MOJO September 2019

Alison Fensterstock New Orleans-based Alison is a regular contributor to NPR Music, and writes for Rolling Stone, New YorkTimes and Los AngelesTimes. She writes a column on eccentric regional history,art,music and the occult for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.She bids farewell to Dr. John from p40. Sylvie Simmons Biographer of Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg, and die-hard Tom Waits fan (her MOJO Interview with Tom was in issue 131), Sylvie has written for MOJO since it began. As she’s puts the finishing touches to her second LP with Howe Gelb and awaits the onslaught of record label bids, she also delves into Waits’s Island ‘Trilogy’ from p72. Vince McIndoe Award winner Vincent McIndoe was born in Canada. An illustrator and artist, he has designed for Canada Post (Toronto’s 200th Anniversary stamp), as well as…

“THE FIRST WHITE ACT I EVER SIGNED WAS JOHN Martyn,” recalls Chris Blackwell, looking back on the history of Island Records, the epochal label he founded 60 years ago. “I learned a lot from him. And the first thing I learned was that if you have a record label that’s known for putting out Jamaican music, you shouldn’t be putting out a crazy Scottish folk-jazz artist on the same label. That was something I missed.” The diversity of the Island roster was not, as Blackwell acknowledges, “a help for John Martyn in the beginning.” Soon enough, though, Island signings were united by a fearless eclecticism, a willingness to subvert expectations and push boundaries, rather than fitting into a homogeneous sound. These Island Radicals became the irregular heartbeat of the label, and…

John Mayall GODFATHER OF BRITISH BLUES What music are you currently grooving to? Not anything at the moment. I’m getting ready to go on an American tour, and we don’t rehearse, so… but I’m a big Cannonball Adderley fan. Everything he does is terrific, it has that vibrancy. I did meet him when he was still around, he was a great fella to hang out with, very personable, just like you’d expect when you listen to his music. Anything you put on by him is going to be great! What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Freddie King’s Getting Ready… It’s a classic, one of his later ones, but a very, very strong record. Give that a listen, you’ll find out what I’m talking about. What was the first record you ever…

BOOGIE IN MY BONES. IT COULD BE A TOM Waits song title, just about. But in fact Laurel Aitken’s side was the first single released by Island Records, promoted by Chris Blackwell as he made the rounds of Jamaica’s jukeboxes in his day job. That was in 1959, the starting point for 60 years of sensational music from Jamaica and far beyond. This month, we celebrate Island’s diamond anniversary with a meticulously-curated CD – the full gamut of roots mystics, folk-rockers, futurists and soul-reshapers – and the label’s most auspicious players, including Tom Waits and Blackwell himself. Their work together began with 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, a period Blackwell recalls as “one of the high times of my life – hanging out with him was extraordinary. I’d heard the record and thought it…

BRAVE IS A word often applied to public figures who suffer personal tragedy. By comparison, the recent Conversations With Nick Cave tour of northern Europe and Britain, which ended with two shows at the Brighton Dome on June 28 and 29, bordered on the heroic. Everything Cave has done publicly since his 15-year-old son Arthur tragically fell from a cliff near Brighton in 2015 after taking LSD, has been viewed through the prism of his family’s loss. Possibly drawing a line under such scrutiny, Conversations With… was an intimate mix of solo performances at a grand piano the size of Brighton Pier, coupled with questions from the audience. As the evening of June 29 unfolded, he unflinchingly addressed not only losing his son but whatever took his public’s fancy, a stated…

CHRIS BLACKWELL was always a bit of a rebel. Born in London, raised in Jamaica, he was schooled at Harrow but scorned its uniform – especially the straw boater pupils were oblige “I used to go into town to buy liquor and cigarettes and sell them to the other students, including the prefects,” Blackwell tells MOJO today. “When I got found out, the headmaster suggested to my mother that I might be happier elsewhere.” A not inconsiderable slice of that attitude, one suspects, went into the record label he launched 60 years ago. Built on Blackwell’s youthful passion for American jazz and R&B, Island Records supplied the world with the treasures of Jamaican pop music, then used its success to back mavericks and one-of-a-kinds including Brian Eno, Grace Jones, Richard Thompson,…