MOJO July 2020

Simon Goddard Writing about Marc Bolan’s T.Rex “Eureka!” moment for MOJO (p52) was a glam busman’s holiday for the author of Ziggyology. Simon has already been happily nailed to 1970 “binge-watching Callan and grooving to The Rattles” for his forthcoming Bowie Odyssey 70 (out August, Omnibus Press). Bill DeMain Bill is a songwriter, journalist, BBC correspondent and owner-guide of the Walkin’ Nashville music history tour. His songs have been recorded by such artists as Teddy Thompson, A Girl Called Eddy and Marshall Crenshaw. He says goodbye to Bill Withers on p42. PANiK PANiK started out as a spray can artist before studying at college, and his illustrations continue to be influenced by early hip-hop and contemporary street culture. A regular magazine contributor, he has also worked with Ministry Of Sound, Levi’s, and MTV. His illustration…

“AN AMBIENCE IS DEFINED AS AN ATMOSPHERE, OR A surrounding influence: a tint,” wrote Brian Eno in his 1978 sleevenotes to Ambient 1: Music For Airports. “My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations.” This month’s MOJO compilation, Music For Homes, features a couple of tracks that could be described as ambient, but it is not an ambient album as such. When we began to conceive this set, the aim was to bring together some of the best new music of 2020, predominantly from new or less-heralded musicians. Over time, though, the brief subtly evolved – as has everything, one way or another, these past weeks and months. Music For Homes still focuses on many of our favourite records of 2020 so far,…

Tim Burgess CHARLATANS’ VIBES-BRINGER What music are you currently grooving to? This morning we had Pom Pom by Ariel Pink on super loud. Me and my seven-year-old son were marching around, punching the air. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Wu-Tang Clan Forever. An absolute masterpiece, featuring all the original members plus Cappadonna. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Long Haired Lover From Liverpool by Little Jimmy Osmond, back in 1972. I was seven. All the girls loved it and, between Little Jimmy and Bay City Rollers, I saw this ‘job’ I’d like. It was from the indoor market in Northwich. Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? Not sure I’ve ever wanted to be myself, but I’ve accepted it now. Y’know,…

WELCOME TO THE SECOND MOJO produced in lockdown, another miracle of home working and determination that, we hope, feels just as familiar and satisfying as our magazines from saner times. This month, we’ve decided to award a long-overdue first MOJO cover to Talking Heads, who guide us through their musical revolutions and personal schisms, 40 years after the wonderful Remain In Light was released. “If we kept the band together, we were gonna really make our mark in music history,” Chris Frantz tells Tom Doyle. “That was a good reason to keep going, despite some of David’s, shall we say, lack of humanity. We carried on because we knew we had a fucking good band.” Thank you to Tom, who filed his excellent cover story while recovering from COVID-19, and equal…

IN THEIR 58-year career, The Rolling Stones have suffered jail, drug addictions, assassination attempts, the deaths of band members and, in recent times, serious health scares. So perhaps it is no surprise that they greeted the 2020 coronavirus pandemic with a flurry of defiant action. The impact of COVID-19 was first felt in Stones world on March 17, when it was announced that the group were postponing their US No Filter tour dates. Fans were surprised and thrilled, then, when on April 23 Mick Jagger dropped the bombshell that a new Stones single was being unveiled, accompanied by an interview he’d done with Apple Music DJ/presenter Zane Lowe. Jagger tweeted, “The Stones were in the studio recording new material before the lockdown, and one song, Living In A Ghost Town, we thought…

YOU MAY never have been to ’60s gigs at the Speakeasy or the Flamingo, let alone seen heroic never-weres at the Woolwich Tramshed or the Ambulance Station on the Old Kent Road. Yet these London music spaces’ vibrations live on. Paul Talling, creator of the fascinating Derelict London website and author of new book London’s Lost Music Venues, understands this more than most. “About 20 years ago, I saw venues and pubs were being demolished or turned into flats,” he explains. “So I started taking a few snaps and researching these places, just for myself. Even if you went to them you can’t always remember where they were, and the people in them now probably don’t know the history of them. It grew from there.” “People say, ‘That place was lovely’, but…