AFTERGLOW
For SMALL FACES, 1968 was a year of extremes, from hit singles and a career-defining album to a final, onstage bustup. But while the bonds between them were strained by internal tensions and external dramas, the music they made in their last months together pointed tantalisingly in bold new directions. As an expanded version of their posthumous The Autumn Stone set reveals fresh treasures, Rob Hughes discovers what really transpired during the band’s final, tumultuous 12 months. “We were splitting up,” says Kenney Jones. “But we sounded so great.”

MEETING PEOPLE IS EASY
Thirty years ago, RADIOHEAD released The Bends – both a prickly, restless reaction to the sudden fame thrust upon them by “Creep” and their first experimental art-rock blockbuster. On assignment for Melody Maker, Andrew Mueller joined Radiohead on tour in America with REM, where Thom Yorke and co defied backstage pranks and on-the-road ennui to make sense of their place at music’s top table. “The thing that’s really freaked me out,” Thom Yorke revealed, “is seeing how being so famous can change the way everybody behaves towards you.”

“A new kind of rock’n’roll”
Together, ROBBIE ROBERTSON, RICK DANKO, GARTH HUDSON, RICHARD MANUEL and LEVON HELM forged a vision of American music, one steeped in its rich cultural history, and whose profound and far-reaching influence can still be felt today. Fifty years on from the release of The Basement Tapes, Uncut invites compatriots, aficionados and heads – including JASON ISBELL, RICHARD THOMPSON, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, ELVIS COSTELLO, VAN MORRISON, MARGO PRICE and STURGILL SIMPSON – to celebrate THE 30 GREATEST SONGS OF THE BAND.

LED ZEPPELIN

A to Z
This month…

Decibels Per Minute
Emerging from a period of intense upheaval, uncertainty, addiction and recovery, A GHOST IS BORN was a Grammy-winning artistic triumph, driven by WILCO’s increasingly adventurous sonic shape-shifting and the daunting tribulations of the band’s chief architect, JEFF TWEEDY. As an expanded reissue shines new light on their creative processes, Uncut travels to Wilco HQ in Chicago to unearth the album’s secret history – via outtakes, alternate versions and abandoned recordings. “If you don’t have any kind of struggle in your life, how do you learn anything?” Tweedy aks Stephen Deusner