Search results for Usher

Bob Dylan and his band setlist Usher Hall, Edinburgh, November 6, 2024:

All Along The Watchtower

It Ain’t Me, Babe

I Contain Multitudes

False Prophet

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Black Rider

My Own Version Of You

To Be Alone With You

Crossing The Rubicon

Desolation Row

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Watching The River Flow

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You

Mother Of Muses

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

Every Grain Of Sand

Speaking of the Super Bowl Halftime show honour, Usher said in statement (via Billboard): “It’s an honour of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list. I can’t wait to bring the world a show unlike anything else they’ve seen from me before. Thank you to the fans and everyone who made this opportunity happen. I’ll see you real soon.”

In a separate statement, Seth Dudowsky, the head of music for the NFL, added: “Usher is an icon whose music has left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape throughout his career, we couldn’t be more excited to have him headline this year’s Apple Music Super Bowl Half Time Show.

“We look forward to working with Usher, Roc Nation and Apple Music to bring fans another Halftime Show for the history books.”

In August, Usher told Billboard that it was “very hurtful” to learn of T-Pain’s experience. “It was very hurtful to know that he had experienced that kind of hardship in life. I wouldn’t wish that on any person. Private conversations for me have always been intended to uplift. But when or if people get pieces of it, they can always have some other interpretation,” he said.

Usher’s interview with Billboard also mentioned that the pair had since spoken and “were good”, however, their reunion onstage at the weekend appears to be the first public display of conciliation.

In other news, T-Pain accused Kanye West recently of stealing one of his “corny lines” for the ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ track ‘Dark Fantasy’.

“This song was inspired by wanting to teach my sons that it is ok for a man to feel emotions deeply and to cry,” said Usher in an Instagram post upon the song’s release.

“Like many men, I was raised to believe that we have to be “tough” and not show our vulnerability, which I don’t want to teach them. While I was shut in during the pandemic and watching the death of George Floyd, the ongoing slaughter of Black men and women, the protests and the events that unfolded, I became very connected to the wider universal feeling of hopelessness.

“Like many, I grew increasingly frustrated by how slow things have been to change.  I became very depressed thinking about all the sons who have lost their fathers to police brutality, social injustice and violence; the daughters and mothers too. So I returned to this song and realized it was intended for this time, so I finished it and here it is.”

View this post on Instagram

This song was inspired by wanting to teach my sons that it is ok for a man to feel emotions deeply and to cry. Like many men, I was raised to believe that we have to be “tough” and not show our vulnerability, which I don’t want to teach them. While I was shut in during the pandemic and watching the death of George Floyd, the ongoing slaughter of Black men and women, the protests and the events that unfolded, I became very connected to the wider universal feeling of hopelessness. Like many, I grew increasingly frustrated by how slow things have been to change.  I became very depressed thinking about all the sons who have lost their fathers to police brutality, social injustice and violence; the daughters and mothers too. So I returned to this song and realized it was intended for this time, so I finished it and here it is. Link in bio. I will be performing “I Cry” for the first time Saturday June 27 during @glblctzn’s #GlobalGoalUnite Concert, at 11am PT / 2pm ET on @youtube and 8pm on @nbc. My proceeds from the record will be donated to @lisc_hq in support of Black-owned small businesses and Black-led community organizations. ?Artwork by: My son Naviyd #icry #blm #blacklivesmatter

A post shared by Usher (@usher) on Jun 25, 2020 at 9:05pm PDT

“It Ain’t Me, Babe” follows “Watchtower”. “It sure ain’t me, babe,” Dylan sings, words ringing out over a minimalist piano jangle which veers into avant-garde pathways, till Keltner steers back to firm ground. “I play Beethoven… and Chopin,” Bob adds on “I Contain Multitudes”, but his sometimes discordant piano strays closer to jazz, where Keltner follows him with delicate attentiveness, running the ship between them.

This is also often the closest Dylan has been to rock for many years. His piano shoots “False Prophet” somewhere tumultuous, Keltner essays stormy rolls,and Britt’s lightning-bolt guitar recalls the sound made by Robbie Robertson here a lifetime ago. There’s an Elvis shiver to his vocal on “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, Dylan’s harmonica solo echoing in from Oh Mercy’s swamps and followed by dark, slow stride piano. Britt’s fuzzed chords drop like controlled explosions into the heavy blues of “Crossing The Rubicon”, as Dylan considers heroes of his youth from Martin Luther King to Montgomery. The vigorous sound he’s plugged back into hilariously climaxes with “Desolation Row”. Students of his hide-and-seek chorus from “Like A Rolling Stone” circa 2019 will surely place this still higher among his iconoclastic rearrangements. Verses are hurled overboard to permit rocketing Rawhide rockabilly, Keltner’s rumbling toms maintaining the relentless pace, till Dylan’s final piano solo pulls the sound still tighter in this wild new place.

Dylan moves directly from this legendary address to “Key West”, a Rough And Rowdy Ways song of equal majesty. It’s an example of tonight’s other dominant mode, with Dylan’s voice and words front and centre, and the band in barely perceptible support. The song hangs suspended outside time, adjacent to its mystical Florida “horizon line”, as Dylan lays out lines with quiet inevitability. He swallowed words early in the show, but now every phrase, and his pride in them, is clear.

A little earlier, “My Own Version Of You” was revealed as another of his great epics in similar Bob-centric fashion. “I say to hell with all things that used to be,” he snarls during this Frankenstein tale like no song he or anyone has written before. “I can see the whole history of the human race…on your face,” he adds with relish, and you believe him. “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” begins with a dramatic, stark vocal flourish and clarion power, as Dylan plays sad cantina piano. His consistency of purpose and achievement across his whole career is set in relief by these past and present songs.

Along with pride in his songs and performance, there’s a modesty to Dylan and his band, heard in the way they vanish into the jump-blues drive of “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”, as infinitely timeless in its own way as “Key West”. Teenage Bob’s ambition was to join Little Richard’s band. Here for a few minutes, he has.

Dylan stands to preach “Every Grain Of Sand”, a Blakean prayer written by a Bob hitting 40 and hovering between faith and doubt, when “sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me.” He hits mighty gospel chords, then plays a harmonica solo whose giant, reverberating notes fill the hall. It might be the last time for all this one day. But not yet.

Bob Dylan and his band setlist Royal Albert Hall, November 13, 2024:

All Along The Watchtower

It Ain’t Me Babe

I Contain Multitudes

False Prophet

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Black Rider

My Own Version Of You

Crossing The Rubicon

Desolation Row

Key West (Philosopher Pirate)

Watching The River Flow

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You

Mother Of Muses

Goodbye Jimmy Reed

Every Grain Of Sand           

JONES: I first came to Europe with the Lionel Hampton band when I was in my early 20s. In 1957 Eddy Barclay offered me the job of musical director at Barclay Records in Paris, which was great firstly because I also got to study under Nadia Boulanger, who had been mentor to Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and many other classical musicians. She was the lady. I learned so much from her – in New York they wouldn’t let you arrange strings if you were black – only horns or rhythm section.

Paris at that time was hot. Bardot was 24, Jeanne Moreau 23, I got to meet people like Pablo Picasso and James Baldwin. Lots of American jazz musicians went and lived in Paris because they loved the freedom and respect they got compared to back home. France nurtured jazz.

I went back to Paris in 1959 with an all-star band for the European tour of a Broadway show, Free And Easy. The band was terrific – guys like (trumpeters) Clark Terry and Harry Edison and (alto sax) Phil Woods, all the guys on Birth Of A Band!, but after the show bombed I lost a lot of money trying to hold the band together. That’s when I learned the difference between music and the music business.

RAY CHARLES
THE GENIUS OF RAY CHARLES

(ATLANTIC, 1959)

In previous years Charles had scored a string of R&B hits but after signing with Atlantic the scene was set for crossover success. Who better to help arrange than Ray’s old sidekick…

That was the first time I worked with Ray in the studio, though we had been friends since we were teenagers. He had wanted to get as far away from Florida as he could and that was Seattle, which in 1946 was on fire.  It was a port for the Pacific Theatre in WW2.  You could hear R&B, be-bop, any kind of music. The Chicago pimps moved there ‘cos that’s where the business was. We used to wear sailor suits because the sailors got the girls. That was an amazing time to come up.

After our paying gigs playing pop hits, Ray and I would go down to the Elks Club and play bebop all night for free. Ray sang like Nat Cole and Charles Brown and played alto sax like Charlie Parker. By 1959 he was a big star but controversial in the black community because he had taken gospel music and made it into pop records like “I Got A Woman”. Then he broadened out into big band jazz like Genius, with people from the Basie and Ellington bands playing. We did it again a few years later on Genius Plus Soul = Jazz, which has a great arrangement of “One Mint Julep”.

QUINCY JONES
BIG BAND BOSSA NOVA

(MERCURY, 1961)

A trip to Brazil in 1961 furnished Quincy with a new source of inspiration and another signature tune, “Soul Bossa Nova”, a swaggering big band blast still familiar two generations on through the Austin Powers soundtrack

We had previously made a State Department trip to the Middle East with Dizzy Gillespie, and it got back to Washington that we had done a good job. They said “We’re gonna send you to Latin America.” We went to Ecuador, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and finally to Brazil. Lalo Schiffrin (pianist and composer) had told me, ‘Wait until you get there!’ It was during the time that Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joaos and Astrid Gilberto and the rest of the bossa nova – ‘new wave’ – were happening. When you listen to it (hums Jobim’s “She’s A Carioca”) – all those flattened fifths in bossa, you can see how influenced it was by jazz. Everyone caught the bug – Stan Getz obviously, and Sinatra did an album with Jobim.

I still go every year to Carnival in Rio and then to see my friends up in Bahia for the carnival in Salvador de Bahia. Next year we’re planning a float in the Rio carnival parade for New Orleans musicians, have them meet up with Brazilians, and we’re gonna have William Friedkin [director of The Exorcist] shoot a film there for an IMAX movie, because a lot of Americ`ns don’t know about carnival, which is a spectacular and spiritual event. Imagine – all those girls dancing on a giant screen!

FRANK SINATRA
SINATRA AT THE SANDS

(REPRISE, 1966)

In 1964 Quincy had arranged a Sinatra hit, “Fly Me To The Moon”, which appeared on It Might As Well Be Swing, with backing from the Count Basie orchestra. When Sinatra decided to cut his first live album, Basie and Quincy were his go-to guys

I first met Frank when I was playing a gig for one of Princess Grace Kelly’s events in Monaco in the late ‘50s. He had me playing “Man With The Golden Arm” as he came on stage and worked the crowd, which included people like Cary Grant and David Niven, then he just took off into “Fly Me To The Moon”. Sensational. Then I worked with him and the Count Basie orchestra in 1964. Those were the days when singers were expected to deliver words like musicians played notes. Frank was actually the one who started calling me “Q”. When we were flying out to Vegas, he asked if we could play “Shadow Of Your Smile”. I said, Sure, as long as you know the lyrics. Then he wrote out the words over and over again and the next night he hit it perfectly – just check the record. And I worked with him again on ”LA Is My Lady”, one of his last records, in 1984.

Sinatra had certain catchphrases. He would say; “Q, live every day like it’s your last and one day you’ll be right.”

THE ITALIAN JOB
MUSIC FROM THE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK

(PARAMOUNT, 1969)

Quincy had scored a dozen films by the time the call came to soundtrack The Italian Job – among them The Pawnbroker, In Cold Blood and In the Heat Of The Night. From The Italian Job an English national anthem would emerge …

I recall it well, as that was the time my son (Quincy Jones III) was born – he was born in London. We had a lot of fun doing the score – we were recording in the daytime at Olympic Studios where the Stones were cutting Sympathy For The Devil at night. Michael Caine would come by every day, then we’d go eat spaghetti con vongele in the King’s Road. Michael and I became great friends – I was with him and Shakira [Caine’s wife] just last month – and I discovered we were born the same year, day and hour – we’re celestial twins. Michael taught me cockney rhyming slang – “Watch the boat on the ice cream and check out the bristols on the richard.” No-one knows what you’re talking about.

I got an Ivor Novello award a couple of years ago and Elton John told me that only a Brit could write “Self Preservation Society”, which became the anthem of the movie, and I said wrong! Don Black did the words but I did the melody. I heard that they play it at every English soccer game – David Beckham told me that!

MICHAEL JACKSON
OFF THE WALL

(EPIC, 1979)

Prior to producing Off The Wall, Quincy was known as a jazz man and soundrack composer – the nearest he had come to making a crossover black pop record was working with guitarist George Benson on Give Me The Night. That was about to change

My connection with Michael came through love, like everything else y’know! I met him when he was twelve at Sammy Davis’s house. Then Michael played the part of the scarecrow in The Wiz (1978 Motown adaptation of Wizard Of Oz) where I was the musical director. On a musical the most important thing is the pre-recording because the movie is shot to that, at least the songs are, the score comes later.

Michael asked me for suggestions on who might produce his first solo album. I didn’t know how intuitive he was; he knew everyone’s lines, dance steps, he didn’t miss a thing. They were rehearsing one day and Michael’s thing was to read a famous quote – he pronounced Socrates as ‘so-crates’ and when I corrected him he looked like a deer in the headlights he said ‘Really?’. At that point I said I’d like to take a shot at his solo album and he said ‘Really?’ in the same way.

The record company said “No, Quincy’s too jazzy,” but that record saved half the A&R jobs there because it sold 12 million copies. I got Michael to sing “She’s Out Of My Life”, a song I was saving for Sinatra, and he cried during every take. The tears are there on the record, man.

MICHAEL JACKSON
THRILLER

(EPIC, 1982)

Where Off The Wall had been been recorded quickly, making Thriller sprawled over months, with obsessive attention to detail. Matters were complicated by the decision to make another album concurrently – E.T. , a ‘storybook’ of Spielberg’s feature film that Quincy scored and Michael narrated (it was soon wthdrawn as at Epic’s insistence). Deadlines loomed

In the summer of 1982 I had too many projects on the go. I was working on Thriller with Michael, working with the McCartneys, and working on E.T. To record Thriller I had three studios on the go – there would be Michael in one, Eddie Van Halen in another (Guitarist on “Thriller”), Bruce (Swedien, Q’s engineer and mixer) in another. We recorded a huge amount of material for the album. Then when we’d assembled nine tracks I took out the weakest cuts and put in “Beat It” and “Human Nature”, that really turned the album upside down cos we had “Billie Jean”, “Starting Something” and “Thriller”. It was incredibly strong. The sequence is very important – that’s the architecture of an album. When you have multi-producers you end up in trouble ‘cos they don’t have any sense of overal architecture and the dramatic sequencing.

Eventually we finished at nine in the morning after putting the overdubs on “Beat It”. I took Michael to my house and said Bruce is going to take the tape to get it mastered, so I got three hours sleep. When it came to the playback the album wasn’t working, so Michael starts to cry.

I’d been telling ‘em all along that if you want big grooves, you have to have 18 or 19 minutes a side, not 24 or 27 cos it won’t hold it, you get a tinny sound. I’d been asking Michael to cut down the introduction to ”Billie Jean” ‘cos it’s 11 minutes long and he’s saying “But it makes me want to dance,” and who are we to argue with him, us fat belly guys? Anyway we had to cut it down, take out a verse.

I’ve always tried to make records that have six exits and six entries so you can’t hear all of it at once; you have the bass line here, the backing singers there and so forth and you can’t hear it all, so you play it until the vinyl wears out and have to buy another copy.

Nobody knew Thriller would become the biggest album in the history of music, nobody, because that’s what God sends.

It never ceases to shock me that wherever in the world I go – and I travel constantly, man, I love it – that at twelve o’clock you are going to hear “Billie Jean” or “Wanna be Starting Something”. Else it will be “Ai No Corrida” from my album The Dude, or George Benson’s “Give Me the Night”. Absolutely everywhere!

MILES DAVID & QUINCY JONES
MILES & QUINCY IN MONTREAUX

(WARNER BROS, 1991)

Jazz’s dark prince finally acceded to Quincy’s request to revisit the tunes he’d recorded with producer Gil Evans in the 1950s on classic albums like Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain. It proved to be Miles’ final album

Miles never wanted to do that concert. It took me 15 years to talk him into that. He was never one to look back, always wanted to keep moving forwards. His early stuff, though, has to be some of my all time favourite music. People always ask me how to get kids into jazz and I say “Give em Kind Of Blue’ and make them take it every day, like orange juice.” But I also liked Bitches Brew. People were telling us not to mix jazz with rock, that myopic mentality. That’s bullshit. Miles, Cannonball Adderley Herbie Hancock and myself used to talk about this, how you should try everything. We’d talk about rock bands. I used to say, “How come we’re drinking on a Saturday night and they’re the ones with the gigs?” One by one we expanded – Herbie wrote “Watermelon Man,” Cannonball did “Mercy Mercy Mercy”, I did “Walkin Into Space” in 1969 and Miles did Bitch’s Brew in 1970. See, the electric bass changed everything. That instrument was the one changed the genre – there would be no rock and roll, no Motown, no nothing without an electric rhythm section.

Montreux was the first time I ever saw Miles smile at the audience! He waved a towel at the audience and smiled. Once Miles had done the show he loved it. He said “We should take this shit all over the world.” I don’t know why he was so resistant, man, that was Miles. He was mad on technology, like Brando – they were complex guys.

QUINCY JONES
BACK ON THE BLOCK

(QWEST, 1989)

After three Jackson albums and We Are the World, had Quincy run out of road? Uh-uh. Back On The Block mixed old school talents like Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles with cutting edge rappers and mixed genres into a seamless whole. It won seven Grammys, including best album

We’d won Grammys on other albums like The Dude and Smackwater Jack, but nothing like Back On The Block. It had the widest range – be-bop, zulu music, soul…that’s my speciality, I love that conglomerate. It kind of ushered in hip-hop too, ‘cos we had Ice T, Daddy Kane, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee.

I’m all for the rappers, because the spoken word is the third genre after music and singing, right? It’s like praise songs in Africa. The lyrical skills are astounding but the lyrical content is often a problem and sampling is also a bad habit. I understand the fascination with gangsterism because I grew up in Chicago, the home of that stuff.

So a lot of hip-hop’s problems have a social source and that’s why I’m working hard now to build a consortium to get to the kids in school to know their roots. It’s crazy that kids don’t know about Duke Ellington and The Cotton Club. It’s starting to turn round – a lot of young guys come to me and say “I want you to teach me how to be a musician.” That’s the attitude we want.

The Cure setlist:

Alone

And Nothing Is Forever

A Fragile Thing

Warsong

Drone:Nodrone

I Can Never Say Goodbye

All I Ever Am

Endsong

Plainsong

Pictures Of You

High

Lovesong

Burn

Fascination Street

A Night Like This

Push

Inbetween Days

Just Like Heaven

From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea

Disintegration

At Night

M

Secrets

Play For Today

A Forest

Lullaby

The Walk

Friday I’m In Love

Close To Me  

Why Can’t I Be You? Boys Don’t Cry

FONTAINES DC: With their astonishing fourth album Romance, FONTAINES DC leave behind the post-punk cobblestones for apocalyptic sci-fi stadium rock. But as they prepare to take the world by storm, they explain how the Arctic Monkeys, Mickey Rourke and “dissonance” have helped usher in their imperial phase – and how they plan to avoid the pitfalls of success.

CHRIS BELL: CHRIS BELL was McCartney to Alex Chilton’s Lennon: the other #1 songwriter in BIG STAR. But conflict, disappointment and depression threatened to diminish the power-pop visionary’s brilliance and Bell died tragically young, leaving behind only one posthumously released solo album, I Am The Cosmos.

MERCURY REV: From their base in upstate New York, MERCURY REV preside over a unique environment – full of eccentric sculpture parks, vintage recording studios and the spirits of storied musical pioneers – which has nourished their creativity for over 30 years. With a new album, Born Horses, embedded in the rich topography of the region, Jonathan Donahue and Grasshopper guide Uncut around their home turf.

BROWN HORSE: With their ragged harmonies, lap steel laments and fiery jams, valiant young upstarts BROWN HORSE are bringing country rock grit to the Badlands of Norfolk. But how do their Songs: Anglia hold up against the alt.standards that inspired them?

AN AUDIENCE WITH… THURSTON MOORE: The Sonic Youth soothsayer talks free jazz, feminism and Tom Verlaine’s paper-plate poetry.

THE MAKING OF “ROUNDABOUT” BY YES: Interminable touring sows the seeds of a prog rock classic.

ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH CASS McCOMBS: The enigmatic singer-songwriter looks back on a restless career.

MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH PAUL HEATON: The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now.”

REVIEWED: Nick Cave, Jack White, BASIC, Manu Chao, Willie Watson, Nala Sinephro, The The, Neil Young, Harold Budd and the Cocteau Twins, Kimbo District, Oasis, Black Artist Group, Patti Smith, Anohni and the Johnsons, Steve Van Zandt, Lawrence, The Jesus And Mary Chain and more.

PLUS: Farewell John Mayall, David Crosby by Mike Scott, Lone Justice, Plantoid and… introducing Thee Sacred Souls.

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

THE BEATLES

Abbey Road

APPLE, 1969

The next one, again, I have to thank my father for. He’d had the Beatles records since he was a kid and they were his everything. I just have these memories of being really little and peering over the record player and seeing the little apple cut in half in the middle of the vinyl. If Dad played a record it was an event, because we weren’t allowed to touch them. And we would sit in the same way as he would read books to us, Lord Of the Rings and The Hobbit. It was almost like, ‘This is your education, guys!’ I can’t go for too long without listening to The Beatles – it’s like oxygen, isn’t it? It’s in our DNA.

BOOGIE DOWN PRODUCTIONS

By All Means Necessary

JIVE, 1988

My brother was in the military. When he went away to the first Iraq war, he left behind a couple of tapes, one of which was By All Means Necessary. So I started listening to Boogie Down Productions and became an enormous hip-hop fan, especially of KRS-One’s lyrics. I suppose some of the hip-hop I’d heard on the radio felt quite misogynistic, but this blew my mind with the level of intelligence. I didn’t really go to school, which was quite sad. So music was an education – listening to people talk about their feelings and how they’re handling situations or just telling incredible stories through music. The message of American movies like Big or The Goonies was that everything’s rosy, but rappers were talking about their lives.

EMMYLOU HARRIS

Wrecking Ball

ELEKTRA, 1995

Growing up, my Mum – my real Mum – really loved country and western music. I used to have to get up and do Patsy Cline in the pub! There was an album by Emmylou Harris called Wrecking Ball that Daniel Lanois produced. I knew I recognised the sound, and it was only years later when I started really listening to U2 that I realised, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the same person!’ The songs make me cry just thinking about them, they’re incredibly poignant. I think that album will stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s very important in my development as a musician, but also just as a creative. I would listen to it over and over again – it’s very healing.

RY COODER

Paris, Texas OST

WARNER BROS, 1985

I was about 19, and I’d been in this movie called Under The Skin. It had a really bad review that was so scathing of me as an actor and I thought, ‘Well, I’m obviously not going to work again – I’m fucked.’ I was not happy with how acting was going, so I decided to get rid of my agent and move to Bali. I only took a few CDs, and this was one of them. Weirdly, I hadn’t seen the film at that point, I just knew I liked Ry Cooder. I listened to it over and over again, and it’s so evocative of that time. Obviously I wasn’t in a desert, but I was travelling and I was alone and I was searching for something. So it was just perfect.

GLENN GOULD

Bach: The Goldberg Variations

COLUMBIA, 1956

I didn’t know very much about classical music growing up, so the first time I heard that piece of music was in Silence Of The Lambs. Then I saw a documentary about him [Glenn Gould] and that was my first introduction to seeking out classical music and who’s playing it and why. I don’t have words eloquent enough to describe how that music makes me feel. My understanding is that when classical music is recorded, it’s the music that’s important. Often, they don’t want to bring in the person. But his energy and his interpretation of that piece of music is incredible, it had never been played like that before. I feel like I’ve got a connection with the person, as opposed to listening to perfectly performed music.

SQUAREPUSHER

Ultravisitor

WARP, 2004

I’d moved back from New York to the UK and bought a house in North London. I didn’t have any London friends, I was really lonely. And when you’re lonely, music becomes your friend – it makes you feel safe or not alone. There’s a song called “Iambic 9 Poetry” which is epic in its scale, but yet it retains this level of personal intimacy. It seems so big and so wide and so beautiful, like looking at city skylines. It has that feeling of something’s gonna happen, like the future is coming and it’s really fucking good! It’s not exactly Ballard, but there’s certainly a connection between the architecture of a city and dance or electronic music.

COCTEAU TWINS

Garlands

4AD, 1982

I got out of London around 2007 or 8. I was trying to create this haven for my new baby, so we moved to this farm in the Peak District. It was a really special time living in this amazing Bronte-esque landscape, quite isolated but feeling really powerful. I’d heard the Cocteau Twins a lot growing up but hadn’t really had their records. So I bought the CD and I totally immersed myself, walking on the moors for hours with my baby, being taken to these other worlds. The music and the landscape seemed to fit so perfectly. Her [Elizabeth Fraser’s] voice is very spiritual to me. It’s almost as if you’re listening to choral music in a church, it’s on that level.

Sam Morton’s debut album Daffodils & Dirt is out on June 14 via XL Recordings

Bob Dylan, New Theatre, Oxford, November 4, 2022

Dylan’s currently on tour in the States as part of the Outlaw Festival.

Meanwhile, Dylan’s 1974 tour with The Band is celebrated in an enormous 27-CD boxset, including 417 previously unreleased performances, which will be released by Columbia Records / Legacy Recordings on September 20.

The new batch of dates are…

OCTOBER 4 2024: Prague, Czech Republic, O2 universum

OCTOBER 5 2024: Prague, Czech Republic, O2 universum

OCTOBER 6 2024: Prague, Czech Republic, O2 universum

OCTOBER 8 2024: Erfurt, Germany, Messehalle

OCTOBER 10 2024: Berlin, Germany, Uber Eats Music Hall

OCTOBER 11 2024: Berlin, Germany, Uber Eats Music Hall

OCTOBER 12 2024: Berlin, Germany, Uber Eats Music Hall

OCTOBER 14 2024: Nürnberg, Germany, Frankenhalle

OCTOBER 16 2024: Frankfurt, Germany, Jahrhunderthalle

OCTOBER 17 2024: Frankfurt, Germany, Jahrhunderthalle

OCTOBER 18 2024: Frankfurt, Germany, Jahrhunderthalle

OCTOBER 21 2024: Stuttgart, Germany, Porsche Arena

OCTOBER 22 2024: Saarbrücken, Germany, Saarlandhalle

OCTOBER 24 2024: Paris, France, La Seine Musicale

OCTOBER 25 2024: Paris, France, La Seine Musicale

OCTOBER 27 2024: Dusseldorf, Germany, Mitsubishi Electric Hall

OCTOBER 29 2024: Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Rockhal

NOVEMBER 1 2024: Bournemouth, UK, BIC Windsor Hall

NOVEMBER 5 2024: Edinburgh, Scotland, Usher Hall

NOVEMBER 6 2024: Edinburgh, Scotland, Usher Hall

NOVEMBER 8 2024: Nottingham, UK, Nottingham Arena

NOVEMBER 9 2024: Wolverhampton, UK, Civic Hall

NOVEMBER 10 2024: Wolverhampton, UK, Civic Hall

NOVEMBER 12 2024: London, UK, Royal Albert Hall

NOVEMBER 13 2024: London, UK, Royal Albert Hall

NOVEMBER 14 2024: London, UK, Royal Albert Hall

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More of Justin Bieber performing at Radhika and Anant’s sangeet at the Jio World Convention Center in Mumbai, India (July 5) pic.twitter.com/mleIf2fzJ5

— Justin Bieber News (@jbtraacker) July 6, 2024

It follows on from a similarly exclusive show that Rihanna played for the couple in March, her first full-length set in over six years.

“Earlier this year, two Americans got in touch with me,” she says. “They had inherited some drafts of the poem that Dylan had left in a café. They sent me these drafts, and I was very moved. This was a young man, a very romantic artist, who had a fixation on somebody only from a picture. You know how very young people are… I realised it had been very important for him.”

It is early spring when Uncut meets Hardy at the chic Hotel De Sers, not far from the Arc De Triomphe. She prefers not to venture out of central Paris if she can help it, so our rendezvous is near Hardy’s home, and just two miles from the ninth arrondissement where the singer grew up. Just turned 74, Hardy is still slim and bright-eyed, quick to laugh and as stylish as ever – today she’s wearing dark skinny jeans, a black top and a fitted blazer, with a bright-red scarf and gold necklace her only accessories.

Bob Dylan’s not the only artist to have been captivated by Hardy and her work, of course – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Nick Drake, David Bowie, Richard Thompson and Graham Coxon have all paid tribute to her considerable musical gifts.

“My sister had a Françoise Hardy single,” remembers Richard Thompson. “I think it was ‘Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles’. My sister had other French records of the period – Richard Anthony, Hugues Aufray – so I was used to the intimacy of style. [But] this was sexier! If you put it together with the pictures of Françoise, it was a powerful package.”

Yet Hardy is not just a muse, but a compelling artist in her own right. She first came to prominence in 1962, aged just 18, with a mostly self-penned debut of infectious yé-yé – Europe’s pop take on rock’n’roll – and swiftly scored a massive hit with “Tous Les Garçons…”, which even cracked the UK Top 40.

“It was my first and most important hit,” Hardy says. “Unfortunately, as it’s not my best song!”

The tune was sprightly, but the lyrics were better suited to one of Émile Zola’s more miserable heroines than a young purveyor of Gallic pop: “I go alone through the streets,” Hardy sang. “The soul in pain… I go alone, because nobody loves me.”

“She was the opposite of all the French new artists trying to look and sound American,” explains renowned photographer Jean-Marie Périer, Hardy’s partner for much of the ’60s. “And her melodies were sad, she didn’t try to make them dance the twist.”

Hardy continued mining this seam of melancholy through a run of albums that quietly and tastefully explore styles from Brazilian jazz to English folk-rock. We’re in Paris to discuss these records, along with Hardy’s unexpected new album, Personne D’autre, in which she examines mortality and spirituality; in many ways, the record’s closest cousin may be Leonard Cohen’s final album, You Want It Darker.

“At my age the lyrics you are singing cannot be the same as the ones you were singing when you were 30 or 40 or even 50,” explains Hardy. “They have much to do with your past, but also with the idea of another life, in another universe.”

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As a teenager in late-’50s Paris, Françoise Hardy found herself carried away by the pop music of the time, much of it British and American. “It was extraordinary, because every week you had tremendous new songs,” she says. “I was very fond of The Shadows and Cliff Richard, and also Marty Wilde. In the States, Elvis Presley, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, all these young people. I was only interested in that.”

As intoxicating as this new music was, these pop stars also acted as something of an escape for Hardy, whose childhood was “humble”, as Jean-Marie Périer puts it: her parents were unmarried – scandalous at the time – and her father was mostly absent, “married to I-don’t-know-who”, as Hardy explains.

“She lived in a very small family circle,” recalls Périer. “Her grandmother was always telling her that she was nothing, not even beautiful. When we started seeing each other, she had never even been in a theatre to see a movie.”

Hardy was intelligent, though, and by the time she passed her Baccalaureate at a younger age than usual, her interest in music was absolute. Her mother asked her father to buy her a gift, but Hardy had trouble deciding between a small radio and a guitar.

“I finally made up my mind for the guitar,” Hardy laughs. “Why did I want a guitar? I didn’t know anything about music! But I got the guitar, and I found out that with three chords I could make up quite a lot of tunes which were bad copies of the songs I was listening to all the time on Radio Luxembourg – ‘your station of the stars’!”

That Hardy then began writing her own songs is impressive – this was an era when pop stars generally employed professional writers (such as a young Serge Gainsbourg) and The Beatles were yet to release their first single. That much of her work still sounds strangely modern, eschewing the gaucheness of many of her yé-yé counterparts, is even more striking.

“At this time, the new artists in France used to sing American lyrics badly translated,” says Périer. “Let’s face it, the translators were not Marcel Proust. So she had no choice but to write her own – plus, she had things to say.”

Hardy believes her desire to write came from French singer Barbara. “She was a great artist, who was writing all her own songs. I was a great fan of hers; I went to see her live, and I always brought a rose to her.”

After signing with Vogue in late 1961, her debut – like almost all her albums, self-titled, but known by its most famous song, in this case “Tous Les Garçons…” – appeared in 1962. Within three months, Hardy was a major name in France, with her fame spreading throughout Europe. Despite the hits, though, Hardy was unhappy.

“I heard The Shadows behind songs like ‘Tous Les Garçons…’, but I had such bad musicians, such a bad producer… I thought those recordings were terrible. But I was on tour with Richard Anthony, and he said to me, ‘You have to record in England!’ My first recordings had such a huge success that my recording company didn’t want to change it, but finally we went to London, and for the first time I had a musical production I was happy with.”

From 1964’s Mon Amie La Rose onwards, Hardy was a regular at Marble Arch’s Pye Studios, working with arrangers Charles Blackwell, Arthur Greenslade and John Paul Jones and musicians including Jimmy Page. Hardy is effusive in her praise for most of those she’s worked with, but Jones’ arrangements come in for some stick. “Terrible production, terrible! He wanted to do a French production, and I was expecting exactly the contrary.”

As the decade swung into the mid-’60s, Hardy’s music began to sound lusher and richer, from the 12-string jangle of “Ce Petit Coeur” and the glacial, orchestral glide of “Il Se Fait Tard” (both written by Hardy) to the maverick fuzz-tone blues of “Je N’Attends Plus Personne”, featuring Page.

“From when she was 18, she knew she was different,” says producer Erick Benzi, who has worked regularly with Hardy over the past 20 years. “She was capable of going in front of big artists like Charles Aznavour and saying, ‘Your song is crap, I don’t want to sing it.’ She never made compromises.”

Accessible, but never pandering to trends, her first five albums were enough for Hardy to be seen as a serious artist, but it was her refusal to play the showbusiness game that made her something of an icon. She modelled, sure, but only for the most modern designers such as Paco Rabanne or André Courrèges, and it’s a fair bet that she would have been welcome at almost any high-society party; but Hardy preferred to mix in quieter circles, or stay at home and read.

“My job as photographer used to bring me into contact with acts like The Beatles and the Stones very often,” says Jean-Marie Périer. “All the Anglo-Saxons used to ask me to introduce them to Brigitte Bardot and to Françoise! When I toured with Bob Dylan he was asking me questions about her all the time.”

While she was performing a residency at London’s Savoy in the mid-’60s, Périer organised a dinner with Paul McCartney and George Harrison. “I remember this day because Jean-Marie had no tie,” says Françoise, “and so we couldn’t get into the club, one The Beatles used to go to often. It was a huge stress! Finally, somebody found a tie and gave it to him.”

Another sartorial debacle stymied a meeting with Burt Bacharach during Hardy’s Savoy run in 1965 – it seems the UK wasn’t quite ready for the futurist fashion Hardy preferred.

“In the audience was Burt Bacharach,” Hardy recalls. “I was a huge fan of his beautiful songs, and he wanted to meet me. I was in my stage dress, which was magnificent – it had been made by André Courrèges, and it was trousers and a top, all white, so elegant and modern, even today. I went down to the audience to see Burt, but the people from the Savoy didn’t let me in – I had been singing for three-quarters of an hour, but I couldn’t have a drink with Burt Bacharach because I was in trousers! Things have changed!”

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On May 24, 1966, Hardy met Bob Dylan for the first time when he played the Paris Olympia. Hardy was now a huge admirer of Dylan’s songs, but the American’s opening acoustic set was a disaster, with Dylan visibly unwell and struggling to tune his guitar. During the interval, Hardy was told that the singer would only return for the second half if she came to see him in the interval.

“So I went to meet him,” says Hardy. “[After the concert] we were with some other French artists, like Johnny Hallyday, in Bob Dylan’s suite at the Georges V Hotel. Usually I never do this, it’s very embarrassing! Bob Dylan was already in his room, he wanted me to come in, and he played me two songs from his last album, which wasn’t yet released in France [Blonde On Blonde’s ‘Just Like A Woman’ and ‘I Want You’]. And that was it! I never saw him again.”

Alongside the hippest artists of the day, Hardy attended the Isle Of Wight festival in 1969. “I wanted to go and congratulate Bob Dylan after his set, but it was so crowded, it was impossible. I’m very surprised myself that I made the trip to an island for it, in the worst conditions! Was I camping? No, I don’t think so!”

If her presence in the festival’s VIP enclosure was the pinnacle of her acceptance by the international rock scene, Hardy soon moved out of its circles altogether. By this point, she was in a relationship with the more rebellious Jacques Dutronc, singer and songwriter and, as the ’70s dawned, Hardy pursued a rarer, stranger sound.

In autumn 1970, Françoise Hardy flew to Rio De Janeiro to sit on the jury for the city’s Fifth Popular Song Festival. Her fellow judges included Lalo Schifrin, Marcos Valle, Ray Conniff and Paul Simon, with the latter acting as chair. “Every personality had a hostess,” she explains.

“I had, I don’t know why, a very bad reputation, so the festival sent me their best hostess. But we very quickly became the best friends in the world.”

Hardy’s hostess, Lena, soon introduced the singer to a Brazilian singer-songwriter, Tuca, then performing in a Parisian restaurant, La Feijoada. Hardy fell in love with her music, especially the song “Même Sous La Pluie”, and the two began writing a new album together. The result, La Question, driven by Brazilian-influenced nylon-string guitar, double bass and strings, introduced a new sound for Hardy: heady, sensual and atmospheric, with her voice floating above the meandering baroque backings.

“This album is one of my best souvenirs,” says Hardy. “We started with Tuca on the guitar and a very good jazz bass player – I recorded the voice at the same time as them, then we went to Corsica on holiday with Tuca to decide if we would have strings or not on this record. When we were back in Paris, she played all the songs and for each song she proposed ideas to me for the strings. It has been the only time I have worked like that.”

While she was working with Tuca, Hardy was also on the lookout for other musicians to collaborate with. One songwriter that interested her was Nick Drake. “He had read how enthusiastic I was about one of his albums,” Hardy explains, “and so he came to the studio where I was recording in London, and he sat in the corner, almost hidden, and he never said one word. I was so full of admiration for his work, so I didn’t dare to say anything, and he didn’t dare to say anything [laughs].”

“Joe Boyd came up with this brilliant idea that Nick was going to write an album of songs for Françoise,” says producer and arranger Tony Cox. “I was going to produce it. So we travelled over to Paris – it was all pretty weird because Nick was a painfully shy bloke. Françoise is incredibly neurotic. She won’t do things like shaking hands, because she’s scared of catching germs from people.”

The Drake collaboration never happened, but Cox was keen to work with Hardy regardless. So, in late 1971, the singer travelled once again to London, this time to Chelsea’s Sound Techniques, to record a full album with Cox and a crack team of British folk-rockers, including Richard Thompson and Pat Donaldson.

“I remember they were all very keen to play on the Françoise sessions,” remembers Cox. “Particularly Richard Thompson, which was kind of surprising because he wasn’t someone who really volunteered to play on sessions much.”

“We did the tracks as a trio,” recalls Thompson, “and strings were overdubbed later. Françoise sang guide vocals on all tracks. We all got to hang out during breaks, in the Black Lion pub across the street. She was friendly and charming.”

Chosen songs included Trees’ “The Garden Of Jane Delawney”, Neil Young’s “Till The Morning Comes” and two Beverley Martyn songs. The results were akin to an English version of the Brazilian-influenced La Question: intimate, moonlit, eerie and quietly experimental, as shown by the backwards guitar running through her take on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Take My Hand For A While”.

“‘If You Listen’ was a pretty enough song, but there wasn’t anything to really get your teeth into. So I gave all the string instruments a choice to play any notes in any order, but playing col legno, with the wooden back of their bow, and it sounded great. I remember everyone, including Françoise, getting very excited when that sound emerged.”

Shy, reserved, yet strong-willed – it’s this peculiar combination of qualities that seem to have sustained Hardy throughout her career. There are certainly analogues with Nick Drake, in their personalities, voices and even a similar taste in chords and harmony. Yet, while Drake didn’t have the chance to even try his hand at real fame, Hardy has survived decades of it. “The last time I saw Nick Drake,” she says, “he called me at the end of one afternoon. I had always been feeling there was something wrong with him, but I didn’t know exactly what. I was going that evening to the restaurant of the Tour Eiffel to have dinner, because Véronique Sanson was performing there. But I felt I couldn’t leave him alone, so I said, ‘Come, and I’ll take you to the Tour Eiffel.’

“I don’t recall how the night ended, probably in a very normal way. But I was not surprised when I heard… He had everything going for him; he was very good-looking, mysterious and talented. There are always many reasons [for depression], but maybe one of them is the fact he had no success at all. C’était la goutte d’eau qui a fait déborder le vase [it was the straw that broke the camel’s back]…”

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Hardy has remained something of a trésor national even as she’s experimented with multiple genres – jazz on 1980’s Gin Tonic, alternative rock on 1996’s Le Danger and orchestral arrangements on 2012’s fragile L’amour Fou – and collaborated with the likes of Air, Iggy Pop and Blur.

“She doesn’t take the past as a burden,” says Erick Benzi. “She’s very precise. She knows what she doesn’t like, so after a few times working with her I knew exactly what she expects from me and the music. First it’s about the capabilities of her voice – she has a very small range – and then it’s about the sensibility. There is a certain style that she likes.”

“Françoise was good in that she liked things to be slightly more adventurous than the norm,” says Tony Cox. “There was a bit of the Left Bank about her – she’s not your average pop singer, that’s for sure.”

Personne D’autre, Hardy’s new album – her 28th – came from trying times, with the singer suffering from health problems over the last few years. “I almost died,” she says, bluntly.

“There are always heartbreaking songs on her albums,” says Benzi, “but on this one in particular, because of her recent history. She was nearly dead, she came back to life, so on two or three songs it’s about this – like ‘Train Special’.”

“I thought, at my age, to take a ‘special train’ can only be a train which brings me to the infinite, to the cosmos,” explains Hardy. “I’m afraid of dying, because most of the time you’re suffering very much physically, but it’s not sad – for me, death is only the death of the body. I’m sure that the link between the soul, and the loved ones who are still alive, stays.”

“She likes it when the chords are a little weird,” adds Erick Benzi, “she likes things not to be too simple. So there are restrictions – but at the same time she is capable of doing a duet with Julio Iglesias!”

Personne D’autre was unplanned by its creator until she stumbled upon “Sleep”, a song by Finland’s Poets Of The Fall on YouTube, and was inspired to work on her own French adaptation. The speed of the new album’s production – Hardy only began writing last April – bodes well for more new music in the future.

“It’s the first time in my life I am so quick writing lyrics, recording the songs and releasing them,” she explains. “I didn’t think I’d do anything else, but a lot of tunes and melodies came to me and I couldn’t resist. I don’t understand English enough to understand Leonard Cohen’s words,” admits Hardy, when Uncut compares the subject matter of some of Personne D’autre with Cohen’s final work. “But I know he believed in spirituality, and I also have read a lot my whole life. There are many forms of spirituality, but when it is clever, there are many common points. I think Buddhism is very near to the truth… But the truth? We will discover it after we die.”

The interview almost over, Hardy takes Uncut’s pen to excitedly write down for us the name of Oren Lavie, an Israeli singer-songwriter who she admires, and who reminds her of Nick Drake. “My body is very old, but in my head I’m still very young,” she says, as she spells out his name in capitals. “I have a fan’s heart, still.”

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INITIALS FH

Françoise remembers Serge Gainsbourg

“He was a close friend, but I didn’t work very much with him, no. After he died, [Gainsbourg’s partner] Bambou told me, ‘Serge said sometimes that he didn’t understand why you never asked him to make a whole album with you.’ I was very flattered – but I had never asked him because I preferred to make my own album, even if it was not as good as an album written and produced by him – because when you were recording with Serge, it was his album, not yours. He was a very strong personality; he was absolutely charming, almost like a child sometimes when he had not drunk anything, but when he had drunk alcohol – he was very fond of cocktails, sweet liquor – he could be very different [laughs]. Yes, when he was a little drunk, he became ‘Gainsbarre’.”

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MY MY, YÉ-YÉ

The finest of Hardy’s long-players

TOUS LES GARÇONS ET LES FILLES
VOGUE, 1962
As primitive as it sounds, Hardy’s debut is packed full of rock’n’roll and yé-yé songs as infectious as her favourite tracks on Radio Luxembourg, chief among them the sashaying “Ton Meilleur Ami”. 7/10

L’AMITIÉ
VOGUE, 1965
Accompanied by the Charles Blackwell Orchestra, Hardy was perhaps at the peak of her pop powers on this lush, varied LP. The title track is sublime, and Hardy’s own “Tu Peux Bien” reaches Morricone levels of melancholy. 8/10

MA JEUNESSE FOUT LE CAMP…
VOGUE, 1967
Hardy begins to embrace subtler, folkier textures on her sixth album proper, with the title track (‘My Youth Is Flying Away’) and the grand torch song “Voilà” especially devastating. 8/10

LA QUESTION
SONOPRESSE, 1971
The masterpiece, an otherworldly mix of French chanson and bossa nova, wonderfully stripped down to fully show off Hardy’s voice and peerless delivery. 9/10

IF YOU LISTEN
KUNDALINI, 1972
Lazily titled 4th English Album in some territories, this is Hardy’s take on British folk-rock. Her version of Trees’ “The Garden Of Jane Delawney” is particularly striking. 7/10

LE DANGER
VIRGIN, 1996
Teaming up with writer Alain Lubrano, Françoise discovers the power of the electric guitar and retains her true character at the same time. 7/10

L’AMOUR FOU
VIRGIN/EMI, 2012
The Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra join Hardy for this low-key, piano-heavy set of melodramatic, super-Gallic ballads, including “Si Vous N’Avez Rien À Me Dire…”. 7/10

PERSONNE D’AUTRE
PARLOPHONE/WARNER FRANCE, 2018
Death, regret, the usual, this time featuring gorgeously gauzy and reverb-heavy textures; closer “Un Mal Qui Fait Du Bien” does recall La Question, though. 7/10

A version of “Ursus Arctos Wonderfilis” from the first album was recorded live in the studio in NYC and a guitar-duelling, drawn-out interpretation of “Dictionary Of Handwriting” from the “Mirror Repair” EP comes from the Yttrium Festival in Chicago in 1996, but the other two live tracks are from the Victoriaville set. This version of “Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder” (the source of the lyric which gives this boxset its title, per O’Rourke’s suggestion) is purely instrumental and relentless in a pensive yet grand way, but it’s “Onion Orange” that is the album’s most striking piece of all. An 18-minute odyssey from Grubbs’ first solo album that is just guitar in its original form, here it’s transformed into an otherworldly expanse with O’Rourke’s scintillating electronic additions, opening a window into an alternative but impossible future for Gastr.

Standouts from the previously released material include “Dead Cats In A Foghorn”, a mournful and melancholic collaboration with sound artist/percussionist Günter Müller, named after Ezra Pound‘s description of futurist music; a wholly abstracted version of “The Bells of St Mary’s” recorded for a Christmas compilation released by Sony Japan; and “The Harp Factory On Lake Street”, a 17-minute experimental orchestral piece that is part ambient, part jazz and entirely compelling.

“Quietly Approaching” and “At Night And At Night” were both written for compilations; Grubbs recalls that the former is the first Gastr song that felt, to him, like it was really developed in the studio, in the sense that it had no relation to what they would do on stage. “The Japanese Room At La Pagode” comes from a split with the avant-garde violinist and composer Tony Conrad, while “20 Songs Less” is actually a 7” from 1993, offered as a single track.

The choice of pieces tells a story, though not in chronological order. “20 Songs Less” is the ninth track in the boxset, but it marks O’Rourke’s very first involvement with Gastr. Not only do several of the songs come from their final performance together, but the boxset opens and closes with the first and last songs, respectively, from that performance. There’s a real narrative sense that their story has come full circle, but naturally it’s presented in this abstracted way, intentionally sequenced to feel like a film presenting flashbacks, in Grubbs’ view. 

O’Rourke and Grubbs have both gone on to release scores of albums, both solo and in collaboration with a dizzying array of musicians and artists, in modes ranging from American primitive guitar and electronic abstraction to chamber pop and free jazz. They created lightning in a bottle with Gastr del Sol, however, progenitors of an electroacoustic flux and boundary-breaking acuity that would become a more acceptable mode of music in the years to come. Back then, though, they were the ultimate ‘What do we do with this?’ band. The answer has always been simple: just listen.

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At 78, Corman remains tirelessly active. In the past four years alone he has produced over 20 movies for his straight-to-video enterprise and continues to be called upon by former employees to play cameos in their movies: most recently in Dante’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he’ll next be seen in Demme’s Manchurian Candidate remake. Here, though, the Godfather of American independent cinema graciously ushers Uncut into his busy schedule, to grade some of Corman University’s most illustrious alumni.

JACK NICHOLSON

Corman produced the film which gave Nicholson his first starring role, as the eponymous Cry Baby Killer (1957), then directed the actor’s  depraved breakthrough in The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960). Across the early 1960s, Nicholson developed into a key member of Corman’s stock company.

CORMAN: Little Shop Of Horrors was a comedy-horror, with the emphasis on comedy. Jack played a masochist in a dentist’s office who wanted to have his teeth drilled. He was very, very funny. The only problem was, the scene was supposed to end as a duel between Jack and the dentist, using a scalpel and a dentist’s drill and – I shot this picture in two days – on the first take, they knocked over the dentist’s chair, so I said, “Alright, the scene ends right there,” because we’d no time to repair the chair. I’d first encountered Jack through the acting classes Jeff Corey was running in LA. As a director, I had no experience or training. I had a degree in engineering, and felt able to learn the use of the camera, editing, all the technical aspects, but I didn’t know enough about acting, so I joined Jeff’s class to learn. Jeff was teaching the Method, which is based to a large extent on improvisation, and Jack was exceptionally good, really the best in the class. He had a unique ability to play a dramatic scene with great intensity and at the same time bring humour to it, without undercutting the drama. That’s very difficult, and very unusual – particularly when you consider Jack was only about 19. I think it’s one of the things that’s served him throughout his entire career. He’s always been a fine actor, and is simply getting better. He helped out behind the camera, too. I did a picture called The Terror (1962), with Boris Karloff and Jack, which I shot two days of on standing sets from The Raven (1962), with only part of a script written. Boris worked those two days, and Jack was going lead the rest of the picture, when the script was written. I had various people directing parts, Francis Coppola, Monte Hellman. The last day of shooting, there was nobody available, so Jack said, “Roger, every idiot in town has directed part of this, lemme direct the last day.” And the work he did was good. We stay vaguely in contact – I see all these people at parties and so forth. Jack, when he directed The Two Jakes (1990), offered me a role, but I had to be in Europe, so I was unable to do it.

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

Coppola cut his teeth recutting ’50s Russian sci-fi movies for Corman to redistribute Stateside; for his first effort, Battle Beyond The Sun (1963), he added a notorious new scene, involving monsters constructed to look like a huge penis and vagina. Corman subsequently produced Coppola’s directing debut, Dementia 13 (1962). Instigating a trend among Corman alumni, Coppola paid thanks by casting his mentor in a cameo in The Godfather Part II (1974).

Francis came straight out of UCLA film school. This was in the ’60s, and I had bought the American rights to some Russian science fiction films, which were very well made technically, but contained some really outrageous anti-American propaganda. So Francis’ job was to recut the films: dub them into English, cut out the anti-American elements. On Battle Beyond The Sun, I had told Francis I wanted an additional battle scene between monsters put in, and asked if there could be some erotic quality to it. Well, he went beyond anything kind of vaguely symbolic! He made it pretty blatant. We had to cut that back a little. Francis became my assistant after that, and went on to direct Dementia 13 for me. He was capable of doing just about any job there is on a film, and doing it well. For instance, we went to Europe to do The Young Racers (1962) with a very small crew, just followed the Grand Prix circuit, and on that, Francis was First Assistant Director, handled some of the sound, and also handled second unit camera on the racing days.  Both with him and Jack, I could recognise early on they had great abilities, and I expected them to do well. But I had no way of knowing they would do as well as they did. When he directed me in Godfather Part II, that was fine. When he cast the Senate Investigating Committee, of which I played a member, he used writers, directors and producers for all the various Senators, which was interesting. He talked to us, explained the scene, ran through the rehearsals, then left us to totally to our own during the takes. Which I think is a very nice thing for a director to do.

PETER BOGDANOVICH

A buff hoping to break into films, the future Last Picture Show director had recently arrived in Los Angeles and was working as a critic when Corman hired him to rewrite and help out on his biker classic, The Wild Angels. After Bogdanovich performed surgery on another Russian sci-fi epic – released as the self-explanatory Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women (1967) – Corman assigned him to direct his chilling debut, Targets (1968), based around preexisting footage of Boris Karloff.

I think almost all the good directors I’ve worked with have been very much in love with film. They all have a great knowledge of film history, but Peter and Marty Scorsese may have the greatest. Peter was still working as a critic when I first met him, in a screening somewhere. We began talking and were very friendly after the screening, and he came to work for me. On The Wild Angels, he was my assistant, and he directed some second unit. He didn’t get along, frankly, with the Hell’s Angels we hired for that film all that well; they clearly came from two totally different worlds. Then he wrote and directed Targets; I had a couple of days with Boris Karloff, as a result of a contractual obligation from a previous picture, and so Peter wrote Targets around Boris’ brief sequence. He had given me a number of ideas for the rest of the movie, which I had rejected. Then, when he came up with this idea – of juxtaposing the artificial horror of the motion picture screen, which Boris epitomised, with the actual horror of real life, a sniper in a drive-in theatre – I approved that. He worked out an outline, then he wrote the script which I approved, but in the actual shooting I left him totally alone. My approach changes from director to director, but, in general, when someone works for me, I talk mostly about the technical aspects and meaning of a film. The actual directorial style, I leave to the director. I feel I’ve made the choice of director, I have faith in that choice, and I must leave him free to do his film the way he sees it – providing he stays true to the thoughts he and I have discussed.  And that film’s concept of random violence in society is, if anything, actually more pertinent today, unfortunately, than when the film was made. 

PETER FONDA & DENNIS HOPPER

The Easy Rider duo first worked together on Corman’s Jack-Nicholson-scripted paean to LSD, The Trip. Prior to that, Fonda had already become a Corman icon as biker protagonist of The Wild Angels. Hopper, who had acted in new scenes in another of Corman’s Russian remix movies, Queen Of Blood (1966), was, not for the last time, on the comeback trail, after having been blackballed by the major studios following a legendary blow-up with Henry Hathaway on From Hell To Texas (1958).

I met Peter first. I think he was aware of the great fame and stature of his father and, to some extent was, as any son would, trying to establish his own persona. Of course on The Wild Angels I had a Fonda and a [Nancy] Sinatra, and that was two things; yes, partially to have those surnames on the posters, but also because they were both good actors and could play the roles. Peter Fonda got on a little bit better with the Hells Angles, because he was able to ride a motorcycle, and as a result could relate with them. And, as an actor, he worked with them, tried to help their performances. It was through Peter I met Dennis. They were friends, and after The Wild Angels, when I did The Trip, Peter suggested Dennis for a role. I think their friendship developed working together on that, and eventually led to Easy Rider; it was a friendship that became a friendship and also a business and artistic partnership. Dennis gave me no problems whatsoever. I had been told he had given problems to several directors and might be difficult. He was never difficult. I got along well with him, and have nothing but admiration both for his ability and work ethic. He shot some second unit for The Trip, his footage was very good, and that good work was one of the reasons I went along with the combination of Peter to produce and Dennis to direct Easy Rider; I was the original executive producer, but then it moved, for a variety of reasons, from [Corman’s regular studio] AIP to Columbia. You can almost chart a line from The Wild Angels to The Trip to Easy Rider, following the counterculture of the day. I thought Easy Rider was a good picture, and caught the spirit of youthful rebellion in the United States. I anticipated it being a success, but I didn’t realise how big it would be. The major studios were beginning to be aware for the power of the independent movement, and Easy Rider really shook them up, caused them to bring in a number of the independent film-makers.

ROBERT DE NIRO

The 26-year old De Niro had only acted in a couple of underground films by his friend Brian De Palma when Corman cast him as Shelley Winters’ youngest, glue-sniffing hoodlum son in Bloody Mama (1969). A loose adaptation of the life and crimes of Ma Barker, this Bonnie And Clyde cash-in ditched backwoods glamour for violence: just your everyday story of rape, incest, drugs and murder.

De Niro was and is just one of the most dedicated, most intense actors I have ever seen. We were going to be shooting in Arkansas, and De Niro went to Arkansas – on his own – a week or so before shooting, just hung around, wandering through small towns, picking up accents, learning how people moved, what their opinions were. He was a very, very intense actor, and it was clear, from the beginning, that he was brilliant. He played a junkie, and started losing weight to get into the character. I wouldn’t say starved himself, but… well, yes. I dunno how much weight he lost, but he definitely lost weight for that portion of the film. That level of commitment was somewhat out of the norm. But I understood what he was doing, and I approved of it, provided he didn’t damage his health, which he didn’t. But, yes, it was an intensity you will see in very few actors. 

MARTIN SCORSESE

Corman produced Scorsese’s first studio feature, the bloody depression ballad, Boxcar Bertha (1972), then came close to derailing cinema history when he agreed to back the young auteur’s next project, Mean Streets (1973), providing Scorsese rewrote it as a Blaxploitation flick. Scorsese turned the offer down, but was still granted use of Corman’s crew to shoot what would become his breakthrough.

I had seen a picture Marty had done in New York, an underground picture in black and white, I don’t even remember the title [Who’s That Knocking At My Door], and it was clear he was a brilliant young film-maker. He had never done a film in Hollywood, and I met him, I don’t remember exactly how, but we got along well. I had done *Bloody Mama*, about a rural woman gangster in the 1930s, and AIP wanted me to do a second one. I had just started my own company, New World, so I said I would produce, but didn’t want to direct, because I didn’t have the time. So I chose Marty to direct, and he did an exceptionally good job. But, at first, AIP did not like his work. Some junior executive or someone had seen the dailies and didn’t think Marty’s work was good. They wanted me to step in and replace him. I said I didn’t have the time, and also that they were wrong; I considered this work to be exceptionally good. Eventually,they agreed with me – and history has vindicated me! But, yes, it’s true I offered to back Mean Streets if he changed it to – well,  I dunno if it was a black exploitation, but my idea was that black films were doing very well, and I felt this type of film as a black film would be very successful. And, yes, in the long run, he was totally correct not to do it. 

You know, I’m still as enthused by the young people working for me; I have two young directors who have just finished two low-budget films: Brian Sechler, out of New York University film school, who’s done a picture about black amateur boxers, Rage And Discipline, and Henry Crum, who’s done a street-racing picture with a Hispanic background. These are two of the best young directors I’ve ever worked with… 

Balvin released his second single from ‘José’, ‘Dientes’, which samples the 2004 Usher classic ‘Yeah!’ and features the Atlanta singer and DJ Khaled. Mura Masa, Fred Ball, DJ Luian, Mambo Kingz, Tainy, and Michael Brun also helped produce the track.

Next week, Sheeran will release his second album of the year ‘Autumn Variations’ . Earlier this week, he revealed that he recorded a live version of the upcoming album by surprising fans and performing in their houses.