Category Archives: Pop and rock

Tom Morello: ‘We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in the US’

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Lockdown and ‘looking after the grandmas’ may have kept the Rage Against the Machine guitarist away from recent protests – but he refuses to be silenced

Tom Morello has made more than 20 albums, as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine – the political rap-rock band who have sold 16m records, and whose 1992 track Killing in the Name has become a perennial protest anthem – and of the bands Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. He also plays solo under the name the Nightwatchman, and has toured with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. His unique approach to the guitar, which he has self-deprecatingly described as “making R2-D2 noises”, has led to him regularly being voted as one of the greatest guitar players of all time. His latest album, The Atlas Underground Fire (released on 15 October), features a series of collaborations recorded in lockdown – with Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Damian Marley and Bring Me the Horizon, among others. He is a celebrated “nonsectarian socialist” political activist, famed for performing at demonstrations – he played at Occupy events across the US and Europe – and a co-founder of the nonprofit “social justice” organisation Axis of Justice.

You recorded your new album in lockdown. Did the pandemic also mean you missed out on the ongoing protests in the US?
Not only was there a global plague to contend with, there was the US political situation and the white supremacy comeuppance, all happening at a time when I was locked down with my 97-year-old mom, my 90-year-old mother-in-law, and two kids going crazy trying to learn remotely. I was unable to be on the literal frontlines for the first time in my adult life, because I’m trying to keep the grandmas alive, you know. So in the middle of the George Floyd protests I recorded a song called Stand Up, with Imagine Dragons, the great trans soul singer Shea Diamond and Bloody Beetroots as well. I was trying, from the bunker, to contribute in any way I could. But you’re absolutely right: that’s my bread and butter. I’m at the front of that march for 30 years, and now, you know, there’s a plumbing problem, or one of my kids broke a window with a basketball, so that’s my day

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Roger Taylor: ‘My most treasured possession? A massive statue of Freddie’

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The Queen drummer and singer-songwriter on former girlfriends, forgetting lyrics and liking red wine

Born in Norfolk, Roger Taylor, 72, is an original member of the band Queen, which formed in 1970. Their hits include Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You and Radio Ga Ga. Taylor’s new solo album is Outsider, and he is currently on tour in the UK. The Queen + Adam Lambert’s Rhapsody European tour takes place next year. Taylor is married, has five children and lives in Surrey and Cornwall.

When were you happiest?
When I first heard one of our records on the radio.

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From hardcore to bardcore: Kedr Livanskiy, the Russian producer inspired by Tolkienists

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Livanskiy’s operatic vocals and hazy beats put her at the forefront of Moscow’s underground club scene. Now she’s retreated from the city to the forest to nurture her imagination

Yana Kedrina’s earliest exposure to music came in a wooden dacha in a pine-forested village 2,000 miles from Moscow. Kedrina’s grandmother, who built the summer cottage with her husband, would invite Kedrina and her seven sisters over to sing Russian folk songs and drink cherry leaf tea. The rustic surroundings and feelings of kinship nurtured in Kedrina an infatuation with her culture’s folklore and a devotion to community.

“A large family, gathering to connect to its ancestral heritage, was an experience unique to a time that predated this individualism we live in now,” Kedrina says, speaking in Russian. Her grandmother never lived to see her blossom into an internationally recognised musician under the name Kedr Livanskiy (Russian for the Lebanese cedar tree). But Kedrina, 31, takes solace in the fact that her career has spiritually fulfilled her grandmother’s dream of travelling beyond her village in Russia’s Tomsk region.

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‘I saw something in Bruce Springsteen that nobody else saw’: the world according to Stevie Van Zandt

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The Boss’s trusty sideman has many plans – from saving central America to TV Hogmanay at the Playboy Mansion – and he’s more than happy to share his rock wisdom

It is the middle of the 1980s, and Stevie Van Zandt, having departed the E Street Band and left Bruce Springsteen’s side, is pursuing a solo career. He has also parlayed decades of experience playing in bar bands into a new and unusual role: international activist and campaigner against injustice. And so he finds himself, in company with Jackson Browne, in Nicaragua, against which the US is waging a proxy war.

He arranges a meeting with Rosario Murillo, the wife of Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, as he notes in his memoir, Unrequited Infatuations. “After a few drinks, I moved off the small talk and suddenly asked her if she loved her husband. She was taken a bit aback but said, Yes, señor, very much. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you should spend as much time with him as possible, because he’s a dead man walking. It’s just a matter of time and time is running out’ … She was a very smart woman married to a revolutionary. But she was expecting a pleasant conversation about the arts, and the reality of what I was saying hit her hard.”

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‘Racism is rampant’: Alien Weaponry, the metal band standing up for Māori culture

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The New Zealand trio have gone global thanks to their forthright Māori-language songs, which confront colonial history and ongoing inequality

New Zealand was a war zone in the mid-1800s. On one side were the British and the colonial government, craving a stranglehold on more of the country’s land. On the other were the indigenous Māori people, fighting to preserve tino rangatiratanga: their sovereignty and self-determination.

On 29 April 1864, the British invaded Pukehinahina, also known as Gate Pā. Despite being grossly outnumbered, the Māori fended off the attackers using concealed trenches and guerrilla tactics. It was a fleeting victory in a war that, ultimately, led to the confiscation of 3m acres of Māori land.

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Rolling Stones review – a funky, heavy first show without Charlie Watts

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The Dome at America’s Center, St Louis, Missouri
The veteran rockers return to the road with an emotional tribute to their longtime drummer and a reinvigorated sense of purpose

For many musicians, it has been an emotional return to live music after the coronavirus pandemic put a protracted end to touring. For the Rolling Stones, picking up their No Filter tour in Chuck Berry’s hometown of St Louis, Missouri, the stakes are even higher. Not only have the stalwart performers not played in more than two years; it’s also a commemoration for drummer Charlie Watts, who died last month.

It opens with an empty stage and only a drumbeat, with photos of Watts projected on the stage backdrop. The band appear, kicking their way through Street Fighting Man and It’s Only Rock’N’Roll (But I Like It), before Mick Jagger pauses the show to devote the tour to Watts’s memory. He along with Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, walk centre stage to thank fans for the outpouring of love and support for Watts.

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Beatles on the brink: the truth about the Fab Four’s final days

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The director’s new documentary weaves together hours of unseen footage to dispel many myths about the band’s final months. John Harris, who was involved in the project, tells the inside story

On paper, the idea looked brilliant. In the opening weeks of January 1969, the Beatles were working up new songs for a televised concert, and being filmed as they did so. Where the event would take place was unclear – but as rehearsals at Twickenham film studios went on, one of their associates came up with the idea of travelling to Libya, where they would perform in the remains of a famous amphitheatre, part of an ancient Roman city called Sabratha. As the plan was discussed amid set designs and maps one Wednesday afternoon, a new element was added: why not invite a few hundred fans to join them on a specially chartered ocean liner?

Over the previous few days, John Lennon had been quiet and withdrawn, but now he seemed to be brimming with enthusiasm. The ship, he said, could be the setting for final dress rehearsals. He envisaged the group timing their set so they fell into a carefully picked musical moment just as the sun came up over the Mediterranean. If the four of them had been wondering how to present their performance, here was the most gloriously simple of answers: “God’s the gimmick,” he enthused.

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‘We’re like Mork and Mindy!’ Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, music’s odd couple

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Fourteen years after their Grammy-winning debut, the roots duo have reunited – facing high expectations. They explain how they left their comfort zones with a ‘nuts but tasteful’ all-star band

More than half a century since arriving to play his first show in the US with Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant was in the strange position of having to explain himself to the authorities.

“I had to prove that I was contributing to the betterment of the American system somehow, which is kind of cute, really,” Plant says of this post-lockdown trip to Nashville. He is sitting in the city’s famous Sound Emporium studio with his collaborator, the bluegrass legend Alison Krauss. It is the same place where they recorded their second, highly anticipated record as a duo, Raise the Roof, before the pandemic put the world on pause.

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Iggy Pop on finding new music: ‘At my age, it helps to remain curious’

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The source of the rocker’s enviable eternal youth? In the words of the man himself, it’s avidly rooting out new artists into his 70s (and beyond)

I keep reading that we decline in our 70s so I try to keep using my brain. Discovering new music opens my mind and the element of surprise keeps me connected. I feel like I’m mining for diamonds – and when you find the diamond, you know. When I heard Chaise Longue by Wet Leg I got really excited: it’s cheeky, with a wicked groove, but it’s the vocals – they’re almost metronomic. You could ask 100 people to sing it and it wouldn’t sound the same.

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Britney Spears’ 30 greatest songs – ranked!

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As she celebrates her engagement and fights for her autonomy, we celebrate the best of an artist who helped to define 21st-century pop

Spears previously flirted with dubstep on 2007’s Blackout, but it was Hold It Against Me that dragged the then-underground dance music into the mainstream. A decade later, and its blistering amalgamation of industrial EDM and saccharine pop melodies still feels every bit as audacious and innovative.

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Alanis Morissette says she was victim of multiple statutory rapes as a teenager

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Canadian music star says in new documentary: ‘I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded … you’re not consenting at 15’

Speaking in a new documentary, Alanis Morissette has said she was the victim of multiple statutory rapes as a teenager.

The documentary, Jagged, is screening at the Toronto film festival this week. The Washington Post has reported that Morissette describes the attacks during the film. “It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimisation on my part,” she says. “I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded like ‘Hey, you were 15, you’re not consenting at 15.’ Now I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re all paedophiles. It’s all statutory rape.’”

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Sarah Harding, singer with Girls Aloud, dies aged 39 from breast cancer

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Fans and figures from show business pay tribute to pop star who was diagnosed in August 2020 and wrote memoir during her illness

The pop singer and TV personality Sarah Harding, who had 21 UK Top 10 singles as a member of Girls Aloud, has died aged 39 from breast cancer.

Her mother, Marie, announced her death on Instagram, prompting a flood of tributes from fans and figures from show business. Geri Horner, the Spice Girls singer and a judge on the TV talent show that created Girls Aloud, wrote: “Rest in peace, Sarah Harding. You’ll be remembered for the light and joy you brought to the world. X”

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Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor: ‘I wanna punch stuff and yell … but not all the time’

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Having blazed a trail with raucous gigs, the Melbourne punk band’s singer deepens her oft-caricatured image on their new album

There is a moment at the end of Amyl and the Sniffers’ music video for Guided by Angels that sees frontwoman Amy Taylor quiet and alone, for once. After ripping down freeways and tunnels in the back of a Mitsubishi Lancer, her tiny body hanging halfway out of the back window, diving into the sea and dancing between the stationary Sniffers – drummer Bryce Wilson, guitarist Dec Martens and bassist Gus Romer – Taylor walks down a dark footpath, sits in the car’s front seat, laughs briefly and is suddenly still.

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Abba reunite for Voyage, first new album in 40 years

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Swedish hitmakers to release album of brand new material in November, and digital avatars will appear in London concert residency in 2022

One of the most anticipated comebacks in pop culture has finally come to pass: the return of Abba.

Forty years after the bitter songs written in the wake of two band divorces for their last album, 1981’s The Visitors, the Swedish pop quartet have reunited for Voyage, an album of brand new songs that will be released on 5 November – including, they say, a Christmas song. Two tracks from it, the stately and epic ballad I Still Have Faith in You and the shimmying Don’t Shut Me Down, are out now.

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Drake’s 30 greatest songs – ranked!

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With the release of a new album – Certified Lover Boy – we pick the best tracks from the Canadian rapper and global superstar’s hit-studded career

Borne aloft on a blaze of horns and flanked by three all-time greats, this was Drake’s entry to rap’s big leagues: “Last name ever / first name greatest”, is how he opens his verse. It’s a rather corny boast and gets cornier still – punchlines like “at the club you know I balled: chemo” could be included in Christmas crackers, were they not deeply insensitive. But his cockiness connects, and the chorus hook is memorably strong.

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David Crosby on love, music and rancour: ‘Neil Young is probably the most selfish person I know’

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At 80, the superstar musician has survived heroin addiction, illness and tragedy to hit an unprecedented run of musical form. He discusses the joy of fatherhood, the pain of falling out with bandmates – and why Joni Mitchell is still the greatest

David Crosby has just turned 80. Congratulations, I say. “Thank you, man!” says the great singer-songwriter, trailblazer and trouble-maker. How did he celebrate? “Eighty years old is something you mourn, not celebrate,” he says.

But that, it turns out, is not quite true. Crosby admits he did celebrate. “We had a great time, man! My son and my wife made me a cake, then my son barbecued some steaks. We baked potatoes, made salads and feasted.”

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‘These are his true remains’: the fight over Jeff Buckley’s final recordings

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In an extract from his book on late musicians’ estates, Eamonn Forde explores the feud that began shortly after Jeff Buckley’s death between the songwriter’s label and his mother

Jeff Buckley had released two live EPs (Live at Sin-é in 1993 and Live from the Bataclan in 1995) plus one complete studio album (Grace in 1994) before he died in 1997. Since his death, eight live albums and multiple compilation albums have been released, spanning music recorded while he was signed to Sony and also before he had a record deal.

The most contentious is Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, which was released a year after his death. Buckley had already scrapped a batch of recordings produced by Tom Verlaine in late 1996 and early 1997 and was preparing to record afresh in Memphis, the place where he drowned in the Mississippi.

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‘We were called heretics and ostracised’: the Stranglers on fights, drugs and finally growing up

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They brawled with the Sex Pistols, gaffer-taped a journalist to the Eiffel Tower and got thrown out of Sweden twice. Now, for their 18th album and final tour, the punks seem to be maturing at last

As Jean-Jacques Burnel drily admits, the Stranglers had “a bad reputation for quite a while”. During the punk years, their many outrages ranged from being escorted out of Sweden by police with machine-guns (twice) to gaffer-taping a music journalist to the Eiffel Tower, 400ft up, upside down, without his trousers. However, the singer and bass player says the biggest outcry actually came when they got themselves a keyboard player.

“It was seen as sacrilege,” he laughs, recalling this supposed affront to the ramshackle garage punk ethos. “And worse than that – he had a synthesiser. We were called heretics and ostracised. Nobody wanted anything to to do with us. But look what happened a couple of years later: synth pop!”

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Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry obituary

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Reggae producer who had a profound effect on Bob Marley’s sound and helped propel him on to the world stage

Lee “Scratch” Perry, who has died aged 85, was one of Jamaica’s finest and most unpredictable record producers, as well as a much recorded singer. But perhaps his greatest global legacy was the profound effect he had on the king of reggae, Bob Marley.

As a singer in the Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, Marley had experienced a modest degree of success in Jamaica before he came into Perry’s charismatic orbit in 1970. Hooking up with Perry changed the way Marley saw things, pulling him away from the measured harmonies of a trio towards something more heartfelt.

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