FROM HIGHWAY 61 TO ROUGH & ROWDY WAYS – 55 years of exploded expectations with Bob Dylan and friends: Al Kooper, Julius Caesar, The Plugz and all. Meanwhile, our covermount CD marks 20 years of Radiohead’s Kid A with a conflation of inspirations and fellow travellers including Can, Clinic, Harmonia, Holden… and Oliver Messiaen! Inside the magazine: Radiohead decoded; Toots Hibbert remembered; John Lydon redeemed; Joni Mitchell unheard. Plus: Bruce Springsteen, Chuck D, Fleet Foxes, Run The Jewels, Joe Meek, Janis Joplin, Nick Cave, Stevie Nicks, Tony Allen, Robby Krieger, Gary Numan, The Zombies, Wilco, Tom Petty by Rick Rubin, Count Basie with Keith Richards, and more!
CONTENTS MOJO 325
COVER STORY: BOB DYLAN Fifty-five years of encounters with Dylan genius, from Highway 61 Revisited to Rough & Rowdy Ways, with stop-offs in a darkened room in Odense and a legendary Letterman. The common thread? He’s always in control: “If Dylan said red was blue, it was blue.”
COVERMOUNT CD: KIDOLOGY Celebrating Kid A’s birthday with 15 Radiohead-inspiring/adjacent/indebted tracks. Artists include Can, Clinic, Harmonia, James Holden, Mingus and Messiaen.
RADIOHEAD Twenty years on, we revisit Kid A – the album that reset rock, bamboozled the band and nonplussed half of those who heard it. So, how does “commercial suicide” sound in 2020?
JOHN LYDON Touting a book of his contrary philosophies, the Sex Pistols and PiL popper tackles speed and sadness, Steve Jones’s transgressions, Eric Morecambe and Dostoyevsky.
TOOTS HIBBERT Farewell, The Maytals’ soul man who exhorted us to Do The Reggay. From jail, downpression and exploitation to the heights of ecstatic communion. Skaba-libba-lay!
ROBBY KRIEGER The Doors’ melodic talisman on flamenco, fighting his past (and Ray, and John), plus Jim Morrison’s uncanny prescience: “He could have been a fortune-teller.”
RUN THE JEWELS 2020’s best rap group are true believers in hip-hop’s Golden Age aesthetics – just ask Josh Homme, Mavis Staples and Kamasi Washington. But it was a hard road to here…
WILCO How Jeff Tweedy and Co made Summerteeth, their masterpiece of cinematic pop, while inside, they were falling apart. “That was a gross-feeling time,” learns John Mulvey.
REVIEWED Joni Mitchell / Bruce Springsteen / Nick Cave / Kraftwerk / Gillian Welch / Eels / Gorillaz / Jeff Tweedy / U2 / Jim White / Gwenifer Raymond / The Style Council / John Lennon / Melody Gardot / Elvis Costello / Trees / Autechre / The Divine Comedy / Bob Mould / Eddie Chacon
PLUS Tom Petty by Rick Rubin / Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold unburdens / Chuck D gets impressionistic / Liraz and The Nude Party arise! / The Zombies live again! / Janis Joplin’s scrapbook / Revenge of the Superstar Sidemen / Joe Meek’s crate expectations / Adam Clayton’s debt to J.J. Burnel / Gary Numan demobs Tubeway Army / All Back To Keith Richards’s! / And Stevie Nicks’s!