UNCUT

“You treat me badly, I love you madly” ONE of my last jobs this issue has been proofing our field report from the End Of The Road festival, which Uncut was proudly involved with again this year. I’m hard-pressed to find another festival which reflects so much of what we do here at Uncut – mixing familiar names (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Slowdive, Lankum, Yo La Tengo) with upcoming faces (Kassi Valazza, Sanam, Florence Adooni, Snõõper) across a variety of genres and styles. By way of evidence, please look no further than this issue of Uncut. Among many highlights, Laura Barton profiles the remarkable redemption story of Christopher Owens, the former frontman with indie-rock classicists Girls, and whose new album I Wanna Run Barefoot Through Your Hair is one of my…

“I never worried I’d lose David as a friend but I was worried the business might eat him up”GEORGE UNDERWOOD IN 1994, David Bowie was one of several musicians who donated artwork to Little Pieces From A Big Star, an auction created by Brian Eno to raise money for the War Child charity. So when Bowie’s lifelong friend George Underwood was invited to contribute to War Child’s latest art auction, Sound & Vision, he didn’t need to think twice – particularly as the theme of the exhibition was Bowie’s lyric, “We like dancing and we look divine”. “I took a detail of two figures dancing from a painting I did in 2010 called Dancing With Giants,” explains Underwood. “I then put them in new outfits inspired by David’s show at…

GRUFF RHYS: Just by coincidence, we put records out at the same time. He’s touring a Welsh language album, and I’m touring an English language album so [a joint tour] makes complete sense. Bill toured Europe with me in 2018 – we had a tour manager who kept everyone in soup, so everyone was in a good place. BILL RYDER-JONES: It was the healthiest I’ve ever been on tour! What I’m buzzing for is that I think we share fans anyway. My writing is informed by growing up listening to Gruff’s writing – the people who follow me are largely Gruff fans and his audience know me as well through association. It’s not a ‘let’s build an audience’ thing, it’s just going to be dead special gigs. We’re gonna have…

GODDESS OF SLIDE: THE FORGOTTEN STORY OF ELLEN McILWAINE (Dir. Alfonso Maiorana) ELLEN’S story was a revelation for me. She passed away in 2021 and had many, many lives. Born in Nashville but raised in Japan, she worked with Hendrix in New York in the ’60s, and built a huge cult following in Australia in the ’80s. Her version of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” was sampled by Fatboy Slim on “Song For Lindy”, so she was revived in the mid-’90s. Such a rich life with so many ups and downs. Pure passion, doggedness and perseverance – from the artist and the filmmakers. At the festival we feel such an affinity for that. DORY PREVIN: ON MY WAY TO WHERE (Dir. Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth) A brilliant film about a…

Paul McCartney’s bass “My idea for the exhibition was to tell the stories of famous recordings through the equipment that made them. I met Mary McCartney at Abbey Road and she asked me to photograph Fela Kuti’s master tapes. Rather than money, I asked to be introduced to her father’s guitars. To stand next to these objects was amazing, it’s why I call them Holy Relics. These pictures are ultra-focal comps – lots of images stitched together to create a pin-sharp composite that isn’t possible to achieve with the naked eye. I then blow them up to about two metres so you can see every mark.” Abbey Road diary page “Lester Smith has worked at Abbey Road since the late 1960s, and he showed me an old appointments diary. This…

2022 was a crisis year for Californian roots veteran Chuck Prophet. Diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, the ex-Green On Red guitarist was kept waiting on his chances of survival. “After they discovered I had a mass in my intestines, I was in a kind of no-man’s land for about 14 days,” he explains. “That was real fear, like a wooden stake being driven into me. Eventually I was told there were options in terms of treatment, and things lifted from there. But it was music that got me out of my head.” Stretching back three decades, Prophet’s highly eclectic solo work tends to involve surf, punk, rock’n’roll, folk and country. Yet it was the hitherto unexpected delights of cumbia music that guided him during his illness and recovery from chemotherapy.…