MOJO
May 2025Launched in 1993, MOJO celebrates the stories of music's all-time greats. It does this through expertly written, insightful features and exclusive, in-depth interviews. MOJO also finds and recommends new music of quality and integrity, so if you want to read about the classics of now and tomorrow, it is definitely the music magazine for you. As founding editor Paul Du Noyer put it, MOJO has ""the sensibilities of a fanzine and the design values of Vogue."" It's lovingly put together every month by music fanatics with huge knowledge, who share your passion. And because they have unrivalled contacts in the music industry, they bring you the kind of access, news and expertise you won't find anywhere else.
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE…
Ian Leslie Ian is the author of acclaimed books on psychology and behaviour, including Curious, about the desire to learn, and How To Disagree. He has written for the New Statesman, Financial Times and The Economist and is the author of Substack newsletter, The Ruffian. His book, John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs, is extracted on p44. Derek Ridgers In the late ’70s, Derek began photographing punks, skinheads, rockers and New Romantics at shows. Documenting British style and culture in the late-20th century, his pictures can currently be seen at the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern. On p73, Derek recalls his art school days with Freddie Mercury. Pak Bae Making his name in street photography in London from 2017 but now based in Seoul, Pak Bae’s meticulously…
SONGS from the COUNTRY HELL
Since we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of Rum Sodomy & The Lash, where better to start than with that album’s rousing opener? Irish myth, radical politics, a trail of picturesque devastation stretching across Europe, and a high-velocity tune that sounds like it’s been around for centuries… The essence of The Pogues in three incredible minutes. Written by Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan. 1985 Warner Music UK Ltd. Licensed courtesy of Warner Music UK LTD. From Rum Sodomy & The Lash. GBAHT0105482 Named by Shane MacGowan, and with Pogues roadie Cush a key founding member, The Men… were the second-biggest folk-punk band of the ’80s. And as this new live version of one of their greatest songs – a Thatcher-bashing protest anthem from 1985 – proves, their fury and energy is heroically…
ALL BACK TO MY PLACE
Brian D’Addario LEMON TWIG, SOLO BRANCH What music are you currently grooving to? I’ve been listening to Jobim’s Waters Of March a lot lately! Also, The Best Of Eddie Cochran and the Rare Joe Meek Recordings Of The ’60s compilation. Plus, Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I guess Pet Sounds. I can’t think of a record that’s moved me more in my life. You can always discover new things from it… and it’s some of the most beautiful singing on record. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? The first CD was The Who’s Live At Leeds at Virgin Megastore in Times Square. It blew my mind. It made it hard for…
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 ROBERTA FLACK. RICK BUCKLER. MIKE RATLEDGE. Gwen McCrae. Jerry Butler. Jamie Muir. After the losses of Marianne Faithfull, Garth Hudson and Sam Moore in the weeks and days leading up to MOJO 377, it’s been another sobering month for bereavements in our world, and one which makes us think about the work MOJO needs to do for our readers. This issue achieves a lot of what we shoot for each month. Great, unheard stories proliferate: about Brian Wilson, and Prince; about hash parties with Jeff Bridges and James Mason; about Elvis Costello’s taste for a pomelo. New interviews with artists as diverse as the Sex Pistols,…
The Beat Defender
“I MUST ADMIT, I found it a little bit difficult,” said Rick Buckler, with admirable understatement, of The Jam’s dramatic split at the peak of their success in 1982. Speaking to MOJO’s Chris Catchpole about his 2022 photobook The Jam 1982, in one of his last in-depth press interviews, he continued, “It just seems so completely unreal, that here we were, after everything that we’ve done, for it to literally be junked… it felt like a sort of musical vandalism, when we felt we had so much more to do, so much more to record.” A generation of Jam fans agreed with him – just as they knew the group would have been unthinkable with anyone else behind the kit. The Jam, one of the greatest bands of their era, would…
THE DOOBIE BROTHERS SPARK UP AGAIN WITH ALBUM 16
IN THEIR ’70s heyday, The Doobie Brothers would tour the States in the special plane and non-stop-party-in-the-sky dubbed ‘The Doobieliner’. One memorable aerial occasion saw the harmonising blue-eyed soul rockers experiencing weightlessness during a parabolic flight – only slightly marred when someone was sick. Now they’re back with new LP Walk This Road. Will they be touring it on The Doobieliner, wonders MOJO? “Thankfully, no,” laughs vocalist/keysman Michael McDonald. Guitarist/vocalist and co-founder Tom Johnston, writer and singer of hits including Long Train Runnin’ and China Grove, avers, “That was a great way to travel! But it burned down.” Old ways and new meet on Walk This Road. Though the latter members and co-founder singer/guitarist Patrick Simmons have been reunited since 2019, it’s McDonald’s first full Doobies album since One Step…
