MOJO

IN MARCH 1991, A NEW PHASE BEGAN IN THE MOST STORIED of musical careers. Bob Dylan released a box set entitled The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3; 58 songs extracted from his archives, that provided an intimate glimpse into the working practices and secret moments of genius guarded for so long. Thirty-two years on, Dylan has released 12 more new albums, plus 14 further entries in The Bootleg Series. Sometimes, it feels like he has become a man with two careers: on a relentless quest to keep driving his muse forward, while simultaneously examining myriad alternative routes through his past. Really, though, it’s all a single mission, of a piece with his alchemical live work. Dylan’s songs are in continuous flux, never fixed in space or time, always evolving and revealing…

Jean-Michel Jarre OXYGÈNE GENIE What music are you currently grooving to? 100 by Big Sean feat Royce Da 5’9” & Kendrick Lamar. They used a sample of mine [Souvenir Of China] in an unexpected way. It’s a good example of using something from a totally different world and making an interesting track. Also Deathpact, a mysterious band from the West Coast – they could be the children of Skrillex. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Discovery by ELO. A very special, joyful, positive, dynamic, happy record. It’s difficult to be happy without being cheesy – everybody can be dark! But I could choose something else tomorrow. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Georgia On My Mind by…

MOJO welcomes correspondence for publication. Write to us at: MOJO, Bauer Media Publishing, The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk WHEN TIME OUT OF MIND WAS RELEASED in September 1997, Bob Dylan was 56 years old. “Shadows are fallin’ and I’ve been here all day,” began Not Dark Yet, and to some the lyrics of Dylan’s 30th album had a valedictory ring. Here was a standard-bearer of the generation who had sworn never to grow old, come to a point where he was grappling with a new sense of mortality. Time Out Of Mind read like a curtain-call for rock’s gilded stars as they confronted the absurdity of continuing into their sixties. “It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there…” Well, we got that one wrong,…

ONE OF THE MORE unexpected documents to emerge after the death of Terry Hall was a two-hour listening session from 1985, originally broadcast on Manchester’s Piccadilly radio. Among songs by his then-current vehicle The Colourfield, Hall’s unapologetically MOR selections included Get Dancin’ by Disco Tex and The Sex-O-Lettes, O Lori by Alessi, and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You by Andy Williams. Hall spent his 40-plus year career surprising his listeners, taking sudden turns and obeying his own in-built artistic compass rather than following a predictable career path. Born in Coventry on March 19, 1959, he left school at 15, already living with manic depression and prescribed Valium. After a variety of low-key jobs, he joined local punks Squad. Aged 19 he joined The Coventry Automatics and was mixing punk…

THERE WILL be a fitting way to remember Terry Hall – as well as his late Specials bandmate John Bradbury, plus Ranking Roger, Saxa and Everett Morton from The Beat and Winston Bazoomies from Bad Manners – this March 24. On that date, a restored version of 1981’s six-band ska concert film Dance Craze will be launched at the BFI. Filmed in 1980 during the height of 2 Tone mania, Dance Craze’s limited cinema run brought together performances from the above-mentioned groups plus Madness, The Selecter and The Bodysnatchers. Apart from a VHS release in 1989, in the absence of film materials since rediscovered, it has been unavailable since. “It’s great that it’s finally getting a release,” says Jerry Dammers. “The BFI have taken it up, as much because of…

“It was really fun seeing Paul sing in Spanish.” NANCY AND Lee. Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell. When MOJO wonders where the new pairing of singer-songwriter Galen Ayers (daughter of Kevin) and Clash/ The Good, The Bad & The Queen bassist Paul Simonon fits into the duo landscape, the latter grins, gappily, “Morecambe and Wise.” There will be sunshine, it seems, on their debut album. Its origins lay in lockdown, when Simonon moved to a fishing village in Mallorca, where he painted and worked on musical ideas for 18 months. “Then I came back to London and ran into Galen,” he says, adding that the two – who speak to MOJO together on a Zoom call – have been pals for a decade. “I was…