This November 14, the latest round of inductions to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be celebrated at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California. It’s something of a UK-leaning intake this year, with Oasis, Iron Maiden, Sade, Phil Collins and Billy Idol among the honourees. Also in line for recognition are the Manchester musicians dually billed as Joy Division/New Order.

• READ MORE: Joy Division and New Order’s best albums ranked

“Is it deserved?” says the groups’ founder bassist Peter Hook. “Without a shadow of a doubt! The fact both bands are there is perfect, otherwise you’d only get half the story. Joy Division has been the bedrock of everything we’ve ever done, and to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes to what we achieved as New Order… those 10 years from 1980 to 1990 were absolutely golden. It’s a hell of a discography, and I still have a great belief in the music.”

The epochal post-punk intensity of Joy Division and New Order’s innovative synthesis of rock and electronics does indeed make for a remarkable body of work. For their part, Hook’s now-estranged partners Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris released a joint statement which read, “This accolade reflects the resilience across nearly five decades that has defined our path alongside our fans, our collaborators and those sadly no longer with us.”

“This achievement is more about the fans than it is about us, to be honest,” says Hook. “Throughout both bands the fans have stuck with us, however much we’ve embarrassed or humiliated ourselves.”

Hook announced his departure from the group in 2007 and has led The Light since 2010. In 2015 he brought a legal case against his former bandmates, who reunited as New Order without him in 2011 (they settled out of court in 2017). As all four original members will be present in LA in November, MOJO can’t help but mention that it is customary for inductees to get together and play a song or three on the night.

“Fans like to think that you were like [British comedy duo] Morecambe And Wise – that we all lived in a flat above The Haçienda and we shared a bed,” says Hook. “The answer is, no, I will never play with them again. I’d rather die than play with them three… what they did to me and my family when they took the name, it was terrible… you have to have morals in this world, and if I let my morals slip, I don’t think people will think better of me. The nicest thing about getting out of New Order was that I could tell the fucking truth, because I lived 
a lie for so long to maintain the status quo… it saps your soul.”

• READ MORE: Ian Curtis Remembered: “Ian was actually loads of fun.”

Hook intends to give his side of the story, again, in a new memoir – his fourth Joy Division/New Order book – about “that legal battle… I’ve got to finish that bastard. The trouble is it’s so fucking miserable.” Other activities include plans for a statue of Factory Records magnate Tony Wilson in Manchester and a statue of late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, who will also be inducted, in Macclesfield (Hook adds that the memorial to late manager Rob Gretton was The Haçienda club). “You live with these people all the time,” says Hook. “It’s like being surrounded by friendly ghosts.”

What would Ian Curtis make of it all?

“I think he’d absolutely love it… but who knows?”

See rockhall.com for more information on this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

This article appears in the latest issue of MOJO Magazine. Featuring a world-exclusive interview with Paul McCartney, King Crimson, Throwing Muses, Cream, Rickie Lee Jones, Spencer Davis Group, a CD of Can rarities handpicked by Irmin Schmidt, and more! More info and to order a copy HERE!

This week sees the release of Ranjha, a second album of collaborations between Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Israeli singer, musician and bandleader Shye Ben Tzur and the Indian musicians known as The Rajasthan Express. Its euphoric and subtly psychedelic dialogue between Qawwali, among other subcontinental folk and classical traditions, and Western music contexts comes over a decade since their first, 2015’s Junun, was accompanied by a documentary film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the creator of There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and 2025’s One Battle After Another, hit movies that all feature Jonny Greenwood soundtracks. While there was always an intention to make another record, the pandemic and other crises intervened, including the death of Junun singer Zaki Ali Qawwal during a November 2021 rehearsal.

“It was awful, gruesome,” says Greenwood, the subject of last month’s MOJO Interview. “He was an amazing man. He was one of the singers when the Rajasthan Express toured with Radiohead. So that slowed us down. Everything in India is quite slow-moving.”

Junun had been recorded in the evocative 15th century Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur with equipment assembled by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. This time, Greenwood suggested a more conventional (in Western terms) recording studio. Conveniently for Greenwood, one in Oxford.

“We didn’t want to record the same album twice,” Shye Ben Tzur tells MOJO. “So it should be different enough in some ways, and at the same time have the DNA of [Junun]. The idea to make it in a studio was one of the first things we knew was going to affect and dictate a different method of work.”

However, that proved easier said than done.

“Getting visas to get Indian musicians into the UK was a nightmare,” explains Greenwood. “We were hoping the immigration officer didn’t notice that they were all born on January 1, because a lot of them didn’t know their dates of birth. A lot of them don’t have addresses. It’s all quite sketchy. We managed to do two or three weeks of recording in Oxford, just playing all day every day.”

While the ecstatic singing – in Hebrew, Urdu, Hindi and Panjabi – of Ranjha echoes the beatific vibe of Junun, the centre of gravity of the music has shifted with its location. The collective have been wary all along of imposing Western structures on Indian music. “There’s some gruesome music done in this fusion [tradition] that’s just awful,” notes Greenwood. “Sub-massagey, or heavy rock beats played over sitars. So there were lots of things to avoid.”

Yet there is more of a sense of the Indian music that sparked psychedelic rock in the ’60s feeding back, something about the slinky groove and wooshing textures of the song Marbolot, for instance, that’s reminiscent of Santana. On Junun, notes Ben Tzur, there was an emphasis on instruments local to Rajasthan; on Ranjha, the palette is expanded to include more colours from Indian classical music, more traditional ragas. But this was not the limit of the expansion.

“The shrine of the main saint of the Chishtiya Sufis [ie. 12th century mystic Khawaja Gharib Nawaz] is in Ajmer, which is in Rajasthan,” explains Ben Tzur. “Making Junun, we felt very much connected to it somehow. Even though we were sitting in Jodhpur, we were feeling the presence of the devotional essence that we feel when we enter the shrine in Ajmer.

“But this time, I was thinking, What if the shrine was not in a fixed place? How would it sound if it was a shrine in space? That image of shrine in space brought in the imagination, and suddenly we were doing different things. And I remember one time Jonny was doing something on an analogue synth, and Sam [producer/engineer Sam Petts-Davis] was manipulating the sound, and Jonny was asking me, is this ‘shrine in space’ enough for you Shye?”

Ben Tzur was born in New York and raised in Israel, where he currently lives. At 19, he saw the Indian flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia and tabla player Zakir Hussain in concert in Jerusalem and became obsessed, moving to Ajmer and immersing in its music, inhaling Qawwali and the poetry of the Sufi saints, also marrying into an Indian family. Harmonising multiple musical traditions is the essence of Rajasthan Express; assembling the musicians in Oxford added complexity, but also opportunities for cultural dialogue.

“We were borrowing tubas from neighbours’ children for the trumpeter to play!” chuckles Greenwood. “The brass music tradition in Rajasthan is amazing because when the British left they left behind all these brass instruments from marching bands. They’ve created their own fascinating version of jazz. We kept saying to Aamir [Bhiyani], ‘You sound just like Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis,’ and he’s never heard of either of them.”

“Everyone has their own cultural musical heritage,” says Ben Tzur. “The singer Zakir Ali [the late Zaki’s younger brother] and his family – there’s his nephew Ehtisham Khan Ajmeri, the dholak [drum] player. They are ceremonial Qawwals. This is what they do every single day – they are singing in the ceremonies. And Nathoo Lal Solanki who plays the nagara drum. He’s coming from a family who for 400 years have played in one of the most important temples in Pushkar, which is a very sacred holy city for Hindus. And he has his own traditional heritage and rhythms and the way that he plays them.

“So each one has their own ways of approaching music, even though this music is original music. Everybody has to learn and put it together. But each one brings their own very particular flavours.”

Now the music of Ranjha – so intimately bound up with its makers’ particular religious and devotional traditions – is about to enter the outside world. “It’s like a photograph that has been in the dark room,” says Ben Tzur. “Now it’s coming out into the light.” There’s the reality of audiences and opinions, and hopefully, eventually, touring, with its even more problematic issues, now the world is even more hostile and suspicious, with visas and the like. Still, Ben-Tzur has a simple hope for Ranjha.

“I’m really hoping, you know, that that feeling of transcendence will come across outward, as much as we feel it in the room.”

Ranjha by Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express is out now on World Circuit/BMG.

Jonny Greenwood quotes courtesy of Dorian Lynskey.

Aldous Harding - Train On The Island

★★★★

4AD

There’s a temptation to sit down with a new Aldous Harding album like you’re a detective trying to crack a case: evidence folders piled up, post-it notes on the whiteboard, a forensic psychologist on speed-dial. Now on her fifth album, the New Zealander can feel less like a musician and songwriter, more like a kind of indie Moriarty, a master of disguise, a genius of escape, eluding capture with a fiendish array of wide-brimmed hats, unnerving masks, coded metaphors (“show the ferret to the egg”, for example) and peculiar Interpol-defying accents.

In the past, Harding has compared discussing her writing process to “rolling over and telling somebody about a dream”; being a vague eyewitness to a robbery, or finding sand in a towel and not knowing how it got there. All fabulous images; all little help to anyone hoping to gloss her work with meaning. Or, as she said slightly more impatiently in a 2019 interview, “People are just so keen to get to the bottom of stuff that's none of their business.”

It feels like wandering into a trap, then, to suggest that Train On The Island, her first album since 2022’s gloriously elliptical Warm Chris, is her most direct yet. The video for first single One Stop shows a newly cropped Harding dancing vigorously in a bunker, emotion and strain showing on her face. It’s a fierce contrast to the visuals for 2017’s Blend, where she aggressively gyrated her way through the male gaze in a showgirl cowboy outfit, or for 2019’s curious chanson The Barrel, where she twitched and jutted in uncanny boots and a blue mask like an escapee from Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge.

Train On The Island opens with the superb I Ate The Most, its thready, bilious synthesizer sounding like Kid A grown up and gone to seed. It seems to witness the moment a child realises the protections and comforts of infancy are vanishing, a reverse Slipping Through My Fingers. “I am through with you on my shoulders,” Harding sings, sounding like a parent who can no longer carry their offspring. There are references to heaviness, disordered eating, love being “sweet like lemon”. Everything is double-edged, untrustworthy: a reference to CS Lewis’s Narnia chronicles – “The Silver Chair and Rilian” – is forced out by the real world in the second verse – “silver hair and Ritalin”. It never quite delivers the solid logical narrative its structure promises (“I’m not afraid like you’re not gay”) but it feels like a song about loss of innocence, the realisation life might be easier if you take up as little room as possible.

The songs that follow match its mercurial pace. The anchor-weight piano riff of One Stop seems to be dragged up by a hometown visit. “I’m gonna write what I know,” sings Harding in a clear, unmediated voice, before exposing how her life has changed. “I met the real John Cale,” she sings, “He had no words but I don’t mind / I packed the stage while he ate rice.” By the time Harding hits the refrain of “why wouldn’t I wanna meet you?”, the song has worm-holed itself into a curious space between St. Vincent and Caravan, a prog-pop meltdown in keeping with the mood of disorientation, of never being able to go home again. Did she really meet John Cale at some festival or other? Did he eat rice? It doesn’t really matter.

There are other moments that land with perfect lucidity, like emerging from fog onto a cliff edge. What Am I Gonna Do?, ribboned with Mali Llywelyn’s harp, rattles along like a hand-whittled version of Unfinished Sympathy, before the music drops away and Harding sings “What am I going to do / I can’t break out of it / what am I going to do / they can’t train me out of it?” The same happens with San Francisco, where Harding returns to One Stop’s desperate refrain, disrupting the misty millennial pop (“I lost my head in San Francisco / you begged me not to drink alone”) like a hectic intrusive thought. She sounds beautifully present on the title track’s submerged, strung-out Fleetwood Mac, too, lifting a line from an Appalachian folk song to hint at something distant: an unachievable goal, a lost person, a whistle in the dark.

Since 2017’s Designer, Harding has worked with producer John Parish, PJ Harvey’s eternal right-hand man, and Train On The Island confirms the intuitive excellence of their match. Harding’s voice and lyrics inevitably dominate, but her fleet, agile music is just as subtle and strange, schooled in Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s sprouting ergot-pop, or Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom. There’s a psychedelic shimmer off Joe Harvey-Whyte’s pedal steel, Thomas Poli’s modular electronics, the reactive, smoked-glass piano and synths, the slightly off-beam acoustic guitar of Riding That Symbol.

Harding remains a fascinating songwriting provocateur.

Harding still plays with her voice on this album – there’s a little Spanish roleplay on Worms, a gallic shiver on If Lady Does It, a high, girlish briskness on Venus In The Zinnia, a deceptively unhinged duet with H Hawkline, but she doesn’t throw on quite so many costumes and covers. It’s best not to be lulled into a sense of false security by Train On The Island, though – this is a record that features the brilliant, inexplicably heartbreaking line “you laugh at me for keeping feathers / but you don’t see me helping down the naked owl.” Coats, meanwhile, sees her clenching her voice tight until the blunt, country-grunge chorus – “big thick coats on the dogs of people trying to help”. Somehow – and you’d probably need an MRI scanner and X-ray specs to work out exactly how - it connects perfectly with the song’s seemingly fractured narrative of adolescent vulnerability, of summer days tinged by dark, unhealthy shadows. “What do you say when you meet blue women?” she sings, casting new light on the blue-faced artwork (not to mention that worrying mask from The Barrel).

No, stop. Close the folders, pull down the incident board. There’s everything to see here, but it doesn’t depend on meeting the “real” Aldous Harding any more than the “real John Cale”. What matters is that Harding remains a fascinating songwriting provocateur, preternaturally disciplined, but able to trip emotional wires you might not even know you had. “I’m only riding that symbol,” she sings, “No one knows what I’m into.” Case very much open.

Train On The Island is out 8 May on 4AD.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

1. I Ate The Most
2. One Stop
3. Train On The Island
4. Worms
5. Venus In The Zinnia
6. If Lady Does It
7. San Fransisco
8. What Am I Gonna Do?
9. Riding That Symbol
10. Coats

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

The Lemon Twigs - Look For Your Mind!

★★★★

CAPTURED TRACKS

There is another world where The Byrds and The Beatles reign supreme, the internet has been turned off, there’s nothing funny about love, peace and understanding, and artificial intelligence is a case of your slow-witted friend trying to say something clever. This is the utopia evoked by The Lemon Twigs, AKA harmony-loving brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario of Long Island, New York. Ten years on from the candy-coated powerpop of their 2016 debut album Do Hollywood, however, recorded when Michael and Brian were just 15 and 17, reality is impinging.

“They’re gonna take my job and give it to a little machine,” Brian frets on Bring You Down, a deceptively joyous rock’n’roller, in the vein of Surfin’ USA-era Beach Boys, about the plight of the working man in the age of Amazon warehouses: clock-watching bosses, rising rents, stagnating wages, an ongoing if ultimately fruitless battle against The Man. This is ’60s protest music, transplanted to the digital age.

“When there is nowhere else to run, look for your mind,” suggests Michael on the title track, applying his best Roger McGuinn drawl against a Byrdsy jingle-jangle guitar, which provides its own case for the benefits of the song’s advice. By throwing themselves so deeply into the music they love, The Lemon Twigs have formed a resistance against the tyranny of modernity, of falling for someone else’s myths, of being shaped and moulded by forces beyond your control.

Going your own way is easier said than done in the 21st century. When The Lemon Twigs broke through a decade ago, a teenage riot of virtuoso musicianship, cheap chic and rock star theatricality, they looked like the kind of eccentric pop sensations the mainstream might reasonably get behind. In the event they proved too eccentric, following up Do Hollywood with 2018’s Go To School, a baroque concept piece about a chimp who is adopted by a kindly human couple before being enrolled in the American education system. Needless to say it bombed, but since then the D’Addarios have grown into their own classicist, virtuosic, highly personal style, from the lovelorn delicacy of 2023’s Everything Harmony to the pop stomp of 2024’s A Dream Is All We Know. Now, bringing the live band set-up of bassist Danny Ayala and drummer Reza Matin into their tiny Brooklyn studio for the first time, the brothers have recorded an album that goes to the heart of who they are.

There is an innocent quality to The Lemon Twigs that cannot be erased, even as life takes its toll. The song 2 Or 3 tells of a simple fellow whose well-travelled girlfriend is far more worldly and sophisticated than he is, with the music recalling the toothy naivety of Herman’s Hermits accordingly. Even when they’re coming up with a modern-day civil rights anthem, as they do on Gather Round, the D’Addarios cannot help but capture a folksy simplicity worthy of The Beatles in 1967. “Gather round, it’s me and you/We’ll love each other down the line,” sings Brian with childlike enthusiasm, before putting his faith in a future leader. “You will do what you must for the ones who chose you/ Won’t you?” he pleads. Such lack of cynicism, such hope for a post-Trump America in the face of everything that has happened under his administration, is integral to The Lemon Twigs’ goofy appeal.

They also make a great team, with Michael playing the mischievous, sarcastic John Lennon to Brian’s sincere, hopeful Paul McCartney. The acoustic delicacy of Joy is pure Brian: a tale of a wonderful girl who left him with a frown, as she passed through to some other town. Believer in the power of true love’s knot that he is, Brian concludes that destiny must surely prevail and Joy will, sooner or later, be with him forevermore. Nothin’ But You is more Michael’s wheelhouse, a perfectly formed slice of Big Star-style energetic garage pop about the perennial young man’s problem of trying to get a girl to notice him. Not that the younger D’Addario brother doesn’t have his sensitive moments too.

“Sometimes I cry,” he confesses on Mean To Me, a tender ballad, straight out of the Brian Wilson school of pure harmony, and like listening to a little kid tell you about his not particularly serious problem there is something both silly and touching about the song, as Michael complains, a little petulantly: “I don’t feel the way I want to.” That’s The Lemon Twigs: embracing the comic book boyishness of rock’n’roll while pouring their hearts and souls into it too.

There are plenty of references to favourite artists along the way. Brian’s pure, keening delivery on I Hurt You recalls the provincial market town innocence of Colin Blunstone and The Zombies; Fire And Gold starts with a Who-like riff before taking off into the progressive stratosphere in a style not dissimilar to all-time Lemon Twigs hero and sometime collaborator, Todd Rundgren. There’s even a nod to early-’60s New York on My Heart Is In Your Hands Tonight, a love song romantic and nostalgic enough to have come from Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons. This is complex, sophisticated music that is ultimately working toward a simple goal: to fashion a great song with a sweet sentiment and a charming melody.

Perhaps, though, The Lemon Twigs’ battle against the modern world is ultimately an interior one. On Your True Enemy, a psychedelic morass of backwards tape effects, ominous church organs, fuzz-laden guitars and Brian and Michael’s father Ronnie reciting some lines from Yeats, all of which might hint at darkness were not the D’Addarios so fundamentally light, Brian concludes: “My one true enemy is me.”

The Lemon Twigs were just a few years into adolescence when they came under the glare of the public eye. Who can blame them for wanting to retreat into their own private Pepperland? The joy for the listener is that, six albums in, they have the confidence to fully inhabit their colourful, analogue world of vintage guitars, bowl haircuts, toy town innocence and unwavering admiration of Todd Rundgren while also allowing aspects of the wider one to come in here and there too. As this delightful album reveals, looking for your mind – perhaps even finding it – proves a worthwhile endeavour.

Look For Your Mind! Is out May 8 on Captured Tracks

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

1. Look For Your Mind
2. 2 Or 3
3. Nothin’ But You
4. Gather Round
5. I Just Can’t Get Over Losing You
6. Fire And Gold
7. Mean To Me
8. Bring You Down
9. Yeah I Do
10. I Hurt You
11. You’re Still My Girl
12. Joy
13. My Heart Is In Your Hands Tonight
14. Your True Enemy

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Speaking exclusively in the new issue of MOJO, in UK shops May 12 and available to order for delivery HERE, Paul McCartney has discussed the making of his new album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, and the emotional, 70-year journey behind it.

READ MORE: Paul McCartney: “Can you imagine trying to start another band after The Beatles?”

Released on May 29, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane finds McCartney looking back on his life, drawing from eight decades of personal stories stretching back to his childhood growing up in Liverpool, and pouring them into a set of songs that make up what might be his best album of the past 20 years.

Produced by Andrew Watt, who helmed both The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds and their forthcoming Foreign Tongues, songs such as Life Can Be Hard and bittersweet lead single Days We Left Behind hark back both to events in McCartney’s past and the vintage sound of classic Beatles, Wings, and McCartney solo records, while resisting being tied too closely to his musical legacy.

“If you’re working with the Stones, they’ve got the Stones sound. It’s kind of the opposite with me - we’re trying not to do that,” McCartney explains to MOJO’s Grayson Haver Currin. “The way we approached this album was: We’ve done that before. Let’s do it different.”

McCartney first met Watt in 2021, shortly after the producer had won that year’s Producer Of The Year Grammy for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, Miley Cyrus and Post Malone. The night before McCartney’s visit to his basement studio in LA, Watt recalls how he woke up in a panic realising he didn’t have any left-handed instruments to hand in case the former Beatle wanted to work on any ideas, so ordered a selection of Macca-friendly gear – a Höfner bass, a Rickenbacker bass, an Epiphone Casino, a Martin D-28 from 1969 – which arrived just before McCartney did.

“We were just talking, and he says, ‘You can write a song from anything. Sometimes I just pick a random chord I’ve never played before and go from there,’” Watt remembers. When McCartney looked for a guitar to demonstrate, Watt handed him one of that morning’s deliveries. “So he played this weird chord and smiled with this boyish charm. He had to resolve it because it was hanging out there so fucking weird. I grabbed a guitar, and we were off.”

The pair wrote The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’s opening track As You Lie There that day, beginning a four-year period of sporadic sessions while McCartney toured and Watt worked on Hackney Diamonds, McCartney having recommended Watt to the Stones’ guitarist Ronnie Wood.

“I came away from the first session thinking, Well, I like him, but he’s a bit pushy,” McCartney tells MOJO of their first encounter. “But pushy’s not a bad thing in a producer. It’s just enthusiasm from someone who wants to keep making this record. It’s infectious.”

• READ MORE: Paul McCartney's Best Albums Ranked

Unlike 2020’s McCartney III, which he wrote, performed and produced almost entirely alone at his studio in Sussex during the pandemic, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane features a number of guest contributions, including, in a subtle nod to Wings, his wife Nancy. On the upbeat Home To Us, McCartney sings not only with The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri from Texas, but with Ringo Starr. McCartney’s first actual duet with his former bandmate after frequent appearances on one another’s records, the song’s lyrics trace a montage of childhood memories.

“Things people write often do refer to the past, but it’s hard to just refer to tomorrow. We don’t know what’s gonna happen then,” he says of the albums’ reflective themes. “But the past is even just talking about yesterday. It’s full of stuff. It’s a rich place to mine for ideas.”

“I don’t want to get depressed, so I fight it. It’s not always easy – in fact, it’s never easy.”

Get the latest issue of MOJO magazine to read our world exclusive interview with Paul McCartney, where he tells the full story of his extraordinary new album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, and dives into key moments in his musical and emotional past: The Beatles, Wings, meeting Dolly Parton and more. More info, and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are, HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

A World Exclusive, in-depth sit-down with Paul McCartney, where he tells MOJO the full story of his extraordinary new album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, and dives into key moments in his musical and emotional past: the Beatles, Wings, Dolly Parton and more. Also in this issue: The Eagles at their height; New Order air their linen; Rickie Lee Jones revisits Pirates; ’80s King Crimson resurrected; Can’s Irmin Schmidt opens up; Soul Train’s TV revolution. Plus: The Spencer Davis Group; Throwing Muses; Taj Mahal; Cream; Motörhead; The Lemon Twigs; unseen Bob Dylan; Northern Soul; Gang Of Four; Peter Frampton; Shoes; Yes; Dave Mason, and more.

THIS MONTH’S COVERMOUNT CD is Can & Irmin Schmidt Replay 1968-2026. Fifteen gems and rarities from the Can vault compiled by Irmin Schmidt exclusively for MOJO!

HAVE MOJO 392 SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

CONTENTS MOJO 392

COVER STORY: PAUL McCARTNEY A MOJO world exclusive: the emotional 70-year story of The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, told by family, friends, collaborators, superfans – and, of course, Paul himself: “We’ve got to beat our way through those hardships.”

EAGLES Fifty years ago, country-rock’s most competitive alpha males checked into Hotel California. Now, as they finally check out, Mark Blake assesses the damage.

IRMIN SCHMIDT Can’s master architect surveys 70 years at music’s cutting edge. Still, “The 10 years with Can was the biggest influence in music in my life,” he tells us.

RICKIE LEE JONES As the boho buccaneer heads to the UK, she returns to the complexities of Pirates – sexism, addiction, heartbreak and music biz pressure. “As it turns out, I like to tell a story…”

THE SPENCER DAVIS GROUP Surging soul heroes of the Britbeat boom, they looked destined to become one of the great British groups – until their boy wonder grew too big for them.

BEAT King Crimson alert! Blessed by Fripp, his Discipline-era charges have reunited to tackle its fiendish art-rock one more time. “A big boy game with adults in the room!”

SOUL TRAIN All aboard for “the hippest trip in America”! Lloyd Bradley rewinds the VHS to celebrate the revolutionary TV show that put black music in the spotlight.

THROWING MUSES 4AD’s resident house tornadoes regroup to look back on their earliest years, as their debut turns 40. “I think I got a lot of ‘art’ points for sounding nuts,” says Kristin Hersh.

REVIEWED The Lemon Twigs / Cream / Fatoumata Diawara / Kraftwerk / Kurt Vile / Ted Lucas / Ed O’Brien / Willie Nelson / Lykke Li / The Beach Boys / Maya Hawke / The Coral / Teddy Thompson / Pink Floyd / Bill Orcutt And Mabe Fratti / Glen Hansard / Kevin Morby / Jalen Ngonda / Don Williams / Guided By Voices / Death Cab For Cutie / Kacey Musgraves / Kelley Stoltz / Funkadelic / Laibach

PLUS New Order’s Hall of Fame catfight! / Northern Soul – beyond the trousers / Gang Of Four get it together / Peter Frampton goes commando / Yes – the saga continues / Shoes add power to pop / Dylan unseen in ’66 / How to buy Motörhead / Mildred and Getdown Services on the up / Taj Mahal – in and out of Rising Sons / The 7 Johns of Dr Feelgood / Farewell, Dave Mason, Asha Bhosle, Andy Kershaw, Moya Brennan, Keith Altham and MOJO’s own Andrew Perry / Anyone for an Ian McLagan puppet? / and more

SUBSCRIBE TO MOJO MAGAZINE

Formed in Toronto, Canada in 1968 and active until 2015, Rush began as Led Zeppelin wannabes and ended up being the geeks who inherited the earth. Their long road to critical and cultural rehabilitation took in grandiose prog and UK new-wave influences, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart wearing their virtuosity increasingly lightly until 2012’s chops-laden last hurrah, Clockwork Angels.

• READ MORE: Rush’s Geddy Lee Interviewed: “Nazareth drunk us under the table!”

Banger Films’ intimate 2010 profile Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage was an important milestone that further-widened their audience. Capturing the loveable, beating-heart of Rush and their enduring three-way bromance, its rich archive footage - and a memorable scene in which Lee, Lifeson and Peart share an increasingly drunken dinner - underlined what fans already knew: this was a goofball group of astonishing talents; a band who sounded and interacted like no other.

Famously self-sufficient - “It was hard to believe only three guys were making all that sound”, Thin Lizzy’s Brian Roberston once told this writer - Rush were unusual amongst bands who’d began as hard-rock acts. Like David Bowie, say, their sound was always shape-shifting, and unlike, Aerosmith, say, they quickly abandoned the more hackneyed terrain of hard-rock lyrics to explore philosophy, ethics and the human condition.  Sure, Caress Of Steel’s 1975 song I Think I’m Going Bald was fun, but antidote to all drummer jokes Neil Peart would grow to become a highly-acute wordsmith, hence 1993’s Cold Fire, a brilliant portrayal of a relationship in trouble.

There was no happy ending. Geddy Lee’s 2023 memoir My Effin’ Life revealed that, prior to Peart’s heartbreaking passing to brain cancer in January 2020, he and Lifeson had kept the drummer’s illness a secret for three years, as per his wishes. Earlier, Rush had bowed-out with 2015’s final, acclaimed US tour R40, which celebrated Peart’s 40 years in the band. The R40 set cherry-picked songs from Rush’s 19 studio albums in reverse chronological order. Rather than do that, MOJO's chief Rush-nerd James McNair has ranked every Rush album order of greatness, from the worst to best...

19.

Test For Echo

(ATLANTIC, 1996)

“We were a bit burnt creatively” Geddy Lee conceded. While Test For Echo was as virtuosic as ever, its title track made for a dirgy, rather pedestrian opener and much of the album sounds like a gallimaufry of off-cuts. Even Peart’s lyrics seemed less honed, Dog Years’ talk of canines “chasing cars in doggy heaven” lacking his usual pedigree. The run-up to Test saw Lifeson make solo LP _Victor_and Peart release a Buddy Rich tribute album while Lee spent time with his infant daughter. When Rush reconvened, inspiration levels were low, indulgences such as Driven’s three bass-guitar tracks indicative of a rare wobble.

18.

Vapor Trails

(ATLANTIC, 2002)

Having lost his daughter Selena in a car crash and his first wife Jacqueline to cancer, Vapor Trails was an Olympian feat of courage for Rush’s drummer, who had to regain equilibrium after years without playing. “Pack up all those phantoms / Shoulder that invisible load”, ran Peart’s lyric for Ghost Rider, referencing the epic motorcycle journey he’d undertaken while grieving. Pointedly, there are no synths on Trails, a stark, ultimately positive LP which accrued hard miles to get back. Its jarring, overly-compressed sound fell foul of the loudness wars, but was somewhat spruced up by a 2013 remix.

17.

Snakes & Arrows

(ATLANTIC, 2007)

After the creative palette cleanser that was 2004 rock covers EP Feedback, Lee, Lifeson and Peart’s penultimate studio release was the first of two with avowed Rush nut and sometime Foo Fighters producer, Nick Raskulinecz. Though the LP’s three instrumentals are decent, YYZ or La Villa Strangiato they ain’t. Replete with some of the distinctive chord voicings Lifeson used so memorably on 1978’s Hemispheres, opener Far Cry impresses, while harmonically-daring deep cut Bravest Face is a Rush song like no other. A decent if somewhat obtuse LP, Lee & Lifeson’s jam-sessions still audible beneath the songs.

16.

Hold Your Fire

(MERCURY, 1987)

Home to fellow Canuck Aimee Mann’s guest vocal on poignant classic Time Stand Still, Hold Your Fire was something of a last hurrah for Rush’s more keyboard-heavy output. The twee oriental woodwind samples on Tai Shan have certainly dated, and songwriting quality-control dips as the record progresses, but icy opener Force Ten and Open Secrets - a moving study of guardedness within romantic relationships - go deep. Elsewhere, producer Peter Collins’ vision for Mission involved overdubbing the colliery parps of Heaton Chapel, Stockport’s William Faery Engineering Brass Band. Perhaps a mix where they’re actually audible will emerge one day.

15.

Presto

(ATLANTIC, 1989)

New label, new producer. Pleased that late ‘80s Rush sounded “more like The Police  than a heavy rock band”, Rupert Hine encouraged Lee to sing lower, thus aiding the intelligibility of lyrics such as that for The Pass, a powerful, empathetic anti-suicide song. Presto rations keyboards carefully, dials-up Lifeson’s acoustic and electric guitars, and, despite some proto math-rock exceptions (Show Don’t Tell; Superconductor) places renewed emphasis on ‘the song’, hence Lee sings more harmonies. Lyrically, Peart had playful, ingenious fun with the aptly-titled Anagram, writing “There is tic toc in atomic.”

14.

Rush

(MOON, 1974)

Unmistakably Zeppelin-esque, Rush’s raw, impassioned debut came on-radar when Cleveland’s WMMS FM put blue collar-friendly closer Working Man on heavy rotation. Zero record company interest hitherto had led Rush manager Ray Danniels to found Moon records for the LP’s release. Solidly helmed by original drummer John Rutsey on his only album with the band, Rush’s unreconstructed hard-rock has the horn (Need Some Love; In The Mood), opens with Finding My Way’s giant-slaying riff, and offers no hint whatsoever of the savvy reinventions to come. Lee and Lifeson’s raw power is already palpable, though.

13.

Counterparts

(ATLANTIC, 1993)

Save for their superhuman swan song Clockwork Angels, Counterparts was Rush’s last truly great record. Lifting the lid on its dry title and uncharacteristically bland cover-art reveals taut gem Cold Fire, depicting an acute all-night discussion between a couple close to separation, and soaring anthem Nobody’s Hero, in part about Peart’s gay friend Ellis Booth, who had died of AIDS-related complications. As ever, Lifeson’s instinctive guitar solos are tangibly emotive responses to the subject matter. Funky/sci-fi-ish instrumental Leave That Thing Alone and Stick It Out are also special, the latter boasting Lee and Lifeson’s heaviest unison riff in years.

12.

Caress Of Steel

(MERCURY, 1975)

Much weed was smoked while making Caress Of Steel, and you can tell. Rush’s first side-long epic The Fountain Of Lambeth charted a pilgrim’s progress from birth to death, while Tolkien-influenced oddity The Necromancer married Peart’s trippy spoken-word narrative to heavy, admirably limber riffage. Long a curious outlier of Rush’s catalogue, the LP sold poorly and took part-justified flak for artistic over-reach, yet it’s ripe for critical rehabilitation. Bastille Day’s French Revolution-inspired dynamism still thrills, while Lakeside Park - recalling a young Peart’s summer-job running fairground attractions on the shore of Port Dalhousie, Ontario - has wistful magic and a lyrical Lifeson solo.

11.

Clockwork Angels

(ROADRUNNER, 2012)

At some level Rush knew Clockwork Angels was likely their last record, and together with producer Nick Raskulinecz they pulled out all the stops. Fans couldn’t quite believe seven-minute single Headlong Flight’s old-school chutzpah: jaw-dropping instrumental interplay, a frenetic, 70’s Rush-style wah-wah solo and Peart’s heartfelt look back on all that Rush had achieved: “I wish that I could live it all again!” Sublime closer The Garden, meanwhile, revealed hard-won wisdom and offered closure: “The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect / So hard to earn, so easily burned.”

10.

Roll The Bones

(ATLANTIC, 1991)

The second of two Rush LP’s produced by Rupert Hine, Roll The Bones’ obvious stand-out is Bravado. Similar in sentiment to Rudyard Kipling’s If, and built around Lifeson’s hypnotic guitar arpeggios, the song’s music is measured and restrained. The rap bit on Roll The Bones’ title track sounds even more iffy 35 years on, it’s true, but the record’s meditations on fate, probability and luck pay further dividends on Ghost Of A Chance. “Somehow we found each other / Somehow we have stayed”, runs one couplet. Though actually about Peart and his then-wife Jacqueline, it could have been describing the magical happenstance of Rush.

9.

Fly By Night

(MERCURY, 1975)

Rivendell is quaint, Tolkien-influenced juvenilia, but with Neil Peart now anchoring-the band post John Rutsey’s departure, Rush became a power-trio of astonishing facility. They never sounded heavier than on adrenalised, super-tight opener Anthem, while By-Tor And The Snow Dog (1976 live album All The World’s A Stage packs the definitive version) was their first proper epic. Though some of the Led Zeppelin-isms which characterised their self-titled debut remained, Peart’s arrival on lyrics as well as drums ensured no more dumb pick-up songs á la Rush’s In The Mood. All this, plus In The End’s immense power-chords.

8.

Power Windows

(MERCURY, 1985)

Sequencers, triggered drum-samples and massive synth pads were go, but Lifeson’s power chords and some decidedly funky Lee bass were essential to Power Windows too. Teeming with layered detail, it’s aged far better than 1987’s less-focused Hold Your Fire. With its brilliantly bonkers Lifeson riff from 1.19, Territories made an acute critique of jingoism / isolationism which still resonates. Elsewhere, Rush explored financial politics on gung-ho opener The Big Money. Together with new producer Peter Collins, they also utilised a 30-piece orchestra and 25-piece choir while working across five different recording studios. Excessive? Definitely. Strong results? For sure.

7.

Grace Under Pressure

(MERCURY, 1984)

Mid-period Rush’s most emotionally-charged LP, Grace Under Pressure got the balance between synths and guitars about right. It took its name from a Hemingway quote and its own gestation process, which saw sometime Supertramp producer Peter Henderson co-helm proceedings at the 11th hour. Afterimage mourned tape-op Robbie Whelan, who had died in a car crash, while the astonishing Red Sector A was Peart’s heartfelt, anonymised account of Lee’s Holocaust-survivor mother Malka’s interment at Auschwitz. An agitated, humane and passionate record, Grace also explored tensions between world superpowers on Distant Early Warning.

6.

Hemispheres

(MERCURY, 1978)

With hindsight, Hemispheres’ Apollonian and Dionysian-concept embroiled Side One outstays its welcome. Despite some fine moments (witness Lifeson’s barnstorming solo at 6.24 and the song-suite’s acoustic coda), it’s also stymied by a key too high for even Geddy Lee to sing, as he later acknowledged. Turn instead to concise, powerhouse Circumstances and Rush’s greatest instrumental, La Villa Strangiato. Part inspired by a nightmare Lifeson had, the latter was subtitled “an exercise in self-indulgence”, but wasn’t, really. Initially, Rush thought its many virtuosic sections would preclude live performance. Not so. They nailed ‘em.

5.

Permanent Waves

(MERCURY, 1980)

New decade, new-ish Rush. UK Number 13 single The Spirit Of Radio proved a challenging dance for Legs & Co. on Top of the Pops, while Entre Nous, about the limits of empathy, reflected Peart’s growing acuity re the minutiae of human relationships. Deep-cut ballad Different Strings was also masterful, guest pianist Hugh Syme - also Rush’s cover art mastermind from 1975 onwards - bringing colour before Lifeson’s feral, slow-evolving solo. Like Peart’s lyrical focus, Lee’s voice was also changing. Fan favourite Freewill was the last Rush song he would sing at the very top of his range.

4.

Signals

(MERCURY, 1982)

Signals was the final Rush album produced by Terry Brown, who’d also helmed their previous eight. Its quality-controlled songwriting embraced nascent digital tech on synth-driven study of suburban ennui Subdivisions, while Lifeson’s guitar sound became more processed, a little more abstract.  Electric violinist Ben Mink guests on avowed classic Losing It, wherein Peart’s lyric sketches the slow, painful fade of artistry due to ageing or ill-heath. Poignantly, this would be the drummer’s own fate prior to his 2020 passing. The Analog Kid and Chemistry are ace too; thoughtful, arresting songs which see Rush embrace new-wave tropes.

3.

2112

(MERCURY, 1976)

1975’s commercial nadir Caress Of Steel necessitated 2112, the high-energy mother of all comebacks. Partly a futurist concept LP set in the dystopian city of Megadon, where music has been banned, Side 1 borrowed from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem as Rush battled those killjoy Luddite priests of The Temples Of Syrinx. Non-conceptual Side 2 packed weed connoisseur’s travelogue A Passage To Bangkok, early gem Something For Nothing, and Lifeson’s classy, pinch-harmonic-laden solo on The Twilight Zone. Resplendent in white silk kimonos on 2112’s back-sleeve, Rush were hot property again, wilder instincts vindicated.

2.

A Farewell To Kings

(MERCURY, 1977)

Featuring tubular bells and Lee and Lifeson on double-necks, 11-minute, Samuel Taylor Coleridge-inspired epic Xanadu was Rush at the peak of their pomp. But Kings also featured succinct, altruistic anthem Closer To The Heart, a singalong fave at gigs thereafter. If Lee’s increasing use of Minimoog and he and Lifeson’s Taurus bass pedals spoke of a band in stylistic transition, recording the LP at Rockfield studios in Wales spoke of Rush’s growing international appeal. Bookended by Lifeson’s courtly classical guitar, Kings’ title track remains a true classic, Lee’s powerful tenor operating at altitude.

1.

Moving Pictures

(MERCURY, 1981)

Propelled by air-drummer fave Tom Sawyer (don your Zildjian finger-less gloves at 2.31), Moving Pictures took Rush out of theatres and into stadia. “Our immediate financial worries disappeared”, recalled Lifeson of this UK and US Number 3. Vital Signs’ nodded at The Police. Limelight was Peart’s lucid debunking of fame; Witch Hunt his ever-pertinent take-down of prejudice. Image-wise, Rush’s stack-heels and waist-length hair had long-since ceded to mullets and skinny ties, but their metamorphosis wasn’t quite complete. The Camera Eye’s nod to New York City and London’s vibrancy had old-school élan, time-signature changes and all.

Photo: Fin Costello/Redferns

By 1967, The Kinks’ Ray Davies had become even more of an outsider within the English pop landscape, longing to withdraw from the limelight and become a producer and songwriter. Simultaneously, his songs became a safe haven for the writer. Nowhere is this more explicit than on Waterloo Sunset. Beyond the lyrics, it’s a curious song of hope narrated by a lonely, lazy, friendless agoraphobic. Those “la-la-laaa” backing vocals seem to mock and comfort our shut-in narrator, and Ray’s vocals are delivered almost too quietly, as if the lyrics are too precious, too private and singing any louder might shatter them. It’s now the defining sound of Ray Davies as a songwriter: removed from the action he’s observing, lonely, alone, but content in his secret kingdom of song.

Here, the three surviving members of The Kinks, Ray, his brother Dave and drummer Mick Avory, discuss the making of one of their most seminal songs, Waterloo Sunset…

• READ MORE: Ray Davies interviewed: “Those English themes became a way of cocooning myself.”

Ray Davies: “By 1967 the songs defined me. They gave me a personality. I don’t talk very much to people. I never did. But I’d discovered songwriting. That was my only communication with the world. So my songs defined me. Was I creating a secret kingdom? Yeah. That’s a very fair way of putting it. Ray’s Kingdom. He’s a cult. It’s funny you should mention the softness of my singing because when I first played them that song I didn’t let them hear the lyrics because I thought the backing track should convey the atmosphere by itself. That’s why Dave’s guitar part works so well. It’s around the vocal. Then you have the backing vocals, the different layers of sound then this quiet voice peeping over the top. I did have a cold as well. The production is part of the identity of the song. The meaning of that song is bound up in the atmosphere it creates. It’s a love song. It’s about people I’ve met, people I know. It’s also about people in the future, the people crossing over the river for a better world. What about the people that don’t cross over? Well, that’s my perspective. I’m the person singing, I’m the person staying behind.”

Dave Davies: “Ray’s singing it as if he doesn’t want to sing it, trying to solve lots of mysteries. That rhythmical guitar style on Waterloo Sunset was learned from a lot of the old ’50s records. Sometimes these things emerge when you don’t know what you’re doing, when you’re searching and you don’t know what you’re searching for.”

Mick Avory: “It all fits into place on that song, everything we were trying to do, everything Ray was trying to do. Things peek through in the right places and it flows. You don’t want any hard dynamics. I didn’t try to do anything funny or flash. It doesn’t call for that. Ray once said about my playing it never gets in the way. It’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, isn’t it? But he means it adds something to the song. John Bonham was a miles better drummer than me but maybe he wouldn’t have suited Waterloo Sunset.”

Tori Amos - In Times Of Dragons

★★★★

UNIVERSAL/FONTANA

“I knew a girl who wrote Silent All These Years,” spits Tori Amos with startling venom, as Shush, the stentorian opener to her 18th album grinds to a close. “Where is she?” It’s a good question, since the Tori Amos who wrote Silent All These Years all those years ago is in her sixties now and there are those who still favour its parent album, 1992’s magical Little Earthquakes.

So, yes, a good question, but not an entirely fair one and Amos is clearly irked by it. She’s moved on of course, but by the closing 23 Peaks, she’s admitting, “I need your help to change me back/Back into the woman I want to be”.

• READ MORE: Tori Amos Interviewed: “In this album’s story, I’m married to a demon lizard-king billionaire.”

She remains a woman with a distinctive voice and an even more distinctive way with a Bösendorfer, but as she’s matured, she’s added layers of depth, experience and nuance without sacrificing her template. Kate Bush, Fiona Apple and Rufus Wainwright are obvious fellow travellers and St. Vincent an equally obvious acolyte, but Amos is clearly familiar with Dory Previn and Mary Margaret O’Hara too. Even so, In Times Of Dragons, a concept album of sorts, is Tori Amos at her most Tori Amos.

Time has significantly ripened and lowered her voice, but Amos still delivers beautifully and, as ever, that beauty enhances the anger which underpins almost everything she’s done. Among many others, Amos evokes Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians; the visionary 16th-century nun St Teresa Of Ávila and disenfranchised divinities such as the Roman sea goddess Salacia. Yet as well as those ancient muses and rabbit-holes of mythology she delights in exploring, In Times Of Dragons is a contemporary parable for Trumpian times where a smorgasbord of characters react to democracy being subsumed by tyranny as a wife flees her abusive husband. Like its closest Amos siblings, Scarlet’s Walk (2002) and American Doll Posse (2007), it’s far from immediate, but the delayed gratification reaps rewards aplenty.

The title track speaks of “the lizard demon and his sadistic companions”, while Stronger Together, written with and featuring her law student daughter Tash, details a mother/daughter bond. Elsewhere, the escapee of Gasoline Girls recovers from being “stalked by henchmen of that lizard scum”, but “ICE breathes in fire’s wind” in the brief, spartan but very 2026 Ode To Minnesota. It’s all over the place and it’s stronger for it.

To answer Amos’s own question, where is the girl who wrote Silent All These Years? She’s still there, older and wiser, and broken but buoyant, especially on the pounding, claustrophobic Tempest, where the cortisol-energised narrator escapes vague but dire threat. She’s there too on the deceptively jaunty Fanny Faudrey and on Provincetown, where a gay witch conjures up an especially annoying spirit guide. That girl never really went away.

In Times Of Dragons is out May 1 on Universal/Fontana.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

Shush

In Times Of Dragons

Provincetown

St. Teresa

Gasoline Girls

Ode To Minnesota

Fanny Faudrey

Veins

Strawberry Moon

Song Of Sorrow

Flood

Pyrite

Tempest

Angelshark

Blue Lotus

Stronger Together

23 Peaks

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

Tori Amos’s Cornwall home has been invaded. “I’ve got a pirate road crew in the live room,” she chuckles as rehearsals for 2026’s 66 shows begin. Now in her 60s (“I’m not in my 60s, I’m 59 plus three”), the daughter of a preacher man first played professionally in Washington bars as 13-year-old piano prodigy: “DC’s in my DNA,” she says. Since Little Earthquakes, her groundbreaking debut of 1992, Amos, has evolved into one of great, era-straddling songwriters, even as she’s taken tangents into classical, seasonal, children’s and covers albums. With 2011’s Night Of Hunters she became the first woman to enjoy a simultaneous Top 10 US classical, alternative and rock album.

Out now, the swashbuckling In Times Of Dragons is Amos’s 18th album and finds her exploring the terrors of modern times via a mesmerising suite of musical parables (you can read MOJO’s four-star review of the record HERE). MOJO’s John Aizlewood spoke to Amos from her home in Cornwall about the record, the horrors of Trump’s America, and the art of the perfect sandwich…

On this tour, you’re taking backing vocalists out for the first time.
I had a three-octave range, but my voice has changed, so you adapt or collapse. Why let my vocal instrument becoming smokier be a pejorative? To do some of the catalogue, I’ve cast angels. They’re not dancers, but they soar with those melodies.

You say In Times Of Dragons, is about ‘the struggle for democracy over tyranny’. It’s tragic it’s come to this in 2026.
Oh yes. I couldn’t have imagined I’d have to do this now, but little did I know that certain groups had plans to infiltrate America. You’re either called to address these things or you’re not. I was. There are a lot of Americans in trauma right now, going, ‘how did we end up here… how are we in this war?’ I’m Tori in the album’s story, but I’m married to a demon lizard-king billionaire, who’s based on real people behind the scenes in America right now. I can't say who they are.

Why not?
Because I don’t look good in orange.

Was Mark, your actual husband and soundman, unnerved to find you wedded to a demon lizard-king billionaire on the album?
Oh, Mark went with it. What unnerved him was the love story with Lugh Of The Long Arm. He said, ‘as long as he doesn't show up at our door, we're good’.

Speaking of family, your daughter Tash co-wrote three In Times Of Dragons songs and sang backing vocals on four.
She’s in her last year of DC law school doing criminal law. She flew into our place in Florida and it was so natural. As the sun set, she drank Aperol spritz and I had a Chard, we sat down at the piano, she pressed record and we wrote Veins, Strawberry Moon and Stronger Together. I forgot about them for a while, until she sent them to me: a Eureka! moment.

You’ve lived in Cornwall since the mid-‘90s. Are you feeling Cornish yet?
I'm finally getting some of their humour after all these years. Finally. For so long, everything went over my head...

Your father was a minister, gods abound in your music, but how are you and God?
Growing up in the church I saw how patriarchal religion instilled shame as its currency and that guilt, that shame and that judgement which gnaws at you is on the new record’s St Teresa. It’s a slow burning at the stake and it’s there on Blue Lotus, but I’ve always had time for Jesus. The Sermon On The Mount is Christ consciousness and his sentiments always resonated with me, like a folk poet who had a point of view, say Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave.

You’ve spoken about taking sandwiches seriously. What’s your current speciality?
Shrimp salad, with dill, celery, rocket, pepper and Hellmann’s vegan mayo. Once you’ve washed – really washed – the shrimp, the trick is to drench it in lemon before you add anything. Of course, you have to toast the bread and, of course, that bread has to be sourdough.

Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before.
Fuck off. I’ve never told an interviewer to fuck off before… but how I’ve wanted to.

In Times of Dragons is out now via Universal/Fontana. Tori Amos plays the London Royal Albert Hall on April 21.

This article appears in the latest edition of MOJO. Also starring: Joni Mitchell's 50 Greatest Songs, Emmylou Harris, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, Bruce Springsteen on Shane MacGowan, Paul Weller on Billie Eilish, Elvis Costello interviewed by Jeff Tweedy, and more! More info, and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

Kneecap - Fenian

★★★★

HEAVENLY RECORDINGS

After last year’s Coachella festival Kneecap became the most talked about rap group on the planet. After accusing Israel of genocide and leading the American crowd in chants of “Free Palestine”, the West Belfast trio went viral, with Fox News calling for their visas to be revoked. Condemned by Keir Starmer, events escalated when a terrorism charge was brought against rapper Mo Chara for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London show in 2024. The charge was eventually thrown out for being ‘unlawful’ in September 2025.

• READ MORE: Kneecap At Glastonbury Reviewed: Defiant trio hit back with feral set.

International notoriety was a quantum leap for a previously cult force who started perfecting their bilingual Irish/English raps in the late 2010s. As with Jason Williams’ grouchy Notts brogue in Sleaford Mods, Chara and Móglaí Bap have used their accents to their advantage. They also share the Mods’ satirical impulses and minimalistic sonic formula – in thrall to UK hip-hop and early grime but with a persistent undercurrent of ’90s rave. If 2024’s debut Fine Art was the story of a wild night out in Belfast, Fenian – written against the backdrop of the prosecution – feels like the aftermath, hilarity tempered by encroaching darkness.

Based around a brooding, Portishead-like percussive motif, Carnival tackles Chara’s terrorism charge head-on, comparing him to the Guildford Four’s Gerry Conlon, sweetened by a ridiculously catchy chorus. They waste little time upending Irish stereotypes amid the Young Fathers-y jagged synths and sirens of Smugglers & Scholars, while the deep growling raps of Liars Tale are even more pugnacious and attritional, lobbing c-bombs at a prime minister they dismiss as “Netanyahu’s bitch”. Solidarity is reasserted on Palestine, an urgent techno-driven duet with Ramallah-based rapper Fawzi.

Elsewhere, punk instincts take over; rallying for the Irish language (the dancefloor skank of Gael Phonics) or in boisterous takes on hedonism’s downside (Headcase’s prescription drug psychosis, the swirling insomnia of Cocaine Hill). The biggest anthem is the title track, an unabashed hands-in-air singalong, collectively spat out over a riot of Theremin-like synths.

While Fontaines DC producer Dan Carey keeps proceedings brisk, hook-laden and on-message, he pushes Kneecap into unexpectedly reflective territory on Occupied 6, using a clanging pulse to count the cost of paramilitary violence: “Who was shot?/Was he known?/From the shop coming home/Another Ma on her own.” Closer Irish Goodbye is more tender still, a grief-flecked duet with Kae Tempest built on a skittering groove and a melancholic piano.

There are other precedents for Kneecap’s rap as Gaeilge. Both Marxman and ScaryÉire signed major deals in the ’90s, only to have their thunder stolen by House Of Pain’s megahit Jump Around. Like that Irish-American trio, Kneecap are PR savvy: see last year’s boisterous self-titled biopic and this album’s visceral cover art – DJ Próvaí in his trademark tricolour balaclava and a blindfold. On Fenian they back that shrewdness with songs of depth and substance, capturing an explicit Emerald Isle that’s not in any tourist guide.

Fenian is out May 1 on Heavenly Recordings.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

1. Éire Go Deo
2. Smugglers & Scholars
3. Carnival
4. Palestine (feat. Fawzi)
5. Liars Tale
6. FENIAN
7. Big Bad Mo
8. Headcase
9. An Ra
10. Cold At The Top
11. Occupied 6
12. Gael Phonics
13. Cocaine Hill (feat. Radie Peat)
14. Irish Goodbye (feat. Kae Tempest)

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

Last week, The Waterboys announced the release of Atlantic Rain: The Lost Fisherman’s Blues Recordings, three discs of music culled from almost 400 reels of tape captured during the sessions for the band’s 1988 album Fisherman’s Blues. You can listen to an amped-up version of Too Close to Heaven taken from it below…

The announcement might have come as a particular surprise to fans who assumed that 2013’s mammoth, six-disc, 122-track compilation Fisherman’s Box: The Complete Fisherman’s Blues Sessions 1986-1988 had given us the final word on the band’s salt-sprayed masterpiece. As he tells MOJO below, bandleader Mike Scott was as surprised as anyone to find he had even more material sat on the shelf…

Many of us thought Fisherman’s Box had given us everything we were going to hear from these sessions - were you always aware that there was even more stuff still in the vaults?    
No. I honestly thought I’d found all the good stuff when I compiled Fisherman’s Box in 2013.

When did you go back to the tapes? Were you surprised by what you found? 
The old Chrysalis catalogue was sold by EMI to a new company called Blue Raincoat, who have been very proactive with archival releases. With them, I did two Waterboys box sets, one each based around the albums immediately before and after Fisherman’s Blues [2024’s This Is The Sea-charting 1985 and 2021’s The Magnificent Seven, which focused on 1990’s Room To Roam]. Blue Raincoat were interested to know if there was any more Fisherman’s Blues material, and when they checked the archive tape list, they spotted several dozen multi-tracks from that era with no song titles, only notes like “jam” or “soundcheck”, or no notes at all. They got them digitised and sent me the sound files. When I listened to them, I found all kinds of forgotten recordings, stuff I don’t even remember playing, cover versions, some originals, alternative takes, beautiful instrumental improvs.

Are there songs here you’d wished you’d included in Fisherman’s Box, or even on Fisherman’s Blues
Damn right. Original album should have been a double or triple.

What was it like hearing the tapes back? Did it take you back to that time and place and what you were trying to achieve back then?
It was a joy. So much wonderful music made by one of the best bands I’ve ever had. The only bittersweet aspect of it is that the original 10-song album showed only a sliver of what we were capable of. This new compilation redresses the balance.

At the time you were recording so much music, how were you keeping track of everything?
Well, that’s just the thing. We didn’t. We used to play live in the studio - vocals included - and could lay down as many as eight or ten songs in a day. The stack of tracks built up until there were over a hundred, though at the time I wasn’t counting. No surprise, then, with hindsight, that a lot got missed and lost.

Is there any more unreleased music from the era we might still get to hear?
I can now say with confidence that I’ve heard everything we recorded in the studio for Fisherman’s Blues, and of course, this isn’t all of it. But this is the best of it. What remains is unfinished scratch songs, comedy numbers, and instrumental jams. I’ve shared some of them on our Patreon page, but I don’t think there will be any more official releases from this lode.

Atlantic Rain is out July 17 on Chrysalis Records.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

   1. Too Close To Heaven (soul version) (5.32)

   2. Come Back To Galway (8.51)

   3. The Man With The Wind At His Heels (7.15)

   4. And Then The Gods (2.47)

   5. Light Shine On Me (3.14)

   6. Endless Store (5.39)

   7. This Land Is Your Land (studio version) (4.55)

   8. Saints And Angels (1988 version) (4.41)

   9. I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore (2.35)

   10. Knockin' On Heavens Door (3.54)

   11. Honky Tonkin' (2.04)

   12. No Expectations (3.03)

   13. When Doves Cry (3.16)

   14. Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground (4.59)

   15. Killing My Heart (full length) (5.27)

   16. Bob And Anto's Soundcheck (1.07)

   17. We Will Not Be Lovers (live take) (7.58)

   18. Lost Highway (double version) (7.59)

   19. The Good Ship Sirius / The Ship In Full Sail (2.31)

   20. Mister Saxman (4.11)

   21. The Waves (6.36)

   22. The Last Jam (long version) (6.12)

   23. Night Falls On Windmill Lane (1.18)

   24. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (13.27)

   25. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (6.54)

Won’t Back Down: Heartland Rock And The Fight for America

★★★★

Erin Osmon

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

Mention the music of the 1980s and for most it conjures a quick-cut montage of big hair, synth sounds, and a certain kind of outsized pop stardom. Erin Osmon, however, offers a different perspective on the decade, chronicling the complicated rise of American heartland rock, a brand of populist music personified by the “core four” of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, and John Mellencamp.

• READ MORE: Bruce Springsteen: “How your country steers itself is under your stewardship…”

Osmon - a Midwesterner and author of previous books on John Prine and Jason Molina - pulls together an interweaving narrative of the era, set against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s outwardly uplifting but ultimately divisive presidency. She notes how this contingent of artists would respond to the shifting mores of the Boomer generation and the destruction of the American working and middle classes, while reckoning with the long shadow of the Vietnam War, the frightening spectre of AIDS, and a music business suddenly, radically reshaped by the arrival of MTV.

In her introduction the author admits that heartland rock’s practitioners can’t neatly by grouped by a common sound or geography. While Springsteen’s Jersey upbringing and Petty’s Florida raising may have been physically disparate, they were emotionally similar and would ultimately inform their battles, as the Boss fought against Reagan’s co-opting of Born in U.S.A., while the Heartbreakers leader waged war against the pernicious policies of major record labels.

Though they serve as the book’s most determined characters, it’s Indiana native Mellencamp who emerges as its most fascinating figure. Evolving from a punkish chancer under the control of David Bowie/MainMan manager Tony Defries to an uncompromising self-determining artist who would earn a rep as “an arrogant SOB or a tough guy who doesn’t take shit from anyone, depending on one’s point of view,” notes Osmon.

Though this strain of rock music was largely male dominated, the decade would close with a chorus of female voices breaking through, chief among them Bonnie Raitt. The Los Angeles-raised daughter of stage and film star John Raitt, she would experience an unlikely mid-career transformation from blues journeywoman to Grammy-winning multiplatinum star – as other similarly earthy artists like Tracy Chapman, Melissa Etherdige, and the young Lucinda Williams brought a powerful distaff energy and perspective to the music.

While the artists’ individual stories – the book also examines the careers of up-and-coming rockers like Los Lobos and the Blasters, and the resurgence of veterans Neil Young and Bob Dylan – form the foundation of the book, the tangents Osmon explores offer equally intriguing insights. She delves into the history of the Compact Disc, and how the opening of Sony’s DADC pressing plant in Indiana crucially helped accelerate the rise of the format, while showing how mail-order record clubs like Columbia House and the American auto industry had a significant impact on the perception of heartland rock as well.

Across 300 pages, Osmon’s clear-eyed vision and economical prose keeps Won’t Back Down moving at a brisk pace, blending facts, anecdotes and critical insights into an unexpectedly entertaining history.

Won’t Back Down: Heartland Rock And The Fight for America is available now from W.W. Norton & Company.

ORDER: Amazon | Waterstones

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

The Black Keys - Peaches!

★★★★

EASY EYE SOUND/PARLOPHONE

Fans of the Black Keys in their earliest incarnation shook their heads in wonder as the flailing, wild-eyed garage-blues duo they’d come to adore became one of the biggest bands of the 2010s. 2011’s El Camino and 2012’s Brothers offered an unexpectedly streamlined, irresistibly catchy update on their blues-rock template, with smash singles Lonely Boy, Gold On The Ceiling and Tighten Up proving that modern, chart-friendly R&B was a game that could be played with guitars.

• READ MORE: The Black Keys Live Review: Noel Gallagher joins duo for electrifying testament to the power of rock’n’roll...

But staying on the pop radar is never easy. Singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney looked uncomfortable in the glare, and the effort of maintaining popularity appeared to impact on the records – as on 2019’s airless Let’s Rock. The slick title track of 2025’s No Rain, No Flowers encapsulated the problem; it’s a good pop song, while lacking all the grit and fire that once defined the band. With returns diminishing, why were they still playing this game?

OG fans knew their guys were in there somewhere, though. They could hear them on 2021’s hill country covers collection Delta Kream, and they’ll hear them on this, another album of homages, jammed fast and loose in early 2025 at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in the wake of a cancer diagnosis for the singer’s father Chuck – who died soon after on March 29. The urgency and catharsis in these tracks makes sense in that context, but there’s something else here: a deep connection with music, felt in every groove and texture.

Tunes essayed include George Thorogood’s 1977 blaster, You Got To Lose, attacked with anarchic gusto, Carney all arms and legs. Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s Who’s Been Foolin’ You underlines the approach; if these songs were not already foaming at the mouth Auerbach and Carney seem determined to make them so. On their version of Junior Kimbrough’s Tomorrow Night, stealthy and hypnotic in its original form, all decorum is abandoned and Auerbach’s snarling, reverb-laden guitar spirals almost out of control.

The feeling of being in the room, in real time, is palpable. Hill country spitfire Jessie Mae Hemphill’s Tell Me You Love Me starts tentatively; Carney and Auerbach stumble and noodle while a second guitar and a mandolin feel for a way in between them. Finally, they lock in and the magic of groove is summoned. By contrast, Dr Feelgood’s She Does It Right is in high gear from first ignition – fittingly filthy too.

Chuck Auerbach, among other things, was a dealer in folk art, with clients in the ‘outsider art’ firmament. So he’d have appreciated The Black Keys’ choice of Willie Griffin’s defiantly odd Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire, an ‘outsider’ 45 if ever there was one. (Suggesting mystic crate-digging synchronicity, it’s the same track Paul Weller covered on last year’s Find El Dorado.) God knows there’s nothing wrong with pop music when it’s done well, but ‘folk art’ describes the blues that obsesses Auerbach and Carney to a ‘t’. They’ve not only supported it and curated it with passion and discernment, they play it like the blazes. Why would they do anything else?

Peaches! is out May 1 on Easy Eye Sound/Parlophone.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

1. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire
2. Stop Arguing Over Me
3. Who’s Been Foolin' You
4. It’s A Dream
5. Tomorrow Night
6. You Got To Lose 
7. Tell Me You Love Me
8. She Does It Right 
9. Fireman Ring The Bell
10. Nobody But You Baby

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

How four Forest Hills ‘thugs’ with a fixation with The Beatles revived rock’n’roll with an injection of raw speed and psycho thrills. The Ramones’ late drummer Tommy Ramone tells MOJO’s Bob Mehr about the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it story of the band’s game-changing 1976 debut...

“A year before making the first record, we had done a demo at a small studio out on Long Island, so we already had the blueprint in mind. What we were looking for was a quirky thing, actually. I had been listening to a lot of early Beatles records and they had these weird stereo mixes – because I guess they were focusing on the mono mixes, and the stereo mixes were an afterthought. So the stereo mixes were really odd-sounding, with things just in the left channel or just in the right channel. And it gave a weird effect when you listened to it. As a concept we were thinking of imitating that. So we were taking elements of that and combining it with some original arrangement ideas. And we had a very original sound to begin with.

So when we went into the studio in February ’76, we brought those ideas with us. Most of the songs were ready to go, because of our experience of recording the demo. That’s how we were able to record the first album so quickly. The record company chose the studio, because they had a deal there. It was Plaza Sound in the Radio City Music Hall building, which was originally a radio station studio. There were some serious budgetary considerations. We had a very small budget [reportedly $20,000, of which $6,400 was spent]. I think possibly [Sire] had no money at the time. We ended up doing two or three days recording tracks and overdubs, and part of that was for Joey’s vocals, and then we did a 14-hour marathon mix session. I don’t think it was more than five days altogether.

The biggest problem was the lack of time. There was very little room for trial and error. Plus there were all these unknowns: the studio itself, working with [A&R man/producer] Craig Leon, whether Sire would even approve of what we were doing. Plus, the house engineers we were working with had no clue what the hell we were doing. They thought a bunch of thugs had come into the control room. It was really strange, what we were asking them to do. Everybody was a little nervous.

Looking back, all the Ramones recording sessions were all the same – the guys just wanted to get it done quickly. We went in very prepared. The guys weren’t particularly intimidated by the studio. They were comfortable. I had worked at the Record Plant, and had experience as an engineer, so they trusted me. We just set things up and did it. At the most we did two takes of the songs. That was great for them, because they wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Once the basic tracks were done Johnny and Dee Dee were gone. And that was good for me because I could work with Joey to do the vocals, and to do some overdubs. That was kind of the methodology.

The first day we went in there I had a really bad cold. We set things up and did some tracks, but we decided to scrap the stuff we’d done the first day. We came back the second day and started fresh. When I had the cold I felt like I was underwater, which is no good for a drummer. So I went back in with a clear head and did the job.

We decided to try separation on the instruments. Craig Leon was looking for that. So we put everyone in different rooms, which was kind of weird because we had no communication except through headphones; we had no line of sight. I never worked like that ever again. But that was an interesting way to record.

In terms of the material, we chose the best songs we had; I had just written I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Blitzkrieg Bop with Dee Dee. Though we did save some of our better songs for later albums – we had things like I Don’t Care, which ended up on Rocket To Russia. The bands we were influenced by were the MC5, The Stooges, and Joey was very much influenced by Alice Cooper. We had all these influences but we didn’t sound like these other acts. We kinda came up with our own thing.

I think that first record was the Ramones sound combined with some Beatles recording techniques – that was the one group we were all crazy about. And at that time The Beatles were not being discussed, it was a lull in Beatleology. I think we saw this album as a wake-up call. The whole Ramones thing was a wake-up call, because in the early ’70s things had gotten so far away from everything that was happening in the mid-’60s when we’d all fallen in love with music. We were going to revive the pop song mentality. But also we wanted to create an album with that feel – we weren’t just interested in individual singles, but an album that would play as a set of songs.

That signature sound of the Ramones was really developed at rehearsals. The trick was trying to get as much of that in a recording session. Once I started playing drums with them, we started going for this specific flowing feel. When we were trying out drummers none of them worked out because their drumming just didn’t click in with Johnny’s guitar style. The style of drumming that was popular at the time just didn’t suit the Ramones. Most people were playing like John Bonham or Carmine Appice; they were incredible drummers, but their use of tom-toms and rolls just didn’t fit with what the Ramones were doing. They would just get confused, that was the problem.

When I decided to start playing drums, I wanted to lock in with the guitar and try and get a forward momentum going. Most people assume the rhythm, the bass and drums, lock in together. But with the Ramones it was more the guitar and drums. I locked in with Johnny, and Dee Dee’s bass was the underpinning of it all. Johnny had this very flowing thing because of his strumming technique.

Interestingly, Johnny was influenced by the group Love; Arthur Lee and the guitar player Bryan MacLean had a choppy sound that Johnny liked. Johnny was also influenced by Mick Ronson’s work on Ziggy Stardust. But once he started playing he couldn’t help but sound like himself.

Joey’s vocals were very easy to capture. He was very good at double-tracking. A lot of people have trouble double-tracking, but Joey was great at it. We’d just get the best take possible and then double it. Again, it was back to the Beatles records, the way Lennon would double-track his voice. The Ramones songs were so unusual and borderline psychotic, that we wanted a pop element in there. And double-tracking is a very pop effect.

That record was really the sum of all our tastes: we liked eccentric music, we liked pop music, we liked very heavy music. We were into so many different things and we kind of combined them all. The combination of all those elements, that sort of became our aesthetic, I suppose. Once we were finished, there was no way we were going to be totally crazy about something that had to be done so quickly. But the album has its own charm. I wasn’t able to elaborate as much as I would’ve liked. So some of the things are not 100 per cent what we were aiming for. But, overall, it worked out because that album was totally unique in its sound. In a strange way, it’s a lo-fi work of art."

As told to Bob Mehr.

Picture: Getty

Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale now, Elvis Costello has revealed details of an upcoming boxset focused on his 1977 debut album My Aim Is True. Due this autumn, the 5-disc set will reflect, says Costello, “the curious nature and the compression of events between ’76 and the middle of ’78”. Alongside a remaster of the album nestle a bounty of unheard demos from 1975 that he stresses “nobody’s ever heard”.

Disc 1 will be the said My Aim Is True remaster – recorded in North London with the US country rock band Clover 50 years ago and showcasing what Costello calls “that great Pathway Studio sound”. He also promises “US readers will find Watching The Detectives added to the end of Side One, just where they expect to find it.” That song – Costello’s fourth single – remains a tribute to its interim rhythm section: drummer Steve Golding and bassist Andrew Bodnar from The Rumour. “‘Bertie’ Bodnar sadly left us not so long ago,” notes Costello, “but I am glad that I got to tell him that his bassline is still in all versions of the song played today.”

Disc 2 is entitled The Blue Print: “a record of 17 acoustic songs recorded in 1975 and 1976,” Costello explains. “Ten of which have never been published or issued before.

 “You will find a version of Radio Soul here,” he adds, “which turned into [1978 single] Radio Radio – but there are eight or nine of these songs that contain themes, individual lines, lyric couplets or entire verses and choruses that are found on Armed Forces, Get Happy!! or Trust, set to entirely different music. It’s a kind of editing in reverse and why this record is called The Blue Print.”

Five of the songs are solo recordings taped in Costello’s bedroom. “These songs were my view from the outskirts of town in ’76, away from ‘where it was happening’,” says Costello. “I had to find an entirely different way of speaking about these feelings and so the songs sound as if I might have been writing them for ‘Whispering’ Jack Smith or Al Bowlly not some odd-looking eejit in hornrims.”

Disc 3, The Stranger In The House, comprises demos and outtakes that in Costello’s mind illuminate the parallel career path that might have opened up for him as a songsmith-for-hire, possibly in Nashville.

“This disc opens with Radio Sweetheart – the first song I recorded for Stiff Records,” he reveals. “As you will hear, it has little or nothing to do with the musical allegiances of 1976 or 1977. It has a pedal-steel guitar on it for heaven’s sake. By early 1976, I was completely convinced I was really a backroom songwriter for other singers and tried to get signed on that for assignments all over town. Only Stiff Records thought differently. They put me in the studio with Nick Lowe and members of Clover.

“This sounds like a boast but Bruce Springsteen once asked me, ‘How did you get that sound on My Aim Is True?’ I told him honestly: No money.”

Compiled in the style of a radio documentary, Becoming The Attractions is Disc 4 and focuses on the period between the summers of 1977 and 1978 when Costello, keyboard player Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Bruce Thomas got hold of the My Aim Is True songs and began to enthusiastically remodel them.

“Clover tried to play really sensibly, y’know, like in the right tempo and everything and sort of swung in,” Costello tells MOJO. “When it comes to tempo, there’s a certain kind of song, particularly anything with a bit of a swing to it, if you play it too fast, it loses that. So, it was very noticeable that the songs from My Aim Is True that disappeared from [The Attractions’] live set were Pay It Back, Sneaky Feelings and Blame It On Cain. They kind of went away because they were a different kind of music.”

Covered In Clover, the final disc, is a live performance with Clover from 2007 – the one and only time the Marin County group performed the songs they recorded for My Aim Is True.

“Mickey Shine, the drummer, had become a painter by then, so we had to enlist Pete Thomas,” says Costello. “If you want to hear a happy drummer, you want to listen to this record. You’ve never heard anybody having such a great time being in his favourite band. He knew Clover before Stiff, before we started. Pete was living in California, and he got to know them, and he was the one who introduced Clover to my manager [Jake Riviera], and hence they were brought to England… supposedly to make their fortunes.”

The 2007 show was a benefit for sufferers of a rare genetic disorder, Prader-Willi Syndrome, a condition that eventually requires residential care. Richard de Lone – the son of Eggs Over Easy pianist and co-founder Austin, a former bandmate of Costello’s – is a sufferer‚ and the inspirer of subsequent benefit events including Nick Sings Elvis – Costello Sings Lowe in which Nick Lowe and Costello performed one another’s songs, and most recently, in 2022, Costello Sings Hunter/Garcia with The All-American Beauties led by Larry Campbell.

Austin de Lone passed early in 2025. “This disc is dedicated to him,” says Costello, “and all the people, both family and friends, who have seen many of the objectives of what has now become The Prader-Willi Homes Of California fulfilled.” You can find out more HERE.

“As we came off the stage, Dylan said, You sing loud - we should do a record of Johnnie and Jack songs…”

As Elvis Costello gets ready to return to the UK in June, playing a revelatory selection of early songs. Wilco renaissance man and Costello fan Jeff Tweedy quizzes his hero exclusively for MOJO. On the agenda: star signs, record shops, tour buses, “backwards orchestration” and, naturally, Bob Dylan. More info and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Presenting the definitive guide to every album by The Smiths, Morrissey and Johnny Marr, plus books, films, and rarities, MOJO The Collectors’ Series: The Smiths Essentials is on sale and available to order for delivery wherever you are now! GET YOUR COPY HERE!

• READ MORE: The Smiths' 50 Greatest Songs Ranked!

Sometimes – though very rarely – a group comes along that sounds nothing like anything you’ve ever heard before and, in an instant, tears up the existing rule book of rock’n’roll and throws it onto the fire. So it was with The Smiths in 1983.

Here was Morrissey, his quiff huge even by the standards of the day, balancing on one leg while swirling a bouquet of gladioli above his head. The lyrics he sang on the group’s first hit single, This Charming Man, concerned a leather car seat and “a jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place” – hardly the usual clichéd pop fare. Meanwhile, Johnny Marr, dressed like he was hanging out on Sunset Strip in 1966, played a chiming riff so intricate that even expert guitarists watched agape.

So began the cult of The Smiths, which would become ever bigger over the course of the next four years. During that time, their every release was feverishly devoured, their concerts became rituals of almost religious intensity, and Morrissey’s lyrics – full of droll, risqué humour and allusions to film, art and literature – were gleefully learned by rote. And then, just as their fourth album, Strangeways, Here We Come, was completed in summer 1987, they suddenly split.

In this deluxe MOJO Essentials bookazine, we unfold The Smiths’ extraordinary tale by dissecting their timeless body of music, album-by-album, with in-depth features shedding new light on their mercurial rise and fall and the constant dramas that engulfed the group. We also spotlight their live recordings, compilations, rarities and TV appearances, as well as provide a guide to the very best in Smiths literature.

Of course, Morrissey and Marr would each go on to enjoy successful solo careers – the singer becoming an increasingly controversial and divisive figure – and we profile both men’s musical output and their artistic highs and lows.

Illustrated with rare and iconic photographs and album artwork, The Smiths Essentials is a must-have purchase for fans of the band and music connoisseurs everywhere.

Order your copy now!

.

.

.

.

In the latest issue of MOJO, on sale now, we immerse ourselves in the genius of Joni Mitchell. MOJO's finest writers sink deep into her 50 greatest songs, we chart her transformation from coffee house sensation to the queen of Laurel Canyon, and there's an exclusive CD of Joni covers, featuring contributions from Fleet Foxes, Margo Price, k.d. lang, and more. Alongside the likes of Judy Collins, Richard Thompson, and Both Sides Now arranger Vince Mendoza, Mitchell's friend, collaborator and Joni Jams coordinator, Brandi Carlile has spoken to MOJO about the enduring magic of her remarkable music...

• READ MORE: Inside the making of Court And Spark: “John Lennon said: You want a hit, don’t you? Put some fiddles on it!”

“When I was younger, I’d projected femininity as a submissive state. I loved punk and rock’n’roll, and Joni didn’t fit that narrative. But I heard Little Green and I understood the power of vulnerability, and how femininity didn’t mean submissiveness. It was the toughest and grittiest song I’ve heard in my life, and it reduced me to tears in ways that I still don’t fully understand.

“I realised Blue was self-revealing in a revolutionary sense. Joni hates the word ‘confessional’ as she thinks it implies you’ve done something wrong, but for me, it’s the first folk album that’s entirely a person turning themselves inside out, and it changed songwriting forever. A Case Of You is one of the greatest songs of all time. It can be played in any configuration – piano, dulcimer, ukelele, a capella.

“Starting with The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, Joni started to be musically experimental, raising eyebrows with some of the great virtuosos of our time, without any formal training. Her lyrics stayed fucking great, too. They feel eccentric at first before they start carving little neural pathways in your mind until you understand it… But my favourite Joni album is Hejira, because it speaks to me at the time of my life I’m in right now. Refuge Of The Roads is one of my three hero songs on the album alongside Hejira and Amelia. She’d returned to writing observational songs, even though they are still ‘I’ statements, using terms and metaphors that aren’t overtly obvious, all through the lens of this journey Joni’s on, her fleeing with honour.

“Shine is also in my Joni Top Three. It’s observational again but she veers into prophesy, and she still manages to be funny, like, “Another asshole passing on the right”. She’s made some potently powerful observations that I fear will be relevant in 50 years in the way that Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ is.”

Joni Mitchell's 50 Greatest Songs

Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our 20-page celebration of Joni Mitchell. Featuring a deep dive into her 50 greatest songs; the inside story of her early rise, told with the help of those who witnessed it first-hand; and an exclusive CD of Joni covers by Roberta Flack, Judy Collins, Fleet Foxes and more, only available when you purchase a copy of the magazine. For more info, and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are, HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale Tuesday March 17, and available to order HERE – Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters have discussed the making of the band’s forthcoming new album, Your Favorite Toy, and opened up about the impact of the tragic death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022.

• READ MORE: Foo Fighters Live In Manchester Review: Small show delivers stadium-sized thrills...

In his first major interview since Hawkins’ passing, Grohl reveals how he started work on the music that would provide the album’s foundations as a means of therapy during the turbulent years that followed.

Each day, he would go into his home studio – often in the middle of the night – and start “recording these instrumentals, ranging from something you could hear on [Led Zeppelin’s] Presence to [1982’s seminal punk tape] the Bad Brains’ ROIR cassette. It was all over the place.”

“There was no plan to make an album,” Grohl tells MOJO’s David Fricke. However, he reports that after a year of writing and listening back to the “40 or 50 instrumentals” he had amassed, he found one stretch of eight recordings that were “punchy, fast, energetic” which felt like the seeds of a new Foos’ album. “I said, ‘That’s what we need...’” recalls Grohl.

Out on April 24, Your Favorite Toy is Foo Fighters’ first album with new drummer Ilan Rubin, who replaced Josh Freese, Hawkins’ initial replacement, in 2025. Largely recorded in a matter of weeks in the small studio above Grohl’s garage, the band report that two key guiding lights during the album’s sessions were the punk and hardcore groups they’d loved as teenagers, and the stripped-down techniques of In Utero producer Steve Albini, who died in 2024.

“That was the design going in,” says bassist Nate Mendel. “Dave referencing the hardcore records from the ’80s that we grew up with – blown out, loose and rough.”

“We did it so bam bam bam,” adds guitarist Pat Smear. “I would say we did it punk-rock style but that’s everyone rushing and playing all together. This was like, ‘Somebody needs to come from 10 to one.’ ‘Pat, we need you for four songs.’ OK, got that. It was still bam bam bam.”

“It’s always been about the challenge,” says Grohl. “We’ve been that band willing to try something we don’t know we can do whether it’s Sonic Highways [the 2014 album recorded in different, legendary American studios], working in a basement [where Grohl, Mendel and Hawkins made 1999’s There’s Nothing Left To Lose] or doing it upstairs in my house.”

A challenge of a far graver kind came with 2023’s But Here We Are, made directly in the aftermath of both Hawkins’ passing and the death of Grohl’s mother, Virginia, only five months later, on which a still shellshocked Grohl played drums.

“We had this idea,” he recalls of But Here We Are. “We were going to record live, the five of us, and we would play the drum tracks from speakers in the room. We’d hit the chord and play along to these drums. But there was no one there. There was just this void, and we were desperately trying to fill it.”

Hawkins’ death, aged just 50, on the night the band were due to headline the Estéreo Picnic festival in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 25, 2022, is a tragedy that still haunts Grohl and his bandmates.

“Losing Taylor was never meant to be,” Grohl tells Fricke, the first time he has publicly discussed his bandmate’s passing at length in an interview. “That threw our world upside down and made me question everything about life, that it was so unfair. I still have a hard time making sense of it.”

The parallels between the loss of Hawkins – whose relationship with Grohl, Smear likens to that of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – and the early days of Foo Fighters following the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994 is something the members of the band were acutely aware of.

Grohl recounts that the “heartbreaking experience” of Cobain’s death had driven him to record Foo Fighters’ 1995 debut album, then take it on the road with Smear, Mendel and original drummer William Goldsmith. When Hawkins, who replaced Goldsmith in 1997, died 30 years later, he and the rest of the band “realized this was something we needed to do. Because it had saved us once before...”

“Before, I was running on fumes and unleaded gas. Now I’m just burning fucking diesel.”

Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our world-exclusive interview with the Foo Fighters in full. Plus! Get your hands on bespoke compilation CD of tracks hand-picked by Dave Grohl and Nate Mendel, only available when you purchase a copy of the new MOJO. More info and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

Foo Fighters - Your Favorite Toy

★★★★

ROSWELL/COLUMBIA

Amateur therapists scouring the first Foo Fighters album since Dave Grohl’s personal life became uncomfortably public may be disappointed that the chief Foo Fighter has sensibly kept the catharsis for his actual therapist. “I’ll find a better way to explain this to you,” he offers on the Neil Young-wistful Unconditional, a pensive outlier on a record otherwise built upon the modular riffage and stacked harmonies that made this band one of the world’s biggest.

• READ MORE: Foo Fighters: “This was something we needed to do, because it saved us once before...”

Yet although swerving the sonic extremes which distinguished 2023’s But Here We Are, Grohl can still subvert his own formula: opener Caught In The Echo brilliantly synthesises Ian MacKaye with Paul McCartney, and the needling pulse of Window is superior Josh Homme-age. The wired Child Actor, meanwhile, reveals a conflicted man behind the persona: “As I chase all the roles I’ve lost, was I good enough?” Credit to him for still asking the tough questions.

Your Favorite Toy is out April 24 on Roswell/Columbia.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

Caught In The Echo
Of All People
Window
Your Favorite Toy
If You Only Knew
Spit Shine
Unconditional
Child Actor
Amen, Caveman
Asking For A Friend

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

Ringo Starr - Long Long Road

★★★★

UME

Ringo Starr’s debut outing with T Bone Burnett, 2025’s Look Up, was a creative triumph, so the pair haven’t messed much with the formula on this swift follow-up. Returning are Molly Tuttle – duetting with Starr on three of the 10 tracks, including Robert Plant/Alison Krauss-styled opener Returning Without Tears – and Billy Strings for the Everly Brothers-fashioned harmonies of My Baby Don’t Want Nothing.

• READ MORE: Ringo Interviewed: “It was an absolute surprise to me!”

Sheryl Crow pops up on the title track (which comes with Ringo’s meditation-informed spoken-word section: “Don’t be attacked by your thoughts… let them come in, let them go”) while St. Vincent cameos on Choose Love, a reworking of a previously-released 2005 Ringo song now given mid-’60s R&B swing and a psychedelic edge. Throughout, Starr’s drumming is reliably great, and while he may indeed have travelled a long long road, here he sounds 85 years young.

Long Long Road is out April 24 on UME.

ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV

Tracklisting:

1. Returning Without Tears
2. Baby Don't Go
3. I Don’t See Me In Your Eyes Anymore
4. It’s Been Too Long
5. Why
6. You and I (Wave of Love)
7. My Baby Don’t Want Nothing
8. Choose Love
9. She’s Gone
10. Long Long Road

Get the latest issue of MOJO for the definitive verdict on all the month's essential new releases, reissues, music books and films. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

During a 1984 interview for The Old Grey Whistle Test, Robert Smith was asked why he had recently said that the time for him to step away from contemporary music was drawing close. Did he really mean it? “Yeah,” The Cure’s 25-year-old singer nodded with a smile, “cause I’m getting too old.”

• READ MORE: The Cure’s 30 Greatest Songs

Forty years later, The Cure would release Songs Of A Lost World, one of the most dramatic peaks of a remarkable high-altitude career, Smith promising that at least one more record was in the works. With the singer as their sole constant member since they emerged from Crawley in 1976, The Cure have survived their often tempestuous creative process through a combination of intense world-building – few pop stars have quite such a distinct shaking-like-milk lexicon as Smith - and careful recalibration.

Nervy punk teenagers who drip-drip-dripped their way through their 1979 debut album Three Imaginary Boys; the post-punk brutalists of 1982’s Pornography; the hybrid pop stars of 1985’s The Head On The Door; the magisterial gothic (never goth) architects of 1989’s Disintegration: The Cure’s evolution is a fascinating record of what happens when a band are so driven by a singular internal creative vision, only tangentially influenced by the shifts of the universe around them, but still able to capture something grand and pervasive about the human condition.

“I’d rather be aware of the fact I am going to stop rather than watching myself sliding down the endless slope to oblivion,” said Smith in that 1984 interview, but The Cure’s ability to capture that slide is what makes them such a vital, life-affirming force. Listen to these records, and cheer up – it’s definitely going to happen, but what a soundtrack The Cure have provided...

15. 
The Cure
Geffen, 2004

“I can’t find myself,” sings Smith on opening track Lost, and despite the album’s definitive title, The Cure documented a band not entirely sure of how to play to their strengths. Their decision to work with the then-ubiquitous nu-metal producer Ross Robinson was a bold statement – and bore heavy psychedelic fruit on Labyrinth – but given this was a time when their vintage influence was surging among younger bands, it was an odd moment to make one of their periodic attempts to chase contemporary gloss (see also Mixed Up). It does, however, feature one enduring hit: The End Of The World, undoubtedly the definite Cure article.

Key Song: The End Of The World

14.

Wild Mood Swings
Fiction, 1996

While it’s possible that this record’s uneasy reputation is partly a result of it being overshadowed by its immediate predecessors Disintegration and Wish, there are other issues that might explain its largely unloved status. Single Mint Car sounds like the sweepings of Friday, I’m In Love and while Smith admirably tries a different vocal approach on Club America, its baggy dance sounds unhappily close to The Stone Roses’ comeback single Love Spreads. Still, if you’re feeling generous, the wobbly mariachi groove of The 13th and the swinging Gone! make it feel like a natural companion to The Top: transitional, unsteady, very much up and down.

Key Song: The 13th

13.

Three Imaginary Boys
Fiction, 1979

Created by young men barely out of their teens, The Cure’s larval debut was a spindly, long-legged affair, bassist Michael Dempsey central to their jittery, ultra-trebly sound. Robert Smith later blamed the pretentious sleeve art and the inclusion of anaemic Jimi Hendrix cover Foxy Lady on label boss Chris Parry, but there is much to love here alongside the more callow moments: 10.15 Saturday Night is predates How Soon Is Now? as a masterpiece of loneliness; Grinding Halt manages to make nihilism fun, while Fire In Cairo and the title track subtly signpost their direction of travel.

Key Song: 10.15 Saturday Night

• READ MORE: The Birth Of The Cure: “It was pure nihilism…”

12.

The Top
Fiction, 1984

On the title track, Robert Smith sings about “the place where nobody goes”, and The Top can suffer from a similar neglect from fans. Recorded as Smith moonlighted with Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Cure’s fifth proper album has a scattered air, but The Caterpillar’s lysergic flicker is an all-time high, while Shake Dog Shake and Piggy In The Mirror herald The Cure’s Banshees-indebted pivot to stadium goth.

Key Song: The Caterpillar

11.

4:13 Dream
Geffen, 2008

After the swerve of its self-titled predecessor, 4.13 Dream – allegedly the lighter half of a planned double album - saw Smith driving The Cure back to their heartland. The opening two songs – Underneath The Stars, The Only One - provide a quintessential sad-happy punch, a kind of Many Moods Of The Cure room diffuser. Yet The Real Snow White and Freakshow sound like Smith drilling for new ideas, and The Scream could be a Faith-era chrysalis hatching into a new millennium. The last track is called It’s Over: there wouldn’t be another album of new material for 16 years.

Key Song: The Scream

10.

Bloodflowers
Fiction, 2000

Robert Smith declared that The Cure’s eleventh album was his best recording experience since Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, a return to core values that yoked it to Pornography and Disintegration. While Bloodflowers lacks hits, that sense of pleasure bubbles through the lovely keyboard adornments of Out Of This World, or the high drama of Watching Me Fall, a song that does well to capture something of Disintegration’s opulent misery. That time-skipping love song There Is No If was written when Smith was 19 adds to the gentle poignancy. No singles were released, but Bloodflowers’ bloom and fade is best experienced as one unbroken cycle.

Key Song: Watching Me Fall

9.

Wish
Fiction, 1992

Echoing their post-Pornography reboot, the period after Disintegration felt like a moment of recalibration for The Cure. After a remix album, 1990’s Mixed Up, and 1991’s live set Entreat, the band’s pendulum swung back to a breezier sound, resulting in their blue-chip pop standard, Friday I’m In Love – knocking The Love Cats off its perch - and their only number one album. It’s very much the many moods of The Cure, taking in the warped nursery-rhyme sexuality of High, the doom-struck college-rock of Open and the romantic sadness of Letter To Elise. A peak of sorts.

Key Song: Friday I’m In Love

8.

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Fiction, 1988

1986’s Standing On A Beach compilation bought The Cure a break from the studio, but they exploded back into life with this rapturously received double album. Recorded in France, with a happy, settled line up, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me launched the Cure as a transatlantic phenomenon, but if the back-combed hair and giant white trainers were a fabulous visual hook, the music became a little uniform, Catch and Just Like Heaven notable facsimiles of Close To Me and In Between Days.

Key Song: Just Like Heaven

7.

Japanese Whispers
Fiction, 1983

Pornography was necessarily the end point of The Cure’s journey to the dark side; as Simon Gallup quit, the rump Cure of Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst decided that life might be worth living after all. Japanese Whispers collected material from three 12-inch singles – Let’s Go To Bed, The Walk, The Lovecats – and The Cure pivoted from death’s-headed harbingers of doom to post-apocalyptic pop pin-ups. The B-sides are excellent, Lament, Just One Kiss and Speak My Language thrilling visions of The Cure to come.

Key Song: The Lovecats

 6.

Seventeen Seconds
Fiction, 1980

Apparently relieved at the relative failure of Three Imaginary Boys, The Cure radically decluttered for their second album, centering Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, David Bowie’s Low and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks on Robert Smith’s mood board. With deep bass from new arrival Simon Gallup, the pummelling A Forest established the Cure sound that would echo down the years, while In Your House, the Albert Camus-influenced M and the light industrial punishment of Play For Today set the controls for the heart of the glum.

Key Song: A Forest

5.

Songs Of A Lost World
Fiction, 2024

The Cure have been on first-name terms with darkness since the release of Seventeen Seconds at least, but there is a huge difference in listening to a 29-year-old confront his fear of decay and a man in his sixties, reckoning with the loss of his mother, father and brother, staring down the void. Songs Of A Lost World was a harrowing comeback, then, but it was also ineffably beautiful, psychically linked to Pornography, musically linked to the wide awe-striking vistas of Disintegration. Despite the grief, the almost-groovy Drone: nodrone and the darker-side-of-the-moon desolation of Warsong also felt like a rejuvenation, while the heartbreaking melody of I Can Never Say Goodbye felt like the purest catharsis.

Key Song: I Can Never Say Goodbye

• READ MORE: The Cure Live Review: Songs of innocence and experience combine spectacularly in intimate setting

4.

Faith
Fiction, 1981

Producer Mike Hedges allegedly characterised the Cure’s third album as “songs to hang yourself by”, and with Smith mourning the loss of his beloved grandmother, Faith was recorded in a fug of drugs and grief. This reckoning with the false hope offered by Smith’s Roman Catholic upbringing (see the cover of a foggy Bolton Abbey) shows all their incipient steel, the raw despair of The Drowning Man and The Holy Hour counterbalanced by the icy snap of All Cats Are Grey and The Funeral Party. “Can’t just carry on this way,” sings Robert Smith on Faith’s title track. If you wanted it darker, though, you wouldn’t have long to wait.

Key Song: All Cats Are Grey

3.

The Head On The Door
Fiction, 1985

“I am slowing down as the years go by,” lamented 25-year-old Robert Smith on Sinking, the closing track to The Cure’s sixth studio album, but after years of bewildering fluster – and with Simon Gallup back on bass - The Head On The Door was the point where they reconciled their artistic drives with their understanding they could be a proper pop band. In Between Days and Close To Me are perfect hits, an intoxicating distillation of the world they had created, while Six Different Ways, A Night Like This and Push are a joyous flex of their distinctive skillset.

Key Song: In Between Days

2.

Disintegration
Fiction, 1989

Written while Robert Smith was in the throes of an LSD-enhanced existential crisis brought on by his impending 30th birthday, Disintegration brings all the art to falling apart. While there is plenty of loathing and disgust – check the title track’s relentless flagellation -  these songs largely swerve the Bosch night terrors and raw nihilism of Pornography, the great glittering landscapes of Plainsong and Closedown instead suggesting all the implacable beauty and cruelty of existence. There were hits – Lullaby’s psychosexual cradle-rocking, the romantic haunting of Pictures Of You – but at its core this is a record of despair, born from the knowledge of “how the end always is”.

Key Song: Pictures Of You

1.

Pornography
Fiction, 1982

You think you know where you are with a record that begins “it doesn’t matter if we all die”, but having started at rock bottom, The Cure’s fourth album drills down into an unimaginable hell of darkness and derangement. Dragged out of Smith’s desire to make a “horrible” record, their Sgt Pepper of the damned moves begins with the dystopian cut-up of One Hundred Years, before sliding into the collapsing reason of A Short Term Effect and the totemic tribal horrors of The Hanging Garden; the title track’s detuned I Am The Walrus, meanwhile is the sound of a band hitting terminal velocity. A profoundly unhealthy space in which to live, but an astonishing world to visit.

Key Song: The Hanging Garden

In what would sadly prove to be one of Prince’s last ever interviews, MOJO was lured to a Caribbean island, and a secret Bond villain lair, by the promise of a resurgent Prince: musical magician, boss from hell - and in 2014 - smoking lead guitarist in the best all-girl rock band on the planet. On the agenda: race, money, Led Zeppelin, the Cocteau Twins, and the power of belief. "I am a giver by nature," he told Will Hodgkinson. "I like people, but I test people in many ways..."

IN A ROOM FULL OF MIRRORS, AN ELFIN, MOUSTACHIO'D MAN CLICKS HIS fingers in time to a crunchy funk-rock riff. Wrapped around his jet-black curls is a headscarf in the style of Coronation Street's Hilda Ogden. Around his neck dangles a somehow familiar, edge-bound Telecaster-style guitar, which he proceeds to rip into with savage insouciance. Behind him, a female bassist, drummer and a guitarist with half her head shaved groove to the rock'n'roll soul they're cooking up. Enigmatically, a caption ponders, “EYE DUNNO IF U’RE READY."

It is April 2013, and this two-and-a-half-minute Vimeo clip – one of the most unexpectedly thrilling of the year- is serving to advertise that the man who in the '8Os considered releasing an album as Camille, and in the '90s changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, has another brand new incarnation: lead guitarist in an all-girl rock'n'roll band named 3RDEYEGIRL.

When Prince Rogers Nelson last emerged from his bunker to engage with the world on a grand scale, it was for his mammoth 21-night runat the 02 in London in 2007. Emerging from a trap-door in a stage shaped like the aforementioned glyph, he smashed the audience into submission with one Prince hit after another: Kiss, Raspberry Beret, U Got The Look. This time round he's been taking the opposite approach, playing gigs at a moment's notice and at the oddest times, including a 3am "pyjama party" at Paisley Park - still the artist's Minneapolis headquarters – before an audience stimulated only by pancakes and orange juice. Meanwhile, he's begun to embrace this viral marketing wheeze. "Catch this now b 4 my lawyers dew", wrote Prince on 3RDEYEGIRĽ's Twitter account in August, posting a clip of the band raging through a new version of Purple Rain rave-up Let's Go Crazy.

In an age when there are no secrets Prince has remained behind a veil while reminding us that he is one of the greatest musicians in the world. After a few uncomfortable attempts to navigate the Wild West of 21st century music distribution including giving away albums as free covermounts on newspapers and having his subscription websites lotusflow3r.com and 2Oprinc3com come and go in a flurry of confusion, he's returning to the power of music as an in-the-moment experience. Prince is still big. It's the music industry that got small. And now he's ready to talk.

“The feminine energy on the planet is very strong now, after being supressed for so long.”

A PRINCE INTERVIEW IS A RARE AND STRANGE THING - no voice-recording, no note-taking, sometimes even no Prince - but on January 1, 2014, and after a series of false alarms, confirmation comes that The Artist will meet MOJO at his Caribbean island hideaway. But first, he sends a reconnaissance team. On a hot tropical afternoon, our taxi heads down an unmarked coastal road and stops at what appears to be a path cutting through wild shrubbery. A friendly, long-haired young man pulls up in a golf buggy and drives us towards a serene paradise of glass-walled villas and shimmering pools. It feels like a cross between a luxury spa and a Bond villain's secret lair.

We sit down in a timber-shingled pavilion containing little more thana handful of white sofas and an enormous stereo. "The girls will speak to you first," says the long-haired man, who introduces himself as Trevor Guy, a laid-back former record company executive from Toronto who is now working as Prince's manager. "Prince will be down later."

Right on cue, bassist Ida Nielsen, drummer Hannah Ford and guitarist Donna Grantis of 3RDEYEGIRL, Amazonian visions of glamour all, troop in and shake hands with polite hesitancy. Over a patio lunch, they do their best to explain what it is like to be inveigled into the cult of Prince.

"I received a message that Prince would like me to come to Minneapolis and jam with him," says the statuesque Nielsen, who left her native Copenhagen in 2010 to join Prince's New Power Generation, the soul revue-style powerhouse he formed in 1990 and continues, alongside other projects, to this day. "At first I thought it was a joke. We jammed for three days. Then he said: Do you want to come on tour?"

You know how doctors are always on call, because their pager buzzes and they have to head to the hospital and do surgery?" asks the buoyant, peroxide-blonde Ford. “That's what being in Prince's band is like. The phone can go at any minute. It can be hard if you let it get to you, but at this stage in our lives we couldn't ask for more."

And how long are they billeted at their employer's tropical paradise? They look at each other and laugh. "We don't know."

Guy, who turns out not only to be Prince's manager but also Grantis's husband, joins us in the pavilion. Also in the room is Ford's husband Josh, who has been remixing tracks and working for Prince for the last year at Paisley Park. That's it: no bodyguards, no business associates, just a handful of men and women who have found themselves making up - for the moment, at least – Prince's inner circle. Guy suggests MOJO heads back to the hotel for a while; a car will come when Prince is ready. You wonder where he's hiding, or what he's waiting for. Aren't we in his house?

AT MIDNIGHT, A CAR ARRIVES TO take us back to the pavilion. The inner circle is there: expectant, cheerful, excited. Prince walks in. Everyone stands up. With a petite, hypnotically beautiful Latino woman by his side, Prince is dressed like a maharaja on a spiritual quest: white turban, white kaftan, white flared trousers, white boots. But what's really striking - more than his huge eyes and caramel skin, still unlined at 55, or taller than expected stature - is his feline stillness. He's standing motionless at the far end of the room, and then he's standing motionless next to you, and you're not quite sure how he got from one place to another. He makes eye contact and shakes hands.

“Heard you had a nice talk with the girls," he says in a quiet but commanding baritone, implying that a vetting process has been met with approval.

He announces that he's going to play us PLECTRUM ELECTRUM, his album with 3RDEYEGIRL, in its entirety, and that it will be the first time anyone outside of the band has heard it. First up is a blistering, Led Zeppelin-like instrumental called WOW. Adapted from The Unexpected, a song Prince wrote for the New Power Generation backing singer Liv Warfield, it must be the heaviest thing he has ever recorded.

“The girls said they'd kill me if I didn't give it to them," says Prince, flashing eyes inviting us to share his brand of sly humour. We all start laughing,

"That's not a joke," he says, smile gone. We all stop laughing. For a moment, I half expect the floor to open and drop us into a piranha-filled aquarium. And things don't improve with a question about his goals for the band and the album.

"Goals? You mean like mountains to climb? Seriously?"

He smiles again. In the ominous stillness, there is the faintest sound of piranhas snapping their jaws.

The next song Prince plays is an elegant ballad called WHITECAPS, which has a mysterious, transcendental quality reminiscent of Crosby, Stills & Nash's Wooden Ships. Slightly haunted by the piranhas, I tell him it's beautiful and ask if he could reveal the song's inspiration.

"No, but thank you very much. I go back to that song more than any other on the record. It's like listening to a painting."

The rest of the album rattles by, stopping off at sweet, girl-group-style pop, pure bass-driven funk, heartfelt balladry and plenty of soulful, Hendrix-like guitar squealing. It's considered and cohesive, with a joyful spirit running through every song- that funky freak quality that made the world fall for Prince in the first place. But if it feels gloriously live it's because that's exactly how 3RDEYEGIRL came together.

"Usually at the end of New Power Generation rehearsals, no matter how long, Ida and I would stay after and just jam," says Prince, on his feet now, hands together. "Ida is one of the few musicians I have met who has the same stamina as I do. Play her at ping-pong if there’s doubt. I had been thinking about who would be the perfect match for her… Someone with chops but still funky and consistent. Enter Hannah Ford.”

            His description of the Paisley Park entrance exam paints a picture of Prince as a benevolent despot, giving generously to those who match up to his work ethic and casting out those who don’t.

            “For many days and test after test, I watched Hannah to see how she took direction,” he explains. “Because she has a good father she was brought up to respect authority. She listens first comprehends, and then executes. If she’s unsure of something, she doesn’t play it.”

Ford’s take on her initiations sounds slightly less forbidding, "The first thing he said to me was: Thanks for coming, Do vou like ping-pong?

“To get into this world you’ve got to be good. We ain’t no punks.”

PRINCE HAS HIGH STIANDARDS. HIS ONE-TIME drummer ‘Bobby Z’ Rivkin recalls early auditions for the legendary Purple Rain-era group, The Revolution, in which a keyboardist was dismissed after looking at his watch, while a would-be guitarist blew it by mentioning drugs. It's no different for Nielsen, Ford and Grantis. "I am a giver by nature. I like people," claims Prince. “But I test people in many ways so that the time we share is quality time.”

What qualities do his current musicians posses that got them the gig?

“Stamina, musical and spiritual consistency... And to be quite honest, they're easy to shop for. To get in this world" -and he waves an arm at the discreetly glamorous world ofpavilions, golf buggies and shimmering, palm tree-fringed pools that we're in - "you've got to be good. We ain't no punks. These girls have got to put up with me 24/7, which is not an easy job. At the Academy of Paisley Park you learn everything in a week, or else. My old bass player, who shall remain nameless, didn't know as many songs as Ida. She had to learn 150 to get the gig and she did it. So I sacked my old bass player."

The classically-trained Grantis, quietest of the 3RDEYEGIRS, left Toronto to spend a year of 12-hour rehearsal sessions chez Prince. “At Paisley Park it's a parallel universe where time stops existing," she notes. "You lose yourself entirely in the music because Prince can play anything: jazz, funk, rock, whatever.”

“When I first saw a clip of Donna," says Prince, “what struck me was her hair. I figured that anyone who ain't afraid to walk into the supermarket with that haircut ain't gonna be afraid of me.”

Ever since 1979, when Gayle Chapman played keyboards in her lingerie for The Revolution, Prince has surrounded himself with female players. Some of them, like drummer Sheila E or Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, became stars in their own right, not always to their employer's unalloyed delight. Then there were the female protégées - Vanity 6 and Sheena Easton among many in the ‘80s; America's Janelle Monáe and England's Lianne La Havas in recent times- while the lyrics to PLECTRUM ELECTRUM's FIXURLIFEUP an anthem of empowerment with a Sign '0' The Times-like lyrical undertow of apocalyptic morality, has it that “a girl with a guitar is 12 times better than another band of crazy boys". Prince confirms it wasn't just her fretboard skills that got Grantis the job.

"She can play better than anyone and she can look better while doing it," he says. "I’ve had enough of guys standing with their boots stuck to the stage. You go and see Donna and she’ll be lying over he amplifier, playing the best solo you've ever heard. The feminine energy on the planet is very strong now, after being suppressed for so long."

PRINCE'S WAY OF COMBINING PATRICIAN command with camp humour, 24-hour flamboyance and, prior to his spiritual awakening inthe mid-'90s and conversion (he calls it a "realisation") to the Jehovah's Witnesses in 2001, insatiable sexuality is consistent with an artist who has never been defined by the usual identity markers of race, gender or class. When Lenny Waronker signed him to Warners in 1977, Prince told his new label boss: "don't make me black". "He named an array [of influences] that was so deep in terms of scope of music that for an 18-year-old kid to say what he said was amazing," said Waronker. “That, as much as anything, made me think we shouldn't mess around with this guy."

“You can’t understand the words of Cocteau Twins songs but their harmonies put you in a dreamlike state.”

He can still surprise us, too. After playing a gentle ballad with hazy layers of over-lapping sounds, Prince reveals that it was inspired by, of all people, the Cocteau Twins, “We recorded it in Bryan Ferry's studio in London, after a night of partying for which the Cocteau Twins was the soundtrack," he says. “You can't understand the words of Cocteau Twins songs but their harmonies put you in a dreamlike state."

Prince likes the Cocteau Twins? Add another to his broad but mostly constant pantheon of inspirations: Sly And The Family Stone, Joni Mitchell, Santana, Miles Davis and James Brown. Mention of Funkadelic meets with approval (“Funkadelic? Oh, you can stay"), but a Led Zeppelin comparison is met with a caveat. “Jimmy Page is cool," he accepts, sitting on the back of a sofa and cracking a sideways smile, “but he couldn't keep a sequence without John Bonham behind him. He went from one to four without stopping at two and three." He nods at Donna Grantis. “I want her to be her own favourite guitar player. I want everyone at Paisley Park to be their own favourite guitarist, saxophonist, whatever. I don't want people to play like nobody else."

Completed after the release of Sign O' The Times, Paisley Park has allowed Prince to live in a bubble of music, work and ping-pong since 1987. Occupying the suburbs of the Minnesota town of Chanhassen 30 minutes to the south-west of Minneapolis, and built at cost of around $10 million, it has a 1,800-capacity sound stage, four studios and a secured room known to Prince fans as The Vault: the place where he stores his swathes of recordings, most of which may never be heard.

The recording engineer Chuck Zwicky recalls a Paisley Park session for 1988's Lovesexy that lasted for 40 hours without a break, while lda Nielsen confirms they once jammed on a 26-hour session. In 1998 Prince told Guitar magazine: "People call me a workaholic, but I've always considered that a compliment. John Coltrane played the saxophone 12 hours a day. That's not a maniac; that's a dedicated musician whose spirit drives his body to work so hard."

True, although Coltrane never reacted as Prince did while on tour in 1987, upon discovering there was no way of getting a baby grand piano up the stairs of London's Chelsea Harbour Hotel for him to practise on. He hired a crane and they brought it in through the window.

Paisley Park also allowed Prince to stay in Minneapolis. Eary collaborators like bassist André Cymone, whose mother Bernadette's leaky basement the teenage Prince lived in for a while, and Sue Ann Carwell, one of his first protégées, were part of a late-70s scene that, helped along by the multi-racial radio station KQRS, fused funk's groove with rock's power, paving the way for the synth-led 1999 to bring the Minneapolis Sound to a wider audience.

“This isn’t about being retro. That doesn’t help anyone. This is new music with a sense of history.”

After Purple Rain became a multi-million seler Prince could have lived anywhere, but it's significant that he's maintained a base and never cut himself off from the city's music scene. The New Power Generation's drummer Michael Bland got the gig after Prince spotted him playing his regular slot at downtown club, Bunkers, and in 2010 a bowler-hatted Prince popped up in the wings of a concert by Ryan Olson's Minnesota indie-soul group Gayngs, holding a guitar but stopping short of jumping on stage and joining the band. Wet and frosty Minneapolis, a blue-collar city where there isn't much to do but get on with it, is where Prince has carved himself a state of independence.

"Can we lose this word: 'independent'?" asks Prince. "Musicians throughout history have taken care of one another. Major record labels, publishers and digital download corporations should be the ones called 'independent'. Try auditing one of them and you will fing out why. I don't know about yours but my bills come in weekly so I need my cheques to do the same. It’s cold in Minneapolis. Haven’t you heard?"

OUR AUDIENCE APPEARS TO BE proceeding well when Prince tells me off for sitting in the wrong sofa. I should be in the middle of the one facing the speakers. I duly move. There's no question about who has the authority in the room, but at the same time there's a sense that Prince is seeking approval, a trace of the insecurity of an artist who presents their creation to an audience for the first time - even if it's an audience of one. And after all, there's been no-one to offer a critical view since the moment his relationship with Warner Brothers turned sour. “At that point, he took control," said Tom Tucker, Paisley Park's late recording engineer. “He started signing the cheques, literally."

Two years after scoring a major hit with the sublime orgy-funk of 1991's Gett Off, Prince abandoned his name and began his long war with Warners, the label he had been with since his 1978 debut For You. Hurt and angry after discovering that the company he previously had good relations with owned his master recordings, Prince released albums hastily to get out of his contract, including the long-suppressed The Black Album in 1994, The Gold Experience in 1995 and the unloved, aptly named Chaos And Disorder in 1996. At first it seemed like bite-the-hand behaviour from Prince, but his rejection of the major label system proved prescient. “He pretty much foreshadowed what we now live in: several independent record labels, many of them artist-owned," says Michael Bland.

Does Prince miss anything from the record industry's imperial phase?

"Yes, some of the people I met. A lot of them were fun, genuinely nice people. They inherited that system. It wasn't their design. That's all history now... Speaking of which, can you help me find out how many copies the album Purple Rain sold?"

In April '96, terms of severance with Warners were agreed. Prince's own NPG label released the triple CD Emancipation by way of celebration, followed by Crystal Ball, a five-disc archive set sold through his website for $50, launching him as the first major star to sell entire albums through the web. Now it may be the norm, but in 2001 it was underwhelming and a little tragic to have something as rich and as intriguing as The Rainbow Children, a cryptic jazz-fusion treatise on spirituality, buried behind a clunky website before it was available in record shops. More recently, Prince's relationship with the internet has been an ambivalent one. "The internet's completely over," he told the Daily Mirror in 2010, in an interview that coincided with the newspaper giving away his album 20Ten for free. “I don't see why I should give my music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it."

Now he has come out the other side, holding up 3RDEYEGIRL as a triumph of the spirit and PLECTRUM ELECTRUM as an album that belongs to both a pre- and post-digital age. "We have made the new garage band record," claims Prince, even if we're not in Prince's garage, or even freezing cold Minneapolis, but a tropical hideaway where a man in a starched white uniform is bringing in a tray of cocktails. “If I was 13 and wanted to play guitar, note for note I would learn PLECTRUM ELECTRUM."

Where once Prince delighted in cutting-edge music technology, today he's holding a torch for sonic classicism. We ask him why so few musicians favour analogue over digital when the sounds speak for themselves and we get a cryptic reply.

“You’ll have to ask the creators of digital recording devices," he says, sinking deep into one of his many sofas. "Analogue recording to us is like the Mystery Schools of Egypt. We could tell you, but you'll have to bring a sacrifice first." On a slightly more prosaic note, he adds: “This isn't about being retro. That doesn’t help anyone. This is new music with a sense of history.”

PRINCE GETS UP TO LEAN AGAINST A WALL, watching us as we sit on the sofa facing his giant stereo. With his apparently nameless companion ever close, Prince, who doesn’t own a mobile phone and has been banning them from recent conterts, offers his thoughts on the dangers of technology.

            “It’s a feedback loop,” he says, referring to the digital conversion between corporations and individuals that results in groupthink. “it means people don’t understand real musicians any more. Jack White is great, he’s the real thing, but he isn’t having hits. Why aren’t Vintage trouble or Lianne La Havas having hits? The goal is to get beyond the feedback loop ad create your own universe which what we have done here. There’s nothing wrong with those people [at record labels], but most of them are accountants and lawyers. What we create here, with music, goes beyond that.”

            Part of the problem, says Prince, is that we are losing a sense of history. He gestures over at the members of his very new band who have been sitting dutifully in a line throughout. “When Donna takes inspiration from Jimi Hendrix or Prince, when Hannah studies John Bonham and Led Zeppelin, they’re taking on their own knowledge and everything their parents taught them. I’m passing it on to these kids because it’s their turn. Who else is showing them? Where is it going? It’s your duty as a writer to cover the real thing because us musicians pay attention to that, you know."

After reassurance that MOJO is all about the realthing, he instantly rejoins: "That's why you're here."

Prince wants hits. After a surprising plea for help in getting him on Later... with Jools Holland – surely he doesn't need our help with that - he stretches over the back of his seat and talks business.

“It's about numbers as well as music," he says, enormous Chaplin eyes gazing out from underneath that bright white turban. “It's box office. I can't have something like The Great Gatsby on my hands. Didn't you know that black people don't get a second chance? It's like Chris Rock said: Leonardo DiCaprio can make one bad movie after another and he just keeps going. Chris Rock makes a bad movie and he doesn’t work again. Black people aren't allowed to make mistakes."

We talk about the source of his legendary stamina and productivity. After all, it's coming up to two o'clock in the morning and he is only just getting going. “For us, music is energy," he says. "It's a life force as well as a teaching tool. New ideas are everywhere. The best songs come from listening. Every new song is already present."

FOR PRINCE, A MAN WHOSE RELIGION does not recognise birthdays, the past is not so much another country as a distant cosmos, extinguished from memory so that he can live in the now. 3RDEYEGIRL Concerts have revived and reinterpreted heavier moments from Prince's back pages, but any question about the past is ignored entirely. His Warners albums have never been remastered and repackaged. The vast swathes of recordings that are unreleased, unheard and locked away in The Vault may never be preserved or archived. "What if it's in his will to destroy that stuff?" Tom Tucker asked the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2004.That would be like half The Beatles' tunes being lost."

Whether or not that fearful prophecy comes to pass, Prince's policy of concentrating on the moment is getting results. PLECTRUM ELECTRUM ends with the self-explanatory FUNKNROLL, an energised, free-flowing groove that captures the spirit of Prince in 2014: virtuosic but spontaneous, fun but deadly serious. Trevor Guy explains how, inspired by tales of '60s London at its most swinging, the band are relocating to the city for a month or so in order to play as many last-minute gigs as they can, popping up in all manner of legendary rock'n'roll landmarks and blowing a few hundred minds at a time. Most significantly, while the artist formerly known as Prince took to the internet when it was still music industry's enemy the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince is returning to the format that represents the high watermark of rock'n'roll culture: the album.

He promises a great-looking slab of vinyl will bestow his new work with the iconic status it deserves.

Can the album survive? “Sure it can and it will, if artists like Janelle Monáe, Esperanza Spalding and Laura Mvula have anything to do with it. Real music lovers love the album format because they're art collectors. Real artists make albums people love, not just songs."

There are no goodbyes. When he decrees our time is over, Prince disappears from view: But not before leaving us with a final thought.

"Come to think of it, real music lovers are actually my favourite kind of people because they like to know, rather than just be told what to think. If you really love music... Come see me.”

Then he dissolves into the Caribbean night, his beautiful companion by his side. That's when we realise: she never spoke a single word all night.

This article originally appeared in MOJO 245.

“Life is just a bowl of All-Bran,” sang Steve Marriott on Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake in 1968, “you wake up every morning and it’s there.” But the rambunctious Small Faces and Humble Pie star would come to discover his existential breakfast cereal had a bittersweet taste. His career progressed, the ’60s Cockney-mod hero turning into a crumpled ’70s blues rocker, yet he increasingly found himself the victim of bad luck and worse deals, culminating in a run-in with the New York Mafia in 1975 that all but ended his international career.

• READ MORE: Why The Small Faces Split Up

The result for fans of Marriott’s music – from the Small Faces’ peerless blend of R&B, folk, psychedelia and music hall, to Humble Pie’s US arena-friendly hard rock jams and beyond – is a back catalogue peppered with annoying blanks, ‘lost’ albums, quick cash-ins, imports and comps. Even some of his major works are these days hard to find even on CD, while his sporadic ’80s studio recordings are scattered across myriad releases, many post-dating his untimely death in 1991 in a fire at his Essex home.

“A transcendent white soul voice… the most charismatic and gifted of East End geezers.”

Yet most of Marriott’s Small Faces and Humble Pie output is easily accessed, and an immediate conduit to a transcendent white soul voice and superlative musicianship and songwriting – though, after laying claim to writing the majority of the Small Faces’ hits (All Or Nothing, Itchycoo Park, Tin Soldier, The Universal), his creative energies in the ’70s and ’80s became increasingly diverted into interpreting old soul numbers, reviving past glories, and playing mean blues guitar.

Marriott’s last years were happily spent in dungarees and a boozy haze performing his old repertoire to small but appreciative audiences across Europe. If he’d hung around another decade, you suspect this most charismatic and gifted of East End geezers would have become a big star again – his bowl of All-Bran tasty and plentiful once more.

10.

Marriott & Lane

Majik Mijits

NMC, 2000

The impeccable Marriott/ Lane writing team seemed broken for good when Steve punched Ronnie during early sessions for the Small Faces’ 1976 reunion album, Playmates. In 1981, when Lane was suffering from MS, Marriott sought out his old mucker and together they cut …Majik Mijits. Though both men’s stock was low, they delivered some fine songs and performances, with Marriott’s funky Lonely No More and soulful knees-up of Birthday Girl among the highlights. Apparently, Clive Davis at Arista offered to release it, but Marriott, worried Lane could never tour it, told Davis to shove it, and the LP gathered dust until the millennium.

9.

Steve Marriott

I Need Your Love…

WHAPPING WHARF, 2013

For this fascinating 2-CD set, Wapping Wharf fanzine carefully assembled rarities from the ’70s and ’80s with the singer’s earliest group recordings – unheard demos cut with The Moonlights from 1962 – plus two unheard, gutsy rockers from his last-ever session in 1991, poignantly reuniting him with his old Humble Pie foil Peter Frampton just weeks before his death. The title track, I Need Your Love (Like A Fish Needs A Raincoat), is a heartfelt, raspy piano-led home demo from 1987, while a cracking cover of Curtis Mayfield’s Gypsy Woman comes from Marriott’s last proper LP, 1989’s virtually unnoticed and synth-heavy 30 Seconds To Midnite.

8.

Humble Pie

Town And Country

IMMEDIATE, 1969

On New Year’s Eve 1968, Marriott dramatically quit the Small Faces to join The Herd’s Peter Frampton in heavy rockers Humble Pie. While ’69s debut, As Safe As Yesterday Is saw the singer retreat into the bosom of the band’s democratic, hard-blues jamming, later that year they committed the acoustic material they opened their sets with to tape. Good job too, as Town And Country proved Marriott hadn’t entirely forsaken the art of songwriting, the story-form Southern rock of The Sad Bag Of Shakey Jake and touching Every Mother’s Son being worth the cover price alone. We also recommend getting Sanctuary’s Natural Born Bugie two-for-one release.

7.

Steve Marriott

Dingwalls 6.7.84

MAU MAU, 1991

After the singer’s first post-Pie solo album, Marriott (1976), proved uneven and seemingly owned by the Mob, he fled to the US leaving an unpaid £100,000 UK tax bill behind him. Band reunions sorted him out, but by the early ’80s he was on his uppers once again, and scratching a living playing pubs and small clubs. The live Dingwalls 6.7.84 is fairly representative of what fans got: rowdy R&B covers and originals, played with unbridled heart and soul amid Cockney banter and blues-guitar showboating. The Pie’s reunion hit, Fool For A Pretty Face, and a rough-house All Or Nothing ensured a great night.

6.

Humble Pie

Eat It

A&M, 1973

In 1973, Marriott steered the Pie back to the thing he loved most, American soul and R&B, adding female backing trio The Blackberries to their line-up. By now, the group were recording in the studio he’d built at Beehive Cottage, his rural Essex home. Though management woes, cocaine abuse and their change of musical tack meant Humble Pie were on the wane in the US, the warm funk on this studio/ live double makes it one of their best: Get Down To It, Good Booze And Bad Women and Beckton Dumps groove mightily; and the digging-deep cover of Ike & Tina Turner’s Black Coffee is legendary.

5.

Small Faces

Small Faces

IMMEDIATE, 1967

After the raw mod pop of their 1966 Small Faces debut on Decca, the group outgrew their pop packaging and found a new home with Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label. Minds duly expanded on LSD, and with unhindered access to Olympic studios and engineer Glyn Johns, a creative bounty ensued. This 1967 LP, confusingly also called Small Faces, oozed woody, folky, hazy confidence, the joyful (Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me and clipped Get Yourself Together sitting cosily next to the Summer of Love psych of Green Circles. A stone-cold Cockney acid-mod classic, and their timeless Top 5 single Itchycoo Park followed on its heels.

4.

Humble Pie

Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore

A&M, 1971

The thought of Marriott with ’tache and greasy locks wigging out with Frampton on a 23-minute version of Walk On Gilded Splinters sent some old mods into a dark funk from which they never fully recovered. But the sheer sonic weightiness of this album, recorded at NYC’s Fillmore East during two years of relentless on-the-road grafting, is something to behold, and there’s no denying that a slinky hard rock cover of Ray Charles’ Hallelujah I Love Her So and a throat-shredding tilt at Ashford & Simpson’s I Don’t Need No Doctor possess impressive transportational powers. Frampton would leave soon after its release.

3.

Humble Pie

Smokin’

A&M, 1972

By 1972, Frampton had gone, new big-shot manager Dee Anthony was pushing Marriott to the fore, cocaine and brandy ruled, and Steve’s marriage to his muse Jenny Rylance was crumbling. Amid the chaos, saturation touring had succeeded in winning over America, and its rock audience was ready to take the tough, stripped-down Smokin’ to its heart. It was the Pie’s biggest LP, and rightly so, the mean’n’lean 30 Days In The Hole seemingly inventing AC/DC, pulsing slow-burner The Fixer testing the singer‘s larynx to the max, and You’re So Good ending in a jubilant gospel crescendo. Stephen Stills guests, on a jam of Road Runner.

2.

The Small Faces

The Autumn Stone

IMMEDIATE, 1969

It’s late 1969, the Small Faces have split and the ailing Immediate label desperately needs some hit product in the shops. The solution was this career-spanning double LP comp, enticingly peppered with tracks from the group’s autumn ’68 session for an unfinished follow-up to Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake, working title 1862. Evidence that it would have been their ultimate triumph comes in the euphoric hard rocker Wham Bam Thank You Mam, a wistful take of Tim Hardin’s Red Balloon, the cheeky, brass-flecked dancefloor groove of Wide Eyed Girl On The Wall and the elegiac, flute-adorned and crushingly beautiful The Autumn Stone.

1.

The Small Faces

Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake

IMMEDIATE, 1968

Few would argue that the concept LP the Small Faces cut in late ’67/ early ’68 is the record the group’s reputation as psych-rock Cockney hellions rests upon. Narrated by surrealist language-mangler Stanley Unwin and packaged in a groovy circular sleeve, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake was a joy from start to finish, as the imaginary Happiness Stan goes in search of the missing half of the moon against a soundtrack of smutty musical hall (Rene), cheeky groove-rock (Rollin’ Over), rinky-dinky East End pop (Lazy Sunday), and stirring, mournful soul (Afterglow Of Your Love). One of the greatest-ever English rock records, and, in voice and song quality, Marriott’s enduring legacy.

Where Next?

Appreciation of Marriott’s musical journey will be enriched by Simon Spence’s oral history of the singer's life, All Or Nothing (Omnibus, 2019), as will issues of John Hellier’s Darlings Of Wapping Wharf Launderette’s fanzine. Eat Humble Pie’s A&M catalogue whole via Spotify, ditto the Small Faces’ Decca releases. The slew of ’80s Marriott live albums are questionable, but 2018’s Watch Your Step box set features, poignantly, four live recordings from his last-ever tour. Documentary-wise, David Peck’s All Or Nothing 1965-1968 (2010) and Gary J Katz’s Humble Pie: The Life & Times Of Steve Marriott (2000) provide commentary and context.

• READ MORE: Faces, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Lane, Ronnie Wood and Ian McLagan's Greatest Albums Ranked!

It can’t be common for an album artwork brief to begin with a demand for the most expensive treatment available. But these were David Bowie’s manager Tony Defries’s exact instructions to Aladdin Sane cover photographer Brian ‘Duffy’ Duffy.

“The key was to make something that was different and astonishing and important,” Defries tells MOJO today of the genesis for the iconic sleeve for David Bowie’s sixth LP. “Which we managed to do with Hunky Dory and Ziggy. But this needed to, in a sense, go up a step.”

• READ MORE: “Everyone was being so outrageous…” Inside David Bowie’s final night as Ziggy Stardust

Defries’s logic, explains Duffy’s son Chris – the man behind a new book containing the full story and shoot – was cunning. “He wanted to commit RCA, to make them spend as much as possible on Bowie, on the basis that they couldn’t then drop him. There was too much to write off.”

Duffy brought the luxe production values he’d already applied to the 1973 Pirelli calendar, where he’d collaborated with airbrush artist Philip Castle.

“For the reproduction, Duffy opted for this Kodak process called dye transfer, which produced a fantastic depth of colour,” the photographer’s son continues. “It also gave the right kind of surface for airbrushing. Then he had the plates made up in Switzerland. These were all the most expensive options you could choose.”

Bowie’s end of the brief was simple – he wanted a flash: something like the Taking Care Of Business logo used by Elvis since his return to gigging in 1969. And the record was to be called A Lad Insane (Chris Duffy claims the re-spelling was his father’s idea).

Preparing for the January 13 shoot at Duffy’s studio in London’s Primrose Hill, make-up artist Pierre Laroche started drawing a small flash on Bowie’s cheek. Duffy stopped him and sketched another across half of Bowie’s face: “Now fill that in.”

Chris Duffy has had 50 years to ponder its power.

“A flash by its nature makes you jump – so it’s got the drama,” he says. “The image is androgynous – it works for men and women – and it kind of poses more questions than answers. It left a lot for conjecture and speculation.”

One of the most fertile sources of speculation is the blob of reflective liquid that collects in the hollow of Bowie’s collarbone. Inspired by John Pasche’s ‘lips’ logo for The Rolling Stones, Duffy saw it as a merchandising opportunity. “He had a half a mind that the droplet could be a piece of jewellery,” says Chris Duffy. “That didn’t go anywhere in the end.”

• READ MORE: David Bowie's 100 Greatest Songs Ranked!

For nearly 40 years after the April ’73 release of the album, Aladdin Sane’s eyes-closed image was pretty much the only frame from the shoot the public would see. Then, in 2010, Bowie approved the use of the colour, eyes-open alternate for the cover of Kevin Cann’s book, Any Day Now – the same shot subsequently employed by the V&A to publicise their blockbuster 2013 exhibition, David Bowie Is… Then, in mid-2020, the Duffy archive authorised the use of another outtake for the cover of MOJO. At last, Duffy’s new book delivers the shoot in its entirety, along with essays by Kevin Cann, Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray and others. The images also play a part in an Aladdin Sane: 50 Years exhibition at London’s South Bank Centre in April-May and a wider-ranging show, covering all five of Duffy’s Bowie shoots, debuting in Madrid this month. “I thought it was time fans saw all of it,” says Chris Duffy.

Bowie’s Aladdin Sane cover brought the values of ad-land to a cultural product, and delivered everything its clients had hoped for. RCA had paid through the nose, but weren’t complaining.

“Defries had a master plan to make David a world superstar,” says Chris Duffy. “But it’s funny: Bowie only ever had the flash on his face once, that one day.”

In Duffy’s book, Geoffrey Marsh describes the Aladdin Sane flash as exemplifying “all of David’s remarkable artistry but also the impact his career had on social values, freedom of expression and the potential for everybody to choose who they want to be.” Chris Duffy puts it more succinctly: “It’s the Mona Lisa of pop.”

Aladdin Sane: 50 Years by Chris Duffy is out now via Welbeck, £40. Aladdin Sane: 50 Years is also an exhibition at London’s South Bank, April 6-May 28. Bowie Taken By Duffy is now showing at COAM, Madrid.

Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale now, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has recounted his attempt to sabotage the recording of the band’s breakthrough hit Creep, interrupting frontman Thom Yorke’s song with his now distinctive guitar crunches in the studio.

• READ MORE: Every Radiohead Album Ranked

“It was known as The Scott Walker Song for ages,” Greenwood tells MOJO’s Dorian Lynskey. “I suppose the nauseating adolescent in me found it a bit wimpy and wanted to make it the opposite. Can’t be having ballads! A distortion pedal and a loud guitar is an enormously exciting thing,”

Despite initial interest in the UK press for 1992’s Drill EP, Creep’s parent album, Radiohead’s 1993 debut Pablo Honey, was initially met with indifference and disappointing sales. When it was first released in September 1992, Creep only reached number 78 in the UK singles chart. It wasn’t until the song was picked up internationally and in the US that it gathered momentum, reaching number 7 exactly a year after it was released.

“I remember [co-producer] Sean Slade saying, ‘Wow, it’s a shame no one will get to hear this, because it’s really good,’” remembers Greenwood. “Because it was the first album from a band who had no real prospects. But through a huge amount of luck, it was discovered. And even when it was, we were all desperate to say, Yeah, but that’s not what we mean! The Bends is a much better record because it felt like us getting back to what we’d been like five years earlier when we were still a school band.”

Three years younger than brother Colin, Greenwood was 13 when he was asked to join the group Colin and classmate Thom Yorke had formed with fellow pupils at Abingdon School near Oxford, Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway.

“It was always Colin’s friends’ band,” he says. “They were older and bigger and more frightening. Even though we’re in our fifties, we still have that relationship where I’m the irritating younger brother. You don’t catch up.”

The band initially calling themselves On A Friday, as that was the day they would rehearse in Abingdon’s music room, Greenwood recalls being impressed by Yorke’s songwriting abilities even when they were still at school.

“I remember thinking, Wow, Thom’s writing songs that sound as good as an Elvis Costello song, but there’s probably someone like that in every school in the country. You don’t realise it’s unusual. But looking back, he was, and remains, unusual.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Greenwood describes the process of working on the songs Yorke brings to the studio.

“I think if Thom is Leonard Cohen, you want to make sure you record the right version of Hallelujah. His version is fine, but the song is toweringly great. So that’s always the motivation,” he says. “Thom has just sat down and played Pyramid Song on piano. How do you do it justice? How do you arrange it? How do you not mess it up?”

Thom’s got enormous reserves of stamina and enthusiasm.

When asked about a Radiohead song he originated, Greenwood recalls presenting Yorke with “half-hour-long jams of a gruesomely exploratory nature” during the protracted sessions for 2000’s Kid A, which would form the basis of Idioteque.

“He had the patience to listen through and say there’s a chord sequence in the middle of this that’s going to be great," says Greenwood. "He’s got enormous reserves of stamina and enthusiasm. He’ll be the one to run into the room when Ed’s doing something and say, ‘That sounds amazing!’”

• READ MORE: Thom Yorke on OK Computer: “There wasn’t this need to exorcise things within myself…”

Recording the follow-up to 1997’s OK Computer was famously tense, as the rest of the band initially struggled to work around Yorke’s embrace of electronic music. As a multi-instrumentalist trained in music theory, however, the younger Greenwood was perhaps best equipped to adapt to the group’s new way of working.

“My standard joke was if you put me in charge, there’d be two extra Radiohead albums, but the quality would be 80, 90 per cent. I was always up for moving forward quickly and releasing things constantly. So I was impatient,” recalls Greenwood of the sessions. “My role was to say, Come on, this is good enough. What’s the next thing? I’m sure it was me complaining that finally got OK Computer released.”

It’s been ten years since Radiohead released their last album, A Moon Shaped Pool, during which time Yorke and Greenwood have released two albums as The Smile, but last year Radiohead reconvened for their first shows since 2018 (you can read MOJO’s report from their first night at London’s O2 HERE).

“It’s incredible that we’re playing live again and that it feels so great and everyone is loving each other’s company. You hear of other bands getting together and having multiple managers and multiple sound people. We seem very blessed.”

“Everything else is just noise…”

Get the latest issue of MOJO to read the interview with Jonny Greenwood in full. On the agenda: Politics, Pixies, and the peril of rock cliché “Spinal Tap is always lurking on the edges…” he tells Dorian Lynksey. More information and to order a copy HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

From the start, The Rolling Stones polarised opinion. No surprise, then, that when their debut album came out in April 1964 The Daily Herald, the old national newspaper of the left, called it “a stinker”, while the New Musical Express advised readers that it was “probably the finest first LP ever” by a rock band, eulogising its “frenetic primal magnificence”.

• READ MORE: Keith Richards interviewed: "We're born to have fun, if you take it too seriously you're fucked."

The group’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, loved the conflict and stoked it with cynical glee. Controversy was the crux of his garish sleevenote statement that “The Rolling Stones are more than just a group – they are a way of life”. He stirred it some more when he persuaded Decca to release it untitled, with not even the band’s name on the front cover, just a stark photo of the five men glowering at the camera.

The pose was better prepared than the album itself, which caught the Stones at the end of their apprenticeship and entering their first significant period of transition. The band both relished making the LP and lacked material to fill it. The previous autumn, Oldham had notoriously locked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in the flat the three shared in Mapesbury Road in north-west London, until they wrote a song, but they still had hardly anything that worked in a context of rugged R&B standards. Tell Me was the only Jagger/Richards composition available. Although a nicely lugubrious, lewd-innocent lament, it represented a hint of the future, no more. So the rest of the LP was drenched in history.

Oldham knew little about recording, but he produced it because that was his fantasy: to be like Phil Spector. He had the gall and the balls; he scared off the old guard from Decca, and he made it happen even though he had to learn on the two-track Revox at Regent Sound, Denmark Street – described by top ’60s producer Shel Talmy as “a shithole with egg boxes up to the ceiling for sound baffling”.

Their triumph flowed from playing the music on gut instinct. Essentially, they pulled the best from their live set, which meant it was all about R&B: Jimmy Reed (who had a US hit with Honest I Do in 1957), Slim Harpo (I’m A King Bee, 1957), Muddy Waters (I Just Want To Make Love To You, 1954) and Rufus Thomas (Walking The Dog, 1963).

Through passionate – and failed – imitation, they found themselves, as when Jagger slurs “Don’t you know that I love you?” at the start of Honest I Do, sincere and still sneering because, even before he was a star, he had no other way to admit vulnerability. Or else when Charlie Watts sets his inner beat to ‘dark and ruthless’ for I’m A King Bee’s leery come-on. And totally when they step beyond the imperious frustration of Muddy Waters’ original and all tear at I Just Want To Make Love To You, hormones gushing. The cut to double speed in the middle eight is all theirs and it still sweats.

Their excursions into soul won less respect at the time. It’s true that Can I Get A Witness (Marvin Gaye, 1963) was Oldham’s notion for a possible single. Jagger didn’t know the words and was sent running over to the publisher’s office in Savile Row to pick up the sheet music. But with Ian Stewart providing angry locomotion on piano, the Stones as petulant victims – “It hurts me so inside to see you treat me so unkind” – are every bit as convincing as Gaye and the Motown studio maestros.

• READ MORE: The Rolling Stones In Mono Reviewed

It’s much the same process on You Can Make It If You Try; their performance dumps the grandeur of gospel singer Gene Allison’s 1957 original in favour of dirt and doubt (as that’s all they knew).

Black rock’n’roll probably presented fewer problems, given Richards’ obsession with Chuck Berry and his firm grasp on the Bo Diddley riff. There’s a carefree cool about their guitars-ablaze, go-faster Route 66, Carol and Mona (listed on early sleeves as I Need You Baby). Oldham claimed that Phil Spector played on the Stones’ cover of Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away – another song with the Bo Diddley beat – released as a stand-alone single in February 1964. It was just his little joke but Spector and his pal Gene Pitney really did come to the rescue on the last day of recording,  February 4. Knowing the band from their January tour with The Ronettes, they dropped in at Regent Sound for a social afternoon and walked into a crisis. The album was still way under the requisite 30 minutes.

Pitney produced a bottle of cognac. Spector took Jagger and a guitar out on to the stairs. Ten minutes later they came back with Little By Little – Jimmy Reed’s Shame, Shame, Shame shamelessly reupholstered – and within half an hour they’d hammered out an R&B moan, one foot in the cottonfields, the other in a London coffee bar. (Pitney played piano and Spector rattled a half-dollar in the now-empty brandy bottle – or “maracas” as the sleevenotes have it.)

• READ MORE: Inside The Making Of The Rolling Stones' Aftermath

Much relieved, they filled the remaining space with a variant on the jam they played in every live set – jamming was a good thing back then, it proved you could “really play”. This one spun off from the chords of their Marvin Gaye cover, as candidly declared by the title, Now I’ve Got A Witness.

The Stones’ crude equipment produced a raw sound. A young band, who couldn’t yet express themselves through songwriting, looked backwards and to black America for their inspiration. But their character burned through with a dark depth and truth that had never before been heard from young Englishmen.

“A first album can be incredible,” Keith Richards later reflected. “All that energy… unbelievable!”

Emmylou Harris may have already announced another final “final” UK concert – headlining The Long Road Festival, at Stanford Hall near Rugby, on August 30 – following what was originally billed as her last ever European and UK tour in May, but she is emphatic as regards her recording future. “Absolutely not,” Harris tells Andy Fyfe in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale now. “There will never be another album from me.”

“I made that decision not to record again some years ago,” she adds, referring in part to her 26th and most recent album, 2011’s Hard Bargain, the biggest-selling of her career. “I don’t know how many records I have out, but I have a huge amount of material that still melts my butter, so to speak, and already it’s hard enough to fit everything I want into an hour and a half set besides bringing some new material into it.”

Even so, Harris recently released a single with singer songwriters Rodney Crowell and Lera Lynn, Go Light A Candle. Filled with a quiet rage and a chink of hope, it was written by Crowell immediately after Donald Trump’s re-election as US President. “I wanted to bang the trash cans and write a good old Steve Earle protest song,” Crowell tells MOJO, “but it seemed like my sensibility took over and said, Let’s go a quieter way with this.”

The song gently wonders how the world has gotten so crazy, and how we’ve all allowed (mostly) men to screw it up so completely.

“Yeah, I am taking the piss out of our gender a little bit. I know there are women who are backing our regime now, as there were in Germany in the '30s, but I’ve mainly poked the bear of our gender, with this greedy bastard man at the centre of it all.”

Crowell, too, is touring the UK around the time of Harris’s final dates, but it’s unlikely they will pair up as their itineraries don’t mesh. Albert Lee, however, might offer fans some hope of Hot Band reunion action in between his own May tour dates: “I played with her a few months ago so, you know, watch this space!”

For Harris, it’s not so much the playing that’s led to put an end to long-distance touring.

“I’ve just turned 79, and the travel can get a bit exhausting,” she explains. “I still don't feel my age, so to speak, but I do know that my energy is not as it was. I’m going to keep performing in the States where I’ve gotten into a routine of going out once a month to fill up the coffers. I still need to make a living.”

And while there may not be any new Emmylou Harris albums, there are plenty in the catalogue to reconsider, most recently Spyboy, an often-overlooked 1998 outing with Buddy Miller, Darryl Johnson and Bradley Blade.

“Buddy discovered these extra tracks that weren’t on the original album, so New West re-released it late last year. The energy in that quartet and the way they reinvented my old material was quite extraordinary.”

Finally, Harris has been working on a memoir, another reason she’s ready to semi-retire from the road.

“I don’t want to be away from my writing room for too long, she says. I’ve been talking about this book for so long, but it’s going at snail’s pace, so I guess I have to get a little more aggressive about the writing. It’s harder than I thought!”

Emmylou Harris tour news and tickets HERE; Rodney Crowell news HERE; and for Albert Lee shows, click HERE.

“I loved very little more in my life than Gram Parsons...”

Haunted by the death of Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris built a solo career on her own version of Cosmic American Music. As she prepares to play UK shows for the last time, and with the help of key Hot Band alumni, she speaks exclusively to MOJO about her mid-’70s hot streak, culminating 50 years ago with her masterpiece, Luxury Liner. “I was conscious of continuing whatever Gram was trying to do,” she tells Andy Fyfe. Get the latest issue of MOJO to read the interview in full. More information and to order a copy HERE.

.

.

.

.

.

.

In May 2023, six months before Shane MacGowan passed away, Bruce Springsteen visited the former Pogues singer at his home in Dublin. “Shane had been a superfan since he was about 12,” MacGowan’s widow Victoria Mary Clarke tells MOJO. “So the idea that Bruce was going to come to his house, I think it frightened him a little bit. He was like, ‘What am I going to say to him?’

• READ MORE: Shane MacGowan: “What I’m interested in doing is having a great time and living as long as I possibly can.”

“But it turned out that they had a lot in common… they spent three or four hours just chatting about music, film, about their lives. There wasn’t an atmosphere of doom and gloom because at that point, we had no idea that Shane wasn’t going to make it.”

“He was raw, hilarious, no apologies and profound,” Springsteen writes in an essay to accompany his version of A Rainy Night In Soho, the first track to be released from multi-artist tribute album 20th Century Paddy - The Songs Of Shane MacGowan, due in November. “Shane’s voice was so deeply real, profane and honest,” Springsteen continues. “As I left, I thanked him for his beautiful work, his music, his songs, his life. I stood in his warmth, kissed him and told him I loved him.”

Clarke first had the idea for 20th Century Paddy shortly after MacGowan’s funeral, inspired by its celebratory performances, particularly Fairytale Of New York by Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill, both of whom appear on the tribute record. “The music at the funeral was something that people were talking about for quite a long time afterwards,” says Clarke. “They were saying, ‘That should be recorded.’”

Among the artists who’ve already completed tracks for the album are Steve Earl, David Gray, Kate Moss, The Murder Capital and Tom Waits. “It was amazing because he actually responded very quickly and very positively, and said, ‘Yes, I want to be on it.” Clarke says of Waits’s involvement. “I was really surprised by lots of people who said yes.”

Primal Scream feature with a version of A Pair Of Brown Eyes, which takes its inspiration from the mid-sixties Byrds. “I know that Shane was a big fan of The Byrds, Love and Buffalo Springfield,” Bobby Gillespie tells MOJO. “So I just thought maybe Shane would like his song reinterpreted in this way.”

• READ MORE: Spider Stacy Remembers Shane MacGowan: “Heroes live forever...”

“There was an authenticity about Shane as a person and a songwriter,” attests Gillespie’s former Jesus And Mary Chain bandmate Jim Reid. “He didn’t care about what other people were going to say. ‘Oh, are you sure you should be having that last quadruple whisky?’ He didn’t give a fuck. It wasn’t your business what he did. And everybody understood that and everybody kind of admired that.”

The Mary Chain’s contribution to 20th Century Paddy, I’ll Be Your Handbag, was a song that MacGowan actually wrote for the Reid brothers back in the early ‘90s and subsequently recorded himself with The Popes for 1994’s The Snake. “We were massive Pogues fans,” says Reid. “It turned out he was into the Mary Chain, and he said, ‘I’ll write you a song.’ He sent an acoustic demo, and we couldn’t figure out how to do it back then.”

Shane was already drunk when he arrived, but he wanted to drink more.

Jim Reid

Instead, MacGowan was invited by the brothers to sing the track God Help Me on the 1994 Jesus And Mary Chain album, Stoned & Dethroned. “It was kind of chaotic, to be honest with you. Shane was already drunk when he arrived, but he wanted to drink more, and we were pretty nervous and drunk. I can hardly remember making the record, but it’s a bloody good song.”

Clarke also reveals to MOJO that there are two unheard Shane MacGowan albums in differing states of completion. The first is already in the can and due for release in 2027. “He’d been working on it for about seven years and that is ready to go,” she says. “So, there will be more music from Shane.”

More esoterically, Clarke is planning a memoir based on her four-decade relationship with MacGowan, which she says will feature transcriptions of her spiritually communicating with her late husband.

“I have channelled him a few times,” she says. “When he’s able to communicate, I can be writing and he’ll just be talking and talking and talking. So I’ll write down everything he says. I feel that if I’m listening to the kind of music that he listened to and if I’m sitting in his chair and if I’m feeling his vibe… if I can tune into that frequency, I can feel him.”

In the meantime, there will be 20th Century Paddy, the title of which was MacGowan’s own. “He had been working on this idea himself since the nineties,” Clarke says. “I think he wanted to celebrate the idea of that character that he embodied – the 20th Century Irish guy. The title stuck with me and I just thought, It’s definitely what he’d want me to call this.

“It’s like extending Shane’s life in a weird way,” she concludes. “It’s like actually giving him this new lease of life he didn’t have.”

20th Century Paddy - The Songs Of Shane MacGowan will be released on November 13 via Rubyworks.

"Shane is the best songwriter of my generation, hands down..."

Get the latest issue of MOJO to read the full version of this feature. More information and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE!

.

.

.

.

.

.

John Coltrane fans may want call early at their local independent vinyl outlet when the nineteenth Record Store Day rolls around this weekend (April 18). Among more than 500 limited vinyl exclusives are The Tiberi Tapes: A Preview Of The Mythic Recordings (Verve/ Impulse!), which presents early 1960s performances of Coltrane and group made by New Jersey saxophonist Frank Tiberi, including an alternate near-twelve minute version of Giant Steps. Over at France 1965: The Complete Concerts John Coltrane Quartet (Charly), three French dates appear over four LPs, featuring the quartet’s only live performance of A Love Supreme.

Bonus Tracks!

RSD temptation doesn’t end there. As ever, big beasts expand celebrated albums with second discs. The Who’s A Quick One (UMR/ Polydor) pairs a mono mix with singles, EP tracks and alternate versions on green and orange vinyl. Also remastered and enlarged are Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band’s Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Rhino/ Atlantic), Little Feat’s Little Feat (Rhino), Cream’s Wheels Of Fire: Live At The Fillmore & Winterland (UMR/ Polydor) and Jackson C Frank’s self-titled sole LP (Sanctuary). Jerry Garcia’s Reflections (50th Anniversary Edition) (Round Records), meanwhile, is joined by two bonus LPs of outtakes and live cuts: Crosby Stills & Nash’s The Solo Albums box collects CSN’s debuts with a bonus LP of demos and sessions from all three.

Alternative Versions!

Other familiar albums are reimagined in wholly new forms: Rod Stewart’s Alternate Atlantic Crossing (Atlantic/ Rhino) shadows his 1975 album tracklist with different takes, while The Doors’ Strange Days 1967: A Work in Progress, Part 2 (Rhino) shows their second LP in protean form. There are similar reframings on John Prine’s Found Dogs (Oh Boy), Suede’s Antidepressants – Demos (BMG), Mark Lanegan Band’s Bubblegum (Original Draft) (Beggars Banquet) and, most radically, on John Lennon’s Love Meditation Mixes (UMR/Calderstone), where Sean Ono Lennon reworks 1970’s Love over three iridescent ‘Pearl Arctic’ LPs. Joni Mitchell’s For The Roses (Asylum/ Warner Records), meanwhile, finally gets her preferred original artwork on neato rose-coloured vinyl.

Picture Discs!

Fans of revolving 12” art are directed to picture discs including the self-titled debuts by Funkadelic (Org Music), The Modern Lovers (BMG) and Motörhead (Chiswick). 2026’s Zoetrope releases include George Harrison’s Dark Horse and Extra Texture (Dark Horse), a one-disc abridgement of The Kinks’ One For The Road (BMG) and Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel (Real World), while this year’s groovy vinyl tones include Roxy Music’s Viva (UMR/EMI) on gold wax, a punk pink edition of Sex Pistols comp Jubilee (UMR) and David Bowie’s Excerpts From Outside (Parlophone) on clear vinyl (there’s also a Neon Pink 12” of the Pet Shop Boys’ remixes of Bowie’s Hallo Spaceboy single).

Live LPs!

You want live albums? They got live albums. Choice picks include Pink Floyd’s quadruple, clear Live From The Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975 (Legacy), Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts’ 2025-recorded The Live Album (Reprise/ Warner) and Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band’s See.Hear.Now Asbury Park 2024 (Legacy Rep). Elsewhere are live sets from Brian Wilson, Blur, Status Quo, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Ray Charles, the Grateful Dead, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Terry Callier, Yes, Adrianne Lenker, King Crimson and XTC, whose Live At Emerald City 1981 (Ape House) kicks off a new in-concert LP series. Taking things further, Sonic Youth’s The Diamond Sea/ Grayfolded (Ume) sees Plunderphonic prime mover John Oswald re-edit 32 live versions of the Washing Machine track, on white vinyl.

Wait, There's More...

It goes on, in near-infinite variety. Paul Weller releases live BBC versions of When Your Garden’s Overgrown and Boy About Town on 7” (Parlophone): more BBC sessions can be heard on Madness’ Faces For Radio (West Village Music Management) and Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Radio One Sessions 1982-1983 (UMR/ ZTT). Enticingly, Pavement’s debut EP Perfect Sound Forever (Matador) is repressed for the first time since 1991 on white 10”, while The Human League’s Being Boiled makes it onto orange 12” (Cherry Red) with bonus 1978 Peel session tracks. Marc Bolan’s Songs From Marc (Demon) compiles unreleased performances from his 1977 TV show just a month before his death. Slint’s Untitled (Albini Rough Mixes) (Touch and Go) is an unreleased session from 1989, and who doesn’t need the new half speed master of Gong’s Flying Teapot (Charly), a remastered 10” of Miles Davis’ 1951 bandleader debut The New Sounds (UMR/ Concord) or a facsimile of the Japanese edition of the US Stones comp Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) (ABKCO Music)?

Note that multiple releases this year will benefit the War Child charity: these include Fleetwood Mac’s The Original Fleetwood Mac (Commercial Group) on two-LP Transparent Bio LP Vinyl, The Cure’s newly remastered Greatest Hits and Acoustic Hits (25th Anniversary Edition) (both UMR/Polydor/Fiction), and the solo albums by Manic Street Preachers’s James Dean Bradfield (The Great Western, Commercial Group) and Nicky Wire (Intimism, Commercial Group).

New Albums, Too!

After all that, there are non-vintage treats too. Robert Plant’s Saving Grace: All That Glitters… with Suzi Dian (Nonesuch) is an all-new 12” EP which includes a cover of Bert Jansch’s Poison. Pretty Things’ From The Other Side (Madfish) is a ‘Coke Bottle Clear’ 10” tribute to late voice Phil May and producer Mark St John, with unreleased tracks completed by Dick Taylor. Soft Cell’s Dancetaria Remixes (Big Frock) is a 12” preview of the duo’s last album, which arrives later this year. Hip hop heads will thrill at Bobby Digital Presents: The Juice Crew (36 Chambers/ DN/ Hitmaker), where Wu-Tang’s RZA produces a new set by golden age MCs including Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap. Previous epochs meeting, to be reborn on vinyl? Sounds like Record Store Day. Be lucky, record hounds.

See recordstoreday.co.uk for more info. Support your local record shop.