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aoTTon

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THE SURE FIRE SOUL ENSEMBLE

THE SURE FIRE SOUL ENSEMBLE GEMINI COLEMINE RECORDS LP / CD San Diego's nine piece instrumental combo is back and steering their “introspective party music” into fresh sonic realms. ‘Gemini’ features their breakbeat-heavy brand of funk-soul mixed with new spiritually-leaning jazz sounds,

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DEDICATED TO

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CONTENTS

LONDON + MEMPHIS + SAN JOSE

THES GATES a. AT MIDNIGHT

LENNY WARONKER tre

legendary A&R/producer/exec at the heart of Warners’ Golden Age with tales of Eddie Cochran, Randy Newman, Neil Young, Elliott Smith, Prince and more.

SEX PISTOLS ...by any

other name. Jones, Cook, Matlock and new boy Frank Carter prepare to hit the road once more, with John Lydon’s “karaoke” jeers ringing in their ears.

JAPANESE BREAKFAST nichelle

Zauner is the best-selling author with the hottest indie-pop band around. How her mother’s death, and Jeff Bridges, helped bring her to this point.

THE BEATLES tow

John and Paul's alchemical teamwork is distilled in Sgt. Pepper's Getting Better, from a new book by lan Leslie. Plus: the new Lennon doc, with Sean!

ALAN SPARHAWK

Since the death of his drumming wife Mimi, the Low man has been onan unasked-for voyage of self-discovery. What's he learned? “Don’t fight the darkness.”

DIONNE WARWICK sBacharachand

David's inimitable interpreter on ups and downs with Burt and Hal. “But | stayed friends with all Burt's wives,” she assures David Hutcheon.

THE POGUES Forty

years since Rum Sodomy & The Lash recast folk, its survivors jump

on MOJO's raft of reminiscence:

“It felt familiar but also totally of that moment.”

QU EEN sbrian May and

Roger Taylor pickapart the Odd Quartet’s hitmaking brilliance, from Keep Yourself Alive to These Are The Days Of Our Lives. Plus: Freddie — the art school years; inside Under Pressure; and more!

Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

MOJO 3

Dude, incredible: Jeff Bridges is psyched for Record Store Day, p19.

Grass roots: Hannah Cohen takes a walk onthe wild side, Filter Albums, p92.

ALL BACK TO MY PLACE -

Brian D'Addario, Lonnie Holley and Kristin Hersh have some music you need to hear.

REAL GONE Bill Fay, Roberta Flack,

Mike Ratledge, Jerry Butler, Gwen McCrae and many others, thank youand goodnight. | : -~

ASK MOJO whosecreted hidden tracks

onCDin the pre-streaming era?

HELLO GOODBYE Aftertoomany Cheap Trick covers, he realised anew DIY approach was needed. Robert Pollard recalls Guided By Voices’ first finale.

RICK BUCKLER Remembered with love, the lightning drummer of The Jam, who left us last month. Excerpts from one of his last interviews sheds light on their split in 1982.

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS Bringing all epochs of their storied band together, the Doobies convene for brand new LP, Walk This Road. “It's still fun,” they say.

RECORD STORE DAY 2025 It’s here again, with a plethora of tempting limited-edition vinyl treats. As well as our pick of over 400 releases, Jeff Bridges gets involved — but what's The Dude got to do with it?

ALABASTER DEPLUME The sax-blowing man born Gus Fairbairn talks confidential with us. Just don’task him if he fancies an omelette - he’s got martial arts skills!

ATLANTIC RECORDS Agiant new photos-plus-essays book celebrates 75 years of the great American label that brought us the best in R&B, soul, jazz, rock and beyond.

MOJO FILTER

82

94

106

108

NEW ALBUMS The gospelaccording

to Annie & The Caldwells, plus Greentea Peng, Alison Krauss, The Horrors and The Waterboys.

REISSUES Gearing up to Kraftwerk’s

first masterpiece, plus John McKay, De La Soul, John Lee Hooker and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.

BOOKS The real story behind Brian Wilson's SMILE LP, plus Lennon & McCartney’s ‘love story in songs’ anda Melanie biography.

SCREEN Stone-cold classic: Questlove’s visionary Sly Lives! documentary.

Praise the heavens: Annie & The Caldwells,

MOJOISSN 1351-0193 (USPS 17424) is published 12 times a yearby H Bauer Publishing Ltd, Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA United Kingdom. Airfeight and mailing in the USAby agentnamed World Container INC 150-15, 183rdt, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. Periodicals Postage Paid atBrooklyn, NY 11256. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to MOJO, AirBusiness Ltd, c/o World Container INC 150-15, 183rd St, Jamaica,

NY 11413, USA. Subscription records are maintained at Bauer Media, Subscriptions, CDS Global, Tower House, Sovereign Park, Lathkl Street, Market Harborough, Leicester LE16 9EF, United Kingdom. Air Business Ltdis acting as our mailing agent.

lan Leslie

lanis the author of acclaimed books on psychology and behav- jour, including Curious, about the desire to learn, and How To Disa- gree. He has written for the New Statesman, Financial Times and The Economist and is the author of Substack newsletter, The Ruffian. His book, John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs, is extracted on p44.

Lead Album, p82.

RIBUTORS INCLUD

Derek Ridgers

In the late’70s, Derek began photographing punks, skinheads, rockers and New Romantics at shows. Documenting British style and culture in the late-20th century, his pictures can currently be seen at the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern. On p73, Derek recalls his art school days with Freddie Mercury.

Pak Bae

Making his name in street photography in London from 2017 but now based in Seoul,

Pak Bae’s meticulously crafted, distinctly cinematic photography has appeared in Vogue, Esquire and GQ and in collaboration with brands including Nike and Gucci. His portrait of Japanese Break- fast’s Michelle Zauner is on p41.

Fran Monks, Borja Bonafuente, Landmark Media/Alamy, CJ Harvey

4MOJO

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hOLDAY$ W The S UN

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SATURDAY 23 AUGUST 2025 DREAMLAND MARGATE

MARGATESUMMERSERIES.CO.UK

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DAVID RODIGAN & DON LETTS & MORE WHITE LIES

THU 21 AUG FRI 22 AUG SAT 23 AUG PLUS MORE

TEXAS JAMES MADNESS COMING

NATALIE IMBRUGLIA HAPPY MONDAYS THE ZUTONS SOO N DOWNEY LIGHTNING SEEDS + THE WAEVE THE SKINTS + THE BEAT FT RANKIN JNR

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THE

9A O’ NEILL AND MORE

THE SICK BED OF CUCHULAINN

Since we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of Rum Sodomy & The Lash, where better to start than

with that album’s rousing opener? Irish myth, radical politics, a trail of picturesque devastation stretching across Europe, and a high-velocity tune that sounds like it’s been around for centuries... The essence of The Pogues in three incredible minutes.

Camera Preéss/Paul Slattery, Avalon.red/LF|, louisephillipsmusicphotography, Sorcha Frances Ryder, Claire Leadbitter, Phil Chevron, John Lyons & Ruth Clinton, World Image Archive/Alamy Stock Photo, Richard Dumas

Written by Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan. 1985 Warner Music UK Ltd. Licensed courtesy of Warner Music UK LTD. From Rum Sodomy &

The Lash. GBAHT0105482

THE BRUTAL HERE AND NOW

The early 21st century Irish band’s name refers to a canalside ghost story, and there’s certainly something uncanny about this track from 2012. Hypnotic yet sprightly, The Brutal Here And Now builds and builds into a kind of post-rock reel. Once heard, it'll haunt you indefinitely.

Written by The Spook Of The Thirteenth Lock. @Transduction Records 2012. ISRC1E-BJB-11- 00009. thirteenthlock.net

6 MOJO

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IRONMASTERS

Named by Shane MacGowan, and with Pogues roadie Cush a key founding member, The Men...

were the second-biggest folk-punk band of the ’80s. And as this new live version of one of their greatest songs -aThatcher-bashing protest anthem from 1985 - proves, their fury and energy is heroically undimmed.

B

THERE MUST BE LESS TO LIFE THAN THIS

The Walker Roaders are Pogues accordion maestro James Fearnley plus two mainstays of American Celtic punk, Flogging Molly's Ted Hutt and the Dropkick Murphys’ Marc Orrell. This 2024 gem was inspired by some Scottish wildmen Fearnley squatted with in the '70s.

Written by Paul Simmonds, Philip Odgers, Stefan Cush, Jon Odgers. Kassner Associated Publishers Ltd. Recorded live at the Craufurd Arms 2024. Released March 2025 on CD/DVD via Secret Records. ISRC: GBFDB2500046. www.secretrecordslimited.com

DIRTY OLD TOWN

Another voice who'll be heard on the impending Rum Sodomy & The Lash tour, Flynn’s version of the Ewan MacColl classic is markedly different to The Pogues’ take. “My favourite version is MacColl’s,” Flynn said in 2023. “It’s so sombre... | feel it’sa

love song for Dublin when | sing it.”

ff THE OLD MAIN DRAG

Members of Lankum will also be on the tour, with this haunting rethink of one of Shane MacGowan/’s greatest songs already in their repertoire. “It’s how tradition is supposed to work,” says Jem Finer. “You take something from the past, rework and reconfigure it, and pass it on again.”

Written by Shane MacGowan. © 2018 Lankum under exclusive licence to Rough Trade Records Limited. Published by Universal Music Publishing Limited. ISRC No. GB-CVZ-25-00078. Licensed courtesy of Rough Trade Records Limited. By arrangement with Beggars Group Media Limited. www.roughtraderecords.com

TY HELL

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EILEEN OG

While plenty of new Irish folk acts take inspiration from The Pogues, it’s Dundalk’s Mary Wallopers who most obviously channel their penchant for punk mayhem. Exhibit A: their tearaway rendering of this fin de siécle trinket by Percy French. Compare and contrast with Lankum’s 2019 version of the same song, using its alternate title The Pride Of Petravore.

Written by Percy French. Produced by Chris Barry. Publisher Copyright Control. ISRC: UK9AV2201329 www.marywallopers.com

fia THE BOTHY LADS

Brothers Diarmuid and Brian Mac Gloinn, from Carlow, have seen their acoustic folk land in some unlikely places — not least a collaboration with Boygenius on a version of trad ballad The Parting Glass in 2023. This delicately powerful take on

an old Scottish song is a B-side

from 2021 - a bothy being a basic shelter found in remote areas.

Traditional/Brian Mac Gloinn, Diarmuid Mac Gloinn. ©2021 River Lea Recordings. Traditional Published by Copyright Control. ISRC No. GB-CVZ-20-00108. Licensed courtesy of River Lea Recordings. www.riverlearecords.com

Killian Broderick, Donal Talbot, Richard’ Dumas, Rich Gilligan, Granger/Shutterstock

HERE’S A GREAT SHANE MacGOWAN QUOTE FROM 2012

that kicks off our Pogues feature on page 62 this issue.

“The energy of punk rock was already in Irish music,”

he tells Andrew Perry. “When | was a kid, | saw The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers — it was all around.”

That’s the spirit we’ve tried to tap on Songs From The County Hell. For this latest, and maybe rowdiest, MOJO compilation, we’ve followed the folk-punk energies of The Pogues backwards and forwards in time, honouring and upending traditions and.creating new ones as they go. There are essential tracks from The Pogues, contemporaries like The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and heroes like the aforementioned Dubliners and Clancys. But we've also found room for a much younger generation of Irish musicians, many of whom pay explicit homage to The Pogues by reinventing Shane MacGowan songs that are now as timeless and intoxicating as the traditionals he loved himself.

The ghosts are rattling at the door. The devil's in the chair. Take one

more drop of poison and crank this one up loud.

6

RED KOLA

Built around two busking brothers from Lugton, near Kilmarnock, the Nyah Fearties were a frenzied Scottish analogue to The Pogues, who seized the band’s attention

J

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LULLABY OF LONDON When Fearnley, Spider Stacy and Jem Finer resurrect The Pogues for a Rum Sodomy & The Lash tribute tour in May, one of their vocalists will be the exceptional O'Neill, who

SONGS/¢ (COUNTY HELL

THE POGUES, THE DUBLINERS HE MARY WALLOPERS, LANKUM LISA O’NEILL AND MORE

&

THE WILD ROVER

Back to the source, and the opening track of the first Dubliners album from 1964, recorded live to capture the atmosphere of a traditional

pub seisiun. The song's origins

©

THE FISHERMAN’S WIFE “Like Macbeth’s Weird Sisters crashing a Sandy Denny séance,” was how MOJO’s folk correspondent Jim Wirth described Luireach, the second album by this ethereal

sang Fairytale Of New York at Shane MacGowan/’s funeral. Hopefully she'll be allowed to play this -

her version of a highlight from /f/ Should Fall From Grace With God.

Lea Recordings. Published by Universal Music Publishing Limited. ISRC No. GB-CVZ-18-00092. Licensed courtesy of River Lea Recordings. www.riverlearecords.com

The Tennessee Jive a @

TENNESSEE STUD

Terry Woods’ remarkable CV includes stints in Sweeney's Men, The Woods Band and Steeleye Span - which made him by some distance the most musically experienced member of The Pogues when he joined the band in 1986. This wired version of the old country song came out asa single in 1980, and found Woods joined by another rebel hero of Irish music, Phil Lynott, who also produced it.

by playing outside their favoured Camden pub, The Devonshire, in January 1986. Pogues support slots followed at the Hammersmith Palais and in Europe, as well as five albums; Red Kola dates from a 1993 EP. The Wiseman Brothers can currently be found playing as Junkman’s Choir.

Written by D.Wiseman/A.Henry/S.Wiseman. nyahfearties.bandcamp.com

£4

THE CUILLEN

Like the Nyah Fearties, Swamptrash were another Scottish band with

a radical take on roots music, throwing in plenty of punked-up bluegrass for good measure. The Cuillen - possibly named after the Cuillin mountains on Skye - comes from a 1988 Janice Long session, released on the Bone EP. Frontman Harry Horse became a successful children’s author before passing in 2007; other members formed the Celtic fusion band, Shooglenifty.

Written by Harry Horse. Publisher PRS copyright control. DDTEP 002 (DDT Records)

Dublin harmony quartet, when it came out in 2024. The Fisherman’s Wife is the first of two Ewan MacColl songs on this CD, originally written for a 1960 radio documentary about herring fishing communities in East Anglia and north-east Scotland.

Written by Ewan MacColl. Copyright control IENSV2300004. @Glitterbeat Records (2024). landless.bandcamp.com

WHISKEY, YOU’RE THE DEVIL

The traditional drinking song was adapted by Thin Lizzy for Whiskey In The Jar, and inevitably claimed by The Pogues, for the B-side of A Pair Of Brown Eyes. Here, though, it’s performed by the Aran-clad Irish immigrants who became toasts of the New York folk revival - and fast friends with the young Bob Dylan.

(arr Clancy) Harmony Music. First released 1959

are lost in the mists of time - one theory dates it to the 17th century - but its romance endures: The Pogues covered it for the B-side of Sally MacLennane.

Written by Barney McKenna, Ciaran Bourke, John Sheahan, Ronald Drew, Luke Kelly. Logo Songs Ltd. ©1963 Sanctuary Records Group Ltd., a BMG Company. Licensed courtesy of BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd. ISRC: GBAJE6400573

—-

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WILCO §€ a ghost ts born

DELUXE EDITION

‘Wilco’s second straight masterpiece celebrates its 20th anniversary.’

Mojo, Reissue of the Month kk**

‘It may be the most pivotal album in Wilco’s catalogue. ‘This sprawling boxset chronicles their experiments as well as their upheavals. This version of the band managed to transform their troubles into beautifully harrowing music.’

Uncut Kk KKK

‘An abundant retrospective of Wilco’s most adventurous statement. Exhaustive and impressively curated.’

Record Collector Kk **

9LP / 4CD Deluxe Edition 80 ‘Tracks - 65 previously unreleased

Original Studio Album Plus: Alternative outtakes and demos

The complete October 2004 concert at the Wang Center-Boston

The complete Fundamentals on 4CDs

Includes a deluxe 48-page hardcover book with previously unpublished photos and a new in-depth recording history of the album by Grammy-winning writer Bob Mehr

Also available on 9CD, 2LP, 2CD, and digital formats

nonesuch

nonesuch.com

79% of paper and 83% of paper-based packaging is recycled into new products;

one of the highest recycling rates of any material in Europe!

Source: Cepi Key Statistics, 2023 and Eurostat, 2022 Europe: EU27 + Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

[m] Discover the story of paper =" a www.lovepaper.org

Scan for paper facts, activities, £ blogs and much more!

Anastasia Sanchez, Viva Vadim, Getty

B

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Kristin Rese

L

Hersh WING MUSE RIATHLETI

What music are you currently grooving to?

Acasa mais estranha nao tem numero... Brazilian lo-fi. Great, unpretentious stuff that reflects spaces and senses and communi- cates so unselfconsciously, you can’t help but be moved. And Tendon Levey, a lovely pain-carrier of a per- son and dear friend, who lived such a difficult life and nevertheless cre- ated so much beauty. Same with Yonlu, who deserved more peace and happiness than he felt here.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?

Geez, is there such a thing? Maybe

What music are you currently grooving to?

I've been listening to Jobim’s Waters Of March a lot lately! Also, The Best Of Eddie Cochran and the Rare Joe Meek Recordings Of The ‘60s compilation. Plus, Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?

| guess Pet Sounds. | can’t think of a record that’s moved me more in my life. You can always discover new things from it... and it’s some of the most beautiful singing on record.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? The first CD was The Who's Live At Leeds at Virgin Megastore in Times Square. It blew my mind. It made it hard for me to listen to the studio versions of those songs because the live versions were so powerful.

Which musician, other than your- self, have you ever wanted to be?

Maybe Roy Wood because he can

Brian D’Addario

play everything including saxes and cellos. Or McCartney since his voice can’t be beat, and he seems to have endless energy and ambition.

What do you sing in the shower? Recently it's probably been The Cookies’ | Never Dreamed, which me and [brother and bandmate] Michael have both been obsessed with.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?

Accelerator by Royal Trux gets me hyped. It’s one of the craziest sound- ing records. Neil Hagerty is one of the most original guitar players and Jennifer Herrema’s voice is so cool. And your Sunday morning record? Black Flower by Nirvana (UK). It has really good orchestrations and the songwriting is fun, harpsichord-led ‘60s pop. Plus, it has the song It Happened Two Sundays Ago on

it, so it’s perfect!

TillThe Morning is out on March200n Headstack Records.

Meat Puppets’ Up On The Sun because it’s so fearlessly itself.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? X's Los Angeles on Slash... Doo Wop Records, Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island. What a record store, life-alter- ing. Better than any radio station or teenage brother as far as providing

a musical education.

Which musician, other than your- self, have you ever wanted to be? My son Wyatt, who is by nature,

a composer rather than a songwriter. | know a few people like this, who hone their craft so that when they jump into the River Music, they come back to the shore dripping with hours of melody.

What do you sing in the shower? I'd most likely just hum. The Mon- kees’ Goin’ Down is probably the most hum-friendly.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?

Karen Dalton’s 1966. Possible that my Saturday nights are different from other people’s, hahaha. If

I’m not playing, then I’m hiding. This record helps you hide.

And your Sunday morning record? An instrumental Prince cover, Sometimes It Snows In April, by Ludovico Einaudi. | have been known to play this a hundred times on repeat and then start the whole process over. There’s something I’m still trying to grasp that | haven't yet learned from it. Be ready, if | invite you to brunch.

Throwing Muses’ Moonlight Conces- sions is out now on Fire.

Lonnie Holley

What music are you currently grooving to?

Moor Mother's last record, The Great Bailout, which | was honoured to sing a song on. But, really, | enjoy all music.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Stevie Wonder'’s /nnervisions or Songs In The Key Of Life. To hear his music and him being blind totally fascinated me. The music has a message for all of us on Earth. It’s just a great wonder. That's his name - Stevie Wonder. Man, it makes you wonder, who is this cat?

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come. | got it in Birmingham, Alabama at a record store on

4th Avenue.

Which musician, other than your- self, have you ever wanted to be? I've never wanted to be anyone

but me, but if | could sing like someone else, it would be Jackie

ACK TO MY PLACE

on Toale

Wilson. And if | was a writer, | would want to write like Bob Dylan.

What do you sing in the shower? | honestly don't. That's the time

| think about what I’m going to sing next.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?

Saturday feels like my Johnnie Taylor time. He was singing about love, the habits of love, the mistakes of love, what our consequences are in love. Who's making love to your lady while you out making love? It’s music that you can go out to, or you could just stay in and groove off of it. If | went out Saturday night, | still would love to hear Johnnie Taylor, right? We're gonna go to the juke joint, cross the tracks and all of that. And your Sunday morning record? Something by Shirley Caesar or anything by Aretha Franklin. Whenever | listen to Aretha Franklin, it was almost like | was listening to her father also, because | remember Reverend C.L. Franklin preaching.

Lonnie Holley’s Tonky is out on March 21 on Jagjaguwar.

|

MOJO 9

MOJO

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Editor John Mulvey Senior Editor

Danny Eccleston

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Thanks for their help with this issue: Keith Cameron, Chris Catchpole, lan Whent, Matt Hurrell

This month’s contributors: John Aizlewood, Martin Aston, Mike Barnes, Mark Blake, Glyn Brown, John Bungey, Keith Cameron, Chris Catchpole, Stevie Chick, Andy Cowan, Grayson Haver Currin,

Max Décharné, Tom Doyle, David Fricke, Andy Fyfe, Pat Gilbert, David Hutcheon, Jim Irvin, David Katz, lan Leslie, Dorian Lynskey, Andrew Male, James McNair, Bob Mehr, Lucy O'Brien, Mark Paytress, Andrew Perry, Jon Savage, Victoria Segal, Irina Shtreis, Michael Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, Mat Snow, Ben Thompson, Kieron Tyler, Charles Waring, Roy Wilkinson, Lois Wilson, Jim Wirth.

This month’s photographers: Cover: Mick Rock (inset, Andrew Catlin) Jerry Abrams, Pak Bae, Andrew Catlin, Jeremy Balderson, Steve Emberton, Michael Grecco, Bob Gruen, Brigitte Hellgoth, Roger Kisby, Laurie Lynn Stark,

Jim Marshall, Denis O'Regan, Stephen Paley, Barry Plummer, Douglas Puddifoot, David Redfern, Paul Rider, Arturo Solorio.

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10 MOJO

Theories, rants, etc.

MOJO welcomes correspondence for publication. Write to us at: MOJO, H Bauer Publishing, The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk

ROBERTA FLACK. RICK BUCKLER. MIKE RATLEDGE.

Gwen McCrae. Jerry Butler. Jamie Muir. After the losses of Marianne Faithfull, Garth Hudson and Sam Moore in the weeks and days leading up to MOJO 377, it’s been another sobering month for bereavements in our world, and one which makes us think about the work MOJO needs to do for our readers.

This issue achieves a lot of what we shoot for each month. Great, unheard stories proliferate: about Brian Wilson, and Prince; about hash parties with Jeff Bridges and James Mason; about Elvis Costello’s taste for a pomelo. New interviews with artists as diverse as the Sex Pistols, Dionne Warwick and our cover stars Queen show how legends often feel free to talk with more tenderness and frankness as the years pass. And there are enough fresh music recommendations to keep you busy for the next few weeks — like Japanese Breakfast, Annie & The Caldwells and Emma-Jean Thackray among many others.

There’s also a requirement for MOJO to be popular music’s journal of record — a magazine that can commemorate the lives of generational heroes, but ensure that artists a little further away from the i are remembered, too. Artists, perhaps, like Bill Fay, who passed away on February 22. This brilliant singer-songwriter’s career began again in 1998, when a small label reaaieal his first two solo albums from long neglect, and MOJO made them our Reissues Of The Month. A rediscovery of a genius, for an enchanted new audience — and now a celebration of an unorthodox creative life well- lived. It’s the least, hopefully, that we can do.

JA

JOHN MULVEY, EDITOR

Shake the freak tree and invite anyone who plops

to the ground! A Genesis cover feature [MOJO 377] is always a

reason to rush out to secure a magazine. However,

It ruins the mystery if everything’s explained

Having just read the Genesis article, there is a reference to giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum — I embroidered this on a denim shirt, pretentious, moi?) being a carnivorous plant. However the lyrics make

am I missing some raised- eyebrow approach to your no mention of the plant being carnivorous, probably

reporting that Peter Gabriel i 1s intending to name his follow- -up album to i/o as o/i? Or “Oi!” us have come to call a release we are Ithely to pre- decease. He has form: a successor to 1992’s Us was

. It was to be titled... i/o. The next non-soundtrack album was 2002’s Up.

, as some of because the sap of giant hogweed is phototoxic and

causes phytophotodermatitis (exposure to sunlight) in humans, which can result in blisters and scars. So it is toxic and not carnivorous.

David R Pollard, Heckmondwike

heralded “within 18 months”

To follow the Genesis feature with a lead review

of Steven Wilson’s new album was manna to this fan of prog of the ’70s, ’80s and bey ond. And a four-star one at that. That said, while balanced, Tom Doy le’s text did not seem to be quite as positive eas the scoring suggested. peivieraslly — Pedant Alert — Doy! le refers to Wilson’s “new” collaborator, Andy Partridge. Putting aside Wilson’s remix work for XTC (mentioned in the piece), the pair teamed up as long ago as 2018 for How Big The Space.

Phil Morris, Hi ereford

.. That’s what I love about your magazine: one issue after Edwyn Collins trots out the familiar anti- -prog attack on Genesis, Yes and Van Der Graaf Generator [MOJO 376], you guys put Gabriel and co on the cover! When is this prog-bashing going to finally stop? Can people not accept a little diversity in

music? Sure, there are times I need to rock out to the Ramones, but sometimes I’m justin the mood for Yes or King Crimson.

Andreas Heller, Lake Constance, Germany

We’re all legends. But

you’re right, | am a legend

OK, so Ringo has a new country album [MOJO 376] and Paul played some bass on the Stones’ last outing. When can we expect the surviving members of the 1960s’ two most successful bands to combine forces? Ringo Starr, drums and vocals; Paul McCartney, bass, piano and vocals; Keith Richards, lead guitar and vocals; Mick Jagger, vocals and rhythm guitar... The Rolling Beats! They could knock out a great album of rock’n’roll standards, blues and country covers. Come on, lads, you know it makes sense!

David Ward, via e-mail

Temperamental artists, eh? Thanks for the groovy Modtastic CD [Beat Surrender!, MOJO 376] — these themed CDs are keepers. Loved the 50 Weller songs, but ’'d flip My Ever Changing Moods to Number | over the ubiquitous That’s Enter- tainment. I’ve met Paul on numerous occasions. Over the years he drove off with a mate’s album, tolda crowd of adoring fans to fuck off, had a nice chat with me outside the 100 Club, buggered off froma charity signing event without signing anything, gave his time generously at the launch of 66 at Hackney’s Earth, and upset longtime followers at the premiere of Jawbone. At the Jawbone event I managed to get avery reluctant Weller to sign my copy of the soundtrack and the vinyl of The Jam Live At W embley Arena 2nd December 1982, which I attended with my girlfriend (now wife of 40 yearn), Jeanette. Unfortunately i in my excitement I managed to smudge one of the autographs. Moments later I was in the cinema and Paul sat down directly behind [me]. Taking this as a sign from the music gods, I leaned back, explained the smudge and timidly asked Paul to sign again. “Fucking ’ell, mate! You don’t want fucking much, do ya?’ ” And with that he signed Jawbone again and I shrank down in my seat to w atch the film. It’s up there with being told to fuck off by the brilliant

Marianne Faithfull. But that’s another stor y: Bruce Marsh, Newbury Park

I’m a performer, darling.

Not a Swiss train conductor In MOJO 376’s cover story, I was surprised to read Paul Weller state there have been relatively few covers of his songs. I believe I may have had the first. I met him in Los Angeles with my transcription of In The City, from the first Jam LP It was not easy to understand all of his lyrics, which he, pen in hand, corrected on my typewritten sheet. It became the lead track on Twist Again With The Low Numbers (Rhino, 1978).

Harold Bronson, via e-mail

There’s no musical ghetto that can contain us

Been with this wondrous mag from the start and this is my first attempt at the letters page. W: ith regard to

1965 In 45s [MOJO 376], I would have been 17 and spending all my money on vinyl. Clothes and girls? May! be later! It was heartwar ming to see w vhat I believe is the first mention of the band The Silkie i in your pages. I have still got their single You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Aw: ay along with their album The Silkie

Sing The Songs of Bob Dylan. They sang excellent harmonies and gave me my favourite version of Boots Of Spanish Leather, and a number called Black Crow Blues which I belted out in a band called Hollowlands. Speaking of harmonies, The Byrds are mentioned in the same article, and my all-time musical hero, Gene Clark, gets a mention. Can I make a case here for I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better being the greatest ever B-side? Over to you.

Mick Garman, Norwich

True poetry is for the listener I enjoyed the article on Jesse Ed Davis [MOJO 376].

Alongside the well-known artists it was gr eat to see another Native American, the late John Trudell, getting amention. I still have my cassette of AKA Grafitti Man! I was lucky to see John at Glastonbury in 1994 and was blown aw: ay with the mix of blues-rock instruments, Native American chants and spoken word. He died in 2015 and his poetry, music and activism is sorely missed.

Peter Evans, via e-mail

Being human is a condition that requires a little anaesthesia

The letters section headlines in MOJO 377 are

from Eraserhead, and the fact that I’m solving this month’s quotes quandary y ina David Lynchless world means that I can’t enjoy my victor y fully. That being said, director John Landis is a friend of mine, and whilst dining at Hollywood mainstay Musso & Frank’s for his birthday alittle over 10 years ago, on the way out we glimpsed David dining by himself. John had actually worked as a production assistant on Eraserhead, and hadn’t seen David since that time.

Dave Gebroe, via e-mail

Sweetheart, | want

to throw a party I was delighted to receive MOJO 376 with the same cover as the store copies. When you started putting out special covers for subscribers, with nothing buta photo, Iwas tempted to let my subscription expire, but I had no easy way of obtaining the issues locally. Those covers seemed to be meant for teenagers who like to look at glossy colour photos of their favourite musical idols. I suspect that most of y our subscribers aren’t from that demogr aphic group. Thank y ‘ou for rev erting back to the old style.

P. Comeau, via e-mail

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MOJO 11

WHAT GOES ON!

THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO

said Rick Buckler, with admirable understate-

ment, of The Jam’ s dramatic split at the peak of their success in 1982. Speaking to MOJO’s Chris Catchpole about his 2022 photobook The Jam 1982, in one of his last in-depth press interviews, he continued, “It just seems SO completely unreal, that here we were, after everything that we've done, for it to literally be junked. .. it felt like a sort of musical vandalism, when we felt we had so much more to do, so much more to record.”

A generation of Jam fans agreed with him — just as they knew the group would have been unthinkable with anyone else behind the kit. The Jam, one of the greatest bands of their era, would have been a hugely diminished force without their drummer’s singular skills and unassuming cool.

Buckler, the son ofa postman turned GPO engineer, was born on December 6, 1955, in Woking. He was recruited into The Jam by Paul Weller and guitarist Steve Brookes in summer 1973, when the three were pupils at

P , 1 MUST ADMIT, I found it a little bit difficult,”

Sheerwater Secondary Shoal. Rick was 17 at the time — two years older than Weller and Brookes — and had first encountered his new bandmates during jam sessions in the school’s music room. Unable to afford decent gear of his own, he had to borrow a drum kit from Guildford’s YMCA for his first live appearance, at Sheerwater Youth Club, for which Weller primed him with a stack of Chuck Berry records. Born Paul Richard Buckler, the drummer was also required to undergo a re-brand as ‘Rick’: there could only ever be one Paul in The Jam.

After Bruce Foxton joined in 1974, the line-up would eventually settle into a three-piece with Weller on guitar and lead vocals and Foxton on bass. It was during this period that the trio honed their chops, playing scores of gigs at pubs and clubs around Surrey. For Rick, it was never about the money or fame, but the joy of perfor mainig and the faint possibility of success. “We'd play anywhere,” he told me. “I didn’t care where. Ify ou came froma working-class background, music was one of the few chances to escape. It was obvious we had some talent and Paul was wr iting great songs, so we just stuck at it.”

Quiet, wry and humorous, Buckler enjoyed the absurdities that attended life in a struggling teenage band. One of his favourite stories involved the group having to borrow a van froma man who kept a pet lion in the back of the vehicle (this was the mid ’70s), with no choice but to take the creature along to gigs. “You wouldn’t believe it, but it did happen,” he’d laugh. When The Jam signed to Polydor Records in early 1977, Rick threw himself into the gruelling live and recousting schedule of a major-label act, while also making sure he availed himself of >

Fin Costello/Getty

12 MOJO

No malice: (clockwise from

ef

above) Buckler and Bruce Foxton, 2007; The Jamin 1982; (from left) Foxton, Buckler and Paul Weller, 1978; Rick Buckler at the forefront of The Jam, London, 1977.

Tom Sheehan, Ben ie Ol Paul Cox/Camera Press, Avalon.red/LF, Chris Catchpole interviewed Rick Buckler for thenewcue.substack.com

<_whatever fun and mischief came the band’s way. At the infamous Mont de Marsan punk festival in August 1977, he joined hisc olleagues in drinking themselves silly before divi ing into the town fountain, his new ly dyed black hair running downhieficeas thelocal gendarmes bundled him into the back of their van. By now, Buckler had adopted his trademark Roger McGuinn-style shades, ear ning the nickname ‘Blind Boy’ among the crew—a disability he’d sometimes feign in front of strangers.

When it came to studio w vork, Polydor’ s A&R Chris Parry described Rick’s dn umming in the early days. as “ragged”, but he soon evolved a crisp, pr ecise style that fed into The Jam’s fast-moving musical evolution. By 1978's landmark Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, Buckler was showing off his skills ona drum solo (much extended live), and from then on his snappy militar iy tattoos and thunderous rock pounding became ever more vital components in The Jam’s song arrange- ments. On 198 1’s post- punk g gem Funeral Pyre, his playing was phenomenal, the track dominated by tightly scr! ipted, elongated snare rolls that dramatically rose and fell with the

20. e=4

music; this artistic contribution earned him a rare co-songwr iting credit.

Every year from 1979 until The Jam’s split in 1982, Buckler was voted ‘Best Drummer’ in the prestigious NME Awar: ds, undeniably acorollary of The Jam’s extraordinary popular: ity ( (Weller, Foxton and the group itself also triumphed annually in their respective categories) but also as a testament to his highly distinctive tec hnique. Steve ‘Smiley’ Barnard, a session drummer for Robbie W: ‘liane and Joe Strummer’s Mescaleros, learned some of Rick’s secrets when he replaced Buckler in

14 MOJO

DOWN IN THE TURE STATION AT MIDNIGHT

|

From The Jam, Bruce and Rick’s millennial Jam ‘tribute’ act.

“It took me a few

mo<v-r>pmzen

shows to nail his style and it was something very subtle,” says Barnard. “It was his posture. If youlook on YouTube,

Rick sits with his back very straight, chin up. As soon as I did that my arms fell into the right place and I began to sound like him. Funeral Pyre, that long snare roll in Town Called Malice, the fills in Going Underground, these are amazing things that will stand the test of time on their own.”

In the last two years of The Jam, Buckler noticed fissures in the group’s once-solid camaraderie. “It began to emerge that we had first and second-class citizens within the band,” he told Catchpole. ‘ “Obviously we expected Paul to earn more money than myself and Bruce, because he wrote the songs. But there were a few things where it made you think, Well, hold ona minute. .. I couldn’t afforda car, I was str uggling with a mortgage. People used to make comments [about it] and I used to dismiss them, because we were

m= SF Sra Zz o=

having a great time.”

When Paul Weller sensationally called time on The Jam after ata gig at the Br ighton Centre on December 11, 1982, Buckler and Foxton were famously flabbergasted. Rick took the br eak-up har: d—

“I woke up in 1983 and it suddenly struck me that I’ve got no reason to get out of bed any more” — but roused himself to start a new group, Time UK, before briefly teaming up with Foxton i in 1986 to form the short-lived Sharp. Healso produced recordings by The Highliners and The Family Cat.

s §

Attempts to rekindle his friendship with Weller had foundered, not helped by an episode at the singer’s Solid Bond studio, where a preview of Style Council material was met with Buckler asking, “Are you taking the piss?” Paul would only speak to Rick once more after that, when the pair ran into each other at a Bruce Foxton solo show, Weller’s final words to him reportedly, “Alright, mush?”, before disappearing into the crowd.

In the mid-’90s, when Buckler had turned his back on music to work as a furniture restorer, he and Foxton ne sued Weller’s father and manager John over alleged unpaid royalties, further complicating his relations with Paul. It was Foxton’s rap- prochement with Weller in 2009 that led to Buckler quitting From The Jam, though the rhythm section subsequently made up.

The drummer then moved into music

consultancy and penned several books about his y youthful musical adventur es, inc luding 2015’s memoir That’s Entertainment: My Life In The Jam and 2022’s photobook The Jam 1982. He declared himself reconciled to events, and said he knew a band reunion would never happen.

On Buckler’s death after a short illness, Foxton was moved to write, “I was shocked and devastated to hear the ver y sad news today. Rickwas a good guy anda great drummer whose innovative drum patter: ns helped shape our songs. Tm glad we had the chance to work together as muchas we did.”

Weller’s statement, meanw! hile, chose to focus on The Jam’s thrilling ear. ly day S

together. “ ‘Tm shocked and saddened by Rick’s passing. I’m thinking back to us all rehear: sing in my bedroom in Stanley Road, Woking, To all the pubs and clubs we play: ved atas kids, to ev entually making a record. Whata journey! We went far beyond our dreams and what we made stands the test of time.”

Amen to that.

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Family affair: The ,

Doobie Brothers ready as

to fly (from left) Tom n Johnston, John McFee, Michael McDonald, ~ — Patrick Simmons.

SPARK UP AGAIN WITH ALBUM 16

would tour the States in the special plane and non-stop-party-in-the-sky dubbed ‘The Doobieliner’. One memorable aerial occasion saw the harmonising blue-eyed soul rockers experiencing weightlessness during a parabolic flight - only slightly marred when someone was sick. Now they’re back with new LP Walk This Road. Will they be touring it on The Doobieliner, wonders MOJO? “Thankfully, no,” laughs vocalist/keysman Michael McDonald. Guitarist/vocalist and co-founder Tom Johnston, writer and singer of hits including Long Train Runnin’ and China

| N THEIR ‘70s heyday, The Doobie Brothers

Title: Walk This Road Due: June Songs: Walk This Road (ft. Mavis Staples); Lahaina; Learn To Let Go; State Of Grace; Angels &Mercy; CallMe ~| TheBuzz: “Itwas fastand furious. We were almost engagedinthe whole thing before we evenrealised we'd decided to evenmakean album. John Shanks isavery, very can- do kind of producer —gointhereinthe morning andit’s not likely you're gonna leave withoutasong recorded. Soitwas kindof spontaneous in that way.”

MichaelMcDonald

Grove, avers, “That was a great way to travel! But it burned down.”

Old ways and new meet on Walk This Road. Though the latter members and co-founder singer/guitarist Patrick Simmons have been reunited since 2019, it’s McDonald's first full Doobies album since One Step Closer in 1980. “| really felt a strong urge to put our shoulders into one more record together,” says the unmistakable voice of What A Fool Believes and others.

The hard-touring outfit started work in late '23 at producer John Shanks’ well- appointed, comfortable studio in the

Hollywood hills. Joined by long-serving multi-instrumentalist John McFee, they followed a pattern established on 2021's Liberté. Writers worked on songs individually with the fast-working Shanks and session players, which were then augmented by the other members. “John’s a pretty fabulous writer anda tremendous player,” says Simmons, whose writing and singing credits include 1975 US Number 1 Black Water. “He inspired us to push ourselves. [The album] has some of the sounds and styles that we've done inthe past - | like that the band has a signature that’s recognisable.”

The title track - a bluesy song of unity co-sung with Mavis Staples - was written with Shanks specifically for the album, but the rest of the material came from the three principals’ song stashes. McDonald says he demoed The Kind That Lasts a decade ago: “It’s like, What have | got hiding up back here in the cobwebs of my mind that might work?” The swampy New Orleans, says Johnston, was rewritten “drastically” with Shanks “in amatter of two or three hours... | was dancing around the studio. [Backing singer] Sharlotte Gibson singing on it was the cherry on top - kind of a Merry Clayton with the Stones kind of thing. And having Mike on the album changes everything. | think his additions are awesome.”

With breaks for gigs, recording and mastering was completed in early autumn 2024. Intriguingly, McDonald and Simmons say they’re also open to recording in more tried-and-tested ways.

“think we all kind of missed sitting on the floor together and developing tracks in real time and recording them,” says McDonald. “Then, things would change and evolve.” “Inthe old days you couldn't cut and paste, you had to just doit until you got it,” adds Simmons. “So we're going to re-examine that way of working and hopefully, you know, maybe make another record.”

“We're still functioning, everybody's getting along, songsare still coming,” says Johnston. “It’s a challenge, but it’s still fun.”

lan Harrison

The Doobie Brothers play BST Hyde Park as guests of ELOon Sunday, July 13.

ALSO WORKING

... Bauhaus singer

(right) releases a new Youth-produced album in spring. Entitled Silver Shade, he Calls it, “as powerful as any of my work to date” \ 5 ...the first LP NEIL f YOUNG andhis new ty group Chrome Hearts : —with vocalist/guitarist Micah Nelson and Spooner Oldham on Farfisa in the line-up —

Chris Pizzello/Alamy, Jolene Siana, KAS

will, hopes Young, be out soon. “Playing with the C ajoy as we recorded song after

Do Things My Own Way and Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab ...pro

rome Hearts was

song at Shangri-La [AKA the storied studio in Malibu currently owned by Rick Rubin],” he wrote. “lam very happy to have this all ready for you” ...out later this year, SPARKS’ MADI.Songs include A Little Bit Of Light Banter,

[ ' Alongside Mobb Deep's Havoc, late rapper Prodigy will appear via archival voice tracks. Nas is also involved ...BILLY F

I NS' recent release

Livin’It Up Down In Texas

ucer The

Alchemist announced on US radio show The Breakfast Club that he'sinvolvedin anewalbum project by Queens rappers

will, he said, precede anew solo record. He promised Forbes it will present, “fresh sonic angles

alongside a few interesting covers. We think it’s quite likeable” ... modular and analogue electronic musician ITH (left) releases her new LP Gush in August. She describes it as “about synaesthesia and surrendering to those moments when the senses melt together" . ...London rock’n'rollers THE GODFATHERS are working onanewalbum, expectitin 2026...

16 MOJO

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Queue for the music: customers get in line outside London’s Sounds Of The Universe for last year’s | Record Store Day; (below) some of the “4 vinyl booty available.

MOJO’S ESSENTIAL GUIDE

TO

T’S BEEN A regular fixture on the vinyl [ aficionado’s calendar since 2008, celebrat-

ing the grass roots record shop and the limited-edition joys to be found within. This April 12, Record Store Day promises to be no exception, with more than 400 exclusive releases to choose from.

As ever, there are collisions of familiarity and novelty. Take the newly rediscovered alternative US version of Public Image Ltd’s First Issue, with subtly reworked sleeve art anda unique tracklist of re-recordings and different mixes. Also new to wax is yellow- vinyl four-track 12-inch EP Power To The People — Live At The One To One Concert, New York City, 1972 by John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band and pals. Taken from Lennon’s final full solo shows, three of the four songs are previously unreleased. George Harrison’ s triple All Things Must Pass, meanwhile, arrives in a retina-shaking Zoetrope picture disc pressing.

This year, numerous releases illuminate artists’ early transmissions. Making

18 MOJO

their vinyl debut, Queen’s De Lane Lea Demos

restore, from acetates, the or oup’ s five earliest

recordings. Another acetate- derived set is Viva

Doc Pomus: Songs For Elvis (The Demos) , which

collects recor dings sent to The King by the

Brill Building titan on double ‘opaque orange’

wax. The Soft Machine Turns On ’67, mean-

WwW! hile, sources the Canterbur y scenesters’

pre-debut LP recordings from the archives

of Gior. ‘gio Gomelsky. The Jesus And Mar y:

Chain’s pr imal A- and B-side comp

> 45s>84>85<,on ‘splatter’ vinyl

with their cover of Floy d rarity Ve getable

Man, looks enticing too.

Other collections shed light on major

albums’ development. Strange Days 1967 —A Work In Progress collects early, pre-overdub mixes of The Doors’ second LP; on blue vinyl, mixer Bruce Botnick adds new notes. Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak (Alternate Version) replicates the original album using different takes in aremixed sleeve. Curiously, Tweez (Tweethan Mix) reverse- mixes Slint’s 1989 debut LP

on green wax, to better reflect

2025

bassist Ethan Buckler’s original vision (“the [Steve] Albini production style ruined our first recording,” he protests). Other albums bolstered by eR extras include Screaming Trees? Clairv oyance (remastered with out-takes) and The Fugs’ ’65 debut, which is augmented with a whole ‘new’ album of early sessions entitled We're The Fugs.

RSD’s live album game remains strong this year. David Bowie’s Ready, Set, Go! (Live, Riverside Studios 03) presents his pioneering live-to-satellite show of 2003, witha poster. Sly & The Family Stone’s The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 captures the group in full flight the year before they crossed over. Other rude-health documents include Yes’s Live At The Rainbow, London, England 12/16/1972 , Talking Heads’ Live On Tour ’7 8 and The 13th Floor Elevators’ Live Houston Music Theatre ’67.Moments: The Montreux Years Vol. I cherry picks unreleased performances by Muddy Waters, Nina Simone, Marianne Faithfull and more from the celebrated Swiss bash on ‘Lake Geneva blue’ vinyl. Roger Waters’ The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux (Live) documents the only live performances of the r eimagined version of the totemic LP on neon pink vinyl. Keith Richards and the

CHANGED / MY LIFE //

Patterson Hood

The Drive-By Trucker-in-chief salutes Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? (Bearsville, 1972).

My record obsession began when | was three.| remem- ber my dad opening his new copy of Magical Mystery Tour, and sitting on his lap, listening to Strawberry Fields Forever and looking through

the booklet. began collecting records at eight and spenta big part of my childhood as an all-out Elton John fan.

X-Pensive Winos w eigh i in with the red vinyl Live 3.10.22 EP: the three unreleased tracks are topped off by an etched image of Keef on the flip. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets’ live version of the Floyd’s Echoes, meanwhile, comes on | 2-inch and play: s from inside-out for enhanced sound quality; it also boasts a special etched design on Side B.

Visual appeal alone accounts for a slew of RSD sw. ag this year. The Cure’s The Head On The Door, Phil Pratt’s Star Wars Dub and Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 LP make their debuts as picture discs. In the non-black vinyl corner, The Who’s 1975 Tommy OST is reimagined in orange and blue, the US version of the Stones’ Out Of Our Heads comes as a clear | 80g pressing, and Lou Reed’s Metal

Machine Music is reborn in ‘Silver Metallic’

Supergrass’s I Should Coco both get the Zoetrope treatment.

The list goes on. Great reggae comps on vinyl from the Soul Jazz label? Check. B-side LPs? Suede, Madness and Marc Bolan have that covered. Live vintage jazz? There are Miles Davis, Bill Evans and Charles Mingus records you may be interested in. Singles? ¢ How about Tom Waits’ Get Behind The Mule, Taylor Swift’s white vinyl For tnight or Be Reasonable, on 10-inch from pre-Brit- pop cults Boys W Esacland ? We haven’t even mentioned Pete Shelley’s Yesterday Is Not Here: Radio Sessions 1979-1983. But such is the infinite variety of Record Store Day 2025. Better get queuing early on April 12, then.

Tan Harrison

See recordstoreday. co.uk ¢ for more info. S upport your

anda new sleeve. Blur’s The Magic Whip and

local record shop.

Courtesy of Loretta Ayeroff

JEFF BRIDGES’ film career has, of course, taken in such essential movies as The Last Picture Show and The Big Lebowski. But he’s alsoa musician of long standing -see his T Bone Burnett- produced solo LP from 2011, and more - which brings us to one of RSD 2025's most intriguing releases.

His LP Slow Magic'77-’78 collects various vintage Bridges material: songs are variously informal and in-studio, from Beefheart experimental to Beach Boys melodious. “Oh, | was thinking about doing another Quaalude,” goes the representative, loopy Obnoxious. Two songs have vocals by acting legend Burgess Meredith, who narrates multi-part movie-for-the-mind Kong. For decades it existed only as an informal cassette comp.

“Music would keep bubbling up,” says Bridges, surely one of the few men in

The young Dude: Jeff Bridges conjures some Slow Magic for Record Store Day 2025.

the world who smoked hash with the aforementioned Meredith and James Mason. “| built alittle studio of my own and for about 10 or 15 years I’d meet with this group of friends every Wednesday night, and we would jam.”

Those loosely structured jam nights, where spontane- ity was the rule, were recorded by Bridges’ pal Steve Baim. Other tracks were cutat studio sessions with co-producer Ken Lauber. Fast forward 40-odd years and Bridges’ musician pal Keefus Ciancia tipped off reissue specialists Light In The Attic about the tape. “He didn’t even tell me,” laughs Bridges. “They said, ‘Hey, let’sdoan album’ - | said, You're kidding me, man! So, boom, we made analbum ofallthese ancient tunes.”

Bridges, who’s also toured with his band The Abiders (“living my Beatles dream,” he says), concurs witha promotional notion that the

DUDE AWAKENING? IT’S JEFF BRIDGES’ RSD RELEASE!

LP is “a window into the secret musical life of The Dude,” AKA the bowling swamihero of The Big Lebowski, possibly his ultimate creation. “Yeah,|am imagining The Dude,” he says. “The Dude hada guitar hanging around - was he doing something like this? Put Walter [Sobchak, The Dude’s friend, played by John Goodman] on bass!” Bridges, who's dealt

with cancer, Covid and the California wildfires this decade, wonders if more “next-level out-there wild jams” may be released. He also subscribes to the RSD philosophy. “I just recently gotanew turntable and ordered a bunch of my old faves,” he says.”“Van Morrison, Dylan, The Beatles... and Slow Magic. \t was wonderful to get that spinning on the turntable. Hey, analogue is coming back!”

lanHarrison

Get Slow Magic’77-'78 (LITA) on transparent blue vinyl on RSD.

Whent|had just turned 13, my cool, older cousin turned me onto Todd Rundgren’s masterpiece Something/ Anything?. And to this day it’s probably my all-time favourite album.

love how it leads off with a hit (ISaw The Light), how every song takes itto some other place, stylistically and thematically. Sometimes it’s stunningly poppy, sometimes downright proggy, and sometimes it just flat-out rocks. |love how he played all the instruments on the first three sides, then essentially recorded side four live with a killer band with false starts and hilarious banter kept intact.

The other hit on the LP was Hello It’s Me, which! remember hearing on the radio before knew of Todd as an artist. Like many others, | mistook it for a Carole King song. Asong worthy of her name- love King’s songs.| probably sang along with it hundreds of times without thinking what the words were saying.

Many years later, | was kind of on the skids, personally, and getting tossed around by my girlfriend of the time. It was really giving mea mind-fuck.| was at work, early morning, after a particularly bumpy nightand Hello It’s Mecameon the radio. The whole wordplay struck me as a perfect description of where we were at, and | literally had to excuse myself and cry for a bit before|l gathered myself enough to finish my shift cooking rancid chicken wings ata terrible fast food joint. To this day, it’s my all-time favourite song.

Patterson Hood's Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams is outnowonATORecords.

Todd Rundgren

MOJO 19

Blade runner: Alabaster DePlume prepares to get over himself.

for people. When do! do something that’s just good for me, not for some romantic connection with someone whol’m giving responsibility to? What do/wantto do? And the answer] found was, What, apart from having a fight? I’m the soft, lovely, be-gentle person, going around being nice to people. Obviously, wanta scrap!

Five prime DePlume

pearls.

1 Viadimir Vysotsky

Koni Priveredlivye (MELODISC, 1975)

2 Paul Robeson Old Man River (Live at Camegie Hall, 1958) (VANGUARD, 1959)

3 Thelonious Monk Japanese Folk Song (COLUMBIA, 1967)

4 Melt-Banana Teeny Shiny

(A-ZAP, 2000)

5 Julmud Basmala (BILNAES, 2022}

Fighting? Uncool!

I'm being playful with my language. Out of respect for my training partner's skill, |will go at them properly, as ifl wanted to wish them harm. But if | get them intoa position where! could actually hurt them,

I'm going to trust them to tap and they’re going to trust me to stop. We wish each other well, because we

AISED IN Manchester and based in Re the man born Angus Fairbairn

taught himself sax in 2007 and em- barked upon his singular recording odyssey in 2012, making waves in reality on the capital’s improv scene with wide-ey ed spoken word and fluttering horn murmurations. Like his other albums, Alabaster DePlume’s latest A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole takes the listener into meditational, emancipatory non-places where avant-jazz and Zen one-ness converge. Acosmic, warm presence, he’s also busy in the world, with trips to the dentist and the US embassy to attend to. But the man whose latest PR release calls a “poet philosopher of life and death” still has time to ask your interviewer, “how is your heart?”

20 MOJO

My heart’s not bad, thanks. How is yours?

It’s ridiculous. Relentless. Why would it bother being relentless? | don’t have an answer for that. We must shout, let us contribute hope

to the situation we face. It isa playful, foolish thing tolive... itis absurd. So why is my heart relentless? | don’t know. Being alive is hard. Whoever you are, reading this, | love that you bother tolive. It’s hard.

People might be quite surprised by yourinterest

in jiu-jitsu.

Oh my god.| love it.I started doing it three years ago.| had known fora long time that! had been looking for my value in another person, and eventually | asked myself, Well, how dol spend my time? spend all my time working.| love my work, my work is good

like training together. And thereisa depth of respect in the way that we’re gonna learn to fall. Learning to fallisas profounda thing asit sounds. Itis very good forme to go and bea bit shit at something and be thrown, and to get over myself. | have found where my limitations are.

Could you draw parallels between that kind of improvisational trust and making music?

Yeah, maybe there’s an aspect of that.In jiu-jitsu, as soonas youthink, | want to do this technique to this person, then you have lost, really. It’s about responding emotionally, truly being in the momentand enjoying it, and not trying to doit, andit’s the same thing with making the tunes. You let goand you get out of the way of the song. The song wants to come through. Let us allow it to happen. lrespond to you honestly. That means | cannot know whatis going to happen. Ican‘task you for anything, because I’m going to respond truly to what | discover, whol discover you to be.

Will Al ever get near the infinite variety of humankind?

What, in terms of, like, seeing funny videos? Either I've got loads of views on it, or,| don’t know, not yet. My friend Jordan Copeland at Tenentnet, who has made all my best music videos, made a distinction. We will find it useful in generative aspects, butit doesn’t know howto edit, and that will be our role. We, as humans, will be able to focus on curation without having to come up with the generative initial thing.

Tell us something you've never told an interviewer before.

Ican’t stand eggs.|’m a vegetarian, but eggs? What the fuck? Oh my god, keep that away from me. It’s the substance and the smell and the fact, the history, where it hascome from... | feel like everyoneisinon some sort of big joke where they’re pretending that they actually enjoy eggs, but! don’t know howyou doit.

As told tolan Harrison

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Courtesy of Taschen (4), Jim Marshall, Jerry Abramowitz, Stephen Paley

N DECEMBER 31, 1947, one of

music’s all-time great labels was

born in New York. Before the found- ers’ signatures sealed the deal, the original name Horizon Records was crossed out in favour of Atlantic Records. In charge were Turkish diplomat’s son Ahmet Ertegun and

dental student Herb Abramson. Using money

borrowed from Ertegun’s dentist, the two music nuts were up and running.

Soon they *d be joined by pr oducers Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd, and over the decades that followed the label released prime jazz, R&B and, after signing a deal with Stax in Memphis, soul. Amove into rock and popin the late 60s, meanwhile, set the scene for success as part of the Warner Records group. Along the w ay, still-vital LPs by Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, John Coltrane and CSNY landed in the catalogue.

These momentous years are chronicled in Taschen’s handsome new visual history,

75 Years Of Atlantic Records, the compiling of which evidently took alittle longer than its creators anticipated. It features shoots drawn

22 MOJO

from the label’s archives and the files of photographers including Jim Marshall, Annie Leibovitz, Anton Corbijn, Lee Friedlander and more. The accompanying images show three Atlantic sign- ings in their pomp: Disco Inferno hitmakers The Trammps, New Orleans gris-gris man Dr. John and Aretha Franklin, who’s pictured in Atlantic Studios in New York in 1970 with an array of celebrated collaborators.

The book’s 461 pages contain much else to feast the eyes. Black and white shots of artists including LaVern Baker, Ray Charles and The Coasters represent the 40s and’50s. Things continued to shift in the next dec ade: with elder Ertegun brother Nesuhi on the team, At- lantic’s jazz side is illustrated in colour by the MJQ, Art Blakey and Charles Mingus, while the decade’s explosion of soul is depicted in portraits of Otis Redding, Percy Sledge and Sam & Dave. One of several illumi- nating essays, Barney Hoskyns’ Pop Goes Atlantic alludes to the in-house chemistry that pro- moted such sustained cre eativity. “We had this incredible roster of repeating singers, and almost ” Wexler is quoted. “We believed in singers and not just interpreters.”

In the rock era the hits kept coming, as Sonny & Cher, Dusty Spr ingfield and the Bee Gees

made room for Cream, the

no one-hit wonders,

Stones, Yes, and AC/DC, as well as Chic and (in the US at least) Roxy Music. The label’s still trading. The ethos that got them so far, it seems, is captur ed in Dav ‘id Ritz’s essay The Soul Of Atlantic when he quotes Ahmet Ertegun: “We founded this company on music we sincerely loved. And we loved the music because we could feel its sincerity.”

Tan Harrison

75 Years Of Atlantic Records is published by Taschen

this month.

Voodoo guru: Dr. John in the right place, 1973; (opposite, from top) The Trammps light the disco inferno in an outtake

from 1976's Where The Happy People Go LP shoot; Atlantic power trio (from left) Jerry Wexler, Ahmet Ertegun and Miriam Abramson, 1951; Atlantic Studios control room, New York, mid-session for Aretha Franklin’s This Girl’s In Love With You, 1969 (from left) Duane Allman, Franklin, Wexler, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd.

———_]

Crock’n’roll stars: Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band (back row, from left) Richard Greene, Kweskin, Bill Keith, (front row) Fritz Richmond, Maria Muldaur, Geoff Muldaur, 1967.

contract.

KWESKIN KOLLECTED

Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band Greatest Hits! (VANGUARD, 1970) ial Anexcellent starter kit. Jug ©, anthems suchas 0 Jug Band Music = aremixed with Chuck Berry’s Memphis and Hawaiian hokum Ukulele Lady.

Jim Kweskin eee

(TORYSOUND, 2024)

ma Duets with

: Wilson, Meredith Axelrod and Juli Crockett. Instrumentalists include steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar, fiddler Suzy Thompson and Annie Raines on harmonica.

Jim Kweskin & The Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue —

JUG BAND VET AND

FINGERPICKING PRO KEEPS

ON BLOWING Dome thin

(JALOPY, 2025)

" - , ® Apot iof RIGINALLY POPULAR in the early Jug Band. Based out of Boston ; i, ne 20th century, jug bands like the from 1963 through 1968, fy one ofits creators Dixieland Jug Blowers and Cannon’s Kweskin and company were pie tmestier # working with

killer musicians.

Jug Stomper Ss play: ved a combination of ragtime Everything from Western Swing

and blues centred around blowing into a jug to create a sputtering bass patter n. “Thej jug resonates the sound,” explains Jim Kweskin to MOJO. “It’s like farting with your mouth.” Jug bands became popular again in the early 1960s amidst the folk revival and ev entually led to rock bands including The Lovin’ Spoonful and Grateful Dead. They were a relative of skiffle — in v ogue in the UKat the same time and the roots of The Beatles.

top- shelf musicians with a sense of humour and fun.

He Ss also namechecked in Great American Songbook toa

Dylan biopic A Complete reefer anthem.

Unknown. Kweskin has always had a deep affection for older music that stems from childhood. Asa kid, he discovered his father’s 78 rpm records by Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke, Cab Calloway, Leadbelly and Bessie Smith.

“T fell in love with that music

But no str aight- ahead ’60s j jug band was as popular and influential as the Jim Kweskin

while my friends were listening to the pop music of the day,” he recalls. “When Iwas a teenager I discovered folk music. Ev entually I put folk and j jazz together which

f ie In a field of hisOwn: Jim Kweskin today == ~ “| don’t cover'songs,

l uncover them.”

is essentially Ww! hat jug band music is: early jazz played on folk instruments.”

He learned how to

24 MOJO

that didn’t exist.”

fingerpick fleet and flashy guitar by listening to Pete Seeger and later Mississippi John Hurt, and began gigging at folk clubs. “In early 1963 Iwas playing at the Club 47 in Cambridge, which was the home base for folk music in Boston. I was billed as just Jim Kweskin, but it was never just me alone. It was alw. ays WI ith

a bunch of local musicians: a fiddle player, a harmonica player, banjo, mandolin. My gigs were basically jam sessions.” The president

of Ve ang d Records offered him a record “Thad a record contract for a band

Within months the newly-formed Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band recorded their first album.

Among the musicians to emerge from the Kweskin Jug Band were Geoff Muldaur, Bill Keith, Richard Greene, jug blower Fritz Richmond and others, including singer/fiddler Maria D’Amato, who married Muldaur and became popular as Maria Muldaur. By 1968 Kweskin was immersed in both his construction business and harmonica player Mel Lyman’s controversial community, and gigged and recorded at a slower pace. When he retired around 2016, he began playing music more often, something he still pursues as he celebrates his 85th birthday this year. His love of older music continues unabated. “I don’t cover songs,” he notes. “I uncover them.”

Michael Simmons

Jim Kweskin & The Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue’s Doing

Things Right is out on April 25 on Jalopy Records.

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Facing the strange: Emma-Jean Thackray finds levity in the groove.

Forfansof: Thundercat, Erykah Badu, Robert Glasper

Comedian/ musician Reggie Watts guests on Black Hole: “I knew he'd bringthe P-Funksilliness.” MC/drummer/ composer Kassa Overall, meanwhile, “brought poetry to | It’s Okay—who else

couldunderstand

: AZZ-FUNK MAVERICK =e science = findnuggets of making it became “my therapy,

humourinit?” my reason to wake up”. She spent AttheRoyalWelsh | year alone in the studio, writ- College Of MusicAnd 2 . 4 ; ing and recording, “not talking to

Drama, Thackray : 7 WEIRDS OUT! Bees e underjazzlegend

on the follow-up to Yellow, her sprawling,

cosmic jazz-funk debut album, Emma-Jean Thackray was blindsided by the sudden death of her partner, electronica composer Mat- thew Gordon. “I just felt so lost,” she remem- bers, calling from the cramped studio within her south London flat. “I didn’t do anything other than stare at the wall like a blob for six months. | didn’t know who | was any more. But eventually, | realised my only way back to myself would be through music.”

Music had been Thackray’s North Star since she began playing cornet, aged eight. Soon she was performing in Yorkshire colliery brass bands, becoming an evangelical jazzbo after being assigned the solo trumpet piece Concierto De Aranjuez. “l’d downloaded Miles Davis's version of the song, and it blew my mind,” she grins. “He wasn’t playing what was on my sheet music, but threading all the other musicians together with his soloing.

It was incredible.” But when she'd play this music to her friends, the magic didn’t trans- late. “They'd be bored. They were normal,

| N EARLY 2023, shortly after beginning work

26 MOJO

day. The songs became like a grief

SSE te diary. But there’s alot of hope and

and | was always alittle weirdo,” she wasbatshitcrazy, in

shrugs. “I'd grown up not realising | the best way. was humour in there. And even ifthe was neurodiverse, always being oth- taking alot of drugs words are bleak at points, there’s ered. But as a teenager, | got defiant: atthetime, and levity in the groove.” I'm going to do my own thing, get SF Ee Indeed, if Weirdo is sometimes really into this music | love, and not wereallimprovising, disconcertingly stark, the music is expect anyone else to come with me and |turnedmy often uplifting, touching on’80s ee Sak a pall tay soul,'70s funk and more. “I’m a

This energy propelled her to the aetna child of the club,” she says. “I love Royal Welsh College Of Music And Everyone waslike, bebop, | love beautiful, challenging Drama, and then London. “I ran ‘Whatis she doing?” music. But! also love a big tune.” jazz orchestras, and wrote for large Pebeulete ies Weirdo closes with the

di standingovation.He | acstatic Thank YouFor The Da

ensembles. Leading brass bands, justloved that Itook , ; y I'd grown used to harnessing lots arisk.” spe bum ee seats my of people and marshalling these ife fell apart. But it belonged at the big sounds. | wanted to be the next Black Hole end ofthe record, because it felt like Carla Bley.” She cut an eclectic series Wanna Die climbing out of the hole. Weirdo is of EPs, and followed them with Yel- Thank You For about this painful grief, but it’s also low, which was Thackray “showing Wee) about survival and resilience. And everything | can do: spiritual jazz; ar- making it saved my life —I’m not sure rangements for brass and strings; funk songs I'd still be here without this record tofocuson, where I’m singing about the universe.” and to help me get backin touch a pone >

Burned out from heavy touring, Thackray tevie Chicl already sensed her second album, Weirdo, Emma-Jean Thackray’s Weirdo is released April 25 would be “more intimate, more introspec- on Brownswood Recordings/Parlophone.

Alex Waespii, Pierre Toussaint

ACHTUNG! THE FALL’S OLD GUARD REASSEMBLE AS HOUSE OF ALL

APTAIN BEEFHEART, Prince and lan Dury may have left the planet, but

that didn’t stop The Magic Band, The Revolution and The Blockheads from

playing the old favourites live. This is not the objective of House Of All, a group comprised

of ex-members of The Fall. It’s masterminded

by guitarist Martin Bramah, who co-founded the class-of-one Manchester legends with Mark E Smith in 1976 and departed after 1979 debut Live At The Witch Trials to form the Blue Orchids.

“Mark was the constant presence and the genius,” says

“Mark was a great editor and we all knew what was expected of us, so it was a bit like he was inthe other room,” muses Bramah, adding, “It was kind of my baby as well. Before we even started the band, taking LSD together, listening to Beefheart, Can and The Velvet Underground... a profound experience, especially as a teenager. There wasakind of Vulcan mind meld between the two of us.”

After last year’s Continuum, new album

House OF All Souls also features

original wild man drummer “The Fall

Karl Burns, who served several

Bramah of his old teenage pal WwW i r tours of Fall duty until 1998, who died in 2018. “But The Fall as b g8e after which he’s kept was bigger than Mark. We've than Mark E resolutely out of sight. After

all got something of that spirit Smith ”

in us.| wanted to get some members together and create something that was a con- tinuation of The Fall’s working

model - obviously with a respectful distance

after Mark's passing.” And so, for three days in a Manchester studio in June 2022, Bramah was joined by

Fall veterans of heavy pedigree: bassist Steve

Hanley and his drumming brother Paul, drummer Simon Wolstencroft and final Fall guitarist Pete Greenaway. They convened with no preconceived ideas. “On that first morning | was thinking, What the fuck have | done?” Bramah says. “It was, turn up, press record and play, and as soon as we listened back, we just knew it was gonna work.”

So far three albums have been created via

in-the-moment spontaneity, with Bramah’s spoken-sung supernatural speculations, deep stratum bass, and garage guitars strik-

ing Fall mysterio-discord notes without being

merely imitative. Smith, meanwhile, makes a semi-cameo in Harlequin Duke from 2023's

self-titled debut, which declares, “Maybe our

Bingo Master has returned!”

br

_ The rise and Fall of...: House Of All (from left) Steve Hanley, Pete Greenaway, Simon Wolstencroft, Martin Bramah, Phil

Lewis, Karl Burns and Paul Hanley.

Bramah referred to Burns as a“hermit” in The Irish Times (“he sent me a message saying, ‘less of the fucking hermit, Bramah!’”), the elusive Burns duly signed up.

“We got straight into the session,” Burns tells MOJO. “The years just fell away — back with the old gang! Absolutely, it is a continu- um. It’s what attracted me to it, carrying on The Fall mission. Let’s just say it’s much more of a democracy without Mark!”

The late MES was known to strongly disap- prove of his ex-wife Brix’s old Fall crew The Ex- tricated. But what would

he have made of House Of FACT SHEET All? “I think he would have © Forfans of:

approved,” says Bramah. The Fall, Blue cae Orchids, Pere Ubu He'd have been glad to © House OFAll see that we're cracking have played 1984 on and doing something Fall fave The Lay Of : The Land “to annoy creative. He was a bloody- meaner minded person, but he one-offrebooting loved us all.” of 1990's Telephone

lan Harrison ThingasAl Thing, but there arenoplansto

House OFAI/ Souls isout now incorporate any more

on Tiny Global Productions. Fall material into theirlive set. “We're

ied | | usingtherulesand

moving forward,” says Bramah. @ Thename, says Bramah, came from browsing Latin "| etymologyand || finding the funerary inscription Domus j Omnium: “Ithinkit SA) was Domus Omnium 7 Mortuorum—‘House OfAll The Dead’. Ithought, Take the first bit, good name. |was going togo withthe Latin, then! thought, Bit pretentious. It was when saw House OfAll written down in English realised ‘The Fall’ wasin there. Itwasahappy accident.”

KEY TRACKS 3 @ Harlequin Duke @ Gaudy Pop Scramble

| @ The Devil’sHouse

'

i}

Tune in! For protest funk, dream reformations and rock noise.

MARK PRITCHARD AND THOM YORKE THIS CONVERSATION IS MISSING YOUR VOICE From collaborative LP Tall Tales, Yorke falset- tos ambivalence over oil-slick electronics, C’mon Everybody rhythms and fading tape. Find it: streaming services

MICHAEL SHANNON AND R.E.M. PRETTY PERSUASION Actor Shannon’s Fables Of The Reconstruction Tour hit Athens, and all four members of R.E.M. got up on-stage and joined in. “Oh my fucking god!” concluded Shannon. Find it: YouTube

PAUL Mc€ARTNEY STEP INSIDE LOVE Macca’s original 1967 voice-and-guitar demo, with bossa nova shimmy, melodic sophistication and no Cilla Black. Find it: YouTube

GALACTIC AND IRMA THOMAS LADY LIBERTY Social protest from the Crescent City, as lively funk foregrounds Irma setting America to rights: “Lady Liberty took a fall.” Find it: YouTube

BON IVER

EVERYTHING IS PEACEFUL LOVE From new album, Sable, Fable, a soft-’80s funk-pop bath of rustic soul and vulnerability. Lovely pedal steel kiss-off. Find it: YouTube

PERFUME GENIUS FT. ALDOUS HARDING NO FRONT TEETH Wood-grained folk with vocals by Harding unexpectedly rocks out hard. From new album Glory. Find it: YouTube

GAVIN FRIDAY VOYAGE, VOYAGE

Goth disco from the Virgin Prunes’ tiber- poseur, as he covers Desireless’s 1989 Eurohit. Find it: streaming services

SEA FEVER

SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THIS WAY Section 25/New Order/Johnny Marr collaborators channel rainy sequencer action and danceable melancholy. Find it: streaming services

ic -Tkme WHAT 1,000 ARTISTS THIS Wilt DIST ANiat we want? Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, The Clash and more record WANT? silent studios in protest at big tech’s Al vampirism. Titles spell ‘The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit Al Companies.’ Find it: streaming services

| THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE MOONBASE BRITANNICA

From an album of themes for imaginary

1970s TV, an ABBA-flecked disco-in-space

tune for zero-g grooving.

Find it: Starburst LP, Bandcamp

MOJO 27

Roger Kisby, Pamela Springsteen

THE MOJO [INTERVIEW

One of the Last Great Record Men, the ‘Artist’s A&R’ in the Golden Age of Warner

Brothers and beyond, counsellor to Prince, Van, Randy, Elliott Smith and more, shares his wisdom. “Producing is hard,” says

Lenny Waronker.

INTERVIEW BY BOB MEHR °* PORTRAIT BY ROGER KISBY

AT IN THE KITCHEN OF HIS WEST LOS Angeles home on an early winter’s day, absorbing the first of many questions, Lenny Waronker

closes his eyes and bows his head in a state of

deep concentration.

Waronker — one of the business’s most storied

producers, A&Rs and label execs, and among the most loved by

musicians — ascribes this prayerlike posture to a childhood spent on

Hollywood studio soundstages, witnessing classic film scores being

recorded. His father, Si Waronker, was a violinist who'd later help

corral orchestral musicians at 20th Century Fox for Oscar-winning composer/conductor Alfred Newman.

“My father wasn’t a strict man, except in that environment,” recalls Waronker. “When the orchestra were ready to record, a bell would ring. He would say to me, ‘Don’t move.’ He might’ve said ‘Don’t breathe’ as well. It’s the way I’ve listened to music, or anything, ever since.”

the launch of Liberty Records. Initially focused on orchestral and film music, the label moved into the pop market with hits by Jul- ie London and The Chipmunks, and entered the fledgling field of rock’n’roll with Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino and Jan & Dean. Besotted by the music business, the young Waronker served a long apprenticeship at Liberty before moving to Warner Brothers in 1965. Over the next three decades, Waronker and label head Mo Ostin would build one of the most successful and respected record companies in the world — a rare haven for art and artists in a bottom-line-obsessed industry. In the early ’90s, corporate machinations pushed the pair out of the paradise they’d created, and Waronker and Ostin went on to found DreamWorks Records. These days, Waronker is largely retired and somewhat at a loose end. “One morning you wake up and realise, I don’t have to do shit any more,” he says, chuckling. “I’m still trying to come to terms

The 83-year-old Waronker delivers his words in soit, measured tones as he recounts a life devoted to helping artists realise their crea- tive potential. The first great discovery came at just 10 years of age, when he recognised the unique gifts of his best friend, Alfred Newman’s nephew Randy, whom he would later sign and produce.

When Waronker was a teenager, his fa- ther saw the studio system collapsing and put up the family’s furniture as collateral to fund

with that.” WE’RE NOT WORTHY

Randy Newman on his debt to Lenny Waronker.

“| used to joke that | didn’t have a spine and Lenny was my spine. But he did believe in me before | believed in myself. | always liked pop music, but if it wasn’t for him, | might have gone right into the movies. We're different, but it’s a complementary relationship. He was important for me and for a lot of other artists too.”

As he reflects on his 70 years of music — as a key facilitator for Brian Wilson and Elliott Smith, The Everly Brothers and Prince — the modest Waronker downplays his contribu- tions. But more than merely bumping into geniuses, Waronker actively sought them out, bringing his deft touch to the careers of cult stars and superstars alike.

“This is a fun way to go back and remember and be part of the stuff you’ve done,” he says, recounting the details from some distant

recording session. “When you’ve been >

MOJO 29

Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library, Courtesy Peter Ames Carlin (2), courtesy of Hachette Book Group, Shutterstock, Nonesuch Records, Getty, Michael Grecco/mgpstockphotos.com, Michael Grecco Productions, Inc

30 MOJO

< doing it for as long as I have, you start to forget.”

Beyond the music you heard hanging out with your father, how much of an influence was it being exposed to the old Hollywood studio system?

The whole concept of the studio system really affected me. The notion that it was like a university or something. Later, at Warner Brothers, Mo [Ostin] and | were both very interested in the studio system and the guys who ran it, so we were always reading biographies about Irving Thalberg, Louis B Mayer, David Selznick. They were studied, that whole scene was studied — what to do, what not to do. In the mid ‘60s, when | first got to Warners, some of those ideas were still usable. In my mind, | wanted to put together some combination of 20th Century Fox and Motown.

What was the first music that really affected you?

Asa little boy, my mom took me to see An American In Paris — the theme to the movie was incredible. And you've got the visual of Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron dancing in this blue, almost psychedelic [backdrop]. | was nine or 10 years old, so sex wasn’t like a big thing yet, but it was a little question mark. And when | heard that tune, | said, | think | know what sex is like. Because it got to me that way.

You played piano as a kid but gave it up early on. | imagine it was hard to feel competent when your best friend happens to be Randy Newman.

Randy and | had the usual relationship that kids have - we played baseball and football and basketball and all that. But the other half of it was music. We would turn each other onto stuff. He's a couple years younger, but he was way ahead of me. Once he really started to focus, he was so far ahead. I’m still taken by his talent - and my own ability to recognise it at sucha

young age, and just get the hell out of the way.

One time, each of us was supposed to write a song for something. Maybe his dad wanted us to do it. Anyway, | wrote some stupid poem-like thing, which is all | was capable of. And Randy worked on this piece of music, this instrumental. And when he finally played it, | just knew he was gifted. Because the chord changes, the melody, it didn’t feel like it was coming from a kid. He was only seven or eight at the time.

Your father started Liberty Records inthe mid-’50s. For a kid it must’ve been amazing hanging out with that first generation of rockers like Eddie Cochran.

My father loved Eddie Cochran, thought he was a great musician. Eddie was a really good-look- ing guy anda glass half-full type, just a lot of energy, and a sweetheart. | was 16 or 17, and my father had a meeting with him. I'm sitting in on this fairly serious meeting with Eddie and his producer/manager Jerry Capehart. Eddie came in to play his new record. I'm in the corner, but close enough to hear. The record starts and it is perfect. | mean, everything happened in this little record, it was amazing. Because | had hung out at the record company for a while, I’d picked up some music business jargon. When the record finished, | couldn’t control myself and | blurted out, That's un-fucking-believable! Eddie looked at me and said, “I want that kid in all my meetings.” (Laughs) The record he played was Summertime Blues. Can you imagine? Well, something like that will get you hooked on the music business.

You went to college, but at the same time you were learning the ropes at Liberty - working as a gopher for producer Snuff Garrett, doing radio promotion, and eventually moving to the label’s publishing arm Metric Music, where you first started producing.

In those days you had maybe 50 or 60 bucks to

make a [songwriting] demo. You could only pay the musicians teeny amounts, but there were

A LIFE IN PICTURES

Len through a lens: Waronker down the days.

Teen spirit: Lenny Waronker in his Senior Year, University High School, West Los Angeles, 1959.

Football fans: Lenny (left) with best friend Randy Newman, circa 1950.

Warner brothers:

Waronker (far left) with his Warner A&R team (from left) Andy Wickham, Ted Templeman, Russ Titel man and John Cale.

Going for a song:

Waronker (left) with “little genius” Van Dyke Parks, Sunset Sound, Hollywood, November 1966.

In the producer's

chair: Waronker in the early ‘70s - “If I’m in the studio, the first thing | ask is, What's the song look like?”

Captains of

industry: Waronker (centre) with record executive Benny Medina (left) and producer Quincy Jones.

Going back to their roots: Newman and Waronker mull over 1970 album, 12 Songs. Lenny —“[Even as a kid], | just knew he was gifted.” For the record: Waronker in 1994 - “I don’t need the whole world to know [my achievements]. Besides, if anyone’s really interested, it’s all there in the music and the records we made.”

young guys around who wanted in, who were really good. People like Leon Russell and Dr John were making demos. There was plenty of talent to do the work cheap. You couldn't get the big-name session guys and after a while you didn't really want them. So | made a lot of demos and learned how to multi-track, learned how to work with musicians.

After your move to Warners you had hits for the Mojo Men [Sit Down, | Think | Love You] and Harper’s Bizarre [The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)]. But quickly you gravitated towards more esoteric acts, signing your old pal Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks - what was the attraction there?

| was always interested in working with somebody unique and interesting. Maybe not obviously commercial, but that if they ever got played on the radio, people might jump on it. It was actually Mo who brought up Randy to me. Randy had been a songwriter, but it was clear he needed to be an artist. He already had

a big reputation in town with musicians anda handful of producers. Mo came to me and said, “Do you know about this guy Randy Newman?” (Laughs) | said, Yeah, he’s my best friend and I’ve hesitated to say anything to you because he is my best friend. But we went after him and ultimately got him.

When | was at Metric, there was a songwriter | was working with, Rita Martinson, and she said, “| want to play you this song by Van Dyke Parks,” and she played me High Coin. And | said to her, Rita, your guy didn’t write that. That’s an old turn of the century number or something. And she really had to convince me. Later, | got a hold of Van Dyke and we had a meeting. He came walking in and was exactly what | had expected - this little genius, somebody who had his own style and was very articulate. Too articulate!

He played me six or seven things, that ended up basically being [Parks’ 1967 debut] Song Cycle. His music was coming from another world. | decided I’m going to sign this guy on

the spot. I’m sure we negotiated, but that’s when | approached him about it — | said, | think I love you.

In the early days at Warners, you tried

to sign the Buffalo Springfield. Do you think if they’d signed with you instead

of Atlantic, their story would have turned out differently?

At the time | was just a little A&R guy, so it wasn’t likely to happen. | mean, Neil Young was the only one that | was able to have any kind of talking relationship with when | was going backstage to see the band. Richie

Furay, he was a very nice guy, but he wasn’t around. Stephen Stills was dismissive. Dewey Martin was fucked

up. And there was Neil. For whatever reason, we became friendly. He was always the guy | would go to. Many

years later, after he’d had a tremen-

dous success at Warner/Reprise, Neil

told me, “If the Springfield had gone

with you, | think the band would still

be alive.” That was the greatest compliment | ever got.

In 1968 you produced The Everly Brothers’ conceptual country-rock album Roots. How tough were they to deal with?

That was a last-ditch effort because they hadn't had much success in a while. They were at a difficult place with each other too. You could sense the tension. They hadn't written anything — Phil was into Italian love songs. And Don, he was the scary one because he could be explosive. When we were almost finished they said to me, “This is the worst thing we've ever done!" (Laughs) They were going on tour fora little while and I told them, Give me a chance to put it together, and then we'll see what we've got. It didn’t end up being a big seller, but it’s considered an important record now - and one of the things I’m most proud of.

Wasn't it on the Everly Brothers project that you connected with Ry Cooder?

Yeah, | got a call from Jack Nitzsche who said, “I've been working with this guy you have to meet, he’s an unbelievable guitar player and we have this idea for a song for the Everlys.” I'd heard about Ry Cooder, just the name made me think he was in his thirties or forties. Jack comes in with Ry and he was a kid, 19 or 20. Ry pulled out his guitar and a bottleneck. | didn’t even know what a bottleneck was. When | heard him play,

| thought, Oh, my God, I’ve heard that sound before. | always thought it was a harmonica or

“Tm still taken by Randy’s talent — and

my own ability to

recognise it at such

a young age.”

something. Anyway, we never ended up doing the song with the Everlys, but that was the start of things with Ry, who we also signed.

You made a lot of records with Randy, Ry, and Van Dyke before any of them had hits. You must’ve met with some resistance within the company. | know there’s the famous story of you playing Song Cycle for [Warners president] Joe Smith and him saying, “Where's the song?”

And he wasn't trying to be funny either! Van Dyke will quote that forever happily. (Laughs) | don’t know which project it was... it might have been a Randy record or a Ry record or one of the singles that Van Dyke and | kept doing, but |

realised at a certain point that these things are going to bea tough sell. It’s like you're climbing a mountain and it’s probably vertical. | knew what we were up against. But | really believed

it was the right thing to do.

That kind of belief became part of Warner Brothers’ reputation as a label that nurtured and stuck with artists. | suppose that paid off with a group like Fleetwood Mac?

Well, we got lucky there. They’d started with Peter Green and then had a period with Bob Welch. And they'd had a small hit, but they were a kind of mid-level act - mid-level, but good. Though certainly not some- body you’d ever bank on selling 40 million records. But they were making some money for the company, so it seemed stupid to let them go. Not that we were smart enough to know anything about what Lindsey [Buckingham] and Stevie [Nicks] were about to bring to the table. That's all down to Mick [Fleetwood]. But yeah, that was an instance where it certainly paid off. It’s still paying off for Warners.

Along with Russ Titelman, you made some really evocative records in the '70s, particularly Newman’s Sail Away and Good Old Boys. Your cinematic rooting is interesting because your work always had that quality - you can almost see the music as muchas hear it.

In sessions, whenever we would talk about an approach it was always, “What does this track look like?” Even today, if I’m in the studio, the first thing | ask is, What’s the song look like?

Did that philosophy develop into the Warners house style, the so-called ‘Burbank Sound’?

To this day, when people mention the

“There was alwaysa conscious effort to shift gears...”: Lenny Waronker at home in Los Angeles, December 2, 2024.

“Neil Young told me, ‘If the Springfield had gone

isby

Roger Ki

with you, I think the band would still be alive.

—< ‘Burbank Sound’, | don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. It’s funny, in [the late ’80s] we signed Elvis Costello after he left Columbia. | don’t know if you know Elvis — he talks a lot, but what comes out of his mouth is fascinating. We had a dinner and he was talking about how he loved the idea of being on Warners. He was very well-versed in the history of the company and he said he wanted to make a “Burbank Sound” record. And | had to tell him, Elvis, | really don’t know what that means. (Laughs)

Maybe it’s that we didn’t have a single identifiable sound. Russ and | used to talk about it, because he had worked with Phil Spector. Early on, | reached the conclusion that as great as Phil was, Leiber and Stoller were better. One of the reasons was they didn’t have a sound, they were just trying different things. If there is a ‘Burbank Sound’, maybe it’s just about changing environments within a record, and not staying the same. There was always a conscious effort to shift gears, sometimes in a

32 MOJO

dramatic way, sometimes in a subtle way.

You were made head of Warners’ A&R department in the early ‘70s. You went on to assemble what’s considered the greatest A&R team ever - bringing in musicians

and producers like Titelman, Nitzsche, John Cale, Ted Templeman, Gary Katz, Tommy LiPuma...

| figured if you have A&R people who are creative, who can go in and make records, then good things are going to happen. Our A&R meetings were wonderful, because we didn’t talk about shit, we just shared our war stories, and we all had them. | remember one meeting in particular, Ted Templeman was a half hour late. Ted was always soft-spoken, but this was a gruff Ted, who'd clearly been up all night, working on this record with Mike McDonald. Ted said, “This song’s got a weird shape and | don’t know what to do any more. Will you guys listen to it and see if there’s anything to it?” It was

999

The Doobie Brothers’ What A Fool Believes — which ended up being a Number 1 hit anda [Grammy] Song and Record Of The Year. When the track finished, the whole room got up and applauded. And you could just see Ted collapse in relief. It was unbelievable. But without that meeting, who knows? That was the atmosphere we tried to foster.

Even though you continued to produce hits - for Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor and Rickie Lee Jones, among others - by the end of '70s you moved away from the studio. Why?

Producing is hard. For me, the up moments didn’t happen enough, and the down moments happened too much. And then there was the boredom - often, you were sitting there just waiting for something to click. | don’t know if we had clocks in the studio, but | remember thinking | was always looking at the clock. That was the

“ he +>

Wy

beginning of the end for me as a producer.

In 1982, Mo Ostin made you President of Warner Brothers at a particularly difficult time. The industry was in a massive slump, and you had to jettison several longtime artists including Van Morrison and Bonnie Raitt. Was that a tough transition?

| hada very difficult time. Literally the first A&R meeting that I’m in as President, we had to drop several artists. Our department hated doing that, because you were admitting that you made a mistake. In my case, | didn’t like to drop them because they were friends and | didn’t have the heart. | was feeble.

But us ‘dropping’ Van Morrison was bullshit — he basically had an offer from someone else: Polygram, | think. It was a big offer, and there was no way we were going to match it fora couple of reasons. Not because we didn’t believe in him - we knew how good he was. So we said, we'll give him his freedom, let him go get a better deal.

Of the massive talents that came through Warner Brothers, Prince would presumably be in the top tier?

The first thing | heard from Prince was a cassette

of eight or nine songs which eventually made up most of his debut album. | couldn't believe it, because in those days, the only one that could really pull that off - meaning playing everything — was Stevie Wonder. And in comes this kid, and he’s done it.

| remember we took him in the studio just to see what he was doing. | was uptight about it because | didn’t want him to think he was auditioning. Because he really wasn't. So we're in the studio and he puts down drums, then an acoustic guitar, and whatever else. Once it started to come together, it was like, “Enough, you don’t need to do this. | don’t want to waste your time.” We were so taken by his talent.

And the first indication that something was up with him was his response, which was, “No, I’ve got to finish. I’ve got to get the bass part on.” He was adamant about it.

Prince was sitting on the floor getting ready to do the bass overdub and there was a little break and | wanted to talk to the engineer, so | had to walk across this cramped little studio floor. | figured if | have to step over or around Prince, | better have something to say. | don’t remember what | said, probably, This sounds amazing. But he looked at me and he said, “Don't make me black.” Meaning, don’t market me that way. Not that we would have. But he was really saying, I’m competing against Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, the

Three key Waronker productions — by his nibs.

Van Dyke Parks Song Cycle

(WARNER BROS, 1967)

“Van Dyke was incredibly ambitious musically, and | learned a lot from him. My name is on that record as producer, but spending those eight months working on it was mostly me staying out of the way - and discovering the importance of that when you're dealing with somebody as talented as Van Dyke. Regardless of where it ended up commercially, it’s still a record | really cherish.”

Fe

~

Rickie L Rickie Lee Jones

(WARNER BROS, 1979)

RICKIELEE JONES “When we made the first record with Rickie, she was coming out of nowhere, but clearly gifted, really somebody who had it all. She could be incredibly demanding and sometimes over the top, but she was dealing with all these male musicians in the studio. If she had something to say, she'd say it because she had a real sound in mind. Those are the kinds of artists you want to work with.”

BOHO A GO|

Randy Newman Dark Matter

(NONESUCH, 2017) * “My friendship with Randy is RAN. one thing, but as an artist, the NEWMAN thing I've always admired is his DARK consistency, and the fact that he’s still going. In many ways, MATTER Dark Matter is one of his best. Randy’s very serious about what he does. He’s probably been conflicted at times just because he knows that his inclinations are difficult for the masses to accept. But he never sells out. He just can't. It’s not in him.”

biggest people all across the board. That encapsulated his ambition and his vision, even as an 18- or 19-year-old. His ambition was beyond anything.

Speaking of mercurial geniuses, you were involved in Brian Wilson’s 1988 comeback album. Was that a tricky record to make given he was still in the clutches of his psychiatrist Eugene Landy?

| hate to say this, but Landy was the worst person | ever met. Landy came in with the idea that everybody thought he was a charlatan — which was true and worse. That was the only time | felt like a politician, because | showed him an enormous amount of respect just to get him out of the way. It was also hard because of Landy’s so-called “surf Nazis”, these young blond-haired tough guys, who were watching Brian all the time.

| did co-produce [the track] Rio Grande on that album. That’s what | thought Brian should be doing, these little mini symphonies in the vein of Smile. He was going in the right direction, but it was the height of all the craziness, so it was sort of a missed opportunity.

In the mid-’90s, you and Mo Ostin left Warner Brothers to launch DreamWorks Records. Of all the artists you signed did Elliott Smith seem like the one destined for greatness?

It was absolutely clear that he was special. He was someone who was always pushing himself. The first meeting | had with him, he was very shy, and he had an orchestration book with him. Because of my experience with Randy and Van Dyke, I think he knew I'd understand, so he said, “| want to orchestrate my next record.” | thought, fantastic, go for it. What | didn’t know was just how enormous his musical instincts and his musicality in general was. That's why his [suicide in 2003] was so sad. There’s no telling where he would be now.

At DreamWorks, you tried to recapture what you’d had at Warner Brothers. Why do you think it didn’t quite work out ultimately?

It was a combination of things. There was an amount of money that was being spent at a time when it probably shouldn't have been. And our predictions about sales were always off - | mean, way off. The math of the music business was changing. Because it was the era of Napster and streaming was right around the corner. It was the start of a whole different world.

Over the last decade or so, you’ve returned to Warner Music in an emeritus role, and have executive produced records by Dwight Yoakam, Jenny Lewis, and Gary Clark Jr, as well as co-producing Randy Newmans last album, Dark Matter, with Mitchell Froom.

On Randy’s record | just came in and gave my two cents and all of a sudden I'm ‘co-producing’. I told Mitchell, “You don't need me, you know what you're doing.” But it’s fun to give him and Randy a little push. Hopefully, if Randy ever gets to the point of making another record, I'll be there. If I’m alive, I'll be there.

Unlike a lot of record executives, you don’t seem particularly concerned about burnish- ing your legacy. You haven't written the usual self-aggrandising memoir or put yourself out there publicly that much, despite all your achievements.

| don't like it. | don’t like how it looks or smells or anything. It’s a disease in a way, worrying about what people are going to say about you — espe- cially after you're gone. It feels like enough people know about what | was a part of. | don’t need the whole world to know. Besides, if anyone's really interested, it’s all there in the music and the records we made.

MOJO 33

Punk’s not dead: (from left) Steve Jones, Frank Carter, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock get ready to rumble.

Witha tattooed cearewey of a frontman, Pall and 9OLON MAI -are are playing the songs that made their names and shook the wo world tc to increasingly demented crowds. Due to ’s s objections, they can’t bill themselves LS, yet they insist they’re upholding the band’s

the SOX PI. [ incendiary spirit. “It Itai ain’t karaoke,” ibe tell )__ aaa R\G LYNN STAR

Barry Plummer, Shutterstock (2), Jemma Dodd, Adam Taylor

EPTEMBER 26, 2024, AND ON-STAGE at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north Lon- don, three of the original Sex Pistols are performing with a startling intensity, dis- playing the fire and skill that always be- lied the Malcolm McLaren-contrived gimmick that they couldn’t play their instruments. As bassist Glen Matlock will put it to MOJO, describing the ex- plosive chemistry between himself, drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones, “As soon as we plug in and start playing, we’re the Sex Pistols.”

Their new singer, Frank Carter, is halfway up a stage-right staircase, and climbing over a railing onto the lip of a balcony, as he belts out Satellite, the Holidays In The Sun B-side that was John Lydon’s ambivalent anthem to the suburban kids in “those godforsaken new towns” where the Pistols sharpened their act with provincial gigs in the first =

NEVER MIND _ THE BOLLOCKS

HERE’S THE

months of ’76.

Carter, now 40, was himself a kid when he first picked out the “naughty”-looking Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols from his dad’s CD collection sometime in the ’90s. Later, he was schooled in the hardcore punk of the ’00s with his band Gallows, in an era which re- quired more Iggy Pop-inspired stage-diving physicality than Johnny Rotten ever dared to attempt.

At the Forum, the tattooed, red-haired frontman gets ready to leap into the crowd, who are noticeably just a touch older than his usual moshpit mobs, then propels himself into the air and is caught and carried aloft by a forest of hands. “I have a very different audi- ence than the Sex Pistols do,” he says later, meaning the followers of his current group, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. At shows with the Pistols, he often finds himself in “a circle pit of, y’know, 40-to 60-year-olds... big fucking lads who really want you to prove it”.

Reactions to Carter fronting a version of the Sex Pistols in a se- ries of select shows beginning in the summer of 2024 (and now ex- tended to a world tour for 2025) have for the most part been wildly positive. But there have been the naysayers, who’ve sometimes ex- pressed themselves to the singer in very physical terms.

“T’ve had a few digs in the ribs,” he beams, proudly. “But once you see a guy get punched, and laugh it off, it changes the whole dy- namic. Because you just realise that this guy is more unhinged than you thought he was.”

“T mean, he’s nuts, man, getting in that crowd,” Steve Jones quietly marvels.

“He’s a little terrier, I tell ya,” Paul Cook cackles.

Having such an intrepid, crowd-roaming frontman isn’t always a boon, however. Some nights it has led them to losing their place ina song.

“The first night we did Satellite,” says Matlock, “it went a bit tits up. Frank was in the middle of the crowd, and we couldn’t hear him, and you need to hang off the vocals a little bit sometimes.

“Maybe,” the bassist adds with a grin, as a thought suddenly oc- curs to him, “we should only pay him for the time he’s actually on the stage.”

“To be honest, if they want to cut my pay, I’ll take it,” laughs

36 MOJO

FRANK CARTE!

Carter. “This whole

situation is priceless to me anyway.”

HE ROUTE TO THE

Sex Pistols’ comeback

with Carter — 16 years

after their classic line-up of Ly-

don, Jones, Matlock and Cook played a

final re-formation-era gig in Spain in 2008 —was a

circuitous one. In the summer of 2023, the guitarist, drummer and

bassist all ended up on the same bill supporting Iggy Pop at Crystal

Palace Park. Cook and Jones had joined forces and repertoires with

Generation X’s Billy Idol and Tony James in an outfit savvily named

Generation Sex; Matlock was playing bass in Blondie, but missed

his erstwhile bandmates’ set due to being late to the site. “I could

hear the opening notes of Pretty Vacant,” he remembers, “but by the time I rushed up there, they’d done it.”

Later, Matlock and Cook hung out while Jones, jetlagged after flying in from his adopted home of Los Angeles, returned to his ho- tel. But, as the bassist reveals, communications between the three had been ongoing as regards future Sex Pistols activity. “We’d been very lightly talking about a way forward,” he says.

There were rumours that Steve Jones didn’t much enjoy the Generation Sex experience. “It was good... it was good,” he states today, without sounding entirely convinced. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind doing more of that at some point, but then it kind of ended, and Billy was going to be doing touring or something else. So our manager said, ‘Why don’t we go out and just do Sex Pistols songs? Find the singer.’”

Then, in 2024, Cook was moved to stage a benefit for Bush Hall, the one-time west London snooker hall-turned-music venue that was facing closure. “The original idea was to get all different singers in to play Never Mind The Bollocks,” Cook says. “But it would’ve prob- ably been a bit too much getting five or six different people in.”

Instead, Glen Matlock’s son, Louis, who along with his brother Sam had toured with the Rattlesnakes in their band Dead!, sug- gested Carter. “I said, Well, let’s meet up for a coffee, and I liked the guy,” Matlock Sr recalls. “I said, You’re up for this? And he said, ‘Yep, I’m up for it. [know I’m going to get flak for it, but I’ve got big boots.’ And he rose to the challenge.”

“At that point, all I was focused on was having one jam with them,” says Carter. “Genuinely. I just was like, I want that for myself. I just want to be ina room with the Pistols and play with them.”

Still, after an initial practice session with Cook and Matlock, Carter felt he’d blown his chance due to an attack of nerves. “I honestly thought I’d fucked it up,” he says. “It was the worst audition of my life. You think you know those songs. And then when you look at the lyrics... like, Lydon’s a genius, but it is hectic.”

“Maybe he was a bit nervous,” Cook says of Carter. “But it didn’t come across. He was pretty low-key.”

Subsequently, Matlock and Cook told Jones they believed they’d found their man, and the guitarist flew over to London for further rehearsals. “Frank was nervous, even when I got over there,” says the guitarist. “He kept forgetting the lyrics... whatever. We just tried to make him feel as comfortable as possible. And then it start- ed falling into place.”

At the first of three shows at Bush Hall, on August 13 of last year, Carter proved his worth. “As soon as we stepped on-stage,” says Cook, “all hell broke loose. It was so exciting. We went into Holidays In The Sun, and it just went off the scale, and it never stopped.”

By the time the new line-up returned in September for a five- date UK tour ending at the Forum, two songs from the post-Lydon era of The Great Rock ’N’ Roll Swindle had crept into the setlist: Cook and Jones’s rousing pop-punker, Silly Thing, and their propulsive, Sid Vicious-fronted take on My Way. “I mean, it’s a good song, but it’s got connotations,” says Matlock of the latter, presumably mean- ing that it was sung by the man who replaced him in the band. “I kind of go along with it.”

For his part, John Lydon has predictably likened the Carter- fronted incarnation of the group to a “karaoke” Sex Pistols. It’s a typically harsh put down, but in truth a hollow one. On-stage,

| i! NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS

Anarchy in the UK: (far left, from left) Sex Pistols’ Cook, Jones, Matlock and Johnny Rotten, September 1976; (left) Matlock, Carter, Cook, Jones, Bush Hall, August 14, 2024; (below left) Sex Pistols reunite, 100 Club, 1996.

.. Aload more,Bollocks: (top) Sex Pistols with new singer Frank Carter; Kentish Town

Carter sounds very much like his intense, roaring self, albeit singing Pistols songs.

“He’s put his own spin on it, that’s for sure,” says Cook. “I mean, it’d be ridiculous to try and imitate John anyway. A lot of people have tried in the past and just end up sounding like Steptoe or something. Frank’s got a really melodic voice. I think that brings something new to the Pistols, really, without all the shouty-shouty.”

“Tt ain’t karaoke,” Carter firmly states in his defence. “John is going to have his opinions, and he’s very entitled to them. I’d love to sit down with him and just explain to him what he means to me and how grateful I am to... not just hold that torch but pour some gasoline on it.”

ECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN RELATIONS BETWEEN

John Lydon and his estranged Pistols bandmates plummet to a

low only comparable to the fallout of their initial split, follow- ing their messy, final phase one gig at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on January 14, 1978. The intervening years of acri- mony and recrimination made their eventual reunion, for the Filthy Lucre world tour in 1996, all the more surprising.

Matlock remembers tensions in the air at the band’s first rehears- al (after a 19-year break) in Los Angeles that year. “John wouldn’t sing,” he says. “Steve and Paul got fed up and left, and then I picked up Steve’s guitar, and me and John went through the set together. It was alittle bit of bonding. I think he was maybe a bit nervous, too.

“If you've spent a lifetime sniping at somebody,” he adds with a laugh, “and then you’re in a room with the people you’ve been hav- ing a go at, you’re probably feeling a little bit cagey.”

Steve Jones now says that while money was certainly a key moti- vator in his decision to rejoin the band, he also felt he had some- thing to prove. “To show people that we could play,” he says. “There was always that stigma: ‘Oh, them guys can’t play.’ And I >>

MOJO 37

<_ think we played better than ever on that tour.”

That much was evident from the opening moments of their re- turn show at Finsbury Park on June 23, 1996, when the Pistols kicked into Bodies and the crowd of 30,000 erupted. “That was our first gig back in the UK since ’77, wasn’t it?” Cook double-checks with MOJO. “And it was huge. It was one of my favourite Pistols gigs... we were back on it.”

The Filthy Lucre tour ended after 72 shows, and a further 32 gigs followed in 2008 as part of the cash-reaping Combine Harvester tour. By the end of that jaunt, a chasm had opened up once again between Lydon and the others. “Yeah, not my favourite tour,” Jones attests. “It started getting horrible at the end, y’know, the old resent- ments. It made me say, Fuck this. ’m never gonna do this again.”

Cook lays the blame on the singer’s dark moods killing the vibe. “It seemed like he was kind of taking revenge a little bit for some- thing that was bugging him,” he says. “Then you just wonder, Why the fuck are we putting ourselves through all this again?”

Matlock has his own theory about Lydon’s deeper feelings re-

garding the Sex Pistols. “I think he resents, in some kind of strange way, having to be Johnny Rotten. Y’know, he wants to be John Lyd- on, but because of the three of us, he had to become Johnny Rotten and then he sort of painted himself in a corner.”

Steve Jones sees it differently, however.

“No, I don’t think he was resenting being Johnny Rotten,” he counters. “I think John was getting off on being Johnny Rotten. He is Johnny Rotten, y’know.”

In 2021, simmering intra-band grievances spilled over into court. Jones and Cook, with the support of Matlock, overruled their former singer’s objection to having the band’s songs used in Pistol, director Danny Boyle’s polarising 2022 TV miniseries based on Jones’s 2016 memoir, Lonely Boy.

“They don’t need my forgiveness,” Lydon quietly seethed to MOJO in 2023. “They’ve made their decision. Them as people, I don’t need them in my life.” Lydon did, however, admit to having sat through the whole of Pistol. “Yes, I had to. It was grim, grim watch- ing. To see those boys throw away their legacy really, really hurts.”

INTHE great tradition of the Sex Pistols having little or no control over many of the records released in their name, when MOJO speaks to Steve Jones and Paul Cook about the trio of Live In The USA 1978 albums being stagger-released between Februaryand April this year, neither of them are even aware of them.

“Fucking news to me,” the guitarist laughs.

“It seemsa bit overkill to me,”

Shooting stars: (clockwise from left) Sid Vicious winds up the locals, Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

January 1978; Rotten and Jones

on-stage at Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa,

Oklahoma, January 12, 1978; Cook 4 and friends in San Antonio, Texas;

Christian fundamentalists protest.

hi$toRyY:

COOK AND JONES ON THE PISTOLS’ CATACLYSMIC 1978 US TOUR: NOW ON VINYL! BY

with audience members, John Lydon declaring fromthe stage

at Winterland in San Francisco,

“Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?” and the ultimate collapse ofthe band.

“That's all well hidden ina locker inthe back of my memory bank,” says Cook. “Wasn't the greatest oftimes.”

Famously, following the cancellation of a

78 taking a swing through the Southern states, playing rough clubs from Atlanta to Memphis, Dallas to Tulsa, where many of the audiences were entirely hostile to them.

“| mean,| get where Malcolm was coming from,” says Jones, in defence of the Pistols’ provocative manager. “Just play these places, don’tdo the normal shit.’ | totally get it. But, y'know, there was consequences.

You're playing in

says the drummer. “I don’t get the show booked at front of cowboys thinking behind it.” the Leona Theatre x | whowantto

Both seem to have deep-sixed in Pennsylvania aN | killyou.” their memories of that notorious on December 28, One significant travelling horror show, involving 1977, the band “| feature ofthe a Sid Vicious withdrawing from spent the firsttwo newly spruced- heroin, self-harming and battling weeks of January ‘| uprecordings is

WITHOUT GOUSONLY SEGOTTEN

S.IFEIS ROTTEN Teeys i

Vicious’s sometimes surprisingly capable, but more often ham-fisted bass-playing. Jones and Cook typically soundas if they’re playing harder and louder, trying to make up for his inadequacies, ordrown him out.

“Sid was just out there on his own,” the drummer grimly remembers. “Totally off the rails, off his head. Play-acting down to the punk stereotype. Just being the total destructive force that he could be, really. Me and Steve were

alwaysa unit. | always played more along to Steve's guitar than Sid’s bass anyway.”

“Me and Cookie were just doing our best,” says Jones. “I mean, you couldn't tell him anything at this point, Sid. He thought he was playing a guitar. He would strum it like it’s a power chord or something. He didn’t realise you got to keep pumping, y’know.

“But it wasn’t even about a bass guitar at this point. It was so chaotic. And he just wanted to, you know, give it the big ‘un. This was part of the falling apart of it all, becauseme and Cookie were sick of playing it like that. It was just a shambles and notcool.”

Still, the guitarist is intrigued to hear the three live LPs. “I’llgoand buy some,” he jokes, drily. “Maybe they'll give mea discount.”

Giuseppi Craca, lconicpix, Bob Gruen (3)

As it turns out, Matlock didn’t much like Pistol, either. “ rassed, really,” he admits, having taken

I was a bit embar-

particular exception to the reinforce- ment of the narrative that he was kicked out of the band. He still insists he quit.

“The way Glen was portrayed in it, I didn’t really agree with that,” says Cook. “That was the main beef, really. I thought that was quite bad. And I just thought the whole thing could have been a bit more down and dirty than how it was. A bit grittier, really.”

“lw sald say I was 90 per cent happy with it,” says Jones, while claiming that he can’t clearly remember the details of Matlock’s departure. He points out that

Cook recently reminded him that the

pair of them “went away to

“Po. -FO YOU'D Ma

the Canary Islands for a week, and when we come back, Glen had gone. I know me and Cookie just went along with it. I don’t think we had a lot of input init.”

“T didn’t see eye to eye with John and there you go,” says Mat- lock, who of course was to enjoy his moment of vindication when he was asked back into the band in 1996.

“T don’t want it to come across nasty,” he stresses, “but when the Pistols re-form, they could get anybody who’s pretty good on the bass to ‘do it. And they always ask me. So I kind of feel I have the last laugh a little bit, really. Not ina snide way. But ina kind of, Yeah, that'll do nicely, kind of way.”

Lydon himself has been through a tough time of late: losing his wife Nora Forster in April 2023, followed by the death of his friend and manager John ‘Rambo’ Stevens later the same year. Cook says the band attempted to reach out to him: “We did try around that time, but didn’t get no response.”

“It’s very sad,” says Matlock. “There’s people writing to me, y'know, ‘You should speak to John!’ and all that. Well, my dad died of Alzheimer’s. Nobody called me. Two wrongs don’t make a right. But what can you do?”

“He lost his missus, and he lost his best mate, which has got to be rough,” Jones sympathises. got no agg with him.”

“I wish him all the best, John. I’ve

HICH BEGS THE QUESTION: WITH THE PISTOLS

expected to be a big international live draw in 2025,

what would the others say if — in a surprise twist — Ly- don decided that he wanted back in the band? “I wouldn’t believe him,” Matlock instantly responds.

“You’d definitely make a lot more dosh,” Jones pragmatically points out. “But is it worth it? Ifit’s going to be that same old bullshit, y’know. You never know though... things change... people change.”

“JT don’t think that’ll ever happen,” Cook says of the chances of a full Pistols reunion. “But if it ever does, we’ll come to that when it does happen.”

One person who'd be dismayed by this (albeit improbable) de- velopment, of course, is Frank Carter. “I would be disappointed,” he offers. “Of course I would. But, look, if that ever was to happen, I would just take the thanks from the rest of the world. Because what an honour to be part of that getting back together.”

In the meantime, there are other possibilities to consider, includ- ing a live Frank Carter/Sex Pistols album. “Yeah, why not?” Jones says. “You definitely wouldn’t have to overdub the crowd noise, that’s for sure.”

More contentious is the notion that the four might also explore

He’s doing it his way: Frank Carter and the Sex Pistols come together

in London, 2024.

writing new material. Opinions about that vary within the band. “There were a cou- ple of ideas floating around in ’96 which John wouldn’t write lyrics for,” Matlock dis- closes. “I think they still could

slot in, y’know, but we'll see.”

“I think that was 2008,” says Jones. “When we were rehearsing, we had a couple of ideas... It was just a couple of riffs or whatever, but nothing happened with them.”

“T think I used them on the Professionals album actually,” Cook laughs, meaning 2017’s What In The World by the band he started with Jones in 1979 and then revived with most of its original mem- bers in 2015.

Frank Carter is, at least in theory, open to the idea of writing new ‘Sex Pistols’ lyrics, even ifhe has one likely deal-breaking condition. “I would do it, of course,” he says. “It w rouldn’t be the Sex Pistols, obviously, unless I could sit down and write the lyrics with John. But again, that’s just opening a can of worms. There’s so much history between them, and it’s delicate ground.”

“For me personally, I think when a band like us starts playing new material, that’s when everyone goes to the fucking bar,” offers Jones, bluffly. “They’re not interested.”

And on recent evidence, there are not many queuing for drinks when Frank Carter and the Sex Pistols are up on-stage and in such fiery form. For now, the band are more than happy to celebrate the immaculate canon of Never Mind The Bollocks (and ancillary) songs, live and loud and with an infusion of new frontman energy.

“Tt’s been really, really fun to talk to their friends and family,” says Carter. “People come up to me and they just give me a big old shake, and they'll tell me, ‘I’ve never seen themithis happy.. seen so many smiles on the stage.’

“T just think, Fuck, that’s what it’s all about. If you’re going to be

. hever

doing this, like, 50 years on, if you ain’t smiling, why the fuck are you up there?”

Moreover, reckons Carter, now as then, the band exists as an es- sential lightning rod for people’s rage.

“To me,” he states, with the insider knowledge of a fan-turned- frontman, “now is the time we need a band like the Pistols more than ever.” ® Frank Carter and Paul Cook, Steve Jones and Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols play the Royal Albert Hall in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust on March 74, plus festivals across the UK in 2025.

MOJO 39

Michelle Zauner is the best- selling author behind the sublime, eclectic indie-pop

of — now featuring new pals

Blake Mills, Jim Keltner and Jeff Bridges. With late-blooming fame informed by a traumatic bereavement, she’s in a hurry to create. “I feel like there’s so little time,” she tells :

Photography by

S A TEENAGER IN EUGENE, OREGON, MICHELLE ZAUNER’S MUSICAL ambitions were modest. She dreamt of touring in a van, staying in Holiday Inns and maybe, one day, Bsaehnine the 1,500-capacity Crystal Ballroom in Portland. “That place felt enor- mous to me,” she says, sitting cross- legged on the floor of her Brooklyn apartment, all in black, a wall of art behind her. “I’m so far beyond what I could have ever hoped for.” By the time she turned 33 in March 2022, she appeared to have made it. Jubilee, her col- ourfully pop-minded third album as Japanese Breakfast, was up for two Grammy awards. Crying In H Mart, her memoir about food, Korean-American identity and the loss of her mother to cancer, spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Yet all this recognition was proving discombobulating, she confessed to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy in a conversation for Interview magazine: “I’ve been feeling a little lost. I feel like I’ve hit my peak and it’s all downhill from here.”

Zauner hoots when she’s reminded of the quote. She is warm and energetic company, with a bright, brilliant laugh. “Why do I think that way? As soon as something great happens, I’m certain that I’ll enter my flop era. I never anticipated that much attention and praise so I’m certain that it’s over.” She pauses. “Hopefully it’s not.”

Zauner has identified each Japanese Breakfast album with a core emotional theme: 2016's Psychopomp was grief, 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet was trauma, and Jubilee was joy. The heart of her fourth, For Melancholy Bru- nettes (And Sad Women), is, as advertised, melancholy: “a romantic quality but also an eeriness,” she says. Recorded at Sound City in Los Angeles with producer Blake Mills, it’s a reaction to being “this joyful frontwoman bouncing around” on Jubilee. She wanted to get back to playing guitar and looking inward.

She picks out two favourite lyrics. One is from the dreamy West Coast lament Winter In LA: “I wish you had a

Pak Bae

happier woman/One that could leave the house.” >

40 MOJO

Portrait of the artist: Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner, South Korea, 2024.

Big league player: Michelle Zauner fronting Japanese Breakfast at Summerfest, Milwaukee, July 7, 2023; (right) curtain call, 2018.

FOR THIS TO HAPPEN.”

Shutterstock (2), Jackie Lee Young, Courtesy the artist (3), Adam Amegual

“I THOUGHT OK, THAT’S IT,

I’M JUST TOO OLD

CRYING MW

legate —

< “I’m very not an LA kind of person,” she ex- plains. “I always get depressed when I’m there. I get re- ally confused when [feel gloomy and it’s so nice out. I was thinking about all these amazing musicians — Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bob Dylan — who have had these really fruitful LA years. I was like, What is wrong with me? Why do I have to suffer through everything?”

The other line is from the sparkling album closer Magic Mountain: “Chained to my reflection in the shad- ow of a mountain.”

“Tt encapsulates how I feel as a musician at work,” she says. “It’s a self-absorbed profession. I want to make stuff and leave some- thing behind but I also don’t want to forget to live my life and be happy and take care of the people around me. A lot of the record is about that contradiction. How do I find the balance?”

How’s the balance working out right now?

She cracks up. “Not great!”

S SOON AS SHE FINISHED FOR MELANCHOLY Brunettes..., Zauner used her second book advance to

fund a year with her aunt in Seoul, where she learned to speak Korean and worked on the videos and artwork for the album. “I was scared to do it but I’m really glad that I did,” she says. “It was a beautiful experience.”

Zauner’s parents, Joel and Chongmi, met in Seoul in the 1980s, when her American father was selling cars to the US military, and moved to Oregon when she was a baby. These days, an American teenager might watch Parasite and Squid Game, listen to K-Pop and eat kimchi, but back then, she says, Korea was a blank space in the

“In middle school, kids didn’t even know

Korea was a country! I think Eugene was, like, 98 per cent white.”

American imagination.

The only prominent Korean-American in indie music, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, became a lodestar.

42 MOJO

Hf MART

4

eh.

Zauner began writing songs at 16 with a cunning plan to secure support slots at shows she wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to attend. Her youth- ful output was sad and confessional, influenced by Elliott Smith, Joanna Newsom and Modest Mouse. Music represented both a way to find herself and a world into which she might escape. “I was an only child,” she says. “My mom was a stay-at-home mom. We lived in the woods. We were very on top of each other.”

Zauner suffered a nervous breakdown in her last year at high school but won a place at Bryn Mawr Col- lege in Pennsylvania, where she majored in creative production, got tattoos and formed an emo band called Little Big League. The band went nowhere and its fatherly bass player Deven Craige (“the Mick Fleetwood of the band”) had just quit when Zauner was summoned back to Eugene by her mother’s cancer diagnosis in May 2014. The two women had been rebuilding their relationship but it was cruelly snatched away. Within five pain- ful, humiliating months, Chongmi was gone. Zauner was just 25.

“It’s a weird age,” she says. “You’re not so young that it’s unim- aginably tragic but you’re not old enough to know how to handle it. There’s no easy age to lose a parent but it’s a weird middle ground for sure.”

She had abandoned musical ambitions. After recording Psycho- pomp, lo-fi yet lush indie-pop, as a form of therapy in the weeks af- ter the funeral (her mother appears on the cover), she took a 9-to-5 job selling advertising space in New York. “I thought, OK, that’s it, I have to get a real job now. I’m just too old for this to happen. I thought I’d do music on the side and I might have a quiet indie fol- lowing of Bandcamp people that I write letters to.”

Instead, she got laid off after a year and used the severance pay- ment to take up an unexpected opportunity to play South By South- west. She promptly landed a deal with Dead Oceans and an offer to tour with Mitski. “I think this happens to a lot of people,” she notes. “Your swan song is the one that saves you.”

She assembled a touring line-up: Craig Hendrix on drums, a

WT

returning Deven Craige on bass and, eventually, her husband Peter Bradley on guitar. “I would never tour this much if I didn’t have my husband with me,” she says. “It’s so hard and so lonely, I don’t know how people do it without having their best friend in the band.”

Without her mother’s death, she realises, none of this — the band, the book, the fame — would have happened. “It’s a double- edged sword,” she says, frowning. “I’m really glad that I had a life raft that made meaning out of this horrible thing. But yeah, gosh, I wish my mom could see me become successful.”

AUNER IS A KEEN STUDENT OF her favourite artists’ careers. This time, she considered the purpose of fourth albums: Bjérk’s Vespertine, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Radiohead’s Kid A. “I’ve always felt like the fourth record is your experimental fuck you: I’m just going to do something weird and me.” On the road, Japanese Breakfast are a con- ventional band with a stable line-up but in the studio anything goes. Blake Mills is a fiendishly well-connected session guitarist to the stars,

whose contacts led to guest appearances by Jeff

Bridges (“super cool”) and drummers Jim Kelt- ner and Matt Chamberlain.

“When I need a drummer, I call someone I know who plays drums,” Zauner says drily. “T don’t call someone who drummed on Dream Weaver.”

While the veterans’ creds (including Kelt- ner’s part in Gary Wright’s synthy soft rock smash) had her pinching herself, Zauner’s first experience in a proper studio witha proper pro- ducer wasn’t all smooth sailing. “Blake is not in- terested in the obvious choice and sometimes that was really hard for me,” she says. “I’m like,

Seoul power: (clockwise from left) young Michelle with her mother Chongmi, 1990; Zauner signs copies of her best-selling memoir, LA, 2023; Little Big League, 2013 (from left) Zauner,

' Deven Craige, lan Dykstra, Matt

O’Halloran; with husband Peter

| Bradley, New York, 2022.

BREAKFAST

Michelle Zauner: the sonic story so far, by Dorian Lynskey.

(Yellow K/Dead Oceans, 2016) The lo-fi haze of Zauner’s home-recorded debut can’t conceal the strength of her y hooks, the fullness of her arrangements orthe breadth of her sound, from haunted instrumentals to Everybody Wants To Love You's arms-wide dream-pop. Named after the spirit that escorts the souls of the deceased to the afterlife, the title track features Zauner’s mother on voicemail: “Don’t cry honey, I love you.”

(Dead Oceans, 2017)

Herintended sci-ficoncept album didn’t pan out but this bittersweet journey through love and trauma still displays cosmic ambitions, free- wheeling through space- disco, shoegaze and Wilco-indebted motorik rockas her themes range from frustrated ambition (Jimmy Fallon Big!) to robot romance (Machinist). Aradically improved reimagining of Little Big League’s Boyish illuminates the distance she’s travelled.

(Dead Oceans, 2021)

“How’sit feel to stand at

the height of your » powers?” Zauner asks ambivalently amid the

chamber-pop fireworks of ’ Paprika. Inspired by the bursting confidence of Bjork's third album, Homogenic, it'salush, ascendant record: tighter, brighter, aglow with charisma. Rhythmis king ontracks like Be Sweet, her purest pop song yet, while Tactics swoons likea Hollywood musical.

(Dead Oceans, 2021)

Zauner’s largely instrumen- tal soundtrack to Sable, an exploration game setona desert planet, extrapolates her previous records’ fleeting ambient interludes intoa movie-length soundscape whose exotic twists and turns call to mind Boards Of Canada or the back halves of Bowie’s Low and “Heroes”. Liberated from autobiography for the first time, she proves her chopsasa sonic storyteller.

intuition is king. But I wanted a producer that was going to challenge me.”

The lyrics are her most intricately literary yet. Resembling a collection of short stories, with references to Greek mythology, John Cheever and Thomas Mann, they unite her two careers. “It’s funny,” she says. “When you’re in book world and people ask you about music it’s like, no, no, no, I’m awriter, don’t ask me to perform! NowI’m promoting a record I’m like, I’m a musician, how dare you?” She pokes fun at herself. “Who could be mad? They’re both dream jobs.”

Quite the polymath, Zaun- er has cameoed in the cult sitcom Search Party, recorded a song for the Marvel series Agatha All Along and record-

ed the soundtrack to the video

A game Sable. She also directs

all of Japanese Breakfast’s vid- eos and has written a screenplay for Cry- ing In H Mart, though the film version is currently in limbo.

“T have so many ideas,” she says, “and I feel like there’s so little time.”

Why is that?

“Because of death!” she exclaims, as if it’s obvious. “Both my mom and my aunt died very young so it’s in my family that I might not have much time. And I’ve had friends die too, even younger, for totally bizarre reasons. So I want to make as much stuff as I can before it’s over.” QY

For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women) is reviewed on page 84.

MOJO 43

From me to you:

John Lennon and Paul McCartney get better and better, Paris, 1964.

Express Syndication/Mirrorpix

Two halves of one brain, JOHN LENNON and PAUL McCARTNEY formed the most extraordinary and intimate musical partnership of the rock era. In this extract from a new book that probes their bond through the medium of their songs, Ian Leslie discovers how one of them, Sgt. Pepper's Getting Better, was a case of Paul reaching out to John, changed but also estranged by his new love... LSD.

N THE EVENING OF MARCH

21, 1967, three of The Beatles were

at Abbey Road, recording backing vocals

for a song called Getting Better. John,

Paul and George were gathered around a

microphone. After a few run-throughs,

John took out a silver snuff box he kept his pills in and began poking around in it, searching for an upper to keep him going. Soon afterwards, he fal- tered and stopped in the middle of a line. He looked up to George Martin in the control room. “George, I’m not feeling too good,” he said. “I’m not focusing on me.”

Martin paused the session and took John up to the roof for some fresh air. The other Beatles stayed behind. But as McCartney and Harrison discussed what might be the matter with John, they figured out that he had prob- ably taken a tab of LSD by accident — and that maybe standing on the top of a building wasn’t the best place for him. They rushed up the stairs, hoping that John did not decide to see if he could fly before they got there. As it turned out, he was OK. Still, work was halted for the night, and the band dispersed.

Paul and John stayed together. With the drug exerting its effects on his brain, John didn’t want to travel back to his home in Surrey. He and Paul headed for Paul’s house on Cavendish Avenue, a short drive from the studio. Once there, Paul decided he would take some LSD himself. Although he had tried acid for the first time in late 1965, that was with other friends. Now he wanted to “get with John”, as he later put it to Martin, who interpreted it to mean “to be with him in his misery and fear”. McCartney told Barry Miles: “I thought... maybe this is the mo- ment. It’s been coming for along time.”

That night, John and Paul did something that the two of them practised quite a few

IGHR PAUL

A LOVE STORY

times during this period: they gazed intensely into each other’s eyes. They liked to put their faces close together and stare, unblinking, until they felt themselves dissolving into each other, almost obliterating any sense of themselves as distinct individuals. “There’s something disturbing about it,” recalled McCartney, much later, in his understated way. “You ask yourself, How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that? And the answer is, you don’t.” The Beatles’ publi- cist and friend Derek Taylor recalled Paul enthusing about LSD: “We had this fantastic thing... Incredible, really, just looked into each other’s eyes... Like, just staring and then saying, ‘I know, man,’ and then laughing.”

OHN AND PAUL WERE GETTING TOWARDS J the end of their work on what had become the Sgt.

Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. They were working on what they called “slog songs”. “The last four songs of an album are usually pure slog,” Paul told Hunter Davies, around this time. “If we need four more we just have to get down and do them. They’re not necessarily worse than ones done out of imagination. They’re often better, because by that stage in an LP we know what sort of songs we want.”

By songs “done out of imagination”, Paul meant those that one or the other of them already had floating around before sessions on an al- bum began — like Eleanor Rigby, Tomorrow Never Knows or A Day In The Life. Those songs arrived unbidden and were sometimes fragmentary or unfinished. Once the group had realised those ones in the studio, they usually needed a few more, and often had a tight deadline. So John and Paul would meet up, usually around two in the afternoon, and knock out the slog songs.

It was like the difference between >

MOJO 45

In the Club: Lennon and McCartney working

on Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road, March 1967; (right) John and Cynthia at The Knack...And How To Get It premiere, June 2, 1965. She was not impressed with his LSD antics.

< letting inspiration strike and trying very hard to have a new idea. On that basis, you might expect the slog songs to sound more formulaic and less in- teresting. But because John and Paul were so relaxed in each other’s com- pany, they were able to tap into each other’s unconscious and find surprises there. In 1967, the journalist Hunter Davies got as close as any outsider did to witnessing this process. He was at McCartney’s house as John and Paul worked on a song for Ringo. They had composed the

melody the day before. They had a title, too: With A Little Help From My Friends. Davies describes the two of them in a seemingly aimless, almost trance-like state. They would “bang away” artlessly on guitars, or Paul would sit at the piano. They'd throw out musi- cal and lyrical phrases until something that one of them did or said snagged, at which point the other would “pluck it out of a mass of noises and try it himself”.

As Davies watches, they land on the idea of asking a question at the start of each verse. At this point Cynthia Lennon turns up with one of their old Liverpool friends, Terry Doran. Cynthia and Terry sit down, chat quietly, suggest lines when invited to and read out the horoscope, while Paul and John carry on doodling. Paul suddenly starts to play Can’t Buy Me Love. John joins in, “singing it very loudly, laughing and shouting”. Paul plays Tequila at the piano, and they go crazy again. “Remember in Germany?” says John. “We used to shout out anything.” John and Paul play through their song but with John shouting random words between the lines: “knickers”, “Hitler”, “tit”, “Duke of Edinburgh”. It’s the kind of moment fa- miliar to anyone who has watched Get Back. This period of boister- ous play stops as soon as it began. They return to the song, now very focused, and speaking softly. John finds just the right words to make a line he has been working on scan. Paul nods, says, “Yes, that will

Shutterstock, Alamy, Beatles Book Photo Library (2)

do,” and writes down the finished verse on notepaper.

46 MOJO

“We had this fantastic thing... Just looked into each other's eyes... just staring and then saying, ‘I know, man,’ and then laughing.” PAUL McCARTNEY

AVIES WAS ALSO AROUND | ) to see how Getting Better came into being. McCartney had been at home with time to kill. John was meant to be coming over to work on new songs, but he was late and it was a nice day, so Paul picked up Martha, the sheepdog he had acquired the previous summer, put her in his Mini Cooper and drove to Primrose Hill. As Martha frolicked in the park and the sun came out for the first time in a while, Paul thought, “It’s getting better,” and smiled. The phrase reminded him of something Jimmie Nicol used to say. Nicol was the drummer who joined the band for a few weeks in 1964 when Ringo fell ill. Whenever one of the Beatles asked Nicol how he was finding it, he’d reply, “It’s getting better.” The Beatles found this hilarious. When John arrived at Cavendish Avenue later that afternoon, Paul said, “Let’s do a song called Getting Better.” They began strum- ming and improvising and larking around until a song began to form. “You’ve got to admit,” said Paul, after a while, “it is getting better” —and John started to sing that. The two of them kept going like this until two in the morning, stopping only for a fry-up, as a succes- sion of visitors who had made appointments to see Paul were left waiting or sent away. Into this song, initiated by Paul, John poured a stream of reflections on his own life: on the anger he had carried around with him as a teenager and younger man; on the emotional and physical abuse he had inflicted on women. Since the tone of the song is light-hearted, the heaviness of the final verse is often missed. The evening after this session, John and Paul went to the studio. Paul played Getting Better on a piano for George and Ringo. The group sat around and discussed what the song should sound like, before dispersing to noodle on their instruments, trying out bits and pieces to play. Paul joined Ringo at the drums and helped him work out his part. After a couple of hours, they were ready to re- cord the backing track. George Martin took his position in the con-

Acid house: (above) Lennon § surrenders to the void, Kenwood, Surrey, 1967; (below) the Fabs with Ringo stand-in Jimmie Nicol,

whose catchphrase was “it’s getting better”.

trol room. The Beatles ran through seven takes, with Paul directing the group (“Once more”; “More drums”; “Less bass”). By midnight they had a satisfactory version. Twelve days later, they recorded the lead and backing vocals (this was the session interrupted by John’s LSD-induced freak-out). Two days after that, reported Hunter Davies, they were back in the studio to redo the vocals, finishing when “they’d got it at least to a stage which didn’t make them unhappy”.

EOPLE WHO KNEW JOHN COM-

mented on a change in his personality that

took place in 1966 and 1967, roughly co- inciding with his use of pot and LSD. In early 1968, Cynthia told Hunter Davies that John was quieter and more tolerant than he used to be. His old schoolmate Pete Shotton also noticed a dis- tinct softening of John’s personality: the ‘cripple’ impersonations stopped, the sarcasm receded. He was no longer drinking himself into oblivion and rage. His songwriting moved past the Sturm und Drang of love betrayed and spurned. He be- came calmer, nicer and more childlike. He even started hugging people. “This is the new thing,” John said, on hugging a friend he hadn’t seen in a while. “You hug your friends when you meet them, and show them you’re glad to see them.” He also stopped worrying about McCartney tak- ing leadership of the group. As Lennon relaxed, McCartney became even more driven. Although Paul had now taken LSD with John, his drug of choice during the Pepper sessions was cocaine. In the studio, after the others had clocked off, he would work through the night, crafting his bass lines, obsessing over every detail of each track.

TO HEAD

FIVE MORE TIMES JOHN AND PAUL'S INTERPLAY MADE A GOOD SONG GREAT.

IF I FELL

(AHard Day’s Night, 1964)

=m, sag Lennonand

¢ PIATAe McCartney share

elelelele vocals on AHDN's RIGIEISIE was ; IRIE TAA] weapen-evidenceo

how ‘Paul’ the song's primary writer, John, could be when he chose. Neither a conventional vocal/BV combo, nora duet, John and Paul’s lines weave, writes lan Leslie, “like a courtship dance”.

IN MY LIFE (Rubber Soul, 1965)

Wg As Leslie notes,

bean) thesongLennon

and McCartney subsequently disagreed most aboutas to who wrote what. They're John’s lyrics — anautobiographical precursor to Strawberry Fields Forever. Paul later laid claim to the melody: “a bit bluesy,

”

with the minors and little harmonies.

TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS Co 1966) Stillimpossibleto ‘y -°- fullycomprehend i howthepair Ni, conceived this, even

* full story of John’s SrA acid eis transformed by Paul-instigated tape experiments. Not just John plus Paul, but the invention ofa Beatle entity that was both themand beyondthem.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

(Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)

The best example of theJohn-Paul yinand yang, what with the ‘John bit’ and the ‘Paul bit’ being tantamounttotwo diferent songs - albeit linked bya theme of profound inner reflection -collaged together. Post-Beatles, John songs would miss Paul's levity, and Paul songs lack John’s intensity.

TWO OF US (Let It Be, 1970) Paul wrote this aftera car journey with Linda, but it’s hard notto parseasa flashbackto the heyday of Lennon and McCartney’s partnership, especially when you watch Paul and John croon it a deux in Get Back. “Get aroom!” youcan almost see Harrison thinking, just before he doesa bunk. Danny Eccleston

John’s drug-enabled pla-

cidity came at a cost. He was

taking acid frequently now,

sometimes with a group of

hangers-on that he would invite back to Kenwood after

a night out in the clubs. Cynthia and Julian got used to strangers in the house.

“They’d wander round, glassy-eyed, crash out on the sofas, beds and floors, then eat whatever they could find in the kitchen,” Cynthia wrote in her memoir. “John was an essentially private man, but under the influence of drugs he was vulnerable to anyone and everyone who wanted to take advantage of him.” John’s use of LSD put an ever-greater distance between him and Cyn- thia. In the spring of 1967, he invited Pete Shot- ton to move into Kenwood, primarily so that he would have someone to take it with.

The first time they took it together was at Julian’s fourth birthday party. After that, John would bring a mug of tea and a tab of acid to Shotton’s room every morning.

Not surprisingly, John’s productivity suf- fered. He had never found it so hard to create new songs. Other than A Day In The Life, only three of the songs on Sgt. Pepper were initiated by him: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! and Good Morn- ing Good Morning. Even on those, McCartney was the midwife. Although John claimed Kite as his, McCartney remembers being at John’s house, pointing to the circus poster that in- spired it and helping John turn its copy into lyr- ics. Paul co-wrote Lucy, too. The number of co- created Lennon and McCartney songs on Pepper (at least six feature significant writing contribu- tions from both of them) is testament to their closeness at this time, but also to how much Paul was now having to coax songs out of his partner.

Nobody, not even John, believed more in John’s talents than Paul, or was more deeply invested in him making the most of them. Mc- Cartney also wanted his friend to be happy. He could see that John was calmer than he had been. He could also see that John was un- moored. When John wasn’t working, he was tripping. Left to drift aimlessly, he might lose himself altogether. By choosing to take LSD with him, Paul was giving John a chance to take the upper hand in at least one aspect of their re- lationship — to play the role of psychedelic guide — while ensuring that the drug’s mind-expand- ing properties were channelled into creativity.

In Getting Better, Paul nudged John into creating a kind of self-help narrative of his own life, sung, paradoxically, by Paul. The narrative is commented on, waspishly, by John (“fool, you fool”), playing a Greek chorus in the drama of his own maturation. The singer has been helped to put aside the self-loathing and rage of his youth by, well, someone. His realisation is ar- rived at grudgingly, as something he has to ad- mit, just as you might acknowledge a friend who often annoys you but who is busy saving you from yourself.

John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs by Tan Leslie is

published by Faber & Faber on March 27. £25 hardback, £14.99 ebook.

MOJO 47

ON THE TURN: INSIDE THE NEW JOHN & YOKO DOC!

Together stronger: John and Yoko on-stage at Madison Square Garden, NYC, August 30, 1972.

TEMPERATURE’S RISING

Anew film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s radical 1971-73 is full of fear, intimacy and great music. “I was completely floored,” Sean Lennon tells Danny Eccleston.

drummer Jim Keltner on the phone, about

a tour he’s planning that will end in Miami Beach to coincide with a protest at August's Republican National Convention. The ex-Beatle’s ongoing challenge to President Nixon and the US political establishment has him buzzing, but Keltner sounds a note of concern. Does Lennon realise he’s playing with fire? Has he considered the risks?

Lifted from a recently discovered box of tapes, the audio is one of the stars of One To One: John & Yoko, Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ vivid and visceral new film about Lennon and Yoko Ono’s period of controversial activism, 1971-73. The pair's recorded phone conversations with Keltner, Allen Klein, MC5 manager John Sinclair and more provide some of the film's most surprising insights. One viewer was particularly struck.

“lwas completely floored,”

| T'S 1972 and John Lennon is talking to

by their New York pick-up band Elephant’s Memory, with Keltner on second kit, Lennon and Ono deliver searing performances of Come Together, Cold Turkey, Mother, Don’t Worry Kyoko and more. After decades of mixed reviews for this period of Lennon’s music-making — encompassing Some Time In New York City and our previous best version of the Willowbrook show, the 1986 release of Live In New York City - it’s another revelation. “To be honest, | don’t know what was going on that day, but the record- ing was very chaotic,” says Sean Lennon, who presided over the gig’s new audio mix, battling

(MERCURY STUDIOS, PLAN B/KM FILMS)

Sean Lennon tells MOJO. “| random mike placements,

think maybe not everyone f realises how special it is for i me to hear my dad talking

or to see him.| grew up with ’ a set number of images and ‘ audio clips that everyone’s familiar with. Soto come

across things that I’ve never

seen or heard is really deep for me, because it’s almost like getting more

time with my dad.”

One To One is full of such moments of surprising connection with the Lennons. The phone recordings provide what co-director Kevin Macdonald describes as one of the film's “spines”; the other is restored footage of the one full live show Lennon performed as a solo artist: the Madison Square Garden benefit for Staten Island’s Willowbrook spe- cial needs school on August 30, 1972. Backed

oe

Ann Limongello/Getty

48 MOJO

Specifically, his grit to it.” SEAN LENNON

tidying flammy drums and foregrounding Lennon’s vocals. “Dad’s amazing at that show,” he continues. “Specifically, his voice, it’s got grit to it. Let’s just say, if] was ina band with John Lennon,! wouldn't solo over his voice when he’s singing.” Lennon chuckles. “Let’s just put it that way.”

events contextualises the Lennons’

activism — Carole Feraci of the super- square Ray Conniff Singers unveiling a Stop The Killing banner at a White House concert —and you empathise with their idealism. “Flower power didn’t work,” says Lennon, “but so what - we start again.” Yet the film doesn’t flinch from the less savoury aspects

€ OLLAGED TV footage of contemporary

One To One: John & Yoko

Dir: Kevin Macdonald, Sam Rice-Edwards

of their radical allies: Jerry Rubin, who wants to empty the prisons; A.J.Weberman, who roots through Bob Dylan's garbage for evidence of his betrayal of The Movement (and syringes).

“To me, ultimately, the mes- sage of the film is that they were very brave, John and Yoko, to go from singing songs to hanging out with the Chicago Seven, hanging out with the Black Pan- thers, and becoming real radical activists,” says Sean Lennon. “But you see that it goes too far. And you can feel that my dad is scared. | think a lot of people to- day remember my dad's activism as aligning with the Jerry Rubins. But he moves beyond that when he realises they're violent too, or they want to be violent. And it’s a cold splash of water in the face.”

Ultimately, it transpired that Lennon was right to be scared. The clicks and whirrs that we hear on the phone recordings really were FBI taps, and while the Lennons deployed private investigators to track down Yoko's estranged daughter Kyoko they briefed lawyers to coun- ter threats of deportation. A higher profile in 1972's election campaign could conceivably have ended as it did for segregationist Demo- crat George Wallace - paralysed after taking four shots in Laurel, Maryland on May 15.

More than anything, One To One isa snap- shot of aman ona voyage of self-discovery. What was John Lennon, if no longer a Beatle? For now, he was a revolutionary. Later, he’d be a drunk, a penitent, a father, and a saint.

“It's especially important to realise John and Yoko moved past this period and they be- came artists again,” says Sean Lennon. “When people ask me, ‘What would your dad think of this or that event,’ | always say, Whatever he would think now would not be what he thought then. That's alll fucking know.” _ &%)

One To One: John & Yoko is in IMAX cinemas on April 9 and 10, and cinemas UK-wide from April 11.

KILIMANJARO PRESENTS

AN EVENING OF SONGS & STORIES

GRAHAM NASH

WITH SPECIAL GUEST

PETER ASHER

THE RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADER PART 2

ACT 1: ACT 2: The Six Wives “The Myths and Legends of King Arthur of Henry VIII and the Knights of the Round Table

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You can call me Al: Alan Sparhawk gets intense at the Lodge Room, Los Angeles, January 21, 2025.

fe Lis igalige~

~ When Low’s Mimi Parker passed in 2022, ALAN SPARHAWK lost his life-partner and his band. Rebuilding has involveda brave left-turn into electronica and a hometown indie-folk team- up that’s birthed a stirring new album. What hasn't changed is his compulsion to embrace intensity and soul-scouring candour. “AllI can do is trust the music,” he tells BOB MEHR.

Photograph by ARTURO SOLORIO

UTSIDE THE LODGE ROOM, THE ATMOSPHERE is heavy: the smell of smoke lingers in the air and there’s ash on the ground. It’s late January in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighbourhood, and for the last two weeks, much of the region has been engulfed by flames from a series of fires. One of the two largest blazes, the Eaton Fire, is centred just a few miles from the old Masonic temple where Alan Sparhawk is performing on this night. It will be a couple more weeks before the fires are fully contained, but the residents of the area are already looking to the future, trying to find a way forward amid the devastation. It’s a feeling Sparhawk knows well.

For nearly 30 years, Sparhawk and his wife, drummer/vo- calist Mimi Parker — along with a rotating cast of bassists — led the beloved indie rock band Low. Over the course of 13 albums the Duluth, Minnesota minimalists were carried by

transcendent songs and the twined voices of Sparhawk and

Parker. Even as Sparhawk occasionally struggled — with mental breakdowns and drug issues — Parker held things together and the band persevered, as its music and career blossomed.

“We were lucky, we had an ideal trajectory,” says Sparhawk of the group. “We were hustling the whole time but made just enough to continue doing it. We got to evolve, honed in on a creative freedom that was still anchored in the way we sang and the way we wrote. That gave us confidence and we just kept growing. We were playing our biggest shows at the very end.”

That end came in November of 2022, when Parker lost her two-year battle with ovarian cancer, leaving behind Sparhawk and their children, Hollis and Cyrus. The outpouring that fol- lowed Parker’s passing — from friends, fans and fellow musi- cians — sustained Sparhawk as he dealt with his grief over the loss of his “Mim”.

“Tve had thousands of affirmations from people acknowl-

edging their love for Mim, for the band, for what we did >

Arturo Solorio

Keeping a Low profile: (left) Alan Sparhawk with his wife Mimi Parker, Duluth, 2021; (right) Sparhawk in September 2024: “lam always eager to jump off the cliff and see where! land.”

”

< and what we meant to them,” says Sparhawk. have been exciting, or at least hopeful.” “As overwhelming as it would be to try to fully com- In summer of 2023, Sparhawk began work- prehend that, it’s incredibly beautiful, At-the-same ing on a brace of electronic tracks, using a drum time, there’s no way you can hold it or claim it be- machine, synths and HeliCon Voice Tone pedal. cause it was the music... it was something that went “I was kind of messing around, just ex- through us, through Mim and me. It was an honour “ via PT , perimenting with some tools I had,” to be a conduit.” MH re Ta i he says. “The songs were different As the thought lingers, Sparhawk sighs softly: Wa enough that I could step into them

“Like I say, I was really lucky.” RGR) without connotation, but also simple

Hea CAN and familiar enough that I could still PS EARLY NING, A COUPLE OF HOURS BEFORE [jiAMHi i) i - Feat recognise things coming out of me showtime, and with soundcheck complete, Sparhawk is laid } Mil i ‘fl ] (i HMM) «= that were valid.”

out on a leather couch backstage at the Lodge Room. At 56, [Rie Hi it i Given Sparhawk’s affection for Neil

he’s remarkably fit, a sinewy figure with long blond ! LUAU | Young (see sidebar over page) it’s tempt- curls in a pink hooded sweatshirt and brown over- a > Ta Mla | ing to draw parallels to Young’s 1983 alls. He’s just a few dates into a West Coast tour ey album Trans, where he similarly al- — backed by his son Cyrus on bass and frequent See tered his voice and engaged in outré collaborator Eric Pollard on drums — in support sonic experiments, inspired by his cer- of his first post-Low project, a solo album called ebral palsy-stricken son Ben’s use of computers White Roses, My God, released last fall. to communicate.

Rather than the sombre meditation that might Instead, Sparhawk points to the work of US have been expected, Sparhawk instead delivered a hyperpop duo 100 Gecs as a clearer touchstone strange, beguiling collection of electro-pop songs ; for White Roses. “I realised what I was _that turned his rich baritone into an unrecognis- doing was similar to the perversity of $ able, pitch-shifted mutation. fey = what 100 Gecs do,” he says. “The first

“After losing Mim, there was a moment where I . ae time I heard them a few years back I - wondered, W That is my voice?” says Sparhawk, play- rd had a really adverse reaction to it. I re- ing with the beads of his necklace. “There was a str uggle to Z = : member being like, What the hell are

ing and feel right. When you sing, it goes from your upper B 5 2 these kids doing nowadays? conscious all the way deep down into your core. The difference 1%, : s “But that’s usually a pretty good was not having Mim there any more. There was something SZ sign that something’s probably pretty

Alamy, a ja PhotoCo, Nathan Keay

about hearing a different sound coming out of me that might un) VYXNBZS forward-thinking and really good. I

52 MOJO

remember coming back around to their music and feeling like, Wait a minute — OK, I see what’s going on here.”

Sparhawk felt the same as he evolved the White Roses material — with the help of producer Nat Harvie — and decided to move ahead with the decidedly challenging project as a solo release: “When you’re ina studio and something happens that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you have to respect that.”

At the Lodge Room, Sparhawk kicks off the show with White Roses opener Get Still, and he spends the next 30 minutes perform- ing the bulk of the album, a barrage of skittering beats and melodic drones. “The electronic stuff’s pretty exciting to do live,” he says. “Tt’s definitely put me into new territory.”

It’s new territory in terms of his physical performance, too. Live, Sparhawk begins each song by triggering samples, then grabs the microphone and stalks the stage like a hip-hop MC, whipping his hoodie off and waving it in the air, as his processed voice vaults upwards toward the ven-

cause he just doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks. He does what he wants to do. He’s fearless in that way.”

In late 2022, just a few weeks after Parker’s passing, Sparhawk made his return to the stage, performing an epic, cathartic ver- sion of Low’s When I Go Deaf with Trampled By Turtles at a gig in Minneapolis. Then, in the summer of 2023, the band invited a struggling Sparhawk to join them on the road, mostly to hang out. “Everything was so crazy at that time for him, I can’t even imagine how crazy,” recalled Simonett. “We just said, Hey man, you want to get out of town for a bit? We had an extra bunk on the bus and he came out on tour. It’s like, No pressure, but if you want to play some songs with us, that’d be great.”

At the time, Trampled By Turtles were serving as the opening act on the country-roots Outlaw Music Festival Tour, headlined by Wil- lie Nelson. “It was somewhat far away from Low’s general demo- graphic,” says Simonett. “But Al would come out each night and do

[Low’s] Days Like These with us,

ue’s gilt ceiling. “Being on the mike without an instrument is different,” he says.

“After losing Mim, there

and it would totally knock people out. He’d just leave the audience ina hushed silence.”

“All the years I was on-stage, I was playing an instrument and some-

was a moment where

Last fall, the Turtles asked Sparhawk to come to Pachyderm

times singing. But now I have a deeper understanding of what it

I wondered, What 1s my

Studios, a few hours south of Du-

means to be singing completely. You have nothing to hide behind.

voice? ‘here was a struggle

luth, to cut a track together, part of a series of recordings they’d been making with various musi-

The vulnerability of that demands

to sing and feel right.”

cal pals. Just before the session,

that you either jump off the cliff or not. I’m always eager to jump off the cliff and see where I land.”

ALAN SPARHAWK

Simonett got an e-mail from Sparhawk with a handful of new

demo recordings. “I asked him,

If some critics were vexed — albeit understanding in their reviews, given the circumstances — by White Roses, My God, the audience at the Lodge seems genuinely enthusiastic. They lap up the mesmeric grooves, cheering loudly as each song ends.

“Most people that come to the show have probably heard the new material and know I’m going to do that stuff — so it’s not quite as much of a shock as sometimes I wish it was,” Sparhawk says, chuck- ling. “In terms of the audience, there’s a loyalty to Low and they want to show appreciation to the band and to me, so they’re poet forgiving. For the time being, I’m kind of getting away with it.”

ETTING ASIDE THE WHITE ROSES MATERIAL,

Sparhawk straps on his guitar and begins to lock in with Cyrus

and Pollard, as they play though a selection of odds and ends from his discography, including tracks by his Retribution Gospel Choir — a noisier alt-rock side-project active between 2008 and 2013 —and several tunes from his forthcoming album, an organic- sounding collaboration with Minnesota folk-bluegrass combo Trampled By Turtles that a number of Low fans will greet with sighs of relief.

The relationship between Sparhawk and the band goes back some 20 years. “He’s been a good friend for a long time, and somewhat of a mentor too,” says Trampled By Turtles founder Dave Simon-

t. “Growing up in Duluth, Alan was this indie rock hero. And Low was like this mystical thing to us.”

Early in Trampled By Turtles’ career, the rag- tag combo were struggling on the road, when Low tapped them to open a pair of California dates at the last minute. “Al just invited us to hop on the bill with- out telling anybody, as we found out later,” laughs Si- monett. “We were a real hippy bluegrass band at that point, playing to this cool indie crowd. I think it was just weird enough that it actually worked.

“Tt was a moment of generosity from Al. He’s just like, ‘Well, you’re from Duluth. Let me get you on-

While we’re there, do you think you could try maybe three or four songs?” recalls Sparhawk. “May- be it'll turn into something.”

The quick two-day session would evolve into a nine-track Sparhawk album that Sub Pop will release on May 30, titled simply, With Trampled By Turtles. “The diversion for me in this project is that it’s going so back to real instrumentation,” says Sparhawk. “It’s very much just us standing around in a circle play ing. In some ways it’s sort of what I’ve always been doing live, but it’s primarily an acoustic record — acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, mandolin, banjo, violin.”

As Simonett notes, “there was no rehearsal or pre-production. The first time we played these songs together was in the studio. It was flying by the seat of your pants, which is how we normally re- cord anyway. At the time, none of us really knew it was going to bea record, so there was no pressure.”

The Sparhawky Turtles album offers a stark counterpoint, or per- haps a perfect complement, to White Roses, My God. “It’s conjecture on my part, but he made this super electronic album and now he’s

made this totally live acoustic album,” says Simonett. “Maybe those are just parts of ‘the same whole. But that’s one of the things that >

stage. It doesn’t matter what you sound like.’

Low end theory: (from left) I realised one of the reasons Al’s so cool is be-

Parker, Matt Livingston and Sparhawk jam in the band’s home basement studio, Duluth, Minnesota, January 24, 2007.

MOJO 53

keeps Al relevant and keeps him exciting for me as a fan — you never know what the hell he’s going to put out next. There’s no rules with him. And that’s rare.”

Simonett recalls one particularly heavy moment during the ses- sion, during the recording of Screaming Song — a slow-building musical panic attack — where the power of Sparhawk’s performance left the entire band in tears.

“I don’t know what was going on inside his mind when he did that, or what he went through when he lost his wife,” says Simonett. “But from my point of view, every time I’ve ever done anything with Al it’s always been that intense and beautiful. Everything he does, he’s all the way in.”

NE OF THE ENDEARING QUALITIES OF LOW WAS

the deep personal connection between Parker and

Sparhawk. The couple first met in grade school, eventually wed and developed a career and a family together. “The marriage is basically the band,” as Parker told MOJO in 2021.

For Sparhawk, music continues to be a blood affair. His 24-year- old daughter Hollis contributed vocals to his last two albums, “and she’s a really beautiful songwriter too,” notes Sparhawk. In addition to backing him in the studio and on-stage, 20-year-old son Cyrus and Sparhawk play in a dance-funk group together back in Minnesota.

“Every parent hopes that their kids might be interested in the

| ] S / | / thing they love so they can share that knowledge or that common

experience,” says Sparhawk. “It’s something that can make your

THREE ECLECTIC TEAM-UPS language and relationship with each other deeper.” KEEPING ALAN SPARHAWK BUSY. From the start, Parker and Sparhawk pointed their children to

WITH TRAMPLED BY TURTLES

There’s talk of the latest Sparhawk incarnation hitting the road fora series of summer festival dates, or potentially a full-scale tour. “I’m not sure what that'll look like yet,” says Sparhawk. “It could be me opening for those guys and them joining me for part of the set. Or me playing with them and then they'd take over the show. We’re still figuring it out, but we’re hoping to make it happen.”

DERECHO RHYTHM SECTION

A four-piece combo featuring Sparhawk’s son Cyrus, launched in 2021, promising “a Lake Superior groove you can dance to”. “Originally, Cyrus wrote a bunch of funk jams,

and since then we've done some collaborative stuff too,” notes Sparhawk of the project that draws inspiration from

the work of Curtis Mayfield, Funkadelic and Roy Ayers. The group has already made several recordings, with singles and remixes available on Bandcamp.

TIRED E'YE'S

Sparhawkis alsoa member of this Neil Young covers band. Led bya group of Minnesota music vets - including members of Ol’ Yeller, Lazer Bear and Golden Smog - they dig deep into the darker corners of the catalogue. “Wetend to play for hours,” chuckles Sparhawk.

music. “We had records playing around the house and we had them

“It's areal band, it’s loud and take piano lessons and all that,” he says. “At a certain point I realised 4 sgot thatslack-y Crazy Horse that if I pushed too hard that the kids might resist it. It had to be thing going on, whichis alot 3 i “a Sifinasparhankealsobeen something they came to on their own.

moonlighting in Ween tribute Not long after that, Cyrus came to his father with a bass in hand.

band, Wandering Eye. “He said, ‘Hey, can you show me a couple songs?’ And he started coming to me with things by Curtis Mayfield and Parliament. ’m like, Oh, Jeez, I guess I need to figure these out.”

And are the Sparhawk children fans of Low?

“T don’t know that they ever came around to saying, ‘I really like your music.’ My daughter likes music that’s sort of adjacent to Low,” Sparhawk says, laughing. “So I think she might appreciate what we did. But Cyrus is more into R&B and hip-hop.”

As he says this, Cyrus pops his head into the dressing room, nods wordlessly, then departs. “He’s very much a second child, you know?” says Sparhawk. “The world can be swirling and crashing around him, and he’s very chill. He doesn’t have the inclination to dominate the air of every room, like I had when I was younger, or probably his sister did when she was younger. He’s very anchoring for me. I’m definitely a lot less anxious on tour than I used to be.”

Sparhawk and his son plan to spend much of 2025 together on the road, including an upcoming tour of the UK and Europe, where

Low achieved its greatest acclaim.

“We had the biggest crowds and best acceptance in the UK. I’m not sure why, though you could point to a few specific things,” he says, noting the vocal support of DJ John Peel, as well as Radio- head’s Thom Yorke. “Also, there might be a subliminal element too, because Low was very influenced by British bands — Joy Divi-

The UK press were happy to champion Lov, “this little band who were kind of underdogs,” says Sparhawk. It seemed exotic that they were from a small town in Minnesota’s Iron Range, his- toric home of Bob Dylan, “And the fact that Mim and I were Mor- mon was unusual too. They thought that was interesting, whereas in the States it’d be like, ‘We’re not writing anything about a reli-

NN gious band’ — which we weren’t. In Europe and the UK, that was 5 ma ‘a Wicsniie i Seach nah fascinating, whereas in America it was dismissed.” ays like these: (from top) Sparhaw & : (far right) in the studio with Trampled By More than 30 years since Sparhawk started on the Lice gt et Abie pose heat GA road, the economics of indie rock have changed dra- axhaug and Dave Carroll; : : : = Rhythm Section (from left) Al Church, matically. At the moment, he’s still trying to figure out

J Sparhawk, Cyrus and Hollis; Tired Eyes (from left) Rich Mattson, Kraig Johnson, Glen Mattson and Sparhawk.

sion and The Cure, and even the early minimalist shoegaze stuff.” ,

ooper Baumgartner (2), Alexa Viscius, Arturo Solorio

oO

Fully charged: (left) Sparhawk on-stage at the Lodge Room, LA, January 2025 - “The electronic stuff’s pretty exciting to do live”; (right) Sparhawk on-stage with Trampled By Turtles’ Dave Carroll, July 2023.

whether it will be feasible to bring a drummer to Europe for the spring tour.

“I’m in kind of a weird pro- fessional echelon where I make a

‘Al's So cool because he just doesnt give a shit

the darkness. “But I have to say