Life is full of strange delights/And in the darkness we find lights/To make our way back home again

AC/DC: Its always been do or die! 40

PAGES OF
REVIEWS
WILCO
THE VELVET
UNDERGROUND
JONI MITCHELL
SPRINGSTEEN
PIXIES

The ultimate

Review
of theYear

75

BEST
ALBUMS!

30 KEY REISSUES!
The nest lms,
books and DVDs
of 2014

AND MORE...

Uncuts 2014
Hall Of Fame
starring...

NEIL
YOUNG

KATE BUSH
JIMMY PAGE
ST VINCENT
MARK KOZELEK
SWANS
PLUS

A fond farewell
ll tto

JACK BRUCE
ROGER MCGUINN

BLAKE MILLS
EINSTRZENDE
NEUBAUTEN
AND EARLS COURT
REMEMBERED

Reunions? I dont want

to be in The Byrds!
AND

LEE BAINS III

SLEAFORD MODS
SMASHING PUMPKINS
SWAMP DOGG
JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT.CO.UK

;(2,

1HU\HY ` 


4 Instant Karma!
Jack Bruce remembered; Deeply Vale
Festival; Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires

14 Jimmy Page
An audience with the Zeppelin guitarist

REVIEW OF 2014

Are we rolling?
A

22 Albums Of The Year

The 75 best records of 2014

33 Reissues Of The Year

36 Films Of The Year
39 Books Of The Year
40 Kate Bush
The making of Wuthering Heights

44 Neil Young
The legends crazy year, charted by his
closest compadres, including Graham
Nash and Frank Poncho Sampedro

54 St Vincent
Album by album with Annie Clark

56 Mark Kozelek
The former Red House Painter aka
Sun Kil Moon reects on fame, infamy,
and his war with The War On Drugs
40 PAGES OF REVIEWS!

63 New Albums
Including: AC/DC, Smashing
Pumpkins, Blake Mills

81 The Archive
Including: The Velvet Underground,
Bruce Springsteen, Pixies

SunKilMoons
Sun
Kil Moons
Benji

T SOME POINT in October, I started receiving emails from record labels

and publicists about their Tips For 2015. A new year loomed, distantly,
and with it the annual music business imperative to embrace a tranche
of new artists. Around the same time, the 2014 Mercury Prize hoopla
culminated with a victory for the Scottish hip-hop act, Young Fathers, and their
Dead album, one of seven debuts in the shortlist of 12.
It is hard not to conclude from all this that the British music business has
abandoned the idea of sticking with artists for the long haul: not always the most
expedient commercial approach, but one which had at least a little bit of traction
before neurotic short-termism went into overdrive. The subtext, perhaps, is that the
industry, the media and, both would presume, the general public, find artists who
grow incrementally to be boring underachievers. If you dont start with a major
success, then youre expendable. Soon enough, therell be another new year and
another horde of contenders to fling optimistically in the direction of the BBCs
Sound Of 2015 poll.
Uncuts Albums Of 2014, though, tell another story. Four hundred and one releases
4 voters. In the Top 75 albums, only seven were technically
were nominated by our 42
d
debuts, and three of those were by artists with considerable
ccareers in other bands behind them. Plenty of the acts felt
ffresh and exciting (Sleaford Mods, for instance, who we
ffeature on page 106), but many had discreetly worked at their
art for a few years, just off the radar, cumulatively growing
with every release.
Take Mark Kozelek, who came up with what may be his
masterpiece, Benji, 22 years into a career mostly conducted
on the margins. I felt confident that Benji would be received
poorly, that people would find it to be middle-aged
ramblings about dead relatives, Kozelek told me this
month, in his most in-depth interview in years. But
something about it resonated with people.
Kozeleks career and those of Sharon Van Etten, The War On Drugs, St Vincent,
Caribou, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Future Islands, Steve Gunn and many other key
players of 2014, to say nothing of Neil Young is an object lesson in how things can
be done differently. This end-of-year Uncut special, we hope, is a testament to the
enduring creative health of our corner of the music scene; a place where many
inspiring albums are still being made, regardless of the Death Of Rock thinkpieces
that will doubtless proliferate, as they do every year, in the next month or two.
If youre hungry for more of this, Ill be posting my own personal chart of 100 or so
records Ive enjoyed in 2014 at www.uncut.co.uk any day now. In the meantime, a
heartfelt thanks for all your support over the past 12 months. Until next year

96 Film & DVD

Bill Murray in St Vincent, Muhammad
Ali documentary, The Doors

104 Live
Roger McGuinn, Sleaford Mods

117 Books
Robert Wyatt, Mick Fleetwood

118 Not Fade Away

This months obituaries

120 Feedback
Your letters, plus the Uncut crossword

122 My Life In Music

Swans Michael Gira

John Mulvey, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @JohnRMulvey

COVER: JEFF CHIU/AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION

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I N STA N T K A R M A !
THIS MONTHS REVELATIONS
ELATIO
ONS F
FROM
RO M T
THE
HE W
WORLD
OR L D O
OF
FU
UNCUT
NC U T
E FESTIVAL
FEST
T IV
I VA
AL
L
Featuring DEEPLY VALE
Jack Bruce in 1967:
He never sang or
played a dishonest
word or note in his life

4 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

JACK BRUCE | 1943-2014

A striving to
make things that
were beautiful
and interesting
and groovy and
stimulating...

FIRST MET Jack when I was a poet in the

early to mid-60s, and I was doing a lot of
shows with jazz people like The Graham
Bond Organisation, who Jack played with.
After Cream formed, Ginger phoned me
up. It seemed like an emergency they were in the
studio, and had done this backing track, which ended
up being Wrapping Paper, their first single, but they
didnt have any words. I went down there and ended
up writing the lyrics for it.
I was living in the same place as Eric Clapton, and
we tried to write a couple of
things, and I also tried with
Ginger, but it became fairly
obvious that the chemistry was
with Jack and myself. We came
up with I Feel Free, and then it
became easier after that. There
was real chemistry between us,
and we got a lot of good stuff
down. Another thing we always
had in common was politics, we
were both dedicated socialists.
I remember once Jack and I
were sitting there at about five in
the morning, trying to get some
stuff ready for Disraeli Gears. Jack
picked up his double bass and
played a riff, and I looked out of the window and wrote,
Its gettin near dawn/When lights close their tired
eyes Jack and I wrote the verses, and then the pair
of us and Eric wrote the hook, and of course that was
Sunshine Of Your Love. Most of the successful Cream

songs were by Jack and myself, with the possible

exception of Tales Of Brave Ulysses and Badge.
Did I see any conflict between the three of them in
Cream? Oh yeah! Having three people in a band is very
claustrophobic, and it was quite a pressurised situation,
because they were the cash cow of that particular
management, so they were working them as hard as
they could. Ginger and Jack had a history of certain
amounts of conflict, and they would compete musically,
and in other ways. A three-piece lineup was incredibly
limiting for somebody like Jack as a composer and a
player, he needed a bigger palette
to work with, which is one of the
reasons they broke up.
Of course, things like Cream,
where the songs become almost
standards, do haunt you. Cream
was nearly juvenilia for Jack I
think some of his more mature
work will eventually be seen to
be just as good, if not better than
that. Funnily enough, when they
did the reunion [in 2005] they
sounded so much better than they
had before, so much more subtle
and thoughtful. They were really
listening to each other, catching
nuances that werent possible
technically because of sound systems in the 60s.
Some of Jacks early solo songs had already been
written for Cream, like Songs For A Tailors Theme For
An Imaginary Western, but Jacks manager hated them
and conspired to lose them. Originally I gave Rope

Jack was an
incredible
composer and
arranger, I was
in awe of him as
a musician
PETE BROWN

JANUARY 2015 | UNCUT |

CHUCK BOYD/IDOLS/PHOTOSHOT

JACK BRUCE remembered by his

colleague of 48 years, PETE BROWN

I N STA N T KA R M A !
Ladder To The Moon to Arthur Brown, but
Arthur didnt know what to do with it so I gave it
to Jack, and he came up with the most incredible
music that was just absolutely 100 per cent
right. I generally kept out of things musically
with Jack he was an incredible composer and
arranger, I was in awe of him as a musician.
I learnt a lot from him, especially as a singer.
We actually worked together for 48 years, on
and off. I was extremely glad when Jack asked
me to write his last record, [2014]s Silver Rails,
with him. He said to me, I want this to be an old
mans album. Its got no pretensions to youth,
or machismo. It should reflect how I am, and
the age that I am. Thats a very honest thing to
say in todays world, where were all trying to
be as young as we possibly can!
Jack was a little frail when we recorded it,
and when we last saw each other, at a Silver
Rails playback, maybe it was slightly obvious

Pink Floyd fans

outside Earls Court,
August 1980, and
below, Bowie at
Earls Court, 1973

WISH YOU
WERE STILL
HERE
In memoriam: Earls Court,
venue of legends. Its a
huge loss for London

ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS; REX FEATURES

Jack Bruce, left, with

Pete Brown, 2005

iit might have been the

ffinal time. Jack had a
liver transplant a way
li
back, and managed to
b
survive it. We all thought
su
of Jack as a tremendous
ssurvivor, so I knew
iit was pretty bad
tthis time, but I was
h
hoping he would
m
make it again.
I think Jack
w
would have liked to
be remembered just
b
as a great musician.
He related a lot to
Monk and Mingus;
those guys were
composers and in
fact Jack, with the classical training he had on
the cello, had an even wider palette than some
of those guys. He could score for strings, horns
and orchestras. Jacks achievements were not
out of a striving for money, they were out of
a striving to actually make things that were
beautiful and interesting and groovy and
stimulating. Jack never sang or played a
dishonest word or note in his life. It is genuine,
honest stuff and thats why a lot of people like
it, because it doesnt come with any bullshit or
fakery. Its real. INTERVIEW: TOM PINNOCK

6 | UNCUT | JANUARY 2015

ODDY HOLDER REMEMBERS Slades

landmark show at Londons Earls Court
Exhibition Centre in July 1973 with pride.
We were the first band to think of playing Earls
Court, nobody else had done it, the singer tells
Uncut. Bowie played there first, but only
because hed heard wed booked it. Unluckily for
him he had terrible sound and got bad reviews,
and we learnt from that, put in baffles and got
much better sound. Id love to have been in the
audience. Apparently the tube was full of 20,000
people in Slade gear, everybody in top hats and
glitter. Nobody had seen anything like it.
And nobody will again, at least not at Earls
Court. Barring a last-minute miracle, the centre
is being demolished this February, the latest
London venue to pay the price of regeneration.
It will be replaced by flats, shops and offices. A
venue that saw important shows by Pink Floyd,
Bowie, the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Dylan, as
well as events from the Royal Tournament to
the Ideal Home Show, will be gone for good.
Its a huge loss for London, says Duggie
Fields, who can see the exhibition centre from
the flat he used to share with Syd Barrett, the
same one that appeared on the cover of The
Madcap Laughs. Fields, an artist, has been
campaigning to save the 1937 Art Deco building,
but now feels its destruction is inevitable.
The developers got a legal injunction against
anybody listing the building, he explains.
In London, it seems everything thats not
a shop, offices or luxury apartments is being
demolished. This striking building still attracts
millions of people from around the world, and

were throwing that history and heritage away.

Earls Court hosted some of the biggest shows
of the 1970s. Pink Floyd and David Bowie played
there in the same week in May 1973, and Floyd
would return to tour The Wall and The Division
Bell. Their shows there in June 1981 for The Wall
were the last full-length ones with Roger Waters,
while October 29, 1994 was the bands last public
performance until the 2005 reunion. In May 1975,
Led Zeppelin played five shows that some
consider the best they ever performed. Bowies
1978 show was filmed by David Hemmings, but
has yet to be released, while Dylans shows that
same year were his first in London since 1966.
More recently, the venue has hosted Take That,
Morrissey, Muse, Arctic Monkeys and Oasis,
while Arcade Fire played two shows in June.
Fields thinks this continued popularity may
be part of the problem for wealthy locals.
The fact that Earls Court draws people to
concerts is fabulous, he says. The whole area is
buzzing. But I think the concerts attract too many
of the unwashed masses in the view of the more
snobbish locals and the council. When Madonna
played [in 2001] there were thousands of girls in
the streets staggering round in boas and cowboy
hats. I think that adds life to the neighbourhood.
That is culture and we should consider ourselves
lucky to have had a venue that could draw
performers like that to it. PETER WATTS

The New Album

December 1st
ACDC.COM COLUMBIA.CO.UK

Free Super Saver Delivery and Unlimited One-Day

Delivery with Amazon Prime are available. Terms
and conditions apply. See Amazon.co.uk for details.

I N STA N T KA R M A !
Recording with old
tech is a transforming
experience
ALEX STEYERMARK

LOMAX FIDELITY

Their journey took them from the

hallowed archives at the Library of
Congress to a lacquer disc plant in
California, a remote farmhouse in rural
Louisiana and even an old karate school
in Memphis where Elvis Presley studied
(Its not there anymore, laments
Steyermark. Its been turned into a
sports bar.) Their subjects include a
smattering of familiar faces: John C Reilly,
Jones Wright and
Steyermark with
Dawn Landes and Kid Creoles former
the Presto, the star
lieutenant, Coati Mundi, who is filmed in
of the project
his kitchen delivering a rendition of Billy
Boy accompanying himself on the
spoons. Other less well-known participants
include the Reverend John Wilkins son of early
blues artist Robert Wilkins, whose Thats No Way
To Get Along was recorded as Prodigal Son by
The Rolling Stones. Filmed at Hunters Chapel in
Como, Mississippi, the 73-year old Wilkins delivers
a rendition of I Want Jesus To Walk With Me that
feels like an authentic connection to Lomaxs
recordings. While Steyermark films, Wright
operates the machine, brushing away the chaff as
its stylus cuts into an acetate disc. Besides being
antique, Prestos are notoriously temperamental.
The manuals only one page, laughs Steyermark.
But the troubleshooting guide is four
We see the project as bridging 100 years of
technology, adds Wright. The music is captured
invited musicians they knew to record a song onto
on an analogue artefact, but the project is taking
the Presto. Their only stipulations were that each
into account all the technology thats available.
artist play a song in the public domain, in one take,
Indeed, the film continues to play at festivals
and that the artist choose the location. Soon, they
with a DVD and online release next year. There
secured the involvement of artists including
are also two albums of recordings from the web
Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III and
series and film. Essentially, The 78 Project is a very
Rosanne Cash. The series grew until, in 2011, they
modern exercise in nostalgia. Its interesting,
decided to make a feature-length documentary.
says Wright, how this 80-year-old machine
We decided to take a road trip, says
interacts with new ones.
Steyermark. We want
E
Every
time we recorded,
to show how people
so
someone
would get their
from different
iP
iPhone
out and take a
cultural backgrounds
pi
picture
or a video. So its
can be connected
co
co-existing
with all these
around this
di
different
technologies
transforming
experience that takes
MICHAEL BONNER
M
place when you have
to cut a record using
For more information visit
Fo
old technology.
w
www.the78project.com

Were bridging 100

years of technology!
Hey Presto! Two filmmakers, an antique disc recorder, and
a quest to record in exactly the same way as Alan Lomax

SARAH LAW FOR THE 78 PROJECT

N APRIL 2010, the New York-based filmmaker

Alex Steyermark travelled to Quogue, Long
Island, on a rather unusual errand. Theres
an eccentric guy who lives in an old fishermans
shack way out on the south shore, Steyermark
explains. He buys old gear from studios and radio
stations that are going out of business, fixes some
of the stuff up, and sells it to collectors around the
world. There, Steyermark bought two Presto
disc recorders, similar to the machines used by
folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1930s and 40s to
document regional folk music in America.
These machines are at the heart of The 78
Project, a documentary by Steyermark and
collaborator Lavinia Jones Wright which both
honours Lomaxs fieldwork and the machines he
used. In the film, the pair travel around America
recording todays musicians on their Prestos.
As Steyermark and Wright explain, The 78
Project began as a web project in 2011, where they

THE CLASSIFIEDS

This month: The Clash and The Slits raise money for Sid Vicious murder
defence fund, while The Jam get festive From the NME, December 9, 1978

FROM THE MAKERS OF

ON
SALE
NOW!
AVAILABLE IN ALL GOOD UK NEWSAGENTS
OR ORDER FROM UNCUT.CO.UK/STORE

I N STA N T KA R M A !
DEEPLY VALE FESTIVAL

A QUICK ONE

INTO THE VALLEY!

1978. Hippies and punks come together
at an idyllic free festival near Rochdale:
It was a really transformative moment!

HE FLYER PROMISED free

food and 10,000 beautiful
people: All you need is love,
but the love revolution needs
you. 1978s Deeply Vale
Festival, then in its third year, was fast
becoming the countercultural hub of the
north. Held in a wooded valley on the
fringe of Rochdale, it represented a
cultural shift. The hippy dream had
crashed and burned, explains The Fall
and Billy Bragg producer Grant Showbiz,
then involved with festival regulars Here
And Now. It was all falling to pieces and
we had to learn to fend for ourselves. We
thought that Deeply Vale was a pointer to
the future, so there was this huge kind of
political meaning to it all. It was a really
transformative moment.
Conceived by five members of a
Rochdale commune, Deeply Vale saw
disparate tribes punks, hippies, newwavers, tipi people co-exist in a spirit of
alternative living. As a new 6CD boxset
proves, it was reflected in the diversity
of bands, from newcomers The Fall, The
Ruts and The Durutti Column to relative
veterans Steve Hillage, Tractor and Nik
Turner. Whats more, everything was free.
In 76, we found this natural
amphitheatre, recalls Deeply Vale
co-founder and Ozit label chief Chris
Hewitt. A beautiful little valley with a
stream and lakes for swimming. We knew
the farmer and initially asked if we could
have a birthday party for 10 people
camping. But we ended up with 20 bands
and 300 people. The next year we had

The Deeply Vale

Festival, 1978: a
British Woodstock?

3,000 there,
30-odd acts and
a review in NME.
By 78, we had a
crowd of 20,000.
Years before
Glastonbury, we
were the first free
festival to allow punk bands on. The
Crass thing was about to happen, then
Chumbawamba and the rest of it.
One of the more anarchic local bands
at the 1978 festival was Danny And The
Dressmakers, whose ranks included a
17-year-old Graham Massey, later of 808
State. It was a good kind of chaos, he
recalls. The stage was basic. Wire and
scaffold poles, daylight in a Hobbit wood.
Sister Maura, our 17-year-old convent
schoolgirl lead singer, just screamed like a
car alarm until her voice packed up. The
festival seemed to be a platform for
musical ideas at a time when the scene
was in flux. Punk didnt divide people in
the north. There was a commonality to
anti-establishment themes and Deeply
Vale was where it played out.
The next generation were in attendance,
too, among them David Gedge, The
Chameleons, Ian Brown, Andy Rourke
and an eight-year-old Jimi Goodwin, later
of Doves; while those who performed
included teenage punks Wilful Damage,
Fast Cars, Alternative TV, Pegasus
(featuring a pre-OMD Andy McCluskey)
and Crispy Ambulance. The latters Alan
Hempsall remembers: In 1978, wed only
been going for six months. Tony Wilson

m
made
the biggest impression
o
on me. He had a spot on
S
Saturday and put on The Fall
and Durutti Column. I think it
a
was the beginning of his idea
w
for Factory. He hadnt seen Joy
fo
Division yet, but he
knew Vini Reilly from
Ed Banger And The
Nosebleeds. Vini
wanted something
that showed off his
talents more.
Reillys presiding
memory is of Les
Pryor, formerly of
Alberto Y Los Trios
Paranoias, coming to
the rescue when his
Watkins echo unit gave up: Les stepped
forward and said to the audience, Has
anyone got an elastic band? He diffused
the situation and made everyone laugh
their heads off. I had a giggling fit. The
rest of the time, says Reilly, was spent
wandering around in a hallucinogenic
fug, listening to Fela Kuti on his Walkman:
There was this very pure, strong herb that
I used to get from Moss Side. It was idyllic.
The last Deeply Vale Festival was held in
1979, though by then it had become victim
to local bureaucracy. An injunction was
served, demanding a better water supply
and sanitary conditions. And though it
struggled on for another two summers at
nearby Pickup Bank, it was all but over.
Thatcherism had come in and
community spirit went at the end of the
70s, says Hewitt. Deeply Vale was
special because it was about everybody.
Wed all been to see Woodstock and
bought the triple vinyl. So we just thought,
Wow, wouldnt it be great to do that here?
We still had that dream of the Woodstock
generation. ROB HUGHES
The Deeply Vale Box Set, including six
CDs, a 272-page book and a pack of
incense, is released Dec 1 on Dandelion

Bruce
Springsteen
recently revealed
to the New York
Times that his
fantasy dinnerparty guests would
be Philip Roth,
Keith Richards,
Tolstoy and Dylan.
A clue as to what he
might serve them
came on November

5, when the Boss

auctioned a
lasagne dinner at
his place in aid of
US veterans. The
price? $300,000.
Its a livin thing!
After his Hyde Park
show, Jeff Lynne
appears to be
planning a full
comeback. Talking
to Billboard, Lynne
revealed that hes
working on an
album, with a view
to playing new
material at US
shows in 2015.
Stumped for
that last-minute
festive treat?
The sequel to 4:13
Dream might not
have appeared in
2014, but The Cure
finish the year with
three Christmas
shows in London.
The venue is the
Eventim Apollo, on
December 21-23.
The latest Uncut
Ultimate Music
Guide is now on
sale, dedicated to
the indefatigable
genius of Paul
McCartney, and
full of fab old NME
and Melody Maker
interviews and
insightful new
reviews. And visit
uncut.co.uk,
packed with news
and reviews, and
some of Uncuts
best features from
the archives.

I N STA N T KA R M A !

PLAYLIST

THE

ON THE STEREO THIS MONTH

NATALIE PRASS
Natalie Prass SPACEBOMB
Stepping out of Jenny Lewis band and
into Matthew E Whites Spacebomb cabal,
the Nashville singers debut is a sumptuous
country-soul classic.
THE GO-BETWEENS
G Stands For Go-Betweens DOMINO
An exhaustive, revelatory 8CD trawl through
Forster, McLennan and Morrisons formative
years. Further, longer, higher, older
JESSICA PRATT
On Your Own Love Again DRAG CITY
A second album of eldritch, candlelit folk
from the fine Californian singer-songwriter,
often sounding kin to Karen Dalton.
THE WATERBOYS
Modern Blues
HARLEQUIN AND CLOWN

WERE NEW HERE

The Glory Fires,
2014: (l-r) Lee Bains,
Blake Williamson,
Eric Wallace and
Adam Williamson

Lee Bains III

& The Glory Fires
Recommended this month: politics, religion and
rocknroll! The radical new firebrands of Southern Rock

w, I got nervous writing all these

Bains concedes that hes far from the first
songs, says Lee Bains III. I was
Southern musician to be drawn to what one
raised not to talk about politics,
obvious antecedent, Drive-By Truckers, defined
religion or sex in polite company. And theres
as the duality of the Southern thing. (Matt
a lot on this record about the two of those that
Patton, a former compadre of Bains in
rocknroll isnt supposed to be about.
Tuscaloosa punkers The Dexateens, recently
Bains has just been asked how hesitant he was
joined the DBTs on bass.) The South remains
about deploying the motto of his home state of
unf