Interview - Earl Slick
Image by DiMazio
In rock music, stage left is a curious position. On the one hand, they are the person who stands to the side of the main attraction, the foundation that allows them to fly but rarely offers them a chance in the spotlight. On the other, they have the accolade of playing on some of rock’s most revered recordings, and alongside some true giants.
Earl Slick knows this better than most. The legendary guitarist has played alongside David Bowie, John Lennon, and Carl Perkins. Keith Richards features in one of his songs, while Mick Jagger, Robert Smith, and George Harrison have all crossed paths with the New Yorker. The list goes on.
Slick’s is a unique tale, which he and lauded rock journalist Jeff Slate have compiled for a new autobiography, the elegantly titled Guitar. Ruthlessly edited, the book reveals a small slice of some of the tales Slick can tell across his 50-year music career. Recently, CLASH caught up with the virtuoso to discuss that career, the book, and his experiences working with some of rock music’s most innovative characters.
After earning his stripes as a guitarist on the New York scene in the early 1970s, Slick was brought in during Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. Infamously, the tour completely changed midway through, as Bowie eschewed the theatrical elements of the show to embrace a more soulful sound, which would culminate in Young Americans. “It was weird,” Slick explains, somewhat understatedly. “Because we had a lot of success with the Diamond Dogs show in the States, the big set and all that stuff. Then we took a break, and when we came back it was a whole other thing. It was pretty much a new band and the direction was new. I wasn’t very fond of it. I can do change, I get that but… it was a strange one.”
10 Years On: Sleaford Mods - Divide And Exit
Ten years ago, the UK was in – what was presumed – a poor state of health. The repercussions of the 2008 financial crisis were in full swing, with the coalition government of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats four years into their austerity programme of cutting public services in a bid to rebalance the books.
Of course, little did we know. Compared to what followed, 2014 could be considered halcyon days. The only referendum in sight was a matter for the Scottish people of independence from the UK. Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, still riding high on the 2012 Olympics-enabled boost to his profile, while Liz Truss was working her way up the Tory’s greasy pole. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer had no public profile, the former making his millions in California while the latter was pre-politics and pre-knighthood, having just received the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, whatever the hell that is.
Yet there was an unmistakable air of a country and people undergoing hardship, only two years after the false dawn of the Olympics. The music industry was still struggling to come to terms with the streaming explosion and – in addition to belts being tightened – the money was rapidly moving elsewhere. Between movements, the album charts were laden with familiar names: Kasabian, Paulo Nutini, Lily Allen, Coldplay, while Ed Sheeran was eating the planet with his second album X. Meanwhile, on 19 May 2014, Sleaford Mods released a new album: Divide And Exit.
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/sleaford-mods-divide-and-exit-ten-years-on/
Soft Play - Heavy Jelly
Life is cruel.
As touring commitments concluded for the artists formerly known as Slaves back in 2019, the two-man band were falling apart, barely able to even speak to one another despite playing to their largest-ever audiences.
It was agreed that a break was required, before real life intervened.
As well as the pandemic, Isaac Holman was thrown into a mental health crisis (suffering from two separate forms of OCD), while the mother of Laurie Vincent’s children sadly passed away after a cancer diagnosis.
Both needed time to heal and pursued solo projects: Holman channelled his vulnerabilities into two fragile albums under the moniker Baby Dave, while Vincent expanded his sonic palette via the Larry Pink The Human project.
IDLES - Cardiff Castle, 12th July 2024
Image by Tom Ham
It’s getting a bit silly now. Why aren’t IDLES headlining every festival this summer?
Yes OK, the Bristol-based band were atop the Other Stage a fortnight ago, a huge step up from their afternoon set on the same stage two years earlier.
Yet their 2024 performance was a tour de force; well-judged in execution, pace and emotion, as they’ve been doing for years. They are ready. Their time is very much now.
Equally, their headline set in Cardiff was a masterclass. Rather than hit the ground running (a pace otherwise relentlessly maintained throughout the rest of the set) the pensive ‘IDEA 01’, with subtle bass and – yes – Kid A anxiety is a mood setter.
As are the first three minutes of ‘Colossus’, slowly ratcheting up the anticipation and excitement before an explosion of rock music in its second half, like a shaken-up bottle of Coke which must – needs – to relieve its pressure.
Glastonbury 2024
Everyone’s Glastonbury experience is different. An important thing to bear in mind.
Much of the fallout from this year’s edition has surrounded the sheer volume of people and therefore overcrowding at the festival.
In certain cases it’s valid; the ongoing popularity of Sugababes (especially with the reformation of the original lineup), should have seen them on the Pyramid Stage rather than West Holts, which had to be shut down because of the size of the audience.
Similarly, after the main stages close, virtually everyone (being worse for wear) is looking for something else to do or watch, with only a handful of destinations to head to – if one isn’t particularly familiar with electronic music, logically they will head to a household name like Fatboy Slim or Hot Chip.
Perhaps it’s time for Emily Eavis to take a leaf from European festivals and consider extending the main stages to run beyond midnight, although the restrictions on licensing presumably prevent this.
Kasabian - Happenings
There’s a school of thought from their fans and observers that Kasabian have ‘lost it’ since the departure of singer Tom Meighan (dismissed from the band owing to personal issues in 2020).
It’s an easy but inaccurate line of attack: for all his virtues as a frontman, Meighan was, barring a couple of songs, just that.
The music was created (from album two onwards) by Sergio Pizzorno, and their power as a live act comes from the ferocity of the musicianship.
More pertinently, it ignores a fundamental rule: after a peak (in the form of psychedelic masterpiece West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum 15 years ago), returns were always going to diminish.
Anyone who caught Kasabian’s afternoon set at Glastonbury will know that Pizzorno has confidently and comfortably stepped into the role of frontman with aplomb. As long as they are active, they will always rock a stage to its foundations, with a stack of anthems in their back pocket. But what of this new album?
Interview - Been Stellar
Image by Gabe Long
After what seems like an eternity, New Yorkers Been Stellar finally unleash their debut album Scream From New York, NY. It’s a wildly ambitious body of work, wide in both scale and sound which should make any comparisons to other acts from the city redundant.
Clash recently spoke to vocality Sam Slocum, guitarist Skyler Knapp and drummer Laila about those unwelcome comparisons, the album, the history of the band and much more.
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/scream-if-you-want-to-go-faster-been-stellar-interviewed/
Liam Gallagher - Cardiff Utilita Arena, 3rd June 2024
Since his wildly successful comeback in 2017, Liam Gallagher has made no bones about his mantra: give the people what they want.
Despite releasing four number 1 studio albums in that period, largely what the people want from him is nostalgia.
Whether it’s performing stone-cold Oasis classics alongside some deep cuts from day one, or headlining Knebworth to recapture some of the magic from the 1990s, the younger Gallagher mines his past shrewdly. Now he takes the logical next step: a whole Definitely Maybe, dedicated solely to performing songs released 30 years ago.
The only concession to the 21st century is first support act Villanelle, who showcase a diverse set of songs that bear little resemblance to contemporary indie. Some drive, some are widescreen, and one track (‘Lazy’) owes a debt to garage rock.
Interview - Richard Hawley
Image by Dean Chalkey
“We need to get together to affect change. We mustn’t be afraid. They use all the power they have to make us afraid. They make us doubt ourselves, they demonise young people and people who want to make a change to the way we think. The album is a reaction against all that.”
Richard Hawley is not known as a political songwriter. Across a musical career spanning over three decades, the Sheffield singer has turned his hand to many things: film scores and soundtracks, countless collaborations including with Manic Street Preachers and Arctic Monkeys (he even played the guitar on All Saints’ cover of ‘Under The Bridge’) and, most recently, a theatre production inspired by his landmark 2012 album Standing At The Sky’s Edge’.
Yet, as he explains to CLASH, Hawley remains characteristically aware of his limitations and acknowledges that – while explicitly political songwriting is beyond him (so he says) – the state of society pervades most of his work: “I’m not a very good political writer. I’ve tried to do it, but I’m not as eloquent as people like Billy Bragg, who I love. His work and him as a man, he’s a great guy. I always end up taking the side of the people who have to deal with the fucking fallout. Which I was, and still am. That’s the point of the record.”
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/its-chaos-innit-richard-hawley-interviewed/
Richard Hawley - In This City They Call You Love
In a forthcoming interview with CLASH, Richard Hawley describes this, his tenth solo effort, as “odd because it doesn’t have a tempo-related flow”. It’s the right of the artist to critique his own work in such a way but, as is typical of the Sheffield songsmith, he does both himself and the work a disservice. Indeed, the very unpredictability of this fine effort is its strength.
The dichotomy lies in the album’s inspiration: once again, the Steel City informs his writing process. For every new slice of gentrification in any UK city, the people and outlook remain stoic. As such, for every ‘Have Love’, a boisterous, simple but effective R&B shuffle with splintered, almost church-bell guitar and an earnest-yet-required message, there’s a ‘Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow’. Surely a result of his performance with John Grant at last year’s Patsy Cline tribute, it’s a sweetly sad country ballad which feels out of its time.
The gunslinging ‘Two For His Heels’ is grizzly and saturnine, all twanging guitar and echoing drumsticks, but the title comes from a term in the game Cribbage, overheard by Hawley in the working men’s club next to his house.
https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/richard-hawley-in-this-city-they-call-you-love/
Paul Weller - 66
Remarkably, the three years between Paul Weller’s last record (Fat Pop Vol.1) and this seventeenth solo outing is one of the longest breaks the iconic musician has taken between studio albums.
Of course, being Paul Weller in that time he has released a B-sides compilation, some one-off singles and toured both that and the previous album On Sunset (released in mid-2020), more than most other acts of the same generation can muster in their busiest periods.
Yet in promotional interviews, Weller has indicated that it may be time to start slowing down, a suggestion that the title of this record (his age at the time of release) and some of the lyrics included seem to corroborate.
Of course, ‘slowing down’ is relative, so we can probably expect his eighteenth album by Christmas 2025, but there is an undeniably reflective tone to 66, even if Weller has outsourced much of his lyric writing.
Interview - Frank Turner
Image by Lukas Rauch
Interesting fact: the world record for most gigs in different cities in one day is currently held by American singer-songwriter Hunter Hayes, who travelled across the state of New England on May 10th 2014 to hit the milestone over 24 hours.
As you may have read in the press this week, next month our very own Frank Turner is going to attempt to smash that record, with 15 shows across England on May 4th to 5th (fortunately, for him and the punters, the next Bank Holiday). When speaking to CLASH last week, it’s fair to say the musician has mixed feelings about the prospect.
“It’s going to be an horrendous fucking nightmare, but it was my idea and therefore it’s my fault, goddammit.”
“It’s worth noting I did 24 shows n 24 hours once, but that was all in London and the current record is 10 shows in different cities,” he explains. “Free Now – the cab company – are helping out and providing transport which is very good of them. They do a lot of work for the Music Venue Trust as well, which is great.”
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/still-undefeated-clash-meets-frank-turner/
Interview - John Robb
Image by John Middleham
Last year, author, journalist, musician and all round polymath John Robb released a book of select interviews accumulated over 40+ years working in (or more specially, around) the music business.
Its title? Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock & Roll?.
A matter of minutes in his company provides a comprehensive affirmative. A human encyclopedia, Robb doesn’t so much know about Rock & Roll, but is steeped in it.
We meet at Bristol Folk House, approximately midway through an extensive tour in support of Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock & Roll?, yet it’s a tour with a twist: the first half features John Robb rattling through how punk rock ‘ruined’ his life, while the second comprises an interview with a local creative artist.
The first hour flies past, Robb barely drawing for breath as he regales the audience with tales of his early dalliances with glam rock, how punk rock informed his outlook on life, through to encounters with Nirvana and Oasis.
The Zutons - The Big Decider
The return of The Zutons should be quite A Big Deal.
Twenty years ago, their fine debut album Who Killed…The Zutons? made a respectable impact, riding the crest (like many of their contemporaries) of the post-Libertines wave, when British guitar music was very in vogue, supported by some classic singles.
Two years later, follow-up album Tired Of Hanging Around (belatedly) made an even bigger cultural impact, with Valerie taking on a whole new life of its own after being covered by Amy Winehouse.
Third effort You Can Do Anything failed to consolidate their success in 2008 and, after being dropped by Sony, The Zutons quietly disbanded the following year.
Bassist Russell Pritchard joined Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (where he remains), late recruit Paul Molloy went on to join The Coral while drummer Sean Payne worked with Miles Kane, among others.
Fontaines D.C. - Starburster
It’s all been leading to this.
Across their three albums to date, Fontaines D.C. have not so much evolved as taken cosmic leaps forward, from recognisably indie fare to the more experimental corners of 2022’s Skinty Fia. Three distinct albums have been reflected in their rise up the bill at festivals both in the UK and abroad.
Although the group relocated from Dublin to London some years ago, the traces of their home country were seeded throughout their third album. In contrast, new single ‘Starburster’ is an apt soundtrack to life in England’s capital; a multitude of genres and sounds all fighting for superiority amidst the chaos.
https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/on-returning-fontaines-d-c-starburster/
Johnny Marr/Gaz Coombes - O2 Academy, Bristol - 11th April
Image by Gary Maher
Well, this was quite the double-header.
An artist of Johnny Marr’s stature would be enticing enough, but for his tenth anniversary tour (commemorating last year’s Best Of, Spirit Power) the legendary Mancunian has pulled out all the stops.
Not least with his choice of support act: Gaz Coombes could probably fill Bristol’s biggest venue (capacity 1600) on his own but, freed from such pressures and obligations for his last album, the Supergrass frontman takes the opportunity to present his own, esteemed solo career.
Through necessity, Coombes’ six-piece band squash together at the front of the stage for his ten-song set but it matters naught, with a relaxed energy and comfortability reflected by the singer, a man clearly comfortable with his place in the world.
From the clanging, driving one-off single ‘Salamander’ (featuring some raucous saxophone), there’s a noticeable ease and positive vibe emanating from the stage.
James - Yummy
Tim Booth has never been one to shy away from The Big Themes.
Since James’ reformation, he and his bandmates have taken Donald Trump, populism and the devastating effects of climate change to task, most specifically on their two most recent albums, Living in Extraordinary Times (2018) and 2021’s All The Colours Of You.
Sadly, the state of the planet isn’t looking much better and thus, on this eighteenth album, the despair continues. Here, Booth finds space to ruminate on what comes next, filtered through that joyful James lens of positivity and – as always – love.
Celestial disco anthem ‘Better With You’ reflects on floating alone in the world while positing that global Armageddon and the subsequent post-human regeneration of the planet would be beautiful to behold, and even better with company (‘drink in the Northern Lights as the planet reboots’). The heavenly soundscapes and Booth’s voice are excellently complemented by Chloe Alper, radiating beauty amid an apocalypse romance.
The Black Keys - Ohio Players
After being a cult band for the first decade of their career, the Black Keys blew up with the success of sixth album Brothers in 2010, consolidated by the earth-devouring El Camino two years later. The latter was itself spearheaded by ‘Lonely Boy’; a track impossible to ignore for a few years.
Despite being anything but an overnight success, the universal praise the albums received seemed to take Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney by surprise and – arguably – they’ve yet to recover from it. Until now.
After a comparatively muted response to their output of the last decade (albeit as they became an arena band) Delta Kream rejuvenated them in the way that covers albums so often do; relinquished from the pressure of writing songs, the pair seemed to rediscover the joy of simply playing. Dropout Boogie (2022) received two Grammy nominations and Ohio Players finds the duo expanding their palette to accommodate several guest appearances, where they were once a closed shop.
https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/the-black-keys-ohio-players/
The Stanford Family Band - For Your Listening Pleasure
This is an unexpected treat.
Brighton four-piece The Stanford Family Band unveil their debut EP For Your Listening Pleasure just in time for the changing of the season.
Sounding unlike anything else in alternative music right now, the tracks sound charmingly out of their time.
While other acts claim to be influenced by the great acts of the 1960s (or at least used to), The Stanford Family Band’s music is steeped in the decade.
Most prominent are the lush, Beach Boys-esque harmonies around Elliot Stanford’s lead vocals, including on opener Your Chair where they are front and centre.
The track conjures up evocative images of the group stood together accompanied only by a battered old piano before the full band kicks in. Ever-so-slightly psychedelic, it’s a warm welcome to their world.
The Libertines - All Quiet On The Eastern Eplanade
About time too.
For too long now, The Libertines have been behaving like a nostalgia band. Part of that is understandable given their impact back in the early part of the century, but given their prolificity first time around their back catalogue is disconcertingly light.
Since their full reformation in 2014 (after a false start in 2010), Carl Barât, Peter Doherty, Gary Powell and John Hassall have toured consistently, with only one album (their third) released in that time.
You’ll likely know that a substantial amount of The Libertines’ time (and money, presumably) has been spent on developing their boutique hotel The Albion Rooms (also a studio, in fairness) in Margate. Fine for them and their more well-moneyed fans, but no substitute for new music.
Thankfully, All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade has been worth the wait. All the elements that made The Libertines mythological are here, and more besides.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/the-libertines-all-quiet-review/