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Thank you Uncut for your continuing support of John’s work and for playing your part in keeping his spirit alive. It is important that new generations continue to discover John’s music and the message behind it. IMAGINE PEACE!

30 BEAUTIFUL BOY (DARLING BOY)
From the John Lennon & Yoko Ono album, Double Fantasy (November 1980)
Written for son Sean, then five, and partially inspired by the writings of French psychologist Émile Coué, “Beautiful Boy” sees Lennon extolling the simple joy of fatherhood.

Liam Gallagher: My song “Little James” was inspired by “Beautiful Boy” and “Hey Jude”. More “Beautiful Boy”. People who’ve got any soul will realise that there’s a day when you go home and put your feet up and cuddle your kids. If anyone slags it off, they’ve either got no heart or they don’t know what the meaning of life is. They just go out and do-do-do-do-do the same thing every day. So fuck them. You can’t win with these people.

Originally, I wanted it to be acoustic. Have you heard Lennon’s demos? They’re dead crackly, and it’s just on a guitar, and that’s the way I’d like to write music. But if it’s gonna go on an Oasis album, it’s gotta be big, hasn’t it? So then I played it to Noel, he went away with the band and he goes: “What do you think of this?” I went: “It’s fucking top.”

29 WHATEVER GETS YOU THRU THE NIGHT
From the John Lennon album, Walls And Bridges (October 1974); released as a single October 1974. Highest UK chart position: 36
Lennon’s first solo US No 1, with Elton John guesting on keyboards. Lennon later joined Elton on stage at Madison Square Gardens in November 1974, for what would be his last public performance.

Klaus Voormann: I got a call from John asking to come to New York to play on his new record. He was getting some friends together – Jim Keltner on drums, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar – so it sounded like a good idea. I think we did the whole of Walls & Bridges in two weeks.

We didn’t do any rehearsals. John would come in each day with a new song, play it to us and we’d go from there. We never got chord structure or anything like that, but he gave each of us a piece of A4 paper with the words on. We’d make our parts up on the spot and if he liked it, he’d give you a little grin. He’d be wearing his denims, usually with his cap on, very low-key. He was completely on the level – you could tell he just wanted to be a member of a band again.

We’d start in the afternoon and work through the night, although by the end of the fortnight, we’d sometimes start about nine in the evening [laughs]. We would only break for food. John would say: “Let’s have Blintzes!” – he loved to have their pancakes with blueberries and cream – or we’d have Chinese, but then get back to work. This was during his Lost Weekend and it was party time. There was booze, and people heading to the bathroom to sniff stuff. I never saw John drunk in the studio, or stoned, but there was a lot of cocaine around. John would say: “Fancy some nose?” So it was that, and a little hot sake.

I remember the day we did “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night”, John was very excited about it. It’s a happy song, but there’s a sadness to it. You could tell he was missing Yoko, and he was cutting loose. We’ve got an expression for it in German – he was painting over his pain.

The recording is way too fast. Elton John wasn’t there – he came in and did his overdubs later – but Arthur Jenkins [percussionist] and Bobby Keys [saxophonist] were, and as the night wore on, each time it got faster and faster. It ended up almost twice the speed it started out! Bobby was playing all the wrong notes, too, which didn’t help! But John was pleased with it – it was all about capturing the feel and atmosphere in one take. Who cares about the speed and a few bum notes, y’know? John was right, of course – it was his first solo number one in America.

28 THIS BOY
B-side of The Beatles single, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” (November 1963)
Inspired by Lennon’s love of doo-wop and home to the Beatles first great three-part harmony. An instrumental version appeared on the A Hard Day’s Night soundtrack.

Ian Hart, actor Backbeat/The Hours And The Times: This song of longing and lost love breaks my heart when I try to sing it. It’s a perfect short love song, but as always with John’s songs, there’s something more to it; the plaintive quality of Lennon’s voice in the chorus is enough to make you cry. I’ve always loved “This Boy” and have various memories of it. They sang it on Morecambe & Wise, and the Ed Sullivan show in the States, neither of which I probably saw until I started doing research for The Hours And The Times.

But it’s the use of George Martin’s instrumental version in A Hard Day’s Night that provokes the greatest response in me. Ringo, egged on by Paul’s granddad, goes on his lonely journey, feeling like an outcast. It’s only a short scene, but the song perfectly matches the rejection and longing Ringo’s character feels in the movie. I owe my career in a way to John, and a lot more besides. I would never have worked with Ken Loach or Neil Jordan, and I wouldn’t have many of the friends I have. This boy wants you back again: cheesy but true.

27 MOTHER
Taken from the album, John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band (December 1970); released as a single in the US, December 1970.
Inspired by primal-scream therapy, Lennon confronts his abandonment issues head-on, delivering a raw, revelatory glimpse inside his psyche.

Lee Ranaldo, Sonic Youth: Like Dylan, Lennon’s someone who has done so much that your favourite song could change from day to day, depending on where you’re at. “Mother” came out of this Janov scream therapy, and he was the kind of person who could take things that were going on in his personal life and channel them into his musical life. That was impressive to me. It came out in early Beatles songs – like “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” – he was starting to channel things into his songs, and those early solo records, like the vituperative condemnation of Paul in “How Do You Sleep”, he was channelling this stuff directly into his music in this incredible way.

I always loved “Mother” – it’s really bold and audacious in the way it ends with the screaming lines of lyrics. It’s so emotionally appropriate and so true to who he was and where he was. It never fails to move me.

26 I’M SO TIRED
Taken from The Beatles album, The Beatles (November 1968)
Composed at the Maharishi’s retreat, and recorded during an all night session at Abbey Road, Lennon’s jaded ode speaks volumes for his boredom at being a Beatle.

Jarvis Cocker: John was my favourite Beatle. When I was a kid I thought I’d like to be like him, ’cause he had glasses. I thought that proves that you can be a pop star and wear glasses. “I’m So Tired”, I’ll have that. Lyrically I like the way he calls Sir Walter Raleigh such a stupid get, and the way he manages to get that mundanity into something quite intense. It made me realise that you could actually write songs like that. He’s just listing things that have pissed him off and he can’t sleep and he doesn’t know what to do with himself, ’cause he’s fallen in love. Getting all the little detail into it was an inspiration for me. Also, that’s one of the ones with the easiest chords. When I bought my Beatles Complete Guitar Book I got discouraged ’cause they always seemed to have all these sustained 9ths and I couldn’t play them. Then I realised “I’m So Tired” is quite simple and I managed to master that one.

25 GOD
From the album, John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band (December 1970)
Bitter attack on idolatry, culminating in a denunciation of The Fabs themselves. “And so, dear friends, you just have to carry on…” is all the optimism Lennon can muster, consigning Sixties idealism to the dustbin…

John Leckie, engineer: I can’t say I was in awe of Lennon, because at that time, The Beatles weren’t that hip. I’d done George’s album [All Things Must Pass], which had so many different musicians that it became a challenge, but it was straightforward with John and Yoko. There were only three people in there and very focused. Yoko was there all the time, offering comments and guidance, and [co-producer] Phil Spector.

Spector certainly wasn’t the tyrant in the studio. He was sitting back, letting John and Yoko do their thing. I’m not sure he understood it, though. I remember it being a lot of fun. It was Ringo, John and Klaus [Voorman] – mates. I went back into Abbey Road recently and got the old 8-track tapes out. That was fantastic in itself. You forget how many takes and experimentation went into that album. It was very conscientiously done, almost matter-of-fact. There’s about three days’ worth of recordings of “Mother”. He tried “God” out on electric guitar first, found it wasn’t working and tried it on piano. John would play a song through and through until he came up with the magic take. We’d start recording around six in the evening and often go on until eight in the morning.

24 #9 DREAM
From the John Lennon album, Walls And Bridges (October 1974); released as a single, January 1975. Highest UK chart position: 23
Inspired by Lennon’s fascination with the number 9, this piece of baroque pop featured backing vocals from May Pang (Lennon and Yoko’s PA who became his lover)…

May Pang: John had just produced Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats album, and he’d created a beautiful string arrangement for the opening track, “Many Rivers To Cross”. John liked it so much he wanted to use it himself. He literally dreamed the rest of the song, including the words “Ah, bowakawa pousse pousse.” Like so many of his lyrics, people searched for the hidden meaning, but there was none. [In the dream], two women were calling his name, which he figured were me and Yoko. It was his idea to have me sing it. He had to turn the studio lights down because I was shy doing those sultry “John”s.

When Yoko put together a video for the song in 2005, she included footage of her lip-syncing to my vocal, which is why some people may be confused. John wrote on his Martin acoustic, whenever inspiration struck, which was often. He’d play me his songs and tell me what he envisioned them to be. In the case of “#9 Dream,” he wrote the orchestral arrangements and produced the track in such a way to lull the listener into his dream. He always had his pen and paper ready to jot something down, even by his bed. One of my expressions at the time was “off the wall,” which appeared in “Steel And Glass.” I introduced him to beef jerky, which became the title of another song. He often asked what I thought about a lick or some words, but when he played “Surprise Surprise” [the song Lennon wrote for May], I teared up and was speechless. He joked to me, “It’s that bad, huh?”

23 GIMME SOME TRUTH
From the John Lennon album, Imagine (October 1971)
A rip-roaring dig at “neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians”, “paranoic prima-donnas” and anyone else who didn’t dig the Ono-Lennon’s Bed-Ins…

Tony James, Generation X: I always loved The Beatles, but I became a real Lennon fan when I first heard Imagine. I used to babysit for Neil Aspinall, who was The Beatles’ personal assistant. I was saving up for gigs and records by babysitting. He said, “I must play you this album John’s just made.”

Here was someone talking about something more than just love songs. Years later, Billy [Idol] and I used to listen to “Gimme Some Truth”. What made it stand out was the lyrical content. We loved the word play – “No short-haired, yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dicky’s gonna Mother Hubbard soft-soap me…”‘ It was brilliant the way the words alliterated, and this cry of passion… We covered it in Generation X. When I last saw Primal Scream, they did “Gimme Some Truth” and they did the Generation X version. When I saw Bobby after the show, he came rushing up and said, “Did you hear ‘Gimme Some Truth’? It’s the Generation X version!”

22 JEALOUS GUY
From the John Lennon album, Imagine (November 1971)
One of Lennon’s most-covered songs, this was a public apology to Yoko over his behaviour following The Beatles split, when his heavy drinking put pressure on their relationship.

Roger Daltrey: My favourite? It’s “Jealous Guy”. I don’t have to tell you why. But I was listening to his voice the other day, his music was on a radio play – his version of “Stand By Me”. Fucking great voice, he had: he was lovely, but again, he had that side of him which could be quite cutting and come across quite nasty. But he was straight up and down – what you saw was what you got. I can’t imagine what their life must have been like. It must have a nightmare. I can see why people go completely mad in this business. How they dealt with it – they couldn’t go out. I suppose it makes you have to hang on to who you are: every day, you have to ask yourself, “Who the fuck am I?” We had a few years of screaming girls, but that was it.

21 HELP!
Taken from The Beatles album, Help! (August 1965); released as a single July 1965. Highest UK chart position: 1
An acknowledgement that entry into fame’s hall of mirrors doesn’t come for free, disguised as the perfect pop song.

Victor Spinetti: Of all The Beatles, I saw John the most. We wrote a play together, In His Own Write. I remember working on it at my flat in London and John said: “Let’s go somewhere warm”. I thought he meant another room and we ended up in Marrakesh. He was one of the first song-writing poets. It sounds like I’m eulogising, but listen to his lyrics. Who else writes like that? It’s a reservoir of poetry that’s still here. He was misunderstood, too. When people listen to “Help!” and decide he was a troubled man, it’s not true. He was saying “I’m approaching 30 years of age. Is this it?” The pressure was on to be better and better. On the set of Help! I asked him: “Do you have lots of songs in a drawer that’ll be discovered after you’ve gone?” And he said: “No, I just ring up Paul and say it’s time we get together and write another hit.” In that sense, he was an artist like Picasso, in saying “I do not seek, I find”. It was finding things and making something out of it that was the key. There was no ego with John. People always thought he was full of it, but he wasn’t. He could be arrogant, but that’s a different thing.

20 SHE SAID SHE SAID
From The Beatles album, Revolver (August 1966)
Perfect, paranoid pop, inspired by Lennon’s encounter with LSD-convert Peter Fonda, who wrong-footed the Beatle at a party with the words: “I know what it’s like to be dead”…

John Cale: There was always this competition between the Stones and The Beatles. Even though The Beatles could be brilliant, the Velvets would always side with the Stones, because they were darker, rougher. Then “She Said She Said” turned up and I could see The Beatles were changing. Lou [Reed] and I looked at each other and realised something was happening, which we zeroed in on. The way Lennon did it seemed so natural. It was obviously not just something he made up his mind to do, it was always part of who he was.

It’s got a very tricky time signature. He stops the beat at one point, which made me sit up. The mindset was so unusual – “you’re making me feel like I’ve never been born”. This is nihilism. What I liked about Lennon was his terseness. He could make a point very fast. I love that ability to be very piercing and savage. You get a physical sense of something from him. As soon as I saw him play, it was there too. He used his entire body when he sang. By ’66, The Beatles were a big deal, it was like a giant wave. We were in New York and every night on the radio there’d be Murray The K calling himself the Fifth Beatle. People would hang on to every word.

19 DEAR PRUDENCE
Taken from The Beatles album, The Beatles (November 1968)
Inspired by Lennon’s efforts to coax Prudence Farrow from her shell while staying with the Maharishi, this is Lennon at his most warm-hearted.

Donovan: It has a particular connection to me because John wrote it while we were in India – the four Beatles, Mike Love, Paul Horn the jazz flutist and friends. We went in February 1968 to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which was a life change for us all. All we took were acoustic guitars. George brought in tablas for Ringo. It was very much an unplugged situation in the jungle in India. As I was acoustic all my life, I was playing guitar constantly, and John looked at me, and said: “How do you do that guitar pickin’?” So I taught John. It’s called the clawhammer. It was invented by Ma Carter in the Carter Family in the 1920s. She adapted a banjo style to guitar, and it changed folk music forever. Prudence is Mia Farrow’s sister. She had come to the ashram, as we all had, with various problems, and Maharishi kept her locked away in meditation for days on end. He was caring for her as she unfolded all her angst. But John felt: “Where is Prudence?” so he wrote this song. With the guitar style, and John’s caring attitude to Prudence, it was very touching.

18 HOW DO YOU SLEEP?
From the album, Imagine (October 1971)
A scorching evisceration of Paul McCartney (“The only thing you done was yesterday/ And since you’ve gone you’re just another day”) supported by some stinging slide-guitar from George Harrison…

Ian Hunter, Mott The Hoople: He’s pissed off. He’s always good at that. He could be bad-tempered at times, and that worked with his vocal, with the nostrils flaring. With “How Do You Sleep”, he had a cause – real or imaginary – and it adds to the performance. The lyric was maybe uncalled for, but he and Paul were having a do at the time. It pissed me off that people picked sides between them after The Beatles split. It’s amazing those two wound up in a band. It was only a matter of time before they got fed up, because they weren’t the same. Paul was always middle, John was very left. It’s a great song. Simple, which was John’s strength. It has that great “Lennon sound”. He wasn’t keen on his voice, he double-tracked it and covered it with all kinds of shit, and that became very powerful. He wasn’t willing to suffer fools either, and sometimes treated people not too well. A lot of guys were like that then. And John would let ’em have it. Which is an honesty you don’t often see.

17 THE BALLAD OF JOHN AND YOKO
The Beatles single (May 1969). Highest UK chart position: 1
“Christ, you know it ain’t easy,” sang Lennon, as he recounted life with Yoko, lived in the glare of the media spotlight…

Marianne Faithfull: I got to know Yoko through her exhibition at the Indica Gallery [in November 1966], through John Dunbar, the founding father of the British arts scene. I understood the attraction between John and Yoko. I could never see John happy being in Weybridge, in a normal bourgeois life. He was keen on The Beatles for a long time, maybe too keen in a way. He submerged himself too much, to the point where they were like one person. So John went in an extreme other direction. And Yoko was his way out.

Nobody can imagine what it was like to be a Beatle. Then there’s all that incredible baggage they each had. I was fascinated with John and Yoko’s bravery – living their life so publicly. But they managed very well. “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” is a brilliant summary of their life so far, as well as being a great tune. It all rushes by, which is just how their life must have seemed then. I think John did manage to shake off The Beatles eventually, particularly with the Plastic Ono Band record. It’s a sparse record, the opposite of what the Beatles were doing. Yoko and I still keep in touch. I was invited to her tower of light ceremony [the Imagine Peace Tower in October 2007] in Reykjavik, which was very moving. It was fascinating because Yoko had a letter from John in which he said he’s seen the day when she would be able to do it. I love that.

16 WORKING CLASS HERO
From the album, John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band (December 1970)
Brutal dissection of class, fame and religion furiously delivered by Lennon, armed only with an acoustic guitar.

John Lydon: The Beatles were poisoned for me when I was young because my mum and dad played them all the time, so it would drill into my head like rusty nails. You know what I mean? “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah…” It’s hard to get that stuff out of your head. I remember hearing “Working Class Hero” while I was in a pub with Malcolm McLaren, about 1975, when we were just starting the Pistols. He took us across the road for one drink each – ah, so kind that man! – and “Working Class Hero” was on the jukebox. It stuck in my mind, because it was such a relevant and important record. I’d heard it beforehand, but then it didn’t mean much. This time I related to it. The anger and the bitterness seemed utterly genuine, the words came out with such passion and violence. That was part of the building block for me, of songwriting in the Pistols. That you could shift into these larger aspects – class hatred, anger, resentment – and get it right.

15 HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER)
John & Yoko/The Plastic Ono Band With The Harlem Community Choir single (November 1972). Highest chart position: 2
“Happy Xmas (War is Over)” inverts the usual pop bromide of the Christmas single, posing the question: “And what have you done?”…

Yoko Ono: There’s a funny story about “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”. We were writing it in a New York hotel over breakfast, and we’d just completed it. Then a call came from George [Harrison], who wanted him to perform in the Bangladesh concert and John said no. I think George wanted John to perform on his own, not with me, but John could not say that to me. He didn’t want to hurt me. He said: “At the drop of a hat, you want to sing.” I said: “I’d like to sing.” John got so angry he didn’t know what to do. He can’t tell me about it. I said: “How dare you say no to a charity concert,” not knowing the situation.

By the time he and I made up, we’d forgotten about the song. And then it was getting very near to Christmas – “Oh, that song, we have to put it out because it’s so important.” Allen Klein [manager] said: “It’s too late.” John was adamant and, of course, it did make it. When we made the song, John was saying, “This is going to replace ‘White Christmas’.” But it just disappeared. Now it’s different. So I was thinking: John, do you see what’s happening? You were right. This one really says it. I think that people of our generation like this more [than other Christmas perennials] – it’s something to hang on to.

14 A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
The Beatles single (July 1964). Highest UK chart position: 1
2 minutes 32 seconds of pure, adrenalised pop, introduced by the most famous opening chord in pop history…

Roger McGuinn, The Byrds: When we got The Byrds together, we wanted to be a Mersey-type band. When we went to see the Hard Day’s Night movie, it was a life-changing event. We took notes on what they were wearing and tried to emulate them as closely as we could. Once we’d met The Beatles, I realised we’d superimposed certain things on to them. We thought they were coming more from the bohemian side, but they were still very hip. We had a lot in common. We all did LSD, pot and amphetamines. I thought Lennon was an incredible songwriter. On “A Hard Day’s Night”, the arpeggio fade was really interesting, as well as that big opening chord. That song is a great indicator of what they were up to at that stage.

Back then, hanging out with other bands was like being in a secret brotherhood. I remember George sending a tape of “If I Needed Someone” to tell me he got the idea from “The Bells Of Rhymney”. I think Lennon got the idea for wearing the granny glasses from me. I saw him in London and he said “What’s with the shades?” I was wearing those little rectangular ones. I got the idea from John Sebastian. I saw him in the Village one night wearing them. He told me to try them on: “Look up at the street lights and move your head around. It’s really groovy, man!”

13 POWER TO THE PEOPLE
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band single (March 1971). Highest UK chart position: 7
Ebullient sequel to “Revolution” sparked by an interview with Red Mole magazine in 1971. The rousing chorus was specifically designed to be sung for street demonstrations.

John Sinclair, ex-manager of the MC5: The first I knew of John was when he came down to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to play a concert to get me out of prison [the Free John Now Rally on December 10, 1971]. That was some first impression. Then my wife and I went to New York to say thank you. We sat around, smoked joints and shot the shit. He was a sweet guy, regular and down to earth. He was an intellectual. He wrote strange and twisted books and made movies. And John was a great composer. What more could you ask for? He saved my life. I loved the guy. I admired his solo work. He had that jacket from The Beatles, which on the one hand made him fabulously wealthy but at the same time shrunk his mental world. I loved “Power To The People”. This was something he believed in, and there was this whole concept of making records that expressed how he felt and he could get that over to millions of people. The impressive thing was that he was a rich guy trying to reach out to the other side and be one of the people. He was trying to figure out a way to be honest with himself. And that’s what an artist does.

12 IMAGINE
Taken from the John Lennon album, Imagine (October 1971); released as a single October 1975. Highest UK chart position: 7
Written in one morning, with a lyric inspired by Yoko’s 1964 book Grapefruit, “Imagine” espoused a utopian dream after the gritty realism of Plastic Ono Band…

Peter Tork, The Monkees: Unlike McCartney, who retreated into domestic treacle, Lennon came at me, talking about – however naively – the world situation. He wanted to work on issues of world peace and international interaction. In other words, instead of writing the “Fuck you, bitch” songs he might have written to be nasty, he started writing songs about “imagine” – just imagine, and war is over if you want it, the Bed-Ins, everything. He was interested in the political aspects of his behaviour and for me as an audience, that was a stride forward, not a retreat.

Mick Jagger: My favourite Lennon song? “Imagine”, I should think. Because it’s the most catchy. I mean, there are many others, obviously, but that’s one that I like.

Neil Young: I did “Imagine” for a benefit show because I love that song. It’s apparently religious but not in the way you think – because that’s not always a good thing. You could say it’s holy, but not Christian, and it tells the right story. A story that was right for those circumstances.

11 ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
From The Beatles album, Let It Be (May 1970)
“One of the best lyrics I’ve ever written” according to Lennon. Composed on a late night songwriting roll, with added orchestra and celestial choir courtesy of producer Phil Spector.

Brian Wilson: My favourite Lennon song is “Across The Universe”. It had a great guitar sound. It flipped me out when I first heard it. And I thought his voice was especially good. He must have either taken some drugs or really concentrated hard, because he got a very special vocal sound on that one. The other thing was the lyrics. They were so heavenly [sings the chorus]. And they were most likely drug-inspired. I thought they were really great. People say that song reminds them of The Beach Boys, but not to me. It’s unique.

10 I AM THE WALRUS
From The Beatles EP, “Magical Mystery Tour” (December 1967); released as the B-side to “Hello Goodbye”, November 1967.
Lennon’s most out-there composition, written after he learned pupils at his old school were studying his lyrics. “Let the fuckers work that one out,” he apparently said…

Neil Innes, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band/The Rutles: At the end of Magical Mystery Tour, we had this party where the Bonzos got up and did their bit. John dressed as a biker, with a leather jacket and brylcreamed hair. When Larry [“Legs” Smith] came out wearing false breasts, John was shouting out “C’mon Larry, we’ve all seen them already!” We ended up having a jam with The Beach Boys, who were also there, doing “Oh Carol” for 20 minutes.

“I Am The Walrus” is code for what The Beatles understood about one another, the rest was Lear-like fun. You have to admire that grinding, angry melody. Most people would have put that anger into some kind of shouting, but this is mean and driving. I didn’t want to play John in The Rutles. It was daunting because he was sharp-tongued, quick and very funny. We forget the Bed-In was a satire of the advertising world. He wanted to make an advert for something as abstract as love. Everyone thought he was mad, but he wasn’t. He was just another bloody art student! Somebody apparently asked John what he thought of the Rutles, and he started singing “Cheese & Onions”.

“Questionnaire” was a tribute to John. That song was the only reason I went ahead with [Rutles’ 1996 follow-up] Archaeology. I’d been to see George about doing a second Rutles album and his dark humour immediately came to the fore: “More Rutles? Which one of you is going to get shot?” But he said we should go ahead and do it, because it was all part of the soup.

9 COLD TURKEY
Plastic Ono Band single (October 1969). Highest UK chart position: 14
“Thirty-six hours/rolling in pain” – Lennon’s fierce hymn to kicking heroin is a chilling musical counterpart to the primal scream therapy he and Yoko undertook with psychologist Arthur Janov.

Bob Gruen, photographer: When we first met, in ’72, he was making Some Time In New York City. He was very cool, grounded and very warm to his friends. A few months later, in the summer, he started rehearsing for the One To One concert at Madison Square Garden [August 1972]. By this time, we were getting to know each other. But when you heard that voice come through, it put a chill up your spine. Suddenly it wasn’t my New York buddy any more, it was a Beatle. Oh my God, it’s that John Lennon! But we’d been so comfortable and natural together that suddenly hearing The Beatles’ songs made you see him in a different way.

“Cold Turkey” was extremely powerful and, like many of his songs, very personal. And his contemporaries understood the feeling in the lyrics and what “Cold Turkey” is all about. It expresses that brilliantly. When they did it live at Madison Square Garden, it’s my favourite version. It was absolutely chilling to see him start screaming and mimicking the suffering you go through when you go through drug withdrawal. You just want and want and want and there’s no way to satisfy that. Everything hurts and you’d promise anybody anything to take yourself out of this hell.

8 REVOLUTION
B-side to The Beatles single, “Hey Jude” (August 1968)
Inspired, perhaps, by the student riots in Paris during May 1968, this loud, fuzz-heavy track featured Stones collaborator Nicky Hopkins on keyboards.

Tommy Smothers, co-host of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: I first met John in 1968. I was invited to the launch for the White Album. Then they picked our show to premiere “Hey Jude”. Later, I played on “Give Peace A Chance”. The funniest thing about recording it was that we were sitting playing and John stops, turns to me and says: “Hey Tom, I don’t like what you’re playing. Just do exactly what I’m doing. That’s the sound I want.” I think I was doing D or G and putting a passing chord in here and there.

Harry Nilsson was a buddy of mine and he’d started hanging out with John. Because of the television show, I had to be straight, but Harry and John were doing nose-blow and cognac. Around 1970, my brother Dick and I were making the show in LA and Harry and John came and ripped into us, throwing stuff and yelling things. They thought they were helping me! The next day, they sent me flowers. John never did things halfway. I loved “Revolution”. Musically, it was cool, but I loved the wordplay: “solution… evolution… contribution… constitution”. But if John was around today and could see what’s happening, he might have wished he’d changed those lines: “Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?” It was appropriate at the time because a lot of Americans got out there and protested. “Revolution” summed up that era.

7 GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
Plastic Ono Band single (June 1969). Highest UK chart position: 2
Recorded during the Montreal Bed-In, the climactic shout-out to “Timmy Leary, Tommy Cooper, Allen Ginsberg, Hare Krishna” added a typically dry touch of humour to this call for world peace.

Julian Cope: As someone who loathes The Beatles but realises that it’s me who’s out of step, I love Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band period, when he was reinventing himself as an American countercultural icon. Liverpool shares a lot with Detroit, and around this time Lennon was at his most Detroit-informed. Look at his song titles – “Come Together” was borrowed from the MC5, as was “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. He wanted to do the Bed-In in Detroit but they wouldn’t let him, so he had to do it on the other side of the Windsor Bridge, in Toronto.

He’s often mocked around this period – all that Che Guevara posturing – but I think the only way you can get anywhere, politically, is by making ludicrous demands that are impossible to achieve. When he sings “Give Peace A Chance” or “Power To The People” an entire generation was having to think – even if only momentarily – of a new world paradigm, be it feminism, revolutionary socialism, or peace.

6 IN MY LIFE
From The Beatles album, Rubber Soul (December 1965)
Nostalgic, even in 1965, for a world he’d already left far behind, “In My Life” took on the form of a personal epitaph following Lennon’s death.

Alex Turner, Arctic Monkeys: I’ve always loved that tune. I think it might be my mum and dad’s favourite Beatles tune too, it’s got that harmonium solo on it, with George Martin playing. “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” is probably our favourite Beatles tune as a band. Do I prefer Lennon to McCartney? Yeah, that goes without saying. I was watching that Gimme Some Truth film the other day, when he’s playing that tune that’s supposed to be about McCartney, “How Do You Sleep?” He plays it on the piano to George Harrison and its like he’s growling. It’s mad to look at that and think that’s where it went. And they’re talking about the Beatles around the table, taking the piss out of the whole thing, saying: “So have you seen any of The Beatles…?” “From one Beatle to another…” Probably to them it did get to be a joke. I bet they did always take the piss out of it. It’s like that with us, we already take the piss out of ourselves.

5 YOU’VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY
From The Beatles album, Help! (August 1965)
Vulnerable, acoustic ballad – perhaps inspired by Dylan’s “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)” – written and recorded in just two hours.

Ray Davies: When he got killed, I was doing the Palladium in New York a week or so later. I wanted to play this. I copped out because I couldn’t rehearse it with The Kinks, and in those days I had to do everything with them. Me and Dave should’ve just got up and done it on acoustic guitars. John could be a cruel man. He was very hurtful to me once, early on. But this is my favourite song by him because it shows the vulnerability he felt he had to press down, back then; the softness he had to hide.

4 ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE
The Beatles single (July 1967). Highest UK chart position: 1
The defining statement for a generation, famously beamed into homes around the globe through a live TV broadcast featuring many famous friends.

Billy Bragg: For Lennon, it’s pretty un-cynical. He often leavened his political songs with a bit of cynicism, as was his way. But here he’s talking about the one thing that typified his generation. Songs had previously only addressed love in purely relationship terms, and “All You Need Is Love” suddenly takes on the status of a global movement. As with the greatest political songs, like “The Times They Are A-Changin'” or “Blowin’ In The Wind”, it doesn’t offer a solution, so you can bring your own perspective to it. The political songs that endure are the most accessible to people, and this is incredibly accessible, isn’t it? “There’s no-one you can save that can’t be saved”. That’s a pretty powerful line to put in a love song. That song showed me that the most commercial band of the Sixties were able to reflect what was happening in the world, that pop music wasn’t about escapism.

After Sgt Pepper had blown everybody’s mind, to come back in the Summer Of Love with that song and for it to be broadcast all around the world as the message from a generation – “All you need is love” – Lennon created the high water mark of the Sixties. What happens next is Epstein dies within a month and The Beatles just lose their innocence, that ability to turn everything they touch into gold. Magical Mystery Tour gets a right spanking, although the songs are great. And then in 1968, Martin Luther King is killed, Bobby Kennedy is killed. The White Album is a clear message that something’s not right now. Where do you go “After All You Need Is Love”?

3 INSTANT KARMA
John Lennon single (February 1970). Highest UK chart position: 5
Written, recorded and released in 10 days, “Karma” illustrated the volcanic rush of ideas experienced by the newly-free Beatle. “We wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch, and we’re putting it out for dinner!” he announced…

Chris Frantz, Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club: I distinctly remember the first time I heard it, driving across the Highland Park Bridge in Pittsburgh, and this fantastic heavy drum sound came on the radio. I turned it up and thought, ‘Wow, this is cool’ and was surprised to hear Lennon’s voice. I was a big fan of The Beatles, but I guess by that time they’d broken up and I was more interested in experimental stuff. I certainly wasn’t looking to Beatles solo projects as a source of inspiration, but that track caught my attention. I’m a sucker for the production, the shuffle beat of the drums, with plenty of gated reverb on the mikes, and that echo on the vocal. The message of the lyric – emphasising a personal spiritual odyssey – is wonderful, but the appeal is more about the production, which I suppose was all Phil Spector’s work. The song is so highly rhythmic and heavy.

2 YER BLUES
From The Beatles album, The Beatles (November, 1968)
Taut, Dylan-referencing slice of dues-payin’, sex’n’death blues – a fuck-you to the more purist critics.

Frank Black, Pixies: Someone in the British music press had commented that it was too bad The Beatles would never be able to tackle the blues. And John Lennon was so incensed that he set about proving them wrong. “Yer Blues” has a lot of rhythm and blues moves, almost showbiz style. The tempo changes and even some of the guitar motifs are like that. There’s one descending guitar line that’s almost humorous, but it has a beautiful grit to it. But then to balance it out, the main guitar riff is just scary.

Call me a stupid white guy, but that guitar line is as scary and provocative as anything you’re going to hear on a Howlin’ Wolf record. It’s totally legitimate. There’s nothing white about it at all. It has so much attitude and confidence. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Yeah, I know I’m really bad. Get the fuck out of my way.” That combination of strength and swagger is what makes it so powerful, elevating it to the next level. The lyric is just beautiful, contemporary and modern. I mean, he references Bob Dylan in it. That line [sings] “If I ain’t dead already / Ooh girl you know the reason why” is just so fucking bad. It’s sexual, but references death at the same time. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Some years later, Ringo had a hit with a song that went “Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues” [“It Don’t Come Easy”] and “Yer Blues” is a perfect example of The Beatles doing that. When they played The Star Club in Hamburg all those years before, four or five sets a night on speed and trying to keep drunk servicemen happy, that’s where they really paid their dues. Some of those Star Club recordings came out here in the US as a double-live album and it was one of the first records I had as a kid. You can hear it all in there. They were tough motherfuckers.

1 STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
The Beatles single (February 1967). Highest UK chart position: 2
Written while on location in Spain filming Richard Lester’s How I Won The War, this stylised portrait of Lennon’s youth remains British pop’s most timeless moment…

Paul Weller: Lennon’s a singer I admire not so much for the technical side but for the honesty and power. I was listening to “Don’t Stand Me Down” and he was just letting go on that track. I love it. And songs like “Twist And Shout”, “Money”, “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and “Bad Boy” really put him up there as one of the great rock’n’ roll bawlers. They sound like he was gargling with razor blades before recording ’em. The flipside, of course, is songs like “Jealous Guy” and “Beautiful Boy” which show the more sensitive, soulful side to his voice. He’s been a massive influence on me right across the board… as a writer, lyricist and singer.

There are so many of Lennon’s tracks that I think are absolutely amazing. I’m currently into some of the less obvious ones like “Remember Love” [B-side of “Give Peace A Chance”]. But when it comes down to it, “Strawberry Fields Forever” is my all time favourite. I can still remember when I first heard it on the radio; I was only nine at the time. I didn’t know anything about drugs or psychedelia, I just knew it was a great, great tune. I was already well into pop music. My mum was quite young and she was still buying records – so I’d already absorbed the Beatles and The Kinks, but that song just blew me away, it took me to a different place. I only had four teachers at school – John, Paul, George and Ringo – but you could say my education really started with “Strawberry Fields”. I got really into them after that.

I remember being desperate to watch Magical Mystery Tour when it was first on TV – Boxing Day 1967. My mum and dad wanted to watch some crappy film on ITV, so I’d switch the TV over during the ad breaks to see it! That was the extent of my authority over the TV back then! From that point on I was obsessed. We had relations in Chester, and one time I went on a pilgrimage over to Liverpool with my dad. We went to Menlove Avenue, and Paul’s house in Allerton, but we never made it to Strawberry Fields itself, sadly.

Technically, the production on “Strawberry Fields” is phenomenal. There was a documentary on a few months ago where bands tried to recreate the tracks played on Sgt Pepper using the original gear with engineer Geoff Emerick, and it showed how difficult it must have been to make. There was no Pro Tools or any of that business – if you got it wrong you had to start again, it was as simple as that.

For me, it’s the first psychedelic record. People talk about “See My Friends” by The Kinks, but “Strawberry Fields” is far more experimental. George Martin did a brilliant job editing together the two different sections; the key change in the middle is amazing. I still always return to it. It’s one of those tracks where you still hear something new every time you hear it, it’s got so many textures. For me it’s still unsurpassed.

INTERVIEWS BY MICHAEL BONNER, CAROL CLERK, STEPHEN DALTON, NICK HASTED, ROB HUGHES, JOHN LEWIS, ALASTAIR McKAY, PAUL MOODY, TOM PINNOCK AND JOHN ROBINSON

This article was originally published in the January 2008 issue of Uncut

Covers still play a party in the project, however. Often Berninger will send the most difficult songs he can find to his band – Radiohead’s “Kid A” or Nirvana’s “All Apologies”, which makes it into that evening’s set. “I get to soundcheck and they’ve figured them out,” he said. “Part of going solo is a way to undo the package of what Matt Berninger the lead singer of The National is. Complicate that.” 

Berninger laid out more of his norm-shattering methods – writing lyrics on whiteboards in indelible ink, or around baseballs. “I’ve been doing that the past few years just to make the process fun and get my phone out of my hand,” he confided. “The baseball helps me slow my brain down. The words go left and they go right and literally bump into each other in exciting ways and I’ll have to write in a spiral until I run out of room. The baseball is editing me by nature of its physical limitations. I can’t write a super-long song on a baseball.”

He gave one of his more colourful balls to The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper, but should really have read it first. “It was called ‘Fuck Swimming’. A few days later he was like, ‘Matt, you realise most of the stuff you’ve written on this thing is about urine?’ Maybe I should’ve given him a different one.”

A diversion into the New York scene of the early 2000s had Berninger learning his art on tour with The Walkmen (“ferocious live”) and almost having his girlfriend stolen by Julian Casablancas in the Mars Bar (“just by staring at her, and it almost worked. He didn’t have to say a word. I was like, ‘I’m gonna have to write better songs’”) before audience questions brought the chat to an elevated level. “What’s your favourite cake?” asked a small girl in row five. “My mom just made the simplest cake,” Berninger revealed. “It’s just like, basic yellow cake with butter and cinnamon on it. I dream of it all the time.”

“Possible Side Effects” might appear to be all jocular bile and surreal digression – involving an acid-imbibed visit to Legoland and an offer to replace a missing tile on Alan Sugar’s roof – but it’s a spidery break-up ballad with desperation at its root. It finds a companion (in song, that is) in “Don’t Get Me Wrong Yvonne”, whose upbeat demeanour masks an unsettling tale of stalker-ish obsession. “Goodbye Sam, Hello Samaritans” is similarly subversive, managing to offset Blackwell’s knack for playful rhyme – “I saw Badly Drawn Boy in a badly parked car/With a badly grazed elbow” – with creeping despair. As with much of his songwriting, there’s depth, nuance and a sheltered humanity at work here.

Further proof that All Asimov… isn’t just playing for laughs arrives with “Birmos In The Cowshed”. Set to a deliberately nostalgic Pistols groove, it’s narrated by a pensioner with a tenuous grasp of the present who takes solace from vivid recollections of his younger days, hanging out with mates at the football, silk scarves on the wrist. ‘Birmos’, incidentally, refers to Birmingham bags, the high-waisted trouser popularised in the ’70s.

Elsewhere though, there’s untrammelled mirth. “Record Store Day” takes a swipe at the industry’s flag day: “Extortion on a levеl you can hardly conceive/Tarted up in a fibreglass sleeve”. “No-One Likes A Polymath” finds Isaac Asimov nurturing a prize allotment somewhere in the North Downs, his insufferable smugness (“Heated gilet and the statement scarf”) necessitating a visit from a vengeful mob. And exactly what sparked “McCalliog And His Hens” – about a poultryman and his telepathic leghorns who crack cases for the Devon CID – is anybody’s guess.

But nothing quite prepares you for doom-folk saga “Falmouth Electrics”. Its newly redundant chronicler buys a ventriloquist dummy, adds ear-piercings and eyeliner, then notices its resemblance to Pete Murphy. Parading down Falmouth high street towards HMV, and unable to pronounce the letter ‘B’, the doll invents its catchphrase: “Have you got any Gauhaus?” Needless to say, things don’t turn out well. It’s brilliant. If this record doesn’t move you on any level, you really do have a wooden heart.

1 Friendship
Betty Ford
We start our seventh volume of Sounds Of The New West with this fine cut from the Philadelphia group’s fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Dan Wriggins weaves a mini-movie, inspired by watching a documentary on the life of the former First Lady, while behind him the group are laidback and ramshackle in all the right ways.

2 Case Oats
Bitter Root Lake
The Chicago duo of Casey Walker and Spencer Tweedy have, with Last Missouri Exit, made one of the strongest debut albums of 2025 so far. Here’s a highlight from it, a steady alt.country charmer that recalls Bright Eyes at their best, especially in Walker’s hallucinatory lyrics.

3 Eve Adams
Death Valley Forever
This is the closing track of Adams’ new album American Dust, inspired by the lonesome, isolated desert landscape in the American Southwest region she calls home. Over a waltzing rhythm, piano and layered backing vocals, a reverb-soaked harmonica calls to mind the mirages of California’s Death Valley.

4 Horsebath
Hard To Love
Best not let the name put you off, for these Canadian cowboys are well worth corralling. On their debut album Another Farewell they marshall honky-tonk barroom piano, pedal steel and twanging Telecasters to create something halfway between the Buckaroos and the Stones.

5 Souled American
Sorry State
These underground legends of alternative Americana are due back with a new and long-awaited album, Sanctions, at some point in the future, and this track will be on it. “Sorry State” may not be as translucent and desperately drifting as the time-stretching songs on 1996’s Notes Campfire, but it still staggers enchantingly under Chris Grigoroff’s raw vocals.

6 Eli Winter
Black Iris On A Burning Quilt
This Houston-born, Chicago-based guitarist released a fine record of expansive instrumental guitar, A Trick Of The Light, earlier this year. Closing it is this near-eight-minute epic, which moves from fingerpicked prettiness to a distorted meltdown and finally a beatific spiritual jazz coda.

7 Slow Motion Cowboys
Invisible Stars
New Orleans’ Slow Motion Cowboys unveiled their stunning Wolf Of Saint Elmo in April, and here’s the opening track, a wonderfully melancholic gem that recalls prime Lambchop or Neil Young at his most country. Margo Cilker’s a fan, and has covered this song live.

8 Anna Tivel
Airplane To Nowhere
Born in Washington State, Tivel moved to Portland, Oregon at 18 and has swiftly built up a strong back catalogue over the last decade or so. Her new album Animal Poem is a quiet marvel, mixing folk, country and jazz, the result resembling a more rustic Big Thief.

9 Wednesday
Pick Up That Knife
Bleeds is the sixth album from the Asheville group – led by Karly Hartzman and featuring MJ Lenderman – and perhaps their best so far. They’re rooted in the humid drawl of Americana if filtered through the lens of Pavement’s “Father To A Sister Of Thought”, and occasionally obliterated by waves of hardcore distortion.

10 Shrunken Elvis
An Old Outlet
On their self-titled debut album, Spencer Cullum, Rich Ruth and Sean Thompson – all solo artists in their own right – come together to produce some thrilling ambient Americana. At times it’s as if Harmonia had recorded by the Mississippi rather than the Weser, with Cullum’s pedal steel drifting weightlessly above the synths, drum machines and fluid lead guitar lines.

11 Julianna Riolino
Seed
This Toronto singer-songwriter is gearing up to release her second album, Echo In The Dust, in late October; her music is rooted in Americana, sure, but she cuts it with ragged garage on the likes of “On A Bluebird’s Wing” and, here, swinging R&B balladry with a magnificently raw vocal.

12 Florry
Big Something
Coming together in Philadelphia and then exploding across the country, the seven-piece Florry still managed to team up to record this tattered, torn and tremendous third LP. Over acoustic guitars, drums and fiddle, the group tap into something strange and visceral, best exemplified by Francie Medosch’s fevered yowls.

13 Sally Anne Morgan
Eye Is The First
There can be something deeply weird about folk music, and Sally Anne Morgan knows that better than most. On her latest record, Second Circle The Horizon, she carries on the Appalachian folk tradition with piercing electric guitar picking, field recordings, fiddle and all manner of unique instruments – the result is spellbinding and often eerie.

14 Jeffrey Martin
Edge Of Lost
2023’s Thank God We Left The Garden was a striking return from the Portland-based musician; here’s a recent, and gorgeous, one-off single that continues the stark, confessional vibes. When he sings about feeling “so far down”, there’s no option but to believe him completely.

15 Joseph Decosimo
Glory In The Meetinghouse
North Carolina’s Decosimo is an expert in ‘old-time music’, and has lent his instrumental talents to recordings by Hiss Golden Messenger, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Wye Oak and more. Fiery Gizzard is the latest missive from his explorations; this piece mixes a fiddle jig with foreboding drones and rattling percussion, the Appalachian undergrowth suddenly feeling very close.

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Neither of them, however, can evoke in their words either the crackling tension that accompanied that first show – after which Springsteen skipped the party and went straight back to his hotel room, suffering, he says, from a form of PTSD – nor the sense of relief, relaxation and joy that suffused the second one, six days later. And there’s no one to describe how, on his next visit to London in 1981, he opened the first of his six nights at Wembley Arena by tearing into “Born To Run” with his eyes closed, in a spasm of catharsis.

But there are more good stories in the film, and one of the best comes from Rob Heron, a Durham miner, and his wife Juliana, who helped with a women’s support group for the striking colliers. What Juliana remembers of attending the first UK date of the 1981 tour, at Newcastle City Hall, is one of her fellow organisers being summoned to Bruce’s dressing room during the interval and returning with a cheque for $20,000 for the support fund from the man who’d written songs about devastated industrial communities and ruined lives.

It was in 1987 that Sarfraz Manzoor, a 16-year-old in Luton, discovered Springsteen and found in the song “Independence Day” something that helped him overcome a difficult relationship with his own father. In 2019, by then a distinguished journalist and broadcaster, Manzoor co-wrote Blinded By The Light, a feature film directed by Gurinder Chadha, who first heard Born To Run while doing at Saturday job in Harrods’ record department as a teenager.

These people – along with longtime fanzine editor Dan French, Sting, the comedian Rob Bryden (who kept a Springsteen scrapbook), the promoter Harvey Goldsmith, the journalist David Hepworth, the E Street stalwart Steve Van Zandt and Springsteen’s managers both past (Mike Appel) and present (Jon Landau) – form a mosaic of voices dropped in amid the relevant clips of live performances.

Those shows in Hammersmith represented a big step: they were the band’s first performances after spending two years in clubs like Paul’s Mall in Boston, the Bottom Line in New York and the Troubadour in West Hollywood. A thread implicit in When Bruce Springsteen Came To Britain is an inexorable upscaling across 50 years, from theatres to stadiums to the biggest arenas available. The miracle of its central figure is how, while expending so much energy on growing his audience around the world, he seems to have hung on to his own sense of a very human scale. It’s an affectionate and admiring film, and none the worse for that.

When Bruce Springsteen Came To Britain airs on BBC Two on May 31 and on iPlayer afterwards

UK ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Elles Bailey – Beneath The Neon Glow
Hannah White – Sweet Revolution
Kathryn Williams & Withered Hand – Willson Williams
Nina Nesbitt – Mountain Music 
The Hanging Stars – On A Golden Shore
The Heavy Heavy – One of a Kind

UK SONG OF THE YEAR
Blue Rose Code – “Sadie”
Brown Horse – “Stealing Horses”
Jack Francis – “Failure”
Nina Nesbitt – “Pages”
Our Man In The Field – “L’Etranger”
Robert Vincent – “Follow What You Love and Love Will Follow”

UK INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR
Ashley Campbell
Henry Senior Jr
Joe Coombs
Joe Harvey White
Joe Wilkins
Keiron Marshall

INTERNATIONAL ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Bonny Light Horseman
Charley Crockett
Jason Isbell
Larkin Poe
Sierra Ferrell
Waxahatchee

INTERNATIONAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR
American Aquarium – The Fear Of Standing Still
Bonny Light Horseman – Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Woodland
Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well
Kyshona – Legacy 
Willie Watson – Willie Watson 

INTERNATIONAL SONG OF THE YEAR
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – “Empty Trainload of Sky”
Hurray For The Riff Raff – “Buffalo” 
Julian Taylor & Allison Russell – “Pathways”
Kyshona – “The Echo”
Lizzie No – “The Heartbreak Store”
Sierra Ferrell – “American Dreaming”

LIVE ACT OF THE YEAR
Ben Ottewell & Ian Ball (of Gomez)
Campbell Jensen
Danny & The Champions of the World 
Kezia Gill 
Lola Kirke
Morganway
Savannah Gardner
Skinny Lister
The Heavy Heavy
Wunderhorse

Jones hasn’t stopped working since. He has released eight albums – most recently Bad Luck & The Blues – and won numerous awards. He’s also toured with the likes of Ringo Starr – a huge thrill for a Liverpudlian – as well as Buddy Guy and Status Quo. He’s enjoyed success in the Netherlands, where he developed a loyal fanbase and it’s here that he experienced a memorable jam with Buddy Guy.

“Buddy is like the Liam Gallagher of the blues,” says Jones. “He was so rock’n’roll. He was throwing plectrums into the audience while I was playing and loving the fact he didn’t have to do any work because I was there. We did ‘Strange Brew’ because he knew I liked Clapton, then went into ‘Miss You’. While we were playing, he walked off stage and got into his limo. He waved goodbye and drove off. He was back at the hotel before I ended the set. Later, I looked at the plectrum he’d given me and he’d written, ‘Buddy Guy, thank you, go fuck yourself.’ I loved it!”

Since signing with Marshall for his 2022 album Destination Unknown, Jones has revelled in the freedom the label has provided, allowing him to self-produce and forge his own direction. For Bad Luck & The Blues he pared his group back to a trio and recorded them live at the Marshall Studio in Milton Keynes, eager to capture some of the prowling energy of those classic power trios. “I love the look and sound of a power trio,” he says. “There’s nowhere to hide. When we had the keyboard, I was always having to play around it but now I have so much space and freedom. The sound is so big. How do you do that? You need a couple of Marshall stacks and you need to turn them up loud but it’s also about the style of the songs, with the writing driven by guitar rather than piano or vocal. That makes a huge difference.”

Jones had previously recorded most of his albums abroad so loved having the opportunity to record in the UK in a studio that he says was “a real step up” thanks to Marshall’s sourcing of vintage equipment, from the mics and amps to the Neve console. His dream was to capture his live sound in the studio, which means his natural desire to combine classic pop melodies with improvised solos. And his love of The Cure hasn’t gone away either – during one song, “In Too Deep”, he will drop in a little reference to “A Forest”, much to the delight of knowing fans. It’s a reminder that for all the focus on genres, music should never be put in a box. 

“I grew up with the blues and my playing is very bluesy, but my themes are more contemporary and my songwriting is very diverse,” he says. “I’m trying to bring a younger audience into the blues because it can be very purist, but for me, it’s all about the songwriting, the solos and playing my guitar. That’s what excites me.”

City To City: Liverpool

Laurence Jones takes us on a musical history tour of his hometown haunts

Gazing out over the Mersey from Liverpool docks towards distant Birkenhead, Laurence Jones is thrilled to be back in his home city. His family moved to Warwickshire before he reached double figures, but Jones was moulded by Liverpool and still considers himself a Scouser at heart. Even after leaving the city, he returned throughout his youth to visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and this is where he made some of his first live appearances, playing the city’s network of Labour clubs, performing the blues on guitar between the meat raffle and a stand-up comedian. 

“That’s one thing I really like about Liverpool, it provides a natural progression so you can start in the bars and Labour clubs, and then move up to bigger venues like The Cavern,” he says. “Then you can keep going. There’s the Epstein Theatre, where we supported King King, and the Philharmonic Hall, which has two rooms and is where I played with Status Quo. You can keep going up to the Arena, all the way to Anfield. That’s what made it great to grow up around here. But you have to be tough. It’s hard growing up in the shadow of The Beatles as it means the audiences have very high expectations. It’s a hard fanbase but one of the best as it can be very rowdy and very loyal.”

Images of The Beatles are everywhere in Liverpool. After posing by a statue of the Fab Four at the dock we head towards Mathew Street, home of The Cavern. This alleyway could be the closest thing England has to Memphis’s Beale Street or New Orleans’ French Quarter, a charismatic strip of clubs and bars, with neon lights and live music pounding from every doorway to attract tourists. There are more statues – of Cilla Black as well as John Lennon – plus a wall of bricks with the names of every act that played The Cavern. 

The original Cavern Club was demolished in the 1970s before being excavated and reopened in 1984 on a location that covered 70 per cent of its original site. That is authentic enough to attract legions of tourists down the dark stairs into The Cavern’s musty interior for regular gigs. Facing it across Mathew Street is the latest iteration of Eric’s, the legendary punk venue that hosted The Clash, the Ramones, the Pistols and Talking Heads, as well as providing a crucible for Liverpool’s fertile post-punk scene. Mathew Street is also home to the Beatles Museum, which Jones remembers visiting with a
much-missed uncle.

Mathew Street’s reinvention as one of the country’s premier music destinations is typical of Liverpool’s resilience. Jones recently played a show at the Salt And Tar in Bootle, a new 3,000-capacity outdoor venue that occupies the unpromising site of an old car park overlooked by high-rise flats. “I love that about Liverpool,” he says. “They can make something good out of any situation, even an old car park.”

It was at this show that Jones played many of the rockers from his recent album Bad Luck & The Blues. He’d written these at home and then played the demos through his Marshall Bluetooth Middleton speaker. “I love the Bluetooth speaker because they’re portable and easy to use, and that’s important because I’m not very techy,” he says, while his wife and manager Amy nods in agreement. “I really love the fact they look like an amp – you can even stack them, like
a proper Marshall! I use them when I’ve recorded my demos on the phone, because I can really blast it through the speakers and it’s very good at picking up the bass.”

From Mathew Street, we wander down to the tiny record shop,
Probe, which prides itself on being “the home of the underground”. As a child, Jones accompanied his music-loving father to The Musical Box, which was opened in 1947 and is one of the oldest record shops in the world. Customers included John Lennon and Pete Best, already local legends. Jones is a vinyl fan and vividly recalls the first time he heard “Just Like Heaven” on his dad’s stereo. “It’s my favourite song and on vinyl it can’t be beaten,” he says.

Probe hasn’t been around quite as long, having opened in 1971. Later that decade it became the centrepiece of Liverpool’s independent renaissance: shop assistants included Julian Cope, Courtney Love, Pete Burns and Pete Wylie. Founder Geoff Davies died in 2023, but the shop continues, with walls stacked with seven inches from independent bands new and old. While Jones flips through the racks, the shop’s manager quietly disappears into a back room and re-emerges with his pride and joy, a 1963 Jaguar. He hands it to Jones for a play, and soon the two of them are lost in the world of guitars. When Jones finally leaves Probe, he’s practically flying: it’s been another memorable day in the musical life of Liverpool.  

Of course, busy work can help rein in bleak thoughts about the state of things, a dynamic that plays out across Only God Was Above Us. “Blacken the sky and sharpen the axe/Forever cursed to live unrelaxed,” Koenig croons over crisp punk drumming on “Gen X Cops”, whose title nods to the comic Hong Kong action film franchise, while its lyrics suggest how subsequent generations kick social crises down the years, disastrously. The album ends on a hopeful note, rather self-awarely titled “Hope”. It’s a folksy invocation proposing that the only way forward is to, well, move forward. It may be realistically cold comfort, but it’s comfort nonetheless.

Cuffe and Taylor promoter Julian Murray added: “We’re excited to be working with Saul and Vanda on what is going to be a brilliant show.

“As well as raising money for an incredible charity, Music Feeds Lives will bring together musicians and fans who all have one goal, to help others.”

Music Feeds Live follows the two-day online festival held during lockdown in January 2021, which featured Liam Gallagher, Sam Smith, Fontaines DC and more on the line-up.

It raised £1million for food charity Fareshare and support organisations Help Musician and Stagehand.