Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i Classic Rock

WELCOME No, I can’t say that when I wrote my editorial four issues ago, in which I said we’d put together the finishing touches of the magazine from the ‘comfort’ of home, I imagined for one moment that we’d still be doing the same this far into the summer. As I write this, lockdown is taking its first tentative steps into easing. Although how that pans out is anybody’s guess! But let’s keep our fingers crossed for a positive outcome. Something else we can be positive about, though, is the wealth of new music that is coming our way. This month sees the triumphant return of Deep Purple – something made all the more sweet considering that when they released their last album, in 2017, it looked like that might…

The Dirt RIP Thank you and good night. Rupert Hine September 21, 1947 – June 4, 2020 Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson have led the tributes to the producer of the Rush albums Presto and Roll The Bones, saying the Englishman was “an upbeat, unflappable and all-around lovely ‘chap’ to work with and to be around”. The 72-year-old was also a member of the band Quantum Jump. His other studio credits include Stevie Nicks, Camel, Kevin Ayers and Saga. Cause of death is yet to be annouced. Keith Tippett August 25, 1947 – June 14, 2020 Jazz pianist Keith Tippett is best known in rock circles for having played on King Crimson’s albums In The Wake Of Poseidon, Lizard and Islands, and leading the jazz-rock ensemble Centipede which he formed…

BOB EZRIN The man who enabled Purple to find their studio mojo again. You’ve produced three Deep Purple albums in a row. What keeps you coming back? What keeps me coming back? It’s Deep Purple, man! It’s a privilege to be able to work with people who are this good at what they do. I really value the time I get to spend with them working on their music, and then the time I get to spend after they leave. Because I have the wonderful pleasure of listening to every member of Deep Purple very intimately, over and over as I mix the records that they make. When the band talk about the period before Now What?!, the first album they did with you, it sounds like they were fairly…

David Bowie ‘I’ve Never Done Anything Out Of The Blue…’ After the minimalism of his ‘Berlin trilogy’, in 1980 David Bowie and his long-time producer Tony Visconti went all out for a kitchen-sink art-rock album. “We wanted to make our Sgt. Pepper!” The result: Scary Monsters. Words: Bill DeMain By the end of the 1970s, Major Tom had been ‘sitting in a tin can’ for 10 years, his circuits all but dead. Meanwhile, back at ground control, his alter-ego had turned into a succession of slightly more terrestrial sorts: Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke. Then, just when it seemed that everyone’s favourite rock’n’roll astronaut would remain marooned in space for ever, he re-entered our orbit. First there was the stark ’79 remake of Space Oddity. Next, the…

Track By Track DANCING WITH THE MOONLIT KNIGHT This song is essentially divided into three sections: an acoustic opening (with the a-cappella introduction by Gabriel, who wrote the whole melody), an audacious instrumental (created by band improvisation), and a final section with a delicate atmosphere. Gabriel: “There was a growing sense of confidence in this track, which I started off writing. I was trying to get a folk reference, you know, to protect and preserve some of the Englishness. In the opening part, I was particularly trying to capture something that had more references to Henry VIII than to American song music. We were attempting to mix some traditional folk elements with more contemporary band arrangements. Even the colour of the voice I was using at the time was folk…

Track By Track MORE FOOL ME Written by Rutherford and Collins while sitting on the steps outside Island Recording Studios, this track is the first in a series of simple (some might say cheesy) songs that would appear much more frequently in later stages of the band’s history. Rutherford plays the 12-string with a lot of reverb on it, while Collins sings, mainly in falsetto, the banal lyrics of what is a simple love song. It was recorded by just the two of them. Hackett: “It was a nice dynamic compared to everything else, it was completely different. It was a love song, and I think it was a refreshing change from everything else. The idea of just a guitar and a voice with the occasional harmony is good. The…

Track By Track THE CINEMA SHOW This is a musical opera which is clearly divided into two parts: the first is an acoustic song written by Rutherford, the second a drawn-out instrumental part written and played by Banks, Collins and Rutherford. Rutherford, speaking in 2007: “Normally, you’ve got twelve strings and they’re paired up and you tune each pair to the same note. I started tuning each pair to harmony notes, which is how the song starts with that sort of run down. Now, I haven’t got a clue what the hell the tuning is. The other day, in New York, they were saying: ‘Oh, let’s do the first half of Cinema Show, maybe.’ And I said: ‘I’ve no idea how I played it. You have to work a compromised…

THE HARD STUFF REVIEWS ALBUMS Alanis Morissette Such Pretty Forks In The Road SONY Piano balladry and serious soul-searching for album nine. Even after all this time, the furious first impression of 1995’s Jagged Little Pill has Alanis Morissette trapped in amber for many as the angry and vengeful young woman of You Oughta Know. That, clearly, is unfair, and her ninth album is a measured, but unwaveringly honest, portrait of middle age with all its elation and tribulations. Honesty, of course, has always been Morissette’s calling card, and on this collection of glossy, piano-led songs, in Diagnosi, she gives an account of postpartum (‘baby blues’) depression that is a tiny feminist triumph – a depiction of a struggle countless women face but which is rarely discussed. Rather than looking at…

THE HARD STUFF REVIEWS REISSUES The Stooges Fun House 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition RHINO Indispensible over seven tracks, not so essential over 159. A half-century on and we’re still riding the ripples of The Stooges’ second album. It’s a beautiful thing, a seven-track study in the feral and unhinged. Essentially, but for its rock-friendly elements (guitar, bass, drums, vocals, attitude), it’s a record that’s got far more in common with the free interpretations of contemporary jazz than with the uniform strictures of the punk scene that it apparently sired. Against the brute minimalism of the rock-solid yet instinctively fluid Stooges, Iggy Pop’s voice extemporises, blurts, explores and punctuates like Miles’s trumpet, framing the future by defying convention. In its original incarnation, it’s perfect. So how better to celebrate its golden anniversary…

THE HARD STUFF STUFF BOOKS & DVDs Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die Andrew Krivine ROCKET 88 Excellent, lavishly illustrated compendium of Punk & Post Punk Graphics 1976-1986. Although sleeve and poster art has always been a vital component of rock, never was it more so than with punk and post-punk. This was because the music was as much conceptual as it was musical, confrontational, determined to grab you by the eyeballs. American-born Andrew Krivine had family in London whom he would visit in the late 70s. He became besotted by the King’s Road punk shops and The Clash. His transatlantic perspective is helpful in recounting how punk visuals impacted both in London and the East coast, from images of a green-skinned, eyeless Richard Hell to the sleeve…

Essential Playlist St Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion) John Parr Don’t You Forget About Me Simple Minds Maniac Michael Sembello Paris, Texas Ry Cooder Call Me Blondie Eye Of The Tiger Survivor People Are Strange Echo & The Bunnymen In Your Eyes Peter Gabriel Flash Queen Danger Zone Kenny Loggins Purple Rain Prince Rock ’N’ Roll High School Ramones Repo Man Iggy Pop Change John Waite Footloose Kenny Loggins Pretty In Pink Psychedelic Furs Up Where We Belong Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes The Power Of Love Huey Lewis Hazy Shade Of Winter The Bangles…

The Soundtrack Of My Life Halestorm singer/guitarist Lzzy Hale on the records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance for her. Interview: Polly Glass “The first time I heard Heart, it absolutely blew my mind.” Grammy-winner, friendly geek, rock star, Lzzy Hale thrives on stage. For now, though, she’s staying home and working on the follow-up to her band Halestorm’s 2018 album Vicious. We caught up with her to find out about some of the music that’s brought her this far. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING Probably the car radio with my parents. I think they were listening to Van Halen, I was about eight and I asked: “Is that a girl or a guy singing?” [laughs] My dad was overjoyed that I had this interest in seventies…

This month’s contributors ROB HUGHES Rob’s been writing for CR for well over a decade now. This month he gets to grips with reformed hellraiser Mark Lanegan (p40) and rising roots collective the Texas Gentlemen (p26). Despite the lockdown, Rob can still be heard on weeknights as guest of BBC 6Music’s Marc Riley, with whom he also presents The A-Z Of David Bowie podcast. MARIO GIAMMETTI Naples-based Mario has been a music critic since 1988, and his articles have been published in numerous Italian national newspapers and magazines. He has also written more than a dozen books revolving around Genesis. Genesis: 1967 to 1975 – The Peter Gabriel Years is his first book published in English. For an extract documenting the making of Selling England By The Pound, turn to…

Lemmy In The Frame Biopic of Motörhead man to begin production next year. THE LIFE OF Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister is being made into a film by Greg Olliver, who directed the 2010 documentary Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker. 51% Son Of A Bitch. The new film, which is expected to commence production next year, will follow Lemmy from his Hawkwind days to his passing in 2015. “We’ve been carefully developing this project since 2013, reveals Olliver, “making sure to stay true to Lemmy, Motörhead band members Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee, and all the other folks that played important roles in Lemmy’s life. This will be a film they’ll be proud of.” In related news, a new documentary on Phil Lynott, Songs For While I’m Away, hits cinemas in Ireland in…

Q&A Dion The 60s teen idol on the blues, getting Dylan to write his sleeve-notes, and being blown away by Jerry Lee Lewis. Words: Ian Fortnam From fresh-faced Teenager In Love to mononymous King Of The New York Streets, street-wise Bronx Belmont to übercool elder statesman of the blues, Dion DiMucci’s extraordinary career is so cool as to be almost beyond credence. Having dominated jukeboxes in the early 60s with Runaround Sue and The Wanderer, he embraced the blues, faced addiction and enjoyed spiritual rebirth before relaunching his rock career with the astonishing ’89 album Yo Frankie. Dion’s latest, Blues With Friends, features collaborations with Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Setzer, Steve Van Zandt and Van Morrison, to name but a few. How did the Blues…

MARK LANEGAN NEARLY LOST YOU That Mark Lanegan is alive is a surprise – to him as much as to anyone else. His self-destructive days are now behind him, but for years it looked like we would be robbed of one of the stand-out singing voices of his generation. Words: Rob Hughes TRAVIS KELLER/PRESS Mark Lanegan has made it into his mid-50s while mostly avoiding his past. Indeed, the last decade has been the most prolific of his long career, having released six albums and a dizzying stack of collaborations, with QOTSA, Neko Case, Duke Garwood, Earth, The Twilight Singers and many more. This year, however, he’s finally decided to confront a few ghosts. He has simultaneously released the intensely autobiographical Straight Songs Of Sorrow, his twelfth solo album, and…

Track By Track I KNOW WHAT I LIKE (IN YOUR WARDROBE) As a single, this was Genesis’s first moderate success in the charts. It starts with a fixed synthesiser drone and bongos. Peter’s spoken intro leads into the rather elementary structure of the song: a verse sung by two voices, over an insistent riff played on electric guitar (Hackett) and sitar (Rutherford), and a very catchy chorus characterised by a lovely bass guitar sequence. Hackett: “A very simple song. It’s based on a guitar riff of mine. We were practising this riff round about the time of Foxtrot. Phil and I used to play it all the time, but the rest of the guys in the band said it sounded a bit too much like The Beatles, so we didn’t…

Track By Track THE BATTLE OF EPPING FOREST A complex song (and at close to 12 minutes the longest track on the album), driven by the incessant organ and bass. Banks uses the synthesiser in some passages, and the falsetto vocals in the choruses are by Collins. Hackett: “I don’t think it’s a totally successful song. I think maybe other people in the band might regard it as a total failure. I think Phil would because there are so many sections and it’s so complicated. Yet it’s a very simple idea. Perhaps it should have been done much more simply to reflect the lyrical content. But then again you’ve got a rhythm section trying to be very clever with rhythms, so it means you’ve got more punctuation than statement. It’s…

Track By Track AISLE OF PLENTY The closing track. It acts as a coda to The Cinema Show and reprises other parts of the album. It picks up from where the previous track slows down to its conclusion, before flowing into the classical guitar riff from Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, from which it also inherits the melody sung by Gabriel. Aisle Of Plenty acts as the perfect conclusion to the album, also in terms of the very short lyrics, full of double meanings and wordplay, with an odd reference to Supper’s Ready: ‘It’s scrambled eggs.’ Gabriel: “This song was the back bookend, using the same melodies and harmonies that I’d written at the front on Dancing With The Moonlit Knight. At that point it was full of these tarmac…

HIGH TIDES AND DEEP TRACKS Ten of the best: an essential Outlaws playlist. THERE GOES ANOTHER LOVE SONG From Outlaws, 1974 The opening song from the Outlaws’ debut album wasted little time in becoming the band’s first US Top 40 single. There Goes Another Love Song set the template for what would follow: a delicious summer melody, unpretentious blue-collar lyrics and lashings of deft guitar picking. KNOXVILLE GIRL From The Outlaws, 1974 With its deceptively frail romantic intro, Henry Paul delivered a country-flavoured ode to the one that got away: ‘Go down, go down Knoxville girl/Cos I know you’ll never be my bride.’ Just try resisting those chick-scratch geetars – you’ll never do it. STICK AROUND FOR ROCK ‘N’ ROLL From Lady In Waiting, 1976 From their second album, this…

Bob Dylan His thirty-ninth album is a masterly late summation of his artistic vision Rough And Rowdy Ways COLUMBIA There can come a point in a great rock artist’s career, after they’ve weathered mid-life ridicule, at which they are regarded as supreme and beyond reproach. It happened to Leonard Cohen, to Paul McCartney, to David Bowie. In the 80s, Dylan, like Bowie, wasn’t always taken terribly seriously, instead regarded as doddery and out of touch, dallying dubiously with religion on Saved, releasing tracks like Wiggle, Wiggle, clopping along behind the pace he’d once set, just another Traveling Wilbury. Since 1997’s Time Out Of Mind, however, Dylan’s stock has risen again. He has nothing left to prove, no significant new developments in rock to keep up with, existing now in a…

REVIEWS BEST OF THE REST Other new releases out this month. Magic Bus The Earth Years BANDCAMP Psychedelically inclined in similar style to today’s Gong, Magic Bus offer a quintessentially English, comfortably trippy, Canterbury scenic, Magical Mystery Tour. 7/10 Richard Davies & The Dissidents Human Traffic BUCKETFULL OF BRAINS Ex-Snakes/Tiny Monroe guitarist Davies takes centre stage on a debut collection of louche and languid, 80s-tinged, blue-collar, mid-Atlantic Americana. Hook-heavy, casually classy, if habitually laid back. 7/10 Wyldlife Year Of The Snake WICKED COOL Obviously there’s a down-side to derivative, but when it’s done this well it’s damn near irresistible. Punk spirit, power-pop exuberance, glam swagger, priapic rock cockiness. What’s not to love? 8/10 Pabst Deuce Ex Machina KETCHUP TRACKS Glam-sneered garage swagger propels the unmistakable sound of self-righteous punkoid agitpop.…

LIVE! Tour Dates KEVIN NIXON JEFF BECK CLASSIC Rock RECOMMENDS Stars always turn out whenever the “guitarists’ guitarist” and Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame double inductee plays. Join them. See over the page for rescheduled dates. Currently April 21 to May 2. EVANESCENCE CLASSIC Rock RECOMMENDS Going Dutch with support from Within Temptation, it’s female vocals to the fore and several shades of rock and metal on show when the two bands team up in ‘21. Worth the wait? You bet. See opposite page for dates. Currently September 30 to October 4.…

INSIDE THE WORLD OF ROCK The Dirt Live Music And The Road Ahead Are drive-in gigs and pay-per-view concerts the post-pandemic future? This month The Dirt was compiled by Stephen Dalton, Lee Dorrian, Polly Glass, Dave Ling, Philip Wilding FOR MORE NEWS: WWW.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM cat no:#278 COPYRIGHT FUTURE 2020 COVID-19 STILL HAD the music world in its infectious tight grip as this issue went to press. With Britain’s government declaring that pubs in England can reopen on July 4, but live entertainment remaining off limits, musicians, many struggling financially, continue to look for ways of presenting their art and also ways to generate an income. An American company called Cadenza TV has begun streaming pay-per-view multi-camera live electric concerts. The White Buffalo (aka Jake Smith) recently presented a pair of shows via…

Steve Priest February 23, 1948 – June 4, 2020 GETTY THE SWEET’S LAST surviving co-founding member has died of an as-yet unrevealed cause. Steve Priest – once warned by David Bowie: “You know you really are putting much too much make-up on?” – was the band’s king of pantomime high camp. The Middlesex-born bassist, who once appeared on Top Of The Pops wearing a sequinned jumpsuit featuring the words ‘fuck you’ on its reverse, was always on the lookout for an opportunity to offend. When the show’s producer tried to make Priest remove said garment, he flatly refused. On the Christmas 1973 edition of TOTP Priest dressed as “a gay Nazi”, daubed in layers of make-up and sporting an SS tunic, complete with swastika armband and a Hitler moustache. Every…

NEWS The acoustic guitar played by Kurt Cobain on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance has set a record price at auction. The 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic was sold for $6 million (£4.9m), outstripping the $3.95 million (£3.1m) paid for a black Stratocaster owned by David Gilmour. In another sale, a custom-made guitar used by Prince on his Purple Rain, Sign O The Times, and Diamonds And Pearls sol for $563,000 (£456,000). The first studio album from the Blue Öyster Cult in almost two decades, The Symbol Remains, is set for release in October. It contains 14 new songs. And Frontiers Records release 45th Anniversary - Live In London, an album of the band’s spot at the Stone Free Festival in 2017, on August 7. Ozzy Osbourne says his health is returning…

BURIED TREASURE Riches from the rock underground MAJIC SHIP Majic Ship, Bel-Ami Records, USA, 1970. £550. New Yorkers Majic Ship evolved out of teenage garage band The Primitives (one of many who shared the name), before releasing their debut single as Majic Ship in 1968. Following a handful of singles that ranged from straight pop to psychedelic rock, they focused on a more fundamentally rock sound. Their self-titled album is an excellent mix of guitar-driven acid-rock and mellower moments. Opener Sioux City Blues is a good example of these contrasting dynamics, combining early distortions of Blue Cheer with the soulful ambitions of Grand Funk. Apart from a tasteful rendition of Neil Young’s Down By The River merged with Buffalo Springfield’s classic For What It’s Worth, the material is self-written. Of…

PURPLE PATCHES The 10 best Deep Purple songs from 1994 to today. LOOSEN MY STRINGS (1996) Ritchie Blackmore’s exit following the sub-standard The Battle Rages On rejuvenated the band. Purpendicular was their finest album in years. Loosen My Strings bristled with elegant confidence, and new boy Steve Morse played like a man with a point to prove. SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE SCREAMING (1996) Seven and a half minutes of Purple majesty. Jon Lord’s graceful keyboards, Ian Paice’s rock-steady backing, and Ian Gillan delivered a vocal performance that was the equal of anything he recorded in the 70s. ’69 (1998) Although 1998’s Abandon fell short of Purpendicular’s heights, it was still a creditable collection of songs. ’69, buried towards the back of the album, was a playful, buzzy number that looked…

Eyes On The Prize Following high-profile stints with Melissa Etheridge and Lizzo, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Celisse is now prepping an album of her own. Words: Jude Gold You might not know her name yet, but you might remember Celisse following her viral headline-grabbing performance with pop star Lizzo on US TV show Saturday Night Live, where she paid tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the original purveyors of rock’n’roll guitar playing. Now, the Gibson-toting six-stringer is hoping to make her own mark on music history. “Guitar is kind of a crazy story for me,” says Celisse Henderson, who nowadays performs and records simply as Celisse. “I’ve only been playing for about six years.” It’s what she has done in just six years that’s so impressive. In her short…

Track By Track FIRTH OF FIFTH Banks: “I’d written a piece for Foxtrot, which had this piano bit that ended up as the introduction to Firth Of Fifth. I was quite excited about it but the others less so. I carried on working on the idea and wrote a piece I thought sounded really good on its own, and that if I could swing it by the rest of them I could do it as an introduction. We’d done Horizons [on Foxtrot], so I thought the idea of letting one person just do a bit was acceptable. Hackett: “There’s something almost religious about Tony’s famous introduction. It’s a cross between gospel, blues and classical.” Collins: “We were steamrollered into Firth Of Fifth, but it worked. Tony was good at that,…

Track By Track AFTER THE ORDEAL Despite what the title may appear to imply, this instrumental has nothing to do with the battle described in the previous song. It was written by Steve, and he’s the main player on guitars: a nylon-string in the initial section and electric later on. Hackett: “It was really designed as an electric tune, but for some reason we couldn’t make it work. It could have just been a section in another electric song, but we didn’t manage to do that, so we were not going to record it. Then in the studio Tony came up with his part, and on the spot we decided to switch it to an acoustic tune where I would play the electric line on the nylon guitar instead. This…

Various Three-disc celebration of British heavy metal’s last big hurrah. NWOBHM Thunder HEAR NO EVIL Nearly 40 years after its brief, blazing heyday, a common perception of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal is of a bunch of provincial no-hopers playing rough-arsed noise for air-guitaring kids in creaky leather jackets, as glamorous as an episode of Bullseye and as kitsch as a late-period Carry On film There’s a nugget of truth in that, but it misses the bigger picture. There was a hell-for-leather heroism to the NWOBHM that has never truly been replicated. For every world-beating band like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard, there were a thousand others who never came close to making it but still dared to dream; a legion of foot soldiers throwing themselves over the…