MOJO October 2019

Typex Typex, a Dutch comic artist and illustrator, regarded The Beatles as an Eternal Musical Omnipresence when he was growing up. A graduate of the Amsterdam College for the Arts, he is the author of two graphic novel biographies: Rembrandt and Andy: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol, both published by SelfMadeHero. A regular contributor to MOJO, this month Typex drew our two extraordinary maps of The Beatles’ London and Liverpool. Lois Wilson If longtime MOJO contributor Lois Wilson had a time machine, she’d set the dials for Liverpool 1962 and head straight to The Cavern to see The Beatles. She first became smitten with them after finding her mum’s Love Me Do 45 at her grandma’s. Saving her pocket money, she got her first Beatles record: a second-hand copy of The…

A PUNK-BOOGIE RABBLE-ROUSER FROM THE AUSTRALIAN hippy town of Mullumbimby. Korean ambience and Tuareg jams. Dubliner literary ramalams. Soul from Atlanta, Chicago, Austin and Bristol. Jazz from London, via Ahmedabad. Motorik freak-outs hymning the English edgelands. And mind-expanding math-prog from Croydon’s home of the hits, the BRIT School. The class of 2019, it’s clear, are an uncommonly varied bunch. To commemorate an action-packed year thus far, we’ve compiled a 15-track primer to the very best newish artists we’ve come across in the past few months. Collectively, they articulate a disdain for neat categories and stereotypes, and an original spirit of defiance that isn’t predicated on commercial success. “I started writing to make myself feel better and try to escape from what was going on,” Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten tells us this…

Sheila Maurice-Grey NÉRIJA’S TRUMPET ARTIST What music are you currently grooving to? Onda by Cassiano, a beautiful, very chilled Cuban artist. A lot of Brazilian music too. Jose Feliciano’s rendition of Golden Lady has similar vibes, alongside another classic, Brazilian Love Affair by George Duke. I listened to a lot of Brazilian music when I was 14, 15 – my biological father’s side is Portuguese speaking, I was researching. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? It’s clichéd but, Kind Of Blue. It’s timeless, there’s space in it, colours, moods… it was so innovative, and it’s still relevant to how I view making music. A beautiful piece of artistry. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? I can’t remember, but I was given Song For My…

FOR TEN MINUTES ON THE MORNING OF August 8, 1969, The Beatles walked back and forth across the zebra crossing outside their studio, while a policeman detained the traffic and photographer Iain Macmillan captured the moment for posterity. In some images, as you’ll see in this issue of MOJO, Paul McCartney wears sandals. In the one that made the cut, he is barefoot; like a corpse, the conspiracy theorists would soon allege. Less than two months later, the eleventh Beatles album was in the shops, and Macmillan’s cover shot had turned a pedestrian crossing into a site of pilgrimage. A brisk stroll away from the MOJO offices, the Abbey Road site is still thronged with tourists today; you can even watch them, exasperating the Uber drivers of north London, on a…

FROM OUTSIDE, it looks like any other shabby east London Victorian townhouse. But inside, we’re in Alan McGee’s teenage home in ’70s Glasgow, where the future Creation Records supremo is having a head wound treated by his mum, having fought with workplace bullies bent on painting his testicles red. “A true story,” laughs the current-day McGee. “These episodes help explain why I turned into such a fucking nutjob.” MOJO is on the set of Creation Stories, a film based on the 2014 memoir of the same name that charts McGee’s rise, crash and resurrection. Surviving an abusive childhood in Scotland, he helmed the record label that brought the world The Jesus And Mary Chain, Primal Scream, MBV, Oasis and many more, before surviving a massive cocaine-induced breakdown in 1994. With…

AFTER PREVIOUS visits to the US and Australasia, this October sees drummer Kofi Baker (son of Ginger), bassist Malcolm Bruce (son of Jack) and Eric Clapton’s guitarist nephew Will Johns (son of Stones producer Andy) bring The Music Of Cream 50th Anniversary Tour to UK venues. As well as performances of the hits and beyond, the evening will also feature conversation and anecdote, plus archive footage of Ginger, Jack and Eric on-stage that the new group will interact with live. Publicity materials refer to, “the bloodlines [paying] tribute to Cream’s legendary four-album reign over the psychedelic frontier of the late 1960s…” “It’s pretty amazing, the three of us onstage,” says Kofi. “I don’t think Malcolm really listened to Cream, so it is strange how he sounds like Jack, how Will plays…