Table of contents for December 2020 in MOJO

Al Kooper A musician and songwriter, Al recalls his contributions to Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited on p66. Meanwhile, at age 77, he fights a never-ending battle to keep himself out of the Real Gone section of MOJO while preparing Unreleased - a 70-plus-track box set - for release on the Omnivore label. Niall Doherty Digging into the labyrinthine making of Radiohead’s Kid A (see p56) took Niall back to standing in the rain at the band’s huge homecoming show in 2001, mouthing the holy words… “They’re playing Creep!” A writer and former Deputy Editor of Q, he previously interviewed Radiohead in Paris in 2016. Alan Berry Rhys Alan is a graphics artist and illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Both in his personal work and work for brands, his love…

IF NOTHING ELSE, 2020 HAS BEEN helpfully configured for private study, and many of us have spent these long months trying to unpick the secrets of Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways. What connects the Greek muses with eminent American generals? Where is the Conch Republic? What’s the dirtiest joke in Ancient Roman poetry? Who was Ward Hill Lamon? And what, ultimately, “would Julius Caesar do?” In this MOJO, we present the results of our findings, as part of our latest and most expansive Dylan Odyssey. Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks take us back 55 years, to the epochal sessions for Highway 61 Revisited. Another insider reveals all about the ’80s night Dylan went new wave. And the staunch Alan Jackson tells us about his multiple audiences with the Great…

Frankie Howerd & June Whitfield Up Je T’Aime (PYE, 1971) An acute psychosexual drama involving snoring, a disappointed June telling Frankie, “You’re a bore and I’m fed up with you” and his golf partner Arthur turning up in the bed. Would Serge have taken satisfaction? Donna Summer Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus (FROM THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY OST, CASABLANCA, 1978) Did Moroder & Bellotte miss a trick with this almost 16 minutes long, strings and brass’d up disco version? Only vaguely libidinous, great chunks lose interest and wander off in a saxy fug of spangly synths and autopiloting sessioneers. Pet Shop Boys Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus (B-SIDE, PARLOPHONE, 1999) A sarky electronic version with former ‘Young British Artist’ and pop fan Sam Taylor-Wood duetting with an asthmatic vocoder. Is…

IN SEPTEMBER 2018, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes came off a mammoth tour for the folk rock outliers’ complex third album, Crack-Up, in a state of exhaustion. Determined to get back to basics, the Seattle-born 34-year-old took off on writing and recording trips to Portugal, France, upstate New York and Los Angeles, found inspiration in Nina Simone and Joao Gilberto, and fretted over how to put the whole thing together. Then coronavirus hit and this most anxious of songwriters, who inaugurated a quiet revolution with the churchy solace of Fleet Foxes’ 2008 debut and in 2013 began a four-year hiatus to go to college and take up surfing, learned to stop worrying. “My mind goes toward music in ways I can’t control,” he says. “I’ve finally accepted that.” You have…

“WHEN I released the first song, my father said: ‘People know where you live, they will come for you.’”Liraz Charhi is recalling the making of her newly released second album, Zan (Farsi for “woman”), on which the Persian-Israeli singer recorded with Iranian musicians for whom the consequences of such collaboration could be extremely grave. Women aren’t allowed to sing in the Islamic republic, so “sessions” took place online. “By Instagram and Telegram,” she explains. “I was sending my lyrics and at the start people really wanted to join the project. But there was heartbreak: a drummer gave me tracks but she didn’t want to be on the album. Some wanted to use other names, others asked me not to contact them. That was painful.” It’s a sunny afternoon in Tel…

1 The Krieger Kid: Robby in 1951, aged 6, in Hopalong Cassidy cowboy shirt. 2 BreaK on through: The Doors on Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, 1967 on the release of their first album (from left) Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison, Krieger, John Densmore. 3 “We had this Dionysian guy”: Robby and Morrison get to grips in the studio towards the end. 4 Hang on to your life: Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore, keeping The Doors open, 1972. 5 Weird scenes inside the gold mine: Robby, Billy Idol and Ian Astbury celebrate the premiere of Oliver’s Stone’s movie The Doors, 1991, Whisky A Go-Go, Hollywood. 6 The resemblance is uncanny: with Frank Whaley, who played Krieger in the aforesaid notorious Doors biopic. 7 Full circle: Robby on-stage at a Riders On The Storm…

on the who: “The Who at the Oval [London, in 1971] was one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever been to… They were giving us a great gift and waking us up to our own mediocrities. [Watching bands] was escapism and at the same time it was filling our brains with new ideas.” on brian eno: “I love Eno’s Portsmouth Sinfonia. He got the most tuneless, talentless people in the world together and they did versions of famously classical songs and it’s horrendously beautiful. It’s alarming how close they got to the originals.” on the sex pistols: “I never felt any camaraderie in the Pistols at all. I hung out with Paul Cook (left) a few times and really liked his company. He’s a really decentfella. But he was Steve’s…

I’LL NEVER GROW OLD (Studio One single, 1963) S1 supremo Clement Dodd shrewdly heard Toots’ powerhouse gospel roar fronting the Maytals vocal trio, and imagined them scoring high a la Mahalia Jackson with a home-country ska twist. Amongst their Skatalites-backed debut recordings, this eruption of exuberance captures ska’s irrepressible post-Independence optimism with unrivalled energy. Hibbert would uphold its sentiment for nigh-on six decades. DOG WAR AKA BROADWAY JUNGLE (Prince Buster/Blue Beat single, 1964) “We died in the jungle, at the hands of a man,” barked Toots in a first verse vaguely ‘outing’ Studio One for non-payment on early Maytals hits, after jumping ship to Buster’s camp. By the end, though, Hibbert is characteristically all smiles: ”Rock your body in time, everything is all right”, he implores, climaxing his most irresistible…

WHEN SCOTT WALKER curates the 2000 Meltdown Festival at London’s Royal Festival Hall he invites Radiohead to play their first UK show in three years. On July 1, they take the opportunity to preview material they’ve been working on for the follow-up to OK Computer. Ten new songs transgress expectation in an attractive way. I report back in MOJO: “How do you better ‘The Best Album Of All Time’? At first hearing, it seems Radiohead have avoided trying, opting instead to broaden their sound, in particular, the way they use rhythm… the new songs seem swingier, lighter of touch, unafraid of simplicity or restraint, and jazzy in places, a little like Talk Talk circa Laughing Stock.” I particularly note Optimistic, Morning Bell, National Anthem, How To Disappear Completely, You And…

HOW DO YOU interview Bob Dylan? Three pieces of advice come as standard… Don’t gush. It may blow your Bob-filled mind to realise you’re actually sharing space with the great man, but to draw his attention to the fact will only make him deeply uncomfortable and you look like a craven fan, not the calm yet open professional the situation requires you to be. Don’t rush. He’s thoughtful, liking to take his time with an observation or anecdote. To chivvy him along, interrupt or, worst of all, attempt to finish a sentence for him will not only be discourteous, but counter-productive. He speaks on the record only rarely. Give him all the space he needs to do so now. And don’t push. Yes, you’ll have your tick list of topics…

Bruce Springsteen Letter To You COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP HE BEGINS quietly, a “big black train coming down the track” on a sombre meditation called One Minute You’re Here (“Next minute you’re gone”). He closes with I’ll See You In My Dreams, its folk remembrance mass promising “we’ll meet and live and laugh again…” A somewhat lapsed Catholic, now 71 and as mortally preoccupied as anyone his age, Bruce Springsteen sounds like a believer. Maybe it’s the company he’s keeping? This is the Bruce record his disciples have been yearning for: a return to E Street, where even with so much sadness in the world, things feel that little bit better. Since the E Street Band reunited in 1999, five of Springsteen’s eight studio albums since 2003’s The Rising up to last…

Tatsuhisa Yamamoto Ashioto BLACK TRUFFLE. DL/LP First international solo release from Japanese improv drummercomposer. OVER THE last 10 years, this 38-year-old percussionist has collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, RUINS and Keiji Haino along with former members of Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple and High Rise. Perhaps best known for his train-track motorik grooves on Eiko Ishibashi’s The Dreams My Bones Dream, Yamamoto possesses a spontaneous, organic style of playing that calls to mind shifting states of nature or machines at play. Very much a studio construction, utilising piano, synthesizer, flute, saxophone and his trademark propulsive drumming style, Ashioto is split into two parts: the first a cumulative gamelan groove that shifts from nervous train-crossing jangle to euphoric Elvin Jones-style deep rhythms. Part two is more abstract and untethered but gradually grows to…

Ray Alexander Technique Let’s Talk NOW-AGAIN RESERVE. CD/DL/LP Technique aplenty in RAT, a Harlem quartet who cut this LP in 1972. A fine balance of sweet soul (I Don’t Bite; Taking The Long Way Home) and funk (My World; title track) on tracks taken from vinyl (masters were lost). In all, it’s a good find. GB Ash Ra Tempel Gin Rosé MIG MUSIC. CD+DVD/LP After 27 years, Göttsching and Schulze play live at the Royal Festival Hall in 2000. More a drifting, electronic synthesis of solo work than a re-ignition of the tripping-balls ‘70s, though an E2-E4-like piece dedicated to absent bassist Hartmut Enke reveals sharp fangs. IH Ian Dury Hit Me! The Best Of… BMG. CD/LP Three CDs and 60 tracks, mostly pre-’79 with the Blockheads and the Kilburns.…

THERE ARE TWO distinct phases to the career of a man who undeniably deserves a place at the percussionists’ top table; three if you count the fallow years between the fervid 1970s, when Tony Allen was musical director of Fela Kuti’s Africa 70, and the 21st century, after Fela’s death in 1997 sparked renewed international interest in Afrobeat and Allen was best placed to reap the rewards. A former electrician and self-taught jazz drummer – “I didn’t want to play like anybody else,” he told MOJO in 2017, “that was my problem” – Allen joined Kuti in 1964 and departed in 1978. He subsequently struggled as a solo artist, with 1984’s N.E.P.A. his last album for 15 years. With a heroin habit to feed, he joined King Sunny Adé’s African…

ALL QUAD CONS 2 Franc Roddam’s film Quadrophenia (above) is released. Based loosely on The Who’s 1973 album, it dovetails with a growing Mod revival sparked by The Jam, whose 45 The Eton Rifles enters the charts the next day. DISCO TAX 3 Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, co-owners of famed New York disco Studio 54, plead guilty to tax evasion, after allegedly skimming $2.5 million in undeclared income. They are jailed and fined. Rubell will die in 1989, while Schrager will be pardoned by President Obama in 2017. CAVE’S RAVES 5 Fronted by Nick Cave, The Boys Next Door support The Members at St Kilda’s Crystal Ballroom, Melbourne. The same month they also play on bills with Cold Chisel and Mental As Anything. LSO YEAH 18 Kate Bush, Cliff…

THE ZOMBIES never got to savour the success of their ‘68 flower-power-era masterpiece Odessey And Oracle, or their 1969 Stateside Top 5 hit Time Of The Season - frustrated and unremunerated, the band had broken up at the end of 1967. Things are far more harmonious now. Reactivated since 2004, and last year inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the core duo of keyboard-player Rod Argent and singer Colin Blunstone responded to the postponement of 2020’s American tour by repairing to Argent’s new home studio in a converted dairy in Petersfield, Hampshire, to work on the follow-up to 2015’s Still Got That Hunger. “I definitely want it not to be an introverted album.”ROD ARGENT “It’s usually me that writes the songs,” says Argent, “and if I get…

“IT’S SUCH a joy to be with my brothers,” says guitarist/songwriter/ singer Kootch of his current bandmates. “These are my best friends - I’ve been playing with Russ, Lee and Wad for close to 50 years.” Kootch is Danny Kortchmar, Russ is drummer Russ Kunkel, Lee is bassist Leland Sklar and Wad is fellow guitarist and hyphenate Waddy Wachtel. Along with new kid on the rock, guitarist/singer Steve Postell, meet The Immediate Family. Their collective résumé as sidemen includes Keith Richards, Stevie Nicks, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt - too many to list. (Sklar is estimated to be the champ with over 2,500 album credits.) When Kortchmar was recording a solo LP three years ago, he called up Wachtel, Sklar and Kunkel. Postell was drafted as third…

THE LETTER, dated June 10, 1966, could be from any young woman to her mother, full of hope, insecurity and hints of past troubles. “I’m still okay,” she writes. “Something of a recluse. Haven’t lost or gained any weight and my head’s still fine. And am still really thinking of coming back to school, so don’t give up on me yet. I love you all X X X X.” They’re the words of the 23-year-old Janis Lee Joplin from The Janis Joplin Scrapbook – a collaboration between the Joplin estate and Genesis Publications that includes letters to and from her family home in Port Arthur, Texas. With their humorous pen-portraits of friends and family and self-deprecating asides (“Everyone seems very taken w/ my singing although I am a little dated”),…

1 THE WAR ON DRUGS PAIN From new gigs document Live Drugs, Granduciel takes flight on the 2017 album track, taking it farther and deeper into ’80s rock existentialism. Find it: streaming services 2 PAN AMSTERDAM AND JASON WILLIAMSON HANNIBAL LECTURE Dizzy acid-hop where the Sleaford skip-seer raps about wraps, white vans and being “nearly 50” before the US rapper-trumpeter tag-teams it to NY. Find it: streaming services 3 LAMBCHOP RESERVATIONS If Wilco’s original was already frail and abstract, Kurt Wagner and co further deconstruct the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot highlight over 13 slow, quiet, sometimes unnerving minutes. Find it: streaming services 4 KIWI JR COOLER RETURNS Built on propulsive rhythms and duel-sprung, code-switching guitars, the Canadians’ first single for Sub Pop channels spry Modern Lovers pop and ’80s indie. Find it: streaming services 5 THE…

THE OPENING SALVO The Doors The Doors (ELEKTRA, 1967) The brutal punk-jazz of The Doors’ debut hasn’t dated a jot (although – shhh – there’s still that sag in the middle of side two). Krieger’s ice-cool space blues animates Soul Kitchen and Back Door Man, while his extended solo in the album-length Light My Fire is Coltrane-esque. Best of all: The End’s near-12-minute bad-trip raga, where Krieger’s hypnotising licks and tickles are the bellwethers of its lulls and surges. Weird scenes, indeed. THE INDIAN SUMMER The Doors L.A. Woman (ELEKTRA, 1971) The band’s swansong began in confusion (longtime producer Paul Rothchild quit during rehearsals) but its blues and R&B foci (plus Elvis vet Jerry Scheff on bass) keep it admirably grounded, awesomely so on the funksome The Changeling and motorik…

AS THE PRESENT CENTURY HIT its stride, future Run The Jewels rapper and producer Jaime ‘El-P’ Meline was already a legend in underground hip-hop: the former mainman of New York trailblazers Company Flow, and the boss of his own record label, Def Jux. But there was a worm in his apple. Illegal file-sharing was eating away his business with every download. As he struggled to keep Def Jux afloat, the death of close friend and labelmate Tero Smith – aka Camu Tao – in May 2008, following a two-year battle with cancer, sent Meline into a downward spiral. “It all crashed,” says Meline today. “I didn’t know how to escape the stress and the sorrow. I spent days numbing myself with booze, ecstasy and cocaine. My self-destruction was evident to…

RADIOHEAD HAVE made no secret of their love of jazz. Guitarist/chief soundscaper Jonny Greenwood has talked about the band bringing in albums by Charles Mingus, Alice and John Coltrane to rehearsals and trying to emulate them. “We enjoy the sound of our failing,” he laughed. Famously, the chaotic atmosphere of Miles Davis’s 1970 proto-fusion classic Bitches Brew proved the artistic template for OK Computer. But Radiohead’s jazz interests extend further out than that, with Thom Yorke selecting a track from Max de Wardener’s Music For Detuned Pianos in a recent Sonos Radio playlist he curated. Yet Kid A was the tipping point, the moment Radiohead’s jazz’s influence became explicit - epitomised by Greenwood’s freewheeling eight-man brass arrangement on The National Anthem, inspired by Theme De Yoyo from The Art Ensemble…

I BEGAN MY PROFESSIONAL MUSIC career as a member of The Royal Teens in 1959, becoming a professional songwriter shortly thereafter and teaming up with lyricists Bob Brass and Irwin Levine. We eventually signed with publisher Aaron Schroeder at 1650 Broadway in New York City, and our songs began to get recorded by various artists, culminating in the debut single by Gary Lewis And The Playboys, This Diamond Ring, in 1964. This slowly climbed the charts and miraculously knocked You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ by the freakin’ Righteous Brothers off the Number 1 spot in Billboard & Cashbox’s charts. This was a learning period for me as a writer and a musician. When we made demos of our songs in the recording studios, Bob and Irwin allowed me to hire…

DYLANOLOGY - OR THE DOGGED ANALYSIS OF EVERY DETAIL CONCERNing Bob Dylan’s life, art, or that of anyone even near his orbit - is a long crowdsourced pseudoscience that has enjoyed new life online. For decades, blogs, message boards, and online fanzines have pondered his lyrical and musical tidbits, untangling an intricate patchwork of references in hopes of decoding his deepest meanings. In recent years, the popular annotated lyrics website Genius has supercharged such sleuthing, allowing anyone to participate in the madcap game of spotting, say, a Dylan nod to an obscure Sun single or a particular mythological muse. Rough And Rowdy Ways seems ready-made for this granular obsession. Consider the first single and album finale, Murder Most Foul: an intricate 17-minute rumination on the assassination of John F. Kennedy…

Gorillaz Song Machine: Season One – Strange Timez PARLOPHONE. CD/DL/LP FROM WHAT started out 20 years ago as an animation-augmented side project for Damon Albarn, Gorillaz proved to have the cartoon legs to run and run. Seven albums in, their sound has morphed through various iterations – 2017’s Humanz adopted a darker, clubbier bent; the following year’s The Now Now, despite its sunshiny vibes, was mostly Albarnsung and confessional, revealing him to be low and road-life weary. Song Machine once again puts a different spin on the virtual band format, conceived as a series of stand-alone tracks/YouTube “episodes” issued one a month since January. Inevitably, perhaps, it has resulted in a traditional album that pools 24 guest appearances over 17 tracks on the deluxe version (trimmed to 11 for the…

The Prine Of Life Kurt Vile – Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (EP) (Matador) KURT VILE often seems to stumble between musical worlds, befriending heroes along the way. “He reminds me of classic writers like John Prine,” Steve Gunn told MOJO in 2018, “not overly precious but witty and with a lot of weight to the content.” Vile, in fact, had been working on a Prine-related project since 2016 that’s finally surfaced as the Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (EP). Hanging out in Nashville with an auspicious local crowd, the EP begins with Vile’s 2016 cover of Prine’s Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness, and moves to a 2019 duet with the man himself on How Lucky, one of Prine’s last sessions. Alongside a Clement cover, two fine Vile originals round out…

Any assessment of Allen’s career needs a handful of Fela Kuti LPs, but they were rarely recorded to highlight the percussionists. The obvious exception: With Ginger Baker –Live! (Regal Zonophone, 1971). The drummer also takes a starring role in oddity Confusion (EMI, 1975), and every home should have a Zombie (Coconut, 1977). Recorded between 1975 and 1978, Allen’s three solo Kutiproduced LPs – Jealousy, Progress, No Accommodation For Lagos (various labels) – catch the full Africa 70 experience. For a solo best-of, Eager Hands And Restless Feet (Wrasse, 2002) can’t be beat.…

ROCKER TERRY CLEMSON (b.1948) played guitar with Twickenham R&B cults The Downliners Sect from 1962 to 1966. He later backed Edwin Starr, Gene Vincent, Hank Mizell and others when they toured in the UK, played with home-grown acts including Lord Sutch, Heinz and Wee Willie Harris, and was part of The Houseshakers backing Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry at the Wembley Rock’n’Roll Revival show in August 1972. He later played with the re-formed Downliners Sect, Johnny And The Hurricanes, and his own band, the TTs. GUITARIST EDDIE PUMER (above, b.1947) co-wrote and arranged the music of Kaleidoscope, whose LPs Tangerine Dream (1967) and Faintly Blowing (1969) were posthumously hailed by psych aficionados. In 1970 the group were renamed Fairfield Parlour and opened the Isle Of Wight festival: Pumer co-wrote the official…

DUTCH SINGLES NOVEMBER 13 1 GIMME! GIMME! GIMME! (A MAN AFTER MIDNIGHT) ABBA POLYDOR 2 CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE QUEEN EMI 3 WE BELONG TO THE NIGHT ELLEN FOLEY EPIC 4 MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE THE POLICE A&M 5 WE GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN OUR HANDS NOTTINGHAM FOREST WITH PAPER LACE WARNER BROS 6 WHATEVER YOU WANT STATUS QUO VERTIGO 7 SURE KNOW SOMETHING KISS CASABLANCA 8 KNOCK ON WOOD AMII STEWART HANSA INTERNATIONAL 9 WEEKEND EARTH AND FIRE VERTIGO 10 STAR EARTH, WIND & FIRE CBS…

Stevie Nicks GOLD DUST WOMAN What music are you currently grooving to? Since May, putting this film together [deep-cuts concert movie 24 Karat Gold], mostly my own. But if I was listening to music and dancing around the house, since this pandemic I started listening again to Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Joni Mitchell. Huge, huge influences for me. And I go back to Haim and Harry Styles. I’m very current! I love The 1975. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I have different favourites - I listened to Harry’s Fine Line for three solid months, over and over. But if I go all the way back, Court And Spark, the first Crosby, Stills & Nash… What was the first record you ever bought? And…

THERE’S NOTHING like a well-curated archival release to make music junkies drool, as the opening of the vaults of Prince, Neil Young and Bob Dylan demonstrates. For fans of visionary British producer Joe Meek, such a moment of revelation is looming, more than 52 years after the tape library of his 304 Holloway Road studio was bought and sealed. The 1,856 tapes, originally stored in 67 tea chests, were sold when Meek’s assets were liquidated after he shot his landlady and committed suicide in February 1967. Cliff Cooper, who played in Meek-produced band The Millionaires and founded august amp manufacturers Orange in 1968, paid somewhere between £300 and £400 for them. Tracks by Marc Bolan, Ray Davies, Rod Stewart, Steve Marriott, Gene Vincent, Alvin Lee, Billy Fury, Francis Rossi, Georgie…

…SLOWDIVE confirm they’re working on their fifth album. “It’s been a good week,” noted voice, guitar and keyboardist Rachel Goswell (right) in September … electronic producer SKRILLEX has been working with Beastie Boy Mike D, who sang and played drums. This follows news that the 32-year-old DJ had also been in the studio with The Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston …Pauline Murray says, “we’ll probably start writing with PENETRATION again and do some gigs next year” …TOM RUSH told New Hampshire site seacoastonline.com “I’m actually doing some recording at the kitchen table… just me and my guitar” …Liam Howlett continued to work on a new PRODIGY album in September, tweeting, “Studio bizniz (sic) this month, back on the beats” … the reformed original line-up of the MELVINS, or Melvins 1983 as…

I used to do a summer job at Billingsgate fish market, as a fish porter in 1977, I was saving up for a bass amp. We finished at about midday, and I, in my smelly fish clothes, would go and cruise the record shops, where I got Rattus Norvegicus. I was staying with a friend in Sevenoaks who had a record player I could turn up loud, and this touched a nerve. It was male music, very aggressive, scary almost. There was a dirty sleaziness to it. As a 16-, 17-year-old, who had been listening to music from, I suppose, the more feminine side, it really spoke to me. I brought it back to Dublin and played it to the band. We did a passable version of London Lady -…

THE TIMING, ROBBY KRIEGER ADMITS, IS awkward. The guitarist – best known for his wild ride through the late ’60s and early ’70s with The Doors – is releasing his first solo album in a decade, The Ritual Begins At Sundown, in the middle of the pandemic. But he quickly agrees when MOJO points out that The Doors’ singer and lyricist, Jim Morrison, was quite prescient on the subject of natural calamity in When The Music’s Over on 1967’s Strange Days and the now-eerie opening line of Ship Of Fools on 1970’s Morrison Hotel: “The human race is dyin’ out.” “Jim was very forward-thinking,” Krieger, 74, says in the house in Los Angeles’ Benedict Canyon where he has lived since the turn of the ’70s. “I remember when Stevie Wonder…

IT’S A SUN-BAKED AUGUST DAY, JUST GONE NOON, AND JOHN LYDON IS IN THE kitchen of his cosy Venice Beach villa gesturing to the open front door. “That’s where the squirrels come in and walk around,” he explains, brighdy. “Even little birds hop in now and again when they fancy a peanut. I don’t touch wild creatures or turn them into pets, I leave them alone – and them me.” Squirrels are something of a leitmotif in the Sex Pistols and PiL man’s new tome of oft revelatory and roving pensées, I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right. His symbiotic relationship with the nut-loving rodents is returned to frequently, and he holds them in the deepest regard, even after a flea from one allegedly “bit his willy”. “No, the…

COMPANY FLOW Funcrusher Plus (Rawkus 1997) Steeped in the paranoid sci-fi of Philip K Dick, lyrically dense, atop a chassis of smudgy, avant-garde funk, Company Flow’s debut struck a potent counterpoint in rap’s “jiggy” era. Nearly 25 years on, it remains brilliantly labyrinthine and disorientating, while still exhibiting a left-handed pop sensibility (Vital Nerve; Krazy Kings). CANNIBAL OX The Cold Vein (Def Jux, 2001) Recovering from Co-Flow’s split, El-P produced this debut by New York rappers Vast Aire and Vordul, who imagined themselves as pigeons, phoenixes and superheroes in a metaphysical landscape of the Big Apple’s grimy underbelly. El-P’s majestic music sampled Philip Glass, underscoring a powerful and psychedelic masterpiece. KILLER MIKE R.A.P. Music (Williams Street, 2012) Mike’s first collaboration with El-P was a last dice-roll for both, but the…

IN THE SUMMER of2000, I was coming to the end of a spell as Deputy Editor of MOJO’s sister magazine, Q. One of my last jobs was to “pull together” Q’s cover feature on Radiohead’s new album, based around a wonderful interview by the late, great David Cavanagh. The only problematic element was that Radiohead were refusing to sit for the magazine’s usual cover shoot but insisted on providing photographs they’d taken themselves and, with the help of their art director Dan Rickwood (aka Stanley Donwood), doctored with computer software. Some of these ‘mirrored’ one side of a Radiohead member’s face onto the other (Thom Yorke’s corrected’ his familiar half-closed left eye). Some morphed multiple Radiohead members into one. All were weird, but Q had no option but to print…

AL KOOPER and I were buddies from Queens. He had a group and I had a group and we would do things together. At the time, I was playing with Chico Holiday’s trio at a place called the Sniffin Court Inn on East 36th Street in Manhattan and was taking a break between sets at Burger Heaven. I got a phone call from Al saying he was playing this session with Bob Dylan and he’d got me the gig. I’m like, Who’s Bob Dylan? I had been on professional tours with R&B bands, but stepping out on the 7th Floor into Columbia Studio A was like stepping in a rocket ship. The energy level was amazing. Like A Rolling Stone was playing and I deduced that the guy standing in…

IN 1981 I WAS living in a one-room, roach-infested apartment on Cherokee in Hollywood, California. Our band The Plugz were local favourites. Gigs were plentiful, but the pay wasn’t. In the summer of ‘82 our band headed east to NYC. We billed ourselves as The Plugz, but our new name [The Cruzados] and our new direction were just around the corner. We didn’t hang around the Apple long and I landed back in LA – this time with five bucks in my pocket, my Fender bass, and an old sleeping bag. Just as things seemed to be getting grimmer, our band received a phone call that would change our lives. I guess we’ll never really know for sure how Bob Dylan found our little band. Someone I know insists Bob…

The idea behind Song Machine was you’d put out these tracks and video episodes quickly – ie, as soon as they were finished? “Well, I announced to everyone I didn’t want to do albums any more. I just wanted to make tunes and put them out whenever I wanted. Then everyone realised that that would probably cause chaos. So, we decided that we’d do it once a month. Then it became, ‘Well, let’s just call them episodes.’ I mean, it’s a classic kind of a play, isn’t it? You give people exactly the same thing but you call it something else (laughs).” How much was done face-to-face or remotely with the guests? “After Pac-Man with ScHoolboy Q, everything was remotely done. Y’know, I’ve been doing this for a very long…

Joni Mitchell Joni Mitchell Archives - Volume I The Early Years (I963-I967) RHINO. CD/DL/LP ON URGE For Going - a track she now calls “the first well-written song that I have” - Joni Mitchell sang of the bone-deep need for escape that comes as the seasons turn. It’s not just the geese “in chevron flight” on the move: there’s also a man with “summer-coloured skin”, or the singer herself, wrapped in blankets, forced to “bolt my wandering in”. By the summer of 1965, the 21-year-old Mitchell had already covered a lot of ground in her quest for heat and light. She had left her hometown Saskatoon for art school in Calgary, before moving on to Toronto’s folk music epicentre, Yorkville. In February, she had given birth to a daughter, ultimately…

Kraftwerk Autobahn / Radio-Activity / TransEurope Express /The Man-Machine / Computer World / Techno Pop /The Mix / Tour De France Soundtracks PARLOPHONE OUT IN the bootleg netherworld, coloured-vinyl counterfeiters have already rendered the Kraftwerk catalogue in marbled purple, bottle green, fizzy transparent orange and other shonky hues to trigger the Kling Klang quality control department. Now, official 180g primary-coloured translucent pressings of the 2009 remasters in their redesigned sleeves, plus booklets, bring harmonious enhancement. Renewed appraisals are invited: a blue Autobahn continues to glide into an imagined, ambivalent future; over two white discs, The Mix seems like a bulletin from an ecstatic rave past rather than the digital heresy of the purists; futurist-nostalgia about the present in The Man-Machine (red) and Computer World (neon yellow) seems increasingly acute. Five…

Tracks: (Live Side) Please Don’t Touch I I Can Tell I Peter Gunn I Lonesome Train I Shakin’ All Over I Milk Cow Blues I (Studio Side) Drinkin’ Wine Spo’ De’O’ D I Do The Dog I Gibson Martin Fender I Don’t München It I That’s The Way You Are I You Don’t Own Me Personnel: Mick Green (guitar), Johnny Spence (bass, vocals), Frank Farley (drums) Producer: Vic Maile Released: October 7, 1977 Recorded: Rockfield, Monmouth (March 1977); The Nashville Rooms, London (April 1977) Chart peak: 57 Current availability: Out Of Their Skulls… Plus (Zircon, 1999)…

NOVEMBER 2 As the ‘70s drew to a close, The Rolling Stones were in New York mixing their next big-seller, Emotional Rescue, with some partying with Stevie Wonder and, in Ron Wood’s case, sharing a stage with Bob Marley in California thrown in. Few were thinking of their old, infamous friend from the ‘60s, Marianne Faithfull. Her first hits – how fresh As Tears Go By and Come And Stay With Me sounded – were more than 14 years in the past. In the ‘70s her interest in music had largely given way to stage acting and roles in low-key films such as Madhouse Mansion (aka Ghost Story) and Assault On Agathon. Enduring heroin addiction, she’d lived in a freezing squat in Chelsea, played in fans’ houses in exchange for…

Recent Ask Fred talk of mispresses and albums with the wrong band on the cover made me think of cheapo covers long-players such as the Top Of The Pops LP series. But were any of these cash-ins any good? Richard Freeman, via e-mail Fred says: When you re talking budget-quickies records, there is fun to be had hearing session men hurriedly covering, say, Bohemian Rhapsody or Wuthering Heights with meagre resources. But some of these covers projects are more interesting: in 1973, Funky Junction’s Play A Tribute To Deep Purple featured all of Thin Lizzy, while Lou Reed sang on two tracks on 1965’s The Surfsiders’ Play The Beach Boys, and Elton John’s past covering chart hits anonymously is well documented. One such record that absolutely must be heard, though,…