CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF DAVE GROHL’s post-grunge institution, while previewing their upcoming tenth studio album, MOJO gets in the van to revisit the band’s fraught birth. Meanwhile, our rifftastic covermount CD gathers the best mid-’90s US alt-rock from Sebadoh, Sugar, Superchunk, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and more. Inside the issue: Jon Savage relives 1970 – rock’s first watershed year; Art Garfunkel waxes strange; Jarvis Cocker strikes back; Margo Price marches on. Plus: how ‘The Ox’ was felled; the new Pearl Jam album; The Jesus & Mary Chain map their Darklands; The Black Crowes bury the hatchet; The Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler ’fesses up; Andrew Weatherall, Ivan Kral, Andy Gill, Joseph Shabalala and David Roback are remembered. And: The rise, and fall, of The Wombles!
CONTENTS MOJO 318
COVER STORY: FOO FIGHTERS Twenty-five years on, Dave Grohl and co return to the mid-’90s’ post-Kurt crunch, when success was far from assured. Plus! US alt-rock’s broader crisis, the Foos’ new film (with Ringo!) and new album news.
1970: THE GREAT DIVIDE James Taylor or the MC5? Supine singer-songwriters or revolting rockers? Jon Savage relives 1970 – the first year rock seriously considered its past, and future.
ART GARFUNKEL The eccentric top end of the disharmonious duo rues his Bad Timing and regrets S&G’s untaken Irish direction. “I’m trying to be normal,” he insists.
MARGO PRICE Obscurity and family trauma were the neo-outlaw country star’s formative ordeals. But neither is success stress-free: “I still don’t know why I’m here!”
JARVIS COCKER Sex, cave art, Britpop: an eclectic smorgasbord of topics is served by the ex-Pulp frontman, back with his best music since the mid-’90s.
JOHN ENTWISTLE Fellow musicians regarded The Who’s bassist with awe; fellow carousers thought him unfellable. But the rock star life he loved had his number in the end.
THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN How the battling bros of ’80s UK indie survived the Psychocandy shitstorm to prove doubters wrong on Darklands: “We thought, Let’s make an album about the songs.”
PUNK IN LONDON Sheila Rock’s photographs of Lydon, Strummer, Siouxsie (and incinerated human remains?) recreate a scene shot through with innocence and idealism.
REVIEWED Pearl Jam / David Bowie / The Strokes / Roberta Flack / Nick Mason / Ren Harvieu / Pole / Gregory Porter / Coriky / Thundercat / The Chats / Cocteau Twins / BC Camplight / James Elkington / Arbouretum / The Heliocentrics / Waxahatchee / Mick Fleetwood & Friends / Black Pumas
PLUS The Black Crowes’ Robinson brothers get their right to reply / Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever report from the studio / Savages’ Jehnny Beth gets all arty / Becca Stevens and The Homesick rise up / Richard Butler revives The Psychedelic Furs / Elton John & Lech Walesa chill out / Andrew Weatherall, Ivan Kral, Andy Gill, Joseph Shabalala and David Roback are remembered / Mike Batt and the long shadow of The Wombles…