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=. Arewe rolling?

Reg Presley RIP, Bill Callahan, Hüsker Dü, Bobby Whitlock, The Men HEN TOWARDS THE end of 1974, The Troggs announce their

12Van Dyke Parks latest comeback single will be a cover of The Beach Boys’ “Good The Beach Boys collaborator 'fesses up Vibrations”, it’s an occasion for much mocking laughterin the " offices of what used to be Melody Maker. Dapper assistant editor 16 Wilko Johnson

Michael Watts, who fancies himselfas a bit ofa wag, wonders to no-one's great amusementifthey should have renamed it “Good Vibrators”, such is the band'sreputation for a certain sauciness. l'm reminded ofthis because of

the sad recent news ofthe death of their lead singer, Reg Presley.

The inimitable guitarist talks about his recently diagnosed cancer, his UK tour plans and his Dr Feelgood glory days

29 Phosphorescent The Troggs then as now are most famous, of course, for their almost The quietly brilliant Matthew Houck cartoonishly lubricious 1966 version of “Wild Thing”, which if nothing else certainly put the ocarina on the musical map. When Hendrix subsequently 28 The House Of Love revisits the song, he turnsit into something orgiastic. By contrast, The Troggs’ Themaking of 1988 classic “Christine” take on it was somehow sniggering, a quick cloakroom wank rather than the 32 David Bowie ecstatic fuck ofJimi’s iteration. They go on to have a succession of similarly

suggestive hits, but are never taken especially seriously. They are often regarded in factas a bit ofa joke. Thisisin part explained by them coming from Andover and not making much of an attempt to disguise their broad West Country accents, which in the opinion of sophisticated toffs like the aforementioned Watts makes them sound like ill-educated yokels. I wonder, however, when Imeet Reg, just as “Good Vibrations” is released, how much it perhaps suits Presley to play up to the part of the vaguely gormless bumpkin.

He's back! We present the definitive review of newalbum The Next Dayand meet The Dame'slatest collaborators

42 Stephen Stills... ...sets the record straight on CSN, among other things

48 The Yardbirds a ur À) Whatever, he turns out to be very funny. He's come up to London it turns out The mighty blues band's life in pictures a d a? mr | ononeofthosenew-fangled high-speed trains, an experience that’s left him à Woo Troaa:R somewhat breathless. “My word, those things don't ’ arf go fast,” he says, in 90 Fela kuti Presley RIP =

wonderment, as if previous journeys to the capital have been made by horse-drawn coach, highwaymena potential menace, and stop-overs atinns along the way where Reg, like some bucolic country squirein an episode of Poldark, would have enjoyed a flagon or two of local

The Nigerian tornado: lover, freedom fighter, Afrobeat pioneer!

56 Edwyn Collins mead, followed by venison pie, a brace of grouse and the amorous attentions ofa bawdy Musical highs of the Orange Juice man serving wench. “We didn’t try toimmertate in any way whatso’er the original,” Reg says of The Troggs’ re-working of “Good Vibrations”. “We wanted to make it diff rent, loik, which "1 — were difficult with a number loik that. It’s very thought out, as it were. It took three months to 61 New Albums record, y know.” What, your version? “Oooo-er, no! Not ours! The original,” Reg wheezes, Including: Low, My Bloody like an asthmatic having a turn. “We knocked ours off after an afternoon in the pub." Valentine, Suede, John Grant, The Troggs’ last big hit had been “Love Is All Around" in 1967. They could badly do with Edwyn Collins — another one now. “Iwrote quite a few hits,” Presley says. “So we've always hada bit of : money coming in [his royalties will go through the roof when Wet Wet Wet’s 1994 cover | Кылы PURINE of “Love Is AllAround” spends 15 weeks at No 1|. But the money’s starting to dwindle now Blue буа Cull, Stephen Stills and I’dlove to have some to investin the stage act." What would he spend it on? “Lights,” he says, making it sound as ifuntil now The Troggs 99 DVD & Film had appeared only on stages illuminated by large candles and a couple of bicycle lamps. “I Bert Jansch, Ken Loach and more thinkthey'd definitely bea help," he goes on, looking forward no doubtto a futurein which

perhaps for the first time the band will be able to see each other onstage. “People expect abit ofashow when you've had a few hits, evenifthey can't

102 Live Kraftwerk, Nick Cave & The Bad

remember what they were until you play them and even then ENAS Seeds, John Murry you can see arf the crowd thought some other bugger did them." 117 Books For more on Reg Presley, see pages 6-7.

Prince Rupert Loewenstein’s

_adventureswithThe Rolling Stones | SUBSCRI BF AN []

118 Not Fade Away

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Hampshire brickie, UFO connoisseur, one true wild thing... A rock'n'roll legend

remembered, by the man who christened him ‘Presley’, KEITH ALTHAM

4 4 "m. NEDAYIN 1965, while I was working at NME, I received a | phone call from Larry Page, who had just fallen out with

ll The Kinks and was looking for a new band to manage. Sw “I’ve discovered another band in Andover,” Page told me. “Гуе named the guitarist Britton, which is nice and butch. The drummer, Ronnie Bond, I’ve named after James, and I’m leaving the bass player with his real name of Pete Staples, as it sounds quite macho. But I have a problem with the vocalist, Reginald Maurice Ball. What do you suggest?"

“Oh, call him Presley,” I suggested flippantly. And so it was that, after seeing the new lineup listed in the NME’s Alleycat column that week, Reg phoned Page to enquire nervously ifhe’d been sacked: who was this new bloke Presley?

I first saw the embryonic Troggs, at their manager’s invitation, ina small hall in Kingston-upon-Thames in 1965. When my wife Maggie and I met them in Page’s flat before the show, they all stood up when she entered the room. I couldn’t help feeling that this slightly roly-poly and friendly figure, who sounded like Walter Gabriel, and his well- mannered group were not exactly bristling with attitude.

Later, though, I watched The Troggs perform to three girls and a dog in the club, and discovered that onstage they had a thunderous sound that propelled Presley to become one of the most loved and unlikely rock stars of the ’6os. Later, they would be hailed as godfathers of garage rockand punk, be venerated by songsmiths like REM, and earn the ecstatic praise of Lester Bangs, who dubbed their music “holy”

and, no doubt chemically assisted, wrote that they were comparable to Marcel Proust

Onstage , he d (Reg thought Marcel Proust was a French

mime artist). That night, they were playing

OCCUDY d Space an eclectic mix of “Louie Louie”, Chuck

Mr SE Berry’s “Jaguar And Thunderbird”, Geno чл? somewhere Washington's “Hi Hi Hazel” and “Ride Your «59, . “70. Pony", some of which turned up later on м, between OZzy their first album, From Nowhere — | The Troggs (1966). Reg became alifelong

at Y uU see 7, Ww “з. Osbourne and friend, and I wrote the effusive sleevenotes

|

, ey c t ш 1 $a c. Ж Y A 7. o the follow-up LP, Trogglodynamite, ari d d urzel although I failed to see any of Proust's deep E. 99 philosophical truths behind his lyrics like,

“РІ buy you ап island out in the sea” (where all the bestislands aresituated), or *My lady owns an oil well/Just one look and you can tell."

The band sounded good and solid onstage, but Reg still struck me as too polite to Бе the mean and moody rock star he was doing his best to RegPresley,left, and The imitate. That changed with the powerchords which announced their Troggs, with Sidney Brent, version of “Wild Thing”. Reg summoned up a threatening vocal to do owner of London’s Таке 6 ; | ; я : à : И boutique, Wardour Street; justice to Chip Taylor’s song: ifyou didn’t know him, it could be May 27,1966 construed as dirty and dangerous.

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 7

MIRRORPIX

. InMay1966, "Wild Thing" entered the NME charts at No 24, and Ronnie Bond cycled over to where Presley was working in Andover. “I were halfway up a ladder doing some brick work on a chimney," he remembered, “апа I threw down my trowel and told the lads to share out my tools. I never went back." Soon, “Wild Thing" would climb to No 2; by July, it was No1in America.

My gift of Reg's surname became something of an albatross for him over the years. Paul McCartney teasingly referred to himas “Reg Trogg" whenever they met, while Mick Jagger left more than one message on the NME switchboard that *Reg Parsley from The Clogs" had rung for me.

Presley was responsible for plenty of comedy himself, most notoriously the “Troggs Tapes”, that elevated a recording studio argument into a music business legend and, for a while, threatened to be a more potent band legacy than The Troggs' frequently visceral and brilliant music. A chance meeting with Bob Dylan іп a recording studio added to the legend, as Presley sat on а stool with his bass guitar in an adjoining studio.

*How long have you been playing bass, Reg?" asked Dylan.

"All fucking afternoon," responded Presley, exasperated.

Presley's Hampshire burr could also lead to a few misunderstandings over his interest in extra-terrestrial phenomena. A few years ago, he seemed to ask me what I would thinkifhe were to open a hole under the "sinks".

“Something blocking the sink, Reg?" I enquired politely.

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“Noooo, not the sink - the bastard Sphinx,” he grimaced. Presley had apparently found an archaeologist who'd tapped into the Sphinx’s paw with an audio hammer in Egypt and discovered a hollowed-out chamber containing a flying saucer. Presley had concluded the expedition to locate the UFO would require funding and, as he knew I hada close working relationship with Sting (The Troggs played at his wedding to Trudie Styler), perhaps Га like to approach him for a few quid?

Although *Wild Thing" wasa hymn to rugged sexuality, and later hits like “I Can't Control Myself”, “Night Of The Long Grass", "Any Way That You Want Me" and "Give It To Me" implied something similar, Presley was mostly saucy rather than predatory. He often looked more comfortable performing gentler self-penned hits like *With A Girl Like You" and *Love Is All Around" (a No 5 hit in 1967, that would make Presley a cool million 27 years later, when Wet Wet Wet's cover stayed at No 1 intheUK for 15 weeks), even though he could ham itup when it came to heavy metallike the best ofthem. Onstage, he could occupy a space somewhere between Ozzy Osbourne and a Wurzel. As a consequence, it was often easy to think of Presley assomething ofa country bumpkin - until you met him and discovered his street savvy, enthusiasm, inquisitive nature and good-humoured intent, plus the infectious laugh that ensured you wound up laughing with him and not at him. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He was a generous and kind-hearted soul.

Now, he has hopefully found the answers he was always searching for. Thetruth is out there somewhere with him and his flying saucers, corn circles and abductees, wagging his finger at us sceptics and cackling, “Oi told you so – oi told you the bastards were out here — you big prannies..."

& | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

Therecalcitrant

Bill Callahan

THE SMOG WHISPERER

How a tenacious new filmmaker got under

the skin of BILL CALLAHAN...

4 A ` VER HIS 24-year recording career, i @ J William Rahr Callahan has gone ; Ў from making dissonant lo-fi аге to become one ofthe most elegant, idiosyncratic voices in Americana. With 2007's Woke On A Whaleheart, he dropped the name Smog to work as Bill Callahan, a gesture understandably, but mistakenly, interpreted as a move toward a more autobiographical approach. If there's been one constant over the past two decades, it's that Callahan doesn't reveal too much in songs orinterviews, which (speaking from experience) can be slightly harrowing. Surely you could think of easier subjects for your debut documentary; not Hanly Banks, a young Texas-born, New York- based filmmaker who has just self- released Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film with the help of fan-funding solicited through the Kickstarter website. How do you get such a private person to agree to this intrusion? “I sent a 20-word email to him through |his label] Drag City,” she tells Uncut. Simple. Callahan agreed, and Banks arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, in June 2011 to follow the tour for his last LP, Apocalypse, over a fortnight in two spells. Banks’ approach may prove instructive. “Гатеаа one feature about him, and seen him perform once,” she recalls. “Other than that, I was only operating under the knowledge of the songs. Reading that one article made me kind of sick tomy stomach, so Ijust decided to stop while I was ahead — Imadea point to blindfold myselfto extraneous information inasituation where it was my discovery that mattered.” The film opens with Callahan reading from an article about himself: “The New York Times says...

The New York Times says...” The wry repetition becomes funny, and could be taken asa remark on the futility of trying to impose a narrative on his work, though self-referential is hardly his style.

Nor Banks’; her role is only perceptible in the awed shots of vast, rural America through the van window, and in how her self-described "terrible" interview style elicited Callahaninto making quite lovely statements on his relationship with music. “A lot of [the interviews were] just him by himself speaking into a mic with a list of my handwritten questions,” admits Banks. “Working alone rings true to him.”

“T think when I'm performing live it's just the realest me there is," Callahan says at one point. Fittingly, the majority of the film shows him performing, mostly songs from Apocalypse, though touching, personal moments abound. “Lately, my favourite partis where he adjusts his mic stand just before playing ‘Say Valley Maker," says Banks. “He’s wondering aloud why it took him until the end of his set to do that. Talk about a metaphor.”

Prior to that moment, Callahan’s voice plays over footage of him soundchecking ata festival. "What's happening in my life, or I overhear a conversation, or something about a friend, or something I read; those things show me what т thinking. They tell me whatIamat that moment. That's

something that I’m constantly trying to define, and that's why Imakearecord, because thatsaysit." By eschewing the tide of narrative, Banks' film lets Callahan'struth bob to thesurface. LAURA SNAPES

A DVD of Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film will bereleased on Drag City later this year

ALAN REEVELL

Land Speed

Record Store!

"NF EF YOU WERE one of the few people in Minneapolis to feel the first stirrings of punk Jl. rockin the mid-1970s, you would have been going to see the Suicide Commandos and The Flamin’ Oh’s. And the place you would have been going to see them, the Midwest’s first node on the emerging US punk rock underground network, wasa repurposed former steak restaurant called The Longhorn. It was here, loading in their equipment early in 1979, that Terry Katzman first met Hüsker Dü, a new band who had

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impressed him on the local scene. ГЕ? | |

Katzman, a Minneapolitan record \ 4 AN X SKE "M together. “I have Hiisker Dü's work were spent, developmentally store guy and early punk rock MA | strong relationships speaking, “in hyperdrive", a period which evangelist, helped Grant Hart >> with them,” he says. culminated in their return to Minneapolis in move some kit, and enthused “They might not see August 1981 after a confidence-building trek about their band. Hart said, “Why eye to eye with each around the country. The band’s rapid first set on

don’t you come and meet our guitar player, Bob [Mould]?” and an enduring friendship was born. In 1987, shortly before the band left for their disastrous final tour, they played Terry’s wedding reception. “Luckily my wife was a fan,” he says. “Though not as big a fan as me...”

Katzman became the band's soundman, later forming Reflex Records to put out the first Hüsker Düsingle, 1980's “Statues”/“Amusement”, a 45 which is now being reissued for Record Store Day (with previously unreleased demos "Writer's Cramp” and "Let's Go Die") by Numero Group. It's the kind of high-quality archival release that the band's early cataloguerichly warrants, but which amixture oflegal complication and bitter personal disagreement has hitherto prevented. Terry has spent five years trying to put something

FromBlow-Up to jazz-funk... the versatile

3 Richard Hewson

other but I see eye to eye with all of them, which has helped with this project.”

The Numero release captures a flavour of Htisker Diias a group moving fast both stylistically and physically. 1979 tracks like “Writer’s Cramp” find the band in a mode they returned to later, vibrant guitar pop. By the time of the fractionally later "Statues", however, the band are doing what Bob Mould described to me last year as an “almost Factory Records kind ofthing".

"Tliked their ability to combine real pop elements with a harder-driving abrasive outlook, plus their focus on speed,” says Terry. “It wasn't like it was later, but they were still a pretty quick band. It was a developmental time. Their sound hadn't crystallised yet."

As Terry remembers it, the first 18 months of

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>» Most famous for his string arrangements on The Beatles’ “Let It Be" and “The Long And Winding Road”, Richard Hewson started out with the orchestration for Antonioni's Blow-Up soundtrack, then various projects for Apple: Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were The Days”, James Taylor’s first LP, the aforementioned Beatles songs. Around the same time he also did a string arr. for Nick Drake's “Magic”. Influenced by the success of Hot Butter's "Popcorn" bubblegum synth

theirreturn to town comprised their debut album. 1982's Land Speed Record. Among his 100 hours oflive Dü tapes from 1979-1983, Terry also has the second set, and would love to help issue a definitive document of both. Another moot project would twin a CD of demos with a disc of rarities — the 25 songs the band played live but never recorded. Even the glacial speed of legal negotiations can't dampen Terry's enthusiasm for this period of Hüsker Dü's transformation: "Nobody could touch them. For a while that was their mission — to see how many songs they could play in 35 minutes." JOHN ROBINSON

"Amusement", "Statues", "Writer's Cramp" and "Let's Go Die" are released in a double 7" pack by Numero Group on Record Store Day, April 20

NGING... RICHARD HEWSON

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instrumental, he wrote and - for the most part -recorded the RAH Band's1977 hit"The Crunch" inhis bedroomin Putney. He would have another hit in1985 with the jazz-funk-tinged "Clouds Across The Moon”, — ЛАЙТ ГЕ The Beatles’ “Let lt Be” and “The Long And Winding Road”, Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were The Days”, Fleetwood Mac’s Mystery To Me, Supertramp’s Crisis? What Crisis?, Kiki Dee’s “I’ve Got The Music In Me", Cliff Richard’s “Devil Woman”. PHILKING

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | Ө

COCO CARMEL, DENEE PETRACEK

A QUICK ONE >» Another Uncut Music Guide hits UK shopsonMarch14. Thisone(No14!)is dedicatedtoThe | Smithsandfeatures 0 [ 0 | theusualmix of archive NME and ERN MelodyMaker interviews and B O BBY WHIT LO C K , forensicnewreviews C | d H ° › bythe Uncutteam. apton an arrison S Plus, we'vetackled keyboardist of choice, Se а | soloalbumandmade finally returns to | acomprehensive А survey of Johnny the spotlight... Marr's post-Smiths career. WLENTY MIGHT RECOGNISE BOBBY Bobby Whitlock with » Bobby Whitlock asa crucial histrusty Hammond Lis > Moregoodstuff member of Derek & The E hasbeenannounced Dominos, as the keyboardist- a Herd There's Will forthe End OfThe guitarist-singer who's all over George "LIE heacknowledges | bought mycontract back from 'em, paid Roadfestival(Aug Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Far E M aman “were my for it out of my own pocket.” ib ise fewer, though, know the couple of strong point”. Still performing with his wife CoCo cds David TN solo records Whitlock made right after It could have been far different had he Carmel and gratified by the acclaim for his &StVi с Bl жы

those classics, again іп the company of Harrison, Eric Clapton and several Dominos. They'll finally get their due on this spring's Light In The Attic comp,

followed Atlantic producers Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler's plan “to do it with NY musicians. I wouldn't even get to play on my own record!” Instead Whitlock cut his

recent cathartic autobiography, Whitlock takes the records’ belated CD debutin

philosophical stride. Back in the early ’7os,

he feels, “They should havejust released

Belle&Sebastian and Sigur Résas headliners. Also newly confirmed:

Where There’s A Will There’s A Way, self-titled debut with contributions by both of those records as a double, but they MarkMulcahy, which puts both 72 albums onto one CD. Harrison, Clapton, Radle, Delaney & didn't. Nobody saw that they completed a CaitlinRose,

Ifthe mixture of rock, soul, gospel, blues Bonnie, Jim Gordon, Klaus Voormann, picture ofan era. George, Eric, Delaney & de ча and country is reminiscent of Layla, there’s | Bobby Keys and Jim Price. “Atlantic Bonnie etal — those two records link them we свецу at e a good reason. “My first record would have rejected it, of course," he says. “So I all together.” RICHIE UNTERBERGER EWhite.

been Derek & The Dominos with me singing all the lead, had [Dominos bassist]

» More Bowie,

Carl Radle been able to get ona plane when anyone? How

he said he was going to,” points out n aboutaBBC2docin

Whitlock. *He got tied up with Leon horn Tree In The Garde Заск Home In England May, provisionally Fom Sick & The Dominos’ Layla:w7o0 | from Bobby Whitlock 1972 titledFive Years,

[Russell]. The Dominos, had they stayed

together, would’ve gone that direction.” And what was that direction? “I’ve

heard that all my career,” he laughs from

After the anguish of Layla's title song, this poignant Whitlock soul- folk ballad brings the album to a close

Another of Whitlock's "pretty songs" (as he calls them), sung with searing passion and with mournful horns that

focusingonthe Dame'sactivitiesin 1971,1975,1977,

À i ST : " 1980and1983?Or his Austin, Texas horse farm. “Every onasimilarly lovelorn grace note. could've come straight from an All maybeParlophone's direction. I mean, the Layla album, it went Things Must Pass arrangement. 4othanniversary everywhere. But it was right down the Let it Down remasterof Aladdin

middle of the road the whole time it was going everywhere." The remake of “Tell The Truth", on Whitlock's Raw Velvet, naturally echoes the hardest-rocking Dominos tunes, though those who loved his *Thorn Tree In The Garden" on Layla will find plenty ofthe pretty, folky ballads

from George Harrison's

All Things Must Pass 1970

A wistful heavy rocker, changed from slow to midtempo with a wailing chorus (sung by Bobby, Harrison/ Clapton) at Whitlock's suggestion.

ep

from Пау & Bonnie’ sOn

Tour With Eric Clapton1970

Whitlock co-wrote and played keys onthis rabble-rousing blue-eyed soul duet, remade for his solo debut.

Sane, out April15?

» Bruce Springsteen's nextalbummight plausiblybea country project. "Awhileback,lcuta countryrecordand putitaside,” hetold

grammy.com. “l returnedtoita coupleofmonths agoandthought, ‘Whataml going todonext?”” His long-promised

yee аан UNCUT AT THE GREAT ESCAPE

"1 |,

Confirmed for Brighton: PHOSPHORESCENT, MIKAL CRONIN, WOODS, ALLAH-LAS...

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b — autobiography » 1 | | — J remainsawork-in-

(D e” y : ^ It'sthattime of year again. Between MIKAL CRONIN N (pictured left) and progress, though:

4 XE == : May 16 and 18, Uncut's operational WHITE F FENC E; E; underground psych "Theredoesn'tseem ۵ focus shifts to Brighton, where legends W 5; chiming LA tobeanurgency | ч КА, Ww $ we'll be curating a stage at the revivalists LAH-LAS; and toreturntoitat ^ Pm Н extravaganza of new music that is The eu ia sanswerto the Fleet Foxes, themoment, К Great Escape Festival. This year, our | |. Not bad, eh?

>» Visituncut.co.uk formorenews, plus regularblogs, reviewsandmore-or- lessseminal Uncut archive features.

selection of performers will include Манка Houck’ s marvellous HORES IT (interviewed + nies p on page е 22); two talented accomplices of Ty Segall,

The Great Escape takes place at venues across Brighton, May 16-18. Early Bird tickets for the whole festival cost£45. More info: www.escapegreat.com

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« X INCE RELEASING 2011’s Leave Home, b. & ariotous mix of punk and space rock, LJ Brooklyn's The Men have undergone a dramatic transformation. It began with 2012's Open Your Heart, which introduced country, doo-wop and surfinto the band's music, and continues with their latest album, New Moon, a sort of psychedelic country set that starts with piano and acoustic guitar on the jangly, Big Star-like “Open The Door”. “Itis a pretty large departure,” admits guitarist Nick Chiericozzi. “That song is a new introduction as we're a different band now. Ben [Greenberg] and Kevin [Faulkner] joined and we all write together, sothat changes the dynamic. We were thinking about The Beach Boys and мм

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Pw. LL Ever-evolving Brooklyn fer rockers The Men:Ben ‚ Greenberg (centre) and Nick ` | Chiericozzi(secondright) cw S7 B

26

upstairs, and that became the centre of operations.”

The album was produced by Greenberg, who joined as full-time bassist along with Faulkner, the band’s photographer and lap steel player. “Being outside the city with no cellphone access was good,” says Greenberg of their Big Indian stint. “There was freedom but also limitations, so if something broke we just had to deal with it. The beauty of the situation is that it puts so many things out of your hands. It’s about balancing the freedom and riding roughneck at the same time. It was very loose but we also worked 20-hour days for two weeks.”

This balance between being comfortable, but not so comfortable they stagnate, has ensured The Men retain their edge

some sing-songy Neil Young stuff, and going for a come-on-in, check-it-out vibe. The rest of the LP goes through the full spectrum of emotions.” Indeed it does, as the album moves through country-blues (“Half Angel Half Light”), sludge rock (“I Saw Her Face”), winsome country (“High And Lonesome”), Stooges thrash metal (“The Brass”), swampy CCR choogle (“Birdsong”) and Boredoms-style monster jam (“Supermoon”) while maintaining adownhome (but very loud) atmosphere, due to relaxed production and front-porch harmonies. “We rented a house upstate in Big Indian and I threw every instrument I own in the van,” says Chiericozzi. “We put the eight-track

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SACRED BONES, 2011 Deliriously in-your- i grillheavy rocker,

combining sludge and space rock with deft nods to Spacemen 3, the Ramones and Sonic Youth.

“They remind me of the energy NY bands had when Sonic Youth started out. Totally fierce... rocking out.” Lee В |

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SACREDBONES, 2012 A shiftin tempo, as country influences start to come out ("Candy") and the aggressive hardcore is tempered by a cheerier outlook.

С f 621 19

even as they evolve (*We printed the lyrics sheet in this one for the first time," notes Chiericozzi proudly). The journey from hardcore to harmony is one taken by others in the past - The Replacements are one comparison, but more apt might be the Meat Puppets - and The Men are happy to acknowledge their debts. Musical references abound in their lyrics, titles and melodies, but playfully and always with creative intent. “That comes from the fact most things have

been done before,” admits Chiericozzi.

“Sure, we rip stuff off, but we also want to hear everyone’s personalities and contributions, and we hope there's a soundin there that is unique, as well." PETER WATTS

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- ~~ butconsistent in

! soundand spirit, New Moon

. sees The Men take on two new

ı members and further mix

| cosmic country with punk,

| sludge, spacerock and more.

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As Ty Segall takes a well-earned breather, his bassist steps back into the spotlight with a bunch of sunkissed garage pop songs every bitas good.

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3 CHAPERONE

The flipside of Low’s The Invisible Way. Alan Sparhawk initiates two mighty 20-minute jams, including a seismic joust with Nels Cline.

РЕ агты Ass Im.

Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze MATADOR

“There was a time in my life when they thought

I was all talk...” Vile

ups the languid braggadocio and insidious loops on an outstanding fifth album.

MESSENGER

Haw PARADISE OF BACHELORS North Carolina's prolific MC Taylor further honeshis soulful, creative take on American musical traditions. His best yet, possibly.

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Neil covers Broooooce, with Nils Lofgren onsynth. Uncut eats itself.

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UNCLE ACID & 1 Mind Control RISE ABOVE

Heroically galumphing stoner rock, much in the vein of early Sabbath and Queens Of

The Stone Age.

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THEKNIFE

Shaking The Habitual rasip

Sprawling gothic fantasia from Stockholm. Includes incredibly-tooled techno-pop, and about 20 minutes of ambient hum.

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COLIN STETSON New History Warfare Vol 3: To See More Light CONSTELLATION

Therad saxophonist from Bon lver returns, with his fearsome foghorn blasts this time

augmented by Justin Vernon.

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Wavy Heat wiLbsAGES A clutch of new releases from cosmic outlier NayNay Shineywater, ex-Brightblack Morning Light, crowned by this drone cassette featuring Colm О Cíosóig of MBV.

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CIRRV HAYNES

Paul’s Not Home THIRDMAN

Superbly juvenile ramalam from Jack White andthe Butthole Surfers frontman. Gibby Haynes is 55 years old.

Forregular updates, check our blogs at www.uncut.co.uk and follow @JohnRMulvey on Twitter

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 11

AARON FARLEY

AN AUDIENCE WITH..

Van Dyke

Parks

The dapper songwriter, arranger and Beach Boys collaborator discusses Smile, pocket squares, Twin Peaks and why he turned down an offer to join The Byrds

— 1 ith his distinguished Southern drawl and neat moustache, Van Dyke Parks can appear more likea gentleman Confederate officer than a venerated musician who has worked with Joanna Newsom, Tim Buckley, Randy Newman, Richard Thompson, Rufus Wainwright and, of course, Skrillex.

Although he boasts one of the greatest contact books in music,

Parks is still best known for his work with The Beach Boys. In 1966, Brian Wilson asked Parks - a child actor and trained musician - to write lyrics for Smile. And as well as his own albums, like 1967's Song Cycle, there's the other stuff — children's books, soundtracks, music videos, acting... *Ihave days off, but Iswearto youl am unsettled,” he admits. “I like to work all the time, on music." Despite that, he’s happy to spend an hour ona hot day in California answering questions from fans and peers. “Listen to the wisdom ofa fool,” he laughs. “Let’s do this.”

STAR QUESTION

Your inventive and beautiful arrangements are the stuff of legend. Do you havea preference, arranging and composing, or writing lyrics? Jonathan Wilson Absolutely arranging. Itisaless abstract process. I love both of those arenas but lyric writing will offera man of great certainty the ability to paint himself into a corner. It always feels life-threatening. I approach an album as a life-defining moment and I have to be careful because it’s like throwing raw meat to the dogs. It's a humiliating, generous, sacrificial gesture. You want to do something beautiful that will not inspire animosity but levity and enlightenment.

Do you still get royalties from Disney for arranging *The Bare Necessities?"

Sarah, Portland

12 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

When I get my royalty cheques Ialways ask my wife, “Are you sticking with me?" And she'll say, “Tm sticking.” And then I tell her, “$2.78.” I did The Jungle Bookin 1963. Iwas frightened to death.

I stood on the podium and the film was projected on a huge screen

in this giant room. A voice came out of this cavernous control room and asked “Are you in the mood?” I didn’t know what he was saying or who he was saying it to. It

was frightening butit wasn’ta complicated arrangement. It changed my life. Г never forget taking that cheque with Mickey Mouse on it to the bank. The teller laughed. She didn’t know how significant it was to me.

How is composing a piece of score different from writing a song, ifitis? And should your pocket square match your socks or your tie?

Joe Henry Joe is one of the dapperest scenesters that I’ve ever met, he is always meticulously assembled. I’ve always

|

Atrue mother of | invention: Van | Dyke Parks today J Ҹ $ >

liked to triangulate vectors, so

they play against each other. I’m talking about socks, handkerchief and tie and ifthe result resembles

a Haitian postcard, it still makes a statement. His question about song versus score, well, a good score issometimes best when it's felt

and not heard, but takes the

same powers of invention. Jerry Goldsmith said, *When you score aman galloping across the screen, youscore the mind of the man not the hooves ofthe horse." Sometimes it’s valuable for a score not to be heard, while a song has to be heard.

Isittrue you have a brief cameo in Twin Peaks?

Rob Irving, Dundee I’ve never understood that. I was hired to do a small part as an attorney. The director, Graeme Clifford, called and asked me to do it. lwasn’t doing anything else that day, so I said yes. I don’t watch television but I knew that people wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer. I was walking down the street with this script and I had this

Interview: Peter Watts Photograph: Getty Images

incredible sense of power because I knew who did it.

If “Surf’s Up” isn’t the

greatest song you’ve been involved in, whatis?

Jamie Goulding, High

Wycombe

My God, I cannot do that. I can't answer that. I think I’m doing my best work now. I celebrate “Surf’s Up” because so many people interpreted it favourably, but I don’t subscribe to that song, it’s not the nature of my beast. But that song has persuasive power and there’s a lot of heart. It was tremendous work for two very young fellows. Many people listened to that song and ifit made kindness contagious, it

hit the mark. Here’sa E challenge: Van | Dyke, have you written an opera? And if not, I dare you to. It’s something I would love to see and hear. Rufus Wainwright

Well, [don’t know what that term means. There is a difference between ‘opera’, ‘operetta’ and ‘Broadway trash’ but I don't really know what that is. I accept the challenge, but if ‘opera’ means playing to an audience that represents just one per cent

of our population, then I’m notinterested. I don’t want

to play to the tux set, I want to play to the street. Opera has astigma that needs to be

dealt with, but I feel Pm

getting there.

\ “Twas disgusted

: | with the idea of í trying to sing n» À while teenage

EN girls screamed”

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Brian Wilsonand Van Dyke Parks during the making of Smile, 1966; andinset, Parks with brother Carson, left, asthe Steeltown Two, Rouge Et Noir Coffee House, Seal Beach, California, 1961

What wasitlike playing music with your brothers when you were kids? Eliza Carthy I was the youngest of four. I played clarinet, the next played coronet, the next played French horn and the eldest played double-barrel euphonium. We played together in the parlour and music was everywhere. Many hymns take me back there, low church, Methodist tunes, I have an undiminished connection to those musical experiences. Eliza’s family have this encyclopaedic knowledge of folk. Martin Carthy, Eliza’s father, stayed a week at my house once and I didn’t play a note Iwas so frightened. Then on the day he left, I played a piece and waited. Ten minutes later he came down and asked me what it was. I got him! But l'mintimidated by the scope and grandeur of what they bring, the physicality of old rhythms from a pre-industrial age.

Why did you turn down The Byrds when they asked you to join in 1966?

Isabel Serval, Hendon I was disgusted with the idea of trying to sing while teenage girls screamed. I knew the group was going places, but it wasn’t for me. I'd quit the Mothers Of Invention before that. didn’t want to be clapped at. But to disagree isn’t to disrespect, and I respect The Byrds and I respect every one of The Beach Boys. I just didn’t want to beina groupand perform. I wanted to learn in the studio. I was interested in recorded

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES, JASPER DAILEY/PETER REUM COLLECTION

14 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

| music. That's why! didn't go on the road and get laid.

Can you talka little

bitabout your

formaltraining? Bill Frisell

When Iwas nine I

joined the Columbus

Boys Choir and that

immersed mein а:

music. But I had that

at home, watching my

parents dancing to

Fats Waller. That was asinstructive as anything Iwas taught. But my formative education began in 1952. I learned how to breathe, how not to be the centre of attention. I wept over the piano. I went from first-chair clarinet when my feet couldn’t hit the floor to La Bohéme at the Metropolitan Opera. I played a street urchin. I’ve been in music my whole life, and ended up in whatis

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to *Good Vibrations", which cost $64,000. That's one single. That was alot of meditating in the Bentley. The fact Song Cycle cost more than ZZ Top is there were more people playing. I put that money into an orchestra and Warner Bros complained they’d lost money, but I opened the gate for people to overproduce their own records. I made every mistake that could be made but learnt fromit. I’m very pleased with Song Cycle. I’m

“ГЇ never be in the Hall Of Fame, noramIwith the one percent — [mamaverick, unbranded"

considered a lowbrow biz, but Гуе never felt in either world. I’m never going to bein the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, погат I with the one per cent. l'ma maverick, unbranded. l've always made my living doing things beneath the dignity of others.

How did Song Cycle come to cost

so much and was it worth it? Alan Hill, Lancs

It didn’t cost so much, not compared

delighted with its abstraction. Ifyou complete something on that scope at the age of 24, I take my hat off to you. Was it worth it? Without doubt.

How do you feel about the most recent incarnation of Smile?

Matt Lisle, South Croydon I'm happy that there is a commercial use of the songs. I’m happy they finally ate some crow. It did very well asanaudio event. The only thing left

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is for it to be filmic but I have no plans to do anything with Brian.

Why did Frank Zappa call you Pinocchio?

Charles Davies, Maine Well, Pinocchio went off with the bad guys and got in trouble. Zappa hada nickname for everybody. But Icouldn'ttake the lysergic, ah, the intensity of the situation. The music was highly inventive and Frank was immensely gifted.

How did you end up working with dubstep star Skrillex? Roberto, Bari Idida session for Skrillex. It was with over 50 people. I loved it. All Iknowis he phoned me and I said, “Tm sorry, I have no idea who you are.” He said he wasin Belgium and had just played for 350,000 people. I YouTubed him and saw a man onstage pouring beer into a laptop while a huge crowd hadan erection, and jumped in the moshpit. I thought, ‘My God, I don't understand what is happening here’, soIsaid I'd doit. Hesaid, ^Mr Parks, we will destroy the world,” andIthought, ‘Hey man, my ship has come in.’

What was і like playing piano for Ramblin’ Jack Elliott near the whorehouses of Winnemucca, Nevada?

Tom Russell It was so refreshing for me to play for Ramblin’ Jack. I like rusty nails and that’s what he is. He’s at the peak of his powers at, what, 81. I went to one of his cowboy poetry gatherings in Utah. It was surreal. Jack was determined I'd wear a hat. In Texas they say of a charlatan he's “all hat, no cattle", so my motto was “no hat, no bull? and that's howI got on with those cowboys. He'sa hero to them.

Your 1975 album Clang Of The Yankee Reaper was advertised as “the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard”. What's the damnedest thing you’ve ever heard?

Hitch Edwards, Kentucky The damnedest thing I ever heard was when I first stood in front of two speakers and heard a train go from leftto right. That thing called stereo sound, that technical device, I fell in love with stereo. I started mixing my product in quadraphonic because I thought the automobile industry would use it. І square stereo. ©

(C UNCUT.CO.UK

Log onto see who’sin the hot-seat next month and to post your questions!

TRE NEW ano

Song For Zula Tremulous mystery from Matthew Houck’s sixth album under the Phosphorescent flag, all dreamy synths, pedal steel and baroque violins ona tune with a haunting, classical pedigree — Vivaldi or Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’, perhaps?

JOHN FULLBRIGHT Jericho Hailing from Woody Guthrie’s hometown, the 24-year-old Okie’s gravelly, modern-day iterations of the troubadour tradition earned his debut a Grammy nomination as best Americana album last month.

He blows a howling harmonica, too.

LOW Plastic Cup Beguiling minimalism on the opening track from Low’s 10th album, ап accusatory tale of drug tests and pissing in plastic cups (pace Lance Armstrong?), given an understated gravitas by producer Jeff Tweedy.

HISS GOLDEN AESSENGER

Гуе Got A Name For The Newborn Child

Domestic dreams, meek and mild, and hopes of deliverance from the darkness from the prolific MC Taylor, taken from the follow-up to 2011’s Poor Moon. (He doesn’t tell us, but he named his ownson Elijah, in case you were wondering.)

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JIM. A lv IE. є IDidn' t now Til Now Textured layers of echoing keyboards and swirling loops are coupled with a weirdly wonderful and crackling retro cocktail-jazz coda from the My Morning Jacket frontman, who heads into unexpected new territory on his solo debut.

EDWYN COLLI In The NOW An urgent, driving celebration of being alive from the former Orange Juice singer, the vital signs underpinned by the pounding of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook. After nearly losing his life to a brain haemorrhage a few years back, why wouldn't he?

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IT MORIAH

Whi ite Sands

Leaving behind their post-punk and black metal backgrounds, guitarist Jenks Miller, and Heather McEntire – who sounds deliciously like a wilder, younger

Dolly Parton — head for the hills

Matthew Houck aka Phosphorescent

UNCUT

EDWYNCOLL

A

and the new/old weird America onastandout track from the second MM album.

BILLY BRAGG DDILL I IC FANS No One Knows Nothing Anymore

A bucolic-sounding Bragg returns to the Americana/roots sound of'98's Mermaid Avenue. Recorded live without overdubs and produced by Joe Henry, Bon Iver's Greg Leisz adds lilting pedal steel.

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Воппіе Вгае

Paul's lad (although “Bridge Over Troubled Water" was still in the charts when he was born so he's now a greying fortysomething) shows it'sin the genes but sounds more like his own man than

his old man on a fizzing pop-rock gem from his second album,

AC) [NI S8 471 |

Division Street. CHRISTOPHER

C YW E R is

A Broken Heart

Romantic devastation and exquisitely sculpted chamber- folk-pop - justa taster of the 29- minute song cycle, Lysandre, that constitutes Owens' first solo album after walking away last year from hisroleas the frontman of Girls.

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Cold Hard Fact

“Cold Hard Fact” is classic Southern roots-rock that climaxes in delirious Allman Brothers/ Lynyrd Skynyrd-style guitar duelling from Cody Canada and Seth James over Steve Littleton’s surging organ stanzas. Find it

on the Texan quintet’s second album, Adventus.

FFATURING!UIM JAMES/PHOSPHORESCENT INS/LOW/CHRIST BILLY BRAGG: ‘CAMPER VAN BEET ENS + Жу SS GOLDEN MESSENGER: THALIAZEDEK+MORE | 1 y

Low. |.

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Falling Snow

Theonly instrumental on this month's CD - but aslyrical an evocation of wintry stillness as was ever conjured. From the Vermont- based guitarist's overlooked 2010 solo album, Cross Latitiudes, released now for the first timein Europe and the UK.

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Counting Sailboats

Dazed, halcyon guitars and superior paisley pop from the self- produced debut by the Chilean psych-rock couple, Ives Sepülveda and Manuel Parra, brought to the world by NY's transcendentally cool Sacred Bones label.

THALIA ZEDEK BAND Walk ANAY Viola-nuanced melancholy and ghosts who won'tlet you be on the brimming opening track from the first albumin five years from the veteran Boston rocker and former Live Skull/Come singer.

ETHAN JOHNS Don’t Reach Too Far Analogue authenticity anda raunchy “Gloria”-quoting garage riff, as the in-demand producer (Laura Marling/Ryan Adams/Kings Of Leon) steps out from behind his mixing desk to introduce himself.

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Norther California Girls “There ain’t nobody like me out there,” David Lowery sings as we close with a track from the fine, long-overdue first LP in nine years from CVB - inspired, he says, by the band's “fake hippy/surfer side".

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 15

PIETER M VAN HATTEM; JO McCAUGHEY; JIMMY KING

Wilkoathomein Westcliff-on-Sea, February 4, 2013

16 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

In December 2012, the mighty WILKO JOHNSON was diagnosed with terminal cancer

ofthe pancreas. This month, he embarks on an emotional last tour of the UK. First, though, hereunites with Uncut Editor Allan Jones, an early champion of Dr Feelgood, to talk of Canvey Island, his remarkable old band, and even the future. “When we left the hospital, I felt elated. I'ma miserable so-and-so — feeling like this was unusual..."

F YOU CATCH the train out of London from Fenchurch St station, Westcliffis nearly at the end of the line. This seems appropriate, because so is Wilko Johnson, who we are here today to meet. Last month, it was announced the former Dr Feelgood guitarist had been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas. He had refused chemotherapy and therefore been given less than ayear to live, during which time he would recorda last album and health permitting play a farewell tour. On hearing this news, the memories of fans who saw the band in their incendiary early prime may likely have turned to those legendary nights in 1973, when the Feelgoods first tore up London’s pub rock scene, mad dog R’n’B monsters who thrillingly established a reputation as the most exciting British rock'n'roll band since the '60s club heyday of The Who and The Rolling Stones.

This was a time when the woeful indulgences of prog-rock prevailed. The Feelgoods by contrast were lean and frighteningly intense, their music raw and feral. Wilko’s guitar was central to their sound — carnal blues riffs, essayed with slashing ferocity, frenetic choppy chords and no solos to speak of, the songs too short for pointless virtuosity. They looked fantastic, too – sharp-suited, crop- haired, like people you might see at the shoulder of some gangland godfather. They blew a gaping hole in the day’s musical fabric, through which a few years later the punk hordes would pour, partly inspired by their example. Their 1976 live album, Stupidity, made them briefly the biggest band inthe UK, butit was almost all over for the original lineup. During fractious sessions for its follow-up, Sneakin’ Suspicion, Wilko fell out with vocalist Lee Brilleaux, John B Sparks and drummer John Martin (universally known as The Big Figure) and walked out of the band. The Feelgoods continued without him and, with replacement guitarist John ‘Gypie’ Mayo, had their biggest hit with 1979’s “Milk And Alcohol”, produced by Nick Lowe.

1947 Born John Peter Wilkinson on Canvey Island, on July 12

1968 Meets singer Lee Brilleaux

1970 Travels to India and Afghanistan 1971Dr Feelgood form 1974 Debut LP Down By The Jetty released 1976 Live album Stupidity reaches No1 in the UK chart

1977 Wilko leaves

Dr Feelgood. He forms The Solid Senders 1980 Joins lan Dury & The Blockheads

1981 Goes solo

1994 Lee Brilleaux dies 2004 Wilko's wife of 37 years, Irene, dies

of cancer

2010 Julien Temple's rock doc Oil City Confidential is released; Wilko acts in Game Of Thrones 2012 Autobiography Looking Back At Me published; diagnosed with inoperable cancer of the pancreas

2013 March tour

announced

Wilko’s solo career was less illustrious. Following a spell with Jan Dury’s Blockheads, he for many years madea steady if unspectacular living on the club circuit here and in Europe, a somewhat overlooked figure. The Feelgoods, too, forjustas long, seemed to be forgotten, their vital early role inthe punk insurrection that followed largely ignored. Julien Temple's Oil City Confidential redressed the balance somewhat, Wilko the film's eccentric star turn, surely a national treasure in the making. Last year's overdue All Through The City 4CD box, meanwhile, was a startling reminder of what the band had been, which at their best was pretty much as good as it gets. Wilko’s career simultaneously had taken a wonderfully unexpected turn when he was cast asa grim-faced executionerin HBO's Game Of Thrones.

And now, he's dying. But not so fast that he can't find time for one last interview with Uncut, in which over a couple of hours helooks back with fondness and some regret at his time with the Feelgoods, their days of glory and eventual falling out, and facing up to the illness that will claim him.

UNCUT: When was your cancer actually diagnosed? WILKO JOHNSON: Just before Christmas. My son, who was over from Manila, noticed I was pissing blood. I would have ignored it, but my son took me into the A&E, forced me to go actually. They examined me and said, "You've got this mass in your stomach,” which Га been aware of for some time, but Га justignored it. I first noticed it last summer. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that after being teetotal all my life, in my dotage, I’ve taken up drinking. We hadanight out and I started drinking absinthe, quite a bit of it. Inthe morning, I could feel the lump again and I'm like “What’s this? I know. It's my liver." Years ago, when Iwas in India, I had hepatitis and I was told I should never drink again. Of course, it had nothing to do with that.

Anyway, they did these tests. Shortly after that they did a biopsy, which is an experience I wouldn't want to go through again. It's a bit freaky. Then, we went in just

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 17

GUS STEWART

| ALL THROUGH

ШЕЕ ESSENTIAL

/ | ү ү | A U

TRACKS

DR FEELGOOD

THE CITY" (DOWNBY THE JETTY, 1975)

From the Feelgoods’ debut album, a powerful introduction to the oil refineries and landscape of Canvey - "Stand and watch the towers burning at the

break of the day". DR FEELGOOD —

"BACK IN THE NIGHT (MALPRACTICE, 1975) Contains one of Wilko's definitive machine-gun riffs. The single version was apparently recorded with little help from the rest of

the band.

| DR FEELGOOD

"ROXE ИТР

| (STUPIDITY, 1976)

Blistering live take of a Down By The Jetty highlight. A typical Feelgoods yarn about anuntrustworthy woman, driven by Wilko's restless guitar.

OR ee

"SNEAI

| nnininl en VL

| QUOFILI ir

| (SNEAKIN'SUSPICION,

1977)

US producer Bert de Coteaux glosses up the band’s sound. Fortunately, he can’t clean up this grubby slice of Canvey noir.

WILKO JOHNSON'S SOLID SENDERS

"nn nunnrr' DR DUPREE

| (SOLID SENDERS, 1979)

Originally sketched out

18 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

Down By The Jetty

for the Feelgoods,

this developed into

a reggae song about sinking ships and exotic strangers for new band

the Solid Senders.

IAN DURY & THE ызы

"| WANT TO B

STRA ЛА IGHT”

(LAUGHTER, 1980) Arguably the best track from Wilko's time in the Blockheads' rhythm section; their first single together.

WILKO JOHNSON “ICE ON THE MOTORWAY (ICEONTHE MOTORWAY, 1981)

Edgy, intense title track of Wilko's solo debut.

WILKO JOHNSON

"BARBED WIRE BLUES” Dee WIRE BLUES, 1988)

First fruits of sessions featuring new, regular band - including Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy, whose dextrous funk

grooves shine here.

WILKO JOHNSON

"90! E KIN Ü П R J" (GOING ДЕХ НОМЕ , 1998)

Wilko's Іугіса luck with womenis not looking up on his last album of original songs to date. This one has “footprints around her window".

WILKO JOHNSON

"p ARADISE"

(THEBESTOF WILKO JOHNSON VOL 1,2010) Tribute to his wife, Irene, originally recorded by the Feelgoods. This version, updated in 2004 after her death, is predictably moving: "My tears are falling,

l ain't ashamed."

before Christmas for the results. In the meantime, we all had a go at the

diagnosis. The consensus was that it was a cyst, and they'd just cutit out. So when we went in for the results, I wasn't expecting them to say it was cancer. But the doctor said, "This massin your stomach. It's cancer and it’s inoperable.” My son cracked up. I was absolutely calm. I just nodded. I went “OK.”

When we left the hospital, I felt elated. That’s the word. You never know what your reaction is going to be and at the best of times Im a miserable so-and-so. I’ve 1 suffered from depression | all of my life since my teens. So feeling like this was a bit unusual, but this elation remained all day and was still there when I woke up the next day. I realised there’s nothing to be hung up about, because the past, the present, the future: it doesn’t mean anything. So this elevation of spirit remained. You walk down the street just tingling, man, and you feel so alive. You notice every little thing — every bird against the sunlight, everything — and just feel absolute calm. At times it amounted to euphoria.

Were yousurprised at your reaction? Yes, totally. It’s been over a month now. Normally! don't keep a feeling, especially a good feeling, for more than a few hours. Usually, I find something to mess it up. But it's remained. It's like you've been given the ability to existin the moment you'rein, without bothering

“The doctorsaid 'Itscancerand it’s inoperable. My son cracked up. Iwas absolutely calm. I nodded and went OK

about the taxman, or anything. You realise what a marvellous thing itis to be alive. When the illness hits me, I don’t think ГИ be quite so jolly, as гт a complete wimp when it comes to illness. But right now, I’m feeling fine. And I’m hoping this feeling will last a while longer.

Canvey Island looms large in your life and also in the legend ofthe Feelgoods. What was it like growing up there? You need a movie to tell the Canvey story. It’sa place that keeps on changing. When Iwas a lad, itwas more or less rural. Canvey Island is reclaimed marshland. It was constructed in the 17th Century. They got Dutch engineers across, ‘cos they're good at draining land. They built aseawall around it and made this island. Oh, it was mysterious then. It was all unmade roads. People were living in shacks and railway carriages. There were a few proper houses, but it was a bit ofa shanty town. When I went to the grammar school up here in Westcliff, 'cos there isn’t a grammar school on Canvey Island, I met people who didn’t dare to go down to Canvey Island. They used to say, “Goodness knows what kind of chainsaw massacres take place down there.” In fact, it was anice place. There was a disastrous flood in 1953, which is one of my first memories... looking out of the back window and seeing the sea where there used to be field. There were waves rolling up to our back door.

n

||

Left: OTE LeeBrilleauxinthe Feelgoods' hevday. Top: ithe original lineup (Brilleaux, John B Sparks, Wilko and John ‘The Big Figure’ Martin). Above: Wilko withlan Dury & The Blockheads, 1981

Was there a music scene on Canvey when you were growing up? No. Like any small town, you’d go down the local youth club, and there would be half a dozen bands practising. But the real scene was in Southend. There were acouple of very good clubs and there were two great groups, The Paramounts, with Gary Brooker and Robin Trower, and Mickey Jupp’s band, my favourites, The Orioles. Mickey Jupp could sing like Elmore James and his guitarist Mo Whitham remains one of the best Гуе seen. I used to go along there and plonk myself in front of Mo and hope I could maybe learn something. That was where the music scene was.

By thetime the Feelgoods got going there was a series of yacht clubs along the river, and you could get gigs there. There were youth clubs, the occasional wedding, but you couldn't call ita music scene. The Orioles and The Paramounts were into American rhythm and blues. First of all there was The Rolling Stones. Everything about them was exciting, the music they played, the way they looked, and you knew your parents hated them. In the aftermath of theStones making their mark, the retail shops in Britain become full of blues material – Johnny Otis and the like — you're flicking through the racks of records, loads of them. You thought they'd go on forever. It just seemed magical.

How serious were you about music as a career? Гуе never, ever been serious about music as a career. I got into it completely by accident. When I was about 18, I had quite a good R'n'B band. I also had a jug-band. We'd go down the seafront, wait for the pubs to come out and we'd play some songs. “You Are My Sunshine" or “Irene, Goodnight”. One time we were playing and three boys came up. We were 18 and they were about 14 – a big gap when you're that age. But the leader of these boys, he was so intense. This was Lee Brilleaux. I saw him occasionally over the next two or three years when Га come back from university. Then I went to Kathmandu and when I came back, I was living on this housing estate and thinking, ‘Well, it's own up time, I need a proper job or something.’ My mother got me a job as a teacher. Around that time, I’m walking down the street, and who's this coming the other way, but Lee Brilleaux. He was a

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first guitar hero of the '70s.

Post-Bolan and Bowie, Britain was a real wasteland, musically. There were all those faded-denim, post- prog stadium bands, and the US rock thing. The Feelgoods cut right through all that. Hearing Down By The Jetty for the first time, at the age of 17, was just what | wanted. | borrowed the LP off a

mate and kept hold of it as long as | could.

Then I went and bought my own.

"| totally related to Wilko's guitar style and his personality onstage. Between him and Lee [Brilleaux] they were such a great team. | don't think l'd ever heard anyone play like Wilko before. You could liken his playing to someone like Bo Diddley, but Wilko is unique, a one-off.

“He is also a great songwriter as well, especially on all those early tunes from Down By The Jetty and Malpractice. | thought they were very special songs. They kept the style of all those American

Wilko forward

for the great job, on the sad day when Patrick Moore passes away, of presenting The Sky At Night,” Julien Temple announced while preparing Oil City Confidential in 2009. "And he could play guitar while serenading the stars.” Indeed, a Facebook petition was set up after to get Wilko the Sky At Night gig. Wilko's fascination with astronomy began by looking at the southern stars while lying stoned on his hotel roof on a 1980 Blockheads Aussie tour. Later, he built what Temple described as “a huge phallic dome” containing a14-inch telescope on his Southend roof. Wilko appeared on Jarvis Cocker's BBC6 Music show talking about the stars. “| could maybe do The Sky At Night one time,” he wrote in his autobiography, Looking Back At Me. NICK HASTED

r é qs m putting

-— —

blues and R'n'B tunes, but had an English angle and energy.l only saw the Feelgoods once. That was at Guildford — Civic, probably in 75. My defining memory of that night was the opening bars... Wilko did a scissor kick and went straight into 'She Does It Right’. | remember thinking, ‘Yeah, that's a fucking great moment!’ And they never let up, the whole gig was like that. | went through my Wilko period shortly after, writing in that style. | took elements of his playing, that choppiness, into The Jam.

"What was it like finally meeting him? He's just Wilko, isn't he? Playing with him a few years ago [Johnson joined Weller on stage at 2010's Belsonic festival for “From The Floorboards Up”] was fucking amazing, areal moment for me.

“Wilko may not be as famous as some other guitarists, but he’s right up there. And there are alot of people who'll say the same. | can hear Wilko in lots of places. It’s some legacy.” ROBHUGHES

solicitor’s clerk, and he had asharp haircut and sideburns and was wearing a pinstriped suit. I thought, ‘He don’t half look mean.’ I looked like a sloppy hippy. I go “Ном” your band?” He goes, “The guitar player’s left and we’re looking for anew one.” I’m thinking, ‘I wonder if he’s going to ask me to join.’ But he didn't. Later that day Sparko comes knocking and says, “Will you join our band?" I just went, “YES!” It started there, and for two years, it was justa local band.

We gotaregular gig ata disco on Canvey Island - every Thursday night. The best one was called the Esplanade down Southend. It was 10p to get in, and the band gotall the 10ps. I knew Lee was a star. I hada lot of belief in him. The whole Dr Feelgood thing developed around him. This style of music we wanted to play, it was not fashionable. So we were somewhat scorned by local bands, but we carried on doing our thing. That went on for a few years. Occasionally we'd spend an afternoon around someone's house learning a few new numbers, but that was about it. We never rehearsed, or discussed what we had to look like or what we were going to do. It all grew naturally out of who we were.

We were all such great friends then and had so many good times. It did get ugly in the end. There was terrible animosity. We ended up ina position where they were all drinking a lot, and I wasn’t drinking at all. Which is not as flippant as it sounds, ’cos when you're on the road you'll be in your room and they'll be in the bar. And who are they talking about? Let me think. I was growing apart from them. I tried very hard to involve Lee in the songwriting as he was a very witty guy, but it never happened. So Iwas doing the songs and they never realised how hard that was. They didn't know about the beating of your head against the wall the night before trying to think ofit. If you've had a bit of success, obviously, your next thing has to be better. It's a bloody strain. If you are the only one doing it, it worries you. It did make me pretty intolerable at times. I can't blame it all on them.

Before it all started to come apart, things happened for you very fast when you first came to London. Yeah. We found out about this London pub rock thing, which

was aterm I hated, and we were quite keen to get in on

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 19

JOE STEVENS; ANDY WILLSHER; REDFERNS

B

BRIAN DAVID STEVENS

Magic hands: Wilko at home with Allan Jones, February 4,2013

HE DOES IT RIGHT

THE BARD OF LANVEY ISLAND

ё & ee was the most dynamically

Canveyite,” says Julien Temple, “the one who ran away to go there. But Wilko is the poet of Canvey Island.” Wilko turned the Thames estuary into a place of mystery and wonder in many of his songs, writing about the floods, the oil fires and the eccentric population. The narrator of the pulpy "Sneakin' Suspicion”, for instance, finds himself at "Midnight on the river/In the light of the flames/l'm staring at the water/And I'm trying to fita number to a name." Indeed, Wilko harboured teenage dreams to bea writer: "If | don't make it as a poet by the time I'm 21, I'll slit my throat,” he said. At Newcastle University, he "apprenticed" himself to poet Tony Harrison. He also tookup art - great acid-inspired paintings - but abandoned it for rock'n'roll. His lyrics at least retained some of

his poetic ambitions,

the refinery of Canvey immortalised as "a tower of babylon", Wilko and his future-wife Irene "in the long grass side by side/ Where the big ships go gliding by/Skylark singing in the sun." NICK HASTED

20 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

_it. The first London gig was [2o a bitofaletdown - filling in for Ducks Deluxe or someone and not many people came. But quite soon we were playing The Kensington on a Saturday, The Lord Nelson on a Thursday, and occasionally The Hope & Anchor and Dingwalls, and after that it happened very fast. We'd come from nowhere and some of these bands had been around for ages, but it

was us things started happening for. It wasn’t a surprise to me that we became popular quickly.

to do with what happened next, which was basically them plotting to get me out. Before we went to Rockfield to cut the fourth LP, Lee and I went to Atlanta to meet Bert de Coteaux who was going to produce. We had three days together. We were friends again, hanging out. But as soon as we got to Rockfield, it was clear they wanted me out. Suddenly, there was areal animosity. Lee was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known. But at the end, there was a lot of bad feeling. It got nastier and nastier. I was completely isolated from the band. And then one day, I was out.

Did you feel bitter about the way you were treated? I didn't want to be bitter about Dr Feelgood because it was the greatest thingin my life. I was confused. I didn't know whether to carry on, in fact. But l'dbeenin the music business for five years then and it’s a pretty good business to be in. SoIthought, ‘Well, I’m going to have to try to carry on.’ But I attracted the worst people inthe world around me and we carried on | “= and ruined it. The whole business did no good to either side. They lost it and I didn't have it. I’m quite good at what I do, and I was holding my own. Then Ian Dury invited me to join the Blockheads. Jan was great - one unusual person. I did really like him. AlsoIfound him to be the most offensive person l'veever met. Dear, oh dear, that guy could be so offensive. A lot of my time was taken up by smoothing over frightful situations that had arisen when Ian had one too many.

There was no-one else like us. No-one i sounded like us, no-one looked like us.

Howimportant was the way you looked? What a band looks like is alwaysimportant. But again, it wasn't something we thought about too much. Lee always dressed like that, very sharp. Also we found you could go down York Road market and buy a suit for 30 bob. It really worked for us, because people could identify with us. You didn't have to dress up in a cape or a pairoftights to see Dr Feelgood. It wasn'tlike going to see Kiss. We had a really strong connection to our audience because of the way we looked and also through the songs.

Atthe time there was alot of stuff about hobgoblins, rubbish really, that had nothing to do with anything. My first inspiration was blues, but I realised I couldn't write songs about freight trains or chain gangs. There weren't any on Canvey. So tried to keep it allin Essex, to get the landscape, the oil refineriesinto the songs. Lee brought frustration and pent-up anger to them. That's what connected us to punk.

If we'd stayed together, we'd have fitted in perfectly with punk. In fact, we'd have walked all over punk. But by then it was all blowing upin our faces. People were more interested in the Pistols and The Clash. They weren't interested in this band splitting up because of some obscure row. And in the excitement surrounding punk, we were forgotten.

We'd had a No1 with Stupidity, which was alive album. I fought the record company over the way it should sound. In those days - and this is true – if you bought a live album, the only thing live about itwould probably be the bass drum. The record company were putting pressure on [producer] Vic Maile to replace every snare drum beat. I refused to do any overdubs. This conflict went on almost until it was eyeball to eyeball. I said, “I’m doing it this way and that's that.” And so we did. Fortunately it worked out.

Because I had this big success with Stupidity, maybe the band thought I was taking over. I’m sure that had something

“There was no-one else likethe Feelgoods. No-one sounded like us, no-one looked like us”

| | Did you keep up with the Feelgoods? Thealbums they did with Nick Lowe, for instance? No. Whenever I took interest, I wished I hadn’t. Everything was crap.

Did you ever make areconciliation with Lee? No, I didn’t. We metona couple of occasions, by accident, and we'd end up looking at our shoes going "Allright..." When he was dying, my brother went to see him and he expressed a wish to see me. So I said, "They've got to send someone over to take me. I’m not going to go knock on his door." Nobody ever did. There were two occasions when the band nearly got back together in the year after the split that didn't work out. One of them very nearly did. I was up in town and a mate of mine came in and said “Guess who Гуе been talking to?” I said, “Is it Lee Brilleaux?” He said, “I had along talk with him and he'd like you back in the band. He really, really would." I said “Would he?" ’cos I was thinking the same thing. A few months later, this guy said, “I’ve gone so far as to make an arrangement for you to meet in The Ship in Wardour St, tomorrow afternoon." Then I met this girl, and spent 48 hours with her. So I never meet Lee and never really spoke to him again. That’s just the way things happen.

Whatare your plans for the next few months? We’re playing some dates in France that were scheduled before I was diagnosed and we’re doing an album. Because of my current circumstances, it's going to be a quick one. No time for all that fiddling about with them knobs. We'll just bloody record it. When we come back from France, we'll be doing the UK farewell tour, which, obviously I hope Pll be fit enough to do. I’m not going onstage ill. don't want people to see me like that. But I’ve got every reason to hope lll be fit

to do those dates. If Ican, it would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. I'll be happy then. ©

Wilko Johnson tours the UK in March. Thanks go to Joe Uchill

David Bowie

The Next Day

The New Album 11.03.13

PHOOPHOREOLENT

изинин

4 1011000117111

“Shit seems toget weird 4< , everyfew years. That's when .

I write..." Matthew Houckin ң

front of Queensboro Bridge,

New York, 2013 "

22 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013 | X

Matthew Houck's quietly brilliant career fronting PHOSPHORESCENT has taken him from Alabama to Brooklyn and encompassed cosmic outlaw country, Crazy Horse jams, electronic washes and an ambition to match Astral Weeks. Now, after a ruined relationship, arestorative trip to Mexico

and a stint in Hendrix’s old studio, he might just have

made his masterpiece...

Story: Allan Jones

Photos: Pieter M. Van Hattem

life in New York started to unravel, Matthew

Houck, still vaguely traumatised by nearly two years touring behind Phosphorescent’s breakthrough album, Here’s To Taking It Easy, did what so many before him have done, finding themselves standing in the rubble of love gone wrong. He took flight, fled the sour scene of unbidden heartache.

“Tt was a Sunday, about three in the morning.

I was justa hot mess,” he says. "Td been thinking

for a couple of days that I might need to actually leave town. I was in a relationship that was clearly

at its end. That's never an easy time. Anyway, I felt

a need to remove myself from my life, the scene I was in. Take a deep breath, you know, and just go. I went online and there was a flight from New York to Mexico, leaving in three hours. I took it.”

He fetched up in Tulum, 80 miles south of Cancün onthe east coast ofthe Yucatán Peninsula, a small resort popular with hippies, backpackers and the occasional celebrity, famous for its Mayan ruins and the Casa Magna, the former holiday home of Columbian drug baron, Pablo Escobar. This was where Houck started to write the songs that form the core ofthe new Phosphorescent album, Muchacho.

“I stayedin a cabaña on the beach,” he recalls. “There was norunning water and the power went off at 8pm. At night you had to work or whatever by candlelight until the electricity came on again in the morning. There were some hippies there and a lot of people who'd just checked out of their lives, like me. Iwasn'treally talking to anyone, to be honest. I was looking for solitude. Ineeded to be on my own to do the work that needed to be done.

“Tm not normally good at routines," he goes on. “Im not what you'd called a disciplined songwriter. Icanstarta song really easy. I mean, give mea couple of minutes with an instrument and I can probably have a pretty good tune worked up real quick. But I often tend to leave them at that point, unfinished. WhenI wasin Mexico, for the first time I forced myself to write, to sit there and actually finish songs and that's what l'd do. Га write that second or third verse, wrap up that chorus.

“The only music l'd written since coming off tour was weird ambient pieces, nothing like the last

W HEN AT THE BEGINNING OF LAST year his

album atall, and that’s a direction I thought Td go 77|

APRIL 2013.) UNCUT | 23

PIETER M VAN HATTEM; GETTY IMAGES

PHOSPHORESCENT

_inonthenewrecord, which was beginning to feel so different I actually thought of maybe putting Phosphorescent on hold and releasing the record under

another name. But in Mexico, I started writing on top of those

ambient pieces, and the songs started coming. The first one that came as a complete song was ‘Muchacho’s Tune’, and thatwas when everything clicked for me. Everything came

from thatone song, the first song. The entire album followed.

Allthese ideas that were just floating around, just out of reach, started actually to become finished songs. АП of a

sudden, I had nine of them."

And they were presumably inspired by recent turmoil?

“Yes, I think so,” he says. “The songs are always inspired by

the circumstances I find myselfin at any given time. It's like the catalyst for me sitting down and hammering out songs has pretty much always been when there’s some kind of turmoil in my life. It’s maybe a coping mechanism, something I turn to for comfort at times when shit gets weird and shit seems to get weird every few years, you

know? That's whenI write."

Sothis wasan album born from crisis? "Aren't they all?" he says, laughing again.

something of the look of a desert ascetic, a fuzzy

y OU HAVE SEEN PICTURES OF HIMin which he has

hippy mystic prone to peyote visions, a great deal of staring into diminishing space and conversations with cooing seraphim. Today, though, he just looks fucked. *Band practice," he says by way of explanation. *Onething led to another and

didn'tstop there."

ItsaSunday afternoon towards the end of January. New York's light is already paling. Houck meets Uncut at Electric Lady, the studio built by Jimi Hendrix at 52 West 8th Street, in Greenwich Village, where Houck came to mix three of the tracks for Muchacho. There are portraits of Jimi on the walls ofthe stairwell leading down from a somewhat scruffy ground floor reception area, accessed directly from the street through a door you have to use a shoulder to open, Jimi in his braided military tunic, a stoned hussar. There are psychedelic

I CALL THEM WHEN | A BIT LIKE NEIL YOUN

éé hosphorescent has never been a band. | mean,

| have a great group of musicians | tour with and they're amazing players, phenomenal. But except when we're onthe road, we don't operate like a group. When | need them, | give them a call. It’s maybe like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, to that extent. The way this record worked, none of it was done live. | did the basic tracks and had 24 hours when they'd come inand they played to the tracks | had ready, as they were needed.

24 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

| |

MATTHEW HOUCK

HEM,

FED T AND CRAZY HORSE...

to bein control. There’s never any question about who makes the final decisions. | enjoy losing myself іп the studio. | сап stay in there for days on my own. To the extent it gets things done, | don’t mind the solitude. l'm not sure if it's healthy, as you can get so immersed. The separation between engaging the worldona sane level and making art of any kind can be pretty profound, which is weird, as any artis anattempt at communication. | think if

_ [knew a different way of

making records, I'd probably try it.”

murals by Lance Jost on the walls of the long corridor that leads to the studio where Hendrix recorded and once held court. The room we are standing in feels spacious, though it's notlarge. Various instruments are scattered, although not untidily, around its curved perimeter. The atmosphere here is lulling. Hush prevails.

There's another studio upstairs, where someone is currently recording, no-one's sure who. Their session means Houck can't show me as planned the vintage desk he used to mix thetracks he brought here and no doubt explain its many intricacies. I try manfully to hide my disappointment and perk up noticeably when a drink is suggested.

We walk some distance to the East Village, across Broadway and Lafayette Street and down Great Jones Street, to the Bowery Hotel, into whose murky opulence we enter rather expecting to be turned away. The lobby and lounge through which we walk to the bar are low-ceilinged, sturdy beams

above us, wood-panelling on the walls, thick ornamental carpets and rugs throughout. In bygone times, you can imagine it as a regular haunt for bootleggers, the occasional gangster and people otherwise perched unsteadily on the legal rim of things, their money made from not always legitimate activities. Drinks are duly ordered and Houck is soon being served Johnnie Walker Black, on the rocks, ina glass big enough to hold a fair amount of the bottle the whiskey was poured from. The beer Matthew has ordered as a chaser seems highly irrelevant. A woman sitting nearby with hair that looks like the stuffing pouring out ofa toy lion torn open bya laughing cat is talking in a voice that sounds like a chainsaw howling through teak, shrill chums providing a caterwauling chorus. I’m relieved when the shrieking coven ups and leaves in a swirl of scarves, drapes and wraps, leaving behind them a trail of perfume that makes me cough likea Tommy ina Flanders trench, choking on mustard gas.

Atleast now, thankfully, I can hear Houck, whose voice is for the most part pitched not much higher than a whisper. He’s telling me, I can now be sure, about growing upin a place called Toney, in northwestern Alabama.

"It had a population of 600 people,” he says. "It was real small. It's not even really a place. It’s just a piece of land. There's no town as such. I don’t know how growing up there affected me or shaped my personality. I had nothing to compare it to. Га never been anywhere else. It’s where I lived. As farasIknew, it was no different to anyplace else. I didn’t grow up feeling especially isolated, although I guess that’s what we were. I don't know if Td be any differentifIwas from somewhere else."

When he mentions that his grandfather was a preacher,

Tm just about to pursue a connection to songs on early Phosphorescent albums - I’m thinking of the eerie rapture

of something like “My Dove, My Lamb" or the congregational sing-along of “Last Of The Hand-Me-Downs”, the Pentecostal horns that pepper his records – when he heads me off, with another laugh.

"This wasn'tlike something out of Flannery O'Connor or There Will Be Blood,” he says. “There were no rattlesnakes or speaking in tongues. It was definitely not a Southern revivalist church thing atall. There was none of that hysteria. Itwas much more straitlaced, pious. Very respectful and the hymns were beautiful. That's the connection, the hymnal quality. That's certainly a part ofa lot of my music. I’ve always loved that hymn-like stuff."

By theageofeight, he'd moved with his family to the larger Alabama city of Huntsville, in the Tennessee River Valley. Music became a central focus of his teenage life, the usual stuffon the radio that anyone his age would have listened to, mostly hard rock and mainstream country, although he

would developa taste for the harder outlaw country of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Nirvana were an early inspiration and you can distantly hear echoes of their signature thrum on atrack like “You” from Hipolit, the self- released album Houck put out under the name Fillup Shack in 2000, although perhaps more typical of his music at the time is asong like “Down Roads", which is reminiscent of Village- era Bob Dylan and sounds like it was recorded on someone's back porch.

He wasliving by thenin Athens, GA. Locallabel Warm putouta second album, A Hundred Times Or More. Its often rickety country-folk recalled Will Oldham, whose influence prevailed on 2005's Aw Come Aw Wry, released by the Ohio-based Misra label, which also on stand-out tracks like “Joe Tex, These Taming Blues” introduced Stax horns to the mix and further embraced elements of gospel and Southern soul. When Misra label manager Phil Waldorf left to launch Dead Oceans in 2007, Houck was one of his first signings. “I’ve known Matthew for nearly a decade,” Waldorf tells Uncut. “It was a relationship I wanted to continue when we formed Dead Oceans. He’s making important, timeless albums, the kind of records that fans of great songwriters cherish forever. That's why we want to be involved with someone like him.”

o mam

astonishing Pride, on which he played everything

himself, as well as producing and mixing the thing. It was alsothe third album Houck put out as Phosphorescent, aname that sounds not lightly chosen. "Itwasn't," he says. “I decided on the name specifically because of the idea of something being able to burn and produce light without combusting itself, without burning itself out and the fact that it self-perpetuates and never goes out."

On Pride, Houck found more clearly than ever before his own artistic voice — or voices, at those moments where his multi-tracked vocals create a truly cosmic soundscape on psychedelic hymns likethe nine-minute *My Dove, My Lamb" and theravishing *Cocaine Lights". There are miasmic sonic expeditions on Pride, as out there at times as Tim Buckley's Starsailor. His fanbase was by now as devoted as mujahideen. What a shock to them Houck’s next record must’ve been. 2009’s To Willie was an album of Willie Nelson covers, inspired by To Lefty From Willie, Nelson’s 1977 tribute to Lefty Frizzell. For the album, he enlisted members of acrack bar band called Virgin Forest, who in various permutations have been with him since, Crazy Horse to his Neil Young, The Band to his Dylan. To Willie was a fabulous country rock album and less the career digression it seemed to some to be. Its follow-up was 2010’s swaggering Here's To Taking It Easy, an album that evoked memories of ’70s Stones and Dylan, with echoes too of Neil Young on the smouldering guitar epic “Los Angeles”, which sounded like something that could have been recorded for On The Beach or Zuma. Here’s To Taking It Easy gave brilliant voice to Houck’s growing authority as a songwriter, arranger, producer andasinger with the vulnerable bravado of vintage

H OUCK'S DEBUT FOR DEAD OCEANS was 2007's

BUYERS GUIDE TU MATTHEW HOUCK

HIPOLIT

SELF-RELEASED, 2000

Houck was eds still going

| under the

name Fillup Shack when he self- released this low-key set of delicate but fairly conventional folk tunes.

Highlight is the country lament "Down Roads".

A HUNDRED TIMES OR MORE WARM, 2003 St Still a ў. vulnerable

~~ affair, Houck also wields that lonesome crack in his voice a little more brazenly on his first LP as Phosphorescent. Hints of the future can be heard ontunes like the rambling, harmonic

drone, "Last Of The Hand-Me-Downs".

s

AW COME AW WRY

MISRA, 2005 , Here Houck expands

к At ; his range

considerably,

adding rock rhythms as well as pedal steel to the mix on songs like the febrile "Joe Tex, These Taming Blues" and the typically repentant "South (Of America)”.

PRIDE

DEAD OCEANS, 2007

This stunning

cocoon of an

album fuses - soul, country, folk and hymns with cosmic spirituals and ethereal soundscapes, epitomised by the incredible ode to awe and trepidation,

"Wolves".

TO WILLIE

DEAD OCEANS,2009 Anew direction, as Houck hooks up

with a band to revisit the Willie Nelson songbook, reinterpreting gems like “Too Sick To Pray” and

"| Gotta Get Drunk" with a swagger rarely seen to date.

HERE'S TO TAKING IT EASY DEAD OCEANS, 2010

Houck stuck

with the band

from To Willie T NER and cut loose on this confident affair, utilising his finest arrangements to explore golden age '70s country rock rhythms on swirling epics like the outstanding "The Mermaid Parade" and epic "Los Angeles".

MUCHACHO

DEAD OC

EANS, 2013

More of

the above, although with synthesisers and drum machines adding to the rich palette this time around. Houck wrote much

of the album in Mexico after fleeing a domestic crisis, and the Mariachi horns give a further melancholy twist to his usual forlorn and apologetic tales of feckless masculinity.

PETER WATTS

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 25

FOCUSING PHOSPHORESCENT

‘TWAS SHIVERING. IT WAS SO INTENSE...

Kurt Vile, Drive-By Truckers and Hold Steady producer JOHN AGNELLO on working with Matthew Houck

éé atthew had M spent months working on his record, recording most of it himself. He had a bunch of awesome tracks, but he needed someone to help him put everything together. He felt with a lot of the tracks he had, there was too much stuff going on at the same time, so it was really about sorting out what the focus of the LP was... "The first song we mixed was 'Muchacho's Tune’. | had a day left over from a project | was working on and he came in and we just mixed for one day. That wastwo or three weeks before we got into the whole

record. That was the first full song | heard from the

album. And | felt that was really lyrical - ‘I fix myself up to come and be with you’ is the big delivery line, and for me that tightens up the whole lyric. ‘Like the waves upon the sand, like the shepherd to the lamb... уе been fucked up and I've been a fool.’ Nothing is throwaway, there’s such emotion in what he writes. ‘Muchacho’s Tune’ is one of my favourites, as is ‘A Charm/A Blade’ and ‘Song For Zula’, the last one he finished. “I’dlook at the lyrics as | was mixing them. As | was going through the lyrics for ‘Zula’, | was

Se ee

shivering, it was so intense. | totally wanted to know what the songs were about. “Thematically, | think the record is all about loss and starting again, and it’s alot about relationships, so when you hear him sing these lyrics with that emotion he sings with, his voice cracking, his extra ad libs, it’s so great. He's such a great singer. We hada greattime. You meet someone and you realise immediately they're just vital people, Kurt Vile is like that. So is Matthew. It's a real pleasure working with guys like him and Kurt, guys who are doing such wonderful music."

. ^. Gram Parsons. Ifit wasn’t exactly Houck's Born To Run, it brought him even more lavish praise than Pride and his healthiest sales to date. He toured the arse off the album over the following two years. What kind of shape was hein when the touring was over?

“Not the best,” he says, not laughing now. “Whatever your best intentions, you fall into certain behavioural traps. That's just the way it goes. It's really not a lifestyle I'd particularly endorse or recommend. It's not a healthy way of living and it does have repercussions, to say the least, on your well- being and the well-being of people around you. The kind of routine you get locked into breeds a mental laziness 1 don'tlike. You get to a point where you just have to numb your mind. You have to shut down your mind, learn to function at a lower frequency, at least until showtime, which is the highlight of your day, or should be. I’m not complaining. I knew what I was signing up for, but it can be very confining. You're just getting through the days, the weeks, the months. It's a very frustrating way to live. Atthe end ofall that touring behind Here's To Taking It Easy, thelastthing I wanted to do was just come back and crank out another record like that. Iwasn't real sure what I was going to do next, but I certainly wasn't expecting it to be anything like the record I ended up

“The album was born out of joy, failings and the dumb shit Гуе done”

Weeks. Scott Stapleton and Ricky Ray Jackson from his touring band provide spectacular piano and pedal steel parts and Bobby Hawk’s fiddle is often sensationally deployed. Houck’s voice soars, rising on thermal drafts. The lyrics typically are hallucinatory, visionary, by turns specific and oblique, like extracts from half-remembered dreams, endlessly revealing. Even as they appear to be giving nothing away, they tell you somehow everything. Houck baulks, though, visibly bristles, in fact, at the thought they will be taken as wholly autobiographical.

“They are first and foremost songs," he says. "There's a craft to songwriting and I think I’ve worked at it hard and long enough to be pretty good at it on occasions. You're not just offering up the details of your life and what's happening in it, like the pages ofa diary or something. I mean, I haven't just made a Joni Mitchell record."

To what extent, though, do your songs feed offthe specific traumas of your own life? “I’m always hesitant about going too deeply into this,” he says, a little uncomfortably. “Yes, there are specific events that were the catalyst for this record. But that doesn't mean those events are the lifeblood of the songs. The songs and music exist independently of the things that may have given life to them. And while a certain amount of trauma was the catalyst for the album, trauma isn't the record's overarching theme. It was equally born out of ecstatic joy, my own failings and just the dumb shit I’ve done.

"There's also a healthy dose of fiction in there,” he continues. “That shouldn't be overlooked. I was reading anold interview with Warren Zevon and he made the point that songwriters are judged differently to other artists, filmmakers and novelists, for instance. It's like there's a different set of critical criteria. Songwriters are scrutinised in a different way. As a songwriter you end up being totally identified with your songs and what they say. You're almost expected to write only about the things that happen to you, asifthatwill somehow make the songs somehow more ‘true’. It’s like everything you write has to be confessional, based on the specifics of your life. I've always wanted, and wantstill, to enjoy greater freedom as a writer than that.

“I thinkit was [American poet] Wallace Stevens who said something like the deeper you go into the personal, somehow the more universal all ofa sudden something will become. The other argumentis, open something up vaguely and that’s where the universality is. I don’t know which is most true. When I'm being specific in a song, I’m hyper-aware of what I’m doing it and it scares me. I don’t like to do that. But sometimes you have to. There’s no other way. But then you end up witha reputation for brooding and introversion or whatever and that’s who people start to think you are. They

can’t separate you from the songs.

“Iwas talking to someone about ‘A New Anhedonia’, from the new record," he says. “And I explained that ‘anhedonia’ means the lack of being able to experience pleasure in things that should be pleasurable, losing the ability to take pleasure in something that was innately pleasurable or had been previously. All ofa sudden things you would normally lean on hard to get out ofa funk, all ofasudden those things disappear. The song asks whatis there left when all these things fall away? What have you got? What are you left with? Sometimes it’s not much.

making. I didn’t expect this record to come out the way it has atall. I really didn’t see it coming."

describes it, of reckoning and redemption, about

walking out of darkness into light. For a record that took eventual shape from bleak beginnings, Muchacho sounds often euphoric, giddily resplendent. Musically, it's the most expansive album Houck's yet made. The cunnilingual swirl of Mariachi horns melts into hazy clouds of synthesisers, strings cascade, at least once making you think of Astral

д“ NOW IT'S HERE, AN ALBUM, as Matthew Houck

26 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

MATTHEW HOUCK

“And he said, ‘But on the cover of the album [a rather racy shotof Houckin what looks like a hotel room with a couple of scantily clad beauties on the bed behind him] you're laughing! ThatIlooked happy in the picture was confusing to him. But Iam usually happy. I’m nota wreck of humanity. I could see how you could think that if you had only some of the songs to go on, but they're just part ofthe picture. He couldn't understand the song came from a place Iwasin when I wrote it,” Houck goes on. “But I came back, you know?" ©

Muchacho is out on Dead Oceans on March 18

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ristine

THE HOUSE OF LOVE

This woozy ode to teenage heartbreak, inspired by the Velvets and Roxy, made Guy Chadwick and his young gunslingers late-'80s indie saviours. "I knew it was something special...”

HEHOUSE OF LOVE were astrange union between thirtysomething Guy Chadwick - a seen-it-all songwriter who'd already spent a decade in failed groups - and the youthful vigour of his accomplices, particularly guitarist Terry Bickers. Signing to Alan McGee's Creation labelin 1987 atthe urging of McGee's then-wife, the band released a pair of singles – “Shine On" and *Real Animal" - before unveiling "Christine". With its hypnotic drones, layers of guitar reverb and blissful vocal harmonies — and influences ranging from The Velvet Underground to Roxy Music and The Beach Boys - “Christine” helped establish The House Of Love as one of the defining guitar bands ofthe late 1980s. But within a couple of years, the band lost their momentum. There was an overcooked second album - the product of a deal brokered with Fontana by McGee. Meanwhile, the band's drug intake got out of hand and, in 1989, Bickers quit amid rumours of nervous breakdowns or a suicide attempt. The band struggled on for a few more albums, before eventually splitting upin 1993. In 2003, The House Of Love reunited, with Bickers reinstated in the lineup. Today, "Christine" is very much a staple of the band's live set. “It was the first proper, focused pop song Га written," explains Guy Chadwick. “As soon as Га finished it, I knew it was something special." JOHN LEWIS

GUY CHADWICK: I had spent most ofthe '80s in various failed bands. The songs were good, but I didn’t really like the sound we were making. I wanted to make music inspired by the '60s - The Velvet Underground, The Doors, The Beatles — and it didn't help that I hated music in the mid-

28 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

'8os! There was one band called Reverb & Barbed which later turned into The Kingdoms, who ended up signing atwo-single deal with RCA. After one single that didn't do anything, we were dropped. It was then that I decided I had to really work out what I wanted to do. TERRY BICKERS: I was influenced by post-punk: John McGeoch in Magazine, Wire, Television, Echo And The Bunnymen, Siouxsie. And I was a big Police fan – Iloved Andy Summers' use ofthe volume pedal! CHADWICK: used to record my demos ina flatin Finchley Road, near West Hampstead tube. It belonged to a friend with whom I was ina group. We stopped working together but he kindly let me use his stuff: bass guitar, drum machine, keyboards, four-track. I spent ages recording these quite detailed demos of several

songs — including “Christine” — in that period between The Kingdoms and The House Of Love. Ialsofelt the need to work with new musicians, soladvertised in the Melody Maker... BICKERS: I answered Guy's advert and met him at his flatin Allingham Street, Islington, where he played me a cassette of this demo he'd been working on. “Christine” was almost allin place, and had a strong mood and a real atmosphere. Guy had the buzz-saw guitar riff,

KEY PLAYERS

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à Guy Chadwick Songwriter, vocals, guitar

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Terry Bickers ^E Guitar, backing ~~ vocals

Û Chris $ Groothuizen » Bass

Pete Evans Drums

Î Pat Collier

7 Engineer, mixing

Peter Scammell Video director

eighth-note bassline, and adrum machine. There was also a guitar line, a kind of solo, which needed development. CHRIS GROOTHUIZEN: Iwaslivingin the squat next door to Terry'sin Camberwell, and heard him playing the demo to "Christine" at a party. I thought it was great and started a conversation with him. We were both into similar stuff: Bunnymen, Banshees, Cure, early REM.

The demo was more atmospheric and synth- based than what we ended up with, but still very good. When we started rehearsing I was still struggling to learn the bass - I remember Terry having to gesture me at the end of each eight-bar phrase, reminding me to change pattern!

PETE EVANS: I was in Reverb & Barbed with Guy, in about 1983, but keptin touch with him while he was in The Kingdoms. I remember him

| working very hard on those demos, and we all

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used them as a template. If my drums sound very metallic and hypnotic, it's because I’m trying to copy the drum machine!

BICKERS: Guy was about 10 years older than me, and introduced me to The Velvet Underground. That fed into where we were at the time, even our look - the polo neck jumpers and black jeans and so on.

EVANS: We useda lot of hypnotic, Velvets-style repetition. Early versions of "Christine" were about eight minutes long! Ithink itwas Alan McGee who encouraged us to edit.

d

"Iheyd drive you mad layering

sound” came from a solid-state pedal, the Boss Chorus Ensemble.

CHADWICK: My guitar looked similar to Terry's, but it was an Epiphone. I played it through a great big Space Echo Chorus unit, as big as a shoebox. We'd divide the guitar parts between us, but I don’t think we were ever precious. Terry was usually more inspired and came up with more interesting sounds.

BICKERS: The Beach Boys-style backing vocals were there from the very start, from the earliest rehearsals. We got very

BICKERS: I was playing . ° perfectionist when we ared CMI semi-acoustic, guitars, but It made got to the studio. which looked likea А 95 PAT COLLIER: We Gretsch. Still play it now! sense in the end. s recorded it at my studio, Iplayedit through a Greenhouse, near Old Fender Dual Showman in | 1 | [ [ | | | | R Streetin London. Itwas a cabinet I built with my the main studio where

stepfather. There were

lots of pedals; an MXR Distortion Plus, an MXR compressor and an Ibanez DM digital delay rack unit which had loads of cigarette burns on the top. That distinctive, wobbly *House Of Love

Alan brought the Creation bands. I worked with the Mary Chain, the Primals, Swervedriver, all that lot.

EVANS: With “Christine” I played to a click track but then stopped when it came to the guitar

Acrowded House: (I-r) Chris Groothuizen, AndreaHeukamp, Terry

Bickers (front), Pete Evans, Guy Chadwick

break that comes in about halfway through. Then it gets a bit freer. We did that a lot.

COLLIER: They were all exceptionally good musicians. With “Christine”, like most of their songs, they started by all playing live through the song. We’d isolate the bass and drums, which got locked down pretty quickly. Then we’d spend bloody ages as Guy and Terry fiddled around playing and re-playing and layering the guitars. They’d get radically different guitar sounds and use adjectives — “make it wobbly”, “use that jazz sound" - that only they'd understand. They have the most back-to-front way of working - they'll often startin the middle ofthe song and work backwards, they'll pile up layers of guitars and vocals and use up all 24 tracks on tape, and they'd drive you mad. But it all made sense in the end.

CHADWICK: It took a long time to mix "Christine". The fundamental thing is that it has aconstant, two-note guitar riff, set against a constantly moving bass riff. You had to be able to hearthat. Alan McGee did a mix and described it as "chainsaw hoovermatic" - he drenched it in reverb and it sounded rubbish. Then we tried it, then someone else tried it. Eventually one of Pat's engineers, Iain O'Higgins, got it right.

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 29

TIM PATON

P a

Guy Chadwick: “We'd divide the guitar parts betweenus: Terry usually came up with more interesting sounds”

. GROOTHUIZEN: Alan my favourite linein it, is about would only pay for | Д |; | F | | t how difficult things are when another mix if we did itin some you'rea struggling artist. graveyard slot. So this poor guy * Written by Guy Chadwick That'sa killer! lain diditfromaboutmidnight * Producedby GROOTHUIZEN: Andrea's The House Of Love

until five in the morning. I remember lain falling asleep on the mixing desk, his hand stretched out on a fader... COLLIER: I came in that morning and they all looked like zombies. I played it and said, 'That's perfect.’ They

* Engineered by Pat Collier * Mixed by Pat Collier and lain O'Higgins * Recordedat Greenhouse Studios, Old Street, London * Released April 1988 e Did not chart

backing vocals were a key component to the way Guy wrote and structured his songs. It changed when she left, musically and personally. EVANS: It was a shame Andrea left. She was homesick for Germany, and I think she

decided to add more vocals. They were obsessed with backing vocals! Andrea [Heukamp] was particularly good on the vocals. CHADWICK: The riff and chord progression, if I’m honest, come from Roxy Music’s “Over You” — Iremember driving one day and hearing itin my head. I think the name “Christine” was the first word that came into my head when I started singing along. The probable inspiration was a girl called Christine Га been out with as a teenager – the first person who broke my heart. She'd had a kid notlong after we split up, with someone else, so that probably inspired “апа the baby cries". BICKERS: I love the line: “Still walking in me/ Still talking in me". It suggests optimism, the idea of something being kept alive. It’s as much about music as anything. CHADWICK: A lot of my songs are about how I feel about music. I think that's true of lots of songwriters. “The whole world drags us down”,

wanted to play bass, not guitar.

There was always tension – at

the first rehearsal I remember seeing her outside, crying. Everyone in the band was friendly, but we were never really friends.

GROOTHUIZEN: When Andrea left it definitely became more... blokeish. A bit wilder.

CHADWICK: Were drugs involved? Notin the studio, not while we were on Creation. The drugs came in when we started touring, it was not healthy. I find it a little bit annoying that Alan McGee rather romanticises that side of things.

BICKERS: The drink and drugs got worse when we'd signed to a major label, and were expected to deliver singles to order. It's the hackneyed story of bands, they start to have some success and it all goes pear-shaped.

CHADWICK: “Christine”, like the entire first album, wasincredibly cheap to make. Compare it to the second album - where we spent six very expensive weeks at Abbey Road on sessions that

were dumped, as well as £130,0000n sessions with Stephen Hague that were never used. Shocking! The first album cost peanuts: around £250 or £300 a day for five days recording and four days mixing. Sothe whole LP cost lessthan three grand. The video for “Christine” cost nothing – it was a favour from an old friend, Peter Scammell. PETER SCAMMELL: Га just setupa video company called State, with Anton Corbijn. Guy was an old mate and he came to visit mein this Dean Street office and played me a tape of “Christine”, which I loved. The videos Га been working on, for Erasure, Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Ferry, The Banshees and The Creatures, used lots of fast cutting. I wanted to do the opposite — long, lingering, photographic images. CHADWICK: | loved the video! I had this idea we could be in Val Doonican jumpers, with acoustic guitars on stools. SCAMMELL: 1 diditasa favour. I only had six rolls of 8mm film, and we shotitin a photographic studio in Covent Garden used by Guy's girlfriend — now wife – Suzie Gibbons, who also did their sleeves. I didn't want to do an orthodox shoot with a drumkit. I thought posing the band with acoustics made them look more fragile, a contrast to this mash of distorted guitars. I possibly overdid the out-of-focus thing! I wanted it to take off when the guitar break kicks in, so we filmed a couple kissing. I think that was Pete and his girlfriend. We turned the cameras sidewise and played it in slow motion, it looked more sexually suggestive and voyeuristic. GROOTHUIZEN: We were asked to perform on the South Bank Show awards. That was a real accolade, usually meant for bands at the pinnacle oftheir career, not bands who'd just started! EVANS: I remember having my make-up done nextto Melvyn Bragg! The afternoon rehearsal went really well. Unfortunately, for the evening performance, in front of the audience, the roadie forgot to plug in Terry's guitar, so it sounded terrible, like a damp squib. Fortunately, they'd recorded our earlier version, and broadcast that. GROOTHUIZEN: | think the later music we did, on Fontana, doesn’t really stand up as well, but “Christine” sounds tremendous to this day, especially considering the budget. CHADWICK: “Christine” was never a hit but it still has a huge resonance. We always play it live —if we didn't, the crowd would bloody kill us! ©

The House Of Love release their new LP, She Paints Words In Red, through Cherry Red on March 25

1984 Guy Chadwick splits up The Kingdoms

Greenhouse Studios. Andrea Heukamp

оту рте October 1987

copies of the band's first demos

1986 Chadwick places

advert in Melody Compilation of early

Chadwick starts Maker, forms The May 1987 House Of singles and B-sides, aka leaves the band‏ 1985 ا ii | 4 | A | ИШ torecordaseries of House Of Love Love release debut ‘The German Album’, April1988 “Christine”‏ | Lee demos, including January 1987 The single “Shine On" released on Creation/ released‏

“Christine”, “Destroy group sign to Creation July 1987 Release Rough Trade June 1988 The House

The Heart” and me "Real Animal”

Of Love album is

released

November 1987 Record "Christine" in

second single "Real Animal"

after "bombarding" Alan McGee with

ЗО | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

Includes the original broadcast concert remastered. The dress rehearsal remixed and remastered. 5 songs recorded in a behind-closed-doors session.

Brand new full colour 24 page booklet with rare photos and liner notes.

amazon.co.uk

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JAMIE BLACKLEY

Why has hecome back? because he has plenty to say, and new ways of saying It. Because he couldn't keep silent any longer...

Religious dissidents and juvenile delinquents, Greenwich Village and Potsdamer Platz, doomed soldiers and vacuous celebrities... To mark the auspicious arrival of DAVID BOWITE's 24th album, David Cavanagh files the epic, definitive review of The Next Day. Plus: we talk to Bowie's key collaborators this time round,

and discover he's been surprisingly busy since 2003.

Photo: © Masayoshi Sukita

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 33

JIMMY KING; GETTY IMAGES

DAVID BOWIE

HIS IS HOW IT ENDED. The crowd booed and catcalled. Bowie reeled away in pain. When he returned to the microphone, his voice had a bitter rasp. “Yeah, let’s do that again all fuckin’ night! Where are you, creep? Yeah, I guess it’s easier to get lost in the crowd, you bastard.” Reports of the incident swept the internet: a lollipop had been thrown by a fan in an audience in Oslo, hitting Bowie straight in the eye. It rivalled the Lord's Prayer at Wembley as the most bizarre event of his performing life. A week later, in Prague, Bowie complained of chest pains. A trapped nerve in his shoulder, they said, but within 48 hours he suffered a heart attack at a festival in Germany. It was June 25, 2004. The rest of the tour was cancelled as Bowie underwent emergency surgery on a blocked artery. After the operation came the shutdown, the withdrawal. No albums, no tours, merely rumours of ill health and retirement. Five years became six, and eight became nine, and the world accepted that Bowie's remarkable career in music was over.

WHO'S WHO

This is howit starts. The crowd are baying for blood. Aman is chased through the streets and dragged to a river on the back ofa cart. Dead bodies pile up on the shore. There's a *purple-headed priest” whom everyone is terrified of. Are we listening to the fate of one of the Tudor heretics? Ora dissident of the Catholic Church in John Wycliffe’s time? Perhaps the action takes place in an even earlier century, like the 11th, where the priests, omnipotent and supposedly omniscient, “can’t get enough of that Domesday song”. Bowie comes to a climactic line and lets fly with a roar that almost strips the skin from his mouth: “They know God exists FOR THE DEVIL TOLD THEM SO!”

Drums pound. Guitars slash. Bowie is tortured and left to writhe in a “hollow tree”. Death is approaching, but when? Barely conscious, he watches the shadows lengthen as the day dawns and dims. “And the next day, and the next day, and the next...”

It’s 2013. David Bowie has re-entered the building.

ANUARY 8 WAS a Tuesday. We awoke to headlines

that made us rub our sleepy eyes in disbelief. Bowie

had stolen іп like a thiefin the night, uploading a new single on his 66th birthday (“Where Are We Now?") and announcing the March release of an album (The Next Day) that had been recorded in conditions of Freemason-esque secrecy. "Where

Bowie'ssinging is magisterial, spanning an

actorlyrange of неш. voices with гы ерни consummate E vow ease... a frail Bowie scouring his memory for video

footage of his past. The song was comparable to two of his finest latter-day ballads, “The Loneliest Guy” and “Thursday’s Child”, but was sadder than either because you could hear that he was struggling to sing.

34 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

STERLING CAMPBELL

(DRUMS)

Joined Bowie’s band in 1992 and served until the end of 2004's Reality tour.

ёф o and a half years ago David took myself, Gerry Leonard and Tony [Visconti] and found some rinky-dink studio to keep it low-key. He was trying out a bunch of ideas and we weren't even sure if it was going to be a record. l've been playing with David since Black Tie White Noise, so it wasn't like there was this crazy new approach. But David would be in the room playing with us, which doesn't happenalot. Even the drums bleeding into his mic became almost part of the concept. The special stuff is David's songwriting, he's always got a sense of adventure. When we were playing these songs they just had working titles. Then David started switching things, so | don'treally know what I'm playing on. It's like, ‘| don't know if it's gonna be a boy or a girl!"

But a magician must perforce deceive in order to lay his trick. "Where Are We Now?” was а classic case of misdirection. Bowie *wanted to sound vulnerable", revealed co-producer Tony Visconti, his relief exploding like a cork from a bottle now that he was finally free to discuss the project. The Next Day, Visconti stressed, was an album of *blistering rock" and we were unlikely to glean too many clues from the single. But by the simple expedient of identifying a handful of Berlin landmarks, Bowie ensured that the public would be primed to expect melancholia, old haunts, fading memories and bygones. They'd be tantalised by the prospect of this legendarily enigmatic man looking back over his 66 years in a mood ofregret (or maybe pride) and phrasing his mortality in verses of honesty and disclosure. The publicis about to get the shock of its life.

One of the album's characters is 22. Another is 17. Another could be as young as 14. Far from concerning itself with Bowie's demise, two songs openly wish death on others.

If Bowie was granting interviews, which he isn't, there are four songs that he'd be quizzed about by every journalist in every city. One of them is so provocative that when The Next Day goes on sale in Hollywood, A-list celebrities will start texting each other in a panic. Bowie's singing on the album is magisterial, spanning an actorly range of voices with such consummate ease that other singers will be left wondering how he does it. There are some criticisms, of course; it's

nota flawless masterpiece and it loses its way badly in the middle. But its aggression and intelligence demand our unconditional attention. The lyrics are fascinating. There's

more language to engage with than on any Bowie album, arguably, since Outside — quite an achievement as Outside was virtually a novel. Bowie's lyrics, in fact, provide the answer to the question Why Has He Come Back? He's come back, clearly, because he has plenty to say, and new ways of saying it, and couldn't keep silent any longer.

LOUD DISCHARGE FROM the drums (whoomph!) and

we're in. Harsh guitars dominate the early proceedings.

This is the title track and it's super-intense. This is music that wants to get us in а headlock and throw us around the room. We hear a Public Enemy siren squeal and the first words on a Bowie album in 10 years are: “‘Look into my eyes,’ he tells her/‘I’m going to say goodbye,’ he says, yeah." Bowie's punching out the lyrics with the same insistent rhythm that he used in *Repetition" (on Lodger), but much fiercer, emphasising key words with a teeth-bared shout. He takes us on a tour of the alleys, shows us the disease- ridden townspeople, introduces the *purple-headed priest" and holds us spellbound as the song races headlong towards the gallows.

After that thrilling entrance, "Dirty Boys" isan abrupt

detour. It has a wonky rhythm that grinds and grimaces. A frazzled guitar (Earl Slick) makes some splintery “Fashion”-esque outbursts, but the sparse ambience is closer to Iggy Pop's The Idiot than to Scary Monsters. A

baritone saxophone enters with a lurch, almost comically, as though playing along to a film about a man with a pronounced limp. Bowie singsin a peculiarly chewy voice, if you can imagine him sucking a gobstopper

Marchi RCA (UK), lso/Columbia (US)

CD, deluxe CD (with three

bonus tracks), iTunes, double vinyl

David Bowie and Tony Visconti

The Magic Shop and Human, New York City

David Bowie (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards, string arrangements), Gerry Leonard (guitar), David Torn (guitar), Earl Slick (guitar), Gail Ann Dorsey (bass, bk vocals), Tony Levin (bass), Zachary Alford (drums), Sterling Campbell (drums), Steve Elson (baritone sax, contrabass clarinet), Antoine Silverman, Maxim Moston, Hiroko Taguchi, Anja Wood (strings), Henry Hey (piano), Tony Visconti (guitar, bass, recorder, string arrangements), Janice Pendarvis (bk vocals)

There are no cover versions on the album, but “How Does The Grass Grow?” uses an ‘interpolation’ of The Shadows’ 1960 hit "Apache"

If The Next Day reaches No in the UK, it will be Bowie's first chart-topping album since Black Tie White Noise in 1993

"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" will be the second single, out February 26

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 35

TONY VISCONTI; REDFERNS

DAVID BOWIE

while trying to impersonate Edward Fox. “I will

buy you feather hat/I will steal a cricket bat/Smash some windows, make a noise/We will run with dirty boys." They'rea gang. A bunch of violent kids whose "die is cast”, who “have no choice". There's something jagged about the language that smacks of A Clockwork Orange, and Bowie's stylised voice seems like an extra device to validate the hoodlums' behaviour as literary, rather than mindless, destruction. We leave them to their nightly ritual.

A primary characteristic of The Next Dayis the way in which it catapults us from one scenario to another, often across continents and centuries, requiring us to readjust and get our bearings. If the first song was set in the Middle Ages, and the second in some imaginary North London, the third, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", takes us to Hollywood and New York where the parties and premieres are strictly invite-only. It's sure to be one of the most talked-about songs on the album.

Itbegins with swishy confidence, busily arranged to bolster a disappointingly plain chord progression. There are three guitars (Bowie, Gerry Leonard, David Torn), a baritone sax and contrabass clarinet (both played by Steve Elson, a veteran of Let's Dance and Tonight), a recorder (Visconti), a four-piece string section and two female backing singers. A snappy vocal hook is heard from time to time, giving the song a Style Council pop-soul tinge. The lyrics make afew punning connections between stars in the sky and stars in the movies, and then, without warning, Bowie goes on the attack.

Fame, he once commented, puts you there where things are hollow. Many songwriters of his vintage have railed at the ersatz celebrity of reality TV and The X Factor, but Bowie sounds like he’s going after the big guns, not the small fry. “The stars are never far away... They watch us from behind their shades... We see Jack and Brad from behind their tinted windows... The stars are never sleeping... Dead ones and the living.” This is Stepford Wives territory: celebrities with no lights on inside, menacing, robotic, inhuman. Bowie, losing

Ground controlroom: Tony Visconti, Bowie and engineer Brian Thornat New York’s The Magic Shop studio recording The Next Da

36 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

‘WHO'S WHO

TONY БШП

(PRODUCER

66 Nf people are looking

for classic Bowie they'll find it on this album,” Tony Visconti told Billboard when news first broke of The Next Day. “If they're looking for innovative Bowie, new directions, they're going to find that on this album too." He went onto herald the record as "extremely strong and beautiful", adding that "you could tell from the beginning that the songs were stunning, evenin primitive form."

Visconti, of course, was Bowie's go-to producer during his classic 70s years, before rejoining him for Heathen and Reality in the early 2000s. Since then he's been highly active. Most notably as producer of the Manic Street Preachers’ Lifeblood (2004), Morrissey's Ringleader Of The Tormentors (2006) and a pair of albums by Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal and Street Songs Of Love.

patience with them, portrays them as ashamed, scared tribe huddling together in tight packs, bonded by paranoia, with radiant smiles but vacant eyes, and with – get this — "child wives" in tow. “We will never berid of these stars, but I hope they live forever," he concludes with derision. Ifit had been written by Brett Anderson, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" would have minimal impact. Coming from Bowie, acelebrity at the absolute pinnacle of the pecking order, it's an extraordinary declaration of contempt for a society of untouchables. Many of them will strain to catch every nuance of *The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" while asking themselves if Bowie — one of their own - has coldly despised them all along.

HE TORRENT OF Bowie headlines on

January 8 amounted to a campaign that

no advertising company’s budget could have bought. Inevitably, interest in Bowie will have been reawakened right across the age spectrum, including tens of thousands, at a conservative estimate, who haven't bought a Bowie album in many years. These people will flock to The Next Day and digest itin isolation. For themit will be an album without backstory or context. But it can also be seen - should also be seen - as the third album in a sequence that got under way at the start of the millennium.

Rekindling his relationship with producer Visconti

after 20 years, Bowie released two albums — Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003) - that have quietly assumed the grandeur, if not the commercial status, of late- period classics. Though they have their differences, Heathen and Reality share a seriousness, a love of texture and an ambiguity of expression that allows multiple meanings to beread into them. In Heathen's case, it came to be seen as Bowie's response to September 11. For Reality, substitute the Iraq War. Bowie has a way of composing lyrics in non-linear

d Cappeople: Bowiein2012

AR, m

fragments, but with manifest emotion within those fragments, so that the finished song seems to apply both to himand to mankind as a whole. He's anxious. It's ananxious world. He feels alone. The world is a lonely place. The Next Day has that geopolitical portentousness that Heathen and Reality had, without specifying nations or leaders. Many of its characters are helpless or hopeless, either out of reach or out of their depth. Something has angered Bowie to the point of slamming down his fist. He's reminiscent of Peter Finch's distraught newscaster in Network: “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad." Finch ends his broadcast, you'll remember, by urging Americans to get up from their armchairs, throw open their windows and shout: “I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Soalong with the clanging guitars, a grim trepidation courses through The Next Day, like the frozen urban tundra that formed the landscape of Anthony Moore's brilliant post- punk LP Flying Doesn't Help. In more chilling moments one can detect the footprints of Scott Walker. It doesn't have to tellus things are bad. We know things are bad. It cannot be said to havea unity of theme (Bowie may one day inform us to the contrary) and it lacks a unity of genre, but The Next Day can perhaps lay claim to something more intangible: aunity of climate. As much as it's all-new and shiny, it does sound like Heathen and Reality's natural successor.

E RESUME. TRACK four: “Love Is Lost”. Bowie holds

his hands down on a keyboard, producing dramatic

chords. Zachary Alford (who played drums on Earthling) inserts an idiomatic “Ashes To Ashes" catch in the beat. Gerry Leonard's bluesy guitar fills have a touch of Stevie Ray Vaughan on Let's Dance. A glam-rock refrain (“say hello, hello") takes us even further back.

“Love Is Lost” is about an emotionally disturbed 22-year- old woman. She's alone and awake in “the hour of dread", “the darkest hour". It crosses the mind for an instant that Bowie might have devised a character through which to explore some dread of his own (is this going to bea song about dying?), but the lyrics become brutal and personalised as he adds more detail. *Your country's new, your friends are new/Your house and even your eyes are new/ Your maid is new, and your accent too/But your fear

WHO'S WHO

LALHARY ALFORD

(DRUMS

With a CV that includes Springsteen, the Manic Street Preachers and The B-52’s, Alford last played with Bowie on 1997's Earthling.

$é e all played live, so it was very organically played. And David was just happy as a clam. He was keen to keep the momentum going, because that’s what he feeds off. The album is reminiscent of his early records in some ways. If you listen to The Man Who Sold The World and “God Knows 'т Good”, they're evocative of folk or country. We had a couple of tunes that were country. But it’s anew millennium record, he’s not trying to make it sound like his old stuff. Although there was one song from the Lodger sessions. The working title was ‘Born In A UFO’. My jaw dropped when he played it, because | could hear [drummer] Dennis Davis in there. My hunchis it's now called ‘Dancing Out In Space’. On one songl changed the beat and David said, ‘| like that!’ and went in a new direction. He said, ‘I’m going to change the lyrics. It was originally going to be about prostitutes at the Vatican!"

d D David Bowie and bandat MadisonSquare Garden, October1996:(l-r) Zach Alford, Reeves Gabrels, Bowie, Gail AnnDorsey and Mike Garson

Bowie, with Gail AnnDorsey, headliningthelsle Of Wight Festival, June13,2004

ОАТ ANN DORSEY

(BASS)

Bowie’s live bassist of choice since 1995, up to and including the Reality tour, and key player on 1997's Earthling.

66 played fretless bass for the first time on this record. It was all done ina totally old-fashioned way, with everybody in the room together, laying down at least the basic tracks. | also went back later to do backing vocals and some lines that David and | sang together [“If You Can See Me” J. The song I'm playing fretless on is pretty spectacular because it’s in this ridiculous time signature. It’s 7/5 or something, a strange looping, limping time signature that’s really very cool. The rest are a real mix, with different moods and textures. They’re different from anything else that’s going on in the music world. The main thing | noticed about David was that he seemed really comfortable in his own skin. There’s nothing to prove anymore. So he had a kind of relaxed, total confidence, just enjoying the process of making the music. | don't think I’ve ever seen him this settled.”

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 37

JIMMY KING; RETNA; GETTY IMAGES

JIMMY KING; GETTY IMAGES

DAVID BOWIE

WHO'S WHO

EARL OLICK

(GUITAR)

Bowie's on-off lead guitarist since 1974's Diamond Dogs tour.

66 hen you've been working with somebody that long, even when you haven't seenthem for a while, you fall back into the routine in a heartbeat. The first thing that me, David, Sterling Campbell and Tony Visconti did was cut three brand new tracks from scratch. One is a mid-tempo cool thing, then we did a couple of rockers. | overdubbed ‘Set The World On Fire’ later. The key to any rock record, especially one of David's, is spontaneity. l'dgetatake ona song straight away, whether it reminded me of Station To Station or Scary Monsters or whatever. From a guitar point of view there were a few songs that just hit me and David, that needed a kind of Keith Richards rhythm. | ended up just doing what came naturally and it worked. The whole thing was so secret that Gerry Leonard didn’t even tell me he’d been in before me, and we'd had coffee together a number of times. | said to him: 'You bastard! But we all understood that's how it was. That's David's call. After 40 years of working with the guy, you have to respect that."

Bowie with artists

Jacqueline Humphries (the

other face ofthe dollinthe

"Where Are We Now?"

video) and Tony Oursler

(the video's director) )

isas oldas the world.” Another radiant starlet whose smile masks a secret despair? Whoever sheis, her mind is disintegrating as she stares at her superficial construct, her plastic lie. Bowie ends the song with anguished cries of “Oh, what have you done?”

The single, “Where Are We Now?”, arrives next, all Potsdamer Platz and elegance, decelerating the album’s heartbeat and slowing its blood to a trickle. The Next Day has become a sombre study of unhappy people depleted of energy. The teenage boy in "Valentine's Day" is not unhappy, but he's deeply troubled. He has fantasies about ruling humanity with a jackboot.

He has an “icy heart". He looks harmless with his “tiny face’ and “scrawny hands”, but we do fear the worst. The musical references are to the past: a Ziggy-style vocal and a whiff of Lou Reed’s “Satellite Of Love” (from Transformer), which Bowie co-produced. But Valentine doesn’t live in London in 1972. More like Colorado or Ohio right now. Something’s about to happen. Valentine is poised to act. The song has unspoken premonitions of a Columbine massacre.

Bowie and Gail Ann Dorsey duet on “If You Can See Me”,

a bewildering piledriver of a track. Counting the beat is impossible in its outlandish time signature. Performed and sung at the edge of hysteria, it’s as frantic as the industrial cacophonies on Earthling, with some voice gimmickry that speeds Bowie up to gnome-like pitch. “If You Can See Me” is an experiment in pushing everything, including us, to the limit. The verses are couched in abstracts. Blue shoes. Ared dress. A ladder. A crossroads. “Meet me across the river.” Children swarm like “thousands of bugs” towards

a beacon on a hill. In one of the album’s most exquisite passages, Bowie lowers his voice to a lordly baritone and croons: “Now, you could say I’ve got a gift of sorts/Veneer of rear windows and swinging doors/A love of violence, a dread of sighs." But children don't swarm of their own volition. The beacon on the hillisanything buta place of safety. When the lordly voice reappears, there’s an unstable edge to it, the shrillness of megalomania. The character is unmistakably a monster. “Iwill take your lands and all that lays beneath... I will slaughter your kinds who descend from belief... I am the spirit of greed."

A medieval despot? Or did Bowie have someone more modern in mind? And is everyone on The Next Day going to turn out to be violent and insane?

,

WhereAre We Now?

"E" au TONY DURSLER

Theteenage boy in "Valentine's Day" is troubled. He has fantasies about ruling humanity with a Jackboot

oe

Video director of

“Where Are We Now?"

| | 66 TFIRST | wondered if l'd be able to live up to a project like this, given the

gravity of the situation, the surprise of coming back after ten years of silence. But | listened very carefully to what David was saying and he already had this crystallised, fully articulated image for the video in his head. There were a few things that we teased out together, so it’s а кіпа of overlapping collaboration that gave birth іп my workshop. Those dolls you see - those doppelganger electronic effigies - аге a trope !'уе been using in my work since the early 90s. David used those in '97 for his 50th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, which was the first time we really did anything together. So he took me to his studio, where he had them out of storage, and said: ‘Let’s just use these.’ It was wonderful to see the birth of this song riding in on some kind of electronic magic carpet in my crazy studio."

OR REASONS BEST known to Bowie, the album has a

tendency towards bland songtitles that reveal nothing of

the turbulent worlds inside. “Га Rather Be High" is about a 17-year-old soldier flown to Cairo to join his regiment. They have received orders from "generals full of shit". The soldier has sympathy for his enemy (“Га rather be dead, or out of my head, than training these guns on those men in the sand"). He worries about going crazy and dreams of home. “Га rather smoke and phone my ex/Be pleading for some teenage sex." Zachary Alford adds to the authenticity by thrapping out a military drum pattern behind Gerry Leonard's guitar, but “Га Rather Be High" could do with some ofthe melodic unpredictability of *Never Get Old" (from Reality), which it faintly resembles. As itis, there's no transcendence, no lift-off. “Га Rather Be High” grumbles about generals, shoots and leaves.

THIN WHITE DUKE S DIARY

BOWIES QU

2004: Duets with Australian songwriter Butterfly Boucher on a new version of “Changes”

for DreamWorks flick, Shrek 2

2005: Records vocals for “(She Can) Do That”, co-written with Brian Transeau, for film Stealth

September 2005: Performs “Life On Mars”, with Mike Garson on keys, at the Fashion Rocks Awards at Radio City Music Hall іп New York. Arcade Fire then back Bowie on “Five Years” and “Wake Up”. A week later they perform “Queen Bitch” and “Wake Up” at CMJ Summerstage in Central Park

2005: Sings on Kashmir’s “The Cynic”, from the Danish alt- rockers’ No Balance Palace LP

January 2006: Attends the New York opening of a Lou Reed photography exhibition

Top: Bowie as Nikola Teslain The Prestige (2006). Above,with Arcade Fire at Fashion Rocks, at the Gallery at Hermés

2005. Below, at the Syd Barrett tribute with Dave Gilmour, Robert Wyatt, Phil Manzanera, David Crosby and Richard Wright. Bottom, Bowie at Lou Reed's photography exhibition

in New York. Belowright, out with his favourite music magazine... 3006: Cradited ac executive producer on doc, Scott Walker: 30 Century Man

2006: Sings backing on TV On The Radio’s “Province”, from Return To Cookie Mountain

2006: Plays Nikola Tesla іп Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, with Christian Bale

May 2006: Guests with David Gilmour at the Albert Hall for

"Arnold Layne" and "Comfortably Numb"

September 2006:

4 Appears as himself on Extras, serenading Ricky Gervais' character with "Chubby Little Loser"

November 2006: His last live performance to date, joining Alicia Keys at New York benefit show, the

. Black Ball.

Bowie sings

QNA MN

f

/ Lo í

\

1

I0 YEARS

Since the Reality tour of 2003-'04, Bowie has cut right down on his musical output. Though he's been far more active than you might think...

“Wild Is the Wind” and “Fantastic Voyage” and duets with Keys on “Changes”

April 2007: Attends the Vanity

Fair Tribeca Film Festival Party in New York

April 2007: Bowie is among the guests as Lou Reed accepts the George Arents Pioneer Medal, at Syracuse University

2007: Voices villain Maltazard in Luc Besson’s animated film

Arthur And The Invisibles

May 2007: Curates the 10-day High Line Festival in New York

2008: Voices Lord Royal Highness in SpongeBob’s Atlantis SquarePantis

2008: Plays a supporting role in Austin Chick’s August, with Josh Hartnett and Rip Torn

2008: Features on “Falling Down" and “Fannin Street”, two songs from Anywhere | Lay My Head, Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers

January 2009: Attends the premiere of son Duncan Jones’ directorial debut, Moon, at the Sundance Festival in Utah

April 2009: Joins Duncan for the New York premiere

2009: Cameos as the subject of the male lead's hero worship in musical comedy Bandslam

January 2010: Releases live album and DVD A Reality Tour, recorded in Dublin in Nov 2003

June 2010: Attends the late Les Paul's ‘95th birthday bash’ at New York's Iridium Jazz Club

June 2010: Goes to the CFDA Fashion Awards at the Lincoln Center, NY, with wife Iman

April 2011: Bowie and Iman attend the DKMS' 5th Annual Gala: Linked Against Leukemia, honouring Rihanna and Michael Clinton, at Cipriani Wall Street, NY

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 39

REX FEATURES; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE FOR NEW YORK POST; GETTY IMAGES; INFPHOTO.COM

WHO'S WHO

(GUITAR

Dublin-born guitarist, Bowie’s musical

director on Reality tour

“| acted as band leader through the Reality tour, so it kind of clicked back into place when we did these sessions. We'd all huddle around the piano and David would play a rough demo that he'd either made at home or that

we'd done back in November 2010. Then we'd all go to our stations and work on sounds and ideas. The sessions all moved really quickly, but were never rushed. David likes to work hard in short bursts and get it done. At times we were tracking a song and

he was writing lyrics at the same time. It was almost distracting. One time he called me back in: Just trust me and bring a favourite guitar.’ He and Tony had sourced a 70s Marshall stack from a picture of a rehearsal room back in the Mick Ronson days. It’s always so satisfying

to play electric guitar with David. He's the only singer | ever worked with who asks me to play louder: ‘Sounds great, Gerry! Can you turn it up?”

4.0 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

DERRY LEONARD

“Boss Of Me”, co-written by Bowie and Leonard,

isa feisty mid-tempo track like “Dirty Boys" with more of the colours filled in. Again, Steve Elson's baritone sax is prominent and the backing vocalists return. All the same, it's one ofthe leastinteresting songs on the album, with some crude changes as if ill-fitting pieces ofunrelated songs had been clomped together as a compromise. There's also a naggingly subliminal association with Peter Gabriel's “Sledgehammer”, which it could’ve done without. The charmless punchline (“Who'd have thought a smalltown girl like you would be the boss of me?") might have graced a Mick Jagger solo album, if it were lucky, but is an incongruous piece of misogyny here. “Dancing Out In Space", which follows, is equally inconsequential. A bouncy poptune that revives the classic Supremes beat (“You Can't Hurry Love”) which inspired Bowie and Iggy's “Lust For Life”, “Dancing Out In Space” has twinkle-star keyboards and wears a mid-'8os party frock. It's conceivable that it wants to be “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince - when it grows up, anyway - but the lyrics are trite and it's hard to care about a sugar-candy throwaway after the action-packed 25 minutes before it. Who puts a trailer in the middle ofa film? Getting The Next Day's psychological measure is tricky enough without being waylaid by a song whose chorus sounds like Darts singing about the boy from New York City.

The many faces of Bowie: (clockwise fromthis shot) the spiky Earthling look, the Heathensophistication and Reality’s smart-casual guise

A plano 1s tinkled as two lovers stroll. Then the lyrics get a bit nasty. Then they get

very nasty...

“Look Back In Anger” (Lodger).

But we need to go back as far as Hunky Dory, and astrange young

man witha voice like sand and glue, to pinpoint the location of “(You Will) Set The World On Fire”. It’s midnight in the Village - Greenwich Village in the early '60s. Candles are litina nightclub. There are hints of furtiveness and concealment. “You say too much”. Kennedy is mentioned, and Dave Van Ronk and

The album is slipping away. But before we EU A "x Bobby (Zimmerman) and there's a “Joan” whose know it, we're backin wartime. “How Does The T surname may be Baez. A young singeris hoping Grass Grow?" fades in like Robert Fripp's looped { to break out of the Village and make her name. army of guitars on Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting, a | = The pummelling chorus taunts and sneers about

nice illusion since Fripp doesn't actually play on the album. A soldieris writing a letter to his sweetheart back home. He urges her to go to a graveyard near some steps (*That's where we made our tryst”), aline that recalls Wilfred Owen. We remember from our Bowie biographies that a grandfather, Jimmy Burns, fought

in the First World War. “The 3rd Hussars were sent to France and a week later rode into the battle at Mons,” Peter and Leni Gillman write in Alias David Bowie. By winter 1914, the Hussars were “stricken with frostbite, the horses up to their

hocks in mud". Sure enough, the song’s chorus goes: “Where do the boys lie?/

Mud, mud, mud!/How does the grass grow?/Blood, blood, blood.”

A metallic riposte after the Motown interlude, “How Does The Grass Grow?” has a compassionate anti-war message, but is undermined by a curious Bowie- Dorsey vocal part that imitates the twangy melody of The Shadows’ “Apache”. Bowie may have been seeking a Joe Meek-ian otherworldliness, and so used a tune from 1960, but the “Apache” motif takes only two listens to become irritating. Three and it becomes a serious issue. Much more appealing is a transition midway through in which the musicians relax and Bowie sings romantically in a “Wild Is The Wind" style.

The next trackis the heaviest on the album. “(You Will) Set The World On Fire” stomps in witha staccato riff like early Van Halen or Rainbow's “Since You Been Gone”. It features a strikingly eccentric Bowie vocal - think ofa barmy aristocrat whom the family keeps locked in the attic — which instantly puts us in mind of

“magazines”. Earl Slick pulls offa bravura solo. “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire,” said St Catherine of Siena (1347-80). The penultimate track, “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die”, isa ballad with astring arrangement that brings vivid flashbacks of the Ziggy era. “Rock 'N' Roll Suicide” looms unmistakably into view, as does Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day". A piano is tinkled sweetly as two lovers stroll through a park. Then the lyrics get a little bit nasty. Then they get very nasty indeed. “I’m going to tell the things you’ve done.” The lovers have separated, and now one of them is hellbent on exposure, incrimination, the apportioning of blame. Bowie launches into a devastating indictment ofa person he once loved, singing likea wondrous union of himself, Piaf and Morrissey. The song will have everyone speculating. Is he writing in character? Or is the target real? Bowie sounds consumed with pain. "T want to see you clearly before you close the door/A room of bloody history/You made sure of that." Hetwiststhe knife. "I can see you as a corpse... Icanread you like a book!" And now the sexual jealousy: “I can feel you falling/ Ihear you moaning in your room/Oh, see if I care! Oh, please, please, make it soon!" It's mighty, mighty stuff. When it's over, you want to rise to your feet, cry ‘bravo!’ and fling bouquets at the stage.

Nightmares pervade the final track, *Heat". A sinister synthesiser buzzes іп a low drone. A bass guitar snarls like a guard dog. Someone is having upsetting visions. A dead dog trapped between the rocks. The water can't flow because the dog is wedged tight. “My father ran the prison/ I can only love you by hating him more/That's not the truth/It's too big a word.” Bowie is muscling in on Scott Walker's terrain here — both vocally and lyrically - and when the eerie violins start to screech, *Heat" can nolonger hide its palpable debt to Walker's “The Electrician” (1978), a song that Bowie has long admired. Walker was writing about the horrors of electric shock torturein a South American police station. Bowie's homage, sadly, is too woolly to be convincing. It's a deflating sensation to see him end The Next Day with a song so brazenly in thrall to a better one.

Visconti has claimed that 29 tracks were recorded, which augurs well for another album in due course. Three bonus cuts from the sessions are included on The Next Day's deluxe edition. They're worth hearing. *So She" is a charming frolic through a Serge Gainsbourg '60s pop paintbox, with lush strings and a glockenspiel melody that Stereolab would be delighted with. “Plan” is a short, unfriendly instrumental. “TIl Take You There”, the best of the bonuses, is a driving rocker loaded with hooks and a terrifically catchy chorus (“What will be my name in the USA?/Who will I become in the USA?"). Hypothetically, it would have maximum singalong interactive potential for a suitably pumped-up audience. Realistically, nobody knows if Bowie's going to perform live again.

So it didn’t turn out to be an album of ruminations, reveries and ghosts. The theories about The Next Day's title invoking Beckett and Macbeth proved unfounded. The passing of the days - endless days, blank days - has always been present in Bowie's work, from “All The Madmen” to “Buddha Of Suburbia”, and it remains so. The days can look after themselves. The characters that we are, however, seem to be gaining frightening momentum as we hurtle towards the collisions that await us. Bowie has given us that much to ponder, and more besides, as he withdraws once again. O

The CHANGES Collection, by David Bowie & Masayoshi Sukita, their signed series of archival grade artist prints from www.genesis-publications.com; Tel: +44 (0) 1483 540 970; Price £1,900. For more on Bowie, see March 2issue of NME

LATE-PERIUU BOWIE

DAVID BOWIE

Six albums you might have missed

(ARISTA, 1993)

Bowie had married

Iman. Tin Machine had

С _ folded. Black Tie White

Noise, co-produced with Nile Rodgers, had topped the British charts in April 1993.Then a real surprise later that year: The Buddha Of Suburbia, commissioned to accompany a BBC2 adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novel. Not strictly a soundtrack, Buddha... was areturn to the restlessly experimental Bowie of Low and “Heroes”. There were avant-garde loops, dark ambiences, weird jazz, Mike Garson piano frenzies and deeply odd instrumentals. The poignant title track (a more conventional song) looked back to Bowie’s South London adolescence: “vicious but ready to learn”.

(ARISTA, 1995)

А 75-minute concept album reuniting Bowie with Brian Eno, who co-wrote and co-produced. Outside (sometimes written as ‘1. Outside’) was a detective story about a girl's death. Its murky narrative was cut up by a special computer programme - the ‘random’ Bowie was back witha vengeance - and similar methods applied to the music, which customised harsh hip-hop beats, violently distorted guitars (Reeves Gabrels), Garson’s off-message piano and all manner of Eno treatments. "The Hearts Filthy Lesson” was heard in 1995's most disturbing thriller, Seven, while David Lynch used “I’m Deranged” in Lost Highway. That’s the kind of company Outside keeps.

(BMG, 1997)

Released a month after | Bowie's 50th birthday,

Earthling wasa

! controversial move

into drum’n’bass,

influenced by Photek and others. Bowie was accused of dilettantism (ironic, since he’d always had magpie tendencies) and of being too old to understand the drum'n'bass culture. But there was another influence on Earthling: The Prodigy. Bowie, in the unlikely role of atwisted firestarter, was almost submerged by the juddering breakbeats, the bass bombs and Gabrels’ squealing guitars. Yet the songs somehow held their own: “Little Wonder" and “Telling

Lies” had distinctive Bowie melodies, and “Seven Years In Tibet” was a belter.

(VIRGIN, 1999)

Abandoning electronica's cutting edge, Bowie made ап album dominated by EIET СаБге!5, never the most restrained of guitarists, behaved impeccably. The music was melodic апа unthreatening, yet Воуле'$ lyrics were anything but calm. Many wondered what exactly he was trying to say: he seemed fearful and uneasy. After a leisurely first half ("Thursday's Child”, "Survive", "If l'm Dreaming My Life") 'Hours...'toughens up and shows a wilder side ("What's Really Happening?”, “The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell"), but it was, and remains, а lowly ranked album in his catalogue.

(ISO/COLUMBIA, 2002) т j Bowie had intended to РЕ \ , | release an album called - ) » ‘Toy’, a mix of new РА - material and old songs from 1964-71. A change of plan led to Heathen, co-produced by Tony Visconti who'd last worked with Bowie in1980. Keeping two tracks from ‘Toy’ (“Afraid” and “Uncle Floyd”, retitled “Slip Away”), Heathen added seven new songs and three covers: “Cactus” (Pixies), “I’ve Been Waiting For You” (Neil Young) and “I Took A Trip On A Gemini Spaceship” (Legendary Stardust Cowboy). Out of these implausibly diverse elements grew an album of angst and atmosphere, massive in scope -and a huge Bowie statement. ‘Toy’, officially unreleased, was leaked online in 200.

(ISO/COLUMBIA, 2003)

A keen Dandy Warhols fan, Bowie reached into his pop locker

and surprised anyone expecting a Sturm und Drangfollow-up to Heathen. Reality was almost beat group music, with glorious tunes ("New Killer Star", "Never Get Old") and a commercial sound. But heavyweight themes lurked beneath the shiny surface. "She'll Drive The Big Car" was about a spiritually unfulfilled woman committing suicide. “Fall Dog Bombs The Moon” was about George W Bush and Dick Cheney. Old friend Lou Reed hailed the haunting ballad “The Loneliest Guy” as one of his greatest ever lyrics.

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 41

STEPHEN STILLS

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| Story: Jaan Uhelszki Photo: Henry Diltz

« [TC

Introducing the lesser-spotted STEPHEN STILLS. Neil Young’s “soul brother”, and a gentleman with “a taste for the posh”, who can, admittedly be “cranky, but a lot of it’s a put-on”. As a boxset of his momentous career emerges, Stills sets many records straight. Like: how did CSN really get together?

HENRY DILTZ/CORBIS

ITUATED ON ONE of LA’s more notorious stretches of road, half a mile down from Jack Nicholson’s stucco house and just east of the digs where Lennon lived during his 18-month ‘Lost Weekend’, is Stephen Stills’ Grange house. Set behind a deceptively primitive looking wooden fence, with a street lamp that seems purloined from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, you'll find a discreet electric gate. Beyond that, a long graded road drops down into a small valley, and suddenly a large stone storybook house appears out of the fine grey mist. A piece of white paper taped to one ofthe front door's windows threatens, “Take Off Dirty Boots by order ofthe Momanagement!” It’s clear who's in charge here: Stills’ wife of 15 years, Kristen Hathoway, whom he met when she was managing a recording studio.

A housekeeper lets mein, but not before inspecting my footwear. Satisfied, she leads me through the sprawling single-storey house, past interlocking rooms and a sunken lounge to a large dining room, leaving me in front of a long, polished oak table. I take a seat at one of the intricately carved chairs, festooned with small acorns, the sign of eternal life.

A good symbol for a man who recently beat prostate cancer.

Everything aboutStills' home whispers gentility and understatement. There is little evidence of his history in Buffalo Springfield, CSNY or Manassas here. There are no

gongs or guitars on display. Whilethere are a few photos of Stills onstage, they're outnumbered by pictures of his family. Theonly concession to what Stills does is a stack of black and white images from the cover of his upcoming career- retrospective boxset, Carry On, signed with his distinctive doubleS signature, mimicking the shape of a guitar.

“Tm sorry if lve kept you,” the 68-year-old says. “I have Pilates three times a week, and I hate to miss it." That, and weighing himself four times a day allowed Stills to shed over 4olbs before Buffalo Springfield's 2011 reunion tour. Today, he's even slimmer. His eyes are icy blue, his haira dirty blond, his smile devilish and knowing. But the thing you notice most is that he’s an unrepentant raconteur. Spend 10 minutes with Stills, outfitted in his pea coat and perfectly cut trousers, his ready laugh and quick wit, and you’ll see what Hendrix, Clapton, McCartney and countless others were drawn to.

UNCUT: Looking at the finished box, did that make you see how accomplished you were when you were young? STEPHEN STILLS: Well, I had schooling. I had classical training soIkind of knew what I was about.

Were you always so brutally confident? Actually,

Iwasincredibly self-conscious and shy. Bashful is the great word for me.

APRIL 2013 | UNCUT | 43

STEPHEN STILLS

the fingerpicking emerges whole. That’s exactly the way I play now. I had only learned the guitar a year and a half before — before that I played drums. Somebody had a baritone uke and that was the first thing I played. When my family lived in Costa Rica, there was nothing todo at night. I had a guitar so after Га finish homework, I'd goin the bathroom to get away from my sisters fighting with each other, and

. Where did you learn so much about music? When I was about five or six my family went to

Louisiana and one ofthe first things we did was go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Back then, it was perfectly OK for a five-year-old white boy to go and sit on the side of the street and watch the Zulu parade go by. It’s the night parade of all the Indian tribes two days before Mardi Gras. I watched the

whole thing and it absorbed into my DNA. To the о Aid Га play guitar until my hands were falling off.

marrow. At three, I had tap lessons and I can still | Stillsin2013

send my littlefeet scraping across the floor and Does it amaze you that you could pick up so finding rhythm. I’ve always had asense ofa much back then? I had this jackhammer pocket, a groove, a rhythm, that's driven quite a few thumb. I’ve got carpal now, so it's not as strong as it used to drummers and other musicians crazy. I tend to say, “Will you be. There'san “ow” moment where I first pick up a guitar and just quit rushing?" Ihaveto brace myself for it, then it sort of settles in.

You started as a drummer? Yeah, I was a drummer first. | You’ve gota bigger range than most people with your

| ^ " thumb... Well, maybe everybody except Jimi Hendrix. In [producer] Arif Mardin's book, he talks about your Neil You П g

keen sense of rhythm. He stole my heart. He was such a ° Are you really the outsider you often insist you are? master, the kindest, gentlest. He was one beautiful man. 1S ту There'sa certain element that seeks to remind me I'm not.

| | uu brother. | NM Despite your reputation for being kind ofa hard ass, you 5 à Did you haveasense you were making history in the seem to bring out the best in people. I can be cranky, but | S like Springfield at the time? No. I was preparing to.

alotofit's a put-on. My father was really a sarcastic son-of-a- we b onde d

bitch. My sense of humour is based around that and needling. My favourite story about youis when you werein LA

Going to military school, being on teams and in bands, you're SO de ep. . Е driving with Richie Furay апа across the road you see a

needling each other all the time. Some people are put off by black hearse with Canadian plates and immediately

that and some people think that’s good guys-manship. STEPHEN STILLS know that it has to be Neil Young and Bruce Palmer. Yeah, | . Іѕее the Ontario licence plate. Wait, that's a hearse from

Do you deserve any of your reputation? Га rather not be Ontario. I know who that is. “Get around this guy, let me out

conscious ofitas otherwise it’s unnatural and false and I’m the car.” I screamed. I jumped out, tapped the window and

just another poser even though I can get caught out being said, “Neil, it’s me.”

demanding. Sometimes I get frustrated and say, “Will you

please do what I ask?” I can get a little cross. But to quote Was he surprised? No, he wasn’t. But that’s Neil. I said, “I

Arnold Palmer, “I refuse not to be nice.” The older I get, the was looking all over for you.” He said, “This is how dorky we

more dedicated I am to that. If Ido havea flash of temper, I 45 RPM were. We went to 77 Sunset Strip [TV show].” That was part of

feel horrible about it later. (оз (о) the attraction. We're both kinda dorky.

What did you learn about yourself from working on ЛУП С ECORDS Did you know how extraordinary Buffalo Springfield

the boxset? All Га done was move house for my entire LAAS f was? Looking back, would you have done anything

life. Iwentto five different high schools and two boarding AA pup differently? I knew we were doing something special when

schools, and three other schools. I was the perpetual оем ЇТ Brucewasthere. Everything slowed down and we were The

stranger, so that’s what I wrote about on that first song, sopa Rolling Stones. We cooked like blazes. When Bruce was

“Travelin”. But the fingerpicking was there. On that tape 3; WORTH ' gone, Dewey [Martin] would get all amped-up. Dewey was a

baseball-playing Nashville guy who took these pills. So we got to the studio and we were very excited, and everything was sped up so fast that it sounded like an all-insect orchestra. When we walked in to do our [2011]

" | б AW A W i | | 1 reunion, Neil and Richie were singing *Go And Say

^ Goodbye" at the original speed, and it was like they

[ AT [ A | | | N | [ [ | 1 M " were leaping up and down like insects. I went, “Stop TE right there. I cannot listen to that. Take that record. Put

Stills on the November 1966 LA demo itinto the thing in ProTools that lets you make it go that inspire d “For What It's Worth" slower without changing key. They have that now, don't

they? Yes, they do. It’s easy.” Then I said, “I will come “The way | sawit, the riot on Sunset Strip was back and practise that song when you have done that.” really a funeral for a bar. Pandora’s Box was Of everything I detest about digital, the fact you can do where you started and ended each evening. that and put it back оп а piece of tape, is like magic.

It was on the island in the middle of Crescent

Heights, they were going to have to bulldoze Buffalo Springfield were my Beatles. What were

it so they could make the big shopping mall they to you? Well, not that of course. We never made and change the street. | was living in Topanga any money. I had a Ferrari and a cabin in Topanga, and Canyon, anda friend and | went over on Laurel Canyon to go clubbing. I managed to get my little sister into Stanford.

When we came over the Canyon and came down that straightaway into

Sunset, we saw a whole battalion of cops lined up on one side of the Didn't you have a Bentley, too? I still do. I’ve got a different street. They were in full Macedonian battle array, and there were all kids Bentley now, but they loom large in my legend. I get the most hanging on the other side. The only other time l'd seen this had been in understated one I can 'cos I want the very fast living room. It’s one of the attempts to overthrow the Somoza government in Nicaragua. posh. Iam posh, I will admit it. I’ve gota taste for the posh.

| said, a) ‘Turn the fuck around and go back to Topanga. We do not want

to be anywhere near here. This could go south so far, so fast about, over Ican see that by your jacket. Well, it’s a Tom Ford. I suffer nothing. And, b) ‘I needa guitar.” for my good taste sometimes.

ДД | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

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Did you always know how to dress? Well, yeah. You go to military school, you’re going to learn how to turn out. My dad was apretty stylish guy. I gravitated to friends who knew how to dress and when I’m ina proper store with a proper guy, I actually get into getting fitted.

So the rest of us were just hippies and you were dressing well. Well, just look at how McCartney dressed in Help!.

You’ve been sober for quite along time. Do you miss drinking? I don’t like itanymore. I don't like being hammered. ГИ have a drink. I quit for 10 years and Iwas craving a steak with a marbled fat, and it's like you need a mojito with that. It's the best thing you can do to your arteries before you eat something like that because it's got citrus in it andit'll make everything go right through.

Do you miss the drugs? I’ve seen the pictures. They're ugly. Giving up pot for me was really easy. I would be driving and Crosby would do shit like before we'd be going into a business meeting. He would light up this stultifying shit, and Га say, "We're going to a business meeting, are you nuts?" They would do it anyway, and I couldn't get out of the room or away far enough away from it, so Iwould goin and my mind is going so fast, Ican't speak. So wejust watched seven million dollars fly out the window because we're too stupid to micromanage something that's actually important. I don't hold anything against him, all he did was do what he always does. Once, I was going to the airport to pick up someone and Iwas at Crosby’s, andIgotin the car and! was on the freeway, and then I wasn’t on the freeway. And I do not get lost.

That'slike your metaphor, you don't get lost. I don’t get lost. You can throw mein town апа Гі! just look at the trees and be still for a minute and І know where lam.

It’s funny that being still should be important to a man called Stills. I thought it had to do witha whiskey still... coming from a family of drunks. Hearing Judy [Collins]’s stories recently about her father’s drinking. I didn’t know about any ofthat. I was so oblivious, so smitten.

You were really smitten, given the number of songs you wrote about her. Were you like Romeo and Juliet? We got out before we got to that point. We didn't let them get us. There wasalot of brother and sister to us, too.

| you feel what was said and all that led up to that key

Lounge music... Buffalo Springfield, 1967: (1-ғ) Bruce Palmer, StephenStills, Neil Young, Dewey Martin, Richie Furay

Can we talk alittle about anotherimportant union, The Stills-Young Band? What was that like for the two of you? Itwas the most fun we had forever. But the band was not preconditioned to act like Crazy Horse and play whatever, and change the set every night. We didn't have time to learn enough songs, and some were more complicated than three chords, so Neil got bored. The band was a littlestiff and there weretoo many of them. That's the short answer. Ithought the cover [Long May You Run] was the best cover we ever did, it was hilarious. It was great fun to get Neil down to Miami. He immediately bought an old trumpy yacht and learned how to drive it, complete with driving into the dock.

Ithink he likes Florida because it reminds him of some ofthe bettertimes with his mom. They used to go to Florida and we were probably about 20 miles apart several timesin ourlives, when we were little boys.

Would you say of everyone in CSNY, you two were the closest? By about five miles. Neil and I are soul brothers, no matter what craziness he does. I think it's probably because we both havea taste of autism. Graham's my brother, but Neil isreally my brother. It's like we bonded so deep that he's actually going to be pissed if I don’t call him soon.

You portray women so beautifully in songs. Oh, my goodness. I’ve never been told that before. That's like little goose bumps. I grew up with two sisters and I have the loveliest, smartest women around me, and they're not game players. Game players are quickly driven out.

Did you always know you had a good voice? Yeah. They put youin the front centre of the choir, that's a clue.

¬

Do you feel musicians are wired differently to the rest ofus? It'strying toexpress why do we have music? Orart? Because we need something beyond words to communicate the profound. Language isn't sufficient, but visual art and music have the ability to communicate the profound. You can do itin a phrase and a glance, because it's got the whole body involved and speaks to the whole body, because sound is analogue. The universe isanalogue. It's manipulation of cells and molecules. So when you're struck by that, the thought combined with the mode of the chord, it touches your emotion and

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After they both performedat the Monterey Pop Festival in1967, Hendrix went to Stills beach house along with Buddy Miles. "| wished | had hada tape recorder running that day,” Stills sighs. “Me, Jimi and Buddy Miles went out there and we played through the night, into the dawn. That's how | really became a guitar player.” While Hendrix played on Stills debut solo album, and they often spoke about recording an album together, very little exists from the sessions that they did together - although one track “No-Name Jam”, appears on Carry On. "The only tapes | have of Jimi and | are just all rubbish. They were rolling tape but we were just wandering around, searching for something to play.

"We were very close. We were very brother- like. But getting together was a pain in the ass because there was always this mob scene. But we would make room for each other. There is a picture of Jimi and me at the studio and I’m teaching him ‘Woodstock’, who | was going to teach that arrangement to first.”

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10 THINGS YOU MIGHT

NOT KNOW ABOUT STEPHEN STILLS...

Stills persuaded Eric Clapton to guest on his debut album in return for showing him how he got his acoustic guitar sound. “1 said, ‘Deal!’ We did that and then we played ‘Tequila’ all night long."

One of Stills’

teenage bands, The Continentals, included future Eagle, Don Felder.

Stills gave Chris

Hillman a rare 1939 Lloyd Loar Gibson mandolin when he joined Manassas.

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Stills’ first solo

album, released in 1970, featured a purple polka dot giraffe on the cover. It was thought to be a message — reportedly to Rita Coolidge. To this day,

Stills refuses to reveal

the truth.

446 | UNCUT | APRIL 2013

Stills wrote

CSN's “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” on shirt cardboard, explaining that “l used cardboard shirt-

blocking, you know those things from the cleaners —’cause they were harder tolose than pieces of paper and they didn’t crumple up. | could line them

up on music stands

and they'd stand up.”

In 1966, Stills

auditioned for The Monkees but couldn't come to ап agreement with the show's producers. The contract for the show required him to assign his music publishing rights to Screen Gems, which he refused to do.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young atLondon's Wembley Stadium, September 14,1974 |

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“You want metosing infront of Joni Mitchell?" Imean,she wasthe hot number...”

STEPHEN STILLS

word, that key moment, that key syllable that makes it - what was the silly word we had back then? – grok.

The legendary guitar battles you've often had with Neil onstage bring out the best in you both. Were you ever encouraged by others to take each other on, or are you both just naturally combative? They were never guitar wars. They're civil conversations, not arguments. We work out our emotions and we might grimace at each other. It's like playing cowboys and Indians. But that's as close as we get, but it’s not mean. Music that’s mean has a name. Punk rock.

Did you ever feel uncomfortable revealing so much of yourselfin your love songs? No. I’m alittle like Taylor Swift in that regard. Wear your heart on your sleeve, then just write about it. Fuck em.

There seems to be some controversy about how you, Crosby and Nash got together. You always say it was Cass Elliot’s house. Crosby and Nash