Uncut Magazine 286 (March 2021) Leonard Cohen

LEONARD COHEN: 50 years ago, Songs Of Love And Hate ushered in a strange and compelling new era for rock’s pre-eminent poet. With help from his friends and collaborators, we examine his remarkable decade – from turbulent tours, intellectual crises, incursions into warzones, lost albums and firearms incidents – and discover how Cohen’s good humour and towering genius endured. “He was aware, probably for the first time, of the impact his songs were having.”

OUR FREE CD! STORIES OF THE STREET: 12 fantastic tracks from the cream of the month’s releases, including songs by Tindersticks, Jane Weaver, Mush, Altin Gün, Black Country, New Road, Aerial East, Mouse On Mars, Cassandra Jenkins and more.

Inside the issue, you’ll find:

THE CLASH: Summer 1981, and the punk rockers take Manhattan, causing riots in Times Square and ending up clubbing with Robert De Niro. Eyewitnesses tell the full story of the band’s legendary stand in New York.

SONNY ROLLINS: We enjoy an audience with one of the last surviving jazz titans, to discuss Miles, ’Trane and Bird, his new album of previously unheard recordings and his ongoing musical spiritual quest. “What I’m trying to do is find a universal unity…”

JANE WEAVER: The stars have aligned for this cosmic musical adventurer over the last decade, and Flock might be her finest album yet. She meets Uncut to explain how her love for Kate Bush and Hawkwind turned into remixes for Paul Weller and songs about abstract painters. “You should just be able to do what you want with music, shouldn’t you?”

THE BLACK KEYS: Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney recall the making of “Tighten Up”.

KRAFTWERK: A classic European odyssey from NME in June 1981. “We see ourselves as studio technicians,” Ralf Hütter explains. “We have to impose every question, and find the correct answer.”

ALICE COOPER: When Cooper and his band found themselves in Detroit in 1969, they found their natural home. As he prepares to revisit those roots on a new album, Uncut winds the clock back to look afresh at the Motor City’s heyday and Cooper’s “improv, guerrilla theatre”.

BOOTSY COLLINS: The No1 funkateer answers your questions on working with James Brown, George Clinton and Keith Richards, LSD enlightenment and the power of ‘the one’.

ARAB STRAP: Album by album with the returning duo

COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS: The songwriter chooses eight records that have shaped her, from Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt to Curtis Mayfield and Neil Young.

In our expansive reviews section, we take a look at new records from Cory Hanson, Mush, Julien Baker, Tindersticks, Foo Fighters, Taylor Swift, Mogwai and more, and archival releases from PJ Harvey, Richard Hell, Bailter Space, psychedelic symph-pop duo Nirvana and others. We catch Courtney Barnett and Lindsey Buckingham live online; among the films, DVDs and TV programmes reviewed are Stardust, Sound Of Metal, News Of The World, Zappa and Small Axe; while in books there’s Bessie Smith and Monolithic Undertow: In Search Of Sonic Oblivion.

Our front section, meanwhile, features Fleet Foxes, David Bowie, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Bad Brains and Brinsley Schwarz, and we introduce Cassandra Jenkins.