Yoko Ono turned 80 last month, celebrating the milestone by fronting a rollicking performance with her Plastic Ono Band in Berlin. Not quite ready to put her feet up just yet, this morning she announced the lineup for this year’s Meltdown Festival, which she’s curating at London’s Southbank Centre between June 14 and 23. The Autojubilator has the full lineup listed below.

See also:

• Yoko Ono’s 80th birthday gig
  
• 10 Beatles songs that should be better known
• How to listen to Cornelius’ Ah! Song

Cut Piece, performed by Yoko Ono (1964)

The lineup kicks off with her own performance, again fronting the Plastic Ono Band, and goes on to feature performances by Siouxsie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Iggy and the Stooges, Boy George, Patti Smith, Marianne Faithful and Autojubilator favourites, Cibo Matto and Deerhoof. We spoke to Miho Hatori last month (look out for our in-depth interview soon), and she hinted at a new style for the new CM album, this time influenced by an increase in the amount of Indian food the pair eat…

While a performance of Ono’s classic Cut Piece is a guaranteed draw, the highlight of the festival might be a promised first performance of the Lennon/Ono album, Double Fantasy, presented “live with special guests”. Quite who these guests will be has yet to be announced, but knowing Yoko Ono, we’re expecting the unexpected.

The full lineup is as follows:

YOKO ONO PLASTIC ONO BAND
Friday 14 June
Royal Festival Hall

Siouxsie
Saturday 15 June
Royal Festival Hall

Cibo Matto
Saturday 15 June
Queen Elizabeth Hall  

Immortal Technique
Sunday 16 June
Royal Festival Hall

Reggie Watts + Mac Lethal
Tuesday 18 June
Royal Festival Hall

Amadeus Leopold
Tuesday 18 June
Queen Elizabeth Hall

Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto
Wednesday 19 June
Royal Festival Hall

Thurston Moore
Wednesday 19 June
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Iggy & The Stooges + Savages
Thursday 20 June
Royal Festival Hall

Body/Head ft. Ikue Mori + Mystical Weapons
Thursday 20 June
Queen Elizabeth Hall

Deerhoof
Friday 21 June
Queen Elizabeth Hall

An Evening of Words and Music with Patti Smith
Friday 21 June
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Marianne Faithfull and Bill Frisell
Saturday 22 June
Queen Elizabeth Hall  

Boy George
Sunday 23 June
Queen Elizabeth Hall

Double Fantasy Live With Special Guests
John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s final album performed live
Sunday 23 June
Royal Festival Hall    

For ticketing information and further details, visit the Yoko Ono Meltdown Festival website.

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11.05pm 

My work here is done. 23 hours of nonstop watching all done. 40 hours without sleep. No energy to add to this blog, suffice to say that – as with the first season – the final two episodes were superb. My eyes can barely stay open now, so I’ll add more tomorrow. For the time being, sleep, although knowing my luck, I’ll be dreaming Game of Thrones. There shall be no escape. Winter is coming…

7.25pm

Remarkable what a bit of food and chat can do. I took ten minutes out, and I seem to have most of my faculties back. As we enter the ‘final straight’, by which I mean the last four episodes, the following bits and bobs intrigue me.

Who has done away with the blonde child-woman’s dragons, and why does her rich suitor seem so keen on showing her the inside of his vault?

Why do we never get to see big battles? Can they only afford to show the dust settling on the aftermath?

The little girl that looks like Peter Dougherty – how long can she maintain the Charles dance?

Where has my favourite royal dwarf gone?

Can someone arrange it so that the S&M child-king gets properly owned?

Does anyone have a way of guaranteeing that, after 17 hours of watching on the back of 38 hours without sleep, I don’t fall into a Game of Thrones dream state as soon as this is all over? I want my life back. I want to live again.

5pm

On Twitter I’ve mentioned ‘brain custard’. It’s the result of 32 hours without sleep, only watching Game of Thrones. It’s about all I’m capable of right now.

I’m well into the second season, currently ploughing through the fifth episode, and I’m only mentally capable of keeping up with what’s going on with the aid of a few cast pictures I found on Google Images.

I remember something to do with a group of people called Thirteen. They stood out – amusing; nice city. Otherwise, as I said before: ‘brain custard’.

Midday

Only a couple of hours behind schedule, but I’m at the halfway point. Yes, the first season is done. Game of Thrones is definitely a grower, with the final two episodes feeling a lot more focused than many of the previous 10. It’s as though we’ve entered into a reasonably strong feature-length, largely focusing on a boy king trying to make a name for himself against the will of those around him. I’m put in mind of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, though obviously darker, more emotionally twisted, and with better accents.

Have I been converted yet? Well it’s too soon to say, but if the quality stays at this level throughout the following 10 hours, it’ll make for a quality afternoon indeed. The worry is that there are other storylines to attend to, and I fear we’re in for more of the sprawling same.

One way to up the stakes, though – more Wilko Johnson (if that’s at all possible, given the poor man’s condition). Those eyes have been woefully under-used so far. Give the man a telecaster and let’s get this realm moving.

From a physical point of view, I know now how the seasoned couch potato feels. In lulling moments, I daydream of a brisk jog. My frontal lobes feel as though they’ve been packed in cotton wool and stored overnight in the airing cupboard. Not that I’m complaining. I just don’t think I could recommend a 10-hour TV sprint to any healthy being, let alone a 20-hour marathon.

10.15am

It really is the show with something for everyone, isn’t it? In the last hour I’ve seen a pair of female lovers treat each other like a heterosexual circus, and a medieval woman become a kind of slave-freeing proto-feminist and turn her barbarian husband into a progressive ruler. I feel like that’s a morning’s work well done.

To tell the truth, the vast cast is probably a little too much to take in during a single sitting. You need at least a week to digest each episode. Faces blur into one another, as do other body parts, and only a handful of characters stand out. With at least twelve hours of this marathon viewing to go, I can only hope they do with the current company – though given the speed at which these characters slip this mortal coil, I suspect I’m going to have to start keeping a more detailed list.

8.00am 

Who’d have thought it? It turns out thinking about the plot in any depth only wastes time. As long as you place your trust in the title and recognise that all the characters are out to get each other by whatever means possible, and that pretty much nothing is considered below the belt, then you’re in for a trouble-free ride.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that, with the possible exception of the good folks at the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine, few people throw a party as well as the Dothraki.

6.45am

Things are going slowly here on Day of Thrones sofa. I’m a little behind schedule – the consequence of trying to keep my notes up to date at the same time as knocking out the occasional blog. I think I’ve lost about an hour. No matter. I think I may have had a breakthrough.

After five long hours of watching, I’m beginning to see what all the fuss is about. A friend on Twitter dismissed Game of Thrones as ‘Eastenders in the Middle Ages’, but I think that’s the point. I’ve seen more mammaries in five hours of GoT than in three decades of Albert Square (the Mitchell brothers being the only obvious pair I can think of this early in the morning), however, as far as treachery, backstabbing and unbridled paranoia go, they’re pretty much on a par.

A little earlier this morning, I was tempted to try and liken it all to an amalgamation of Shakespearean plots. I’ve had a coffee since then and pulled myself back from the precipice. It has been a very long night, but it’s looking a lot more hopeful than it was three hours ago.

5.30am

The dawn is here, and like a man who has wronged the mafia, I’ve begun the day with the site of a horse’s head cleaved before me in my bed. No, not the result of a sleep-deprived mind, but what seems to be a fairly standard Game of Thrones opening scene. Happy Monday to you all.

3:40am

Bleary-eyedness and mental fatigue are starting to play havoc now. I’m seeing double Bean, and that’s not always a good thing. Worse still, I’m only on the fourth episode – not even quarter of the way through. A word to the wise: if you ever consider doing a TV marathon, kickstart it at midday rather than at midnight. The Double Bean is rarely an afternoon phenomenon.

On the subject of the Game of Thrones itself. I’m recognising a growing affection towards certain characters, and, notably, they’re all what you might call exceptionally damaged people. Daenerys is developing a strength that keeps her storyline interesting (despite the best efforts of her dull-as-dishwater advisor to yawn it all up again), while the royal dwarf (my apologies – I’ve yet to learn his name) steals every scene he’s in. That’s not an easy task, as he’s often in scenes with ‘The Bastard’, who has something mildy Shakespearean and windswept about him, too.

Not sure what was going on with the outrageously camp sword fighting instructor at the end of the third episode. After all the darkness of The Wall, his appearance was like a moist, pink slap in the face. Sent my mind reeling. Had to lie down for a moment or two.

2.15am 

Always a delight to see Wilko Johnson, although disappointing that he hasn’t spoken yet. Hopefully that’ll be rectified. I watched the brilliant Oil City Confidential a couple of nights ago – the man is one of the great British eccentrics and a born actor to boot.

Other than that, the second episode dragged a little. As I had been warned, the sex is so relentless that it becomes dull and functional amazingly fast. I had a suspicion beforehand that people might be watching Game Of Thrones purely for the breast count, but there’s nothing particularly erotic on show here. The fact that Lena Headey is involved could change that at any given second, of course. If only she weren’t so into her twin brother…

Monday, March 25, 1:10am

One episode down, 19 left to go. This could take a while.

What I’ve learnt so far…

The folk that tried to persuade me that Game of Thrones isn’t a fantasy obviously missed the dragons eggs.

As a youth, all the king ever wanted to do was, ‘crack skulls and f*ck girls’, so he obviously joined the right production.

Trying to keep a nudity count was a daft idea. It went out the window in around the 45th minute – about the same time that the beach orgy/wedding took place.

I’m no fan of the royal dwarf. I wouldn’t miss him if he were to be pushed from a castle window by his incestuous brother.

Anyone hoping to learn Dothraki ought to know that there is no word for “thank you” in Dothraki. No need to thank me.

Sunday, March 24, 11:30pm

Before all of this begins, a word or two on what I’m doing here. I’m guilty of having judged a book by it’s cover. Guilty, but not ashamed. From what I’ve seen, Game of Thrones is an orgy of hairy men and swords. It’s Conan the Barbarian for the Sean Bean age (Bean the Barbarian crossed my mind, but it sounds too much like a Rowan Atkinson vehicle gone badly out of control). As such, I’ve never wanted a part of it.

All of which is why my colleagues thought it a good idea to put me forward for their Game of Thrones Challenge. It sounds simple enough: watch the entirety of seasons 1 & 2 in a single, twenty-hour sitting, and blog about how my life has been changed. The trouble is, such is my dislike of Sean Bean and his hirsute ilk, that it feels a little like the TV equivalent of having major dental work done, with very little on hand to numb the pain. Such is the glee with which my colleagues wished this upon me, one of them even had a word with the kindly people at blinkbox – so at least the only cost will be psychological.

The marathon gets underway in approximately half an hour. I’ll begin watching season 1, episode 1 at midnight. Twenty hours later… well, we shall see. For the time being, I’ll move over to the sofa and on to Twitter, where the hashtag #DayOfThrones will be my rallying flag. I expect to meet a mixture of bored insomniacs and feral Throners (is that what they’re called?) as I travel this dark night largely alone.

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Fans of Steve Coogan’s greatest comedy creation have been waiting for the Alan Partridge movie for years, and not necessarily with unrestrained excitement either. While Alan’s creators have managed to maintain good quality control in the 22 years since he first appeared on Radio 4′s On the Hour, there’s a fear that pushing him into a feature-length appearance may be a stretch too far.

However, the pre-trailer news is promising. Stalwarts making their return include long-suffering assistant, Lynn, and Geordie ex-squaddy, Michael. His nemesis, it would appear, is rival DJ, Dave Clifton. All in all, it seems we’re in good hands.

Shots from the set that have been released over the past few months include Partridge at a desk in a ’70s-style office, surrounded by memorabilia from his own career, and a panicked-looking Alan holding an air rifle.

Watch the Alan Partridge movie, Alpha Papa, trailer here:

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I discovered Greg Brown when I was working at a college radio station way back in 2002. It was just after Christmas, there was snow on the ground, more on the trees and flitting between even the closest of buildings necessitated donning several layers of extremely thick clothing, which then of course had to be peeled off just as soon as you crossed the threshold into the warm interiors again. It was the kind of January where there were constant queues for the SAD machine in the student centre and an unwavering demand for hot tea.

Each week we’d receive numerous promos and demos from various independent record labels and we’d sort through these discs for records to feature on the folk programming. The view out of the studio window over the Appalachians was simultaneously bleak and comforting, and so putting the Milk of the Moon EP was something of a revelation in the midst of this seemlingly never-ending cataloguing. We had several other promos to track that day but I remember nothing more than the fact that this was the one that kept getting replayed.

Greg Brown’s voice is hypnotic; he possesses an almost non-human, deep and gravelly growl that manages to embrace you and send shivers down your spine all at once. His is a voice rivalling Garrison Keillor for uniqueness.

For anyone attuned to folk and Americana, his inclusion here will be far from surprising: he’s been around since the 1960s, working with a veritable ‘who’s who’ of folk musicians and is still going strong now. His music has been covered by everyone from Joan Baez to Jack Johnson. He is nothing if not prolific and far-reaching, yet quietly so.

Oh, and I should mention his hat, which looks like it’s been worn for as long as he’s been playing. That’s how you know you’re dealing with the real McCoy.

Watch Greg Brown’s ‘Lull it By here’:

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According to an infographic published last week (and printed below), the UK’s roads are overrun by Queen obsessives. Responding to a survey by Tesco Compare Car Insurance, 75% of the UK’s motorists admitted (proudly? shamefully?) that Queen are the only band that get their motors running (different band, we know, but worth the pun all the same). That’s worth pausing over for a second or two. Three out of every four cars move to the sound of the man Mercury. If you listen very carefully, you can just about hear them.

The survey and infographic, entitled Queen of the Road, are broken down by postcode, which makes for some very interesting and frequently surreal reading. If the stats are to be believed, there’s a Louis Armstrong stronghold clogging up the A4 and A35 routes through Slough, and you can’t move in Llandrindod Wells for Gerry Rafferty fans. Meanwhile, the Ilford byways only move to ABBA, and the people of Sunderland won’t so much as find the car keys for anything less than George Michael. No wonder Britain’s public transport system is as oversubscribed as it is.

In truth, the top 10 chart for British motorists is as predictable as you might imagine it to be, reading much like the soundtrack to your ageing uncle’s most recent stag do. We’ve listed it below for your eternal pleasure. Look on this, good people of Britain, pull over onto the hard shoulder, and weep.

1. Queen
2. Adele
3. Madness
4. Coldplay
5. ABBA
6. Take That
7. The Beatles
8. Meat Loaf
9. Bon Jovi
10. Rihanna

The motorists of Britain have spoken, and they’re not starting their engines without Freddie

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The Centrifuge Brain Project, a frankly brilliant short film from Till Nowak, tells the story of a scientist trying to expand the capacity of the human mind through experimental theme park rides. We follow Dr. Nick [insert Simpsons joke here] as he explains his incredible creations in detail, from his earliest sketch through to completion and testing of his first experiment. A later experiment involves a super big wheel that lasts a whopping 14 hours from start to finish, which, funnily enough, is the same amount of time it takes to wait in the queue for the London Eye on a Saturday afternoon.

Watch The Centrifuge Brain Project from Till Nowak via Vimeo:

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Try as I might, I can’t think of many comedians who have turned painter. Not publicly, anyhow. Retirement plans for the modern stand-up tend to involve TV or movie-based drama, a crossover that the artist behind the Hot Valve Leak exhibition has already made successfully. So it falls to Vic Reeves to take this brave step forward, and the very good news is that he does it with his sense of the ridiculous firmly intact.

That he is not taking himself too seriously is obvious from the minute I arrive at the Strand Gallery. The artist himself is in attendance, and he’s decked out in a brown pinstripe suit and waistcoat, a jaunty beret and elaborate facial hair, his moustache elaborately curled at the ends. It’s a look that suggests he’s only playing at being an artist, and I wonder whether this might also be why he’s billed under his stage name rather than as plain old Jim Moir. He’s all Reeves in person, however, and his voice booms a crazed “Wa-hey!” every time a friend arrives. It sounds as though he’s welcoming The Man With The Stick back to Novelty Island.

The exhibition, officially titled Hot Valve Leak: The Visual Ramblings of Vic Reeves and running Feb 13-23 at The Strand Gallery, is split across two floors. The upper selection sets a more serious tone, a mixture of stern but well executed dockyard paintings and surreal, aqueous portraits. The aesthetics that flavoured his Big Night Out era are unmissable, however, and visitors ought to pay close attention to his pottery, in particular the delicately crafted vase spattered with the legend, ‘Britain’s Got Talent’.

Downstairs, the art indulges the comedy, and guffaws are in plentiful supply. These are mainly mixed media pieces and framed sketches, as well as pop art devoted to Reeves’ idols. The Burt Lankaster [sic] piece looks like something from the set of The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer, as does the sketch of Tom Jones wielding a piece of welding machinery (it looks like a storyboard for his skit featuring “Paul Simon and his good friend Arthur Garfunkel”). Better yet are his collages, one of which we’ve kindly been allowed to reproduce below. ‘Aircraft’ is a typical example, the joy and humour to be found very simply in the words: “Scientists have clubbed together and come up with this design for the aircraft of the future”. Subtle but surreal genius.

On leaving the event, we overhear Reeves explaining that he cares very little about promoting this side of what he does, which suggests that he does it largely to keep himself entertained. I think that quality is there in the paintings. Enjoy them for what they are and you’ll have yourself a happy little half hour indeed.

Hot Valve Leak: The Visual Ramblings of Vic Reeves. The Strand Gallery. Feb 13-23, 2013 

“Aircraft” © Vic Reeves

“Icon” © Vic Reeves

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In my experience, the best interviewees have a tendency to ramble, and in this respect Johnny Marr is right up there with Sir Tom Jones. Obviously infatuated with his subject, Marr is fast becoming the man the magazines go to when they need a musicologist’s point of view. Since his early teenage years, he has lived and breathed music, and his encyclopedic knowledge of rock and (more specifically) pop was an essential part of the foundations on which The Smiths morphed into the most important British group of their era.

As he prepares to release The Messenger, a debut solo album after 25 years of playing on records for other people, he talks to The Autojubilator about the artists he once emulated in the bedroom mirror, the development of his latest songs, and some of the more surprising collaborations that have taken place during his 30 years as a professional musician.

I want to start off by going back to the early days after The Smiths, when you developed a reputation as a gun for hire. Is it true that you briefly joined Paul McCartney’s band? Did that really happen? 

I didn’t do a recording session with him as such, but we did get together for a good long eight-or-nine-hour day, and just played and played and played very intensely, really loudly. Which was pretty great, obviously. He was pretty good! He can play that bass and sing pretty well, I must say. That was a fun time. That was pretty much the first thing I did when The Smiths stopped being together. I’ve seen him a couple of times since. We’ve not played together, but he’s always very friendly and very gracious.

Do you remember what you played? 

Yeah, man! I remember everything about it. We played ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, ‘Tutti Frutti’. I got him to play ‘Things We Said Today’, and I think we played some Wings stuff. ‘C-Moon’, I remember. That was fun. He and I were singing harmonies on ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ – that was a pretty good moment, too. I was only 23, maybe 24.

Had you grown up a big Beatles fan? 

You can’t really avoid The Beatles if you’re breathing air and you’re a musician, I don’t think. The interesting thing was that, understandably, he likes to play the music that inspired him when he was a kid, when he was starting out. So there was a lot of Eddie Cochran – ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, ‘Come On Everybody’ – and I think he was surprised that I knew that stuff, because obviously it was made before my time, but I’d checked out a fair bit of rockabilly before The Smiths had formed. It was quite a popular movement, so I knew a bit of Scotty Moore and Chet Atkins – that kind of stuff. I think he was using a lot of the songs that were touchstones for him when he started out.

What was that session intended to achieve? 

I think he was just sort of checking me out, because he’d liked what I’d done. The Smiths had asked Linda to play and sing on The Queen Is Dead album, which sadly she wasn’t able to, so he was aware of us. I think he liked the way I played, so that was cool.

You didn’t get to jam on any Smiths tracks with him, then? 

Nah. I don’t think either of us would’ve been bothered about that.

I’m interested in your position as a British guitarist – where you see yourself fitting in the line up of the greats. 

You know, I think to talk about myself in those sort of terms would make me uncomfortable, really. I think it’s not really my job. I don’t really like musicians who talk about themselves. It seems to have an aspect of self-mythologising, to be honest, and I think I’m too close to living my own life and trying to be a person and a good musician to stand outside it and talk about myself in those terms. It feels a little distasteful to me, somehow.

Do you see yourself following a certain kind of aesthetic, though? I get the impression you might identify more with George Harrison than Eric Clapton, say. 

Well George Harrison has always been one of my favorite guitar players, and his approach to the song and creating little parts and moments in records is more something that I can relate to, and along the lines of how I see myself, sure. Out of respect to the guitar greats who came out of the blues rock boom in the 60s, you have to hold your hands up and show that respect. But unfortunately for them, the legacy they started somewhat mutated throughout the 1970s, when I was growing up, into other stuff that wasn’t really about my age group. But George Harrison’s more musical, composed kind of approach, rather than being particularly bluesy, was more my thing really.

So you weren’t standing there in front of the bedroom mirror, ripping out the riff from ‘Layla’, then? 

Oh, ‘Layla’ is a pretty amazing track, I think. It’s kind of a thick guitar soup, with a strange, haunted melancholia in it. Quite intense. Whenever I’ve heard that record, I’ve quite enjoyed it. I did plenty of standing in front of the mirror, but it was usually to T-Rex and the glam bands. Sparks, I liked a lot. ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us’ was an early single I bought, and that’s got really wicked guitar playing on it. And ‘All the Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople was a big record for me. Just trying to figure out the entire record was something that had a massive impact on me, and on the development of me as a guitar player and musician. I was really hooked on the harmonic change in the chorus from the A-Major to the A-Minor against the vocal melody. Those little devices were things that I would wander around and develop mystical notions about! Seriously! Or why ‘Metal Guru’ really sounded the way it did, and why it moved me in such a way, before I was able to understand the relationship between the backing vocals and the mellotron and the bass line and the chord change. All of these things were really mystical.

Do you still find yourself as fascinated by all that? 

Yeah. When you hear something that touches you in a certain way, and you’re fascinated by it… once it has touched you, you can’t pretend that it hasn’t. I’ve lived my life in pursuit of those moments, and in my case, trying to create them for myself. Sometimes you reach it, and other times you happen to do really good stuff whilst you’re trying. Does that make sense? Cool.

The new album, The Messenger, is a really guitar-orientated album, and so it strikes me as being a return to your original love. Would that be a fair thing to say? 

Yeah, I’d say that’s right. Partly because there were things that I didn’t overthink, and the considerations I did have, I was very focused on. I realised that there were some things that I should just be OK with and not focus on.

What were they? 

It’s personal politics, almost, but in the case of this record certain things would crop up and it would be like, ‘My band don’t have that. My band don’t have that sound. My band wouldn’t use that sound.’ That was very useful.

How do you adapt to being a singer, or a frontman? As a guitarist myself, I find it incredibly difficult to play your riffs at the same time as singing Morrissey’s vocal lines, for instance. 

Yeah, well I seem to be all right with it. When I’m playing Smiths songs live, if there are any bits that compromise the vocal then the guy who plays second guitar with me will take over at that point. I’ve got really into using pedals. I don’t use tons of pedals, but I change them from verse to chorus to bridge, and I’m always doing what I call ‘producing with my feet’. The technology has now caught up with me, in a very, very good way. You know, some of the devices you can get now, for someone like me, are heaven sent. I can switch from tremolo, to a certain kind of delay, to a backward sound. I mean… wow! I can really sound like the way I do on records.

Morrissey is on record as saying that The Smiths had the best of the both of you. I wonder how you feel about that as you sit here promoting The Messenger. 

Well, he’s entitled to his opinion. People feel differently about everything. That’s probably quite a considered opinion on his part, so I’m not going to disagree with his right to say or believe whatever he wants. If that’s his opinion, then that’s fine, but I’ve done a lot since then and I think there’s a lot of songs that both of us have done outside of the band that are pretty good. So I think he’s selling the both of us short there.

Are there songs of his that you particularly like? 

Erm, I don’t really want to get into that to be honest, because it’ll just be all over the internet like some silly rash.

Moving on, then… You’ve worked with a lot of great lyricists in your time – Morrissey, Billy Bragg – but this album really puts you into the spotlight as a wordsmith. Does that side of songwriting come naturally to you? 

In a way, it’s just like music, or like when I’m doing a collage or taking photos. It’s the same kind of process. Some stuff just finds itself diving out of you, like ‘The Messenger’. The melody and vocal line for that song was exactly as I first sang it. I tried to sing it and re-sing it, and it just didn’t have the same spirit, and was a bit too straight and correct for me. ‘Upstarts’ I did in an afternoon, the whole song, start to finish. ‘Sun & Moon’ had a lot more verses, and when we went out to play it live I cut it down and rearranged it, added more words, and I enjoyed that puzzle. On ‘New Town Velocity’, I had a crazy deadline and really had to focus to write something that I could have overthought. So I look back on every song, and I have a real fondness for the process. ‘Generate! Generate!’, believe it or not, took me the longest time because I was just trying to be too clever, and sometimes it wasn’t going quite right with the music. Like anything, even though it was a process, I really enjoyed getting it done. I don’t know if you’ve ever done crosswords? They’re not my thing, crosswords, but sometimes the stuff you put more work into is the most rewarding. Some stuff is a real breeze; some stuff is a craft. I like it all.

Johnny Marr’s debut solo album, The Messenger, is out on February 25. Johnny spoke to Jon Wilks for this interview, exclusive to The Autojubilator. Click here to read a review of The Messenger album. 

Watch Johnny Marr’s “The Messenger” here:

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Last night, on a whim and at an hour much less sensible than practical, I whipped up a steamed pudding and then proceeded to scoff down half of the sugary treat. Three hours later I was lying in bed, deeply uncomfortable (that’ll be month eight of pregnancy for you) and about as far from sleep than it is possible to get.

Naturally I did whatever any sane insomniac would do and went downstairs to catch up on some current affairs. All done with kings under car parks, gay marriage reform and Chris Huhne, I noticed something curious. Several news outlets had developed a sudden, rabid obsession with Mrs Carter and, boy, were they ticked off.

The woman in question here, I should clarify, is not the wife of the 39th US President, but rather – if we are to believe these think pieces – The Artist Formally Known As Beyonce. Controversy [apparently] abounds that she has launched her new touring schedule under the moniker The Mrs Carter Tour. “How dare she?”, screech various columnists; “what a betrayal of the sisterhood!” How hypocritical that she should expunge the virtues of being self sufficient (“I bought it!”), independent and self assured (“if you like it then you should have put a ring on it”), make her fortune and then suddenly throw it all away for a life of marital subservience? What cheek!

It may have been the hour, the sugar or lord knows what, but as the calendar flipped over to another day, I got to thinking about this perennially thorny issue of names, identity, marriage and, by extension, coverture.

Really, with regards to Ms Knowles, Mrs Carter, “the bootilicious one” or whatever you want to call her, I think feminism is hardly the issue here. Does anyone really believe that naming your tour thus is anything other than a clever marketing ploy, designed to exploit the current fervour for family life and babies (don’t see it? Check out any tabloid mag – there’s a baby epidemic simmering away). Let me be clear. Beyonce is neither insisting that people refer to her by her husband’s name (which, let’s face it, isn’t the moniker he’s best known for, either) nor has she formally taken it as her own. Surely it’s just a bit of fun, hinting at a different side to her public persona than her erstwhile image as strong single gal? Certainly maintaining the Single Lady alter ego in the light of her burgeoning family life would be more philosophically troubling. Wouldn’t it?

What these editorials really wanted to talk about, you see, was not so much the issue of her tour title, but the more commonplace tradition of adopting the husband’s name after marriage. Now we were getting to the heart of the matter. Let’s leave Beyonce out of it.

I have no truck with people keeping their own names or taking their spouse’s. It really doesn’t matter, does it? What I think bothers me is the assumption that the latter should be “the norm”. As one of these Lucy Stoners (and no, I don’t mean that Charlie Brown’s nemesis has developed a pot habit) I’m more concerned that we’re all going along with the status quo for no good reason save historical and administrative convenience without giving adequate thought to our own feelings on the subject.

Assuming the same name after marriage is hardly a given. It is not necessarily found universally (not, for example and to name a few – in generalities of course – in Arabic-speaking countries, Cambodia, [traditionally in] China and in Greece – although here a woman may informally be known by her husband’s name, officially she may well keep her own) and isn’t always done along the male line – traditional matrilineal name adoption was commonplace in Sweden, some parts of China amongst others.

I have friends who gave the ink of their marriage certificates a helping blow to dry, so keen are they to shimmy along the name changing protocol. They refer to themselves as “The Future Mrs –” and couldn’t be happier. I find this giddily endearing.

I also have a couple of friends who, when they married took each other’s names (with the additional of a hyphen, of course) rather than strike one from the records. I find this incredibly sweet.

If a name is just a name is just a name, then what’s the big deal? None, some would say. It hardly matters – your surname is, after all probably one your mother adopted at her marriage, thus betraying her own feminist proclivities, if that’s your line of thinking. Identity is transitory and fleeting at best. But, of course it does matter: “because it is my name! Because I’ll never have another”, as cried John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Our names are our selves, whichever ones we chose.

For me, I took the decision to keep my name because the identity I’d forged with it was long fought and heartfelt. It might not be any more authentically “me” than had I taken my mother’s maiden name or my husband’s surname, but having spent the foremost thinking years of my life mulling over the issue, it did seem to make the most sense to me. I like to think this is as equally endearing, sweet and thoughtful as either of the other two options, but certainly no more morally courageous or superior.

Occasionally I have to call up more traditional relatives and explain to them – deeply embarrassed – that I can’t cash the cheque or sign for the parcel because my surname is not the same as my husband’s, so yes, I understand that holding on to a separate name can be inconvenient, but since when should inconvenience be a legitimate reason for not doing something?

So, Mrs Carter. In truth I really don’t give a monkey’s about your tour name, in fact truth be told I find it almost homely of you, you decidedly un-homely specimen. Angry feminists take a breath, and let her be. She can’t be a Single Lady forever, especially with a conspicuously present small child and husband (thank you Instagram). A transitionary use of her husband’s name is hardly a transgression worthy of so many column inches (for which now I must plead similarly guilty) and not really a transgression at that. No doubt we’ll be having the same discussion when cutesy little Blue Ivy Carter marries John Smith twenty or thirty years down the line and you know what? I can almost guarantee the issue of what name she should take will not be presented as a choice between Carter or Knowles, as it will be between Carter and Smith. Just sayin’.

By Em Kuntze, exclusive to The Autojubilator. 

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