MOJOJune 2021的目錄

FOR JEFF Buckley’s mother Mary Guibert, meeting actor Reeve Carney meant there was no doubt who’d play her son in a new biopic. “They were introduced and… it’s not just that Reeve looks exactly like Jeff, but he sounds exactly like Jeff,” says Orian Williams, the producer and director of the just announced Everybody Here Wants You. “When he sings, you really think it’s him. Mary watched him and said, ‘Yeah, that’s my son.’” Bagging Carney, a respected Broadway actor and musician who co-stars in Ridley Scott’s forthcoming movie House Of Gucci, was one of the more serendipitous twists in Guibert’s tortuous 13-year mission to bring her son’s life to the big screen. The story began a decade or so after Buckley mysteriously drowned in the Mississippi River on May…

At The Trucks! (MUNSTER, 2006) MainMan filmed 1974’s theatrical show Wayne At The Trucks at a New York City theatre (reportedly influencing Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour). Energised glam-punk rockers include Fucked By The Devil and night-life roll-call Max’s Kansas City. The Electric Chairs (SAFARI, 1978) County keeps it clean, addressing teddy boy wars on Eddie And Sheena, and hailing Janis and Jimi on Rock & Roll Resurrection, saving the dirt for that year’s Blatantly Offenzive EP’s Toilet Love and Fuck Off. Deviation (ROYALTY, 1995) Recorded in Manchester, I’m In Love With Dusty Springfield, T exas Chainsaw Manicurist, Everyone’s An Asshole But Me and Transgender Rock & Roll are roughshod punk romps of unbeaten spirit.…

Robert Finley In 1972, I was working as a maintenance man in Houston, mainly fixing up apartments. I was also playing talent shows and local clubs, but it was just a hobby, at weekends, for fun. I wanted to make a living from it, but it’s all about being in the right place at the right time. In the clubs, I was singing blues, mostly my own songs. I’d use punchlines to make people laugh, so if the audience didn’t like the singing, I’d at least get their attention. I’d heard Al Green on jukeboxes and on the radio, and I just fell for his style of singing, in falsetto, and I found that the more I sung in falsetto, the more audiences reacted. Don’t get me wrong – I…

1 BILLY F GIBBONS WEST COAST JUNKIE With drums loaned from Walk, Don’t Run, the ’Top’s psych connoisseur testifies about heading to the coast for some “champagne and a little bit of weed”, to serious twang.Find it: YouTube 2 AROOJ AFTAB MOHABBAT An incredible singer from New York’s jazz/experimental scene, Aftab turns a Pakistani classical ghazal into glimmering baroque folk akin to Joanna Newsom.Find it: Bandcamp 3 MOLLY LEWIS OCEANIC FEELING As-seen-on-the-’net Australian Lewis (“the human Theremin”) uses her lithe, melodic whistle to Martin Denny-esque effect on sultry exotica.Find it: YouTube 4 CHEMICAL BROTHERS THE DARKNESS THAT YOU FEAR Part private psychedelic reel and part zerohour anthem, the Chems’ new single sets down gently and blasts off into ecstatic disco abandon, with spookily soothing vox.Find it: streaming services 5 REIGNING…

“I WAS IN THE DESERT MOUNTAINS IN SPAIN THE FIRST TIME I HEARD Jimi Hendrix. Was it 2014? It was a long journey and our driver put on Hey Joe. I was sleeping and suddenly I woke up. It nearly made me sick, just how incredible it was. At first, I thought it must have been a Tuareg playing because it was very similar… I didn’t know America had any musicians who were so talented.” Reclining against his bed, Mahamadou Moctar Souleymane, AKA Mdou Moctar, the hottest shredder in the Sahara, the Tuareg currently taking the desert blues deeper into space than anyone else has yet dared, is reminiscing quietly while children run freely around the room. Not his. This, he’ll explain, is standard Tuareg life wherever you are: if…

FROM THE MOMENT Polydor art director Bill Smith saw The Jam on-stage, at the Greyhound in Fulham, he could see the cover of their debut album, In The City, in his mind’s eye. “I had this story in my head,” he tells MOJO today. “The Jam were being chased by a rival band or gang, and they’d hidden in this underground toilet, where they spray-painted their logo.” Since underground toilets are not ideal photographic locations, Smith and snapper Martyn Goddard built one in the studio: “So the morning of the shoot me and Martyn put up these two two-metre by one-metre boards and tiled them ourselves.” Smith sprayed the logo in one go. “I can’t remember having a plan of what it would look like,” he says. “Luckily it turned…

isn’t anything ★★★★ (Creation 1988; Domino 2021 CD/DL/LP) Although way beyond the shoegazing multitudes which followed, their debut full-length is still the classic MBV line-up’s only album with clearly identifiable antecedents: Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth and especially Dinosaur Jr. are unself-consciously audible within (When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream and You Never Should, while on Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside) Kevin and Bilinda’s still-discernible vocals talk dirty with the chaste charm of the indie disco. Its desiccated discontinuity remains odd and compelling. loveless ★★★★★ (Creation 1991; Domino 2021 CD/DL/LP) A rarely spoken truth now it has entered art’s highest chamber is that Loveless didn’t initially impact among peers or fans with the same scorched earth force as its two prior EPs. But while including both Soon and…

MARCH 1971 AND PAUL McCARTNEY WAS IN LOS ANGELES, TRYING to lie low. While the local press speculated whether he was in town to shoot a US TV special with a new band, or if he’d indeed already left LA and flown to Hawaii, McCartney bunkered in Sound Recorders on Yucca Street in Hollywood, in the shadow of the ringed storeys of the Capitol Records building, putting the final touches to his second post-Beatles album, Ram. He only broke cover once, at the Grammys on March 16, rolling up to the podium, hand-in-hand with Linda, to accept an award for Let It Be from movie legend John Wayne. Outside, when leaving, a reporter caught up with Paul for a quote. “I have a knife and fork and I’m here to…

Tony Joe White ★★★★ Smoke From The Chimney EASY EYE SOUND. CD/DL/LP IT WAS in 1970 when Tony Joe White first heard Brook Benton’s cover of his 1967 song Rainy Night In Georgia. The 27-year-old Louisiana-born singer had been performing and writing since childhood, and that writing came easy, songs that somehow managed to turn his experiences of everyday Southern life into deep dark tales about life and loneliness, prejudice, love and hate. He’d spent his early twenties writing and recording for Monument Records, with one of his earliest songs, Polk Salad Annie, becoming a live staple for Elvis Presley throughout the 1970s. However, it wasn’t until he heard Benton’s “comeback” cover of Rainy Night that he realised something had been missing from his sound. “I’ve [always] wanted revenge on…

Third Ear Band Music From Macbeth HARVEST, 1972 TODAY, DIRECTOR Roman Polanski remains a fugitive from US justice, after he left the country in 1977 while awaiting sentencing for “unlawful intercourse with a minor.” Five years earlier he’d released his film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. His first project since his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family in Los Angeles in August 1969, it was rejected by the major US studios and was eventually financed by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy organisation. Stricken with bad weather on-set in Wales and Northumberland, the violence-and-nudity-packed production went massively over budget and then bombed, losing more than $3 million. Less troubled by the curse of the Scottish Play was the haunting soundtrack by London transglobal, transtemporal ensemble the Third Ear Band. It’s a…

REGGAE APOSTLE David Rodigan, who named Bunny Wailer’s solo debut Blackheart Man as his favourite ever album, has likened the magnitude of the 1973 split of the original Wailers group to that of The Beatles. The comparison’s easily extended: if revolutionary Peter Tosh was John Lennon and pop superstar Bob Marley was Paul McCartney, then the group’s spiritual envoy and lower-key musical superpower – their George – was Neville O’Riley Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer. Short in stature but formidable in charisma and accomplishment, he was born on April 10, 1947 and raised in Kingston and rural Nine Mile, Jamaica. His father Thaddeus, AKA Mr Taddy, was a country shopkeeper and revivalist preacher, and from a young age Neville played drums in church. He was eight when his father…

YELLOW FEVER 5 Sentimental jailhouse jingle Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree by Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando (above) is Number 1 in Britain and the US. It also tops charts in Canada, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and South Africa. RAW DEAL 5 Released In February, Iggy And The Stooges’ Raw Power reaches US Number 182. Around this time, manager Tony Defries advises Iggy to forget the band and play Peter Pan on Broadway. NIXON IT UP 17 The Senate Watergate Committee begins its televised hearings into President Nixon’s conduct. Topical records include The Waves’ At The Watergate (The Truth Come Pourin’ Out), Fred Wesley & The J.B.s’ Rockin’ Funky Watergate and Dickie Goodman’s Watergate. FLOYDIAN TRIP 18 Pink Floyd play the first of two sold-out…

Sharon Van Etten STAGE AND SCREEN STAR What music are you currently grooving to? Adriana McCassim’s debut EP Quiet Sides. [She] reminds me of my younger self. She worked as an intern at a management company, learned how to record herself and others, as well as thriving on constant motion, inspired by heartbreak, yet feeling rooted in self-awareness and contemplation. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. Makes me miss playing with my band and embracing the flaws of live feels. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Elastica’s first album. I was 14. I bought this at a Sam Goody at the mall, on cassette, the summer we were driving cross-country from New Jersey to…

…LIAM GALLAGHER hinted to his online massive: “Always come back with a banger to wake people up.” He previously told Zane Lowe, “The next [album] is going to be called Come On You Know” …ANNA CALVI (right) revealed to guitar.com that “I definitely have enough songs for an album, I’m just trying to decide whether they’re good enough” …JAMES release a new album in June called All The Colours Of You, produced by Jacknife Lee. Mused singer Tim Booth, “With all the shit that went down in 2020, this was a miraculous conception” …after releasing their new song Lout in March, THE HORRORS are self-producing their sixth album. Bassist Rhys Webb speaks of “the nastiest music we’ve made since [2007 debut] Strange House… it seemed like the perfect time to…

A PICTURE OF serene elegance and wisdom, Peggy Seeger’s reflections on her unique place at the forefront of the folk revivals on both sides of the Atlantic are peppered with humour, song lyrics, acerbic asides, detailed descriptions and winning self-deprecation. Born in New York in 1935, she grew up in a folk music culture where both parents and brothers Pete and Mike held important sway, and much of her tenure in the UK involved a partnership with folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. At 85, her latest LP, teasingly titled First Farewell, offers more measured views, but she’s as passionate, as ever, currently campaigning against building plans on fields near her home in Oxfordshire. Given your family background, was it your destiny to be a musician? I don’t believe in…

“You’ll see the picture, feel the wind, smell the sea breeze..”PAUL WELLER ON DECLAN O’ROURKE 'DECLAN’S A MASTER storyteller. He will put you in that place. You will see the picture, feel the wind, smell the sea breeze. You’ll be totally involved.” Says one of Irish singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke’s biggest fans: Paul Weller. Weller has been friends with O’Rourke since they were both signed to V2 in the early 2000s, when the Irishman’s 2004 debut album, Since Kyabram, went double platinum in his native country. Since then, wider success has eluded O’Rourke outside of Ireland, and he’s well aware of his long, slow arc to worldwide overnight sensation. “I’ve been toying with the idea of a song about that,” he laughs. “Something like, ‘If it takes me half as long…

ANNIE CLARK HAS SLIPPED INTO SOME-thing more comfortable. The pink latex bodysuits and thigh-high boots she wore for St. Vincent’s last album, 2017’s Masseduction, have been mothballed: new photographs show maroon flares, a robe, tousled blonde hair, all shot against the beaux-arts-meets-Skid-Row backdrop of downtown Los Angeles’ Barclay Hotel. “Gena Rowlands in a John Cassavetes movie or Candy Darling,” says Clark, explaining the inspirations behind the rebrand that heralds St. Vincent’s sixth album, Daddy’s Home. “Glamour that’s been awake for two days.” Where its predecessor was high in sheen and concept, Daddy’s Home is rich in oil-crisis style, morning-after experience; love and its compromises; what it takes to hang on as the world falls apart. Family and its legacies also feature: the album’s title partly refers to her father’s decade…

ALI FARKA TOURÉ Le Jeune Chansonnier Du Mali (Sonafric, 1976) Touré bore a long grudge against the label that released his first five LPs – an original today would cost you more than he ever saw in royalties – yet where else do you start with the Saharan blues but the godfather? TINARIWEN Aman Iman (Independiente, 2006) After two albums that explained what they did, Tinariwen grasped the myths that had grown up around them on their third. Side one’s Cler Achel and Matadjem Yinmixan (both written by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib) are the very definition of Tuareg funk. GROUP DOUEH Treeg Salaam (Sublime Frequencies, 2009) A tip of the hat to Spiritual- ized’s Jason Pierce for hipping us to this quintet from Western Sahara in MOJO 170: “It’s made by…

Our House Graham Nash & Joni Mitehell (demo) In a sense the soul of Déjà Vu. a guileless song of domestic bliss written at “Willie” and Joni’s house but not recorded until after she dumped him. They were still together when Jane Lurie, Joni’s former NYC roommate, recorded the pair singing it at her piano on a visit. Joni’s harmony sounds gleefully childlike. Birds Neil Young & Graham Nash (demo) Just Young and Nash and an acoustic guitar which, in a dash of dialogue, Nash asks him to tune. It’s slow, stately and downright beautiful. Nash’s perfect high harmonies and Young’s “oohs” make it more sorrowful still than the version on After The Gold Rush. Song With No Words David Crosby & Graham Nash (demo) Croz and Nash aren’t talking…

IT’S A LATE 1970 EVENING AT DETROIT’S UNITED Sound studio and the drug divide within Funkadelic is widening. As work starts on their third album, producer George Clinton and guitarist Eddie Hazel are flying on potent yellow sunshine LSD while the rhythm section are nodding on heroin. Yet Clinton hears something in a haunting chord sequence being trundled at funereal tempo by guitarist Tawl Ross and bassist Billy Nelson. His acid-bubbling brain starts envisioning a mournful eulogy: for departed souls, darkening times and a utopian hippy dream soured by conflicts in Vietnam and America’s inner cities. Clinton cues in Eddie Hazel, the mercurial guitarist believed to carry some of Jimi Hendrix’s spirit even before the latter’s recent death, knowing he only has to brush Hazel’s emotional hair-trigger to send his…

ONE DAY IN 1996, KEVIN Shields was summoned from his south London HQ to the Hammersmith offices of Island Records. His band My Bloody Valentine had signed to the major label in October 1992, 11 months after the release of Loveless, an album made under such stressful circumstances over three years it fractured their relationship with indie rock bastion Creation, yet was acclaimed by critics in terms that stretched the limits of hyperbole. “Its creative inspiration defies belief,” Select’s Andrew Perry gasped; “A virtual reinvention of the guitar,” Q’s Martin Aston declared; “The outermost, innermost, uttermost rock record of 1991,” Melody Maker’s Simon Reynolds swooned. Thanks to the painful birth and staggering realisation of Loveless, the 29-year-old Shields was anointed with the mystic hue of a pioneer, a post-punk Brian…

WHEN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FIRST SUNK ITS teeth into Britain, shutting the nation down in March 2020, Paul Weller was presented with what appeared to be an insurmountable problem. His new album, the free-spirited On Sunset, was due to be released that June. He had a lavish live reading of it planned, with strings and brass, but very quickly it became apparent that there would be no live performances allowed that year. Weller was distraught. He believed that On Sunset’s soulful, softly psychedelic stylings delivered a career highlight. He was proud of it. He didn’t want it to flash brightly upon release and then vanish. Peering into his back catalogue, he had flicked through 45 years of recordings with The Jam, The Style Council and as a solo artist to…

★★★★ Bills & Aches & Blues 4AD. CD/DL/LP Self-starting 41st anniversary celebration from pioneering label. THIS RECORD’S concept is simple: artists on 4AD’s current roster cover tracks from the label’s past. When Bills & Aches & Blues works – and it nearly always does – it’s more complex, though, pulling together the threads of an enduring artistic legacy to intriguing effect. US Girls, for example, take the malign buzzing energy of The Birthday Party’s Junkyard and trap it under a glassy dreampop dome, while Tkay Maidza deftly trepans Pixies’ Where Is My Mind? It’s interesting to see who is chosen: no Cocteau Twins (although SOHN cover This Mortal Coil’s version of Song To The Siren), but a strong showing for Grimes, Deerhunter and The Breeders (the latter covered by Tune…

Spiritualized ★★★★ Lazer Guided Melodies FAT POSSUM. LP IGGY POP’S Lust For Life. Chuck Berry’s San Francisco Dues. The Soul Album by Otis Redding. Soul Dressing by Booker T. & The M.G.’s. And, less edifyingly, Lie: The Love And Terror Cult, the album released while Charles Manson was awaiting trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders. These were the five records the members of Spiritualized used to obscure their faces at an NME photo shoot in July 1992. Their desire to be seen as historic, soulful, transgressive, at an elevated remove from their British contemporaries, was almost touchingly needy. “The whole of what people tag ‘indie’ is the biggest mainstream going, and nobody seems to want to work outside of that,” the band’s leader, Jason Pierce, told me in the accompanying cover…

Derrick Harriott And The Crystalites ★★★★ The Undertaker DOCTOR BIRD. CD From 1970, The Dynamites play Upsetters-like instrumental reggae: LP has 14 bonus cuts: a second disc adds another 27 Harriott productions. IH Linda Smith ★★★★ Till Another Time: 1988-1996 CAPTURED TRACKS. CD/DL/LP A Baltimore veteran of bedroom 4- and 8-track recording, this set of Smith’s lo-fi cassette releases reveals soft echoes of the Velvets in meticulous melodies, dreamy Nico-ish voice and deadpan diary entry song-titles (I So Liked The Spring). JB Various ★★★★ Northern Soul’s Classiest Rarities Volume 7 KENT. CD/DL Two dozen diligently soughtout dancers chosen by Ady Croasdell from acetates, tapes etc. Familiarity of arrangement is key as unknowns (Ray Gant; Isaiah Smith, he’s a bit like Darrell Banks) and proven voices treat ears and feet. GB…

MUSIC EXECUTIVE SALLY GROSSMAN (below, b.1939) was a close associate of Bob Dylan and wife of Dylan’s manager, Albert. She famously appears on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home, enigmatically smoking a cigarette on a chaise longue in a bright vermilion trouser suit. Manhattan-born Sally Ann Buehler dropped out of college to join the Greenwich Village arts scene, meeting Albert Grossman while working in Café Wha?. Settling in Woodstock, the couple ran the Bearsville record label and recording studio, and later the Bearsville Theatre. In 2008 she curated a unique digital archive of the sacred Bengali music Baul. HEADHUNTERS bassist PAUL JACKSON (b.1947) studied piano and bassoon before taking up standup bass aged nine. He joined Herbie Hancock for the jazz-fusion trailblazer’s 1973 smash Head Hunters. After Hancock…

SAO PAULO (BRAZIL) MAY 5 1 YOU’RE A LADY PETER SKELLERN LONDON 2 LISTEN TO THE MUSIC THE DOOBIE BROTHERS WARNER BROS 3 WHY CAN’T WE LIVE TOGETHER TIMMY THOMAS TOP TAPE 4 YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE OF MY LIFE STEVIE WONDER TAMLA MOTOWN 5 AMOR, AMOR, AMOR MARCOS ROBERTO CONTINENTAL 6 DOMINGO FELIZ ANGELO MAXIMO BEVERLY 7 CROCODILE ROCK ELTON JOHN FERMATA 8 SO LUCKY FREDDIE DAVIS CHANTECLER 9 I’D LOVE YOU TO WANT ME LOBO PHILIPS 10 O MENINO DA GAITA (EL CHICO DE LA ARMONICA) SÉRGIO REIS RCA VICTOR From Bury to Brazil, in brown: Skellern at 1.…

E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk HELLO DEAR READERS, it is a great pleasure to be asked to edit this particular issue of our favourite music mag. An honour, too. MOJO has consistently brought us incredible features on our favourite artists and introduced new ones too. I, like many, remember buying the first issue with John’n’Bob, and haven’t ever stopped. Regardless of who’s on the cover, I know there’ll be something of interest to me. With some of the greatest music writers around, MOJO is always quality and with no other agenda than to bring you all this fantastic music, month after month, year after year. I also wanna mention the brilliant Art Director Wags – maybe someone you don’t know, but he’s the brain behind creatively putting this mag together month after…

Elvis Presley Are You Lonesome Tonight (RCA, 1991) This August ’69 Vegas live performance starts off professionally until, legend has it, Elvis was distracted by a bald reveller who’d cast aside his toupee to dance. Cue ad-libbed words, corpsing, convulsing and wiggy falsetto bvs. The Marathons Talkin’ Trash (ARVEE 45, 1961) The flip of ’61 hit Peanut Butter by the Los Angeles vocal group who also traded as The Vibrations and The Jay Hawks, this goofball R&B portrays a hapless suitor getting convincingly giggled at for two minutes 25 by his love interest. Frank Zappa Watermelons In Easter Hay (ZAPPA, 1979) After all the outrage and satire of Joe’s Garage, Zappa cracks up in character as the ‘Central Scrutinizer’ (“ultimately, who gives a fuck?”) only for one of his most…

DOWN THE years, Paul McCartney has been no stranger to the transformative powers of the remix. His 1993 ambient electronic album Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, made as The Fireman in cahoots with Youth, was the result of McCartney letting loose the producer/ Killing Joke bassist on the tapes of his just-released Off The Ground. Then, in 2005, Macca hooked up with mash-up artist Freelance Hellraiser for the radical shapeshifting of tracks from his back catalogue – everything from Maybe I’m Amazed to Temporary Secretary – on Twin Freaks. Now McCartney has gone further, handing over the masters to his third eponymous solo LP, recorded last year in lockdown, to various artists ranging from Beck and St. Vincent to Anderson.Paak and Damon Albarn. The result is the tellingly-titled McCartney III Imagined,…

BACK IN the summer of 2019, Paul Weller invited Liverpool group The Mysterines to duet on a live version of Dr. John’s 1968 track I Walk On Guilded Splinters. It had been a brave move of Weller to tackle The Doctor’s voodoo incantation back in 1995, but dial up the more recent performance on YouTube and Mysterines singer Lia Metcalfe, 18 at the time, seems totally unfazed as she breathes new fire into the song. It’s all Weller can do not to stand back and admire. “Lia’s got a strong personality and great stage presence, and it’s nice – and I don’t mean this in a patronising way – to hear a young woman with that sort of ballsy voice,” recalls Weller, who also invited Metcalfe to feature on True,…

THE ANNUNCIATION St. Vincent Actor ★★★★ (4AD, 2009) Action! After the charming antique pop and CGI folk of Marry Me, Actor pushed St. Vincent onto a bigger, grander stage. Clark drew heavily on Disney themes and vintage film music as inspiration for her second record, but turned them into soundtracks ofanxiety and alienation, Black Rainbow’s Holst-like explosions and Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood’s delicate disturbances proving that she was following her own script. THE TRANSFIGURATION St. Vincent St. Vincent ★★★★★ (LOMA VISTA, 2014) Starting with Rattlesnake, a song about an ill-advised naked ramble in the desert, St. Vincent’s fourth album is a pivotal moment in Annie Clark’s evolution. Here is where she threw off any lingering ‘singersongwriter’ constraints to become a glorious full-blown pop star courtesy of Digital Witness,…

P40 CSNY Celebrating DéJà Vu at 50, with brand new interviews and a sneak peek at the outtakes. P46 THE CORAL Weller-endorsed Merseysiders mark 25yearswitha career highlight. Sound! P52 FUNKADELIC The sadness and madness at the heart of Maggot Brain, the funk-rock trip from Mars. P58 COVER STORIES The sleeve art of Bill Smith. Featuring The Jam! Plus tips on tiling and spray paint... P60 KEVIN SHIELDS My Bloody Valentine’s sonic visionary on the thin line between perfection and insanity. P66 PAUL WELLER This month’s MOJO Editor gets back to the day job, the new album, and lockdown anxiety. P72 PAUL MCCARTNEY The story of Ram- Weller’s Beatle idol’s greatest solo album.…

IT’S OVER 10 YEARS SINCE MOJO LAST SAT DOWN properly with The Coral. Back then the Wirral-based quintet were promoting their sixth studio release, the John Leckie-produced Butterfly House. An album of lush melodic psychedelia, it felt confident, assured. “We’re stronger than ever,” frontman James Skelly told MOJO, as the band prepared for a UK tour and a sold-out gig at the Royal Albert Hall. “We’ve got the map now. We’ve got to push on.” What happened instead was a dead stop. “Yeah,” says Skelly with a sigh. “I had a breakdown. I had to move back to my mom’s and I kipped on my younger brother Alfie’s floor for about a year. I was hallucinating, I couldn’t remember where I’d been. I just thought, I’m absolutely fucked and I…

I’LL BET YOU from Funkadelic (Westbound, 1970) Although covered by The Jackson 5 in 1970, Clinton had already thrown this old school soul taunt into Funkadelic’s bubbling lysergic cauldron, becoming their second single after Eddie Hazel forged the band’s first heavy riff – bloodcurdling screams greeting his attitude-charged solo. KN I WANNA KNOW IF IT’S GOOD TO YOU? from Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow (Westbound, 1971) Super-stoked by its carnal chant, Hazel’s inner Hendrix reared over Billy Nelson’s radioactive throb with the priapic wah wah motif that earned a composing credit, his solo rising from watery moan to lascivious uproar (further highlighted on the 45 version’s instrumental B-side). KN SUPER STUPID from Maggot Brain (Westbound, 1971) Angelic intro, demonic riff: the two faces of heroin in one…

PAUL WELLER and Kevin Shields: an unlikely alliance? “Because of Primal Scream, I had a loose association with people who all kind of know each other,” Shields explains. “And Paul Weller was part of that world a little bit.” But when Shields arrived at Black Barn in 2009 to work on tracks that became She Speaks and 7 & 3 Is The Striker’s Name, the portents were concerning. “I plugged in my pedals and nothing worked at all,” he recalls. “It was like, ‘Oh, shit, oh, shit!’ I was falling on my face extremely badly. But Paul was really cool. He was just like, ‘Oh, fuck it, you know, just make some feedback, that sounds really cool.’” Shields was struck by Weller’s open-mindedness. “The phase of records he was making…

JON LUCIEN Search For The Inner Self (Ampex, 1971) A permanent entry in Weller’s Top 10, his signed original 7-inch of this rare, deep soul groove is among his proudest possessions. No offers, though: Weller won’t sell. SAM FENDER Leave Fast (Polydor, 2018) Spiritual relative of The Jam’s That’s Entertainment describes a young man’s fear of being stuck in a small town amid “broken fridges and torn-up sofas” beyond his leave-by date. CHILDISH GAMBINO This Is America (RCA, 2018) Actor Donald Glover’s powerful rap-gospel statement about American gun violence and institutional racism provides philosophical inspiration for Weller’s That Pleasure on Fat Pop (Volume 1). THE CORAL Dreaming Of You (Deltasonic, 2002) One of James Skelly’s earliest compositions for the Wirral-ites details teenage longing as a glorious sing-along soul-shanty. Showcase for…

IN 2020, Paul Weller’s In Another Room EP was released on the ‘hauntological’ Ghost Box label, giving him the chance to explore his more outré tendencies. He describes the experience as: “A portal into another world. Something both familiar and half remembered and very British but also something very strange. No one else is doing what Jim [Jupp] and Julian [House] are. It’s unique, and a total labour of love.” That labour began in 2004 when Jupp, an architect technician, and his pal House, a graphic designer, set up Ghost Box as a website to sell CDRs of their respective bands on a burn-to-order basis. Jupp’s Belbury Poly and House’s The Focus Group specialised – and still do – in that creation of “another world”, a preternatural parallel reality of…

Five Live Yardbirds and the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams are both debut albums and live recordings. I can’t think of any more but there must be loads. Can you help?? Dr E J Robinson, via e-mail MOJO says: Live albums which capture their subjects raw need an audience, so let’s discount live-in-the-studio debuts like Please Please Me. A quick selection of in-concert first forays on wax includes: Tom Rush’s Live At The Unicorn (1962), Georgie Fame’s Rhythm And Blues At The Flamingo (1963), John Mayall Plays John Mayall (1965), The Blues Project’s Live At The Café Au Go Go (1966)… so yes, loads. Other significant examples include Hot Tuna’s first album (1970), Jeff Buckley’s 25-minute EP Live at Sin-é (1993), Suck On This by Primus (1989) and Hüsker Dü’s…