THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE QUEEN

DAMON ALBARN'S SOUND CLASH RENEGADES TAKE AMERICA!

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that changedIL,;
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COMPILED by
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J O H N LY D O N
JACK WHITE
ARCTIC MONKEYS
HI BRIAN WILSON

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AND MORE*
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LEONARD COHEN'S'HAPPY nAYS' RATS fiAiree nnnui linn
 R E C O R D S T H AT C H A N G E D T H E W O R L D

for it, because we've recruited

, they're the 100 albums, MOJO's favourite musicians to
singles and 78s that made us see nominate and venerate the records
the world differently, that made that moved the earth for them.
Brace yourselves for ardent billets
grown women to lose their minds
and 13 -year-old boys buy plywood doux from on,
guitars from the Littlewoods John Lydon, U2, Jack White,
catalogue. The most influential Dr. John, Johnny Marr,
and inspirational recordings ever , a/fit mithand
made, they changed music — the , and strap yourselves
in for the ironclad, undisputed,
way it was played, bought or even
most seismic record of all time!
imagined. But don't take our word

PLUS! Brand New Interviews With...

JL xxjej UUUJrto LED ZEPPELIN
The surviving members In the basement and on The damp, cold genesis
tell the wigged-out tale the cutting edge with of their awe-inspiring
oftheirastonishing, the makers of Music fourth album. "It was a
genre-mashing debut. From Big Pink. mine of creativity!"

60 MOJO
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

EH GNARLS m TELEVISION
BARKLEY Marquee Moon
Crazy (Downtown (Elektra, 1977)
single, 2006) Interlacing guitars and a
Rebirth of the all-over pop cool new aesthetic. I ain't
smash. On the internet! waiting... uh-uh.
Andre 3000 [OutKast]: "I've known Lawrence (Felt/Denim/Go-Kart
Cee-Lo since third grade. One time, Mozart): "I first heard the title track on
John Peel. I caught it in the middle, but
during the [Atlanta hip-hop collective]
I thought, I bet that's Marquee Moon,
Dungeon Family days when we were
. because I'd read what Nick Kent wrote
starting out, it was considered that it
I about it. When it finished. Peel said,
might be good to have Cee-Lo in the
In alphabetical order<. 'Well, that reminds me more of 1967 than 1977/ and
group. That was even before there was a Goodie I thought, He doesn't know what he's talking about,
Akon, Tori Amos, Vicki Anderson (James Mob. But Crazy is just a great song! You can feel that.
There are special DJs who just love Cee-Lo who'll play I just heard the future of music! The guitars were
Brown), Mark Arm (Mudhoncv), Brett it on their urban stations, but some people seem absolutely brand new, and played so intricately. But
Anderson (Suede), Andre 3000, Chris to not know where to play it. That's the difference what inspired people most was the austerity and
Barber, Robert Levon Been (Black Rebel between America, which is very format-oriented, and coldness of their sound, the'no rock'feel, by which
I mean that it's a completely 'white' album, shorn of
Motorcycle Club), Norman Blake (Teena the UK, where something like Crazy will be embraced.
But the power of something like Crazy has to prevail R&B and groove, even if Tom Verlaine was heavily
Fancluh), Bjork, Mike Bordin (Fait into jazz improvisation. Crucially for me, there was
in the end. It feels like a victory for the family."
More), Stuart Braitbwaite (Mogws no strumming on the album, just integrated pick
Findlay Brown, Joe Brown, Vashti Buriva Without this, no... rush to get Danger Mouse to
ing, which was a new aesthetic; the sound was soft,
rtin Carthy, Jaz Coleman (Killing Joke) produce your next album. poetic and pained. Live, they just stood stock still,
lice Cooper, Chris Cornell, Chuck D, no talking between songs, which really appealed.
(Young Knives), Dr. OB THE STONE Being so non-confrontational was the opposite of
Iteve F.arle, The Edj ROSES punk, and of dancing and elation. They were about
a different emotion, which was more like awe."
i'ott (Def Leppard), Craig Finn (Tl The Stone Roses Without this, no... Echo & The Bunnymen, U2,
ild; Steady), Edgar Froese (Tangerine: (Silvertone, 1989) Razorlight.
.), Andy Gill (Gang Of Four), The rebirth of Brit-pop
illespie (Primal Scream), Ba psychedelia and the start of indie-dance. EH DONNA
Greenway (Napalm Death), Rich
ley, Kristin Hersh, Robyn Hitcl
■ Robert Levon Been (Black Rebel SUMMER
I Motorcycle Club): "I first heard I Wanna
n Hunter, James Hunter,, Alex ]i
r *r V, Be Adored on Live 105 in San Francisco.
I Feel Love
(lur), Tony James, Bert Jansch, T II It just threw me, because at the time I (Casablanca single,
;s, Mick Jones, Alex Kapranos, 1 ^V"'/ was listening to grungier stuff like Nine ■ '977;
M j Inch Nails and Nirvana, but The Stone
aright, Wayne Kramer, Jon Langi Druggy, robotic love-making that goes on
urence (Felt etc.), Lemmy, Don Roses had this wash of reverb and ambience that
forever? Bliss!
turned my head. A lot of the album was a bitpoppi-
Mark Linkous (Sparkle-horse), John I Owen Clarke (Hot Chip): "I discovered
er and more bubblegum but everything was super-
Ion, Stephen Marlev, Johnny Marr, " melodic, and then I started noticing the words, which I Feel Love like a jewel set in a Dutch
Culloch, Thurston Moore, Jim . were cripplingly vicious. The way all the parts are K-Tel compilation, and though 1 can
no Moreno (Deftones), James . layered and weave in and out was a big influence scarcely imagine I Feel Love's impact
!D Soundsystem), Richard Norris (Th on us because we try and hide a lot of subliminal on its release, to hear it cast among
guitar tracks; it helps make a record that can be lis J Smokie and Brotherhood Of Man gives
id etc.), Ed O'Brien (Radiohead
tened to over and over because you never hear the me an idea of how alien and seductive it must have
lagan (High Llamas), Andy Part same thing twice. The Roses opened the door for sounded. I want to roll around in it like a cat in a
'etty, Madeleine Peyroux, Se bands to go the other way to American rock'n'roll. sunny spot. I try to emulate Giorgio Moroder's magi
no (Kasabian), Robert Polla I followed the trail to those bands and found Ride, cal insta-gorgeousness in a humble form with a
ionn Regan, Peter Reilly (The View), Ma The Verve, My Bloody Valentine. Oasis came along triggered Roland 101 synthesizer when playing with
and made it a lot bigger, but it never felt like the Hot Chip. At a recording session at the BBC's Maida
iter, Srnokey Robinson, Pete Seeger- Vale studios a sound engineer asked me to run my
next step. The Roses were a sharper blade."
skis, Mattie Safer (The Rapture gaffa-taped keyboard in isolation; I obliged thinking
lmon (The Scientists), See Without this, no... rebirth of tunes in British indie, there was a problem. It ran for a while and with a
idrian Sherwood (On-U Se Madchester, The Verve, Oasis and Kasabian. contented sigh he said, Thank you. That's just gor
.elly (The Coral), Patti Smit geous.' I'm as yet unable to conjure up Donna's sexy
Smith (Maximo Park), Tommy Sr EH IRON narcoticized vocal, but I'm working on it."

r Spencer, Bernie Taupin, Alex' MAIDEN Without this, no... Electro, house, techno
tic Monkeys), Alan Vega (Suicid I Iron Maiden EH GREEN DAY
irlairie, Tom Waits, Rurus Wainw I (EMI, 1980)
Dean Wareham (Galaxde S00), . I/MsJS nearheaded the New
Dookie
Wareham (Acoustic Ladyland), Joan ' Wave Of British Heavy Metal and inspired (Reprise, 1994) *
ui As Policewoman), Spider Wei the metal of the '80s and '90s. The Jam via The Dickies to i
■rors), Pete Wentz (Fall Out Bo; Barney Greenway (Napalm Death): get the sound of America, -
(Ash), Jack White, Brian ' 'The first Maiden album really attacked 21 st century-style.
Wire (Manic Street Preach Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy): "I was into
j you - it was so raw and fast, it felt like
| it was going right off the rails. Maiden I Guns N'Roses, Michael Jackson... but f
iterviews by... had this youthful energy, and they didn't I punk rock, pop-punk, it started for me !
\garwal, Phil Alexander, * I conform to the verse/chorus style of the I with Dookie. I remember looking at the
Tom Bryant, Stevie Chick,' older and more polished metal bands. They sound ^T cover and trying to pick out every thing
ed so fresh and new. Their singer Paul Di'Anno was .iv-—^ on it. Basket Case is one of my favourite
Dovle, Danny Eccleston, Ben Edmonc so iconic. He had mad spiky hair and a don't-give-a- videos ever, when they wheel in [Green Day drum
Paul.Elliott, Pat Gilbert, Sid Griffin, Ian fuck attitude that definitely inspired me. Paul wasn't mer] Tre Cool in the wheelchair. I remember thinking,
Harrison, Will Hodgkinson, Bill Holdship, a typical heavy metal singer. The way he screeched, How does he play like that? It was so fast. I don't '
David Hutcheon, Colin Irwin, Andria it was real balls-out stuff. That's what gave Maiden think there's a band we've ever played with that isn't
idrew Male, James McNair, Kris a punk edge, perhaps unintentionally so. Maiden's tremendously influenced by that record. My Chemical :
Ross Murdoch, Lucy O'Brien, album defined an era for metal, just as Never Mind Romance, Panic! At The Disco, all the way to The
The Bollocks did for punk. It was the album that Killers... Green Day influenced a generation of bands, i
nurew Perry: Svlvie Simmons, Phil
inspired kids to pick up guitars. It was the template We might be in a band but it would sound totally dif
Sutcliffe, I j us Wilson for speed metal, Metallica and beyond." ferent. Also, Dookie's a front-to-back record. You can i
Extra kudos to. . Martin As.fo listen to every song. There's not a skipper, dude."
Without this, no... thrash metal, death metal,
grindcore, Slipknot and Bullet For My Valentine. Without this, no... US pop-punk and emo. >▶ •

62 MOJO
 Transcending
the caricatures:
Carl Barat (left)
and Pete Doherty
before the fall.

E
'
,

REVENGE OF THE URCHIN, HYMNED BY KEITH CAMERON

grooves, Mick Jones's production is vibe-friendly and unfussy, but the
reason the record has character is die relationship between guitarists/
Up The Bracket songwriters/soulmates Carl Barat and Pete Doherty, yet to whirl down
fRough Trade, 2002) the pan of drug-addled confusion, mistrust and hurt. Which isn't to
®THE LIBERTINES
FOR THEIR first MOJO feature The Libertine, say there's nothing of the sort within the likes of Horrorshow ("I've
re-created die Sex Pistols' infamous spurting beer- been following your mind's instructions/On how just
can photo. In retrospect another punk-era to slowly, sharply screw myself to death"), but like
image might have been more appropriate. The gyroscopic frenzies Carl and Pete are too engaged
impromptu shot of The Damned air-busking out with their band's fizzing raunch to let the magic-
side Stiff Records, Rat Scabies rampant on dustbin wander. The Libertines made it all sound so easy.
drum stool and rolled up newspapers, might as ■ T The hordes following in their wake assumed it was
well be The Libertines transported to the younger, and Up The Bracket's legacy is that romantic tales
more innocent times they did their best to evoke. of post-adolescent urban misadventure became die
Gamin charm, dandyish cool, hyper-real yet default setting for new British rock. Duly dazzled,
somewhat bonkers: qualities all found in this ram Arctic Monkeys schemed their own exalted patent,
shackle quartet's rapid overwhelming of a gener
jsftliiiS H&3S233 but The Libertines' mythos gave birth to a legion of
ation's hearts and minds. Because the band's fall professional chancers like The Kooks, and, tragical
was equally swift, and the personal traumas at its ly, the former Libertines themselves. Babyshambles
core played out in such lurid detail to a pander GAMIN CHARM, and Dirty Pretty Things so obviously need what
ing media, it's been too easy to forget the intense DANDYISH the other group's leader embodies (Barat: stolidity;
brilliance of their brief peak. Up The Bracket still Doherty: mania) that a Libertines reunion must
transcends the skag and bone men caricatures; COOL, HYPER- be inevitable. Until then, these are The Lost of
here is the scrawny, juiced-up sound of a molten REAL YET England — probably what they wanted all along.
R&B group flaying their art to the floor. The Jon Without this, no... Jamie T, Larrikin Love,
Hassall/Gary Powell rhythm section solders the
S O M E W H AT Fratellis and (unfortunately) The Kooks.
BONKERS."
 Richard Norris [The Grid and beyond]:
EH NINA "When it came out, this sounded like it
SIMONE was being beamed in from another plan
To Be Young, Chris Barber: "Jazz Was born in
New Orleans, from black folk
et. There was a basic nod towards disco
and other forms of dance music in that it
Gifted, & Black music's influence on the French had a repetitive four-four beat but, apart
(RCA single, 1969) marching bands - that started the from that, it was just an incredibly long, pulsating
brass swinging. Louis camef squelch, created by accident when DJ Pierre was fid
Epochal testimony to black pride becomes that tradition but he was alv
the voice of the civil rights movement. dling with his Roland TB303.1 first heard it through
trendsetter: he joined Fletcher Henderson's Genesis P-Orridge. We'd made our Jack The Tab

£
I Vicki Anderson (James Brown singer): band in New York in 1924 and in weeks they album - our idea of what acid house should be - and
"Nina Simone gave us strength. She gave were all swinging, [saxophonist] Coleman didn't hear Acid Tracks until we'd finished it. It abso
us songs of hope, and that's what we Hawkins included. He came up with new lutely influenced us afterwards. I used to walk around
really needed - we still do. The young with a 303 strapped to me with a pair of headphones
gs all the time and everyone copied him.
people, as long as they have hope they "He wrote the rule book on jazz improvisa on and let it run and make weird noises. Someone
I can survive. This was like when James tion, but his music always related a genuine gave it to me because they couldn't work out how to
Brown said, 'Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud.' It use it and they didn't think anyone else would want
feeling: hear one note and you know it's the
was important, too, because these words were com truth. West End Blues is one of the perfect it. They asked for it back in the end, unfortunately."
ing from a woman. It said, as a woman, you can pieces of jazz playing. Everyone tries to play it Without this, no... acid house, rave, Britain on
express yourself. She paved the way for everyone: but no one can - Wynton Marsalis can't play it! ecstasy, the '90s.
Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, Aretha At the time, it sold 5,000 copies at most, but it
Franklin, Donny Hathaway and myself. She stood up
for all of us. Nina Simone's lyrics ring so true to me:
influenced more musicians than any other jazz
performance in history. Quite extraordinary!"
EH OASIS
'We must begin to tell our young, There's a world
jazzas we kno Definitely
waiting for you, this is a quest that has just begun.'"
Without this... we're stuck with We Shall Overcome.
Maybe
(Creation, 1994)
that and The Vines that really got us. At college Beatles chords, punk
JM EH THE when it was me, Nick and [Matt] Helders, they had
'tude: hedonism reclaimed for rock'n'roll.
JB STROKES practice rooms and we'd play bits of The Strokes at
dinner time. Then when us four got together, we'd Peter Reilly (The View): "I was about
W* Is This It practise in this warehouse and play Someday. For I 14 when I first heard Definitely Maybe. I'd
me that album always reminds me of the bus going 1 been listening to a lot of old stuff like
^ ( R o u g h Tr a d e , 2 0 0 1 )
to college. I had a Walkman and a few cassettes - The Doors, The Beatles and T.Rex at the
\ « It came from NYC, with a Rubber Soul on one side and Is This It on the other." time. Those bands were great, but it was
full-blown rock'n'roll revival in its wake. I the stuff that my mum had been listen
Without this, no... spiky 21st-century indie redux.
ing to. When I discovered Oasis, I'd found some
listened to guitar music other than a bit
of Oasis. My dad had brought me a gui EH PHUTURE thing of my own.
"They had a huge impact on everyone, especial
tar home, but there were no real bands Acid Tracks ly the kids round our way. Liam's voice carries so
that I was into. The Strokes were the first much attitude. The tunes have really nice chord pro
J Alex _Turner
ones that(Arctic
everyone Monkeys): "I'd not
had a buzz about.
was Nick [O'Malley, bassist] who gave me Is This It. I
It ffiK| (Trax single, 1986)
Malfunctioning box in a
gressions, but they've got balls too. It just sounds
really exciting. Everyone wanted to be like Liam
remember one day him coming round on his bike Chicago basement kick- because he was the ultimate front man, and every
and he had that CD and he lent us it. I loved it. It was starts a sonic revolution. one wanted to write songs like Noel because they

64 MOJO
100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

"LOUIS WROTE RULE BOOK

ON JAZZ" CHRIS BARBER
were so brilliant. Every band at that time wanted to to this old folk scene that was hardly there in the
be like them, and everyone who wasn't in a band first place. They stayed true to the song but turned EH THE
wanted to start one." it on its head, and they were able to create some SHADOWS
Without this, no... Beatles rehabilitation, 'havin' it'. thing that no one had done before. Stuff then was
so lily-white, and here's Eric singing about whores Apache
and balls and chains. It was heavy." (Columbia single, 1960)
EH QUEEN Without this, no... electric Dylan. You want more? *i And twang went the
Sheer Heart hearts...
Attack (EMI, 1974) EH SONIC Richard Hawley: "It's an awesome tune.
It means fuck all, but it means everything,
Their first million seller,
with a standard-setting
YOUTH in two minutes 15. The first thing I
theatrical bravura.
EVOL j thought when I heard it as a kid was,
I wanna learn how to play that. And I did.
(Blast First, 1986)
j'fl Joe Elliott (Def Leppard): "I can clearly I I love the concept of instrumentals, how
remember the first time I heard Sheer NYC noiseniks retune a
they can affect you just as much as a song with lyr
; Heart Attack. I was with my friend Russell generation's guitars. ics. Plus, music without words is much better for
Major, who ended up being our drum I Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai): "EVOL when you're off your head on acid, which I recom
tech, at his parents' house in has a real immediacy to it - they were at mend for Apache. Hank's legendary. Without him
Upperthorpe in Sheffield. There's me the peak of their innovation, marrying and Bert Weedon there'd be no Jimmy Pages or Jeff
with my basin-cut hair, Marc Bolan T-shirt and flared this experimentation to a total pop sen Becks. I got the chance to work with him on my
jeans with embroidered parrots on the back pock sibility. You get an eerie beauty to some- song I'm Absolutely Hank Marvin, and he was fuck
ets, and you've got Brighton Rock blasting out. It I thing like Shadow Of A Doubt, which is ing out of this world. His use of volume control and
blew my mind! I'd heard Sparks, but I'd never heard all down to their open tunings and harmonics. the tremolo arm on the Strat... Awesome!"
falsetto like that over real hard rock. Expressway To Yr. Skull is mind-blowing - that 'free
'There's so much on one platter, from punchy Without this, no... Strat rock, English axe boom.
noise' thing is a huge influence on Mogwai. For our
rock like Now I'm Here to Freddie's skip-to-the-loo- first 10 rehearsals that's pretty much all we did.
my-darling stuff. They'd found their feet as writers 'They took something from the work of Glenn
EH THE CURE
and really took the idea of vocal harmonies to a Branca and others, but they changed the way a lot of
whole new level. It was the album that proved they people make music - you can see their impact on so
Pornography
had that extra oomph, like all the classic bands." many groups, from obvious followers to Radiohead,
(Fiction, 1982)
Without this, no... Guns N'Roses, Foo Fighters, The even Neil Young. I went to Reading Festival in 1991 - The iir-text of self-
Darkness, Def Leppard. I was 14, my big sister took me - and they closed with punishing, Gothic
Expressway. That made me want to be in a band." bedroom gloom.
EH RADIOHEAD Without this, no... Nirvana, Mogwai, Dinosaur Jr.,
My Bloody Valentine... Pornography on cassette when I was 15.
The Bends I copied it from a friend and, because my
(Parlophone, 1995) version didn't have the lyrics printed
Beginning Radiohead's
ascent to Most Important
IH1TOG! GUEfEBALL! inside, I used to listen to Robert Smith's
IChino
words Moreno
really intently
(Deftones):
and write
"I them
got all
out. On One Hundred Years he sings about being in
Band In The World status.
a bathroom, then a high building, or the back of a
I Kris Drever: "I was 16, and playing gui black car and they all seem like dangerous places, as
tar in bands, doing Hendrix and Cream though something awful is about to happen. The
I covers as all kids seemed to in Orkney
droney beat on Siamese Twins is such a hallmark of
then, when my mate bought The Bends. that early '80s sound. It's so minimal, the keyboards
For my age group, it was the first origi- so sparse, and it still sounds so relevant. It's a lonely,
I nal-sounding rock record. I was amazed desperate record, like a eulogy, as though someone
with the journey of Greenwood's guitar playing. It died to make it."
was like he'd invented a new way of playing, which
Without this, no... Interpol, Placebo, Deftones,
is pretty hard to do as it's the most widely played
instrument in the world. He had a lot of octave and A Perfect Circle, Bloc Party, Death Cab For Cutie.
a clever use of very simple effects, with almost a jazz
tone, and just quite wild, whereas others like him EH THE JESUS
could be a bit overblown and pompous. Once past
the guitar, you find so many really great pop songs
& MARY CHAIN
wrapped up in the rock package, like High And Dry, Psychocandy
Fake Plastic Trees, Bulletproof, Street Spirit. The (Blanco Y Negro, 1985)
Bends felt like music was turning a corner."
Beach Boys + Velvets = a
Without this, no... Muse, Coldplay and their ilk. new direction for rock'n'roll's dark side.
Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine):
the animals EH THE Joni Mitchell's jazz phase "MBV used to be more garagey, like The
nominated for world-chang
^S IK MDD1E Dl IHE RlSlrlC. B

ANIMALS Birthday Party and The Cramps, but

Never Understand took us in another,
U, f ' The House Of ing laurels. By Bjork. I far more modern and radical direction.

% ■J The Rising Sun "I was 14 when I first heard Joni - Don Juan's
Reckless Daughter and then Hejira, which had an
Even if songs like Taste The Floor weren't
happy, I found their core extremely positive and
(Columbia single, 1964) enormous impact on me. Joni felt like a woman's
bright, which was a revelation. I used to play
Trad blues meets Brit Invasion. Bob Dylan world, rather than a male thing fronted by a
woman. It wasn't just the voice and the lyrics, it Psychocandy to people just to see their reaction,
listens intently. was the whole production, a whole universe that even my parents, because to me they were so revo
,7f Seasick Steve: "I knew it as a real old I could really relate to. The music my stepfather lutionary - did people realise what was happening
folk song - Tex Alexander sung it in the played, like Clapton or Zappa, even punk, was here? People used to go on about the Velvets, but
1920s. But when that organ sound male-orientated, and musically very square, all C, F they didn't come close to what the Mary Chain did
and G chords, that German-Christian kind of thing! with noise and feedback. Psychocandy took the idea
comes in, I got chills up my spine. I Joni's chord structures were more chromatic and
couldn't believe this guy Eric Burdon was of noise and put it into a pop area, where it hadn't
sensual and grew more organically, like a plant. been before. We found our own way in the end,
I English - he sounded like a deep blues, She showed that it was possible to make your own
soul man at a time when all the white kids were universe. She gave me the guts to go there myself. thank God, but we were the number one Mary
"She's really underestimated. You see Bob Chain copy band for a while."
singing lollipop music. It broke a boundary when
things were real iffy, with people trying to hang on Dylan put on about five billion times, but what Without this, no... C86, shoegazing. >*
about Joni? How do you say in English - bring her
to knighthood!"
Turn to page 70 for Madeleine Peyroux on Joni's Blue. MOJO 65
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

Cabin Fever
The first Back To Basics record by the group that would come to epitomise
'band-ness', Music From Big Pink stopped Clapton and The Beatles in
their tracks and revived the importance of roots. Robbie Robertson and
Garth Hudson tell Will Hodgkinson how it came together.
How did The Band come to live in Big Pink? spilled out into my songwriting - Crazy Chester in fascinated me. Nowadays I find it irritating, but
The Weight was a real character from Fayetteville, backthen it had mystique.
Robbie Robertson: In 1966 Dylan had his
Arkansas. Another influence on my writing was GH: Tears Of Rage has become my favourite song
motorcycle accident and was lying low. And we
the film-maker Luis Buhuel. I liked the way he on the album. That was another basement tune.
were living in New York becoming increasingly
would take liberties with his storytelling. We weren't worried about being serious back
frustrated. It was tough to find a place to rehearse
without annoying the neighbours. The situation GH: With music, a sense of history is important. then, but that was one of those songs that went
was getting desperate - we were working with My speciality is jump jive, it was on every jukebox on to become something else completely.
in black America back in the '40s. Richard Manuel
Tiny Tim, for God's sake. Then [Albert] Grossman How did you transplant the spirit of the Big
suggested Woodstock. It had a remote artists' would picka gospel song,To Whom Shall I Turn
Pink basement into a recording studio?
colony, and we all liked this idea of a 'clubhouse', by The Caravans. Grossman introduced us to
a place where we could make music without Indian music: a group of itinerant Indian street RR: [Producer] John Simon came to Woodstock
constraints. So we found this old, pink house with musicians,The Bengali Bauls, came and played and figured out our process. Then he pretty much
big windows in the woods and 100 acres around it. harmonium and tabla in the basement. I recorded replicated our basement set-up in a real studio.
And with that we found a new sense of freedom. an album with them down there. We also loved He covered the clocks, changed the lighting, and
Garth Hudson:The Band was bom in Big Pink. Rick The Byrds' version of Chimes Of Freedom and the told the engineers that we would all play facing
steel guitar of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. each other, which was unusual at the time. We
[Danko], Richard [Manuel] and myself moved in,
took our musical communication with us into
and Robbie and [then-wife] Dominique were
thesealien environments.
nearby. Levon had moved back to Arkansas after
we got off the road with Dylan so Rick called him to What was the reaction to the album?
join us. When we moved to the house, at the top of
RR: It was: "Who are these people? What kind of a
a bumpy road with holes in it, we stopped playing
12-bar blues, stopped jamming and concentrated strange record is this?" But to us it was all very
natural. We were searching for some kind of
on songs. We'd been playing blues and rock'n'roll,
and all of a sudden here we were in a pink house in authentic expression of our shared experiences
a beautiful place in beautiful hills near a flower- and musical knowledge.

power village, and that music wasn't suitable any But you looked like 18th century frontiersmen.
more. We were in a perfect situation to take a new
RR: In that atmosphere up in Woodstock you just
direction... although we were all in proximity, you
started to dress a certain way. Polka dot shirts
never felt crowded. That's the way with a good
with frills would have been somewhat unsuitable.
family: they encourage everyone to work on
whatever they're best at and leave them to it. We didn't want to look slick-ass because that
would have contradicted the music.
Music From Big Pink had its roots in The
Basement Tapes, the collection of songs you
THE BAND When did you realise that this album was
recorded with Dylan in 1967... WAS ABOUT changing people's minds about music?
RR: I met Eric Clapton, and he said that after
GH: TheBasementTapes sessions were initially
demos for Dylan. He would come over to the BEING CENTRED. hearing Big Pink he decided to ditch Cream and
house and write funny stuff like Million Dollar do blues with Delaney And Bonnie.The real
Bash and we would go into the basement and WE WERE surprise was The Beatles. They did a live TV
record it. We got a good sound down there. It's
nice to make music without wearing earphones.
REPRESENTING performance of Hey Jude with about 60 of their
friends sitting around and singing along, and at
RR:That basement had everything a recording HISTORY, FAMILY, the end of it they sang the lyrics to The Weight.
GH: Big Pink made us part of it all and not part of it
studio is not meant to have - cement walls, a
concrete floor and a huge metal furnace in the AND MANKIND." at the same time. We headlined at Woodstock in
corner - but we knew we could get a vibe going. '69, but we were singing about the value of family
We all faced each other and listened to each while everyone was hitting the road in their vans.
other, and if you couldn't hear whoever was
RR: We were aware of psychedelic music, but I had How do you feel about the album now?
singing you were playing too loud.
GH: Dylan would be coming round the house three been playing long guitar solos with Ronnie GH: It's tremendous.The variety of stuff on there
or four days a week, and there was a little type Hawkins and was ready for something new. We is huge and I like the sounds we got. I was playing
writer on the coffee table in the living room that he wanted to explore the places rock'n'roll came from. a Lowrey organ through a Leslie speaker and it
would bash away on while we were in the base GH:The Band was about being centred. We were sounds like the wind. Richard Manuel was the
ment. Richard wrote a song about that, Upstairs, representing history, family, and mankind. finest rhythm player of the time, everyone else
Downstairs. As far as I know that's one of those few, played with dignity and respect. It's a worthy
sacred Basement Tapes songs still in the locker. Songs like The Weight and To Kingdom Come memoriam to Rick Danko and Richard Manuel.
have a mythic quality. What did you think you RR: A lot of records are uptight. Big Pink was the
Standing against the psychedelia of the time, were you writing about?
opposite. We were doing what came natural and
Music From Big Pink has an ancient quality... RR: The Weight is simply about trying to be a what sounded good and we didn't realise that we
RR: Everything we had crossed paths with to that good person and failing-you know, Hey, can you were making anything revolutionary.
point was an influence. We spent years playing do me a favour? So you do and that just leads to GH:Bythe way, somebody painted Big Pink blue a J
the Southern chitlin circuit with Ronnie Hawkins trouble. To Kingdom Come came from the way few years ago. But now it's pink again.
and then as Levon And The Hawks, and we would stories from the Bible play into people's everyday Is.
-o
pick up music from the side of the road: gospel, lives. I would come across strange Christian The Band: A Musical History, a compression oflOOS's J
mountain music, country. And I picked up stories groups like the Holy Rollers and the Pentecostals, box set, plus a Band tribute album, Endless Highway, §
and characters that got stored up in a trunk until it and that side of North American mythology are out now. m

66 MOJO
 S3 TS¥?T?viTm
Music From
Big Pink
(Capitol,! 968)

Bernie Taupin: "I was fresh out of the

sticks and adrift in London when Music
From Big Pink came out. My musical tastes
'ere not in keeping with current trends,
he guys that blew my skirt up were story-
ellers like Johnny Horton, Woody Guthrie,
Marty Robbins, The Louvin Brothers, Johnny Cash. So
imagine the vindication I felt in Musicland on Berwick
Street when Tears Of Rage, a culmination of all these
inspirations, unfolded lazily from the speakers. I was
mesmerised, dragged along on its funeral-like fire: the
strangled guitar, the ethereal organ, a foreboding tom
tom pattern, Richard Manuel's achingly beautiful voice.
"Perhaps this was just a freak track? Nothing could
possibly follow in this revolutionary fashion. Boy, was I
wrong. After The Weight had left my lyrical aspirations
in ruins and Garth Hudson's incendiary intro to Chest
Fever had blown every fuse in my body, Rick Danko's
heavenly wail on the coda of I Shall Be Released left
me a blubbering wreck. Here was music that sounded
forged out of solid rock in the Appalachian moonlight
by men of another time. It was a welding together of
everything I dreamed music should be: earthy, honest,
soulful, eclectic, traditional, modernist. In essence, a
blueprint to the Sistine Chapel of rock'n'roll. Everyone
wanted to be in The Band, but you could see it was
an unobtainable world, a million miles from Swinging
Anything. They were an outlaw band holed up and
clinging together to the coattails of fable and folklore.
"A certain amount has been said about The Band's
influence on mine and Elton's earlier work, specifically
Tumbleweed Connection. Americana had been in my
blood from an early age, what Big Pink and its follow-up
did.was say it's OK to write about history, about the land
and the characters who inhabited it over a century ago.
I loved the expanse and opportunity in America, the
blood-soaked 1800s, its magical wilderness. The Band
simply lit the blue touchpaper. Listen to Big Pink today
and it seems even more awe-inspiring and fiercely origi
nal: the ragged interwoven complexity of the vocals,
he Band: (from left) Robertson's stinging economical guitar work, his solo
arth Hudson, Robbie at the end of To Kingdom Come. If there is an album
obertson, Richard equivalent to the great American novel, this is it."
Manuel, Levon Helm,
Rick Danko. * Without this, no... Derek And The Dominos, The
White Album, hats'n'beards in rock.
 The Pixies' Frank
Black: "You could write
f, raw things but i *
m

$r*mL ^\

"^ijpr*-

/*vj3 HO
Jurfer Rosa

^
hi rock revoluti
I Smith (Maximo Park):
J 'In my teens, I spent years wonder-
|' because
ing what of
thisitsweird
coverrecord
-1 felt was
a bit
T h e S m i t h s , | E j fl T H F j Findlay Brown: "I love Pink Moon for
i its intimacy but Five Leaves Left is my
I SMITHS favourite of his three records. I know
he was manic-depressive, but I find the
I naughty looking at it in record
I shops around Middlesbrough! I
I This Charming album is very uplifting and extremely ught it after I'd heard Doolittle, and
i this wild, expressive, blood-and-
II* Man (Rough Trade I imoving in parts. His timing and delivery
is so assured and he hits the notes every time, and guts music, full of little surprises and lightning
I single, 1983) bolts. It was initially hard to stomach but it
his guitar playing is completely unique. I love the
Never mind the gladioli, here's the blue really got a grip on you. Those little spidery
strings, especially on Way To Blue. That tune is so
print for indie jangle. guitar lines, and shouting, and that drum
amazing, the kind that when you're feeling emo sound Steve Albini became known for: mas
tional about something and you hear it, it almost
makes you question your very existence. I don't sive, yet quite trebly. The record is like some
m into doing what I do because of what

t
one garrotting you, but it's the combination
think you can put him in any genre. He doesn't
Johnny Marr wrote and played. I was of pop songs, like Gigantic and Where Is My
J about 16, your hormones are raging, sound particularly folk to me; it's more classic and
Mind? with a visceral quality. It showed that
cinematic and timeless. I really think he could have
f / you're so sensitive to everything, par- you could write angry, raw things but still be
EB Ed
r ticularly
O'Brienmusic,
(Radiohead):
and this band
"I was
arrives
drawn
like done soul music too. I don't think there's another
album anywhere that's as complete." pop - but not in a metal way, which is the key.
nothing you've ever heard before. It emotionally You can't underestimate the impact it made
pinned and uplifted me, and I knew this thing with Without this, no... wispy acoustic rock. on Kurt Cobain. He was obsessed with not
six strings was something that could create this selling out, and here were the Pixies making
effect. What struck me first was the guitar melody: EH GANG massive pop songs with all that dissonance in
it's one of the defining pop-rock intros. It's one them.lt still has the power to shock."
of those songs you go back to when you've had
OF FOUR hout this, no... Smells Like Teen Spirit.
enough of music. It's joyful and uplifting, it drives Entertainment!
and resonates. It was the template for indie pop, (EMI, 1979)
for good and bad. For a while, you had that goth Entertainment! You dance like you would at a disco,
Punk, meet funk - the art-
thing coming out of New Romanticism, and U2, who with your arms all over the place."
dance begins again.
a lot of people were sniffy about, but The Smiths Without this, no... Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M.,
unified fans of both camps; they had a real pop Henry Dartnall (The Young Knives):
"I didn't get Entertainment! at first. I neo-post-punk renaissance, from The Rapture to !!!
sensibility, they looked fucking cool, and Marr had a
thought it was too obtuse. What got me
Rickenbacker, continuing that British tradition of gui
tarists from Townshend and The Beatles to Weller." j inquality.
1 the end wasGill's
Andy the guitars
incredible
are rhythmic
so in-your-
Q3 BIG YOUTH
Without this... the '80s rediscovery of the '60s, face. He's quite droney, which you get in Screaming
Stone Roses, Oasis, Shins. folk but much less in rock. He also sits on the same Target
note, hitting it as hard as he can. (Trojan, 1973)
HDNICK "All I know is what The Young Knives wrote
The reggae DJ album
before I heard that record, and what we've done
DRAKE since. Before, we were more indie-sounding.
achieves lift-off. t

1
Five Leaves We were quite young, and I had this attitude Don Letts: "Big Youth was one of the first
to transfer the energy of the dancehall e
that I probably wanted my mum to like it, but
Left (Island, 1969) Entertainment! made me want to do stuff that to the studio. He was different to U-Roy
Sad-eyed bard journeys my mother would hate! Our sound became stab- and King Stitt who had paved the way for ,
beyond folk, unknowingly creates a new bier and rhythmic, an exciting sound that would him. Their vocal style was inspired by DJs
singer-songwriter exemplar. make people get up and dance. You don't pogo to broadcasting from out of Miami, it was all ;

68 MOJO
100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

"IT WAS A MASSIVE ATTACK ON

THE SENSES" JOHNNY MARR
hip jive talk. Big Youth delivered his words in a chant Johnny Marr: "I'd bought Jeepster and two lanes will take us anywhere'. There's something
ing style. He drew on Rastafari, nursery rhymes and I decided this was the band for me. I abso- inherently American about that. The song Born To
cinema - you can even hear lyrics inspired by The Last l^grtNp1:'"ying
lutely loved it. Get It has
On was a band hav- Run has that Phil Spector Wall of Sound. I always
their moment-it a sound you
Poets - and he was one of the first rastas to flash his think of [the narrator] as someone on the verge of
dreads on stage, a symbol of rebellion. The title of the I can almost touch, as Jim Lea from Slade trying to live their adult life. There's these endless
album comes from an obscure movie called Sitting ! once said. Seeing T.Rex on Top Of The possibilities but he can't even get started. That's
Target that starred Oliver Reed, and in Jamaica it was Pops - they were doing Metal Guru - was actually how I felt, especially when I graduated college.
renamed Screaming Target to make it sound more a life-changing moment for me. For the first time I "His use of proper nouns influenced me to write
exciting.You can hear Big Youth and the album's heard a sound that was simultaneously mystical and with characters. Whenever he drops a name - Wendy,
influence everywhere - in New York, in Brooklyn, in otherworldly but strikingly familiar also. The whole Eddie, the Magic Rat, the Duke Street Kings -1 want
the Bronx in the beginnings of rap, in The Clash, in sound of it was like a massive attack on all of the to know more about those people. Meeting Across
2-Tone records, in garage and grime, in conscious senses. It's a very interesting place because it isn't The River is pretty artsy and atmospheric. He's able
ragga in Jamaica. Big Youth was the voice of the just sweetness and light, it's intense and fairly sexual to infuse the character with a desperation. The guy's
street, of the people, he was militant and tough. He and mysterious and can be dangerous. I'm prob in a bad place, it's obviously criminal, yet there's
soundtracked my life. His album was full of youthful ably describing a lot of people's experience of most another funny line: 'You gotta promise you won't say
exuberance, full of self-interpretation, but he added aspects of rock'n'roll - danger, sexuality, mystery, anything/'Cos this guy don't dance'. And Jungleland
a militant, political angle. He made it serious. He almost religion really." is just incredible! Everything's so big and that's how it
made you feel empowered. He was the man." feels during adolescence. Everyone can relate to that.
Without this, no... glam explosion, Smiths, Oasis.
Without this, no... see above! I didn't study literature, I studied communications,
and Springsteen knows how to communicate clearly."
mi BRUCE
mi R.E.M. SPRINGSTEEN Without this, no... urban romantic mythos, Jim
Murmur i Born To Run
Steinman, The Hold Steady.

(IRS, 1983) BQ PUBLIC

Mossy, myth-strewn opus
reinvents American roots * ( C o l u mDylan
b i a , rocks 1like
975 )
Elvis do IMAGE LTD
music for post-punk kids.
in the character-strewn bar-band opera to
start them all.
Public Image
(Virgin, 1978)
"The first thing I heard from R.E.M. was I Craig Finn (The Hold Steady): "Every
John Lydon destroys what
Wolves, Lower on a Trouser Press flexi. lyricist I like can be funny at times.
he created, in an act of slashing renewal.
Wow. By the time Murmur was released j Springsteen makes a joke right at the
I think I had already started an R.E.M. start in Thunder Road: 'You ain't a
§ R o b e r t fanboy
P o l l ascrapbook,
r d ( G u i d esuch
d Bwas
y Vo beauty, but hey you're all right'. That in high school when I found PiL's first
myi cinfatua
es):
tion with Chronic Town and the Hibtone Radio Free I makes it lighter than you think it's going album in a bargain bin around 1997.
to be. And the song has this wide openness: 'These I knew the Sex Pistols so I recognised
Europe/Sitting Still single. Anticipatory giddiness
was nearly uncontrollable and when Murmur was the face and the name, so I bought it. I
a M a t t i e Swas
a f e buying
r ( T h elotsRof
a pjazz
t u r eand
) : funk
" I wthen,
as
finally in my hands and on my turntable I was, uh,
moved? It greatly exceeded my grandest expecta and New York punk like Talking Heads, but the PiL
tion. It was smarter and prettier than Chronic Town album, especially the single, had the immediacy of
and even included better recordings of the two hardcore and punk but a more sinister, artful edge.
songs on the single. Their sound. Unique. Pop. Metal Box was even more exciting but without that
Post-punk. Haunting. Gorgeous. Murmur brought it first album, Metal Box wouldn't have made much
all together with 12 songs that will never leave the sense. Public Image was a very important record for
iPod in my head." me because it showed you could be aggressive and
weird and different without being anti-melodic, or
Without this... US indie takes a different form;
have to play as fast as possible. It showed that you
mainstream-integrity-rock needs new pin-ups. didn't have to compartmentalise music. The Rapture
were pulling from as many different sources as we
an CAROLE could and not put a particular idea or ethos to it."
KING Without this, no... post-punk, neo-post-punk.

Tapestry
(Ode, 1971) EETHE
Writer-turned-performer KINGSMEN
finds strength through gentleness. Louie Louie
r^^w"f Tori Amos: "I remember the babysitter (Wand single, 1963)
^k bringing this record with her one night.
*JB I was four or five at the time and I was Then: a slurred lurch of
white teen R&B, deemed obscene by the
I entranced by it. Over the next couple of
weeks it was my goal to play every single FBI. Now: the lingua franca of rock.
I song. I was in trouble because I was sup How Harry Belafonte | Spider Webb (The Horrors): "I must
have been 15 years old, delving into the
posed to be playing Mozart. Carole King is one of the changed the world. Or
greatest songwriters ever. Her songs are like stories ' world of I45s,
records and Iitwas
bought. wasalready
one of the first
familiar
or sonic movies, you want to walk into them. With at least Tom Waits's...
I Feel The Earth Move or It's Too Late, you're right "Streets I Have Walked [RCA, 1963] is a beautiful with it in films but it takes a certain...
there. Some people have emotions they talk about, record. It's collected songs - lullabies from Japan, I change, at that age, to really under
with Carole King, you sense how she really feels." Woody Guthrie, Waltzing Matilda, cowboy songs, stand it. I rediscovered it. It's a punk record, loose,
Jewish songs, all kinds of things. Belafonte was a not quite there and you can't even decipher the
Without this, no... Kate Bush, Beth Orton, Tracy
great collector of songs - he had that Lomax bone, lyrics. I think it encapsulates that primitive, three-
Chapman. I think. And he introduced a lot of songs from dif chord garage template - the raw organ sound, the
ferent cultures that had never, in that sense, been
breaks, and that violent picking of the guitar. It was
mi T.REX heard. The first time I heard Hava Nagila it was
Harry Belafonte who sang it.
the birth of American beat music, a group sound
Get It On "I think I was maybe 13 when I first heard sweeping through every single city. Listen to Louie
it, and I still have it. It definitely had an impact. Louie and you can hear the energy of delinquent
(Bang A Gong) You see, he loved melody, and I was at a time in youth. You can play it in any environment today and
(Fly single, 1971) my life when I was really nourished by that, by people will still go wild."
The return of rock as melody itself. I know that with kids, at a certain
point, music becomes a costume - you wear the Without this... punk dissolves and bar bands find
transgressive sexboogie. music, and there's certain music that you wouldn't another default setting. ; »▶
be caught dead wearing - but to me music was
always a completely interior experience, not a
fashion."
MOJO 69
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!
it [her label, Columbia, refused to issue it]. She just vocals too on the second side, they're so mesmeris
""mKick
MC5
Out The states it, so beautifully, as fact. The reason all of us ing and different. Eno helped, but Bowie was run
feel Billie so deeply is because her life and her sing ning that show. Low pretty much invented the '80s,
Jams (Elektra, 1969) ing were not separate, which is the greatest way to alongside Kraftwerk, just as Bowie had invented the
do whatever you do. The way you are every day is 70s. Kraftwerk was the seed, Bowie was the labora
Yippie funk, spaced jazz the way you are as an artist. It's one and the same." tory. Low was like a guidebook to synth punk. If the
and molten rock'n'roll Pistols and Ramones drove you to pick up a guitar
Without this, no... music as a matter of life and
wrapped in a timeless rebel aesthetic. death. and add plenty of chords, Low was what you can do
; Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream): with one finger, a synth and your imagination. Any
"A lot of people tend to talk about The band with a side parting, especially coming out of
Stooges' first album and the MC5's in
HO LOVE Sheffield or Leeds, owes it to Bowie."
the same breath because they came Love Without this, no... synthpop, wedges, "getting
from the same scene but to me they Eno in", the '80s generally.
I are completely different bands. There's
(Elektra, 1966)
Crazed punk template by
the whole political angle with the MC5 and a sense
of space that they get from Sun Ra and jazz as a LA's doomed cult band m MARVIN
whole. Live, they're incredibly powerful, soulful. archetype. GAYE
Kick Out The Jams proves that totally. People tend
to focus on Rob Tyner's vocals on Ramblin' Rose
j Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub): What's Going
j "Before the Fanclub, me and Raymond
because they're so out there, but it's quite faithful I [McGinley] had a band called The Boy On (Motown, 1971)
to [Oklahoma soul man] Ted Taylor's version. I love Hairdressers. The [2005 Turner Prize A new path for soul plot
Rob's voice but to me the album is about the guitar nominated] artist Jim Lambie was in ted in obsessive seclusion.
playing: Fred 'Sonic' Smith and Wayne Kramer. I the band, too, and he was a Love obses I Smokey Robinson: "When Marvin
They're incredible. It's heavy but in a different way sive. The unique thing about Love was these really
Gaye announced to me one day in 1971,
to most other bands. When I listen to it now, Kick unusual chord structures. If you sit down and play
I 'Smoke, my new album is being written
Out The Jams stills sounds like concrete funk." them with a guitar, it's like jazz. Then there are those
by God. I'm just an instrument, God is
Without this, no.. kicking out the jams, odd lyrics - with Arthur, you could never be sure 1 channelling this music through me,' I
motherfuckers! where the song would go to next. And the arrogant
B I lwas
\ shocked but not surprised. Shocked
way Love stared at you out of the sleeve of that first because he was Motown's reigning sex symbol and,
album - that was a real antecedent of punk. Plus the
EEJ BRIAN ENO ethnic mix, the Spanish influence, it gives it a differ though I knew he was the son of a preacher, mat
ters of the spirit were not often addressed in pop
Discreet Music ent dynamic. Later, they became Creation's favourite
music. But I was not surprised, because my friend
band, but before that, when Bobby Gillespie had the Marvin was a man of all kinds of crazy aspirations.
(EG, 1975)
Splash One club in Glasgow - before the Mary Chain He was going to be a football player, or a boxer,
Baroque chamber music or the Primals - they'd play Love and The 13th Floor or a crooner of standards in a top hat and tails. As
reimagined for electronic Elevators. In images of early Primal Scream - the
farfetched as some of his obsessions surely were,
d o o - h i c k e r y. huge belt buckles and Bobby's bangs - you can see when Marvin latched onto an idea he didn't let it
1 Max Richter: "I found it in Andy's how influenced they were. All the Glasgow bands on
go. We lived around the corner from each other, so
Records in Bedford in the mid '80s. I'd Creation were in love with Love." I stopped by to see what he was talking about. I sat
■ have been 14,15. The cover was really Without this, no... British indie rock. next to him at the piano while he played, I could
intriguing, especially all that theorising feel a new energy emanating from him. I felt it, too,
on the back. I was listening to Kraftwerk
I at the time and building old synths with
[33 JONI when I visited the sessions. He was out in the studio
with the musicians, completely in charge, trying to
soldering irons and I liked the idea of this machine- MITCHELL find new grooves for new kinds of songs. It's true
made music but I wasn't ready for how extreme it Blue (Reprise, 1971) that Motown didn't want to put it out at first, but
was. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. You nobody had heard music like this before. The things
keep thinking, OK, something's going to happen Post-hippy but pre- her it was talking about then - war, drugs, the environ
now, and it doesn't. Nothing happens, and it goes on jazz period: a byword in ment, material poverty, spiritual poverty - are more
not happening, one enormous intro that never kicks sophisto-pop. relevant than ever today. I know every note of this
in. I probably played it far too loud at first. It can be Madeleine Peyroux: "I first heard it at a music, yet I find fresh inspiration every time I play it.
quite epic when it's loud. It has real grandeur. It goes I friend's apartment in 2000. She sounded It's the best album ever made."
back to Erik Satie's idea of furniture music but it also i so pure and fully developed. An artist is Without this, no... soul-album-as-statement.
starts to creep into your consciousness because it's I really who they are from the beginning
so beautiful, with that lovely slightly-out-of-tune and for all time, and I feel that especially
analogue tape thing going on. It's a formative record I here. Joni has the ability to add fallibility ESCAN
for a lot of people. Eno laid down these markers and
everyone was drawn along in his wake. It put the
in her beauty, and joy in sadness. She also makes the
storyteller extremely self-aware in everything that
Tago Mago
(United Artists, 1972)
performer in the same boat as the audience. The she or he is thinking and saying and living. There's
performer is pushing go and then they're listening foresight in every song, the kind of vision that allows The motherlode of
with you, waiting to hear what happens, the start of us all to see the future in these characters' lives. It improv monstro Teuton
all that democratic hands-off automated music of seems to me that Joni was the first woman to talk space groove.
the '80s and '90s. I think Eno is influential because frankly about female issues such as regret and unre I John Lydon: "Whenever I listen to
he makes 'ideasy' music - which is normally difficult
quited love - before, the blues and folk music of our | Tago Mago I have an impression of
and forbidding - but the results are beautiful." Western world was used to hearing only a woman's Sid [Viciousl's high-rise council flat in
Without this, no... Berlin Bowie, Talking Heads, complaint, rather than an informed opinion. This is Hackney. Sid would play Tago Mago all
modern electronic music. why I am in awe of Joni: she is a truly important liter I the time. The first thing that struck me
ary force, and will be more so with time." I about Can was the superb drumming.
CS BILLIE Without this, no... bookish female singer-songwriters. I'd put it on a par with Miles Davis' Bitches Brew - a
similar approach but a very different end result.
H O L I D AY
HO DAVID Their audience wasn't full of deep-thinking intellec
Strange Fruit BOWIE
tuals, but mainly people who liked any good noise
that anyone could kick up. Can had a bass sound
(Commodore single,
LOW (RCA, 1977) that could literally make the stage collapse. They did
1939) that at The Roundhouse in 1975. Holger Czukayjust
Brixtonian/ET hybrid sets
Anti-lynching anthem breaks devastating plugged the damned thing in and the subsonics
new ground for popular music. record for successful con were so... irreverent that the PA just shook and the
secutive reinventions. foundation underneath the stage collapsed. It was
i Joan As Police Woman: "I didn't know
BHBM Ian McCulloch (Echo & The the experimentation that I loved - random chaos.
I' taken
about the
withlyrical meaning
the melody, at first;
which I was so
is gentle ^^B Bunnymen): "I didn't get it when I loved them. People have suggested that Can
influenced the Sex Pistols and you know, why not?
= and simple and gorgeous. But then it K^j^H Charles Shaar Murray in the NME said he
! was as if the curtains were opened one You could lose yourself in them, find your own way
y*<£_ J hated Low because it was so bleak and
i* detached. I loved its poppy qualities, like in their ebb and flow, and there wasn't too much
I day, and I got sick to my stomach when of that going on at the time. They were therefor
I understood. There is enough pain in Billie's voice Wat* Sound And Vision, and Always Crashing
In The Same Car; his voice is fantastic and magnetic, the people who caught on to them. They've given
from the experience of living her life that she doesn't
just pure Bowie. The album had a radiance and something to us, so love 'em for it."
have to insert anything extra - all she does is sing
it. It's so short and condensed, and potent. It's not crispness to it, particularly the first side. It still makes Without this, no... Eno, PiL, Joy Division, hypnotic
even angry - even though she had to fight to record me smile and not feel low. I loved the wordless repetition. ^*

70 MOJO
 They don't give a
damn.N.W.A: (from
left) Ice Cube, DJ
Yella, Eazy E,

J&-
e, MCRen.

If

PETER RELIC SAVOURS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

and DJ Yella's pulse-jacking scratches heightened the confronta
tion. Soon after the album's release, the LAPD launched Operation
Hammer, terrorizing LA's black and Latino community in a disas
trous attempt at gang control, while the FBI sent Priority Records
a letter objecting to the group. Even for those who shared N.WA's
blasting at tire back end of a disastrous decade for frustrations, their murderous misogyny proved dif
underprivileged America and the gangsta rap era ficult to defend. But the album made no claims at
began. As Jeff Chang wrote in his hip-hop social problem-solving, pushing issues to the centre of
history Can't Stop Won't Stop: "Reaganism had the table where no one could look away. Within
eliminated youth programs while bombarding a New York-centric genre, Straight Outta Compton
youths with messages to desist and abstain; it hailed the rise of the West Coast and established
was all about getting used to having nothing." the enduring gangsta rap archetype. (Compton's
Niggaz With Attitude weren't having that. The au courant rapper The Game has the N.WA logo
sex-mad, money-hungry group — Ice Cube, Dr tattooed over his heart.) The tide track's video
Dre, Eazy-E, M.C. Ren, and DJ Yella - rejected DUMB showed N.WA being slammed onto patrol cars two
Afro-centrism and the intellectual rigours of
Public Enemy and spat lyrics supersaturated with msnmmm years before die LAPD's beating of Rodney King
was filmed, and five years before the Beastie Boys
hate for the officers patrolling their tree-lined impersonated cops in Sabotage. Compton foretold
Compton streets. "Searching my car/Looking
"N.WA HAILED reality and inspired many impressions. As Layzie
Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony puts it: "When
for the product/Thinking every nigga is se] THE RISE OF N.WA came out with their gritty hardcore don't-
ing narcotics," Ice Cube griped on Fuck Tha
Police, before cutthroat clown Eazy E laid it out
THE WEST give-a-damn attitude, then everybody was like, Oh,
we can really tell it like it is?'"
"Without a gun and badge what do you got? COAST AND THE
A sucker in a uniform waiting to get shot.. .by Without this, no... Snoop Dogg, Biggie, Tupac,
me." The pistol grip funk of Dr Dre's beats GANGSTA RAP Eminem and, er, Anaconda.
ARCHETYPE."
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

"IT'S A TEMPLATE FOR HUMAN

EXISTENCE" PATTI SMITH
CE JOHN S3 FAIRPORT Si THE
COLTRANE CONVENTION BYRDS
My Favorite Liege & Lief Sweetheart Of
Things (Island, 1969) The Rodeo
(Atlantic, 1960) The generations meld and (Columbia, 1968)
a new future is forged for folk.
Sax maestro journeys outside of himself, suntry into hippy rock will go...
takes punks and psychsters with him. 1 Jim Moray: "It's one of those records like
| Steve Earle: "I had been listening to
Patti Smith: "I was 16 when I first ■ ^v Sgt. Pepper that everyone rates but takes Jimmie Rodgers and Merle Haggard. I
heard this, and as well as being incred ^P"^l) for granted and forgets how good it is. didn't know who Gram Parsons was but
W^ If It has the seminal trad things, songs by The Byrds making an acoustic country
ibly beautiful, it taught me everything ' record did not seem that out-there to me
H^ ,* amazing new writers, incredible playing,
j I needed to know about improvisation. great singing, presentation and sequenc
Coltrane would take a popular tune, I in San Antonio, Texas, where the relation
1 even a square song like My Favorite ing. It's the consummate folk album. The first time ship between country and folk was solid. In Hank
I remember making a conscious effort to listen to it Williams's time the country chart was called the folk
Things, deliver the melody, then go off for 12 min
utes as if he's talking to God before returning to was when I was learning to play guitar. I'd sit in the music chart. So Sweetheart... made perfect sense to
the main motif. What he did on that record was a front room with my shiny new electric guitar putting me, and took me on to The Flying Burrito Brothers
the needle back to the start so I could try and play and Gram's solo records. But there were divisions. I
template not only for art but for human existence.
Because as workers, as artists, we want to break Crazy Man Michael or Tamlin. When I moved I got a got my ass kicked for having long hair and cowboy
boundaries and push ourselves harder in order to mint vinyl copy - I'd forgotten about the thing on boots and some people wouldn't listen to country - it
see new levels of things. the sleeve with little information boxes and pictures was the music football players and guys who greased
"It was one of the most important jazz records, of Cecil Sharp, Padstow Obby Oss and stuff. It's like their hair back and guys who beat up the coffee
but its importance went way beyond that. It was right a primer of 20th-century folk. I still play it regularly house crowd listened to. But Sweetheart... started to
up there with Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'. even though I know it off by heart. My favourite chip away the wall that divided the two camps."
It captured people's imaginations. It blew everything track right now is Farewell Farewell, which is to the
Without this, no... Eagles, 70s soft rock, alt coun
apart, not just what people's idea of jazz was, but of tune of the famous folk song Willie O'Winsbury with
the potential of improvisation in all forms. From that try (hereinafter, 'Americana').
new words by Richard Thompson - a great marriage
record I learned about Miles Davis and Roland Kirk; between old and new, the jewel in the crown."
then the poets associated with those artists, Allen
Without this, no... English folk-rock, psych-folk,
SO PINK
Ginsberg and Ray Bremser; and then abstract expres
nu-folk, Battle Of Evermore. FLOYD
sionists like Jackson Pollock. I still have Coltrane in
mind when I vocalise. To be in front of a microphone Arnold Layne
and embark on a 12-minute improvisation such as (EMI single, 1967)
Radio Baghdad is an arduous task. But having faith The doors of perception
in that ability is what I got from listening to Coltrane. are blown right open - and British rock is
And I'm still listening to him." never the same again.
Without this no... Eight Miles High, Fun House,
Edgar Froese (Tangerine Dream):
astral rock. "From the first three or four chords of
Arnold Layne, it's definitely different.
SO THE It sounds like the coolest song ever
UPSETTERS made in Britain, a transporting atmo
sphere, a journey across a landscape.
Blackboard Unfortunately, Syd went too far into that open land
Jungle Dub scape and couldn't find his way back, but most of us
did, and we carried his influence. Being a guitarist
(Upsetter, 1973) at the time, I appreciated Syd's very hard Fender
Lee Perry and King Tubby hatch the first sound, with distortion and feedback, very different
big dub album out of Kingston, Jamaica. from the rest. Syd gave many musicians their kick
into the music business. I very much liked British
% Adrian Sherwood: "I was living in High
psych; it was cooler and more melancholic while
] Wycombe at the time. I used to go to American psych had a silly, fun factor."
■ ■'. reggae clubs and blues parties and I'd
I J hear Blackboard Jungle. It just sounded Without this, no... art-rock, space-rock, psych-
, A amazing -you had the bass rattling rock, prog rock, Hawkwind, Cope, oil projections.
P your ribcage, you also had these sound
effects crashing on top of your head. There were a Five great records that H3 JOHN
couple of other dub albums around, but they were influenced no one LENNON
nowhere near as adventurous or completely mad
as Blackboard Jungle. The sound effects and the per Mike Nesmith The Prison (pacific arts, m*)
Multimedia existential synth-country concept
John Lennon:
cussion seemed to be twice as loud as the rhythm
tracks. It was Lee Perry trying to upset people with album about a future mind-prison, with free Plastic Ono
novella. Talk about the road less travelled... Band (Apple, 1970)
the balance of sound. It set a new appreciation
of the sonic picture. He mixed it with King Tubby Half Man Half Biscuit Back In The The paradigm of the psyche-scouring rock
at Tubby's studio. Tubby was first and foremost a D.H.S.S. (PROBE PLUS, 1985) confessional.
sound system operator, and when he started up Tumbledown nursery-room indie allied to rubbish
his studio, it was a matter of, Press record on the ¥,&M B N'cky Wire (Manic Street Preachers):
pop culture encyclopedia. Defines 'particularist'. ■ "An NME writer called Steven Wells got
machine, and move the bass and drums up and
The Flaming Lips Zaireeka m*.w I me into it. He used to go on about the
down, bringing in crazy effects. It was effectively a
live performance mix, but Lee brought something No one else is crazy or bored enough to release }tmWf> lyrics and °f course we'd just written
four CDs you played simultaneously on four sepa 1 Motown Junk:'I laughed when Lennon
extra out of Tubby. You can imagine him saying, I
rate systems. I got shot.' This changed my mind.
want it to sound like the heavens are falling through Lennon's use of words to betray, to hurt, to make
the sky! He's like a mischievous kid who's completely Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell (epic 1977) you think, to stimulate, to educate, is just amazing.
in control. I've been working with him this weekend, Grand guignol pop from the Springsteen of Silly. The album is so pure - this rejection of every kind
actually. We're making a new album, the best thing Number 1 in a field of one. of bullshit idea. Listen to the song God, just that
he's done in 20 years." line: 'I don't believe in Zimmerman.' We live in this
Prefab Sprout Steve McQueen sacred cow society where Bob Dylan is a demi-god
Without this, no... Post-Kid A Radiohead, (KITCHENWARE, 1985)
Timbaland, drum'n'bass, etc... even though he's made desperately shit albums
Baroque lyrical conceits, scatterbrained soft-pop
dynamics and quirky Thomas Dolby soundscapes.
Exists outside history.
72 MOJO
 punk, he was
around for two
years then gone.'

year after year. If Lennon was around today he'd

still be backbiting, which I can relate to. We covered
Lemmy: "Buddy was I
was only around for tw
m CAPTAIN
Working Class Hero on our new record [Send Away then he was gone, but he ma BEEFHEART
The Tigers]. I think it's the greatest dissection of fame
and class and that line, 'You're still fucking peasants
such a difference. That'll Be 1 & HIS MAGIC
Day was the song that put him on
as far as I can see', is incredible, so full of vitriol." the map. It's in his guitar sound BAND
Without this, no... Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Thorn his innovative playing - Only Buddy and
Jie Cochran could play solos. He showed
Trout Mask
Yorke, Conor Oberst.
lat you can do with just three chords, none Replica (Reprise, 1969)
of this 'I know an augmented 17th, that'll be Rite of passage/'out'-rock creation myth.
[23 CHIC handy.' Here he invents the 'F instead of D'
Good Times trick, which impressed us young guitarists at
Edgar 'Jones' Jones: "I first heard it when
I was about 20, and there were things on
(Atlantic single, 1979) the time. It's also got one of the greatest intros it like Ella Guru and Sweet Sweet Bulbs
in rock'n'roll; we all sat there trying to figure that I got immediately, 'cos the syncopa
The '70s funk aesthetic that fucker out for ages, our fingers bleeding. tion of the guitars sounded so nice-The
stripped to its imperative, The Beatles were big, big fans; look at how Stairs used to incorporate the Yardbirdsy
tight-waisted essentials. many of his songs they covered. And that bit of Veteran's Day Poppy in a live medley we did. My
Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand): "I vocal hiccup: where would Adam Faith and
relationship with it changed as I learned more about
heard Chic when I put on bands at The Mike Berry have been without it? And Fats music; I made the connection with modern classical
Thirteenth Note in Glasgow and thought, Domino aside, he was the first of that rock'n'roll composers like Messaien and Bartbk, and realised that
I It's so to-the-point. It's such a contrast to generation who didn't look like Elvis." it's a classical record played on blues guitars. Today,
j rock, where everyone hammers away all Without this, no... Beatles, Weezer, indie you can tell The Zutons and The Coral like it."
I the time. We recorded part of our second rock geeks generally.
album at Avatar Studios in New York, which used Without this, no... XTC, mystic Scouse rock.
to be the Power Station. We talked to the engineers
about how Chic recorded. They'd do the vocals in the
Fionn Regan: "It's Neil Young's second
K!J STEVIE
live room and put the drums in the vocal booth so
instead of that '80s sound, big echoy drums and tight record and it's as if he finds his sound by WONDER
vocal, you have this lovely, ambient vocal and these playing with Crazy Horse. Any time he Innervisions
great, tight drums. Essentially, the great thing about plays with them my ears prick up, the
Chic is you can't listen to it and not want to dance." I chemistry between Neil and the band is (Motown, 1973)
I jawdropping. To me, the album sounds k^C The full ripening of
Without this, no... Punk-funk, Let's Dance, Stevland's holistic pop vision.
like three cars joyriding - folk, country and rock
Madonna, hip hop. - and they're banging off each other's bumpers. On
I Beverley Knight: "Precious few can lay
a track like Round And Round you realise how vast
I I ^3 NEIL the sound is. It sounds like island music, or a forest, j claim to genius but Stevie is one of them.
You know the minute you put this on it's
YOUNG like Canada itself. I think the whole record was made
in about one-and-a-half or two weeks and it feels like
a masterpiece. There are Latin flavours,
gospel handclaps, jazz and Beatlesesque
Everybody that. It sounds like a documentary of a time and it I harmonies all mixed in with the soul and
Knows This taught me that you can't build records. It's a case of synthesizer. It's important as a piece of protest music
two takes and if that's not working, then it's not the
Is Nowhere song for that day. You can't force these things."
but also for Motown, who were still associated with
lighter, brighter music. Here they're plunged into
I (Reprise, 1969) Without this, no... grunge, hypno-heaviosity, absolute reality as Stevie bends all the rules."
8 The smouldering Young/Horse stomp is born. mewling rock voices. Without this, no... Michael Jackson, Jamiroquai... >*-

MOJO 73
 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD

»»s

m■

_ A Lifetime
They met in meditation class, recorded their debut album in 10 days and
may or may not have thrown a TV through the studio window. The tripped-
out, Dionysian template for rock-as-psychic odyssey was the result.
Fair hears the truth, or something like it, from the surviving Doors.
ATE iMAY 1965. JAMES DOUGLAS MORRISON late 1965-66 was that every band was totally unique, whereas today you
can parse a band by its influences. I guess the phrase'a happening'
and Raymond Daniel Manzarek have just
captures exactly what it was like on the [Sunset] Strip. No two nights were
graduated from the University Of California, Los alike, the women were gorgeous, people wore outlandish outfits and all
Angeles. As cinematography students they've kinds of craziness went on. There was a sense, not of revolution, but of a
studied everyone from Bergman to Fellini, but it is very rapid evolution. What took other societies a decade, we were going
to do in a year.
resident tutor, Josef von Sternberg - German
expressionist director of Marlene Dietrich in works such as The Robby Krieger (guitar): By the time I was in The Doors I was cutting down
Blue Angel - who will influence them most, his lectures and darkly on my acid use. That's why I was doing meditation classes -1 had to come
back to earth. A friend, Keith Wallace, had a brother who'd been overto
adult films firing Morrison and Manzarek's youthful imaginations. India to try and find sartori or whatever. He'd met the Maharishi, and he
Faces on the emerging 'heads' scene, aspiring poet Jim and clas- convinced him to come to Los Angeles to teach transcendental meditation
sicallv trained jazz/blues buff Ray enjoy pot and acid-fuelled chats at - this was well before The Beatles or anything. That meeting at the
Wallace's house was the first time the
Jim's bohemian apartment in Goshen, Maharishi had come to the States. John was
West LA. City Lights Bookstore-endorsed there and that was where we first met Ray,
writers such as Allen Ginsberg and too.The three of us had been meditating
Michael McClure are hot topics, as are the individually. The leader guy at the class, Jerry
Li-bomb, the ongoing war in Vietnam, The Doors Jarvis, asked if there were any problems. Ray
(Elektra, 1967) put his hand up and said, "No bliss yet!"
Sonny Rollins versus John Coltrane and John Densmore (drums): You were
Debussy versus Stravinsky
supposed to bring a flower, some fruit, a
lor now; the buddies hope to become handkerchiefand$35.Robbyandlwerelike,
auteurs, and Ray is a little sad to hear of "Enlightenmentfor$35!OK!"We'dbeen
Alice Cooper: "Every other band in LA
Jim's plans to move to New York City. In at the time were all 'peace and love'. The fooling around with psychedelics, and
Doors weren't. They were LA's signature meditation made us a lot calmer. Jim came
fact, Manzarek could barely be more sur
sex band. They also had this kind of jazz one time. He didn't want to meditate - he just
prised when he next chances upon Jim, wanted to look in the Maharishi's eyes.
on LA's Venice Beach, and Morrison re background. Robby Krieger played this
snakey type of guitar that was very sexual, Krieger: I can't imagine a more diverse group
veals the stirrings of what will shortly very syncopated. When you listen to this album of people coming together to make music.
there's never anything in any other musician's way. John and Jim were Sagittarius. I was
Then you add a singer who's a wildly unpredictable
Ray Manzarek (keyboards): I'm sitting on beat poet and you have an incredible, original band. Capricorn and Ray was Aquarius. Jim was
Venice Beach when who should come walking 'They would sit around and listen to blues all the Dionysian and the rest of us were Apollonian
down the shore but Jim Morrison. He's time, but when they got into the studio The Doors personalities. We had to be to balance Jim
wearing cut-offs and he's got curly hair, and recorded music that was really unique, like Moonlight out. Jim had the lookfor sure, but from the ■
he's kicking his feet in the surf. The water is Drive. Break On Through was based on Shake Your first few rehearsals, he didn't seem to have
backlit so the sprinkles look like jewels that Moneymaker by Paul Butterfield, but by the time they the stage presence. He lacked confidence.
take existence then disappear. I shout, "Hey! finished with it you couldn't tell.
Densmore: It was real melting pot, just like
Come over here," and fatefully Jim tells me "Girls loved Jim Morrison because everything he
America. Robby was into flamenco and folk,
he's decided to stay in LA and he's been said had some kind of sexual connotation to it. Light
My Fire, Backdoor Man, or Soul Kitchen. 'I wanna sleep Ray and I were into jazz and classical, and Jim
writing songs. This is a surprise; I know him as a had read every book on the planet.
all night in your soul kitchen!' What do you think that
poet, not a songwriter. I say, "Sing me means? Well, duh! Manzarek: One of his tricks was to say, "I'll
somethingf'and he squats down and digs his "Also, everything he wrote was about him dying.
hands into the wet sand. Eventually he starts turn my back, you go to my bookshelf, pick
He was maybe the most self-destructive guy I ever out any book you like and read a line or two
singing Moonlight Drive: "Let's swim to the met. There was no way of talking him out of his death and I'll bet you a six pack of Tecate that I can
moon/Let's climb through the tide..." "Cool!" I wish. There were times when he would be at the top
of the 6000 Building - which is 15 or 16 stories high guess the book." Nine times out of 10, Jim
thought. I could hearthe organ lines in my
Morrison drankfree beer.
head: somefunky Ray Charles or Jimmy Smith. on Sunset Boulevard -with a bottle of Jim Beam in
"Come on baby gonna take a little ride/Goin' each hand, balancing himself. Things like that were Densmore: Jim was shy and very smart. Ray
down by the ocean side/Get real close/Get real daily events. The fact that he lived to 27 was amazing. was gregarious and vicious, and Robby was
"We toured with them and he'd get up and do even shyer than Jim. Me? I was a bit pompous
tight,"Jim goes on. I'm thinking love song, but
then he goes, "Baby gonna drown tonight." When The Music's Over, during which it would take
{laughs).
Death had entered the equation in typical LSD him, like, 10 minutes to light a cigarette, but it was
like James Dean lighting a cigarette or Marlon Brando. Manzarek: John Densmore was a puckish lad
fashion, and death looked over the shoulder of The audience would be totally mesmerised. with a good deal of cheek and a great deal of
Jim Morrison for the rest of his life. "But this first album distils just how good The rhythmic sensibility. Robby was a quiet guy
Jac Holzman (Elektra Records boss; signed Doors were. And they were unbelievable." with a high IQ like Jim's. Ray Manzarek was
The Doors): The beauty of the LA scene in Without this, no... Iggy Pop, The Cult, Echo & The and is everything that I am. I knew that ^*
Bunnymen.

74 MOJO
Jim Morrison lights
his fire: "Girls loved
him to death."
 *~WJ£

*!#>
ar

The Doors on-stage at The Scene,

New York, 1966 (from left) Robby
Krieger, Morrison, John Densmore,
Ray Manzarek; (opposite top) at
"WHAT SET THE
the Whisky-A-Go-Gp, Los Angeles,
1966; Morrison with Paul Rothchild, DOORS APART WAS
outside Sunset Recordings during
Strange Days sessions, June?,! 5,1967.
PERFORMANCE.
WHAT YOU HEAR
*<. Jim Morrison was a very handsome guy that
ON THE FIRST drunk. The dark side of our music came from Jim
the girls would love. And they did love him; they ALBUM IS WHAT and his inner demons.
loved him to death. They were Dionysian Manzarek: Jack Kerouac's On The Road was an
maenads tearing Dionysus apart. THEY DID LIVE." extremely influential book in Jim's life and mine,
Krieger: After the first few rehearsals we didn't because it conveyed the generation before: a
have enough originals, so Jim said, "Why don't bunch of potheads and literary guys seeking
you guys try writing something?" I thought, "OK, I freedom. Without Kerouac.The Doors wouldn't
better write something pretty heavy to compare with Jim's lyrics." I took have been instilled with that sense of search. Philosophically, Aldous
the four elements: earth, air, fire and water - you can't get much more Huxley's The Doors Of Perception was obviously important, that's where
universal than that. Butthen I picked fire because I liked the Stones song we got the band name. LSD opened the doors of perception for us.

Play With Fire. I don't know how I came up with light my fire, but oddly Holzman: Elektra had already found Love and Arthur Lee had asked to see
enough nobody had yet put those three words together in a song title. The me because he knew I was coming in from New York. Arthur was playing
Doors' songs up until then were pretty straightforward, so I decided to use the Whisky and he talked to me about The Doors, this other band on the bill
every chord I knew. When Ray put that whole Bach spin on it, that was the that night. I did stick around for them, but I was very tired and I didn't get it
icing on the cake. at first. For some reason I kept coming back, but Morrison hadn't ignited in
the first three performances I witnessed, so I think it was more the
Manzarek: We weren't influenced by the British bands' intellect; we were musicians in the band. I was fascinated by the substitution of the bass
influenced by their success.Tbe Beatles came to America and overwhelm
guitar with piano bass. The clean architectural line of the music was very
ing madness ensued. 'The Beatles in NY!' the headlines said. Limousines striking. I knew that on an intelligence level I was going to enjoy working
and screaming girls-yeah, we wanted some of that. with The Doors, but I thought Morrison something of a loose cannon.That '-
was what was attractive about him, though. There was danger around
Krieger: We were definitely influenced by British Invasion bands like The
Animals and Them.Their set-up was similarto ours: the organ and a certain Morrison; you never knew what was going to happen. He was always :
graceful with me but when he had too much liquor he was a nasty drunk, i
type of lead si nger. When we played with Them at the Whisky [Whisky A
Go-Go club, Sunset Boulevard] it was a real highlight. Van [Morrison] used Manzarek: The Elektra deal offered no real front money. Yeah, we got $5,000,
to get really wasted and break mikestands almost every night. He but wasn't there, like, $25,000 so that we could get $5,000 each? Jac is a great
reminded me a lot of Jim. He became a total other person when he was guy, but this was an NYC doo wop deal like The Penguins orThe Six Mustangs <

76 MOJO
 'i;si>:mx

got. The fact that he gave us three albums was fabulous, Densmore: Aesthetically, Sunset Sound was dark and dingy
though. We made money right away. like a factory. Great sound, though.
Holzman: It was clear to me that Paul Rothchild should produce. He'd Krieger: We bought a bunch of candles and some sandalwood incense to
already had experience with electric music when he produced The Paul make the room a bit more homely.
Butterfield Blues Band, and he'd worked with Love. The relationship
between him and Bruce Botnick was very tight, and Paul was well versed in Manzarek: Going into Sunset Sound was an existential moment. You can
classical music, jazz... whatever. He could stand nose-to-nose with any of only record your first album once. It was a terrific, spacious room with a
The Doors and argue a point with them. great board that had Bakelite knobs and looked like something out of Flash
Gordon. Paul and Bruce were at the helm of something out of a sci-fi comic,
Krieger: And the fact that Paul had been busted for drugs a few months piloting these strange, arcane echo devices. We were filled with excite
before gave him a lot of street cred as far as we were concerned. We liked ment and trepidation. It was finally our chance to get our music to people
him immediately. outside of Los Angeles.
Holzman: Paul was hip as anybody and could roll perfect joints that were a Botnick: Paul Rothchild had thought a lot about recording techniques
thing of beauty, perfectly cylindrical. He drove around in a Porsche or just while he was in jail forthe drugs bust. He dreamed about that stuff.
the right Mercedes and wore a Borsalino hat.
Krieger: Jim did acid making the first album, but the rest of us didn't. If
Densmore: Bruce Botnick was working as a recording engineerfrom the
you're on acid you're useless half of the time, and when you're paying for
age of 16. He was 19 by the time we met him, but he'd already recorded studio time you can't afford that.
Diana Ross.
Manzarek: Acid is a spiritual thing, a sacred sacrament. That's why Jim
Bruce Botnick (engineer): I had started working on the second Love
went to the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church on Sunset looking for
album, beginning with the single Seven & Seven Is in June 1966, and we
started the first Doors album on August 19,1966. Sunset Sound Recorders inspiration before he came back to the studio to sing The End.
was the most advanced studio in Los Angeles at the time. It had a vocal Krieger: It was Paul Rothchild's idea to put that organ melody at the start
booth, something few other studios had then. I worked for Disney and of Light My Fire. He said, "When you're making a rock'n'roll song, you've
other companies as well as Elektra, so I'd be recording Mary Poppins and got to catch them right away." I think the Marxophone on Alabama Song
maybe a commercial for a muffler company during the day, and The Doors was Ray's idea. We'd gone up to Music City in Hollywood and they had all
in the evening. I loved it. these exotic instruments you could rent. >-

MOJO 77
 Morrison squared: Jim and Van jam
at the Whisky, '66; the Lizard King
in Hamburg, 1968; young Jim with
his naval officer father, Steve; Jac
Holzman, Krieger and Manzarek /: Si
unveil Doors star at the Hollywood
Walk of Fame earlier this year.

to 38 years to discover that, and it was only remedied when I

remixed the album about a year ago.

Densmore: Itwasmyfirsttime in New York. I rememberthinking

about that Brian Wilson line: "New York's a lonely town when
you're the only surfer boy around." I wasn't a surfer, but I missed
the ocean.

Krieger: We had this residency at Ondine, a little

club under the 59th Street Bridge. Andy Warhol
would drop by and it was always packed. We'd
"THERE WAS play five or six 35-minute sets, starting from
midnight. It was a debauched, vampire-like
DANGER AROUND existence and we'd have to tramp back to the
Henry Hudson hotel through the snow at five in
MORRISON; YOU the morning. Jim hung out with Nico a bit. She'd
«< Botnick: The thing that set The Doors apart
from pretty much everyone else was that they NEVER KNEW heard he liked redheads and she dyed her hair
onetimejustforhim.
were into performance. What you hear on the first
album is what they did live. It wasn't just playing
WHAT WAS GOING Manzarek: Did Jim have a soft spot for Nico? No,
he had a hard spot for her. Everybody did. Jim
the song - it transcended that. You can hear it on TO HAPPEN." liked her because she was cuckoo, this crazy, truly
the climax of The End - Jim took it all the way. You
didn't have to coax vocal performances from Jim. fabulous German chick. Meeting Warhol was like
Unless he was totally bored, he was in the zone, meeting a zombie from Night Of The Living Dead.
I took his hand and it was limp and flaccid and
period. Ninety-eight per cent of his vocals were
live in the studio. All we did was double-track his voice occasionally. white and slightly moist. His eyes were hollow and lifeless and I wanted
nothing to do with him.
Holzman:The other guys in the band knew Jim's importance. They were
the ones who pushed Jim forward when they were shooting the first album Holzman: Break On Through stalling at Number 106 in the singles chart
cover. They did a lot of things that were right as a band. Everybody had to was done on purpose. We knew it wouldn't be a hit, but it was the proper
introduction to The Doors' music. It caught a lot of their essence.
agree on any business decision and they agreed to split all songwriting
royalties equally. No matter who wrote the song, it was always fleshed out Manzarek: It was nice and short, a good samba thing. Jac released it
in this magical working-through process that they had. because he thought it would be a hit. It wasn't, but then Paul Rothchild did
Botnick: It's been said that Jim took my TV and threw it through the control that infamous edit of Light My Fire.
room window during the sessions for the first album, but that's not true. He Krieger: We resisted that edit for along time; but FM radio was nothing in
bumped into theTV, but that was it. I have thattelevision to this day and it those days, and we had to get it down to about three minutes for AM radio.
still works. After Break On Through fizzled out, my fear was that we'd made this great
album and nobody was going to hear it.
Manzarek: Why thefuck would Bruce still have a little old portable from
1966? And if he does have it, why isn't it in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame? Holzman:The band didn't want the guitar solo out, but what it came down
to in the end was one very tight edit. The A-side had the mono edit of Light
Krieger: I remember Jim throwing theTV set at the control room window.
It was a typical Jim moment, but I think he was right. We were trying to My Fire at around three minutes, but the B-side was the entire track in
stereo. My argument was that whoever buys it can look on the shortened
create this mood and concentrate, and Bruce was watching the LA
A-side as a calling card for the song, the album, and forThe Doors as artists.
Dodgers. We were a bit scared, because if the glass had actually broken... It worked out exactly the way it was supposed to. Light My Fire became
Holzman: No TV set was thrown. Elektra's - and The Doors' - first Number 1.

Densmore: I'm positive it happened. Jim was tripping and theTV got on Densmore:The first time I heard Light My Fire on the radio I was in my little
his nerves. Fortunately the glass was real thick. Everybody was like, "OK. We Singer Gazelle at a stop light. I rolled the window down and shouted at the
thought our singer had charisma - maybe he's just psychotic..." car next to me, "That's me! That's my band!"

Krieger: Acid is a 12-hour high, and the night we recorded The End Jim Holzman: I bought John a horse for Christmas. And we bought all of The
hadn't come down yet. He came back to the studio after we'd all gone and Doors the first portable video tape recorders forthe home. Paul Rothchild's
sprayed the whole place down with a fire extinguisher. Made a real mess. parole officer got a laminated Billboard chart with Paul's name as producer
on it, and he eventually got a gold record, too.
Holzman: I went by the studio the next day and the owner, Tutti Camarata,
was a little upset. Disney was one of his clients too, and Jim allegedly Botnick: After we finished the first Doors album, I was recording The j
trashing the place might have jeopardised the Disney account. Whatever Turtles. They'd been in London and spent a lot of time with The Beatles. ;
the minimal damage costs were, we paid them.Tutti put a fatherly arm Somehow or other they came back with an acetate of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
around me and said, "Jac, you're spending a lot of money on this album. I HeartsClub Band. I played it for the guys. We were all blown away by the *j
think we're up to $4,000 in studio charges -1 sure hope you know what freedom and ingenuity of the music. It inspired us immensely. <
you're doing." Krieger: I was amazed, but I was positive that they'd stolen the idea for
Botnick: We mixed upstairs at Electric Studios, New York City. That's where that speeded-up bit on A Day In The Life from The End, because I know
the unintended slowness of the album happened.The machine was they'd heard the first Doors album by then. I must ask George Martin
playing backa quartertone flat, so the whole record was slow. It took close a b o u t t h a t o n e d a y. ©

78 MOJO
100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

'IF YOU KNEW NUGGETS, YOU

KNEW BETTER" KIM SALMON
Alex James (Blur): "I found it through
EEJTHE Blue Monday. I'd read that New Order
EE MILES
ROLLING had been a band called Joy Division DAVIS
STONES and the singer had killed himself, so I
Kind Of Blue
Sympathy For t backtracked,
my head off.and the music
It didn't sound just blew
like any (Blue Note, 1959)
The Devil thing else I'd ever heard. Ian Curtis's voice isjust... The modern jazz album.
startling. It was very ambitious, almost symphonic Seminal, epochal, definitive, bestselling.
(Decca album track, 1968) music. It was as if they had two lead guitarists, with
■ Pete Wareham (Acoustic Ladyland):
A mystical, voodoo masterpiece you can one of them playing the low notes. At the same
dance to. time, it's fractured, unpolished. It makes you feel ^^W "By 1959 bebop had been around for a
that you can do it - I learnt to play bass along to T -- JI decade, people had realised howcon-
I Serge Pizzorno (Kasabian): 'That tune JM strictive it was and were trying to escape.
She's Lost Control. You can feel they were playing
opened my eyes to another world. My ^^ji | With modal jazz, you could play just one
fucking loud, really ragging it. And above it, the bril WLm chord for eight bars, even 16. Musicians
I old man would have played me it first liant lyricist who drove it all, saying everything you
- he was a massive Stones fan. It just had to find things to play within that. Importance
wanted to hear as a teenager, which is that every
has that voodoo quality. Being from the was placed on the atmosphere you could find in
I Midlands there was that mad fucking thing is very bad and confusing. It makes Nirvana
sound fucking flimsy. Unknown Pleasures was what that chord. Miles introduced modal jazz on the title
rave scene and it reminded me of a dance tune. The track of Milestones, but this was the first entirely
all the bands listened to, all the cool people. The
bongos and the tablas, the driving rhythm, it has reason I'm in a band is Joy Division." modal album. The result was instant modern jazz. It
the ability to hypnotise you and you never want was a hit with the audience, critics and other musi
it to end - that thing Primal Scream and Happy Without this, no... students in overcoats, sidepart- cians. Chet Baker and the cool school were influ
Mondays were trying to recreate in the early '90s. ings in rock, Factory, New Order, Editors. enced by Kind Of Blue; it's where Coltrane's mission
There's only a few chords in the song but it just starts. On piano, Bill Evans is defining cool, chilled-
grabs you. From that first scream from Jagger you
know that something is going to happen. Jean-Luc
EH THE out playing - and this points to Keith Jarrett and the
ECM school of European jazz."
Godard'sfilm of them recording is my favourite on jRONETTES Without this, no... Chet Baker, Coltrane, ECM.
tour. They look so great and they're making this
song that will last forever. Bands these days are just
t. ; H Be My Baby
nowhere near it; they're more worried about finding
(Philles single, 1963) EE VARIOUS
out if their ringtones are selling rather than actually The last brick in the Wall
getting down the fucking studio. We did a couple of
Of Sound. Unveils the rock-producer-as- Nuggets
m e g a l o m a n i a c - a u t e u r. (Elektra, 1972)
gigs with them and they've still got it. We saw them
do the song twice. 'Pleased to meet you, hope you Compiler Lenny Kaye
j Brian Wilson: "Be My Baby is probably
guessed my name': what a great line to sing in front the most full-sounding record ever creat- preserves the bug-eyed
of your fans. And what a fantastic name for a song." ■ ed, absolutely thrilling. Ronnie Spector's lunacy of US garage.
Without this, no... genuinely evil rock'n'roll. I vocals are great, the arrangement is very, Kim Salmon (The Scientists): "Perth
very hip and just the overall sound of it was very isolated from the rest of
1 is spectacular. I was driving my car down
EH SAM COOKE a street in Hollywood in 1963, and suddenly I heard
Australia and very influenced by the UK.
So in 1976-77 it turned very quickly into
You Send Me those drums and then, (sings) 'Be my, be my baby,
I this sort of Nazi-skinhead kind of place.
my one and only baby...' Oh, those background I If you knew Nuggets you knew better.
(Keen single, 1957) vocals! I had to pull over to the side of the road so I
Nuggets was saying that punk rock had been around
Ray Charles's soul genius could listen to the rest of it. Hearing it over and over a lot longer than the Sex Pistols and those of us
torch is passed on. taught me how to combine instruments - like pia that knew about Nuggets felt like we were getting
I James Hunter: "As a singer, his influ nos with guitars - to make richer, fuller, more resil it straight from a secret source. The bands were so
ence was astounding. So many have ient songs. That intro alone taught me how to utilise
insane, yet so suburban, and sort of validated your
tried to emulate him. Everyone from drums more effectively. You could say it taught me
all the ropes, and to tell you the truth, I doubt I'll being white, middle-class and reasonably educated.
j Otis Redding, Rod Stewart, Al Green Like The Seeds only ever really wrote Pushing Too
ever top it. Be My Baby is not only my favourite song
and Aretha to myself, we all owe a huge Hard, but it's enough. There's so little going on in
I debt to Cooke. He'd written secular of all time, it's my favourite record."
that song but it sounds like a whole universe."
songs before You Send Me but this was the one that Without this, no... Let It Be, Pet Sounds, Ramones,
Without this, no... Stooges, Ramones, Cramps.
crossed over. It hit the Number 1 spot in both the teen opera.
US R&B and pop charts. It combined his gospel roots
with a sophisticated R&B and pop flavour. It set a EE THE WHO ED LINK
template for soul music. It's the effortlessness of his WRAY
singing that strikes you first. Very few manage to My Generation Rumble
make it sound so natural as he did, and understated (Track single, 1965)
too. He didn't throw in everything, he was mini Townshend declares war (Cadence single, 1958)
mal, he wasn't gratuitous, he wasn't showing off. on his parents. The Who A gang fight translated to
Cooke had a sense of narrative, there was a story, a declare war on each other. the guitar.
structure - Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson took
Tom Verlaine (Television): "In retro Billy Childish: "When it came out it was
note - and his songwriting complemented his voice banned by some radio stations because
spect, the thing about My Generation is
perfectly, they were both so conversational. He cul how avant-garde radical the whole track of its violent intent. I also heard some-
tivated this graceful, melodic style, and he encour ■ where that it relates to Morse code. To
J is. There's a manic freedom to the play-
aged people to sound like him when he became a I me it sounds like a dark, strange world
jk 1 I ing: Keith Moon's drumming splatters ' W that's a bit wrong. It's recorded quietly
producer, maybe subconsciously. He knew he was V* AH everywhere, there's no real rock beat,
doing something right!" and the bass sound is almost Duane Eddy, with this with high level, and intensity. People don't under
Without this, no... Marvin Gaye, storytelling soul. manic feedback and tons of energy. I'd listened to stand that anymore. They think that the level has to
a lot of free jazz before then, like Albert Ayler and come out of the amps. It doesn't, it needs to go onto
the tape. With Link Wray you get small amps being
EE JOY Ornette Coleman, so to hear a rock band liberate
themselves was really exciting, because I hadn't crucified. Link's also got this incredible rhythm thing
DIVISION liked a lot of rock up to that point. No punk got when he plays chords, it's like he's dragging some
Unknown near to Moon's drumming or Townshend's guitar,
but the lyrical attitude obviously left a mark. As a
thing heavy. I have a theory that this is to do with
the American Indian influence. You can hear that
Pleasures teenager, it always struck me as funny, a really great influence on Link, Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters and
( F a c t o r y, 7 9 7 9 ; expression of a certain feeling." Tina Turner. They've all got American Indian blood."
First testament of Ian Curtis. A new stan Without this, no... Mod explosion, Mod revival, Without this, no... power chords, Pete
dard in "meaning it" is set. Sex Pistols, Husker DO, Pearl Jam, Radiohead. To w n s h e n d , punk rock. >=-

MOJO 79
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD

EE THE EH JEFF in Edinburgh. I had been learning guitar by listening

to Big Bill Broonzy and Woody Guthrie but this was a
BEATLES BUCKLEY complete departure, a jazz structure based around
Revolver Grace a single chord. It's a brilliantly clever piece of music.
It has an old-fashioned jazz bass line, a Flamenco
(Parlophone, 1966) (Columbia, 1994) run and a repetitive pattern in A minor - put these
The apogee of pop pro Reinvented the male rock relatively simple elements together and you have a
duction. On 4-track! voice in a swoonsome, keening trice. song that is perfect for the guitar because it lends
itself to improvisation. Angi was Davy's girlfriend of
I Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse): "It's the I Chris Cornell (Soundgarden,
' pinnacle of songwriting and production. I Audioslave): "Grace and OK Computer, the time, and after it came out all the guitar players
I've played Tomorrow Never Knows, She wrote instrumentals named after their girlfriends!"
fBq in the last 15-20 years, are the best
Said, She Said and I'm Only Sleeping Without this, no... English psych-folk, Led Zep III.
j records on the first listen and after a
for people who don't really know The I hundred listens. Grace has that intan
I Beatles - younger people and musi
cians - and they were really impressed but had no
gible magic, the ability to transfer you to EEBOB
an environment you can only reach when listening
idea who it was. They thought it was a new band! to that record. Very much like Led Zeppelin, and MARLEY&
And personally, in recent times it's helped me a lot. The Beatles too. A million bands have tried to mimic THE WAILERS
After my record It's A Wonderful Life was released a
few weeks before September 11, 2001,1 got really
that, from his singing style and guitar sound to the
songwriting, but none give me that Grace feeling.
Exodus
depressed, for three or four years I couldn't work at Jeff had a boldness on it that's rare. He'd stop the (Island, 1977)
all. I wasn't able to do anything. Then I found myself song, and sing, quietly, in this thin, high, almost The Marley message comes of age on the
going back to what I really considered the best. It falsetto register, for a length of time that becomes first global reggae album.
was Revolver that got my juices flowing again." unsettling and challenging. I've been influenced by
Grace in terms of its spirit of openness and freedom, £H jfe Stephen Marley: "Its influence is far-
Without this, no... psychedelic pop, Sgt. Pepper.
but I'll never have the abilities Jeff had."
a greater purpose, it brings us together
EE NEW YORK Without this, no... post-Sends Radiohead, modern
rockgirlymen.
no matter what colour or creed. That's
what defines my father and his music on
DOLLS a reaching. thisMy
album.
father
If you
saw
asked
thathimmusic
he would
has

7%. ftTi'^ New York Dolls EETHE tell you he wouldn't deal with politics: what he does
is depict the truth. Within that you'd find political
( M e r c u r y, 1 9 7 3 ) STOOGES topics, but he related everyday life in Jamaica. When
A beacon of trashy
rock'n'roll lights the prog gloom.
Fun House he was shot, he laughed. He said he was grateful
for the experience. He said he was hurt by the fact
(Elektra, 1970) someone wanted to shoot him, not the bullet. He
I Alan Vega (Suicide): "Back in the mid
Behold! The punk rock knew no boundaries of music or politics. He got the
'70s, Suicide and the New York Dolls
1 often played gigs the same night at the paradigm is begat!! balance right, the ingredients right, roots but also
I Mark Arm (Mudhoney): This is the soul. He was influenced by American soul groups
\^%rji Mercer Arts Center. Whenever the Dolls he heard on the radio in Jamaica - The Impressions
best rock'n'roll record ever made, the
\^|«f played you knew there was going to be and Curtis Mayfield, the harmonies, which you hear
.^.^■H a great party scene. Between the fast, culmination of the promise of rock'n'roll
raw music and their wildly extravagant clothes and since its inception. Every song is perfect: in the I Threes, and the message, like on People Get
platform shoes, they really lit up the room. The Dolls simple, raw, direct and gut-wrenching. Ready. You have to move your feet to this album and
I The Stooges are no longer the bored its production is before its time. Me and Ziggy were
literally wore their punk attitude on their sleeves
- the androgynous, don't give a fuck, extreme dress. teens of their debut, but musical arsonists who've known to go on-stage when he sang the title track.
learned to burn down walls. It has an impeccably That was the last song of his set and we'd run out to
Walking down the street with them, they looked so
outrageous they stopped traffic. And the music and logical and intuitive flow that begins with the join him, so that will always have a dear meaning to
me. Jamming, Turn Your Lights Down Low, Heathen,
lyrics drove it home. David Johansen has a great blues straightahead chug of Down On The Street and
voice, and Johnny Thunders was a phenomenal guitar ends with the churning, primal free-rock of L.A. they are all great songwriting. And One Love is the
Blues. Every song in between is in its optimal place. unofficial anthem of Jamaica. The importance of this
player - he could play anyone right off the stage. album is its universal message. It broke all barriers."
Their first album cover was a classic, their influence Side one features the band unadorned, ending
has permeated music and fashion. Just ask David with seven minutes of Stooge soul: Dirt. Then the Without this, no... third-world superstars.
Bowie, the disco divas and the party people, Freddie lulled listener flips the record and gets strafed by
Mercury, Malcolm McLaren, the glam fashionistas, gay
culture that rose from invisibility. Just ask Aerosmith,
the two-chord instant mayhem of 1970. By the
end of the song all Iggy can do is scream "I feel all
EE MICHAEL
Green Day, the Johnny wannabes. Just look at The right!" as if that will make it so. Saxophonist Steve
JACKSON
Horrors. Just ask every band whose energy was born Mackay enters two-thirds into 1970 and stays for Thriller
of'take no prisoners'. And David Johansen can ask the rest of the album. The title track is the ultimate
combination of jazz and rock, roundly ignored by (Epic, 1982)
Iggy and Mick. And Johnny can ask God."
the fusioneers. After Fun House rock'n'roll took two The invention of the
Without this, no... Glam Bowie, Sex Pistols, Clash,
divergent paths. This first is the narrow mountain genre-bending pop blockbuster, 50 million
Morrissey. sales and counting...
ous trail of homage to The Stooges, which codified
itself as a drop-in-the-bucket movement known as I Akon: "It redefined the whole music
EE LONNIE punk rock. The second path is that of non-rocking industry, and how you market a record.
DONEGAN 'rock' (or the Superhighway Of The Majority), which It took it to another level, and made
is jammed bumper to bumper by virtually every
Rock Island body else. As far as I'm concerned, either you're with
I everyone step their game up, like, 10 or
15 thousand times. He was the first art
Line The Stooges, or you're the enemy." ist to bring Hollywood and pop music
(Decca single, 1955,) Without this, no... punk, grunge, sludge or'core together and present it to the people like that. I'd
of any sort. just arrived in the United States [from Senegal]
Leadbelly goes skiffle. And British when I first heard it, I was about 10 or 11. It was just
rock'n'roll is born.
I Joe Brown: 'The skiffle phenomenon EEDAVY crazy, everybody was wearing Michael Jackson T-
shirts - I made sure I got myself a Michael Jackson
started with Rock Island Line. Before that GRAHAM jacket. He had Eddie Van Halen on there... Thriller
kids never had their own music, it was all
big bands in white suits. Rock Island Line
WITH ALEXIS was rock music, soul, funk, pop. That's the direction
I want to take myself, to be able to play any kind
starts with a guy talking about this railway KORNER of music. Michael's one of those artists who can do
i line that 'runs down to New Orleans'
- which was strange - then when he picks up speed 3/4AD anything they want, and his fans will support him.
He influenced me as a businessman, too. No one
me and my mates are picking up speed too, thrashing (Topic EP, 1962) had ever been bigger than The Beatles at that point,
away on our banjos, so excited. Lonnie was a great Brings Morocco to the UK folk clubs. Blows but when Michael bought up their song publishing
vocal phraser, he swung from the off. But he brought minds. [in 1985], he made it seem like he's their boss! When -
us something we could all play. Home-made music. you make an album that big, it's almost impossible !
\ Bert Jansch: "3/4AD is significant
The Beatles started as a skiffle group. Eric Clapton, because it contains Davy Graham's Angi, to come up with another one like it. Classics can't be .
Mark Knopfler, they'd say how Lonnie influenced duplicated, and every artist is gonna 'peak' at some
I which became the guitar instrumental
them. I felt really qualified to do Rock Island Line and I -<j everyone had to learn, myself included, point. Once you reach your peak, it's hard to peak
John Henry because I was a British Rail fireman." first heard it in 1960, long before the the peak. But nobody's outsold him yet." <
Without this, no... home-grown blues and rock record was released, when Davy's half- Without this, no... Timberlake, Neverland, modern .
variants. sister Jill Doyle played it to me on a scratchy old tape chart pop. >=- :

80 MOJO
 1 ", ■

Jimmie Rodgers (far

left) and The Carter
Family, Maybelle,
Alvin and Sara: the
"raw essence of indi
viduality," said Dylan.

V
; /

"mm

BIRTH OF THE WHITE MAN'S BLUES. BY SYLVIE SIMMONS

JIMMIE RODGERS he's boasting about having "more women than a passenger train can
haul"; verse three he's buying a gun to shoot her "just to see her
Blue Yodel #1 (T For Texas) jump and fall" (you can almost see the light bulb go on over Johnny
(Victor single, 1927) Cash's head); by four he's going after her lover; and the last verse
^ f c JERRY LEE LEWIS once said there were only four indicates the lengths he'll go to maintain his dignity.
musicians in the world with their own style. One of them, no surprise, So far, so blues. But Rodgers' wasn't a black idea of the blues. His
was Jerry Lee. The others: Hank Williams, Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers blues was whimsical, witty, cheery. More Tin Pan Alley than cotton
Don't know about Jolson, but without Rodgers there field. And something Flollywoodian about his cheeky,
would likely have been no Hank Williams. Nor Hank upbeat, little guy who's trodden down but comes out
Snow, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Johnny Cash, nor on top. He had black as well as white fans, though
probably even Elvis. Which could be why the man what the former made of what Dylan called "that
dubbed the Father Of Country Music (as well as infamous blue yodel that defies the rational and
the Singing Brakeman and Blue Yodeler) is not Victor conjecturing mind" is hard to say. Once, find
just in the Country but the Rock And Roll Hall t result* lUrJ ni 1 A > ing myself in the same room as Jimmie Rodgers'
Of Fame. In his short recording career — 1927-33 niece, Pat Ward — as a child she'd watch him write
BLUE YODEL
— he sold around 12 million records, in a vari (RoOgors) songs with her mother, Rodgers' sister-in-law — I
Jimmie Rodgers ^ asked if she knew where the yodelling came from:
ety of styles from vaudeville to plantation songs,
Dixieland to homesick hillbilly ballads. But his ^ "Nobodv knows, not even him. He just started
most popular dien and best-known now are his the yodelling and he liked it and he kept it up."
13 yodelling blues. He made it sound both baroque and natural. Like
T For Texas was the first. It borrowed heavily HIS BLUES WAS Dylan says, he's "a blazing star whose sound was
from the Mississippi blues songs Rodgers heard and remains the raw essence of individuality." And
while working on the railroads as a youth, and WHIMSICAL. he set the multiracial boundary-trashing agenda for
their sexual braggadocio is all over the song. His MORE TIN PAN rock'n'roll three decades before That's All Right.
woman did him wrong but by the end of the Without this, no... Hank Williams, Johnny Ca
first verse he's stopped whining; by the second ALLEY THAN Elvis Presley.
COTTON FIELD."
 Close to the edge:
Grandmaster Flash
& The Furious Five
deliver The Message.
\wi8gw MASTER
pci
FLASH & THE
v^ " FURIOUS
'41^ FIVE
ED DAVID r^j pATTI
BOWIE SMITH
The Rise And Hip he Horses (Arista, 1975)
Fall Of Ziggy Joan The Baptist of punk

Stardust And Chuck D: 'The first time I hi

The Message, I was on the dance-
rips rock apart with beat
poet abandon.
The Spiders Prom Mars floor of Club Encore in Queens. The Edge: "I'd play it to friends who
(RCA, 1972) When we heard it, we were like, were more your meat-and-two-veg rock
'How can you dance to this shit?' fan, and they hated it. Some of them
Bowie invents the '70s three years late
combination of things - the repu claimed it actually made them want to
with ambisexual loucherock opus. throw up, which got me even more
tation of Grandmaster Flash, the style of Mell
i Brett Anderson: "Ziggy Stardust was a Mel, a top MC and the writing talent of the excited. Gloria is one of the greatest
• career-defining album that launched a formidable Duke Bootee - made for an abrupt openings to any album of all time, beautifully
thousand dodgy haircuts. It's certainly switch. That combination of hip hop and poli streamlined and inspiringly uncomplicated. Horses
the iconic glam record. Bowie's vocal tics was inevitable, but it took Grandmaster instantly became one of the records we'd listen to
on Rock'N'Roll Suicide is untouchable, Flash to make it work and getthe song and talk about together. It's the pure drop. It has an
I and those chord changes at the end of accepted. The Message ultimately gave a authenticity and authority, with Patti's poems like
it are completely unexpected without sounding platform for every single rap group that guitar solos, bringing the music to this other level.
contrived. Mick Ronson's solo on Moonage Then there's the way she quotes Gloria, and rewrites
afterwards, including Public Enemy. It
it - like sampling before anyone had thought of it.
Daydream, too - it's the classic iiber-rock, 'foot the gap - We were no longer talking ab
"She came to Dublin, but they had an immigra
on the monitor' moment. inin,
in', we were spreading The Message."
"There's something quite prosaic about the tion problem and the band couldn't play. Some of
W i t hout
l this, no... rap as CNN of the streets. my friends turned up at the venue and she read
album's cover, this photo of Bowie just standing in
poetry to, like, 20 people. They said it was incredible,
this little London backstreet, but his Ziggy persona
everyone spellbound by this creature. That was
seems all the wilder for that. A mate of mine another thing about Patti Smith. She was so
. Jon Langford (The Mekons):
remembers watching Starman on Top Of The Pops,
I "Everybody's got a theory about who androgynous and fierce. She redefined sexuality."
and he said the buzz in the school playground was - * * * ( shoved the blackness - and thus the Without this, no... Stipe, Bono, P.J. Harvey, Karen 0.
that Bowie was from outer space. I love that, sexiness - into a white American music
because it speaks of this innocent, more credulous scene where Bing Crosby was your dad
time in pop when almost anything was possible." I and Ernest Tubb was your grandpa. Sure
aa NIRVANA
Without this, no... UK punk, pop androgyny, enough, when Jimmie Rodgers came to town sin- Smells Like
gay-acting straights.

EI] HANK
WILLIAMS
gin' the blues the divorce rate sky-rocketed, but it
was Hank Williams who first went outright lascivious
under the spotlight. That skinny, dirty, semi-crippled
Southerner had pinched his rhythm and licks from a
black street musician called Rufus Tee Tot' Payne on
1^1 Teen Spirit
(Geffen single, 1991)
Sr)£S5K£ Kurt Cobain tries to emu-
late Pixies, changes music overnight.
Move It the streets of Greenville, Alabama and when - with
the faintest hint of a pelvic thrust - he unleashed I Tim Wheeler (Ash): "Listening to
On Over Move It On Over into a sea of repressed hillbilly
Nirvana for the first time was the begin
ning of a life-changing period for me. We
(MGM single, 1947) sexuality, the girls all gasped and the boys stood
back to sneer in grudging respect. played Nevermind to death. There was so
The first white track with a shot at 'first much energy in the guitars and it was
genuine rock'n'roll record' status. Without this, no... country rock. i full of hooks. After that, I discovered

82 MOJO
100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

"IT GAVE A PLATFORM FOR

EVERY RAP GROUP" CHUCK D
Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. I'd Tony James: "Mick and I were sharing a Jon Spencer: "My exposure to Rocking
even listen to bands that Kurt mentioned in inter ' flat on the Portobello Road when The
. Chair predates the Blues Explosion. The
views, like The Vaselines. It opened up a whole new ! Clash were writing London Calling. Every I Gibson Bros - Jeffrey [Evans] and Don
world for me. I'd been trying to write metal songs for J night he'd bring a cassette home and
i say, 'Listen to what we did today!' I -•t Wolf.
[Howland]
Those- Willie
turnedDixon
me on to Howlin'
songs, like
years, but they were always too melodic. Hearing
Nirvana made me realise it was OK to make melodic, i; I remember very clearly him bringing
home the track London Calling. I was floored by its
Spoonful and The Red Rooster, are such
high-energy guitar songs. It was a punk experience: catchy pop tunes, Hubert Sumlin's guitar playing
after Nevermind I felt I could do whatever I wanted. genius - the way the bass counter-melody makes it sounds incredible, and Wolf has that great delivery.
"Everything seemed to change so quickly after sound like there's a lot more chords than there are. I remember reading in a book about him climbing a
wards. The whole world went grunge. Nirvana made It uses what Mick calls the 'West London scale'... curtain onstage somewhere. It's hard to think about:
music real again. They cut through all the bullshit." "London Calling really showed their feel for differ Howlin'Wolf wasn't a pretty guy or a young kid - he
Without this, no... '90s 'alt' with everything. ent kinds of music, from rockabilly to R&B, Brand New was this huge, scary-lookin' dude. Thinking about
Cadillac to Jimmy Jazz, but also a soaring melodic him going over to play England in the '60s, I'm sure

T^ 1 SO
side on stuff like Spanish Bombs. People had started
CHARLIE to think of punk as that three-minute ramalama, but
people were scared to death. He wasn't the first or
the only one, but Howlin' Wolf had a magic."
PA R K E R all the main groups came out of classic English rock
- The Small Faces, The Beatles and the Stones - and Without this, no... Led Zep, Captain Beefheart.
Koko it was time for them to spread their wings a bit, to
(Savoy single, 1945) do their Sgt. Pepper. London Calling said that punk ES RAMONES
Bird blows Cherokee to could be about music, and that people didn't need
to be blinkered. It proved that The Clash were a clas
Ramones
bits. Birth of jazz as art.
sic rock'n'roll band with a great style, a moral and (Sire, 1976)
| Tommy Smith (Scots sax nabob): heartfelt attitude." Girl groups, rent boys,
"Parker's Koko has lived on because of
Without this, no... stadium punk, rock album as solvent abuse: the veri
ties of rock'n'roll revived!
I and tomorrow. Dizzy Gillespie and Bird generic tapas, Sandinista!
*^ j fly like the fiercest wind. Any musician
L. J the I awetryingand wowalong
to play factorwith
it had then, now
the recording ^3 HOWLIN' father was dying. My family had been
travelling back and forth, to and from
will need a jet engine to keep up, and any listener
will be astounded at their precision and fluidity. It's WOLF the hospital, and I can remember stop
great to hear the other guys in the band heckling in The Rocking ping off at a record store. I stared at this
the background urging the soloist to reach greater 0 Thurston albumMoore:
the whole
"I was
way home
18 and thinking,
my
heights. Think of Everest, 1953, Edmund Hillary and
Chair Album What can these guys possibly sound like? It was
Tensing Norgay, climbing the mighty peaks. Bird (Chess, 1962) kind of a morose scene around our house. I put the
and Diz were doing that to jazz in the '40s. Chester Burnett scares the bejasus out of Ramones on and all my aunts and uncles and my
"Parker was a genius, and became the best of his mom and my sister got up and they danced to the
a generation.
generation through a period of social and economic whole record, whooping it up and letting off all this
hardships. If jazz became art through Parker and emotion. I was sitting there on the couch thinking,
Gillespie then art is simply a reflection of real life." This is not what I expected. I expected something
like a Stooges or an Alice Cooper record - some
Without this, no... bop, free jazz, the works.
thing somewhat nefarious - but this struck right to
the heart of feeling good. After that, I played it once
£b$«**.<!BMl ^BLACK or twice a day for over a year. I learned how to play
SABBATH guitar from it, and wrote a song called I'm Not
Gonna Mow The Lawn No More. The Ramones were
Black Sabbath as much an alternative to punk rock as they were to
(Vert/go, 1970) the mainstream. Punk had this slovenly, fucked-up
Bad vibes, axe doom and image, but here was this precision, sandblasting,
no-frills rock'n'roll. There was diligence in the per
jazz swing set the standard for metal. formance and the look, and beneath the humour
™ Osbourne Band): "Black Sabbath marks there was a pathos in the lyrics. It's hard to say
l ^
where rock music would be without the Ramones."
tr the end of flower power. It's the toehold ■ Without this, no... "Onetwothreefour!"
Jjj in the evolution of heavy metal. The
I band were 19 and had nothing to lose.
EJk Mike I They
Bordin
did this
(Faith
for £500
No inMore,
11 hours
Ozzy
on two SI THE
4-tracks and then drove across Europe to play a
show. The essence of everything the band did after
e BEACH BOYS
wards is here: Ozzy sings a little different, but it's still Pet Sounds
him; Tony lommi plays more guitar on this album (Capitol, 1966)
than probably anyone else had before; [bassist] Vote for your most seismic Pop expands its horizons.
Geezer Butler is the king of the belt on here- his
belt is tight, his underwear loose and his nuts are records ever. Gain kudos. I Sean O'Hagan (The High Llamas):
flying everywhere! With [drummer] Bill Ward they're Horrified by the exclusion of Terry & Gerry's From j "Hearing Pet Sounds was one of those
like a jazz rhythm section because they swing. Lubbock To Clintwood East! We'd love to hear your great spiritual experiences: to hear an
"You're not prepared forthe power of that take on the most influential records ever, for publi album as a whole and understand there
cation in a future MOJO. Don't forget that albums, . was a different way music could be
opening track [Black Sabbath] because nothing had
sounded that heavy before. It's one of rock's defin 45s, 78s and - why the hell not? - downloads are I assimilated. It flummoxed everybody,
eligible. Choose a Top 10 most seismic, in order, but people like McCartney and Andrew Loog
ing statements and it says: Beware, son, beware." and adorned with pithy justifications. Email to Oldham responded, and it became a classic musi
Without this, no... good (ie non-widdly-widdly) [email protected], with a subject line of Readers' cian's record. It showed that music could be about
heavy metal. World-Changing Records, or scrawl on a postcard undefined colour and impressionism, that it could
to Readers' World-Changing Records, MOJO,
reach inside itself. Pet Sounds taps a compositional
EEJ THE CLASH Mappin House, 4 Winsley St, London Wl W 8HF.
history that goes back to Ravel and Bach. For me,
London Calling: SEISMIC SOUNDS! Listen to MOJO Radio's
Records That Changed The World over the week
the great track is Let's Go Away For Awhile, because
you don't recognise what the top line is: there's no
(Columbia, 1979) end of from April 30 and throughout May. Find vocal, and the melody is hidden in the arrangement.
MOJO Radio on Sky (0182), Freeview (721) and From the outset there's no way you can tell where it
Romantics beat nihilists
www.mojo4music.com. will end up, which is completely intriguing to me,
in the punk wars. Passion,
soul and wide-eyed MOKE MOJO! Enjoy more muso musings and something I've chased for years."
experimentation win out. on the records that altered everything at www. Without this, no... sunshine pop, R.E.M. ^-
mojo4music.com. Including: J. Mascis on Exile On
Main St., E5G on Nina Simone and Stevie Nicks on
Crosby, Stills & Nash.
MOJO 83
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD

Wild In The
Country
Led Zeppelin's fourth album made demigods
of its principals and set an outrageous,
intimidating; standard for rock in the '70s.
But behind the runic strangeness and musical
magic lies an unglamorous tale of damp, cider and
stakhanovite toil. Andy Fyfe hears Robert Plant
and John Paul Jones tell it like it was.
First things first: the album is officially JPJ: There were ideas that never made it, but not
untitled, so what do you call it? whole tracks. Sometimes an idea would start a
Robert Plant: I don't call it anything. It would be a song but it either sounded like something else or
bit pretentious to call it "Four Symbols". At the just didn't go anywhere interesting so we'd stop
time it was a neat idea each of us choosing a after a couple of hours and do something else. We
symbol that would be representative of our own didn't waste time in that respect. Again, it probably
"lean", but that isn't a title. For abbreviation and as comes from the old session days - the clock is
a point of reference when people are talking ticking and these things are expensive.
about it, LedZepIV is perfectly acceptable.
What was Headley Grange itself like?
How do you feel about the album 36 years on? JPJ: Oh, I hated the place.The main room sounded
RP: I don't thinkanything of it really. In the old great but the place itself was awful. That probably
days, when we thought and dreamt in colour, has something to do with the speed at which the
there would be the concept or projection that an album was made. I couldn't wait to get out of
album was a culmination of what a band was there. We'd recorded some of LedZeppelin ///there
writing and thinking at the time. We wrote Misty and werefamiliarwith
Mountain Hop and the next day The Battle Of the space. Having said
Evermore. There may have been a mine of that, it was pretty much
creativity at the time, but you can't really say that just one big room.
When The Levee Breaks was part of the mindset Bonzo set up at one end
that created The Battle Of Evermore, so I now look and the rest of us were
at it individually as tracks. I don't listen to it very at the other, except for
often but I'm pleasantly surprised when I hear, say, When The Levee Breaks
When The Levee Breaks out of context in the car. where he got so loud
John Paul Jones: We were pretty pleased with the we pushed him out into Bonzo and myself to
album overall at the time, it really was a snapshot the hall. We had cooks drive backto the
of exactly where we were at that moment. there and so on, but it Midlandsatthe
Most of the album was recorded with The was pretty spartan. I weekend. We were
had a load of electric quite happily locked
Rolling Stones' mobile studio at Headley
fires in my room trying into married life and
Grange in Hampshire in just two weeks. How
to dry the place out and going back down on a
many of the songs were already written?
there was an epic fire in Monday to carry on
JPJ: Black Dog I think I wrote on the train, possibly
the main room that we where we left off. The
on the way to Headley Grange, Stairway To
used to sit around doing things with cider and facility to record at any point of the day or night
Heaven had been worked on by Jimmy and Robert
pokers. There was no telly and the pub was the also made a whole lot of difference. The confines
in a cottage in Wales [Bron-Y-Aur], but I think the
pub - you can do that anytime. of a studio with the control room and the fixed
rest of it was done on the spot. I think we'd just
come off tour so were up to speed performing- RP: The layout of the house was perfect for environment and all that stuff didn't suit us. When
wise. All the juices were flowing and these things creating a very instant sound, moving the drumkit you've got a mobile parked on the lawn you can
do happen quickly. Jimmy and I had been session or whatever into what was probably the sitting do whatever you like.
musicians and were used to working quickly. We room. There was no typical day or routine. Bonzo JPJ: It's a very dense album in terms of production,
never spent a huge amount of time on things. might go up to the Speakeasy and hang out with and having the mobile facilitated that. For
Keith Moon overnight and come back down at instance, with Four Sticks I felt we needed a sustain
RP: It was fantastically stimulating. You can hear it
in the production and engineering which is lunchtime where we'd be working on a chord melody because the rest of the song, the riff, is
progression or John Paul could be doing some very rhythmic and choppy. I had a bunch of things
spectacular, particularly now it's been transmuted
from one format to another. No matter how much thing. The family of a friend of mine actually owns set up and discovered a synth line that worked.
Headley Grange now, but I don't go back. Some You just discover things and build them up and
damage the record company try to do transferring
from vinyl to CD without proper references, it still where I have a list of the breakages and damages... when you think you've got enough you stop.
That's also a skill, of course- knowing when to
sounds pretty good. We were so in tune with each So it was a very easygoing atmosphere?
otherthat even the outtakes were pretty intense. stop. When we had two mandolins on The Battle
It was a great time for just playing. RP: Ha! Yes, at times it was, um, yeah, "easygoing". Of Evermore, that was obviously time to stop.

Yet from this relaxed atmosphere and short Manyofthesongsare heavily driven by John
Boogie With Stu, Night Flight and Down By The
Seaside were discarded during the sessions space of time comes a very intense album. Bonham's drumming. Would it be fair to say it
but reactivated for Physical Graffiti. Are there RP: Because of our age we hit this seam of was his album, his finest moment?

any unheard tracks? amazing energy and creativity. But it still allowed JPJ: He owned pretty much all of the albums as far

84 MOJO
 as I'm concerned. You wonder how on earth he The success of IV, and Stairway To Heaven,
did it, wonder at how audacious it was to do what changed the band. Was it too big, too fast? oleman (Killing Joke): "I've had
he did. Every night, live, he would do stuff that JPJ: The work flow at the time was horrendous. many fascinating conversations with
made you think, "If I were a drummer I wouldn't I guess what actually happened was that we Jimmy Page. He's a wonderful person
have attempted that!" It was just breathtaking. - very strong, but quiet. You could say he's
managed to slow the initial burst of being shot
RP: I think Physical Graffiti and Presence might top out of a cannon, especially 1970 onwards, a mystic. Jimmy has a passion not just for
it. The drumming on Presence is outstanding. The the occult, but also the hidden history of
although 1971-72 is quite a blur. Also, the the world. With his blessing, I arranged a few tracks
public didn't really get what Presence was about. transport gets better. We started touring in
It's so underestimated, so brittle and might not be off Led Zeppelin IV for the London Philharmonic [as
cars, then it was commercial airlines, then heard on the 1997 album Kashmir: The Symphonic Led
a very friendly collection of songs, but if you want buses and we eventually, had our own plane.
to epitomise the heart and soul and pain and the Zeppelin]. I absolutely fell in love with The Battle Of
RP: We werejust carrying on in a straight line, Evermore, and when I did it with the orchestra, I used
joy of Zep, it's all on Presence.Zep IV was the fourth although it had a few swerves along the way, a Irish pipes and tried to make it even more Celtic.
album we made in three years, and we were few perilous moments on the cliff edge of life, "I also had to arrange Stairway To Heaven, which
loaded with bright ideas - oh dear, "bright ideas" but we just kept going. We were being was difficult because it's had more exposure than
is a very mundane and straight way of putting it... awarded the keys to the city of Memphis by Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Robert Plant's melody is
the mayor before a show and then under tremendous, but perhaps his lyrics haven't dated as
Robert, you wrote the lyrics to Stairway To
house arrest before the end of the concert. I well - I can remember one massive Led Zeppelin fan
Heaven in a rush at Headley Grange, but surely
could walk through the affluent streets of asking me what "a bustle in your hedgerow" was! But
you had some ideas beforehand? the melody reigns supreme. And Plant is completely
Dearborn in Detroit and people would drive
RP: No, no ideas at all. I just sat down with Jimmy redeemed by some of the other lyrics. They conjure
past in a Lincoln Continental, wind down the
by the fireplace and the first couple of verses came window and spit at me because I was a long up an image of a forgotten age, or a golden age yet
very quicklyjust fell out. I liked singers who could haired hippy. But I was letting my freak flag fly, to come.
create an oblique, abstract, multi-angular look at which I wanted to do. Looking back I can see it "When The Levee Breaks is John Bonham at his
best. The way he sits on the beat - no other drum
wordplay. I was 23, so I kind of floundered through was part of a cavalcade, and I'm very glad to
it a bit and put my shoulders back and said, "That's mer has got that perpetual swing. It's explosive! You
have been part of that. We don't see each
the best I can do." The thought process that goes can hear why this band took the world by storn
other very often any more but sometimes we
through all the ambiguities of it I might not be land in the same place on the same path and Zeppelin at their peak were invincible."
.a able to subscribe to any more, but it was just a rare Without this, no... Aerosmith, Rush, Jeff Buckle
enjoy it together.
White Stripes, Dungen and wannabe axe heroes play-
| moment. That was the great thing about Headley
s Grange, I could run away upstairs with a pen and Andy Fyfe is the author of WhenThe Levee Breaks: tairwayTo Heaven in guitar shops.
£ paper and go to work on stuff. The Making Of Led Zeppelin IV (Unanimous)

MOJO 85
 the T-bird away. For all its apparent fecklessness, Satisfaction is post-
Dylan rock'n'roll, existential and politicised. Unlike the hapless kids
m (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction in the Berry and Cochran songs, its protagonist may be old enough to
smoke cigarettes and successful enough to fly around the world, but he
€ ^ J*^TI(Decca
H E Besingle,
CAN'T O L1965)
RSatisfied,
L Muddy
I N GWaters
S TO N E Sin
had declared is continually bombarded by misleading messages from politicians and
his first hit back in 1948. Less than 20 years later, corporations alike, and he can't even parlay his fame
his shaggy British disciples paraphrased their into gurlie action because the babes he tries to pull
mentor on a defining hit of a vintage year. It was are on dtat "losing streak" — possibly the earliest
also the track which cemented the identity — part known reference to menstruation in a mainstream
brat, part bluesman, part bohemian — which the pop song. But above and beyond that, Satisfaction
band had cobbled together out of borrowed bits remains the ultimate high-water mark in Jagger
of old Chess records. Keith Richards supplied a and Richards' popcraft. That novelty fuzz riff was a
hook, but so was the "hey-hey-hey" refrain and the
menacing, fuzzboxed riff which wouldn't have
sounded out of place in one of John Barry's bouncy, clapalong-friendly tambourine-and-drum
Bond scores, Mick Jagger sounded impos lick which accompanied it. Bob Dylan once sniff-
ily told Keef, "I could've written Satisfaction, but
sibly louche and lairy, and the rest of the band
delivered a groove exactly halfway between soul Mlllt you couldn't have written Like A Rolling Stone." A
dubious claim, but if he had it's highly unlikely that
stomp and rock chug. "THE EARLIEST Otis Redding would've wanted to cover the result,
Superficially, Satisfaction owed its lineage to
which he did with enough panache to convince
an honourable '50s tradition of adolescent male KNOWN REFER even some of the Stones' buddies his version, not
discontent — from Eddie Cochran's Summertime
Blues to Chuck Berry's Almost Grown — but this ENCE TO MEN theirs, was the original. African America and the
Thames Delta had begun a conversation: head to
was 196S, after all: Vietnam was rolling, the Civil STRUATION IN
head, and soul to soul.
Rights movement was rocking and pop had a little
more on its mind than whether or not daddy took A MAINSTREAM Without this, no... Zeppelin, UK Stax tour, Clash.
POP SONG."
86 MOJO
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

EEI ARETHA Steve Reich to the jazzers, and brought in a lot of

'Tom Joad he wrote at my apartment in New York
squares and classical snobs who wouldn't have
FRANKLIN given rock music house-room otherwise. She's
- 17 verses all in one night. He told me RCA Victor
wanted him to write a song about The Grapes Of
I Never Loved Leaving Home on its own bridged an enormous Wrath. I said, Have you read the book? He said, 'No,
A Man The Way generational gap. It made people think differently." but I saw the movie.' I'm only one of thousand's of '
I Love You Without this, no... soft rock, sonic experimenta
tion, rock coverage in broadsheet newspapers.
people who have taken their lead from Woody. The
best songs in the world can be funny or deadly seri
(Atlantic, 1967) ous. I think that's what Woody taught us. The great
Highest point for soul and sanctified pop. est artists throughout history combine the tragic and
&#A#tfES JAMES the comic."
| Rufus Wainwright: "From one singer to
, another - if Aretha's reading this article
, (laughs) - when she made this album the
"A* BROWN Without this, no... Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, social
justice in America.
pinnacle of vocal prowess was reached.
'There was nowhere higher to go. Even in Wa
SUL*
WW ( KBrand
W Papa's New
Got
ing single ) Bag
, 1 9 6 5A mCHUCK

o
opera, which I love, it's the imperfections
that make it great. Callas or Jussi Bjorling, those And on the eighth day, God created funk... BERRY
voices, they had a certain cracked quality that made
them warm and emotional. But Aretha was beyond Got A Brand New Bag blasted out of
Johnny B.
perfection. Magic. That album totally obliterates all 1 nowhere. The track has gospel ele Goode
musical forms in an instant. It's totally dominant. I nAndy Gill (Gang Of Four): Papa's —- (Chess single, 1958)
ments in the voice and entreating tone,
grew up with it at my parents' parties and everyone but otherwise it's brand new. Its clean, Hillbilly + R&B + a very naughty boy = a
dancing. Or taking another drink. Aretha's inspired uncluttered lines were of the most mod music revolution.
me. She's also frightened me with her brilliance. ernistic '60s design. The guitar does that little chink
There's just never been a greater singer ever." Wayne Kramer (MCS and beyond): "As
ing rhythm thing but the drum and bass is up at the a young boy in the late '50s growing up
Without this... people might think Joss Stone is same level, a massive break with the past. Brand
in Detroit, Chuck Berry seemed to speak
good. New Bag is also all about what's left out. You're not
taken on a melodic journey; instead, you have the directly to me in a secret code. It had to
do with the actual sound of his guitar,
EH BOB DYLAN groove with all that space, and this incredible tight
structure, like the iron girders of a train bridge hold
_ the reckless velocity. It sounded like
freedom to me - power and freedom. I guess I heard
Like A Rolling- ing everything in position. Then, with the growling
Johnny B. Goode on the radio in '58, and bought
Stone and grunting, he sounds animalistic, electrifying.
You can hear the influence of that even on singers
it on the Chuck Berry Twist album [Chess, 1962]. It
had Maybellene, Thirty Days, Roll Over Beethoven
(Columbia single, 1965) like Iggy Pop. The attitude is frankly, fuck you, and - every one of them an incredible performance and
The Guernica of ri . that scared people. Gang of Four picked up on that."
with Chuck's beautiful poetic sense of being an
Robyn Hitchcock: "I heard it when I was Without this, no... funk, funky rock, Sly Stone, Prince. American teenager. Chuck would brilliantly illustrate
on the cusp of puberty. I'd been sent off neighbourhoods, or school rooms or driving in the
car - you know, being bad but not being evil! The
Wj n to a young gentlemen's academy and
V.V m was completely out of my depth. There
EH THE JIMI other thing he starts with Johnny B. Goode and Roll
HENDRIX Over Beethoven is the rock'n'roll song that's about
^^E^Bv^they
werehad
no aDaleks,
jukeboxnoand
mumevery
or dad.
dayBut
some rock'n'roll. It's what the MC5 did on Kick Out The
body would put on this record, and this voice would
EXPERIENCE Jams - a song played by a band about playing in a
come out of the speaker saying, 'How does it feel, to
be on your own... with no direction home.' Within
Purple Haze band. On Johnny B. Goode he's creating a character
(Track single, 1967) that's him. I call it auto-mythologising! Guitar-wise,
six weeks I'd stopped wanting to be Doctor Who. Rock acquires jazz intensity at nuclear vol you've got to play a position with your left hand that
I was one of the millions whose directions were ume. Guitarists feel inadequate overnight. is excruciatingly painful, and the right hand is 8th
changed by hearing Like A Rolling Stone. There notes with a kind of 16th note feel. But when you
aren't many pop records that have so much disdain i Mick Jones (The Clash): "Cream's work that music hard it lights a fire under an audi
in them, and I suppose you can see it on several lev | Disraeli Gears and Hendrix's Smash Hits ence. He codified the rock'n'roll identity in the stories,
els. It's an address to this socialite who has incurred , were the first records I bought with my in the lyrics, where we all meet. It's where the com
Dylan's disfavour, but it's also about being lost, or own money. I knew I wanted to be in a munity of rock'n'roll exists. In the end I think that's
being free. I love that idea that Greil Marcus writes I group before then, but Smash Hits came what great art has always done for human beings - it
about in his book on Like A Rolling Stone, that it's I out at that point of growing up and shows us we're not alone. If you love Chuck Berry and
come adrift from its moorings like a kind of cultural starting to go to concerts, and deciding what you / love Chuck Berry we'll never be properly alone."
free radical. 'You can do anything now 'cos I've done wanted to do. The big one was Purple Haze. When
that one started it made me shiver... I used to play Without this, no... John Lennon, Rolling Stones,
this.' Dylan changed the rules, broke the rules and MC5, Beach Boys, meta-rock'n'roll.
ignored the rules. The problem is, what works for football with these guys when I was a kid, but I fell
the innovator doesn't always work for everybody out with them when I discovered rock. They came
else, so Jimi Hendrix is superb but his influence is round my house in Brixton and said, 'Mick, there's ED FRANK
a fight going on outside, come out quick!' I said.
terrible. Dylan set a lot of people free, but was that
a good thing? He made people feel that what they Who's in the fight? They said, 'You!' and bashed'
SINATRA
had to say was important - and you get all this me. It was 'cos I chose music over football. So that's In The Wee
stoned, self-important twaddle. Pop music lost its what Jimi Hendrix did for me!" Small Hours
innocence after Dylan. Pop knew it was naked and Without this, no... heavy rock, Bitches Brew, US
had put on a lot of fantastic clothes to cover it up." (Capitol, 1955)
acts breaking first in Britain.
'The Voice' invents the comeback album
Without this, no... Hippies, Yippies, thin wild and concept album at a stroke...
mercury sounds.

EH THE
BEATLES
I EE] WOODY
, GUTHRIE
I Dust Bowl
Ballads
James Skelly (The Coral): "In The Wee
Small Hours is like a film starring Frank
Sinatra and directed by Nelson Riddle.
The film starts off pretty sad, and then it
gets devastating, and it stays pretty dev
Sgt. Pepper's (RCA Victor, 1940) astating to the end. In the '40s Sinatra
Lonely Hearts Folk fountainhead sings for the poor.
was a teen idol, but by 1952 he was dead and
buried and estranged from Ava Gardner. I think he
Club Band Popular political song is born. needed to go through that to sing these kinds of
(Parlophone, 1967) Pete Seeger: "Pop music in the '30s and songs. Sinatra's not just a singer singing, he is the
Popular music taken seriously as art. Pop £*£» the '40s was controlled by Hollywood song, experiencing every word. The songwriters, the
musicians spoilt forever! 1 and Broadway. President Hoover told arrangements, the sounds are amazing too. No one
e*^ Rudy Vallee he'd [reward] him if he sang has written love songs as deep and mature since. It's
I Andy Partridge (XTC): "It was like the J songs that took the people's minds all been for teenagers since, or today it's all about
I blowing up of the big firework com
■■■« off the Depression, but Woody always jewellery or cars. As a singer, what you learn from
pared to the white phosphorous of The pushed the other way. He hitchhiked and rode Sinatra is, Don't be afraid of the song. Ian Curtis
I White Album and the dying embers of the rods to California and got a job there on a tiny really dug Sinatra, you can tell Jim Morrison did too.
1 the last two, It was a strange pinnacle, radio station where for a dollar a day he sang those Sinatra reinvented singing and, for me, In The Wee
Small Hours is where he did it."
dust bowl songs. Later, he got a job on the radio in
the end and beginning of something Without this, no... teenagers, Elvis, gloom-pop,
>" etrawand the first psychedelic straw at the New York but quit after a few weeks because they
the modern LP record. *-
Wouldn't let him sing what he wanted to sing.
i from Evlsi and
, it affected everyone,
~\ same time.' MOJO 87
Ladies and gentlemen!
Johnny Rotten is Tobias
Crisp: "Sin is finished..."

LYDON'S LEER SPELLS REVOLUTION FOR GREIL MARCUS

there's no future, how can there be sin?" The blasphemies of the
-\ ^ SEX PISTOLS English past broke like a great wave into God Save The Queen.
m m God Save The Queen Along with the refusal of sin came the ancient cries that sin was only
^3 ^^M (Virgin single, 1977) a trick played on the starving classes; that as work was the punish
^mmW^ "Tobias Crisp held thai 'Sin is finished. Hum be fre< ment for Adam's fall, with the refusal of sin came the refusal of
men of Christ, you may esteem all the curses of the law as no more work; that since heaven was the promise for a life lived without sin,
without sin there was no need for heaven.
concerning you than the laws of England concern That wave was made of rage, buried for three
Spain,'" Christopher Hill chronicled in the 197S
centuries, reappearing in the three minutes 16
Penguin edition of The World Turned Upside seconds of God Save The Queen whole and
Down: Radical Ideas During The English
embodied. The burning, bitter (but beneath the
Revolution. "Some sectaries hold they cannot
surface of the noise, gleeful) voice was that of
sin, but if they sin, Christ sins in them... In someone who had just woken up to the fact that
1647 John Trapp reported a 'female Antinomian,
he hadn't heard the truth his whole life: who had
who when her mistress charged her for stealing
woken up to the realisation that if he wanted to
her linens, replied, "It was not I, but sin that
hear the truth he would have to tell it himself.
dwelleth in me'"... Mrs Attaway and William
The wonder isn't that he did. It's that the truth as
Jenny held themselves as free from sin as Christ he gleaned it - as it came back to him, as if the
was when he was in the flesh... They believed in
intervening 300 years had been merely a dream —
the mortality of the soul, and that there was no
hell but what was in the conscience. A London
THE TRUTH FIT fit so neatly onto a 7-inch piece of plastic, noth

lady declared that murder, adultery, theft, were NEATLY ONTO ing missing at all.
Without this, no... Clash, Buzzcocks, Joy Division,
no sins." "All crimes are paid," a 21-year-old
London man shouted in public in 1977. "When
A 7-INCH PIECE Fall, Prodigy, Green Day, Thatcher.
OF PLASTIC."
 100 RECORDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD

□ RAY that people discovered it for themselves. It doesn't

sound like any other record that came out that year, B BOB DYLAN
CHARLES so it never dated. It's been hugely influential. It's got The Freewheelin'
What'd I Say a softer side and a darker side, and it doesn't sound
Bob Dylan
slick, which carries the message that anyone can start
(Atlantic single, 1959) a band. Listen to Bowie pre- and post-VU and you can (Columbia, 1963)
From the roots of gospel, hear the impact. All the punk bands cited it. Galaxie US folk's new hope breaks
comes the swooping sound of soul. 500 listened to the album a lot, and to Jonathan shackles with genre-smashing mix of pro

1
Ian Hunter: "When I heard What'd I Say, Richman and The Feelies - but those bands came out test, poetry and hipster yocks.
it was like You Really Got Me - the first of of the VU tradition too, which says everything."
KJ Vashti Bunyan: "I first heard Blowin'
something else. I'd never been a blues or Without this, no... rock counterculture; no Bowie, ■ In The Wind at art school. The boy who
R&B guy, and I preferred my piano faster Iggy, Alice Cooper, avant rock, Krautrock, punk, goth, I played it wouldn't teach it to me because
like Jerry Lee Lewis, but it blew my socks Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain, C86 indie, lo-fi, etc.
I off when I caught Ray doing it on TV. It's Bjc«\ he didn't think a girl singing Dylan was
that left-hand piano riff, real slinky, a boogie riff but ■jJl' right! It sounded like the most beauti-
with a difference, like Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. Ray's mROBERT HL ful thing, so modern, saying everything
I wanted to say. When I was 19, having moved to
singing is phenomenal, head back and flat out, and JOHNSON Greenwich Village, I listened to nothing else for
it's the first time I'd heard that drum pattern. I'm
sure all them British singers like Van Morrison and King Of The months. I'd get annoyed with people saying he can't
Paul Rodgers were copping off him and Sam Cooke; Delta Blues sing. Actually he had the most wonderful voice. What
other voice could have sung those words with such
not that I could because I can't sing that way. We all
have to come from somewhere." Singers impact? I loved his phrasing, it reached something in
(Columbia, 1961) me that hadn't been reached before, about American
Without this, no... soul music, period. In Britain, no politics or American life. Being brought up in a protec
Van, Winwood, and the rest of UK's white soul bros. Charley Patton and Son House through tive post-war British environment, and to find this
Satan's prism: rock'n'roll's ookiest myth
other world was just... I played it to my sister and
creeps out the generations.
0 VARIOUS she didn't understand it at all which made it all mine.
Things changed so incredibly fast after that album. It
Anthology Of I first heard it. It seemed very scary to was youth taking the world for itself rather than being
American Folk me, to be honest. I remember flicking led, told what to do and sent off to war."
through the record racks when that Without this, no... Byrds, RubberSoul, poetry in
MusiC (Smithsonian
compilation [Columbia's The Complete
a Jack White: "I washadmaybe 15 released,
or 16 when popular music.
Folkways, 1952) Recordings] just been and
Music history care of Harry Smith's six-LP the cover - that photograph of him - captivated me.
collection of pre-war folk and country. There's something about it that made me think, Uh, El ELVIS
I Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses): 'The
I don't know if I really wanna get involved with this.
I was already aware of the 'myth' of Robert Johnson,
PRESLEY
impression most people have of field of selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads. After Heartbreak
l recordings is that it's a dead art form;
■ that the artists are literally dead, and
finally listening to it, I could believe it. It was so Hotel
unearthly. I can't fathom it was actually recorded by
so the music no longer exists. But the human beings - that the guy who recorded it on the (RCA single, 1956)
music is shared and faceless; it's not self- acetate cutter might have shouted, That's a great Not the invention of rock'n'roll, but its
expression, it's the expression of a culture over time. take, Robert, let's try another.' It doesn't seem invention as global phenomenon.
The beauty and timelessness of this style is almost
possible that someone would sing like that - and, on Martin Carthy: "Heartbreak Hotel
a pre-verbal expression. It's an honest response by
top of that, that people would think it was interest was the first record I bought. I was
people to their time, and it becomes timeless. I grew ing enough to record and sell on to other people. 15 and bought Rock Island Line and
up listening to this music during the 70s, alongside It comes down to record companies wanting to sell Rock Around The Clock on the same
The Clash and Talking Heads. Both cultures spoke record players to black families. That's why all those
to me and, stylistically, they're not that different. day, but Heartbreak Hotel is the only
blues guys got recorded. It's just a happy accident. I one I learned to sing. It was all about
There's something similar in the chord structures, We're lucky they wanted that new market. We cov rebellion at a time when all you heard was I'm A
which aren't standard keys or key changes, but ered Stop Breaking Down Blues on our first album. Pink Toothbrush, You're A Blue Toothbrush. When
more keening and jolting. And there's the crazy way It came out pretty good."
people think of it they only see Elvis, but it's a great
they used to sing. The music has a sadness, a reso Without this, no... British blues boom, punk rock
nance that broke my heart even as a child, so much song, an astonishing song! It took on a whole new
so that my mother would make my father stop play blues, Sympathy For The Devil perspective and made me understand it a lot better
when I found out it was written by a woman, Mae
ing the record. She'd say 'a sad song is a dangerous Boren Axton, and in a strange way the song has
thing' and she turned out to be right!" 'f m
Autobahn
KRAFTWERK come to a grinding halt because of its iconic status.
Without this, no... Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bloody Elvis! I was hugely disappointed when he
Dylan, any other troudabour seeking cover material. did Love Me Tender and I found Jailhouse Rock very
(Vertigo, 1974)
bombastic. I think, essentially, he was a lazy sod, but
□ THE Chuck Berry and The
Beach Boys hymn Fritz
you can't deny the power of this."

VELVET Todt's transport miracle: Without this... rock'n'roll remains 'race music'.
the birth of circuitry with soul.
UNDERGROUND James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem): THE bEXtles 0 THE
AND NICO 'The first time I ever heard Kraftwerk was T " m T \ B E AT L E S
JJ,W-U The Velvet Computer World. It was given to me by I Want To Hold
a speed metal guitar player called Eric
Underground (Verve, 1967) Dab when I was 13. It freaked me out Your Hand
As Brian Eno says, few bought this record and I loved it so much. It was punk rock
(Parlophone single, 1963)
o
frmedaband. to me. I lived in this farm town in New Jersey and Fabs shock George Martin with a good
didn't know anything about Kraftwerk so I could song, invade America, the rest is hysteria.
),im make UP Whatever I wanted - they were princes, Tom Petty: 'The Beatles were hyped to
- mmT^l' »—« U/aft...
* * * * " the
70s. J mw livedtr^WM"1*'
murderers, like robots in tidy sound
their houses. „ be the best thing ever, but they actually
were better than that. Just the sound
■ I 'Dean &Britta): "In the late

iE
With Autobahn they re fl9"""9 h bj hit and 0f this is thrilling. Even today whenj
was 1969 Live, which Moved. I used it to listen to it, it doesn't really sound like
Take out with my girlfriend, all these , 'people singing, it sounds like it could be
J S n T v e ^eiqht-minute,
c V d a v a Ugently
a b l e pulsing
i n A songs,
m e r i cthe
a ZrorClthin^Liustakidwhenitcame
amazing thi^g about the Nico album is that it's their out. I went and bought the single, with that picture
£ "n" it's absolutely stunning, which is unusual of them on the cover in those great "««*""**
S You can tell from the first recordings by The Beatles Kraftwerk did was important. Their use of synthes
es their refusal to rock but yet play this music that and then I immediately set out to get a guitar. I ve
-Ind "ones exactly whatthey were listening owt
E the Velvets you might hear elements of Phil Spector, was so physical, these disembodied bags of gas play- read that guitar sales boomed after that.
1 or Marvin Gaye's Hitch Hike in the intro to There She tag this funky, funky music that was sampled Ioy 4m Without this, no... groups writing their own songs.
S Goes Again, but otherwise it's as if they landed from hip hop crew. I never thought of it as dance music (
| another planet. It's a really evil-sounding record. and still play it for children. Children iove KraftW&K.
2 They tuned a lot of the guitars down, which gives it imfoitkfyeMV
J a darker side - a trick that metal bands use. It was a Without this, no... electronica, acid house, er,
Primal Scream's Evil Heat.
NUMBER QUE! the history of pop music...
a complete flop at the time, but the benefit of that is

MOJO 89
 ioo RECOKDS T H AT CHANGED THE WORLD!

In The
Beginning
Was The
Word...
.. .And the word was A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-
bam-boom! A torrent of filth wailed by a bisexual
alien, Little Richard's Tutti Frutti smashed down
the doors of culture and ushered in an attitude we
still call rock'n'roll. Elvis, Keef, Dylan, McCartney
and Bowie were electrified and the world was
remade in an instant. Bob Mehr investigates...
EFORE HE WAS THE ORIGINATOR, THE INNOVATOR, THE EMAN-
cipator, before he could claim his throne as the King, Queen or Quasar of
Rock'n'Roll, Little Richard stood before a microphone in a cramped New
Orleans studio and delivered his masterwork. The audience on this day was no
more than half a dozen or so souls: an enterprising young Italian engineer, a
conservatory-educated black jazz producer, and a gang of hep Crescent City
studio cats, none of whom knew quite what to make of Richard, this physically deformed, bi
sexual singer from Macon, Georgia. But as he screamed and shouted his way through the inspired
gibberish that would become known as Tutti Frutti — a thinly veiled and hastily rewritten ode to
the joys of backdoor sex — he did so with the unmistakable gospel fervour of a holy roller.
One can only imagine how it must've sounded when the song exploded across the airwaves of
Eisenhower's America in early 1956. Yet the invention of rock'n'roll as mass-culture subversion,
outsider art turned showbiz, so nearly never happened. An X-rated novelty used to enliven
Richard's nightclub sets, Tutti Frutti wasn't even scheduled to be recorded and was only cap
tured as time was ticking away on the final moments of a failing session. An accident, then, or
providence, for as The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards would
note after hearing the song, it was as if, in a single in
stant, the world had transformed from workaday
monochrome into glorious Technicolor.

Penniman came mewling

WHEN R I Cthe
into H Aworld
R D on W AY N E
December
5,1932, there was no doubt he was a re-

*e T,P In Inn- His mother ran a rap

id!)'growing household. Theirs wJa

middling existence, neither rich nor
Poor, but full of fun and promise- at ^
 I f
I
H M

-.'>»

" \

■•>«
%>, 1
LITTLE
RICHARD

#..

fjAm •;

"Whooooo!" The origina

tor. Little Richard with his
legendary road band The
Upsetters in the Alan Freed
film MrTtock'n'Roll, 1957.

THE BIGGEST BIG BANG IN POPULAR MUSIC, BY DR JOHN

lot of other people started using that shit. They use it today.
"The idea for Tutti Frutti was probably already floating
Tutti Frutti around New Orleans. I bet Flichard heard something like
(Specialty single, 1955) it from Eddie Bo: 'A gal named Sue/She knows just what to
© L I T T "When
L E Little Richard
R I was
CH AR
cutting D
Tutti do' — that shit was nasty! Some New Orleans songs, like Tee-
Frutti, I was standing right outside Cosimo Matassa's Nah-Nah, are Creole. Your tee-nah-nah is your ass cheeks,
studio. I was always hanging out there during Specialty your tee-nah-noo is your asshole. But Tutti Frutti isn't
sessions, trying to sell Art Rupe some songs. Creole, and I don't think it had anything to do with
Some people say Richard bummed his act from no ice cream flavour. You know what a fruit is, right?
"Richard was a totally original cat — everything
Esquerita, but to me, S.Q. was more gospel-
about him was off the hook. Seeing him and S.Q.
sounding, and Richard was straight up hip. His
hanging out wearing men's suits, topped off with
style was a revelation, a really good sound that
could rock the house without fail. This is what
"RICHARD WAS lipstick, high hair, and women's shades, would
made Richard special: as Fats Domino told me, A TOTALLY catch people off guard. Plus nobody else played
'I couldn't tell you what's the difference between piano standing up, and he had some smoking bands
rock'n'roll and R&B.' But Richard changed some
ORIGINAL CAT. with badasses like Billy Preston and Jimi Hendrix.
Richard always worked the house and he's always
thing in the New Orleans groove. Instead of a EVERYTHING been controversial. That's why I love his ass!"
shuffle, he could play that 8th-note thing on the
ABOUT HIM WAS Without this, no... Nothing!
piano. He used it from that first record on, and a
OFF THE HOOK." H^HHBHI^^^^^^^H
 *< least as much as could be mustered in the Jim Crow South. X-rated songs of 1920s blues mamas like Lucille Bogan, Tutti Frutti
The church loomed large in Richard's early life. His paternal offered an unusually graphic description of sex - specifically, as the

grandfather was a minister and as a child Richard sang with gospel original lyrics suggested, the pleasures of the anal variety ("Tutti
group the Tiny Tots and with the family Penniman Singers and Frutti, good booty/If it don't fit, don't force it/You can grease it,
dreamed of becoming a preacher himself. But his first significant make it easy"). In fact the term "Tutti Frutti" had long been slang

on-stage experience, at the Macon City Auditorum with guitar- among Southern gays, its roots traceable back to camp icon Carmen
Miranda, "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat".
wielding gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, changed all that. "She
was the one I got the 'whooo' from," he later recalled. Finished with RCA, Richard signed to Don Robey's Houston-
Richard always knew he was different. Born with one leg notice based Peacock Records in 19 5 3, but once again his recordings failed to

ably shorter than the other, he endured vicious teasing: "The kids capture any of his on-stage charisma. Worse, Richard clashed with
didn't realise I was crippled. They thought I was trying to twist and Peacock's owner Robey, a domineering black gangster type with a
walk feminine. The kids would call me faggot sissy, freak, punk. volatile temper who, angered by Richard's insolence during a meeting,

They called me everything." Pushed to the fringes, he was sexual- gave the singer a beating that left him with a painful hernia for years.
ised early in his adolescence by older women in the neighbourhood After staying out of the studio for over a year, Richard crossed
and predatory men. Soon, he began to drift away from church and paths with New Orleans R&B sensation Lloyd Price in late 19S4.

THE KIDS WOULD CALL ME

FAGGOT, SISSY, FREAK, PUNK. 5*
THEY CALJF.n ME EVERYTHING.
Price suggested he send a demo to his Los Angeles-based
family and into Macon's gay demi
monde. Shunned by his father for being label, Specialty. Richard cut a pair of fairly straight gospel-
"less than a son", he ran off with a flecked numbers - He's My Star and Wonderin' - at a ra
medicine show to sell snake oil at car dio station studio in Macon and shipped them off. "So I
nivals. This led to his first professional sent the tape to Specialty and they waited one year before
musical gigs, touring the chitlin circuit they wrote me back," he recalled. When Richard's tape
as singer with B. Brown And His Or arrived at Specialty's offices in February 1955, the com
chestra and later a minstrel troupe pany was at a crossroads. Founded in 1945, by Arthur N.
called Sugarfoot Sam's Traveling Show. Rupe, Specialty had enjoyed several years of small-time
He eventually landed up in the gay success recording black gospel and R&B music, hitting the
district of Adanta, falling in deeper with big time in 1952 with Price's Lawdy Miss Clawdy. But the
an odd assortment of transvestites. It was black music marketplace was changing rapidly, and Special
there that he came into contact with ty's crack A&R/producer Robert 'Bumps'
singer-pianist Billy Wright. Known as die Blackwell — a formally trained musician
'Prince of the Blues', Wright was a flam from Seattie who'd played a pivotal role in
boyant figure who coiffed his hair up to shaping the early careers of Quincy Jones
fantastic heights, slathered his face in Pancake 31 makeup, and Ray Charles — was on the lookout for an
and shouted a "crying" brand of gospel blues — elements act who could compete: specifically, a "gos
diat Richard would eventually incorporate into his own act.
pel singer who could sing the blues."
Another important encounter was with Esquerita (aka S.Q. "Our office began to get calls from
Reeder), a flashy pianist and outsize personality who would Richard about every two or three weeks,
help define Richard's signature playing style. "Fie got on anxious to know about his tape," recalls
the piano and played One Mint Julep way up in the treble," Rupe today. "Our secretaries, as per proce
Richard recalled. "It sounded so pretty. The bass was fan dure, always informed him that he would
tastic. I said, How do you do that? And he's says, 'I'll teach get our decision soon. Because Richard was
you.' And that's when I really started playing." ^L so persistent, a secretary eventualK told me
that a Little Richard insisted on talking to a
'Mr. Root'! It was technically a poor re
Richard signed to RCA's Camden imprint. His first session cording, [but] I detected an emotional, churchy sound in Richard's
T H R O Uproduced
G H A CaOsmall
N N Eregional
C T I O NhitWcalled
I T H Every
WRIG H T, but a sec
Hour, voice. We were looking for qualities similar to those of B.B. King
ond, February 1952, session proved unsuccessful. Two weeks later and Ray Charles, so we signed [him]."
Bud Penniman was killed — shot dead outside the Tip In Inn during Specialty loaned Richard $600 to buy his way out of his Peacock
a dispute with an unruly patron. With his older brother Charles off contract and a date was set for his first Specialty session in New Orle
fighting in Korea, Richard assumed the role of breadwinner, washing ans, site of the label's previous successes, for mid-September 1955.
dishes at the Greyhound bus station in Macon to make the family's
ends meet. It was there, Richard claims, that the first stirrings of
Tutti Frutti came to him. "I was washing dishes... and I couldn't New Orleans was located on the corner of Rampart and
talk back to my boss man. He would bring all these pots back for me IN THE FALL near
Dumaine, OF the1955,
city'sJ&M RECORDING
historic SERVICE
Congo Square. FoundedIN a
to wash, and one day I said, I've got to do something to stop this decade earlier by Cosimo Matassa and Joe Mancuso, the studio was
man bringing back all these pots to me to wash, and I said, A-wop- an outgrowth of the pair's record store and appliance business. At
bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom, take 'em out! and that's what I first Matassa, who handled the engineering duties, had hoped to tap
meant at the time." into the rich pool of local talent. Within a couple years, the studio
A slighdy more profane version of Richard's phrase — "A-wop- was attracting interest from independent labels across the country,
bop-a-loo-mop-a-good-goddamn" — was used to kick off a bawdy, cutting Roy Brown for Deluxe Records out of New Jersey and Pro
half-improvised novelty song that he'd begun singing during his fessor Longhair for New York's Atlantic. The studio hit its stride in
nightclub sets with his new band, die Tempo Toppers. Similar to the 1949 with the first of several hits by local talent Fats Domino. By

92 MOJO
 m

cJon . t1 d

the mid-'50s J&M had also developed a successful relationship with eran musicians considered Richard a "kook". "He walked into J&M
Specialty through their work with Lloyd Price and Guitar Slim. like he was coming off-stage: that thick, thick powder makeup and
Matassa, who received a lifetime achievement Grammy earlier this the eyeliner and the lipstick and the hair everywhere in big, big
year, was a skilled but subtle engineer, whose modest nature helped waves," recalled drummer Earl Palmer. "Walked in there like some
define J&M's sonic aesthetic. "My philosophy, if you want to use a thing you'd never seen. I don't remember exacdy what I said; some
big word, was to be transparent," says Matassa. "I thought my job thing like, What the fuck is this? Not who, what."
was to go out in the studio and listen, and what I heard there, put on The musicians' reticence certainly had something to do with
tape. So if you never knew I was involved, then I did my job." Richard's sexual flamboyance. "At that time, everybody was a little
The other key element to the J&M recordings was a core group concerned about being seen with somebody that looked and acted
of session musicians who'd become the cornerstone of the "New so gay," noted Palmer. But it wasn't long before Richard's natural
Orleans Sound". This collection of players included drummer Earl enthusiasm had won over the suspicious studio hands. "Richard was
Palmer, pianists Huey Smith and Melvin Dowden, saxmen Lee Al so infectious and so unhiding with his flamboyancy, he sucked us
len and Alvin 'Red' Tyler and bassist Frank Field. "Those guys were right in," said Palmer. "We got laughing with him instead of at him."
As the musicians mingled and Matassa adjusted mikes, producer
really terrific sidemen," enthuses Matassa. "They didn't just sit
there and say, 'Tell me what to play', they participated. They did a Blackwell surveyed the scene. As Palmer notes, Blackwell was a
lot of what were called head arrangements, where they came up company man ("He was afraid of Rupe") but one with an air of
with parts on the spot. We had a great thing going there." authority and purpose in the studio. "Bumps gave the distinct im
i This close and convivial atmosphere was suddenly interrupted pression that Bumps was in charge," says Matassa. "Now, he didn't
when Little Richard arrived at the studio on September 13. With flaunt it or act imperious about it — he was one of the guys — but
■ his strange look, garish clothes and hyper manner, the crew of vet there was no question that the buck stop

MOJO 93
 "I always did have that thang!" Little Richard's congregation (clockwise from near right) with rocker Eddie
Cochran (at right) and Alis Lesley, 1957; Billy J Kramer was never like this! Sans wig and backed by The
Dakotas at The Oasis club in Manchester, 1964; holy roller Richard works the pulpit in 1959; Specialty
boss Art Rupe; producer Bumps Blackwell; with young proteges The Beatles, and with former rockabilly
artist who climbed aboard the rock'n'roll bandwagon Bill Haley, 1956.

*=£. Blackwell's greatest challenge was to give Richard the confi loud as I was hollering.
dence to let his natural style come across on tape - something die I was screaming even
louder than a holler. I
singer had failed to do in his recordings for Camden and Peacock.
"For Richard, Bumps was a cheerleader. He was a real motivator. screamed, and played
And Richard was like a wild stallion - well, a mare is more like it. A and banged the piano; I
mare in heat," says Matassa, laughing. "So it wasn't a question of almost tore that piano
out of the wall."
reining Richard in. It was more turning him loose... and praying!"
But for much of the sessions, Richard seemed inhibited. He For Blackwell, Ri
would occasionally flash fire but generally relied on a measured vo chard's "wild piano"
cal approach. The first day's material - Wondering, Lonesome And was crucial to the suc
Blue and a mid-tempo version of Kansas City - was pedestrian. As cess of the song. "Ab
day two progressed in the same vein, Blackwell faced the grim real solutely," agrees Matassa. "Richard's
ity of heading back to LA without a hit: "I had to think. I couldn't piano style was designed to push him
self and the song. It was the kind of
go back to Rupe with the material I had."
In Blackwell's version, the group took a break and headed to the tiling where you felt it as much as you
Dew Drop Inn (Palmer and Matassa both think this unlikely as the heard it."
club was a quite a distance from the studio). But as Blackwell told "What I remember about those
sessions is how physical they were,"
it, "We walk into the place. There's a piano and that's [Richard's]
crutch. He's on-stage reckoning to show [saxophonist] Lee Allen observed drummer Earl Palmer. "I'll
his piano style. So wowl He gets to going. He hits that piano, tell you the only reason I started
dididididididididididididi... and starts to sing A-wop-bop-a-loo- playing what they come to call a
rock'n'roll beat came from trying to
mop-a-good-goddamn-Tutti Frutti, good booty...' I said, Wow,
that's what I want from you, Richard! That's a hit!" match Richard's right hand."
From a pure sonic perspective, the
track was typical of the J&M sound,
found his prospective hit in Tutti Frutti but needed a new, with the vocals prominent, the bottom
BUT NOW sanitised
BLACKWELL
lyric suitable WAS
for radio
IN play
A QUANDARY.
- and quickly, asHE'D
time of the rhythm pronounced, and horns
was running out. So he called on local songwriter Dorothy Labos- and piano coming off a bit lighter.
trie who'd already provided the bluesy I'm Just A Lonely Guy, cut Meanwhile, the patented Richard
earlier that day. scream which introduces Lee Allen's sax solo, was born out of ne
Born in rural Kentucky to a New Orleans Creole family, Labostrie cessity. "They didn't have but the one microphone, hangin' over the
was an amateur poet and writer who'd begun piano," recalled Richard. "I had to scream so
the saxophone player would know it was time
hanging around J&M studios in the early '50s
for him to blow. When I hollered, he knew it
looking for her big break. As LaBostrie told
author Jeff Iiannusch, "I was listening to the "IT WASN'T A was time to get it!"
radio and an announcement came on that im With Richard's vocals roughened by two
QUESTION OF
mediately caught my attention. It said that days of recording, his singing had a harsher
Bumps Blackwell was looking for songwrit REINING RICHARD quality than previous work and he reverted to
ers. I was working as a cook for a lady and I IN. IT WAS ABOUT the fevered swoons and aphorisms — the trade
told her that I had to quit because I was going mark trilling "whoo"s — he'd learned from
to write a hit record. I practically broke Cosi- TURNING HIM female gospel singers like Sister Rosetta
mo's door down the next day." LOOSE... AND Tharpe. "The one thing diat gospel style does
It's ironic that Blackwell should have tapped to vocalists is it liberates them. If the spirit
Labostrie to clean up a song, as her own cata PRAYING!" moves tiiem, they sing it," says Matassa. "And
logue tended toward the risque. As Dr. John in Richard case, there's that extra emotional
observed: "If anybody wrote a dirty song, it level that they reach, that's really highly in
would have been Dorothy. She wrote Mickey Mouse's Boarding House spired, for want of a better word. And it showed."
for Big Boy Mylcs, which was about a whorehouse." (Labostrie would Although they'd cut dozens of takes of the previous songs, it only
later, somewhat fantastically, claim that the idea for Tutti Frutti had took three passes to nail Tutti Frutti. The first take somehow didn't
been hers solely. "My girlfriend and I liked to go down to the drug store quite click, while the second was too loose — Richard was having
and buy ice cream," she told Hannusch. "One day we went in and saw trouble remembering the words and the arrangement had yet to gel
this new flavor, Tutti Frutti. Right away I thought, Boy, that's a great — but everything came together for the third and final version of the
idea for a song.") song. With just a couple of minutes to spare on the clock, the track
Whatever the song's true authorship, a new lyric was hastily was in the can and the session was over. For Matassa, the experience
penned by Labostrie with just minutes left to go in the session — un of Tutti Frutti came to epitomise Richard's approach to recording.
ion rules limited playing hours before costs ran into overtime. With "Let me be as forthright as I can about Richard. I describe his
no time left to come up with an arrangement for piano, Blackwell efforts as being the Queen of the May syndrome. He's gay, he wants -,
had Richard jump on the keys and lead the band through the song. to be the best, he has to be the best - you follow me? He's driven by i
For Richard, this was his defining moment. With previous record that kind of a thing. And his performances tell that. The way he sang 1
ing failures lingering in the background, and the death of his father on-stage, was the way he sang in the studio — he'd bleed for you. i
hanging over him, he summoned everything he had and let the raw And he bled on that track. That's why it was so great."
emotion and power of his voice and playing finally spill onto tape. But no one, least of all Richard, thought history had been made. \
"I was really desperate and determined, I wanted to make it and "I didn't go to New Orleans to record no Tutti Frutti," Richard \
help my family," he said. "I was singing at die top of my voice. I was said. "Sure, it used to crack the crowds up in the clubs with those \
screaming. You never seen a guy with a big head like me scream as risque lyrics. But I never thought it would be a hit." i

94 MOJO
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