CATEGORIES

MAN OF THE YEAR JOHN LYDON

For John Lydon, 1978 was a pivotal year, leaving the Sex Pistols and forming Pil

33% minutes with...Glen Matlock

In stark contrast with the misinformation and backstabbing aimed at Glen Matlock on his departure from the Sex Pistols in 1977, their reunion in 1996 saw the bassist reinstated and his significance in the band’s history re-evaluated. After spending the late 70s and 80s in a succession of shortlived bands, and a stint with Iggy Pop, Matlock channeled the momentum from the Pistols’ 90s revival into an ongoing solo career. On his sixth album, Consequences Coming, his Pistols-era knack for a sharp tune is paired with politically charged lyrics. “It’s a word to the wise,” he tells Record Collector.

THE ENGINE ROOM

The unsung heroes who helped forge modern music

UNDER THE RADAR

Artists, bands, and labels meriting more attention

33% minutes with...Chuck D

The Public Enemy founder is Zooming Record Collector from his study at his LA home. It’s the middle of the night, which is when he works best, he says. Dressed in de rigueur black T-shirt with baseball cap, he’s sat with rows and rows of neatly filed CDs to one side and, to the other, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with art books. He’s just become the subject of his own, Livin’ Loud, which collects over 250 of his paintings, sketches and drawings of musical and sports heroes from Gladys Knight and James Brown to basketball player Julius Irving aka Dr J. In between are political cartoons and satirical skits. Always the restless creative, he’s also just launched the cultural app, Bring The Noise, and published his first of what he calls ‘naphic grovels’ on his own Enemy Books. “I was raised with an artist’s mentality,” he says

musictovisit

Bob Stanley carries pop’s baggage everywhere Britain’s secret radio hits

MYSTERY RUSHENT RECORDING

Ian Shirley uncovers the story behind post-punk/synthpop producer Martin Rushent’s 60s group, The Nett, and meets his band-mate from way back when, Gerry Shadbolt

SACRED & ROUND

Set up by Eddie Singleton with Berry Gordy’s ex-wife Raynoma (Miss Ray) in 1964, the Shrine label, based in Washington DC, has been highly collectable for over 50 years. Shrine had no hits – in fact, they had very few sales at all. What it did have was musical talent and a business plan that ended in glorious failure – thereby making the 20 singles that were pressed sought-after by soul aficonados. As a new Ace Records compilation rounds them up in one place, Ady Croasdell gazes enviously down the list of their releases – with estimated asking prices in Mint condition

SILENT SHOUT

With an acclaimed final album on the shelves, Janis Ian was on one last lap of glory, with a lifetime achievement award and the European leg of her farewell tour to look forward to. Then everything changed. She tells Charles Donovan what happened…

RIGHT SAID 'FRED

Paul Jones celebrates the 60th anniversary of the band formerly known as Manfred Mann, with help from Mike d’Abo and guitarist Tom McGuinness. Man in the middle: Michael Heatley

COOL VARIATIONS

At the start of the 80s Tom Waits felt trapped. Hemmed in by the persona he’d created over the previous decade, his salvation came with the album Swordfishtrombones, an artistic volte-face that celebrates its 40th birthday this month. Wesley Doyle looks at its creation – via an album-byalbum run-through of what led up to it – and reassesses the peerless work that followed

NOT FADE AWAY 1973's IMMORTAL LIVE DEBUT LPs

‘THE 1973 LIVE LP WAS THE ALBUM ON STEROIDS’

"We wanted to sound like Sinatra with a fairlight"

As the UK synthpop scene gathered momentum at the turn of the 80s, a bunch of ambitious modernists from South Yorkshire were thinking bigger. ABC, in a very different yet not entirely unrelated post-punk way to The Human League, Soft Cell, Haircut One Hundred et al, would create a vision of shiny, post-modern pop that endures on their finest recorded hour: The Lexicon Of Love. Leader Martin Fry remembers how, for a short, surreal period, it all went so gloriously right. Alphabet superstar:

Wild At Heart

How the 'best new band in Britain' earned their title...

The Collector

This month: musician/ producer Chasms

CANDID CANDI

The Southern soul, disco and gospel queen tells Ian Shirley about her acclaimed Fame recordings and how real-life pain helped her deliver those heartrending vocals

Divine Intervention

Having conceded that “addiction took years off me” and spent much of the late 20th century in a personal and artistic limbo, Kevin Rowland is now making up for lost time with a revitalised Dexys. As they prepare to release their new album, The Feminine Divine, this soon-to-be-septuagenarian is keen to express an older, wiser worldview and put the finishing touches to a back catalogue he can be proud of. “We haven’t done that much, really,” he tells Rob Hughes.

THUNDER BIRD

While the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal spawned plenty of globe-straddling rock superstars, some of its less high-profile names still made their mark, even if more in influence than record sales. Tyneside terrors Raven were one such pack of unsung heroes, but their reputation has been rightly rehabilitated since their reformation at the turn of the millennium, and as a new album is released they sound revitalised as they come off a triumphant anniversary tour. Murder of crows: Rich Davenport

RENAISSANCE MAN

Keyboard supremo Lonnie Liston Smith is one of jazz’s pre-eminent sidemen, playing with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis. But it was as a leader that he came into his own, trailblazing a style that blended improvisation with soul and funk grooves. Spreading messages of peace and tranquility through positivist lyrics, albums such as Expansions, Visions Of A New World, Reflections Of A Golden Dream, and Renaissance proved crossover hits. Diversions into boogie followed before his renown among the rap generation led to his involvement in Guru’s groundbreaking project, Jazzmatazz. Tempted back into the studio by producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the keyboardist’s first new album in 25 years rekindles the magic of his 70s recordings. He talks Paul Bowler through some of the key albums of his remarkable career.

HIGH FLYING BIRD

As the forbidding figure behind New York post-punk noise provocateurs Swans, Michael Gira spent the bulk of the 80s as the sworn enemy of conventional melody, until new creative partners and an unsatisfactory spell with a major label saw new influences come into play. More recently he has ventured back down that original avant-garde road armed with a bigger, more ambitious sound. “I write because I have to,” he tells

SO NOIR SO GOOD

With The Cure’s US dates being hailed as the tour of the summer, Siouxsie cutting an imperiously witchy figure at festivals, everyone from Bauhaus to The Mission still active, various releases including a box set, a slew of books, and newspaper articles, Goth seems destined to outlive all other subcultures. The polymorphously perverse post-punk movement that began in a club in London has since seeped into all corners of modern life, from Batman movies to Billie Eilish – even Eurovision 2023 seemed inundated with goth sonics/imagery. Jeremy Allen casts a kohl eye over its origin story and speaks to goth prime movers.

The Flaming Lips – "We like Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd"

Across four decades and countless madcap ideas, The Flaming Lips have evolved from indie noiseniks to purveyors of Disneyesque symphonia to multi-media art ensemble, each new album expanding the group's sonic world and conceptual ambitions. Accidental hits (She Don't Use Jelly; Do You Realize??) have pulled them into the mainstream on occasion, and yet the Lips have consistently refused to court commercial success and often seemed to actively shun it, with a string of extra-curricular projects, including a homemade sci-fi movie and a line in deconstructive covers albums, defying even the most hardened Lips fan to make sense of it all. Frontman Wayne Coyne tells Jason Draper why the extreme-embracing unit will always remain a "weirdo studio band".

33 1/3 minutes with... Allan Clarke

Allan Clarke co-founded The Hollies with school friend Graham Nash. Between 1963, the year they started, and 1968 when Nash left to form Crosby, Stills & Nash, they notched up nine Top 5 singles including Just One Look, Here I Go Again and I’m Alive, their first of two No 1s.

NO LESS THAN HERO

To mark the release of Seven Psalms, an astonishing meditation on spirituality and mortality and his first album of new material in seven years, Paul Simon a giant of postwar American popular song matched only by Dylan - takes to Zoom for an RC exclusive to talk about (his) music with fan, friend and fellow master songwriter, Elvis Costello. Listening in: Terry Staunton.

Oh, Sit Down!

We will if you stop playing those infectious big-venue anthems to alienation and belonging. But James can't help themselves, and they never could, whether in their early indie phase, during Madchester, with Eno, or any time since. Still on their singular path and in pursuit of the new, they're releasing an orchestral retrospective album, Be Opened By The Wonderful. Tim Booth, Saul Davies and Jim Glennie tell Kevin Harley about their choppy journey as perennial outsiders and the value of an open mind.

BREAKING THE WAVES

A going concern since 1976, first in The Hague and since 2006 in Rotterdam, the annual North Sea Jazz Festival returns this summer with a stellar lineup including Janelle Monáe, Seal, Stormzy, Little Simz, Lizzo, Duckwrth, Snarky Puppy, Tom Jones, Van Morrison, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Jill Scott and more. It showcases the best contemporary jazz-influenced acts while attracting the biggest names. Photographer Paul Bergen has been capturing images from the festival for nearly four decades. He talks us through some of his favourite shots from previous years...

KINGS OF THE WORLD

Fifty years ago, imams of immaculacy and avatars of the acerbic, Steely Dan, were jazz pop's cool rulers. They had under their belts a debut album, Can't Buy A Thrill, that wasn't so much hesitantly promising as fully-realised, supremely accomplished. Clearly, on a roll, the follow-up, issued in July 1973, was, if anything, even better: their second - and, some would say, finest - album of cutting perfection (ism), Countdown To Ecstasy. Max Bell evaluates its razor buoyancy.

WIND OF CHANGE

It is 1974 and the Bee Gees haven't had a hit for a while. Nor are they enjoying the critical respect of the heavenly-harmony \"B\" boys: Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds. Into this commercial and critical lull enters producer Arif Mardin. In this extract from his book on the brothers Gibb, Bee Gees: Children Of The World, author, RC writer and pop musician Bob Stanley finds them midway through Phase 2 of their transition from late 60s orch-popsters to late 70s disco behemoths.

POP ART

Numerous rock'n'pop artistes have proven dab hands with other artforms over the decades. RC artist Paul Bowler paints a picture of some of those who work on other canvases

The days of his life

Freddie Mercury's unseen personal collection set to be exhibited and auctioned, darlings!