With ‘Random Access Memories’ finally out, Chic guitar legend and Daft Punk collaborator Nile Rodgers talks to me about 2013’s most hyped record.

How did you become involved with the record?

“We’ve known each other for a very, very long time and every time we’ve had the opportunity to get together it’s been completely chaotic. So finally the brilliant thing that Thomas and Guy-Man did is they just came to my apartment in New York! It was so smart because it was just the three of us sitting there face-to-face. Three artists who have mutual admiration for each other and have had it for such a long time. We actually sat around joking about the times that we’d missed each other… “Oh yeah, do you remember in St Tropez when we were supposed to meet up?” “Remember Paris when I ended up sat at the head of your record company’s house for three hours?” It was a wonderful moment when we could just laugh and laugh about the irony of the situation. The only way we could really have a chance to chill out and just be artist-to-artist was for them to come to my apartment. That meeting was the smartest thing and the most perfect way to do this. It was great because they didn’t have their gear and I didn’t have my gear. All I had was one acoustic jazz guitar. We just sat there and started talking and I picked up my axe and started jamming and playing some ideas. They said: “That’s how we want to make this record. We want to make this record exactly the way you made records back in the day. You just start playing, from the beginning to the end. You just play.” I said: “Oh, I know how to do that!” That’s what R&B and Dance records were, back in the day. We just went in there and we had charts or a template and then we’d just play this long, linear journey from beginning to middle to end.”

Did Daft Punk have a firm idea of what they wanted before they came to you?

“They may have had a solid idea. I think they’re too smart to have not had a solid idea, but they didn’t need to speak to me in those terms. Some of the brightest artists, and I always use Bowie as the great reference point: the smartest artists can speak to you in very abstract terms but you hear them clear as a bell. It’s almost as if we were spies breaking a code. They can speak to me in incredibly coded language and it’s 100% clear as a bell to me. When they started talking, and I started to realise that they were talking about making an old-school record, or using old-school techniques to make a record that’s timeless, a record that represents the past, the present and the future, it didn’t take a lot of explanation at all. I went: “Oh, I know what you mean” and I went and got an old fashioned guitar, an old jazz guitar from the 30s or 40s, and started playing new music on that thing. They went: “Yes! That’s exactly what we mean!” You can take something old that’s organic and beautiful and it’s made of wood and it resonates. Top-of-the-line craftsmanship went into that thing, and then you use it to play something modern, something that it wasn’t designed to do. When that guitar was made, it was made to play in a big band with Duke Ellington or something. It wasn’t made to play at 120 beats-per-minute with a vocoder next to you. All of a sudden, you mix these things together and they sound wonderful because they represent the past, the present, which is what you’re doing now, and hopefully if you do it right, it’ll sound fresh and wonderful and relevant to somebody 30 years from today. That’s what I think classic music is all about. I happen to be a jazz freak, so when I listen to Cab Calloway sing ‘Reefer Man’ I feel like it’s happening right now. I get into it. I want to dance jitterbug or lindy hop even though I can’t. It doesn’t feel like I’m listening to old fashioned music. It feels like I could walk outside and everybody would be wearing zoot suits.”

Giorgio Moroder told us they used a different microphone to record him depending on which era he was talking about.

“I get that! That’s a perfectly funny and sound example of how they think. They would use three mics to represent the past, present and future. That’s exactly correct. I love that. The things that’s really cool is that most listeners won’t hear that. They won’t hear it now. 10 years from now, when they get older, when they’re playing it for their kids or their friends, they’ll be saying: “Oh man, I remember when Daft Punk dropped this record.” They’ll listen to it and I have a feeling that they will have the same kind of feeling that I get now when I walk into a club and there are 16 and 17 year olds dancing to ‘Good Times’. They’re acting like it’s something brand new and cool, and I’m thinking to myself: “Wow, that’s so amazing.” You need to have that kind of passion, and the intellectual credibility and knowledge, to pull this off. You don’t have to make records like this, trust me. They didn’t have to do it this way. They chose to do it this way because they were either paying homage to something that they love and trying to recapture the feeling that made them want to make music, or inspired them to make the music that they made, but they also realised that in order to do that, you had to realise that the music that was being made at that particular time was inspired by people who were living before them. We are living in three different musical eras when it comes to making classic music. When it comes to making throwaway music, the sort of thing that everybody loves and then after five years it doesn’t really move you anymore. They say you ‘grow out of it’, and it’s true. We all do ‘grow out of’ a lot of stuff, but the stuff that’s classic, even though our styles may change, when we listen to that music it still gives off that feeling. It still conjures that primal or intellectual or spiritual or artistic thing in us. I know that’s the truth with me. I never grow up. The records that I heard when I was younger are still amazing to me.”

Why do you think Daft Punk wanted to record with a live band and musicians like yourself?

“I don’t know, but that’s OK! They didn’t have to explain why to me because I didn’t really care. They just told me what they wanted to do and I said: “You mean, like this…” and I ran and grabbed my old jazz guitar and started playing and they said: “Exactly like that!” The next thing you know I’m in the studio doing that thing. That wonderful, organic thing. When it came to my guitar playing, I started to show them some of the old tricks we used to do. They got so into it that they couldn’t believe how we used to do it. They were blown away by it. It was a wonderful experience for me because I saw that they were just as enthralled with what I did. They wanted to get first-hand knowledge of how we accomplished that. Every little Chic trick that we used, I showed them. It was like: “Wow,  this is cool”. You can hear it on ‘Get Lucky’. The truth is, I can’t play that live because that’s two of me. I can play it something like that! It’s like now, when you see a Chic show, it sort of sounds the same as it did on record. To the average person in the crowd, when I play ‘Le Freak’ they think it sounds like the record but it really doesn’t. There’s two of me playing the guitar in that record!”

Are they reacting against EDM?

“That didn’t come up while we were working. W e were just artists making music. There was no big, holistic statement to make other than: “I wanna make great music right now.” The thing that I love about them is that they carry that holistic vision through on every level. The visuals and the music videos, it’s all part of a certain artistic commitment. There was one moment that moved me in a way I’ve only been moved a couple of times before. I can count those times on my hand. When we first played ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Good Times’ for a room full of strangers, and I saw their reaction. When I first heard Diana Ross outside of a recording studio, in a nightclub. People responded in a visceral, primal, spiritual way. Doing the music video for the next Daft Punk single, after days of shooting, when we finally did the first full playback from beginning to end it was the first time the extras heard it. They were weeping. They were hugging each other. They weren’t crying because of exhaustion. I’ve seen this before and it’s people going: ‘Something important just happened, and we’re a part of that thing.’ I was crying too! I kept thinking to myself: ‘Thank God I have my own trailer so they don’t see me like this. I’m supposed to be in control.’ I’d been up onstage jamming my butt off, and they were all into it, but then I went from Mr Riff Machine to welling up and saying: ‘I understand just how you feel, guys…’ It was funny and it was sweet and it was wonderful. In today’s world of pop music, how often does that happen? Not very often, man. Whatever happens with this record, the truth is I was a part of that moment and it was unbelievable. You can’t manufacture that moment, it’s totally real. It’s incredible to be part of something so truthful and organic. You don’t get that so much anymore because we’re so concerned with the hits. I’ve been lucky, because after 1980 I didn’t really have to have hits anymore! I could just live on royalties from that point on, but I love making music with creative people. I love people like David Bowie who can talk to me in abstract terms and make it sound like child’s play.”

What are they actually like to work with in the studio? Is it hard work trying to get exactly what they want or are there fun moments?

“Well, you can’t work with me without laughing! It’s impossible! As seriously as I take my job, and that’s very seriously, the most extreme personalities in the universe are always laughing and joking when I’m in the studio. I’m so thankful that I get to do this for a living that we’re in there cracking up. Also, you’ve got to remember that when you’re in this linear mode of doing an old school recording there are so many new events that are springing up during the course of the recording that the looks on the artists’ faces tell me what’s going on. Every time I looked up I’d see Guy-Man smiling and Thomas smiling and I’d think: ‘Wow, this shit is really fucking happening!’ They got to experience what I’ve experienced all my life, which is a bunch of really amazing musicians jamming and having a really great time, and then you hear something and you analyze it and say: “Wait a minute, let me try this” and you see that smile come over their face again. We had a blast, and I guarantee you that my parts were nothing but fun! I taught them a lot of old school Chic tricks. They love learning about old techniques and they love getting smarter. I think that’s the cool thing. They’ve remained teachable, as have I. I love when people show me something new.”

That’s the great thing about this record, it sounds like they’re really having fun and experimenting with things that are new and weird.

“Have you heard that track with Paul Williams, ‘Touch’? Wow. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard. I just love it. I absolutely love it. Having made as many records as I have with Bowie, it felt very Bowie-esque to me. I love this album. Had I not played on it or wrote for it, and I’d just bought it as a fan, I’d probably be sitting at home grinning from ear to ear. It’s so cool to me. It’s great in the way that I’ve heard on many classic records in the past, and it does that thing to my soul that those records have done. I don’t get a chance to feel that way that much nowadays! I’m not putting other artists down, because people work in very different ways, and it’s all relevant, but when I work with someone who is being that artistic and clever and is touching your soul. To me, you touch the soul with simplicity. Complexity has to be deciphered. It’s like digesting a food, it might be wonderful and interesting to the palette when it’s complex, but it’s still got to get through your system. When music is so complicated that you have to think about it, that’s not what’s great. What’s great is when you just experience it and then you think about it afterwards and you think: “What the fuck did I just hear?” That’s what I like about this record. Some moments make you think first, but some moments just make you groove and dance and smile. When you analyse it after the fact you think: “Did they really just do that?””

What did you think when you heard the finished record?

“It feels like an old friend come home. That’s the truth. If I’d just bought this and listened to it I’d sit there for the first hour just laughing and going: “That’s so cool! I can’t believe they did this!” I’d be unbelievably impressed by the amount of sincerity and dedication spent on making a record this authentic. It’s not retro. It’s not a retro record at all. I think what they were thinking is that certain types of gear can give you the old school organic elements that still touch people in a particularly special way. If you know that that’s a fact, then let’s get that and stick in our music! There are certain things about analogue recording, certain types of synthesisers, my guitar… there’s a reason why I’ve played the same guitar on every single record for the past 35 years. I’ve got a million guitars, but when it comes to making hits, that’s my job, and I bring out The Hitmaker. I know that that guitar sounds a certain way. You can hear it on ‘Get Lucky’. I could play another guitar and I’ll sound like Nile, but I won’t sound like that. That’s the only one that sounds like that. When you listen to this record, you can tell that people have toiled over. That’s what I hear when I listen to it. It feels like a perfect record, that I love.”

Did Daft Punk mention any Chic tracks that they really wanted to try and capture something similar to?

“No, not at all. That’s what was smart. They know that I don’t want to know anything. I want to be surprised. I never want to hear anything before I get to the studio. I’m a professional. If you have the music written out, I can play it right there on the spot. If you don’t have it written out, I will write it out and play it from beginning to end. When I was young, I made my reputation by being fast. I don’t care what it is, or how complicated it is, I can walk into the studio and play it. So no, they didn’t tell me anything, I just went to the studio.”

Where was that?

“Very few people know this, but the studio I recorded with them at was the same studio where we recorded the very first Chic single. The song that broke Chic was ‘Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)’ and we recorded it at Electric Lady. What was funny for me was that was the neighbourhood I grew up in. I knew that studio way before Jimi Hendrix bought it. I knew it when it was a nightclub called Generation. I’ve been in that room throughout my entire life. When I was a teenager in New York the legal drinking age was 18, so being 15 or 16 I could get into that bar. I used to go to that joint every night and drink and jam.”

That fits the theme of the record perfectly, those random memories…

“It couldn’t have been more perfect. Not only do you get Nile Rodgers with his two classic Chic recording guitars, in the place where he made the very first Chic single, in a building I was in before Jimi Hendrix even made it a studio. I saw Jeff Beck there. I remember when Jethro Tull played there and they got their amps stolen, and they made an announcement and one of the Hell’s Angels eventually returned it! We’re talking serious history in that room. I’m not superstitious or anything, but you can’t deny there’s something wonderful trapped inside those walls. I’ve done a lot of records there. I did INXS there. I did Hall & Oates. I worked with D’Angelo there, I worked with The Roots there. Walking into that studio feels like going home, and this record feels like an old friend that’s come home. It’s no accident that they contacted me in New York and we went down to Electric Lady. They were eating it up, and I love sharing that!”

Are you looking forward to bringing Chic to Glastonbury?

“Oh man, live shows are sort of what we live for! The last night of my musical partner [and Chic bassist] Bernard Edwards’ life, he looked out at the audience from backstage at our show at the Budokan and he said: “Man, we did it.” I said: “What are you being philosophical about?” He said: “We did it. They didn’t come to see us, they came to hear us.” It’s ironic to work with Daft Punk because they’re sort of the modern version of Chic. With Chic we were this faceless band and the music was the star. We called it the ‘Chic mystique’. If you look at our credits we never tell you who plays what. We were as ambiguous as possible. When I play Glastonbury I get to be this faceless guy who comes up and says: “Okay guys, these are all my songs. Have a good time!” It’s never about ego, it’s about playing this body of work at a festival like Glastonbury, which I’ve heard about for gazillions of years. One of the most prestigious festivals ever. Not only do we get to play, we’re headlining our stage! Wow! You mean I get to play my full show? Are you kidding me? 15 or 20 songs? Are you kidding me? This is going to be amazing!”

Do you think Daft Punk will play live again soon?

“I can’t make any comment. You should ask them about that.”

Originally published in NME, 25 May 2013.

The Canadian poster-boy for slacker delinquents, Mac DeMarco has garnered a reputation for putting on some of the most raucous live shows around. One of the biggest hitters at this year’s South By Southwest, he’s set to take next week’s Great Escape festival by storm. From his bizarre DIY videos to his lascivious debut ‘Rock And Roll Night Club’ and it’s follow-up ‘2’, DeMarco is master of Jonathan Richman-like calypso-soaked riffage. But what terrible skeletons lurk in his closet? From transvestites shooting heroin to naked U2 covers, he tells us  about some of the strange and terrible experiences have made Mac DeMarco the man he is today…

SMACK SHOOTIN’ TRANSVESTITES

“My first memories of going to bars are from when I was 16 and had a fake ID.  I went to one with my friend Jeremy, who’s a bit older, and there was this famous Canadian transvestite there. Her legal name is Lexi Tronic Supersonic. She even has cheques with that name on. There was a photographer there, and she had this band on and was doing heroin in the club while he took pictures. Jeremy went up to her, trying to feel if she had a cock or a pussy.  That was pretty fucked up to see that at that age.”

JERKIN’ OFF AT THE VET’S

“The first job I had was at a vet’s when I was 14. It sucked. I’d sweep the floors. I’d walk the dogs, but they were all fucking sick with diarrhoea. They’d be all feeble and bummed out. I didn’t have to put them down, but afterwards they’d just leave them out, chilling. It was sketchy. I jacked off a lot, in the kennel bathrooms. I got bladder infections. It was filthy in that kennel. Touching sick animals then jacking off has got to be bad. I was working in a medical setting, so it really should have crossed my mind.”

ANAL DRUMSTICKS AND NAKED U2 COVERS

“One night in Montreal before a show I got so fucking drunk I loaded my iPod with backing tracks I could sing over, including one specific U2 track. I wasn’t even supposed to be playing. I went onstage, and then… I don’t even know what happened.  People were taking off my pants, someone was pouring beer on me, I was screaming and then I turned around and shoved two drumsticks up my ass, right at the crescendo of ‘Beautiful Day’, when the vocals were really soaring. This kid videoed it and it got on YouTube. My aunt sees the video, and my mom, and my grandma too for that matter, my whole family. It was right around the time of that zombie bath salts thing, so they thought I was smoking bath salts or meth or something. So that’s what the song ‘Freaking Out The Neighbourhood’ is about.”

CRAZED STRIPPER FANS

“I was playing a rock’n’roll show at a house party. This girl I knew who’d become a stripper was there. While I was playing she kept coming up to me and grabbing me and hitting her head against mine. She swung at me and I fell back on the bass drum. She sat on me while I was lying on the drum and I had my guitar on top of me, digging into me. I was going: ‘Argh!’ but she was like: ‘Yeaahh!’, grinding her ass on me.  It was fucked up.  Eventually I got up and everyone said: ‘Don’t punch him!’, so she turned around and punched my friend Chris in the face instead.”

SHITTY TOURING

“When we tour in America we do it by car. I don’t know why we did this, because there were definitely places to stop, but when we first did it for some reason we were infatuated with pissing in jugs. I took a shit in a Cheetos bag at one point.  We’d make these little tents in the corners of the car and then jack off. Looking back it’s like: ‘Why the fuck did we do those things? It’s disgusting!’ But you know… we were 18-year-olds on tour, really living it up.”

TEACHIN’ COMPUTERS TO THE VIETNAMESE

“I signed up for community work in Vancouver. They normally put you downtown to teach homeless people how to use the internet. I really needed the money. Instead they put me in a high school where half the kids were my age. I was Mr DeMarco. Then they put me in a community centre. I taught these old Vietnamese couples how to plug their computers in. They were totally chill. All they wanted was to search for pictures of the Yangtze, because that’s where they all went on honeymoon. Then they’d be like: ‘I don’t need to look at this thing anymore.’”

SMOKIN’ LIKE STEVE MCQUEEN

“‘Ode To Viceroy’ is about a brand of cigarettes. I like them because they’re cheap. People wave them at me at shows now. The thing is, Viceroy is owned by British American Tobacco. It’s a giant company and I think they’re like: ‘Okay, this is the shittiest tobacco that we can’t put in any other cigarettes so we’re going to put it in Viceroy’. It used to be a big cigarette in the States. Steve McQueen used to endorse them. I think it was a nicer smoke in the Fifties and Sixties, but now it’s just the cheapest cigarette you can get.”

Originally published in NME, 18 May 2013.

Lots of studios have a history, but none quite like Hansa. It’s the ‘Hall By The Berlin Wall’ where Bowie and Iggy came to record ‘“Heroes”’ and ‘Lust For Life’ in the middle Seventies and where Nick Cave was strung out on heroin in the Eighties. Now it’s home to three brothers from Bath who are living in the flats on the top floor and spending fourteen hours a day recording incendiary, primal blues rock.

That’s not to say they’re too concerned about the weight of history. “We’re not looking towards the past,” says drummer Tim. “We’re a forward-thinking band. It’s great that all those guys recorded here, but we’re obsessed with modern records as much as we are old-school ones.”

“But we did find out,” chips in singer Will, “that a break we used in one of our songs from Iggy Pop’s ‘Nightclubbing’ was recorded in the same fucking studio. It comes full-circle. That’s fucking cool.”

One listen back to the album sessions and it’s clear Hansa’s reputation is in safe hands. The record is full of the sort of hook-filled, strutting rock songs that Jack White would sell his sister for, shot through with a trace of Bristol trip-hop.

“We used to have other people in the band and be quite strict about the type of music we’d make, but we had an epiphany when it became just the three of us,” Will explains. “I remember us being on holiday in the sun and listening to ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ by The Rolling Stones. We thought: ‘This is the point of music. From then on it’s just been about writing music that you can fucking get into and groove to.”

It’s the sort of music that just begs to be heard in a sweaty underground bar, so we pile into taxis and head across town to White Trash. It’s the sort of place where you can get a tattoo, eat a heart-punishing burger, down a shot of whisky, smoke a cigarette, meet a beautiful stranger and watch a life-changing rock’n’roll show all without leaving your barstool.

The band are instantly at home. Their set is fast, swaggering and deafeningly loud. “If we had it our way we would be playing shows 365 days of the year,” says guitarist Ollie backstage. “And if we weren’t doing that then we’d be in the studio. We find it so natural because we’ve been playing music together since we were 14. Being in Berlin and actually getting paid to do it is the dream.”

They’re not stopping here: they’ll spend April touring the UK with Willy Moon ahead of hitting this summer’s festival circuit. Their sights are trained on the top of the bills: “We’ve always dreamed big,” says Will. “We want to sell a million fucking records and headline every festival around the world. If you’re not thinking huge then what’s the fucking point?”

Before that they’ve got a city to take. “Berlin doesn’t look open, but once you explore you realise how cool it is,” says Ollie. “We’ve been to bars in DVD shops and an old dentist surgery. Maybe it’s pot luck but we haven’t found a bad one yet – and we’ve been to a lot of bars…”

Tonight we end up in Chalet, a tumble-down Kreuzberg mansion which dates from the 19^th Century and must have been a stately home in its time. Now it’s overrun by hordes of gorgeous German party kids. And why not? As The Family Rain know: who needs history when you’ve got right now?

Originally published in NME, 23 March 2013.

“God damn, it’s bright in here.” Dave Grohl winces and draws the curtains out of respect for his burgeoning hangover. It’s midday and he thinks he got to bed maybe four hours ago. He’s making the most of his time in London. Last night he swung by his favourite Soho rock hangout The Crobar before attempting to pay a visit to burlesque club The Box, which turned out to be closed. That didn’t stop the party, but one hanger-on nearly did. “There was this English singer with us who was completely wasted. We almost had to throw him out,” he explains. Which of this country’s hard-living rockers is he referring to? You’ll never guess: “Have you heard of this band… Blue?”

That’s right, the greatest drummer of his generation spent last night being tailed by conspiracy-spouting pop crackpot Lee Ryan. “The guy kept telling us how many million records he’s sold,” Grohl shrugs. “I was like, really? You?”

The mind recoils at the idea of the pair propping up a bar, but then Grohl does have a reputation for being “the nicest guy in rock” and he’s no stranger to surrounding himself with a weird and varied cast of characters. Last night he played a show with his Sound City Players, a band that included the Foo Fighters as well as Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmate Krist Novaselic, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielson and 80s heartthrob Rick Springfield. They’re in town to for the premiere of his documentary, Sound City, which tells the story of the legendary LA recording studio where Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Rage Against The Machine, Arctic Monkeys and many more all laid down masterpieces. The place holds a special significance for Grohl, because it was there that Nirvana went in 1991 to record ‘Nevermind’.

As he sits down for a revitalising breakfast of sausage and eggs, Grohl opens up to us in-depth for the first time since he was named Godlike Genius at the 2011 NME Awards. There’s a lot to talk about, from his plans for the next Foo Fighters record to how his musical idol Paul McCartney came to front a reunited Nirvana lineup and why he still wants to throttle the charlatans who produce manufactured pop.

NME: Your film starts with Nirvana in a beat-up van going to Sound City to record ‘Nevermind’. When did you realise how big that record would get?

Dave: When I joined Nirvana they had demoed ‘In Bloom’ and ‘Lithium’ with the original drummer Chad so there was already this buzz about the band. We signed to the David Geffen Company and they gave us money to go down to Los Angeles to record ‘Nevermind’. I don’t know why we picked Sound City. I think it was because of the board, which was an old Neve, and because it was cheap. It was like $600 a day. Our budget wasn’t much because nobody thought anything was going to happen with the record. When we got there we were surprised that it was such a shithole, but we weren’t accustomed to the finer things in life anyway. It was such a quick session and nobody thought anything was going to come of it. We only took three pictures while we were making the record. That’s all there is to document the making of that record, other than the record. It was so far outside Hollywood that none of the fucking posh A&R people would ever come out. I asked our manager if I should worry, and he said: “No, consider yourself lucky! You don’t want those assholes there.” We recorded in April and the record came out in September and then we were just touring in the van as we’d usually do. Things started to change by Christmas. I knew things were going well because our per diem went like from $7 to $10 a day. It was a sweet gig! Audiences started getting bigger and bigger and by the end of the tour the album was gold. Something was happening with the other bands too: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. In two months, everything changed.

What was it like to go back into that room at Sound City where it all started?

The first time I went back after we recorded ‘Nevermind’ I went in and right as you walk in the front door there’s a huge Nirvana plaque. It was an incredibly emotional experience for me because when I first walked in to Sound City I thought: ‘Oh my god, what a shithole.’ Then I looked at the wall and saw Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and Neil Young. I couldn’t believe that these legendary records had been made there, because it was such a dump. It was good to think that another kid would say the same thing when he walked in the front door: “I can’t believe ‘Nevermind’ was made here, it’s a shithole.”

What’s the wildest thing you got up to at Sound City?

Once I was producing a band called Verbena and it was the singer’s birthday so I bought him this mini motorcycle that went fucking 45mph. We spent an entire afternoon jumping the ramp that goes up to the parking lot like Evel Knievel. It was the stupidest, most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. There were countless nights where we’d just abandon the session and start drinking. It’s not like you were going to mess anything up in there. Once you got into that back hallway where it was really dark and all the walls were carpeted, some really nasty shit went on there. It was fun.

When Sound City closed you bought the soundboard. Now you’ve got it in your studio are you desperate to record the next Foo Fighters record on it?

Yeah, but it’s funny because I’ve just made the biggest infomercial for my studio. We’re getting calls from really popular bands who want to come and record on the Sound City board. I’m fucked because it’s my studio and I don’t have anywhere to go! I think the reason they sold the board to me was because they knew I wasn’t going to chop it up and sell it for parts. I wanted to use it the way it’s supposed to be used. That thing hasn’t been turned off, other than like power outages and earthquakes, for forty years. You’re not supposed to turn boards off, and those tubes have been glowing for forty fucking years.

You’ve said you’ll start working on the next Foo Fighters record as soon as you get home. When can we expect to hear it?

Eventually! We have a lot of music, we just need to turn it in to a record. You know, I think we do best when we step away from things and regroup. One of the reasons we’ve been a band so long is that we eventually learned how to say no to things. I mean, we’re on hiatus now and we’re busier than we’ve ever been in our life. Pat Smear calls it ‘I hate us’! We can’t spend that much time away from each other because we’ve been friends for a really long time. Whenever we get back together just to do something as silly as the Sound City project it’s always fun. The next record is going to be good. I’m looking forward to it.

When will you next going be onstage as the Foo Fighters in the UK?
I don’t know. Not any time soon.

Five years?

I can’t wait that long! God damn, if I waited five years I’d almost be 50 years old! I’ve got to come back before then. You’d have to fucking wheel me onstage…

Well if it was Reading it wouldn’t be the first time someone was pushed onstage in a wheelchair…
[Laughs] Exactly! You don’t want to go through all that again.

Last year at Reading there were rumours you’d cover Nirvana. Is that something you’d ever consider?
Every once in a while we talk about it. For the Sound City gig here in London we were thinking about musicians that we could invite because Stevie Nicks and John Fogerty couldn’t make it. Someone came up with the idea of doing a Nirvana song with Polly, PJ Harvey. Kurt loved her, and we love her, and we thought: “Yeah, what would we do?” I said: “God, what if we were to do ‘Milk It’ from ‘In Utero’ with Polly singing?” We all looked at each other like: “Woah, that would be amazing…” and then she couldn’t do it! The thing is, it’s sacred ground. If we were ever to do something like that it would have to be right because you want to pay tribute. There’s a reason Foo Fighters don’t do Nirvana songs, and it’s a good reason.

At that Hurricane Sandy benefit show a lot of people thought you were reforming Nirvana with Paul McCartney…

When he came to our studio to record with us that day we didn’t know what to expect. Some musicians need to know what they’re going to do before they get in the studio, others are just willing to get weird and experiment and jam. Paul likes to just walk in and see what happens, which I have so much respect for because he’s fearless. He has a confidence that you don’t find in a lot of musicians because he’s really good! I knew that we weren’t going to do a Beatles song and I was pretty sure we weren’t going to do a Nirvana song, so when I talked to him he said: “Well, why don’t we just write something?” I said “Oh great, that takes the pressure off!” Then with the Hurricane Sandy benefit he called and said “Hey, um, I’m doing this benefit, would you like to play?” I said: “Of course.” He said: “Maybe you could play a bit of drums. Hey, why don’t we do the Sound City song?” I would never have suggested that! I wouldn’t have been like: “Hey Paul, let’s do one of my songs”, you know? So I asked Krist and Pat and it just happened. Of course, there was a lot of speculation. People didn’t know what our intentions were, but I was really happy that we were the one band that went out there and did a song that no-one had ever heard. A song that no-one knew existed at that point! We’d kept it a real secret.

What was your most surreal moment with him?

We were in the studio and he says: “Go in there and double my vocal”, and I said: “Ok, you mean put a harmony on it?” “No, no just sing what I sang. Me and Lennon used to do it all the time…” Like, what?! Who am I? What’s going on here? This is crazy! I had to pinch myself. Even had we not filmed it or recorded it, that still would have been the most special day of my entire life. It was so awesome to sit with my absolute hero, my musical hero, the person that influenced me more than anyone else and to record on the board that I think is responsible for me being here. It was incredible.

Your film emphasises the importance of bands playing together and sounding shitty while learning their craft rather than taking the X Factor route to the top. What is it that talent shows lack?

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves. Music is meant to be a basic expression and it should be entirely human, like hearing someone speak or watching someone move. One person’s Beethoven can be another person’s fucking Throbbing Gristle. That’s what bums me out about those shows where people are judged so harshly by fucking musicians that hardly even play an instrument on their own fucking albums! It makes me really mad. I swear to God, if my daughter walked up on stage and sang her heart out and some fucking billionaire looked at her and said: “No, I’m sorry you’re not any good”, I’d fucking throttle that person, I swear to God. Who the fuck are you to say what’s good or bad? If you were to put Keith Moon up on stage and have him judged by prolific fusion drummers they would say: “Well, your time’s not great, you’re all over the place, you’re hitting rim-shots when you weren’t supposed to, your cymbal work is a little sloppy….” It’s ridiculous. It homogenises music so that everyone sounds like fucking Christina Aguilera. I mean, really? In my world I listen to fucking drummers that sound like they’re falling down the stairs as much as I love listening to a beautiful disco track where someone’s got perfect time like Tony Thompson. People need to understand that if you’re passionate about something and you’re driven to do it then don’t be fucking scared, do it. The next time someone says you’re not that good a singer, say: “Fuck you!” I interviewed Neil Young, and he said in his first band someone said to him: “The band’s really great but honestly you shouldn’t be the singer. Please, don’t sing.” If Neil Young had listened to that person, we wouldn’t have Neil Young!

The Foo Fighters are supposed to be on hiatus but you’re working harder than ever. Can you ever imagine retiring?

Retiring? You should see the house I have to make payments on! No, look, I’ve had jobs. I’ve had shitty jobs: manual labour, pizza restaurants, fucking record stores, whatever. This is not a job. I’ve already retired. I retired the fucking day that ‘Nevermind’ went gold. The thing is, I have more opportunities thrown at me now than ever before in my life and the hardest part is doing as little as possible. I get all these amazing opportunities and you’d be crazy not to take them.

You get called the ‘nicest guy in rock’, but don’t you need to have an edge to be successful in music?

Evidently not! I think that it’s important that you try to treat the people that work with you with respect and that you try to take as much time as you can with the people that come up to say hello. Sometimes it gets overwhelming when you just want to sit down and have a fucking drink and you can’t, but it could be worse. I have this motto in life: ‘It could be worse’. Some people have a ‘It could be better’ mentality, but not me. Even when it’s bad, it could get worse, believe me. I don’t have any complaints.

With that it’s time for Dave Grohl to head off into the sunset. He’s got to start whipping those Foo Fighters songs into shape, not to mention maintaining his reputation as the world’s most in-demand drumslinger-for-hire by playing with everyone from Queens Of The Stone Age to RDGLDGRN. Judging by his unstoppable workrate, don’t be surprised to see him back prowling a UK stage before too long. It means too much to him not to. “You know it’s funny, recording at Sound City and playing the Reading Festival happened within six months of each other,” he says. “It was such a crazy year in my life. I was 22, I was a child. I was so dumb, but all those huge experiences happened in a short period of time so I look back on that period in a very romantic light. To be young, and to have the world in the palm of your hand… I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Cover story for NME, 23 March 2013.

If you’d just recorded an electro concept album about a teenager zombified by a collision with a mysterious red Ferrari Testarossa, how would you announce it to the world? If you’d throw a party at a sprawling Ferrari showroom in Paris with a free champagne bar and inviting Daft Punk, Justice and Sebastian Tellier, then  congratulations – you’re ready to step into Kavinsky’s world.

It’s a world that the Parisian DJ, born Vincent Belorgey, has built for himself from the ground-up. Everything about debut LP ‘Outrun’ adheres to his idiosyncratic aesthetic, founded on a love of fast cars, Eighties fashion and the sort of cinematic electro purpose built for neon-lit streets. “The best place to listen to my music is in your car,” he says over espressos. “It’s not made for clubs… or if it is I want to know about that club! I chose the character because I didn’t want to be on the front cover in black and white, sat next to a fireplace, looking moody. I wanted a story.”

Nicolas Winding Refn liked the story so much he used the Lovefoxx-featuring ‘Nightcall’ on the soundtrack of his 2011 Ryan Gosling-flick Drive, propelling the track towards 30 million YouTube hits. Such is Kavinsky’s hedonistic lifestyle, the first time he saw the film he’d spent the day in Paris downing whisky with Skrillex.

When they rocked up to the exclusive screening he still wasn’t sure when his tune would turn up. “I was like: “Where the fuck is my music?”” he says. “I thought maybe it would be over the end titles. I couldn’t wait. Then there was the black screen and: POW! I was jizzing in my pants! I grabbed hold of Skrillex and went: “Fuck, it’s my music! Man, this is the shit!” Then I felt a tap on my shoulder and some guy told me to shut up because he couldn’t hear the film!”

Originally published in NME, 2 March 2013.

The stage is wired. The bands are wired. The crowd is wired. We’re all totally wired. Behind the scenes the bands try to play it cool while sizing each other up. Everybody’s got that nervy feeling, shuffling their feet like they’re waiting for a blind date. It’s up to four boys from B-Town to break the ice, and as soon as Peace saunter onstage to open the 2013 edition of the NME Awards Tour with ‘Higher Than The Sun’ it’s clear that this – this tour, this gig, this night, this whole thing – is going to be a righteous kind of Fun.

Continue reading at NME.

We rocked up to Newcastle’s Academy last Thursday (February 7) to meet up with Django Django, Miles Kane, Palma Violets and Peace as the NME Awards Tour 2013 burst into life. Here’s what went down. It gets messy.

3:47pm Early Birds

Django Django have been here since early morning, catching up on some sleep in their bus after coming all the way up from Sussex where they’ve been working on new material. Miles Kane is here too, wearing a spectacular fur coat and fresh from a couple of warm-up shows which “blew the cobwebs away”. There is no sign of Peace or Palma Violets.

4:41pm Peace In

Peace arrive, falling off the back of a lorry full of kit.

4:27pm Palmas Arrive

Palmas arrive and pile off their tiny van, stretching their legs after five hours on their bus. Drummer Will is philosophical, pointing out that after touring the States even the length of the UK feels like a relatively civilised distance now. Daniel, a Palmas super fan from Newcastle, has brought along his NME New Bands Issue so that Palma Violets can sign their joint cover with Haim. Someone has drawn a comedy moustache on Will’s face. He’s not happy.

4:41pm Dinner Time

Miles Kane is telling everyone he meets about the “brilliant” king prawn linguini he’s just tucked into. There’s a moment of farce when the catering staff are baffled by the fact that Chilli from Palma Violets has the same name as his dinner order.

7:04pm Class Of ‘13 Photo Call

With all the bands now sound-checked, everyone piles into Django Django’s dressing room for the group photo. This is the first time that the bands have met each other, so spirits are high and there’s instant camaraderie.

7:11pm Peace Reminisce

Grabbing a quick smoke before they kick the tour off, Peace are reminiscing about the last time they were in Newcastle. They got kicked out of the 24 hour Gregg’s by the sausage roll shop’s bouncer, and then broke onto the city centre ice rink. Unfortunately the band then got stuck on the ice. “Not so funny now, are you, you cunts?” was the bouncer’s unhelpful response.

7:28pm Peace Onstage

Peace run through their pre-gig rituals before opening the NME Awards Tour 2013 to the roar of the Newcastle crowd. Backstage, Miles Kane has popped into Django Django’s dressing room to compare notes and get acquainted.

8:21pm Palmas Singalong

Palma Violets are onstage and the whole crowd is bouncing along to ‘Best Of Friends’. At the end of their set, Chilli gives the crowd the option of choosing between ‘We Found Love’ and ‘Fourteen’. They choose the latter night-bus anthem.

9:37pm Kane & Able

Miles Kane is onstage, to the delight of the assembled mod masses. Backstage, Chilli is having a fag and reiterating that ‘Fourteen’ is definitely about a bus, not an underage female.

10:04pm Django Unchained

Headliners Django Django have just taken to the stage, but out the back of the venue there’s roughly 100 kids at the stage door getting the Palmas to sign their stolen tour posters. There’s also a hefty contingent of fans waiting for Miles Kane to emerge.

10:48pm Django’s Climax

The Toon crowd lose their shit when Newcastle is name-dropped into ‘Skies Over Cairo’. Django finish up with ‘Default’ and ‘Life’s A Beach’ to send their fans home ecstatic.

11:26pm Birthday Girl

It’s Doug from Peace’s girlfriend’s birthday, and he’s take her out for a night of pheasant and champagne. Back at the venue, Palmas and Peace pile into one dressing room to sing her a raucous ‘Happy Birthday’.

12:04am Bar Hopping

The problem with being in an indie bar with Peace and Palma Violets is that every single fucker wants to hug them before we get to the bar. A girl asks me to sign her tits and I write “Read NME” across them. Is this terrible and sexist? Definitely. I am not proud of myself.

12:45am Naughty Stuff

REDACTED This bit is totally illegal, with a soundtrack by Jefferson Airplane.

12:58am Peace On Ice

Peace return to the scene of the crime and vault onto Newcastle’s city centre ice rink. A bouncer makes a half-hearted attempt to catch them, but Peace nimbly outskate him despite their lack of appropriate footwear.

1:02am To Digital

A plan is forged to go to local club Digital

1:07am Digital Bar

This plan is abruptly halted by over-zealous security who don’t like the look of us.

1:09am Gay Bar!

Peace and Palma Violets head next door to Roxy’s, a gay bar. The transvestite DJ is playing Happy Hardcore.

1:28am Fall Guys
I’m having a heated argument about the merits of Mark E Smith with Doug Peace. Pete from Palmas skilfully defuses the situation.

2:09am Peace Out
Peace duck out.

2:47am No Thanks
A middle-aged gentlemen offers to “suck off” Chilli and I in Roxy’s toilets. We decline, pretending to be a couple.

3:04am Good Night
Palma Violets kicked out of Roxy’s. They are crowned victors of the opening night. Only another 12 to go…

Originally published in NME, 16 February 2013.

When I was 13 I used to have a coughing fit every time James sang about sex. It was the opening lines of their hit single ‘Laid’ that did it: “This bed is on fire with passion and love / The neighbours complain about the noises above / But she only comes when she’s on top.” This sounded unbelievably filthy to my young ears, so when my mum made a disapproving comment after overhearing it blaring out of my bedroom I was so mortified that I’d desperately try to drown out the offending lines with an impromptu hacking cough if I thought she was within earshot.

The trouble is I had to do this a lot. James were barely off my stereo when I was a teenager – the first band to get me excited about music and, fittingly, the first band I ever saw live, at the Great Hall at Exeter University on 26 October 2000. They were even better than I’d imagined they’d be, with singer Tim Booth flailing himself into a hypnotic trance. When I heard that James were releasing their first ever boxset, ‘The Gathering Sound’, I took the chance to finally talk to Booth about growing up, life-changing gigs and blowing Brian Eno’s mind.

James in Exeter in 2000 was my introduction to live music. Do you remember the show, or have those old tours just blurred into one long gig?

I think I was sick. I may have had the flu. It’s interesting: when you get sick before a concert it strips you down so you’ve got nowhere to hide. They can either be the worst gigs you do, or some of the best. I seem to remember that being a really beautiful one, because I was just so vulnerable. Certain gigs jump out and I have memories of, and then other gigs I haven’t got a clue. I remember fantastic gigs or very bad gigs.

Is it important to you to feel vulnerable as a musician?

I have an inherited liver disease which I’ve had it all my life. It’s probably saved my life, because I can’t indulge too much in alcohol or drugs – which go hand in hand with my profession! I think having periods of severe illness gives you a strange perspective. I’ve nearly died a couple of times. Being brought close to the end, to near death, is always a good place to write from. It’s a real leveler and it’s made me look for what people would term “spiritual answers”, which really just means coming to terms with the fact that you’re going to leave this world. All of us at some point go: “What the fuck happens next?” I think that’s true of most religions – it’s everyone going: “What the fuck happens next?”

I think the fact that you were tackling those big, existential questions is what drew me to James as a teenager.

Great, I’m so happy that’s what you found. That’s what we put down there. There were artists who similarly reached out to me, especially in my teens when you’re fucking confused and asking: ‘What the fuck is this about?’ You know it’s all a fucking mess and piece of shit – or you can do! Then there are certain things that you read and you go: ‘Thank God! I’m not alone!’ They seem to have a bead on this. For me, it was Patti Smith and the writers Doris Lessing and Albert Camus. ‘The Outsider’ is one of those books where you go: ‘Oh thank God! I’m not alone.’ I love that we were part of that daisy chain, that paper chase.

I had the same experience reading Camus. What was it about Patti Smith that you connected with?

Well, speaking of Camus: there’s that amazing scene in ‘The Outsider’ where he’s imprisoned and they want the priest to come to him and he’s telling them to fuck off even as he’s about to die. So when you hear Patti Smith’s opening line on ‘Horses’: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” you realise it’s all about taking responsibility for your own life and your own sins. You also realise that within what is called ‘sin’ there’s a huge amount of power and energy. Part of what makes us individuals is sometimes doing taboo things we definitely would have been burned for hundreds of years ago by the authority. I particularly remember hearing Smith’s song ‘Birdland’ the night I was told my father was going to die. It was the first time I’d ever really listened to it and it’s about a boy losing his father. So I think that went in at a very deep level, and probably unconsciously made me become a singer and a lyricist. She was a poet, so words became hugely important to me.

What was the first gig you went to as a fan?

The very first one was when somebody dragged me to Hawkwind, with Motorhead opening for them. The second one, which was more of a conscious choice, was Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. I think the third was the White Riot tour [The Clash, The Jam, The Buzzcocks, The Slits and Subway Sect]. That was the point from when I never looked back. That was the point from when it made sense. The fourth might have been Iggy Pop, and I was lost after that! There was no hope for me!

In 13 years I still haven’t seen many performers go into the sort of trancelike state that you do during a James show – when did you start dancing like that?

I don’t know. It was just something I could do. I used to take songs when no one else was around and I’d throw myself around the room, often ending up crying or shouting or screaming. It was my choice of release. You can see the power of dance from the fact that 100 years ago it was banned in many Christian countries, on pain of death, because it was seen as a very sinful thing. Look at Elvis! His dancing is Shamanic. Then early Iggy was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen on stage. In my 30s I met a woman who taught dance as a way of going into trances, but she recognized that that’s what I already did. You get into an ecstatic state. It’s a great place to write songs from, and an amazing place to see the world from. There’s a tradition going back to the Sufis of dancers writing poetry. It’s a tradition of ecstatic worship.

‘Sometimes’ is a personal favourite, how did you write that?

Oh, thank you! We jammed it in our rehearsal room at Beehive Mill in Manchester. We knew it would be a big song, so we sent the demo to Brian Eno. Everyone wanted to work with Eno, and they still do! He rang me up at 9 o’clock in the morning and said he’d record with us. ‘Sometimes’ was the main song he talked about. I hadn’t got the lyrics for it at the time. I had the bit about the boy who wanted to be struck by lightning but no chorus. In the studio I had to keep telling him I wasn’t ready to record it yet, because I hadn’t finished the lyrics. We had this layout where we’re in a circle around him with the recording console is in the middle of the room. Eventually we say: “Okay Brian, we’re ready to record ‘Sometimes’.” I’d got the chorus ready and I hadn’t told them. He’s prowling around the floor while we were playing the start of the song, just waiting to see what I’d got. I sang the chorus and he kind of went white and sat down while we were playing. I thought: ‘Oh shit, he doesn’t like it’. When we finished he didn’t say anything. He had his head in his hands on the desk and we all crowded round him and eventually he looked up and he said: “I’ve just experienced one of the highlights of my musical life.” We went: “Woah!” We were completely blown away. That someone we held in such high esteem could have such a physical, tangible reaction to that song. His reaction was one of our highlights of our musical life!

Just to burst our balloon and bring us down to Earth, I was going through customs in Manchester airport once, and one of the customs guys is frisking me and he goes: “You’re in that band James?” I go: “Yeah.” He says: “That song ‘Sometimes’: does the chorus lyric bear any relationship to the verse?” I said: “Not really.” And he said: “Thought not. I’m a Morrissey man myself.”

Everyone’s a critic.

Everyone’s a critic, and there are just some lyrics that don’t make sense. The chorus in some ways doesn’t connect with the verse – I don’t know why I’m singing that chorus but I’m singing that fucking chorus because I know it’s the right chorus for that song. Some of my favourite songs lyrically don’t make sense – the Pixies: what the fuck are they singing about on most of their songs? Then there are other lyrics that I want to make sense all the way through. Lyrics are a mystery, in terms of what works and what doesn’t. Lyrics are important to me. Some of those Patti songs hit me in the subconscious even though they don’t necessarily make literal conscious sense.

Speaking of lyrics, the opening lines of ‘Laid’ used to make me so embarrassed I’d have to cough over the word “comes” if my mum was around.

Well, I just hope you don’t still cough whenever sex is discussed. A censored version was released with the line: “But she only hums when she’s on top”. Normally I refuse to censor our lyrics, but I found that quite witty.

Originally published by NME.

Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards show, hosted at Koko last weekend, is one of the best places on the planet to hear the cream of the world’s grooviest, jazziest and most eccentrically experimental tunes.

The show itself featured standout performances from Mala’s hypnotically groovy ‘In Cuba’ project, the staggeringly talented Natalie Duncan, funky Bossa Nova legend Marcos Valle and the impossibly cool Neneh Cherry. If you haven’t heard Cherry’s mind-blowing cover of Suicide’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’ yet, you can rectify that travesty immediately with the Spotify playlist below. We caught up with Mr Peterson backstage to get his take on 2012’s highlights and the coming trends for 2013.

Continue reading at NME.

Can you imagine a place without music? In the north of Mali, in West Africa, Islamist extremists have taken control of vast swathes of the country and set about imposing a restrictive social code which includes the banning of all forms of music. It’s a cruel irony that this is happening in a place known all over the world for the richness and beauty of its musical culture. Among the areas that have now fallen silent are Timbuktu, near the site of the famous Tuareg ‘Festival Au Désert’, and Niafunke, the hometown of the legendary triple-Grammy-winning guitarist Ali Farka Toure.

Can you imagine a place without music? In the north of Mali, in West Africa, Islamist extremists have taken control of vast swathes of the country and set about imposing a restrictive social code which includes the banning of all forms of music. It’s a cruel irony that this is happening in a place known all over the world for the richness and beauty of its musical culture. Among the areas that have now fallen silent are Timbuktu, near the site of the famous Tuareg ‘Festival Au Désert’, and Niafunke, the hometown of the legendary triple-Grammy-winning guitarist Ali Farka Toure.

Glastonbury Festival last week declared their solidarity with Mali’s silenced musicians by announcing Rokia Traore as the first act on this year’s line-up. They also pledged that every day a singer from the country will open the Pyramid Stage. If you’re not already a fan of Traore then you should know she comes highly endorsed: at this summer’s Africa Express concert in London she was joined onstage for a gorgeous performance of ‘Dounia’ by both Paul McCartney and Led Zeppelin’s John-Paul Jones.

The banning of music is not without precedent, but recent history shows that somehow songs finds a way to survive. In Afghanistan until 2001, music, dancing and television were all banned under the Taliban’s rule. However, as Havana Marking’s 2010 documentary ‘Afghan Star’ showed, by the end of the decade the unlikely saviour of the ‘Pop Idol’ format was helping a culture find its voice. The remarkable documentary illustrates that even under the Taliban music continued to live on out of earshot of the authorities. The film opens with young boy, blind in both eyes, singing his heart out straight to camera. He can’t be more than six or seven, but when he finishes he says that without music, human beings would be unhappy. A reality his parents’ generation lived through. In another incredible scene, unearthed footage from the early ’80s shows an Afghan electro-pop band who look and sound as if they’ve just walked off the set of Top of the Pops. It’s evidence that pop music wasn’t as alien to Afghan culture as the Taliban tried to make it seem.

Hopefully the people of northern Mali will not have to live without music for as long as the Afghan people did, with international attention now being drawn to the country. Meanwhile, Fatoumata Diawara recently gathered over 40 of the country’s most renowned musicians to record a song called ‘Mali-ko’ (Peace / La Paix). The group, collectively called ‘Voices United for Mali’, includes local legends like Amadou and Mariam, Toumani Diabate and the late Ali Farka Toure’s son Vieux. With any luck, by the time Glastonbury arrives the song will be able to be heard not just in Pilton but on the streets of Timbuktu and Niafunke too.

Originally published by NME.

There have been truckloads of great rock memoirs: Keith Richards’ Life, Patti Smith’s Kids, Mark E Smith’s Renegade, R Kelly’s Soulacoaster, but how many lyricists have made the leap from songwriting to longform fiction? And have any of them been any good?

Continue reading at NME.

Backstage during Pulp’s raucous return to Sheffield, two huge shaven-headed roadies are watching Jarvis Cocker cavort around the stage and throw himself off speakers, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with every thrust of his impossibly sharp hips. Eventually, during the long, strange intro to ‘Party Hard’, one turns to the other, a baffled look slapped across his face. He tilts his head towards Jarvis and mutters: “There’s something not quite right about him.”

34 years after Jarvis decided to form a band during a boring economics lesson, Pulp remain elegant outsiders. They’re still the band that every mis-shape, mistake and misfit and in the country see themselves in. When they stepped in to headline Glastonbury at the last minute back in 1995, Jarvis told us: “If a lanky get like me can do it, and us lot yeah, you can do it too.” Their underdog triumph made it cool to be different. They weren’t afraid to be smart or literate. Their songs were like Philip Larkin poems rebuilt for the indie disco.

But all things must pass. Rumours are flying around that this will be their final UK show, with only a pair of dates on the Coachella Cruise remaining of their reunion tour. Fittingly, they’re playing at the arena home of the Sheffield Steelers ice hockey team. The rink has been boarded over with chipboard floors but it’s still there, frozen under their fans’ feet. Pulp are being put on ice.

It was even colder outside, but that didn’t deter the Pulp ‘hardcore’, who’ve been arriving since 8am. Someone brought a marker pen to write the order they arrive in on their hands. That way they can huddle together for warmth but still keep their strict positions in the queue. A fan called Susanne is wrapped in silver foil, like a collapsed marathon runner.

The first to arrive was Melina, who had flown over from Georgia in the USA just to see the show. “It’s my first time in the UK,” she says.  “I’m so sad that I’m leaving again tomorrow. I first saw Pulp on television when I was 16. I fell in love right there and then.” She’s one of many international fans who’ve made the pilgrimage, knowing this could be the last chance to see their idols in the flesh.

The fans are younger than you’d expect for a reformed Britpop group. Another early arrival is Alice, who at 17 has been alive exactly half the time that Pulp have been a band. “When I saw them at Reading Festival it changed my life,” she giggles. “I was just like: “Marry me, Jarvis!” I can’t wait for ‘This Is Hardcore’, when Jarvis does his thrusting.”

Another fan, from Australia, sums up why Pulp are the sort of band worth queuing all day for: “It’s because of the people that Pulp write about. You don’t hear about people like me unless you listen to a Pulp song.”

There are 12,000 people at the Sheffield Arena who feel the same way, so Pulp have to work hard to make the show feel intimate. Before the band go on, drummer Nick Banks says: “We’re going to play a lot of songs tonight. We’ll play all the ones they want to hear, so I don’t think they’ll be leaving disappointed, but hopefully they’ll also hear some stuff they might not have heard for a long time – or even ever.”

Against the odds, Pulp manage to transform this cavernous sports warehouse into a local club. They have a fake fireplace on stage, beside which Jarvis nonchalantly sips red wine. The best touch, though, is what Jarvis describes as toilet paper-powered “time travel”. In the band’s early days they would festoon venues with rolls of it, in lieu of the pricier pyrotechnics they can deploy today. After inviting the audience to cover the whole arena in long white paper streaks of the stuff, they then reach way-back into their collective history, fishing out 1983’s My Lighthouse’ – accompanied by Jarvis’ sister Saskia – 1985’s brilliant ‘Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)’ and 1991’s disco-drenched ‘Countdown’.

The whole show is a barnstorming triumph, from the opening shimmy of ‘Do You Remember The First Time?’ through to the collective ecstasy of ‘Common People’ and the anthemic ‘Mis-Shapes’.

Longtime collaborator Richard Hawley joins them onstage for a chunk of the set, most visibly when he plays the solo on ‘Born To Cry’ live for the first – and possibly last – time. He won’t be joining the band for their cruise-ship shows, so tonight is particularly poignant for him. He tells me later: “I’ll be seeing them off with a tearful hanky at the pier, I think, but it seems fitting to wave them off into the sunset.”

He adds his own thoughts on the significance of Pulp: “The only shame about them not doing anything new is that they could put a real spin on what’s happening in our country and the fuckwits that lead us, although in a way it’s already been said with songs like ‘Common People’. Jarvis’ lyrics aren’t just of a period of time, they still make sense. We’ve stills got cunts in charge. As long as there are dickheads like Cameron and his ilk, Pulp will always have relevance. Also emotionally they still resonate. Their songs go beyond political ranting to something far more subtle and important than that.”

Later in the night, at Pulp’s party for friends and family at The Blue Shed, you can see the baton being passed to a new generation as Pulp bassist and Palma Violets producer Steve Mackey hugs his protégés as Arctic Monkeys tunes blast across the dancefloor. Chilli from the Palmas is full of praise for their mentor: “Steve Mackey is a king! I saw Pulp at Hyde Park, but tonight the one! This was a whole different level, even if all the Sheffield references did make us feel a bit left out. I could tell how much they put into it emotionally.”

Emmy the Great describes the gig as definitely in the top three shows she’s ever seen, “possibly the top one.” She adds: “I saw a girl just behind me by the mixing desk, wearing a T-shirt with Pulp written on every square inch of her body. At the end she was just weeping, but I understood because that’s how this band makes people feel. Their first show may have been in 1980 but they’re still so good and so relevant.”

At the end of the night, Jarvis hosts a small party in his dressing room. It’s a chance to ask him exactly what it meant to him to come back and play in Sheffield. “The thing is,” he says, “even though I haven’t lived here for a very long time I always get in a right fluster when we come to Sheffield. Tonight was no exception. It had highs, and lows, and it was funny. There were lots of friends and family here, and that’s what piles the pressure on even more. Your mother’s there, your sister’s there – even onstage singing with yer. I think it went okay. I think we made a connection. The toilet rolls were good. It’s hard to play a big place like this. It’s an arena, so it doesn’t have any atmosphere of its own. You have to try and make an atmosphere happen. We were trying to take this shed, where anybody will play, and make it feel like a Sheffield thing and an intimate thing.”

So the only remaining question is: is this really it, Jarvis? The last ever Pulp show on terra firma? “Ooh, I can’t…” He cracks a smile and trails off. “Certainly for a while, yeah. I don’t believe in saying that it’s the last one forever. There was enough pressure on tonight without saying: ‘This is it: the final show.’ It’s not really your call, do you know what I mean? Ten years ago when we played at the Magna, it felt like: “Ooh, right, this is the end.” You can try to tie everything up neatly, but you just have to see what life throws at yer. I think that’s the way life works. You can’t impose a structure on it. So… we’ll see. But it’s it for now.”

Originally published in NME, 5 January 2013.

If rock’n’roll could be turned into flesh and made to walk the earth, it would look and sound a lot like Keith Richards. It’s not the skull ring, the elegantly wasted appearance or the chemically-enchanced bloodstream that does it – although that all helps – but the fact that he has an unerring knack of hoovering up pretty much all of the greatest guitar riffs ever written.

Continue reading at NME.

A couple of hours before their first ever London show, Mac DeMarco and his band are curled up on the stage at Birthdays, stealing a few moments of shuteye. “We’re all hella jet-lagged,” Mac tells the capacity audience that squeezes in later. It doesn’t show.

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Any city whose staple food is chips, gravy and cheese curd is alright by me. Montreal’s proud, surprisingly not overweight, citizens call it ‘poutine’ and even if you don’t rock up at notorious 24hr joint La Banquise until four in the morning they’ll still be queuing around the ice cold block for it. I was in town last week for the annual M For Montreal festival, Canada’s new band festival and worthy rival of the likes of SXSW and The Great Escape. In a handful of crammed city centre venues the festival cheerfully slathered some of the year’s best international acts over a generous helping of Canada’s finest homegrown bands. I put on my warmest, furriest hat and headed out into the frozen night to see what I could find. These are the bands worth writing home about:

Death Grips
M For Montreal pulled off something of a festival coup by bagging Death Grips, and the Californians were easily the pick of the international bands. Yeah, so it’s a bit of a shame that touring without production guru Andy ‘Flatlander’ means they’re playing to a pre-recorded backing track, but even that doesn’t take too much away from Zach Hill’s monstrous drumming, which seems him breaking drum sticks and hammering the skins with his fists, or from the visceral power of MC Ride in full flow. A ferocious live proposition.

Blue Hawaii
Initially sold to us on the Grimes connection (they’re signed to Arbutus Records and have opened for Montreal’s current indie queen on various occasions) it took about 4 seconds of their set in Casa Del Popolo on Wednesday night for it to become clear that they’re in no need of riding anybody’s coat-tails. Singer Raph is blessed with an immediately captivating voice while her boyfriend Agor works all kinds of magic on synths and drums. The first band of the week to get everyone dancing, I next saw them in an underground illegal warehouse manfully battling to keep playing on while the party was shut down around them. Well played.

Suuns
Dark, experimental rockers Suuns were much feted at the beginning of 2011 when they released debut album ‘Zeroes QC’, but on the evidence of their set following Blue Hawaii at Casa Del Popolo their second record ‘Images Du Futur’, due next March, will be one of the highlights of 2013. You can hear lead single ‘Edie’s Dream’ now – but here’s a tip for when you’re raving about them later: it’s pronounced ‘Soons’, not ‘Suns’.

No Joy
There was a whole lot of shoegazing going on at M For Montreal, so for any band to stand out they had to be doing something special. Thank the Lord then for No Joy, who actually have the songs to back up the de rigueur hazy guitar sounds. Their ‘Negaverse’ EP, released this year, has been blowing Montreal’s collective minds, but personally I’m just a sucker for anyone who dedicates a great rock tune to Philip Larkin.

Duchess Says
Regardless of the sprawling lineup, the one band all the organizers were raving about in private were Duchess Says. Something of a Montreal institution having formed a little under a decade ago, they brought their driving Stooges-with-synths to the skull-covered environs of the Katacombes. I didn’t see a better live performer all week than Annie-Claude Deschênes, who wails like Karen O and spent most of the show walking upright over the crowd, held aloft by a sea of hands. The devout down the front would swear she could do the same on water.

Mac DeMarco
There could be only one victor of this year’s festival, however, and that was Mac DeMarco. Montreal will be dominating end-of-year album lists across the world and across genres thanks to year-defining records by such disparate musicians as Grimes and Leonard Cohen, but Mac’s the next big thing. His record ‘2’ is full of deceptively simple riffs and laidback jamming with snatches of everyone from The Modern Lovers to Pavement. He was welcomed back to Sala Rossa as a returning hero, and had already won the audience over before the final charming moment of crowd-surfing with his girlfriend in his arms while ‘Together’ played out. If that wasn’t enough, the next night he turned up at a warehouse party playing drums and then bass with the brilliant Walter TV (who you can hear here). There’s nothing else to say but light up a Viceroy and dance.

Originally published by NME.

Rage Against The Machine matter in a way few bands ever do. Righteously angry and fiercely intelligent, they also proved that political rock didn’t have to suck. They made rap manifestos that rocked and heavy riffs you could dance to.

Their debut album went off like a bomb twenty years ago this month. Over the next two decades the shockwaves changed countless lives, including mine. To mark the anniversary the band are re-releasing the record in a box set that also contains footage from the band’s first ever public performance at Cal State Northridge in 1991 as well as their Finsbury Park victory concert in 2010. They’ve also thrown in the original demo tape of 12 songs that they recorded before they’d even played a show.

I don’t need a calendar-based excuse to listen again to Tom Morello’s incendiary guitar riffs, but it doesn’t hurt. Morello’s a genuine Harvard-educated political heavyweight as well as a technical pioneer who famously used his guitar’s toggle switch to simulate a DJ’s scratching. I caught up with the rebel with a cause to find out what he remembers about making the album, politicising a generation of fans and the moment it all kicked off at Reading.

It’s been two decades since you released ‘Rage Against The Machine’. How does it feel?

In some ways time has just flown by, but in other ways I never thought I’d live this long! Looking back at 20 years of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” has been really energising and I’m so glad that we’re able to put out this box set for the people who I’ve always considered the fifth member of Rage Against The Machine: the fans.

If you could somehow speak to yourself in 1992, would you give yourself any advice?

Oh yeah. The success of the band outpaced the emotional maturity of all four of us. We were swept up in it. We were offered a record deal after our second show. It took a while for the band for the break the US, but ‘Killing In The Name’ exploded in the UK shortly after it was released. We didn’t really pay the normal dues together, where bands build a brotherhood of solidarity. We were thrust straight onto the cover of the NME! The one thing I would say to myself would have been to press pause and really check in with each other as friends and as brothers to see where everybody was at and how everyone was doing as opposed to just pressing forward with the next gig.

What do you remember about recording those first demos together?

Let’s make it clear that we had no ambition beyond writing songs that we liked. We thought that the disparate genres of music that we were combining would be wholly unacceptable to the general consciousness. We didn’t even dream of an indie record feel. That was just off the board. We didn’t even think we would be able to book club shows. At a rock club nobody wanted to hear anybody rap and at rap clubs they certainly didn’t want to hear Zach. Then the band’s politics as well: there was nothing like that ever on the radio. Then there was the ethnic make-up of the band: there were no bands with a half-black guy and then a Chicano and a half-Jewish guy. So we wrote those songs for this first record with complete surety, without any aspirations to even book a club show let alone get a record deal. I reckon that’s one of the reasons we connected, because we were so unafraid, and we didn’t have any commercial aspirations. We made that whole first demo, recording 12 songs, before we even played a show.

Was there a moment when you realised things had exploded?

It was Reading ‘93. We had been to the UK a couple of times to play club shows, and we were still opening up for House Of Pain back in the United States and opening up clubs, and we were somewhere middle of the bill at Reading. When we came out it was like the whole country was pogoing. It was unbelievable. Clearly every one of the 65,000 people knew every lyric and were just going ape shit. We were like ‘Wow, what’s happened?’ It was really then that it occurred to us that there more might have been going on than we expected.

Are you proud of what the band achieved in terms of engaging fans politically, or do you sometimes wish you could have changed society more?

First of all there has never been a more popular band with politics as radical as Rage Against The Machine. We planted a flag on the political rock Mount Everest. There are bands that are political who have sold more records but they’re not as radical. There are bands who are more radical – well, maybe – than Rage Against The Machine but they haven’t come near to the same global popularity. That’s something we can be very proud of. You can look at it on a global scale and a personal scale. Bands like The Clash and Public Enemy changed me and encouraged me to pursue a life of activism and charity work. I meet people every day who tell me that Rage Against The Machine has done that to them. A number of the founders of the Occupy movement on a global scale have cited this particular record as the thing that politicised them. So any work that they do is in part because of those ten tracks! So that’s on a personal level. Certainly on a global level there have been specific issues that the band have been involved in, such as different union struggles in the US, where there have been great successes. There have been other goals, such as the Zapatistas’ goal in Mexico, which may have not been fulfilled to the fullest, but Rage has been a link in the chain of a long history of musical artists who stand with and for the oppressed and continue to put wind in the sails of future generations of rebels. That’s something to be proud of.

Why do you think there aren’t more bands today engaged with politics?

In the wake of Rage Against The Machine’s success in 1992/93, there were a lot of bands who were kind of emasculated versions of Rage. They played commercially successful rock/rap music without the politics. I can’t name two bands who even attempted to do what Rage did. That makes me feel very fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Zach, Tim and Brad and have that perfect storm come together.

What’s been your proudest moment with Rage Against The Machine?

Wow. I would say just lasting 20 years. It’s the fans who are the reason why we connect so viscerally with our global audience because the raw emotion that you feel in the music in the performances and in Zach’s lyrics is real. The entire band’s history is a tightrope walk. At any moment that raw emotion could tear the band apart. The other side is that if it could be harnessed it could be the biggest band of all time and maybe start a global revolution! [Laughs] The band somehow picked a path, directed by fate and luck and chance and the vectors of day to day living, where we were able to get some good work done but left some work undone. I’m proud of the fact that 20 years later we’re all alive and able to celebrate the 20 year anniversary. Sometimes I feel like our fans have been underserved by us. Maybe we haven’t toured as much as our fans would have liked, or brought out as many records as they’d have like, but this moment in time is for them. Here’s all of it. Here are shows from 1993 in a Philadelphia bar that you weren’t at, but now you get to enjoy forever. This band lit a lot of fires.

How important has the UK been to the band?

The UK is where Rage first broke, so thank you. The UK is where Rage had our first ever number one ‘pop single’, so thank you. It’s been a love affair with the UK since day one, so sincerely thank you for the support y’all have shown us over the last 20 years.

Originally published at NME.

Sleepy London town might seem like no place for a street fighting man this autumn, but in an interview with Radio One this week Plan B predicted that we could see a repeat of last August’s riots. He thinks the government is “out of touch”, and hasn’t done enough to solve the problems which initially provoked the unrest.

He’s not the only one.

Nobody wants to see a return of the destruction and violence that ended with 3,000 arrests, but plenty have said it could happen. This includes many of the police officers who were interviewed for an LSE study into the riots. One superintendent from Manchester said: “I don’t think anything has changed between now and last August, and the only thing that’s different is people have thought: riots are fun.”

Similarly, a Centre for Social Justice report argued that the crackdown that followed the riots has itself led to more gang violence, as younger members battle to replace their arrested leaders.

The strangest fact for anybody who remembers how earth-shaking the riots felt at the time is how little has changed. The government has ploughed on with funding cuts for all manner of youth services, while since last August youth unemployment has increased. Today in the UK there are over a million unemployed 16- to 24-year-olds, 12% more than when the riots kicked off a year ago. It’s particularly difficult to find work with any sort of criminal record, as those 3,000 arrested for their part in the riots will be finding out. Anger and resentment about how young people are policed still runs through many areas of Britain’s cities like kindling.

This is why it’s so inspiring to see Plan B taking a stand. In an age when it’s routine for musicians to worry more about the state of the record industry than the wider world, and to avoid getting political for fear of being seen as divisive, he’s switched-on and saying things like: “Through music and through film we can change people’s perception of the problem and show them the reality of it.”

He’s also putting his money where his mouth is. He recently said that’ll be donating £1 from every ticket sale from his 2013 arena tour to his new charity, Each One Teach One, which will give money to people doing good work in communities who aren’t receiving financial support.

David Cameron could pick up a lot from watching Plan B. He doesn’t have to learn how to rap, act or direct films but he does have to learn how to listen.

Originally published by NME.

Drop those twee red cups and step away from the seasonal shortbread, Starbucks are releasing their very own Christmas album. It’s called ‘Holidays Rule’ and features actual real life Beatle Paul McCartney alongside the likes of The Shins, Rufus Wainwright, Sharon Van Etten and fun.

Aside from the face-punching banality of yet another sleighful of indie darlings being shoved out to gurgle their way through Christmas standards, there’s a far more insidious evil at work here.

A recent Reuters investigation has revealed that Starbucks haven’t paid a penny in corporation tax in Britain for the last three years. In total, they’ve paid £8.6m in UK taxes on £3bn of sales since 1998. In the midst of a crippling recession and with public services being cut in every borough of the land, Starbucks have been using a policy of ‘transfer pricing’ to create the impression that they’re losing money in Britain and thus avoid having to pay tax.

Good lawyers have ensured that Starbucks haven’t broken the law, just played the system. As campaigning group UK Uncut put it: “Starbucks continue to avoid tax at a time of unprecedented and unnecessary public spending cuts. We must keep the pressure up so that the government cracks down on tax avoidance and ends its disastrous austerity policies.” I don’t have much to add to that, except to say that one of the bands who play on ‘Holidays Rule’ are Ohioan rockers Heartless Bastards. Starbucks could have saved everyone time by just calling the whole record: ‘Merry Christmas From The Heartless Bastards’.

One of the most frustrating things about miserly Starbucks counting their beans in a way that would make Ebenezer Scrooge look like a beacon of philanthropy is their hypocrisy when it comes to their public image. In a statement responding to the recent investigations they claimed to be “compliant” tax payers who balance the “need to operate a profitable business with a social conscience.” This is exactly why it’s so upsetting to see the likes of Macca, Rufus and James Mercer queuing up to make Christmas music for them. It plays into the image that Starbucks like to maintain of being cool, friendly and ethical while ruthlessly exploiting every tax loophole they can find when they think people aren’t looking.

There must be better ways for indie bands to celebrate the oncoming holidays than by sweetening the reputation of a multinational coffee brand. If Starbucks really want to get into the Christmas spirit this year, they can start by paying their fucking taxes.

Originally published by NME.

Feliz Día de los Muertos! Time to crack some skulls, it’s the Day Of The Dead. Mexico’s most famous holiday is a chance for friends and family to gather together and remember those who are no longer with us while also enjoying the blind rush that comes from gnawing on a skull made of pure sugar. I was in Mexico City last month to cover the Corona Capital festival for NME, and while bands like Suede, New Order and The Maccabees showed that even in troubled economic times Britain can always rely on our booming musical exports, there were also plenty of local delicacies to be sampled. I rounded up the cream of Mexico’s music press to give you the lowdown on what’s hot south of the border, so pour yourself a cerveza with a shot of mescal on the side and hear this:

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“Cerveza, cerveza,” shout the vendors who weave through even Corona Capital’s most tightly-packed crowds with trays of sloshing pints balanced precariously on their heads. Others hawk snacks and pouches of mezcal with lime ice lollies on the side. We’re a long way from the grey skies of London and Manchester, but it turns out that even under a Mexican sun it’s pretty easy to roundup 60,000 people who idolise Brett Anderson and Bernard Sumner.

If Mexico City seems a long way to come for a festival with a strong Anglophile twist, your mileage is rewarded with October warmth, all the tacos you can eat and an embarrassment of riches spread over four huge stages.

The two-dayer sprawls over a NASCAR racetrack so I barely have time to see Dum Dum Girls stomp through ‘He Gets Me High’ before I have to hot-foot it all the way to Unknown Mortal Orchestra, whose laidback jams suit the untroubled atmosphere.

Die Antwoord couldn’t be more different when they emerge to steal the weekend. It’s still early afternoon but their set becomes a no-holds-barred rave the moment they drop ‘Wat Kik Jy?’ Ninja’s hilarious acapella opening to ‘Xp€n$iv $h1t’ might be the highlight.

Mexican DJ collective The Wookies take us on an intergalactic tour of dance music genres while wearing Chewbacca masks before Cat Power gets into the national spirit by appearing clad in a Mexican poncho. Sporting a scruffy bleached blonde Mohawk, she could be taking styling tips from Die Antwoord. She stalks the stage with the sort of confidence that was unimaginable from her shows a few years ago. The epic beauty of ‘Nothin’ But Time’ dazzles before she delights her devoted audience with a gorgeous ‘Ruin’.

The night closes with a raucous Suede greatest-hits set and an exuberant if overlong show from The Hives before Basement Jaxx unleash their arsenal of bangers to get the late-night crowd throwing ecstatic shapes.

On Sunday, The Maccabees tell the crowd this is “one of the best lineups they’ve ever been on”. Eager to use the opportunity they corral Florence & The Machine to join them onstage for a touching ‘Toothpaste Kisses’. Next up, The Drums’ big singalong moment on ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ is preceded by Jonathan Pierce cheerfully dedicating ‘If He Likes It Let Him Do It’ to “the homosexuals”. James Murphy’s DJ set of anthemic house is the perfect precursor to New Order’s hit-packed set before The Black Keys bring the weekend to a clattering, riff-heavy halt.

That’s why those Cerveza salesmen are so important. There’s so much here, there’s just no time to get to the bar.

Originally published in NME, 27 October 2012.

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad,” wrote Philip Larkin. “They may not mean to, but they do.” If Phil thought families in Hull were bad, he should hear what they get up to in America’s rural Deep South. Beth Ditto’s frank and heartfelt memoir starkly captures the seemingly endless permutations of emotional and physical abuse that her extended family handed down to one another. It’s heart-wrenching to read the litany of awful things that can happen when children are left to raise children and even incest becomes routine. In one devastating scene, she tells her first boyfriend she can’t remember a time before her uncle abused her. Back in 2006, Ditto caused a minor uproar from animal rights organisations after telling NME that when she was a child her family had shot and eaten squirrels. Seen in the context of her childhood, it’s baffling that people were more upset about the animals than the welfare of the children hunting them for food.

Continue reading at NME.