MOJO July 2019

Andrew Male A former MOJO Deputy Editor, Andrew first started writing for the magazine in 1999. Twenty years on, he divides his time between The Sunday Times, Sight & Sound, The Guardian and helping at his wife’s cafe, Nico, in London SE25. In this issue, read him on Ronnie Lane and fellow Wirralites OMD. Guy Eppel Shooting Bill Callahan in Texas was a wild west adventure, says Eppel. “Bill is the essence of cool and Smog rules OK!” To see more of Guy’s photos visit www. guyeppel.com Neil Edwards Neil Edwards lives and works in Wrexham. He specialises in comic book art, character design and storyboarding. Neil produced his first commercial work for Marvel in 1996, and has illustrated for DC Comics, Valiant, Lucasfilm, BBC, Disney and Wrexham Council. He illustrates this month’s Lead Album…

HOW TO ENCOMPASS 50 YEARS OF KING CRIMSON’S genuinely progressive rock music in the space of one CD? Robert Fripp, the sole constant member of the band and their “raison d’être”, has a singular take on the group’s inception – that their 1969 debut, In The Court Of The Crimson King, “reached back and pulled those young players towards it in order that it could be made.” The idea behind this MOJO Anthology: Rare, Classic, Unusual And Live 1969-2019, is to pull a new audience towards the highly individual riches of King Crimson – and to reward both hardcore fans as well as adventurous neophytes. The 12 tracks, compiled by MOJO and the band, encompass every phase of their idiosyncratic career: from the monumental first steps of 1969, and their subsequent…

Abdullah Ibrahim CAPE JAZZ MAESTRO What music are you currently grooving to? I really enjoy the music of the natural world. I live in the countryside, so for me it’s the sound of springtime in the mountains; the birds singing to each other, the gentle flow of the river. There’s a special rhythm that’s very calming and inspiring. It was a big influence on my new album. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Duke Ellington once said to me something like, “My favourite album is the next one.” I’m inclined to agree. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? It was of Sotho Traditional Music, which comes from Lesotho, a small kingdom within South Africa, which has its own individual musical style as well as…

IT IS EASY TO GET SEDUCED BY NUMBERS when thinking about Queen. At time of writing, worldwide box office receipts for 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody are fast approaching one billion dollars – a meganumber to file alongside all the others that have defined their story: the biggest-selling album in UK history ( Greatest Hits , 6.3 million); the most streamed song from the 20th century (Bohemian Rhapsody, of course, 1.6 billion streams); and so on. There is much more to Queen, though, than mere scale, and this month’s MOJO cover story explores the serious musical riches upon which their triumphs were built. With the significant help of Brian May and Roger Taylor, Mark Blake learns the real stories behind the fabled hits, and investigates some of the less-celebrated classics hiding in that…

ON APRIL 18, 2019, the audience for Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets at New York’s Beacon Theatre witnessed an unexpected guest appearance. Pink Floyd’s co-founder Roger Waters turned up to sing the 1968 album track Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. Floyd drummer Mason’s redux tribute to the group’s early works has been playing to sold-out houses across the world since summer 2018, but this was the first time one of his ex-bandmates had stopped by. Speaking to MOJO before their inaugural tour last year, Mason said he’d be delighted if Waters or Floyd guitarist/bandleader David Gilmour “came down and did something, but not at the first few shows.” Fifty gigs later, Waters obliged. While Mason played the gong during the song’s lengthy intro, Waters loped on-stage to…

THE BEATLES Counterfactual is a long, self-sustaining tradition, reimagining the post-War world’s cultural relief map without (arguably) its most seismic event. What if The Beatles had never formed? Or split in 1962? What would music, or politics even, be like? What if Paul really was dead? Or Lennon lived? Or how about, The Beatles did exist, but after a mysterious, reality-rearranging ‘event’, only one person in the whole world (who luckily, happens to be a musician) remembers them and their songs? The idea is the nub of a new movie, written by Blackadder/Four Weddings’ Richard Curtis from an idea by Jack Barth. Directed by Danny Boyle and starring former EastEnders star Himesh Patel, it’s a feelgood family romcom set in a world identical to our own (even post-‘event’), not the sci-fi…