SONGS from the CountyHELL

THE POGUES, THE DUBLINERS, THE MARY, WALLOPERS, LANKUM, LISA O’NELL AND MORE

SHERR ART ATTACK!

Four songwriters with four eccentric visions, alchemising hard rock,

"MY SONGS ARE ALWAYS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS"

Me? BRIAN MAY has brought both, and more, to the music of QUEEN. Brattereband's swagger disguised a writer with unusual Influences (West Side Story?) Renoluvere than a little insecurity. "You can reveal too much," he tells MARK BLAKE Portrait

"I REMEMBER THINKING, WHAT A SWEET GUY, BUT WHAT A LOSER!"

Beween 1967 and 1971, photographer DEREK RIDGERS attended Ealing Art College with Freddie Bulsara: "Everybody liked him and so did 1-even when he stole my girlfriend."

"THERE WAS SO MUCH BLOW"

Take "a few bottles of wine", white powder racked out on gold discs, stir in some clashing Big Singer Energy and voilà, you have Under Pressure, the Queen song they can't quite believe they made happen "Five egos in the studio could be a bit much," discovers MARK BLAKE

"CARS AND GIRLS. WHAT ELSE IS THERE?"

Would MOJOts de we tale the songworld of QUEEN be complete without their rhythmic spine, keemergh harmonies and author of I'm in Love With My Car? Of course not. To like, Is this a joke? ROGER TAYLOR tells JAMES MCNAIR

ALL THAT GLITTERS...

ROGER TAYLOR remembers Queen's turn as Larry Lurex And The Voles From Venus: "I think we got £15 each."

"WHEN THEY WENT ON, FREDDIE SMELT BLOOD"

HARVEY GOLDSMITH on his fight to book Queen for Live Aid, and how it paid off, in spades: "The more Freddie hammed it up, the more the audience lapped it up."

THIS MONTH'S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE...

Ian Leslie Ian is the author of

ALL BACK TO MY PLACE

THE STARS REVEAL THE SONIC DELIGHTS GUARANTEED TO GET THEM GOING...

Theories, rants, etc.

MOJO welcomes correspondence for publication. Write to us at: MOJO, H Bauer Publishing, The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk

Standing Inside The Flame

A rediscovered songwriter of immense sensitivity, Bill Fay left us on February 22.

APRIL 1954 …Chet Baker Sings

Blue Valentine: (clockwise from main) Chet Baker recording

Who hid Easter eggs on CD?

Let us answer your nagging rock’n’roll queries and shed light on musical mystery.

Situationists Vacant

Win! Three Sex Pistols live-in-’78 albums and tasty T-shirts.

Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices

It began with a bar band and smashed records, and ended on a bittersweet New Year’s Eve in Chicago.

The Beat Defender

THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS SPARK UP AGAIN WITH ALBUM 16

Family affair: The Doobie Brothers ready to fly

MOJO’S ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO RECORD STORE DAY 2025

Queue for the music: customers get in line

DUDE AWAKENING? IT’S JEFF BRIDGES’ RSD RELEASE!

JEFF BRIDGES’ film career has, of course, taken

Alabaster DePlume

The sax improv trickster talks the relentless heart, the creative moment and learning to fall.

Diamond R&B

Atlantic Records celebrates its 75th birthday with a lavish photo book.

JUG BAND VET AND FINGERPICKING PRO JIM KWESKIN KEEPS ON BLOWING

Crock’n’roll stars: Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band

JAZZ-FUNK MAVERICK EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY WEIRDS OUT!

Facing the strange: Emma-Jean Thackray finds levity in

ACHTUNG! THE FALL’S OLD GUARD REASSEMBLE AS HOUSE OF ALL

C APTAIN BEEFHEART, Prince and Ian Dury may

One of the Last Great Record Men, the ‘Artist’s A&R’ in the Golden Age of Warner Brothers and beyond, counsellor to Prince, Van, Randy, Elliott Smith and more, shares his wisdom. “Producing is hard,” says Lenny Waronker.

PORTRAIT BY ROGER KISBY S AT IN

"AS SOON as we PLUG iN, we'RE The SeX PiSTOLS"

With a tattooed tearaway of a frontman, STeVE JONeS, PaUL COOK and gLeN MATLOCK are playing the songs that made their names and shook the world to increasingly demented crowds. Due to JOHN LYdON's objections, they can't bill themselves the SeX PISTOLS, yet they insist they're upholding the band's incendiary spirit. "It ain't karaoke," they tell TOM DOyLe

MOJO PRESENTS

Michelle Zauner is the bestselling author behind the sublime, eclectic indie-pop of JAPANESE BREAKFAST – now featuring new pals Blake Mills, Jim Keltner and Jeff Bridges. With late-blooming fame informed by a traumatic bereavement, she’s in a hurry to create. “I feel like there’s so little time,” she tells DORIAN LYNSKEY

A RIGHT PAIR

Two halves of one brain, JOHN LENNON and PAUL MCCARTNEY formed the most extraordinary and intimate musical partnership of the rock era. In this extract from a new book that probes their bond through the medium of their songs, Ian Leslie discovers how one of them, Sgt. Pepper's Getting Better, was a case of Paul reaching out to John, changed but also estranged by his new love... LSD

TEMPERATURE’S RISING

A new film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono's radical 1971-73 is full of fear, intimacy and great music. "I was completely floored," Sean Lennon tells Danny Eccleston

AFTER THE FIRE

When Low’s Mimi Parker passed in 2022, ALAN SPARHAWK lost his life-partner and his band. Rebuilding has involved a brave left-turn into electronica and a hometown indie-folk team-up that’s birthed a stirring new album. What hasn’t changed is his compulsion to embrace intensity and soul-scouring candour. “All I can do is trust the music,” he tells BOB MEHR

MAKE THE MUSIC PLAY

The exquisite records DIONNE WARWIC K made with Burt Bacharach and Hal David set a bar for pop sophistication that may never he topped, leaping across boundaries of genre and race in an era of segregation. But when writs followed hits she proved she could go it alone, too. “I had all these voices asking: ‘What’s she going to do now she doesn’t have Burt and Hal?”’ she tells DAVID HUTCHEON “I just said, This is what I’m gonna do..”

THE POGUES UNLEASH RUM SODOMY & THE LASH

Out of the saloon bars of early-’80s north London came an unholy union of Irish rebel music and punk, fronted by hard-drinking poet-bard Shane MacGowan. In 1985, The Pogues recorded their masterpiece of romanticism, defiance and defeat with Elvis Costello at the controls. “It was suddenly like the songs sounded huge and full,” recall the principals. “You’d have to say it was awe-inspiring.”

The ties that bind

The family that plays together… A Mississippi matriarch and her family are here to spread the word. David Hutcheon is a believer. Illustration by Borja Bonafuente.

The Horrors

Fright club: The Horrors (from left) Jordan King,

FILTER ALBUMS

Black Country, New Road ★★★★ Forever Howlong NINJA

Queen of cups

South London’s cosmic neo-soulsearcher keeps up the blue sky thinking on second album.

Lucy Dacus

Feeling good: Lucy Dacus is more than a

Paradise regained

Bluegrass at its most refined yet existential‚ as old firm stick and twist for seventh studio outing.

Eye of the storm

Mike Scott celebrates the wild at heart countercultural figure

JAZZ

Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, & Sam Wilkes ★★★★

Nels Cline

Circular motion: Nels Cline is primed for the

ELECTONICA

Hieroglyphic Being ★★★★ Dance Music 4 Bad People

Hannah Cohen

Stepping out: Hannah Cohen takes a walk on

Anoushka Shankar

Leading light: Anoushka Shankar comes full circle on

Kings of the road

The start of Kraftwerk’s imperial phase – or the end of the road for Hütter and Schneider’s original project?

FILTER REISSUES

Roy Haynes Courtesy of Gobblinz ★★★★ Hip Ensemble

Various

Rock and troll: Gobblinz have a go at

From the air

Post-Banshees work from innovative guitarist goes overground

67 Varieties

A former London music hall didn’t know what had hit it in the summer of 1967

Various

★★★★ Barnyard Beehive NUMERO GROUP. DL/LP Female

Various

Sweet inspiration: Paul Weller has his fuse lit

Blinded By The Light

Bright young things: Sunhouse (from left) Paul Bacon,

Led Zeppelin

To be a rock and not to roll.

HOW TO BUY

10 Led Zeppelin Celebration Day ATLANTIC/SWAN SONG,

The last laugh

An exhaustive oral history graced by a friend’s loving touch.

FILTER BOOKS

Sir Coxson Dodd: His Musical Mightyness ★★★★ Jeremy

Stone immaculate

Questlove questions the systems that destroyed a revolutionary star.