Table of contents for December 2015 in Rolling Stone Australia

“It was an inspired idea getting Phil Jamieson to interview the chaps from Cold Chisel.” Phil’s New Gig? INSPIRED IDEA GETTING Phil Jamieson to interview the chaps from Cold Chisel (RS 768). If ever there was a band to inherit Chisel’s crown, it would surely be . . . well, it wouldn’t be Grinspoon, but they’re still fun to watch. And Phil proved himself an entertaining interviewer. Ever thought about making him a permanent staff member? Gary Wallace, Lake’s Entrance, NSW Howard’s End I DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER to laugh or cry while reading your interview with Terence Howard (RS 768). The man is quite clearly, gloriously bonkers – it would be endearing if there wasn’t a psychologically scary side to him. And you have to feel for anyone who saw…

BETWEEN JANUARY 1965 and February 1966, Bob Dylan wrote and recorded his first three electric albums, breaking from folk music and forever changing the course of his career and of rock itself. And as his exhaustive new studio-outtakes box set reveals, the journey toward the perfection of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde was just as fascinating as the final products. The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12, out November 6th, offers a definitive look at the development of Dylan’s plugged-in sound, unveiling embryonic takes and alternate versions of some of his greatest songs, including “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Visions of Johanna”. “At the beginning, most songs were fairly shapeless,” says organist Al Kooper, a key collaborator on…

BLUR WERE ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR bands of the Nineties – everywhere except in America, where most mainstream listeners know them as the “woo-hoo!” guys thanks to their lone U.S. hit, 1997’s “Song 2”. In Australia, however, their reputation has never dimmed, as evidenced by the arena shows they played in the country in July. Now the band are hitting the road once again, where they’ll play their biggest American non-festival gigs ever, at L.A.’s Hollywood Bowl and New York’s Madison Square Garden. Front-man Damon Albarn called from his London home to talk about why he both loves and hates getting back together with his old bandmates; his plans for a new album with his most successful non-Blur project, Gorillaz; and more. “I’m on my sofa, and I’ve just…

The subtitle of Chrissie Hynde’s new memoir, Reckless, may be “My Life as a Pretender”, but by the time she gets to the formation of her pivotal New Wave band, the book is about 75 per cent done. It turns out that’s not a problem, because somehow the daughter of a secretary and a phone-company man from Akron, Ohio, found herself at an absurd number of key cultural moments in the 1960s and 1970s – from the Kent State shootings to Ziggy Stardust’s first American concert (she gave David Bowie a ride in her mum’s car that night) to the London punk scene, where she fronted an early version of the Clash. Hynde writes with complete frankness. A passage where she recounts being gang-raped by a group of bikers has…

“Saul Zaentz robbed us and owned all our music.” FOR CREEDENCE CLEARWATER Revival, the beginning of the end came during a group meeting in October 1970, when John Fogerty’s bandmates dropped a bombshell on him: After nine Top 10 hits in three years – all written by Fogerty – they wanted Creedence to become a democracy, with everyone contributing equally to the songwriting. “They just wanted to go into the studio and come up with songs by osmosis,” Fogerty writes in his new memoir, Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music. “These guys had no clue about what was necessary. A vision. That’s just the truth. . . . To me that was scary . . . a disaster....Can I go so far as to say catastrophic?” Creedence lasted just two…

WHEN JOSH PYKE STEPPED onstage at the Rolling Stone Live Lodge on the evening of Tuesday October 6th, he did so armed not with a guitar, but with 60 of the most challenging trivia questions he could muster. Watching the singer-songwriter host a trivia night was one of the more surreal moments of this year’s Live Lodge, which was held at Sydney’s New-town Social Club from September 23rd to October 11th. Kicking off with a raucous opening night party that saw Jack Colwell and JONES Jnr. provide the soundtrack and Boy & Bear DJ and make cocktails, from there punters were treated to a three-week smorgasbord of live music that included album launches by the likes of Gay Paris, Ash Grunwald and the Snowdroppers, label showcases (Inertia Music and Bad…

You’ve known Ed for a few years: what differences do you see in the Ed Sheeran you took out on tour in 2012, and the guy who’s headlining stadiums in 2015? “It’s funny, I was just thinking about that when I saw him play the Hollywood Bowl recently. There is no difference. Myself and Johnny McDaid spent the afternoon with him backstage before the show and he was exactly the same . . . relaxed, making jokes and sociable right up to – and I mean the second he went on stage. It’s remarkable in itself. He’s more well-travelled of course, but not world-wearier, or duller of spirit, or cynical. He played three new songs on the acoustic in the dressing room that afternoon and I was thinking, ‘How has…

‘Sing Me Back Home’ “TORONTO TAPES” (1977) Richards was facing seven years in jail on a heroin charge when he recorded this haunting solo piano take of a Merle Haggard classic he had learned from late friend Gram Parsons. “I thought that was the last time I’d get my hands on instruments for a while,” Richards says. “Things didn’t look too bright.” ‘Make No Mistake’ TALK IS CHEAP (1988) Richards mixed reggae and Memphis R&B on this gorgeous duet with Sarah Dash, formerly a La-belle, whose refined voice works perfectly with Keith’s gravelly croon. “When he sings in the lower register, he has such a rich tone,” says producer Steve Jordan. ‘I Could Have Stood You Up’ TALK IS CHEAP (1988) Richards took “a little stroll through the rock &…

Joanna Newsom Divers Drag City/Spunk “I definitely can’t write an easy song,” Joanna Newsom confessed in a recent interview – but that doesn’t mean she makes music that’s difficult to listen to. A Joanna Newsom song can be appreciated on a superficial level. The structures may not be traditional, but there’s always a melody, a turn of phrase for those who have better things to do than unravel the layers. And that really is the beauty of her albums. They can be appreciated like a Monet, or peeled like an onion – and the payoff is almost always profound. To enter into a Joanna Newsom record is to submit entirely to her self-contained universe. On Divers she is a more generous host, offering us snackable songs (by her standards at…

Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill: Collector’s Edition Warner So she’s more than a little bitter, with both her ex(es?) and the record executives who dismissed her. So she hasn’t got a technically amazing singing voice, and the contribution of gun co-writer and producer Glen Ballard – who turned her vitriol into something musically compelling – cannot be overstated. But let’s not deny Alanis Morissette her important place in the feminist music canon. She may not have been completely DIY like Kathleen Hanna, but she sold a lot more records, and taught millions of teenage girls that it was OK to feel intense anger and express it. This twentieth anniversary four-disc collector’s edition includes 10 (wisely) unreleased demos, an acoustic disc, and a live concert disc from her heyday in London.…

The Dressmaker Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse DIRECTOR JOCELYN MOOR- house’s first feature in about two decades blazes with colliding tones, story types and theatrical realism. Anyone expecting a nostalgic romance or dinky-di drama will be thrown by The Dressmaker’s seam of darker undercurrents. Because glimpses of sunshine are not what must clear the storm clouds tied to the turbulent homecoming of Tilly (composed Kate Winslet). Forced from her small, isolated home-town as a child, due to being accused of murder, Tilly returns in 1951 as a sophisticated adult. Whether she seeks revenge or catharsis isn’t clear, yet her presence unpicks the veil of civility that covers the scourge of accepted abuse. Working from Rosalie Ham’s bestselling novel, Moorhouse concocts a Western fable…

The last time I stole something I stole some body lotion moisturiser from our hotel on the weekend. It smelt really good and made my face feel nice and clean. I think it’s there to be stolen that stuff. If it’s smaller than my hand I’m allowed to steal it. The last thing I regretted eating When we filmed our filmclip for “Hiding to Nothing” in Andamooka we played under this shed and it stunk like cat piss, and for some reason in front of all the locals I said, “If I’m going to come to Andamooka I may as well make myself a local by eating some dirt.” And I put a whole handful of dirt in my mouth and it was the rankest thing I’ve ever tasted in…

‘Visions of Johanna’ with the Hawks Shortly before heading down to Nashville, Dylan attempted to record this surreal song with the Hawks (later known as the Band) in a New York studio. It’s as fast and aggressive as the released version is gentle, yet somehow it manages to be just as gorgeous. ‘She’s Your Lover Now – Take Six’ Dylan and the Hawks spent 19 takes trying to nail this stunningly bitter song about a nasty breakup. “You just sit around and ask for ashtrays,” Dylan snarls. “Can’t you reach?” It wasn’t released until 1991, with the first Bootleg Series. “Maybe it was just too mean,” says Greil Marcus. ‘Desolation Row Piano Demo’ The first 10 years of Tom Waits’ career in a two-minute song fragment: an alternate-reality version of…

James Cruickshank, best known as guitarist and keyboard player for the Cruel Sea, passed away in early October after a 12 month battle with bowel cancer. He was 53. Born in Melbourne in 1962, Cruickshank played in indie-pop band the Widdershins before joining the Cruel Sea in 1989. He played on all six of the band’s albums, including 1993 breakthrough The Honeymoon Is Over, which won five ARIA awards. When the Cruel Sea slowed, following 2001’s Where There’s Smoke, Cruickshank stayed busy, releasing three solo albums, including 2011’s Note To Self. An in-demand collaborator, Cruickshank worked with singer/songwriter Gyan and cartoonist Michael Leunig on their 2005 album, Billy the Rabbit, and recently as a member of Mick Harvey’s backing band. Edward Clayton-Jones, friend and former collaborator with the Bad Seeds,…

PATTI SMITH BEGAN her career writing poetry books (Seventh Heaven) and for rock magazines (including this one), and her songs have always been steeped in literary tradition. So it’s no surprise that the successor to her National Book Award-winning memoir is, once again, no boilerplate rock-star flashback. But where Just Kids follows a line through Smith’s coming of age with late soulmate Robert Mapplethorpe, M Trainis an impressionistic weave of dreams, disasters, space-outs and epiphanies, a meditation on life and art by a woman who sees them as one. As on Horses (“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”), Smith slings a great lead. “It’s not so easy writing about nothing,” she begins here. In fact, she processes everything from outlandish encounters (a wee-hour singalong with chess master Bobby…

A FEW YEARS AGO, IT looked like Nathaniel Rateliff’s music career might be over. The Missouri native had been at it for more than a decade, first as frontman of the Denver alt-rock band Born in the Flood, then as a singer-songwriter. His 2010 solo album led to gigs opening for Mumford & Sons, but his label rejected his follow-up. Rateliff worked as a gardener and thought about calling it quits. “I thought, ‘If it ends here, then I’ve done what I can do’,” says Rateliff, 36. He eventually decided he had only one option – “push through and write new songs” – but this time, he added a fresh twist. “At an early age, I loved Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and doowop,” he says. “I wanted to make that…

SOPHIE LOWE SOUNDS LIKE: Kate Bush time traveling to the year 3000 and returning with a spaceship full of synths and sexy, cinematic electro FOR FANS OF: Banks, FKA twigs, AlunaGeorge, Purity Ring WHY YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION: Arriving in Australia from the UK at the age of 10, Lowe discovered a passion for acting that led to an AFI nominated turn in 2009 drama Beautiful Kate and a recent role on supernatural TV series The Returned. The 25-year-old began writing songs at 15 with the aid of GarageBand, her debut EP of gothic electro-Americana arriving in 2013 under the moniker ‘SOLO’. With the imminent release of a follow-up under her birth name, a move into live performance has now taken centre stage, including supports with Meg Mac and Montaigne.…

IT’S A MONDAY AFTERNOON IN LOS ANGELES, AND JO- anna Newsom – a 33-year-old with the unlikely distinction of being American pop music’s premier harp-playing auteur – is about to do some birdwatching. It’s about 4 p.m., but Newsom, a night owl and insomniac, just ate breakfast at an old-timey restaurant in Los Feliz. With Miu Miu shades covering her eyes, she walks to her Audi hybrid SUV, which she parked in a comically tight space, and climbs aboard. “I haven’t had a car since I was 16 that couldn’t fit a harp,” she says, as we head off toward Griffi th Park. Newsom, who lives in L.A. with her husband, Saturday Night Live alum and Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Andy Samberg, has sold hundreds of thousands of records and earned…

Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE. Sarah Blasko Eternal Return EMI BY ANNABEL ROSS Sarah Blasko is in love. Butterflies in the tummy, spring in the step, shout it from the rooftops, love. It’s something she makes abundantly and unapologetically clear on her fifth studio album, Eternal Return, and it marks a buoyant departure from 2009’s As Day Follows Night (described by Blasko as a “hopeful heartbreak” record) and 2012’s I Awake, written during a particularly lonely time Blasko spent living in Brighton, England. Both records were brilliant, beautifully drawn navigations of Blasko’s darker waters, which might cause fans to approach Eternal Return with trepidation. Blasko does sadness and pain so well, and the last thing we need is another bloody record about love, surely? Doubters, breathe…

Custard Come Back, All Is Forgiven ABC Music David McCormack frames the Custard recipe simply in “Factual”. “I write songs based on my life/The funny thing is, they’re based on my real life.” He’s not laughing though. Neither is his band, which opts for the funereal thump and twang of a haunted man adrift “in an ocean of time”. It’s been almost that long since Brisbane’s deadpan suburban pop sociologists split under the usual pressures of growing up. It sounds like the blink of an eye. “I woke up on the road again,” is the sudden opening of “Orchids In Water”, which twangs in like our narrator has only dreamt he was elsewhere for 16 years. The real-life plot has advanced, of course, in the slightly pitiful New Year’s Eve…

Tug Of War MPL/Concord Pipes Of Peace MPL/Concord The new frontier for Beatlemaniacs: reclaiming Eighties Paul. It’s one of the weirdest areas of the man’s career, full of buried treasures ripe for discovery. On the map of McCartney’s music, fans usually avoid the Eighties as the zone marked “Here Be Broad Street”. But the newly reissued Tug of War and Pipes of Peace prove it’s worth the search, even if it means tiptoeing around a few toxic-waste dumps. Check out “So Bad”, from 1983’s Pipes of Peace – that piercingly bittersweet melody, the way his voice soars in the high notes (“there was a paaain”), the modest ache of the chorus. The Eighties production goop is tough to stomach (even from George Martin) and the lyrics are barely even a…

Taylor & Mick Get Ya-Ya’s Out Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour has featured huge guest stars, from Steven Tyler to Justin Timberlake, but no one at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena was prepared when she welcomed “one of the greatest entertainers of all time – my friend Mick Jagger”. Mick and Taylor powered through “Satisfaction”, with Taylor showing off some wild new stage moves. Later, she simply tweeted, “Drops mic.” SCHOOL OF ROCK Slash made his first visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he took a picture of Chuck Berry’s lyrics to “School Days”. “I was impressed!” Slash says. IT’S MADONNA, BITCHES! “I don’t follow the rules, and I’m not about to start,” said Madonna to RS earlier this year. She didn’t disappoint at the opening night of her…

AN HOUR BEFORE THEY TOOK the stage at MTV’s Video Music Awards in Los Angeles on August 30th, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were sure their set was going to be a total disaster. The Seattle rapper-producer duo had just finished the final run-through of the performance – an ambitious outdoor version of their new single, “Downtown”, involving tricky choreography and multiple guest vocalists – and nothing was going right. “We watched the playback, and Ryan was bummed,” says Macklemore. “He was like, ‘Dude, this isn’t good. It’s going to be a shitshow.’ ” In the end, their first televised performance in more than a year went off without a hitch – but it was a high-stakes moment for more reasons than one. The last awards show Macklemore and Lewis performed…

Most Michael Jackson books either try to understand his pop brilliance or dive into his tragic life. Veteran journalist (and ROLLING STONE contributing editor) Steve Knopper balances the musical and the personal, packing the 400 pages of The Genius of Michael Jackson with fascinating anecdotes, covering every stage of the singer’s career in vivid detail – from pre-adolescent stardom to unprecedented crossover success with Thriller and Bad to his tortured, embattled final years. The section on Jackson’s childhood is especially gripping; one heartbreaking story describes an early Jackson 5 recording session where Michael’s tyrannical father, Joe, is so abusive that a producer pulls a gun on him and tells him not to come back while they’re working. Later, we relive the all-too-familiar consequences of that turmoil as Jackson’s life spins…

Since Soundgarden reunited in 2010, Mike and Jaye English – creators and publishers of a book dedicated to the Seattle rockers, Photofantasm – have followed their tours through five countries, taking literally thousands of photos along the way. A few years ago they decided to put their photos and experiences into a book, to which they asked fans from around the world to also contribute. “An authentic fan based book like Photofantasm had never been done until now,” says Jaye. “There are fan centric books put out by other high profile bands but none that are from hundreds of fans and artists collaborating around the world in celebration of one band’s music.” Limited to 1,000 copies, and with all proceeds going to charity, the hard cover collector’s edition features more…

Barbra Streisand “People” Barbra’s voice is just so strong and so pure. The sound that came out of her mouth amazed me when I first saw her. It was almost like it was coming from her toes – like it wasn’t real. Dionne Warwick “Don’t Make Me Over” I love her so much. I worked for Dionne as a backup singer for 10 years, and I drew a lot of strength from her. Aretha Franklin “Ain’t No Way” Aretha and I are kindred spirits. I love all of her songs, especially this one. It really moves you and touches your heart. Celine Dion “All by Myself” Celine Dion came out of the blue for me. When I found out she was from Canada, I said, “I guess Canada has some…

“Ray Davies made me want to be a songwriter.” The Song I Fell In Love To Buddy Holly “True Love Ways”, 1960 “When my wife and I got married, our first dance at the wedding was ‘True Love Ways’. When we first started dating she played in a band called By Divine Right, and they were about to go on tour in Australia. Before she left I made her a cassette, and ‘True Love Ways’ was the first song on it. It means a lot to both of us.” The Song I Play Air Guitar To Deep Purple “Fireball”, 1971 “I’m a frustrated hard rock musician. My favourite Deep Purple album is Fireball, and for my money the title-track still rocks harder than anything I’ve ever heard. You…

You Am I Porridge & Hotsauce Inertia There’s nothing like a gleeful middle finger to signal an unrepentant return. Especially with the other hand flapping behind your ear and one Cuban heel stomping double time. “Good Advices” is just such a spectacular act of dancing-backwards co-ordination for Tim Rogers & Co: as sassy a set-opener as any in You Am I’s esteemed back pages. Recorded between Daptone HQ in Brooklyn and some garage in Melbourne’s suburban north, their pointedly unheralded first record in five years relishes that filthy, fuel-injected chemistry for three tracks before its first, more worldly diversions. That’s the Dap-Kings’ horns and soul chorus on “Two Hands”. A positively oceanic string section empathises with Rogers’ classic romantic desperation in “One Drink At a Time”. In “Out To the…

Eleven Eleven Double Cross Records Brandishing a sound as heavy as their name suggests, this Leeds trio hark back to the days when Seattle was the epicentre of the musical universe. To label them mere grunge revivalists would, however, be unfair – as with Royal Blood (with whom they share a producer, Tom Dalgety) the band worship at the altar of the riff, injecting dynamics and melody into the equation with a beefed-up vigour that makes this a very modern concern indeed. With a sense of melody that falls somewhere between Nirvana and Failure, the likes of “Friend Of Mine” and “Willow Tree” are like sonic shots of adrenaline, “Anxiety Trip” is as sludgy as molasses, while “Crystalline” proves the trio know their way around a good chorus. Textured closer…

Drake and Future  What a Time to Be Alive Cash Money/Epic/A1 What a time to be alive – and being “alive”, as Future and Drake define it, involves having way too many feelings about way too many strippers for way too many sleepless nights. Their surprise mixtape is shrewdly timed, since both MCs are on a creative roll after dropping two of the year’s biggest and best albums. It’s a quickie, and it sounds that way: a six-day digital dash in the studio. Yet that’s why it feels fresh and spontaneous. This is the sound of Future’s Dirty South meeting Drake’s Great White North, both artists playing off their louder-than-life personalities without overthinking the details. Future dominates the chemistry, with his producer Metro Boomin behind most of the tracks. Yet…

Various Artists  Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music 1.5 Festival/Warner The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community is advised that this review includes references to people who have died. An expansive update on the original compilation (2000), Buried Country 1.5 scores the second edition of Clinton Walker’s comprehensive history of Indigenous country music. The collection spans genre, captivating immediately with Vic Simms’ “Get Back Into the Shadows” (1973), while tracks such as Jimmy Little’s “Shadow of the Boomerang” (1960) meet cutting social commentaries (Mop & the Drop Outs’ “Brisbane Blacks”), sounds of a distant time (Maisie Kelly’s “My Home in the Valley”), and paeans to country and culture. Beyond their oft-familiar stylistic vernacular – see the newer, roots-stacked inclusions of Disc 2 – these are palpably angry, boldly…

Astral Weeks Warner His Band and the Street Choir Warner Van Morrison devotees know that the Irishman’s most compelling early work can be found on Astral Weeks and His Band and the Street Choir. Now, Warner has remastered and repackaged these two fan favourites for CD and iTunes with bonus tracks. The results are passable but not particularly compelling. The weird and hazy Astral Weeks sounds cleaner and louder on this release, but nostalgic listeners may find themselves longing for their scratchy vinyl copies. More than most albums, Astral Weeks was made for vinyl: its eight tracks divide neatly in two, and its quieter passages are enhanced by crackle. The diverse His Band and the Street Choir benefits more from the clean-up job, and has the better bonus tracks. Of…

The Program Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd Directed by Stephen Frears There have been a few documentaries about Lance Armstrong’s exceptional disintegration, but High Fidelity director Stephen Frears has delivered the first feature. Based on a book by sport journalist David Walsh (who chased Armstrong for years about drug allegations), The Program spans the professional career of the disgraced Tour De France “legend”. While all that is presented might be true, Frears’ packaging of a competitive life surges with an offputting sense of venom. Perhaps Armstrong was the win-at-any-cost jerk he is depicted as, and Ben Foster dissolves convincingly into the obsessed cyclist. But Armstrong seems deliberately reduced to a narcissistic caricature, to deny him any sympathy or humanity. The Program capably plays with sound and vision to suggest it is…

Trainwreck Amy Schumer, Bill Hader Directed by Judd Apatow Inside Amy Schumer Amy Schumer Created by Amy Schumer Few pop culture figures have gone from near-anonymity to household-name as fast as Amy Schumer. But while a blockbuster movie put her on the mainstream radar, her TV show offers the purer dose of the comedic superstar. Trainwreck’s party-girl Amy is a version of herself in that she’s a hard-drinking, pot-smoking sexual libertine very much living life on her own terms. But once she becomes hooked on Bill Hader’s gentle sports doctor, this Amy has to choose between her wild ways and a tamer lifestyle. Though the movie is broadly funny, director-producer Judd Apatow’s stock-in-trade male stoners never have to fully pack up their bongs the way our girl-hero does for a…