Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i Classic Rock

WELCOME Where would rock’n’roll be without guitarists, eh? Answer: nowhere – there’d be no flippin’ rock’n’roll. This month we take a look at some of the sonic architects without whom the musical landscape would look (and sound) a helluva lot different. Join us in our deep dive (starting on p25) celebrating many of the players who don’t always get the love and attention they deserve. On a different note, hopefully by the time you read this we might be starting to come out from under the lockdown cosh and back into the world. But I thought I’d mention that should you not yet be venturing to the shops; don’t forget that you can get Classic Rock delivered direct to your door (and grab a gift and save yourself some cash…

The DIRT RIP Thank you and good night Bunny Wailer April 10, 1947 – March 2, 2021 The last surviving original member of Bob Marley’s Wailers, Bunny Wailer, has succumbed to a stroke. Born Neville Livingston in Kingston, Jamaica, the singer, writer and percussionist won three Grammys during his 73-year lifetime. Rupert Neve July 31, 1926 – February 12, 2021 Once referred to as the Steve Jobs of the audio world, British-born Rupert Neve had an illustrious career, and yet the inventor of the Neve recording console remained an unsung hero of the industry. 94 years old at the time of his death due to pneumonia and heart failure, Neve’s contribution to music was monumental. Elliot Mazer September 6, 1941 – February 7, 2021 The long serving producer…

Chris Barber April 17, 1930 – March 2, 2021 A SIGNIFICANT FIGURE in the music scene of the 1940s, 50s, 60s and beyond, bandleader and trombonist Chris Barber has passed away at the age of 90. He had been suffering from dementia. Barber was an influential musician who linked New Orleans jazz with blues, rock’n’roll and R&B, his role in the skiffle movement bringing blues artists to British audiences during the 1950s and 60s. “Without Chris Barber,” Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman once observed, “the Stones and the Beatles would not be where they are now.” In 1991, he was awarded an OBE for services to music. Born in in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, Barber formed his first band in London following the Second World War. He collaborated with many…

BURIED TREASURE Riches from the rock underground FELT Felt, Nasco, USA, 1972. £800. Felt were the brainchild of talented songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Myke Jackson, who formed the band in Huntsville, Alabama towards the end of the 60s. It’s hard to comprehend that Jackson was only 17 years old when Felt was recorded, as it has such an accomplished feel, full of tasteful musicianship and styles ranging from heavy blues to progressive pop and jazz rock. There’s a slightly melancholic feel to the overall vibe, which is enhanced by slightly dark psychedelic touches. Opener Look At The Sun has a sorrowful Beatles feel with piano, which doesn’t really give an an idea of what’s to follow. Now She’s Gone is a more upbeat progressive jazz-rocker, with a reflective mid-section. Weepin’ Mama Blues sets a…

100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GUITAR HEROES SYLVAIN SYLVAIN He had the look, the attitude, the talent, the desire. Had heroin not intervened, he reckoned his band the New York Dolls, not the Stones, could have been the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band In The World. Interview: Ian Fortnam Sylvain Sylvain lost his long, courageous battle with cancer on January 13 this year. Egypt-born, Paris-raised, New York City-made, Sylvain was the heart and soul of the New York Dolls, the band he formed and named in 1971. Sylvain’s guitar provided the essential complementary ice to temper his Dolls sparring partner Johnny Thunders’ singular proto-punk fire: insistent spiky shards of reliable rhythmic punch to propel the animalistic post-Dick Dale roars, yowls and caterwauls of the ungovernably mercurial Thunders. While it’s the libertine excess of the…

STEVE ROTHERY NITA STRAUSS: JEREMY SAFFER Marillion’s longest-standing guitarist regularly features in our sister magazine Prog’s reader poll for Guitarist Of The Year, his cultured, tasteful and song-centric style having been a cornerstone of Marillion’s sound since 1979. The echoing hook of Kayleigh and the anthemic lead line of Lavender may be obvious markers, but they do demonstrate three main elements of his often imitated style: Rothery plays beautifully textured arpeggios and chords; he is an absolute master of tone; and his most memorable solos are hummable. At its most soaring and lyrical, his lead style puts him in a lineage with Steve Hackett, Camel’s Andy Latimer and especially David Gilmour, but he can also tug subtly at the heartstrings, and can render the chilling cacophony of war itself (Gaza,…

TODD RUNDGREN From using a guitar to simulate motorbikes on Bat Out Of Hell, and the sound of strangled chickens on A Wizard, A True Star, we revisit the case for the singer, songwriter, producer’s guitar genius. Interview: Henry Yates If Todd Rundgren isn’t at the pinnacle of the guitar-hero pantheon, then he only has himself to blame. The 72-year-old wears too many hats, and too damn well. He’s the legendary producer who worked on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album and the New York Dolls’ scuzzy-arsed debut. He’s the golden-touch hit maker who broke big with his 1972 album Something/Anything?, and the visionary who forked left into the wilds on 1973’s A Wizard, A True Star. As a guitarist, though, Rundgren is a self-confessed part-timer. It says it…

GUTHRIE GOVAN Coming of age as the fastest gun in Chelmsford, Govan had hoovered up everything from Cream to Joe Pass, and when he made his first ripples, winning Guitarist magazine’s annual star search in 1993, he was already a complete player. Govan’s amazing technical solo work has never quite hit the mainstream, but the respect he commands on the prog scene has led to some eye-opening collaborations, from Asia headhunting him as an “affordable” stunt guitarist on 2001’s Aura album, to soundtrack king Hans Zimmer tapping into his mastery of mood on 2019’s The Lion King reboot. Of these, it is perhaps nu-prog kingpin Steven Wilson who has pushed Govan furthest, on 2015’s immersive Hand. Cannot. Erase album and the dizzying slowbuild solo on Regret #9 – a tour…

100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GUITAR HEROES ELMORE JAMES Jimmy Page said James’s slide tone “knocked you flat”. He was far from being the only one floored by it. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: SHUTTERSTOCK; GETTY x3 The few surviving photographs of the sharp-suited young man with the easy smile (now a long-term resident of Newport Baptist Church Cemetery, Mississippi) are old and faded now. But the sound of Elmore James attacking a slide guitar remains one of the most neck-tingling experiences the blues genre has to offer, still unsurpassed by the celebrity covers that sought to leave their thumbprint on what was already perfect. As Jimmy Page – who had once wrestled with Dust My Broom in a teenage shift with Neil Christian And The Crusaders – once noted: “It knocked you flat.” For…

HANK MARVIN Brian May on the profound influence the underrated Shadows leader and prototype guitar hero. “Guitar was the work of the devil to our headmaster at Hampton Grammar school. And we actually had to hide, y’know? We would play in the cycle sheds after school round the back. Or we actually managed to make a little guitar club in the library, where nobody ever went [laughs]. So we had kind of a little guitar clinic, I suppose, of people who wanted to bring in stuff that they’d heard and wanted to play. We’d be like: ‘Who played the new Shadows record first?’ “We were lucky, really, because we were around at the beginning of rock guitar. It didn’t exist when I was a young kid. People like James Burton,…

GEORGE HARRISON Overlooked in The Beatles’ early days, he has since been reappraised as one of the great stylists. As ‘the quiet Beatle’, George Harrison was always that group’s secret weapon. Lennon and McCartney wrote most of the Fabs’ hits and sang their way into your heart, but it was sullen George who gave the songs their transcendent guitar moments. Witness the supple elegance of his solo in Till There Was You, his Carl Perkins–channeling double-stops on All My Loving, or the plangent chiming of his Rickenbacker 12-string on everything from A Hard Day’s Night to If I Needed Someone. He plied his magic even without a guitar. What would 1965’s Norwegian Wood be without Harrison’s lysergic sitar lines buzzing sinuously beneath Lennon’s tale of adultery, auguring the coming psychedelic…

LET IT BEE While the return of American band Touch will be a delight for AOR fans, it’s also likely to see the return of people re-telling a 40-year-old story that the band wish would just fly away. Words: Dave Ling Oh dear. Classic Rock has just gone and mentioned the ‘B’ word (or in this case should that be the ‘Bee’ word?), and for the first time during an otherwise lively conference call with Touch’s Mark Mangold and Craig Brooks the atmosphere cools. We are recalling the potentially life-threatening moment in 1980 when, during their band’s performance at the inaugural Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, bass player Doug Howard took a swig from a bottle of beer, unaware that a bee had crawled into it. And of…

REVIEWS LIVE! Todd Rundgren Clearly Human virtual tour, Nashville, USA If it’s Saturday it must be Chicago. Again. ★ My world is something you can’t see, but it’s still very real to me,’ Todd Rundgren sings on the classic Real Man, which opens his show in ‘Nashville’. He’s in the middle of the 25-city Clearly Human virtual tour, for which he and his band remain in residence in a Chicago theatre, and pepper each concert with localised banter and video of the city they’re ‘playing’ in. It does somehow feel very real. And much more engaging than the usual guy-in-front-of-a-bookcase pandemic gig. An ace nine-piece band decked out in matching outfits, with colourful lighting, choreography and multicamera shots keep the show moving. And in a decade-spanning set that included faves…

This month’s contributors PAUL HENDERSON Paul has been CR’s production editor since 2001. When not complaining about missing hyphens or… anything, he bangs on about the sound of Ginger Baker’s drums, and tells stories such as auditioning for Sigue Sigue Sputnik, being covered in (real) shit on a boat mid-Atlantic, and appearing in panto with Ronnie Biggs. This issue he writes about guitarists for our cover feature (p25). BILL DeMAIN In quarantine, journalist-muso Bill DeMain contributed to Go Further, an upcoming collection of essays on power-pop (out May 18, Rare Bird Lit). He’s also become an avid bird watcher and bird maker. For info about his line of Oddbirds cards and prints, visit www.instagram.com/oddbirds1 This month he spoke to Nancy Wilson for us, and wrote about the overlooked guitar genius…

LG Petrov February 17, 1972 – March 7, 2021 THE MEMBERS OF Swedish heavyweights Entombed have paid emotional tribute to Lars-Göran Petrov, the former singer of their band who has lost a battle with bile duct cancer. The 49-year-old announced his incurable illness last summer, telling Classic Rock’s sister title Metal Hammer: “It’s just very, very bad luck. Cancer doesn’t have feelings.” A Swede with Macedonian roots, Petrov joined death metallers Entombed in 1988, appearing on eight of their most popular albums, including the genre-defining Left Hand Path. In 2013 he was part of the rebranded outfit Entombed AD. In a statement, Entombed AD wrote: “Our brother, leader, vocalist, our Chief Rebel Angel went on another ride last night. It’s with the deepest sadness that we have to announce that…

WELCOME BACK The Offspring Dexter and Noodles on opioids, sex droughts and growing old disgracefully. JERRY CANTRELL: TINA KORHONEN CITING CALI PUNK godfathers like X and the Dead Kennedys – but spinning that influence into a more palatable racket – The Offspring sold over 11 million copies of 1994’s Smash to a post-grunge audience ready for something sunnier. You know them best for Self Esteem’s ode to a flaky girlfriend and Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)’s skewering of a wannabe hipster, but singer Dexter Holland and guitarist Kevin ‘Noodles’ Wasserman tell us their tenth album Let The Bad Times Roll is more socially charged. What’s the significance of that title? Dexter: It seems to wrap up our times right now. We’ve had a lot of shit over the last…

WELCOME BACK Chris Holmes The former W.A.S.P guitarist on Blackie Lawless, his new documentary, giving up booze, and that interview CHRIS HOLMES MADE his reputation during two stints with W.A.S.P, who the guitarist’s maniacal personality helped to establish as a major force. After eight years he quit in 1990, then rejoined in ’95 and was with the band for another six years. In recent times he’s fronted his own band, Mean Man Most people probably remember Holmes from his infamous interview, while seemingly drunk in a swimming pool, for the documentary The Decline Of Western Civilization: The Metal Years. Now, he’s opened up about his life and music in the documentary Mean Man: The Story Of Chris Holmes. In the Mean Man documentary you say some harsh things about W.A.S.P’s…

100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GUITAR HEROES Words: Bill DeMain, Ian Fortnam, Polly Glass, Paul Henderson, Rob Hughes, Siân Llewellyn, Grant Moon, Neville Marten, Chris Scapelleti, Johnny Sharp, Henry Yates A few months ago, our sister mag Total Guitar ran a reader vote to ascertain the Greatest Guitarist Of All Time. It’s a heady task, and one we’d wager most self-respecting music and/or guitar magazines and websites have had a stab at (we certainly have here at Classic Rock over the years in one format or another). Coming in at top of the shop for TG was none other than the Queen maestro Brian May. A superb choice, and certainly not one we have any truck with. But their list got us to thinking… Rock’n’roll is littered with amazing, fascinating, genre-defying men…

MICK GREEN Wilko Johnson on the first time he heard The Pirates’ chief six-stringer DEVIN TOWNSEND: ERICH SAIDE/PRESS; GETTY x2 “It was a Saturday, I know, because Saturday Club was on, which was a programme on at midday on the BBC, which was one of the only bits of pop music that you would hear then – it was before pirate radio even. Anyway, I was walking across the room and Brian Matthew said: ‘This is Johnny Kidd And The Pirates’, and it was their new record I’ll Never Get Over You. I heard the guitar and I just sort of stopped in mid-stride, and when the solo came in I just thought: ‘This is fantastic, it sounds just brilliant.’ “Then the next week they were on Thank Your Lucky…

RICK NIELSEN Behind the oddball exterior and the daft guitars is someone who could show guitar heroes a thing or Given his oversized personality and goofy stage demeanour, it’s easy to overlook Rick Nielsen’s musical ability. The Cheap Trick linchpin has never been one for self-aggrandisement either. “I’m a songwriter, not a guitar player,” he recently told Classic Rock. “I wish I would’ve practiced forty years ago, because I might be pretty good by now.” But don’t let him fool you. Beneath the cartoon exterior lies an exceptional guitarist whose bold, voluble style encompasses a vast range of licks, trills and slides that pull from classic pop, glam and riffy British rock of the late 60s and early 70s. And while his nerdy image (flip-brim baseball cap and bow tie)…

GARY CLARK JR He might be a relatively new kid on the blues block, but his Grammy-winning combination of guitar playing, music and lyrics has fast-tracked him to its top table. Words: Johnny Sharp GARY CLARK JR: WILL IRELAND The blues has always been a fertile genre for producing great guitar players, and Gary Clark Jr ranks prominently among its more recent graduates. But few have branched out so effortlessly into other genres and added a contemporary edge so seamlessly to their sound as Clark. And despite that stylistic versatility, his strikingly soulful, richly emotive guitar playing remains a constant major feature. Why isn’t he a more celebrated figure among guitar aficionados? Well, in the US he is – having three Top-10 albums and winning four Grammys will help on…

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Nobody – nobody! – rocks a Fender Telecaster like Bruce Springsteen. Sure, he delegates the flash stuff to the likes of Nils Lofgren, but over the years The Boss has bossed that Tele tone himself. On record the early stuff is fertile ground for his own gutsy, no-bullshit lead playing. There’s something universal about his bluesy feel, vocal-like vibrato and squealy, soul-drenched tone. Even when he’s knocking out the raggedy-assed intro to Glory Days, his playing fits his overall narrative and character. And when he wails in concert, it’s goose-bump time. There are kids on YouTube who can easily out-shred him, but who will grow never earning the hard-won spirit that fuels Bruce’s own guitar playing. If you could bottle that, you’d have the ineffable essence of rock’n’roll…

100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GUITAR HEROES STEVE CROPPER At the very least, if you’ve ever heard anything on the Stax Records label, then you’ve heard his masterful guitar playing, and he might well have also written it and produced it. Interview: Rob Hughes The guitarist with Booker T. & The M.G.’s, Stax Records’ house band, Steve Cropper backed scores of soul greats during the 60s as well as being a go-to producer. He’s also a songwriter whose compositions include classics such as Wilson Pickett’s In The Midnight Hour, Eddie Floyd’s Knock On Wood and Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay. He has also done studio work with John Lennon, Rod Stewart, Roy Orbison, Jeff Beck and many more, and was a founder member of the Blues Brothers band.…

GARY MOORE A gifted guitarist who could turn his hand to any style of music, “he just happened to come along after all the guitar heroes, so he never really got the acclaim,” says Bernie Marsden. Words: Mick Wall He was one of the greatest rock guitar players of his generation, but Gary Moore would squirm and pull a face if you ever dared suggest as much. “I don’t even listen to rock music any more,” he shrugged disdainfully the last time we spoke, shortly before his death in 2011. Never mind that he’d been an influential member of Thin Lizzy, one of the greatest rock bands of all time. “I’m too old for dressing up,” he snapped. Surely, then, one of the greatest blues guitar players of his time?…

ON THIS MONTH’S DIGITAL ALBUM… IT’S A SIX-STRING THING All this talk of guitarists got you hankering for some hot six-string action? We’ve teamed up with the good people at Mascot Records to bring you this exclusive compilation of some of the very best. 1 Steve Lukather Serpent Soul Led out by a shuffle beat straight from the world’s seediest jazz bar, this highlight from I Found The Sun Again puts cathouse piano front and centre – but Toto’s resident motormouth finds space for an all-feel guitar solo where his fingers do the talking. From I Found The Sun Again 2 DeWolff Yes You Do The Covid-era genesis of Yes You Do might sound like a dystopian nightmare (“We wrote it in a Zoom meeting!”). But this strutting soul-psych highlight…

ROUND-UP: BLUES By Henry Yates Julian Taylor Band Desert Star APORIA With a track record that goes from Neil Young to The Weeknd, there’s no such thing as a typical Torontonian, and Julian Taylor is fast becoming one of the square-peg city’s favourite refusenik sons. On 2019’s hard-funking Avalanche album, we feared for the health of his wah-wah pedal, and here again the bandleader revisits those dread-shaking flavours on early struts like Heard Good Things, complete with Kravitz-like soul-man bark. But he’s palpably grown, too. Try the title track’s easy-on-the-ears country soul, One Time’s exploration of the haunted end of Americana, or the standout House Is A Garden, with its almost gospel slow-bloom balladry. True, Taylor may not be immune to commercial considerations: the hip-hop-informed Hot Heels and That Spice are…

Suzi Quatro The Devil In Me STEAMHAMMER/SPV Possessed of the past, the treasured pioneer rocks into the present. TINA KORHONEN/PRESS Making a seismic impact in the 70s on this side of the Atlantic by combining the slam-dunk chart-toppers Can The Can and Devil Gate Drive – as well as Top 10 smashes 48 Crash, The Wild One and If You Can’t Give Me Love – with the era-defining imagery of low-slung bass guitar and leather catsuits, Suzi Quatro proved that rock’n’roll wasn’t just the preserve of excitable lads and their dads, as she also inspired multiple teens of her own gender. Indeed such has been her indelible mark on British rock and pop culture that it’s entirely understandable that she’s viewed as one of our own. Lest we forget, she was…

The Soundtrack Of My Life Glam-rock icon Suzi Quatro on the records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance to her. Interview: Ian Fortnam “My guitar hero is my bass hero, which is James Jamerson from Tamla Motown.” Since first exploding into all our lives in 1973 with with the now evergreen Can The Can, Suzi Quatro has exemplified the ultimate rock’n’roll frontwoman. From the pioneering Chinnichap hellcat in skin-tight black leather to the time-honoured living legend of today, Suzi Q has retained an attitude and swagger that’s as quintessentially Detroit as it is Motown. Currently enjoying something of a career renaissance, Quatro has used enforced lockdown downtime well, producing The Devil In Me (in collaboration with her son Richard Tuckey), an album that some, including Suzi herself, are…

Chick Corea June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021 THE VIRTUOSO JAZZ fusion keyboard player who was a member of Miles Davis’ band during the late 1960s and went on to form Return To Forever has died of a rare form of recently discovered cancer at the age of 79. Born Armando Anthony Corea (the nickname came from an aunt who pinched his cheeks and called him ‘Cheeky’ in childhood days), he grew up near Boston. During the 1960s Corea worked with jazz musicians such as Stan Getz and Herbie Mann before joining Miles Davis. His 1972 album Return To Forever morphed into the band of the same name. Their classic line-up was reunited for a world tour in 2008. Known for his ability to improvise, Corea was the fourth…

Mick Fleetwood Plans Farewell Mac Tour Drummer says the band “owe it to the fans”. FOLLOWING A RECENT interview given by Christine McVie to the BBC, in which the keyboard player/singer implied that future Fleetwood Mac tours could happen without vocalist Stevie Nicks, her former husband bassist John McVie and possibly even herself, Mick Fleetwood has stepped in to soothe things. In an upbeat conversation with Rolling Stone, the drummer claimed to be mapping out the idea of a farewell tour “The vision for me is that we actually say ‘this is goodbye’ and go out and actually do that,” he said. “We owe it to the fans.” Fleetwood was keen to dilute McVie’s comments, saying: “I think she got out of bed on the wrong side that day. She…

Q&A Michael Schenker The influential guitarist on immortality, alcoholism and why he’ll never make peace with elder brother Scorpion Rudolf. Interview: Henry Yates For better or worse, Michael Schenker’s reputation precedes him. Born in West Germany in 1955, the wunderkind guitarist joined elder brother Rudolf for the Scorpions’ 1972 debut Lonesome Crow, then split for UFO and a run of de-facto solo projects. As he rightly points out, his influence is towering: without Schenker’s melodic pyrotechnics on classics like Another Piece Of Meat and Love To Love, heavy-mob acolytes such as Dave Mustaine and Kirk Hammett might never have become the players they are. Among the rock press, meanwhile, Schenker is infamous for semi-coherent rambles that leave them with not a lot to write about. Today’s conversation begins inauspiciously, with…

ROBERT SMITH All spidery substance and no “empty flash”, The Cure frontman makes the guitar sound like no one else. When The Cure broke big with 1989’s Disintegration, and the world turned its attention to Robert Smith, the frontman’s guitar playing was always doomed to be a footnote. For wags it was all about the hair, the slap and the moan; for casual fans, it was the songs and the synths. By comparison, the sinister, spidery lines spun by Smith with a Fender Jazzmaster (or often a six-string bass) were a best-kept secret – although hugely influential to those that knew. When Smith played guitar, as Billy Corgan once put it: “The air gets heavier.” Growing up in West Sussex, Smith’s formative influences weren’t as leftfield as his outlier image…

100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GUITAR HEROES MARC RIBOT Meet the daring sonic chameleon (and a guitarist for Tom Waits, The Black Keys and others) whose playing has taken in rock, free jazz, classical, hardcore punk, Cuban music and more. Interview: Grant Moon JOSEPH BRANSTON Experimental New York guitarist Marc Ribot made his reputation early with his pioneering work on Tom Waits’s 1985 album Rain Dogs. He’s since gone on to make music under his own name, with his avant-garde outfits such as Ceramic Dog, and his long-rolling CV as a sideman includes stints with Fred Frith, John Mellencamp, The Black Keys and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Ribot can also count fans from all parts of the musical spectrum, Kirk Hammet cites him a guitarist who rocks his world. “His playing…

JONI MITCHELL She’s best known as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of her generation, but her mostly open-tunings one-of-a-kind guitar playing occupies a field of its own. Words: Bill DeMain JONI MITCHELL: GETTY In Martin Scorsese’s documentary Rolling Thunder Revue, there’s a great scene from a picking party at singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot’s house in 1975. Lightfoot, Dylan and Roger McGuinn, guitars in hand, are gathered around Joni Mitchell, who’s trying out a new song of hers called Coyote. As she starts, you see the guys doing what guitar players do, checking her hands to get their bearings. But it’s like trying to throw a lasso around a meteor. Mitchell’s left hand moves through unfamiliar shapes. Her right hand brushes and flicks the strings in a deceptively non-linear rhythm. By the…

GLENN TIPTON As half of Judas Priest’s twin-guitar firepower he’s one of the architects of heavy metal. GLENN TIPTON: WILL IRELAND With KK Downing his vital and equally undersung counterpart, Glenn Tipton was half of Judas Priest’s highly influential twinaxe attack, helping to forge the sound of heavy metal as it moved into the 80s. Like many players of his generation, Tipton’s lead technique hasn’t always been Yngwie-precise, but, more importantly, his parts are delivered with guts, speed, and real edge. Priest has always been a band greater than the sum of its parts, and Tipton’s heavy, nimble playing and squealing adds heft, intensity and excitement to their irresistible slabs of genre-defining metal. Tipton can bring the shred (Screaming For Vengeance’s Electric Eye; Painkiller’s A Touch Of Evil), but his…

TERRY KATH If Hendrix said the Chicago guitarist was the best, who are we to argue? Whether, as is often reported, Jimi Hendrix really did call Terry Kath the “best guitarist in the universe” or that he was Jimi’s favourite guitarist, doesn’t really matter. The fact that Kath was good enough for people to say Hendrix said so is praise enough. A self-taught player among a group of schooled musicians with the collective chops to deliver a jazz-rock landmark with their first album – and the balls and self-confidence to make it a double – in a complimentary way it could be said that Kath was perhaps the ‘loose canon’ who put the rock into his band Chicago’s jazz rock; the tight but loose into the otherwise just tight. On…

STEVE MORSE The Deep Purple guitarist scores guitar-mag polls, but is often overlooked by the mainstream. A‘guitarist’s guitarist’, Steve Morse has topped numerous guitar magazine polls over the years. Dream Theater’s John Petrucci has cited this Ohio-born star as his favourite player of all time, and even his predecessor in Deep Purple, Richie Blackmore, has called him a fantastic guitarist. Praise indeed, from him. Morse studied music at the University Of Miami in the early 70s, and his genre-mashing style was first heard with the Dixie Dregs, a virtuosic collective drawing on everything from fusion to funk, from southern rock to prog to country. Like his contemporaries Brian May and Eddie Van Halen, Morse fabricated his own guitar, his ‘FrankenTele’, to accommodate his bespoke needs, and his signature tone and…

100 MOST INFLUENTIAL GUITAR HEROES RORY GALLAGHER Forget the money, forget the fame, forget the acclaim, He was in it for just one thing – the music. And when this Irish wizard played it, he was one of the greatest. Words: Mick Wall GETTY Bono called him “one of the top ten guitar players of all time”. When asked once how it felt to be the greatest guitarist in the world, Jimi Hendrix replied: “You should ask Rory Gallagher that question, sir.” In which case, how come Rory Gallagher’s name is nowhere on the list of first names out of the mouths of so-called experts when discussing that age-old question: who is the greatest guitarist of them all? Perhaps this story will shed some light on that murky injustice. When…

“He played at my wedding, and all the other guitar players went and hid” Bernie Marsden and Don Airey remember their old friend. JESSE WILD To mark the tenth anniversary of his death, a new Gary Moore album, How Blue Can You Get, is released in April. It contains previously unheard and unreleased material, including Moore’s stupendous version of the BB King classic from which the album takes its title. Here two of Moore’s oldest friends and musicianly contemporaries, guitarist Bernie Marsden and keyboard player Don Airey, recall the guitarist who could “play anything”. “If Gary had been from that same age group, he would have been in there with Clapton, Beck, Hendrix, “says Bernie Marsden. “Even as a young guy, Gary could do a Jeff Beck thing, do a…

ROUND-UP: MELODIC ROCK By Dave Ling MIKE POLITO/PRESS Joel Hoekstra’s 13 Running Games FRONTIERS In 2014, seeking a replacement for guitarist Doug Aldrich, Coverdale plucked Joel Hoekstra from Night Ranger to play on The Purple Album, and he’s been a ’Snake ever since. Six years ago Hoekstra released Dying To Live, an album fronted jointly by Jeff Scott Soto, Symphony X’s Russell Allen, Toby Hitchcock from Pride Of Lions and Trans Siberian Orchestra’s Chloe Lowery. Running Games retains many of the same instrumental protagonists, including a rhythm section of Tony Franklin and Vinny Appice, plus keyboards from Derek Sherinian. This time there’s a lone singer, Russell Allen. It’s a more focused follow-up, that manages to avoid sounding like the handiwork of a glorified sideman. Driven by the fluent, punchy performance of…

BEST OF THE REST Other new releases out this month. Ruts DC ElectrAcoustiC Astutely re-imagined for the trio’s acoustic live sets, The Ruts’ cannily constructed chart hits (Babylon’s Burning et al) take on new life when stripped back and allowed breathing space thanks to a clean Pat Collier production. 8/10 Jaded Hearts Club Live At The 100 Club BMG Unlikely supergroup featuring Matt Bellamy, Graham Coxon and Miles Kane brutally, brilliantly and enthusiastically assault the classics (Gloria, Paint It, Black) in irresistibly raucous Pebbles-era garage-band style. 8/10 Birdpen All Function One JAR An album about ‘living a cyber life’ that covers isolation, sadness, loneliness and paranoia: the full post-millennial package, but in a good way. Superb electro alt. prog with lashings of en-vogue existential misery. 7/10 Starmen By The Grace Of Rock…

The Georgia Satellites Ultimate LEMON Earthy southern rockers’ first three albums, now laden with extra tracks. They came and went in an instant. In 1986, Atlanta’s Georgia Satellites reached No.2 in the United States with the single Keep Your Hands To Yourself, as sizzling a slab of cheery southern rock as they come. The attendant self-titled album went platinum, and it seemed like the missing link between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Aerosmith had been found. Three years and no hits later, third album In The Land Of Salvation & Sin stumbled to No.130 in the US chart and the game was up, except for a current reincarnation that features only one original member, guitarist Rick Richards. What happened? Ultimate comprises the core line-up’s three albums, all for Elektra, plus 19 live tracks,…

BEST OF THE REST Other new releases out this month. Various Oh! You Pretty Things: Glam Queens & Street Urchins 1970-76 GRAPEFRUIT A three-CD encapsulation of a mid-70s best exemplified by the proto-punk glamsploitation of the Hollywood Brats (if only there were more like them). A mad hotch-potch (Slade, Dolls, Jobriath, Eno, Mott), but ludicrous fun. 7/10 Ngozi Family 45,000 Volts NOW-AGAIN Led by guitarist/vocalist Paul Ngozi and featuring drummer Chrissy Tembo, Zambia’s Ngozi Family fuse classic, if upbeat, primal Black Sabbath riff rock with elements of psych-funk, on this re-vinyled ‘77 second album. 6/10 Colosseum Transmissions: Live At The BBC REPERTOIRE Sixty tracks, more than six arduous hours, from the initial ‘69’-71 lineup of Graham Bond alumni Jon Hiseman and Dick Heckstall-Smith’s progressive fusion of blues-based rock and jazz. Nice. 6/10 Waysted…