Hit Singles

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Iconic bass guitar smashed at The Clash gig to join collection at Museum of London

The bass guitar that was memorably smashed by The Clash’s Paul Simonon is to go on permanent display at the Museum of London later this year. ORDER NOW: The August 2021 issue of Uncut Simonon smashed his Fender Precision Bass at New York’s Palladium in September 1979, with photographer Pennie Smith capturing the dramatic moment on her 35mm Pentax camera. The resulting image, which sees Simonon raising the instrument like an axe, became part of rock folklore after it was chosen by frontman Joe Strummer to appear on the cover of The Clash’s 1979 album London Calling. Advertisement As The...
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First Look Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground documentary

The Velvet Underground begins with a quote from French poet Charles Baudelaire: “Music fathoms the sky.” It doesn’t explain much about the two hours that follow, but it does make clear that director Todd Haynes is looking at the band from the perspective of a fellow artist rather than an archivist. ORDER NOW: The August 2021 issue of Uncut The director of I’m Not There is trying to understand what the Velvets achieved rather than laying out the facts of where and when they did it. Which is just as well, because the Velvets story is famously slippery. After all,...
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Krist Novoselic on Nevermind’s impact: “So much was going on. And then it all just spectacularly blew up”

As part of the cover story in the August 2021 issue of Uncut and in celebration of Nevermind’s impending 30th anniversary, we revisit the era-defining classic in the company of its surviving creators. In this brand new interview, Krist Novoselic traces the album’s remarkable journey from a rented barn in Tacoma to the stage of Seattle’s Paramount Theatre and beyond. ORDER NOW: Read the full cover story with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Butch Vig in the August 2021 issue of Uncut READ MORE: Dave Grohl looks back on Nevermind sessions: “Nobody thought Nirvana was going to be huge” What do you...
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Butch Vig on recording Nevermind: “Little did we know that Nirvana would be putting the nail in the coffin of hair metal”

Jonathan Poneman at Sub Pop called me out of the blue sometime early in 1990. They wanted me to work with Nirvana. He said they would be as big as The Beatles. I thought he was just being cheeky. ORDER NOW: Read the full cover story with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Butch Vig on Nirvana in the August 2021 issue of Uncut A couple of days later, Bleach turned up at Smart, my studio in Madison, Wisconsin. I thought it was pretty one-dimensional except that one song, About A Girl, which to me did sound like a Lennon–McCartney...
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Spirits Rejoice African Spaces

Jazz has always had a strong resonance for millions of South Africans. It might have been music that was created 8,000 miles away but the underlying themes – an artform born out of struggle, a stylistic fusion created in the face of segregation, an attempt to create joy in the face of racism and oppression – had a strong pull for a nation living under apartheid. By the early 1960s, Cape Town, Johannesburg and their surrounding townships had become established centres of a new form of fusion that blended US jazz with indigenous kwela, mbaqanga and marabi music. ORDER...
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Hailu Mergia & The Walias Band Tezeta

Prior to 2013, organist and composer/arranger Hailu Mergia was a sixtysomething cab driver in Washington DC whose high profile on Ethiopia’s popular music scene of the 1970s had long since faded. But the recovery of his 1985 solo (largely accordion) album by Awesome Tapes From Africa’s founder Brian Shimkovitz and its reissue in 2013 led to a career revival. Five years later, Mergia started touring again and even released a new solo record, his first in more than 30 years. The label re-released Mergia and the Walias’ second album, 1977’s Tche Belew, in 2014 and has now blown the...
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1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything

Right now you can find a whole bookshelf of pop histories eager to contend that any year from 1966 to 1984 was the one true year when rock, soul, punk or pop changed the world forever. On the face of it, David Hepworth’s 1971: Never A Dull Moment might be the most plausible of these: it’s hard to dispute the glory of 12 months that gave us Blue, What’s Going On, Hunky Dory, Tapestry, Electric Warrior, Tago Mago, Maggot Brain and There’s A Riot Goin’ On – to name but a few. ORDER NOW: The August 2021 issue of Uncut...
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Altın Gün: “Songs about love, hate, tragedy, death, war… it’s all basic human emotions”

There’s a rumbling deep beneath Vondelpark – more precisely, emanating from the Vondelbunker, a Cold War nuclear shelter under a bridge in one of Amsterdam’s biggest parks. These days, it’s a volunteer-led space for cultural events and houses practice rooms where bands, including Altın Gün, rehearse. “It’s a proper bunker!” laughs Merve Dasdemir, the band’s singer and keyboardist. ORDER NOW: Read the full interview with Altın Gün in the August 2021 issue of Uncut “We have a very nice space there,” says bassist and founder Jasper Verhulst. “Though there are no windows and there’s not a lot of air...
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The Best Of 2021 Halftime Report

First off, a gentle reminder that our excellent new issue of Uncut is in the shops now, featuring Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic on Nirvana, plus Sly Stone, Paul McCartney, Amy Winehouse, Altın Gün, Grateful Dead, The Jam, Will Sergeant, Rodney Crowell, Sparks, Rodrigo Amarante and more. Full details about the new Uncut are here, in case you missed them. As is tradition abound now, I tried to round up my favourite albums from so far; specifically releases from January until the end of June. I’ve listed them here in (roughly) order of release – just to be painfully...
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Making The Sparks Brothers documentary: “Being ahead of the curve for 50 years is a lonely place to be”

“Is the Sparks story even that interesting?” wonders Ron Mael aloud, with one of those quizzical frowns that over 50 years have variously signalled wry mockery, abject despair, ironic ennui or absurd determination. “We joked about this with Edgar when we began work on The Sparks Brothers project. Because other bands in documentaries usually have a tragic ending – you know, a suicide – or they had a drug issues and were able to overcome their habit to win in the end, or their career had a meteoric rise then a tragic fall… But our story didn’t fit...
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