Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i Classic Rock

WELCOME BACK Dan Reed Network The band return with a new album that Reed says is “a little more fun than our last couple of records”. DAN REED NETWORK: AMANDA ROSE/PRESS; ALEX LIFESON: RICHARD SIBBALD/PRESS; NODDY HOLDER: ALAMY Dan Reed Network’s fusion of hard rock with funk lasted three studio albums, including the acclaimed Slam, from their formation in ’84 to the band being put on ice in ’93. Frontman and main songwriter Dan Reed dropped off the map, then returned to begin a solo career. He regrouped the Network on New Year’s Eve in 2012. Talking to Classic Rock Reed previews a third post-reunion album, Let’s Hear It For The King, and a spring UK tour. Fifteen years ago, while you were living in a Buddhist monastery in India,…

NEWS The Royal Mail has announced a set of 12 Rolling Stones stamps to commemorate the band’s 60th anniversary. The Stones were the highest-earning touring act of 2021, pulling in more than £87 million despite playing just 12 dates of their No Filter tour. Vince Gill says the Eagles are not planning to make new music. “There doesn’t seem to be any kind of attempt at that, and I think that’s pretty healthy,” he revealed in a recent interview. The group’s last album, Long Road Out Of Eden, was released in 2007. David Lee Roth cancelled his recent sold-out residency in Las Vegas, billed as the last live shows ever from the former Van Halen frontman. Roth was also scheduled to appear at the House Of Blues at Mandalay on…

NEWS Frank Zappa’s 1971 run of shows at the Fillmore East in NYC and final Rainbow Theatre gig in London with his band The Mothers is to receive 50th-anniversary treatment with an eight-disc box set. The Mothers 1971 adds a considerable amount of previously unreleased live material, and is out on March 18 via Zappa Records/UMe. Bruce Springsteen has sold his entire back catalogue to Sony Music for $500 million (£364m) in the same month that the estate of David Bowie received £195m for ownership of the late singer’s 26-album catalogue. Over the past year a number of big-name artists including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks and Neil Young have cashed in on their back catalogue. Faith No More have cancelled all their shows for 2022, stating: “Unfortunately due…

DEAR PRUDENCE SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES 1983 First recorded by: The Beatles, 1968 Written by: John Lennon/Paul McCartney “Too damn catchy,” according to Siouxsie, but their take on the Beatles’ tune was a turning point. 1983’s Siouxsie And The Banshees, who were by now at their Top Of The Pops-friendly, chart-bothering commercial peak, already had form on The Beatles cover version front, having delivered their own assault on the White Album’s Helter Skelter (a proto-metal McCartney song tarnished/enhanced by its blameless association with Charles Manson) for their ’78 debut album The Scream. The decision to record Dear Prudence (written by Lennon in an attempt to encourage Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence out of self-imposed meditative seclusion back in ’68) was taken at a time of significant flux for the Banshees. Guitarist…

ALONE HEART 1987 First recorded by: i-Ten, 1983 Written by: Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg © UMG How a song filed away and forgotten about by its writers became one of the power ballads of the 80s. The late 80s produced more monumental power ballads per square inch than any other decade. And few power ballads were as monumental as Heart’s Alone. A towering, 12-tier wedding cake of a song accompanied by a leather-’n’-lace-heavy video that looked like it had been wrenched from the dreams of gothic novelist Anne Rice, this slab of baroque drama gave the Seattle band their biggest ever US hit, and sealed their resurgence following a career-threatening slump in the first half of the decade. But what most of the record buyers who helped propel the…

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT MANFRED MANN’S EARTH BAND 1976 First recorded by: Bruce Springsteen, 1973 Written by: Bruce Springsteen MANFRED MANN’S EARTH BAND: SHUTTERSTOCK; THE PRETENDERS: GETTYY Even a cover of an acclaimed songwriter’s song can ace the original. This is one of them. You couldn’t throw a stone in the 70s without hitting someone covering a Bruce Springsteen song. Everyone from Patti Smith and David Bowie to the Pointer Sisters and Southside Johnny And The Asbury Jukes plundered his catalogue of released and unreleased songs with varying degrees of commercial success. And then there was Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, whose cover of Springsteen’s 1973 debut single Blinded By The Light not only vastly outperformed the largely unnoticed original but, in hitting the top spot on the Billboard chart in…

THE HOLY GRAIL On March 10, 1968 at Winterland in San Francisco, Cream covered a Robert Johnson song. Today it is seen as one of the most magnificent four minutes of live rock ever recorded. Words: David Sinclair “ Eric Clapton, please, on vocals.” So ends the definitive live recording of Crossroads, signed off with a terse acknowledgement by Jack Bruce, bass player and primary singer with Cream, to a rising tide of applause. To the band it may well have been just another rendition of a song that had been in their live repertoire since their very first gig. But today that live version is recognised as one of the most magnificent live performances in the history of rock, an astonishing piece of collective, semi-improvised genius by Clapton, Bruce…

WALK THIS WAY RUN-DMC 1986 First recorded by: Aerosmith, 1975 Written by: Steven Tyler/Joe Perry An early rap/rock collision crossover and a major hit single, it influenced a generation of rappers. It was 22-year-old punk/metal/rock/rap aficionado Rick Rubin who encouraged Run-DMC to cover Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, rather than just sample it, on their third album, Raising Hell. But when the maverick producer played it for the rappers in full for the first time, Joseph Simmons (Run) and Darryl McDaniels (DMC) were outraged by what they perceived as redneck vocals and lyrics. Eventually they were coaxed by their DJ, the late, great Jason Mizell (Jam Master Jay) and Rubin. But both rappers were insistent it shouldn’t be a single. Instead, their preferred My Adidas was released as the album’s lead…

GOD GAVE ROCK AND ROLL TO YOU II KISS 1991 First recorded by: Argent (as God Gave Rock And Roll To You), 1973 Written by: Russ Ballard GETTY From divine origins to loud guitars (and Bill & Ted), its writer reflects on the song made into a megahit by Kiss. Written by Russ Ballard, recorded by Argent and introduced to a new generation of fans by Kiss, God Gave Rock And Roll To You owes its unusual title to a difficult US tour and a much-used saying favoured by Ballard’s mother. The guitarist and vocalist had suffered panic attacks during an American tour as a member of Argent, “possibly as a result of working too hard”, he theorises. Upon returning to the UK, over a period of around nine months…

LED ZEPPELIN VS MEMPHIS MINNIE Whose version of When The Levee Breaks is better? Words: Charles Shaar Murray GETTY The musical and cultural bloodline of Louisiana-born, Delta-raised Lizzie Douglas (1897–1973), better known to history as Memphis Minnie, runs through the veins of every woman who’s ever picked up a guitar and rocked the blues. A powerhouse singer, guitarist and songwriter whose raunch, skill and charisma challenged the male monopoly of down-home guitar blues, she was sufficiently formidable to best the majestic Big Bill Broonzy himself in blues contests held on his own Chicago turf. Bukka White rated her as “about the best thing goin’ in the woman line”. It’s therefore bitterly ironic that the song with which this pioneer is most frequently associated in the rock era is one she…

BLACK BETTY RAM JAM 1977 First recorded by: James ‘Iron Head’ Baker, 1933 Written by: Traditional A song without a writer, Ram Jam’s (or was it?) version was one of the memorable hits of 1977. Rock fans of the late 70s might have claimed her as their own, but in fact Black Betty was older than she seemed. In December 1933, the noted American ethnomusicologists John and Alan Lomax set up at Central State Farm in Texas – actually a prison where convicts produced sugar cane and cotton – to record an a-capella take by career criminal James ‘Iron Head’ Baker, which is believed to be the song’s first rendering. The 63-year-old couldn’t claim authorship of Black Betty, which had likely been hollered under the burning sun as an African-American…

AM I EVIL? ​METALLICA 1984 First recorded by: Diamond Head, 1980 Written by: Brian Tatler/Sean Harris GETTY Metallica gave a second life to what Lars Ulrich describes as “the Smoke On The Water of eighties metal songs”. In 1987, Brian Tatler was in the crowd at the Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, watching Metallica play Am I Evil?, a song he’d written for his former band Diamond Head almost a decade earlier. “My mate who was there with me tapped this guy on the shoulder, pointed at me and went: ‘He wrote this,’” says Tatler. “And the bloke looks at me for a second and goes: ‘Did he fuck’, and carried on headbanging.” Tatler recounts that story with amusement. He’s aware that Metallica’s version of Am I Evil?…

ALBUMS Scorpions On their first album in seven years, fires are still burning. Rock Believer UNIVERSAL Punk was meant to barge aside bands such as Scorpions, with their long hair, their album covers that even in the 70s raised eyebrows, their big riffs and their even bigger choruses. So, while we’re at it, was grunge, hair bands, industrial rock and the heritage circuit. No chance; the wind of change didn’t even ruffle what’s left of frontman Klaus Meine’s hair. Extraordinarily, 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Scorpions’ debut album, Lonesome Crow. Two 73-year-olds, Meine and rhythm guitarist Rudolf Schenker, have lasted the course, while Matthias Jabs, a young pup of 66, has been lead guitarist since 1979. Now comes Rock Believer, delayed by covid travel restrictions that detained bassist Pawel…

REISSUES Various Eddie Piller Presents British Mod Sounds Of The 1960s EDSEL Modcaster’s brilliant, near-definitive overview of an era’s sharpest sounds. Mod, a movement that attached enormous significance to how one buttoned one’s jacket, was and always will be about attention to detail. Sure, it’s a broad church, but you don’t want to be getting things wrong. You’ve got to know your stuff. Which is why the lack of exacting, precisely detailed sleeve-notes here is something of a surprise. There are songwriter credits attached to each of its painstakingly curated 100 selections, in a glossy, handsomely illustrated accompanying booklet, but no personnel details – a huge omission when you consider the illustrious latter careers of many of the artists included. While tracks are datestamped with year of release, many only…

BUYER’S GUIDE Kevin ‘Caveman’ Shirley The in-demand, classic rock-loving South African is arguably the 21st century’s leading producer for the best music. While he’s best known for being Iron Maiden’s producer for the past two decades, Kevin Shirley is the ultimate classic rock sound guru, having worked across hard rock, blues rock, classic heavy metal, and prog. His love of Deep Purple, Free and Bad Company was the catalyst for his formation of the supergroup Black Country Communion; he’s produced Journey, Aerosmith and The Black Crowes; he engineered and mixed Led Zeppelin’s How The West Was Won live album and their self-titled DVD; he’s produced even more albums for Joe Bonamassa than he has for Iron Maiden. Nicknamed The Caveman, his Hulk-like figure with unkempt hair has now been hunched…

BACK TO LIVE The Sheepdogs With the Canadian retro-rockers set to tour the UK, we catch up with frontman Ewan Currie. MAT DUNLAP/PRESS “[The upcoming album] is more streamlined, and it’s much more rock’n’roll.” Things had been building nicely for The Sheepdogs in the UK, building their profile with tours alongside The Temperance Movement and Rival Sons, and some well-received headline dates promoting their sixth album, 2018’s Changing Colours, and then… well, you know what came along. Now they’re finally packing their bags to arrive here in February. For a band who earn their living on the road, lockdown must have been catastrophic. It was, but we run our business pretty smartly and we survived. Since I became a touring musician in my early twenties, this was the longest time…

Alex Lifeson’s New Project Ex-Rush guitarist announces new band, album and single. Alex Lifeson has announced details of his new band. Joining the former Rush guitarist in Envy Of None are ex-Coney Hatch bassist Andy Curran, frontwoman Maiah Wynee and guitarist/keyboard player Alfio Annibalini. Their self-titled debut will be released on April 8 via Kscope, preceded by the single Liar. Lifeson says of vocalist Wynne: “When we say she’s special, it’s because she’s really fucking special. Maiah became my muse. After hearing her vocals on Never Said I Love You, I felt so excited. I’ve never had that kind of inspiration working with another musician.” The album’s song Western Sunset is a tribute to Rush drummer Neil Peart, who died in 2020. “I visited Neil when he was ill,” Lifeson…

WELCOME BACK Helen Love Twenty years and 10 albums in, approved by John Peel and Joey Ramone, maybe it’s time you gave them a little love. HELEN LOVE: ALISON WONDERLAND/PRESS Since forming in 1992, Helen Love have built an enthusiastic cult following over the course of 10 albums and countless singles. Blending bubblegum pop-punk with sheer Ramones-devoted exuberance, the three-piece have seen their Peelfavoured songs covered by Ash and The Queers, while vocalist/guitarist Helen even got to sing with Joey Ramone himself. We caught up with her… How did your background shape you? I’ve been in Swansea since I was ten. It was safe and quite comfortable. Sunday school, Brownies, the social club, going to the football with my dad. Skateboarding. I knew even at that young age Swansea was…

WELCOME BAKE Spoon Almost 20 years into their career, the band return with album number 10 and a playlist that helped inspire it. SPOON: OLIVER HALFIN/PRESS; RONNIE JAMES DIO: KEVIN NIXON The title of Spoon’s latest album, Lucifer On The Sofa, makes you wonder about frontman Britt Daniel’s house guests. “I loved that line when it popped out, but wasn’t sure what it meant,” he says with a laugh. “I later figured out it was a conversation with myself. It represented the worst of me that can come out in times of stress and anxiety.” Like so many other bands, Spoon had to find creative workarounds during the pandemic lockdowns. The result is a record that channels that stress and anxiety into 10 taut, hooky songs. We caught up with…

UNDER THE COVERS Ranging from almost Xerox copies to barely recognisable complete restylings of other people’s songs, we look at the culture of the cover version, and what actually constitutes a cover. Words: Bill DeMain David Bowie once said: “To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.” He was probably speaking for many. All rock musicians are rock fans first. And what better way to show that you’re a fan than to cover a song by a favourite artist? When you’re starting out, a cover is a means of identification – like wearing a rock T-shirt. A way to say: “This is what I love, this is who I am.” More practically, doing a cover is a way to learn how successful songs are put together,…

THE GREEN MANALISHI (WITH THE TWO PRONG CROWN) JUDAS PRIEST 1978 First recorded by: Fleetwood Mac, 1970 Written by: Peter Green GETTY Replacing power with energy, Priest turned an already classic song into a classic track of their own. Judas Priest always knew the appeal of an unexpected cover, whether delivering a barely recognisable version of folkie Joan Baez’s Diamonds And Rust, or transforming Spooky Tooth’s blues-rock chugger Better By You, Better Than Me into a razoredged metal anthem. But it was their gleaming update of Fleetwood Mac’s malevolent 1970 single The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown) that crowned Priest the kings of the metalised cover version. The part the original, Peter Green-led Fleetwood Mac played in the development of what would become heavy metal has never properly…

STOP YOUR SOBBING THE PRETENDERS 1979 First recorded by: The Kinks, 1964 Written by: Ray Davies A song about a girlfriend, it was covered by someone who then became its writer’s girlfiend. The Pretenders’ take on The Kinks’ Stop Your Sobbing is far from being the only cover to be praised by the person who wrote the original. But it’s possibly the only one that led to a romantic relationship between people involved in each version. Buried towards the back of their 1964 debut album Kinks, Stop Your Sobbing swapped the feral proto-metal roar of their You Really Got Me for sunny beat-pop. But as with so many great Ray Davies songs, there was an undercurrent of melancholy to it. In his offbeat, semi-fictionalised autobiography X-Ray, Davies suggested the song…

ROCKIN’ ALL OVER THE WORLD STATUS QUO 1977 First recorded by: John Fogerty, 1975 Written by: John Fogerty GETTY At first it divided Quo fans – and the band – but it soon became a live favourite and an everyone-knows-it track. On Saturday 13 July, 1985, Status Quo opened the biggest concert in history, Live Aid, with a cover version they had made their own almost a decade before. Standing on stage in front of 80,000 people packed into the old Wembley Stadium, the boogie-rock veterans kicked off with Rockin’ All Over The World – a song that seemed to sum up the grand reach of this unprecedented event. “Nobody wanted to go on first, so we went: ‘Fuck it, we’ll do it – get the fuck on, get the…

Breaking The Law A song written in the late 1950s, I Fought The Law took on a new and decidedly grittier life when The Clash put their stamp on it in 1979. Songwriter Sonny Curtis tells all. Words: Henry Yates There’s a gathering thrub of drums. An anticipatory pick scrape. Then that deathless guitar riff, as urgent and insistent as a fire alarm. For those who heard it first on The Clash’s 1979 EP The Cost Of Living, I Fought The Law surely could only have been forged in the crucible of British punk. But for anyone who leaned in and listened, Joe Strummer’s opening line betrayed the song’s true provenance: ‘Breaking rocks in the hot sun.’ The reality is that I Fought The Law had been written two decades…

GLORIA PATTI SMITH 1975 First recorded by: Them, 1964 Written by: Van Morrison GETTY x2 More a rewrite than a cover, Smith’s nevertheless powerful version retains little of the original. It seems as if there was very little forethought or enthusiasm when Patti Smith decided to cover Gloria, the bawdy slice of primitive teenage braggadocio that Van Morrison had written in the not-soinnocent days of the summer of 1963, leading up to his eighteenth birthday. Recorded while fronting Them, his was a straight recitation of events, without frills, with a slightly menacing beat, his ragged, scratchy vocals full of innuendo and proud lust in the crowing tale of a nocturnal assignation with a girl. Already a garage rock anthem by the time it appeared on Them’s debut album Angry Young…

SINCE YOU BEEN GONE RAINBOW 1979 First recorded by: Russ Ballard, 1976 Written by: Russ Ballard MAIN: GETTY; INSET: AVALON How Rainbow took its writer’s “soft” original and turned it into a punchy rock classic. Having quit the band Argent two years earlier, Russ Ballard had hoped that a second solo album would ignite his solo career. Winning, released in 1976, did bring attention to several of Ballard’s songs, although little of it under his own name; Santana covered its title track on their album Zebop!, the Bay City Rollers re-recorded Are You Cuckoo? and Roger Daltrey borrowed Just A Dream Away for the score of the film McVicar in which he starred. But it was Since You Been Gone that cemented Ballard’s reputation as a go-to songwriter to take…

CASH CONVERTERS Johnny Cash doing a version of industrialists Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt was nothing if not unlikely. But then the iconic Man In Black was no stranger to recording unlikely cover versions. Words: Bill DeMain Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt never should have worked. Even Cash had his doubts at first. “When I heard the record, I said: ‘I can’t do that song. It’s not my style,” he said. But after four successful albums with Rick Rubin, he trusted the producer’s sometimes left-field instincts. Rubin had already introduced him to songs by Soundgarden and Tom Waits, and sensed that the Nine Inch Nails ballad Hurt might unlock something deeply personal in the singer. He told Cash: “Just read the lyrics. If you like the lyrics, then we’ll find a…

ELOISE THE DAMNED 1986 First recorded by: Barry Ryan, 1968 Written by: Paul Ryan GETTY How the punk godfathers turned a 60s ballad into something more manic. Ten years into their tumultuous career, The Damned had already metamorphosed into a different beast from that which released punk’s first single, New Rose. Guitarist Brian James had left, bass player Captain Sensible had become guitarist Captain Sensible and left, while drummer Rat Scabies and vocalist Dave Vanian had both left and come back again. By 1986 the latter pair were fronting a noticeably different version of The Damned (completed by bassist Bryn Merrick and guitarist Roman Jugg): epic, psychedelic and signed, to MCA. Their ’85 album Phantasmagoria had supplied them with their highest album chart position to date (No.11), and three singles…

American IDOL As his all-conquering single American Pie passes its halfcentury, Don McLean recalls a childhood dogged by illness, getting a foot in the folk scene, the struggle to get signed, and keeping the folk flame burning in the wake of 2020’s civil unrest. Words: Jo Kendall GETTYW With its evocative but obscure lyrics rooted in 1950s nostalgia, politics and romance, American Pie was one of the dominant sounds of the 70s, and brought previously little-known songwriter Don McLean worldwide fame at the age of 26. The song – covered over the years by artists as diverse as the Brady Bunch, Killdozer, “Weird Al” Yankovic and, most famously, Madonna – and the self-titled album it comes from turned 50 last October, and McLean is preparing for a celebratory 2022 tour,…

Slash Ft. Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators Fourth from Slash and co. sounds more like a band and less like the sum of the parts. 4 GIBSON RECORDS/BMG A word of advice: don’t listen to this album through laptop speakers, and for god’s sake don’t play it through your phone (or at least not the first time). These days that’s a less common prerequisite than you may think – even ‘proper rock records’ are now usually mixed with lo-fi, portable platforms in mind. Which is perfectly fine. Being a music fan isn’t always about spinning deluxe editions on high-spec equipment. That said, there’s something very appealing about 4’s old-school values. All rich, roomy tones, captured live in Nashville’s RCA Studios, it benefits from being listened to on a decent sound…

ROUND-UP: MELODIC ROCK By Dave Ling Kissin’ Dynamite Not The End Of The Road NAPALM Rising stars in their native Germany, Kissin’ Dynamite have made admirable progress since meeting in the early noughties as schoolkids. Educated by the music of their parents, the fivesome gorged on English acts such as Maiden and Priest but also GN’R, the Crüe, Bon Jovi and AC/DC, whose album Blow Up Your Video was the source of their name. Not The End Of The Road is Kissin’ Dynamite’s seventh full-length album, and following the Top 10 success of 2018’s Ecstasy, having left Metal Blade for Napalm Records, plenty must rest on the fortunes of this follow-up. There’s still something unavoidably unconventional about them. Perhaps it’s the fact that English isn’t their native tongue. And despite…

REISSUES Hawkwind Dust Of Time: An Anthology 1969-2021 / Sonic Attack 40th Anniversary ESOTERIC Space-rock and so much more. You have it all here. Sonic Attack, reissued for its 40th anniversary on blue vinyl and with a bonus blue vinyl seven-inch (the turbulent fury of Angels Of Death b/w Transdimensional Man) is space-rock maestros Hawkwind at their most psychotically deranged, tripped-out and futuristic and deep into the bowels of how society is controlled via language (thus presaging 2021 neatly). The opening, Michael Moorcock-written title track sets the scene: the howl of betrayed generations fighting for air, like a devolved version of Peter Porter’s post-apocalyptic poem Your Attention Please!, cacophonous and distorted and chaotic. The 81-track, six-CD retrospective Dust Of Time is as fulsome and monolithic and progressive and spaced-out and…

BACK TO LIVE Wilko Johnson & John Otway They might play different musical styles, but, as Johnson says: “We go all-out to entertain.” WILKO: GETTY “I stopped feeling like a musician any more. I was just some old geezer stuck away in a room.”Wilko Johnson Wilko Johnson was a co-founder of the original Dr Feelgood, and left the band in 1977. Three years later he joined Ian Dury’s Blockheads, after which he pursued a solo career. In 2013 he was given months to live due to pancreatic cancer, but was reprieved after doctors removed a tumour. As he prepares to get back on the road, supported by John Otway, we caught up with both of them. This tour was originally planned for February 2021. Hopefully it won’t get cancelled again.…

NEWS In the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list, Elton John’s songwriting partner Bernie Taupin was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) for his contribution to music. Taupin wrote the words for almost all of Elton’s albums from 1970 to the present, having teamed up with him after answering a ‘talent wanted’ advert in a newspaper. Organised by his brother Edgar, a new all-star album pays tribute to the revered blues guitarist Johnny Winter, who died in 2014. Brother Johnny, released on April 15 via Quarto Valley Records, includes guest appearances from Billy Gibbons, Joe Bonamassa, Warren Haynes and Steve Lukather, among others. Spencer Elden, who as a naked baby appeared on the cover of Nirvana’s album Nevermind, has re-filed his lawsuit against the band, after lawyers representing them…

MY FIRST LOVE Montrose MONTROSE By Luke Morley The Thunder guitarist on a “close to perfect hard rock” album. “I remember exactly where I was standing in the Saxon Tavern, Bellingham, South London one Friday night in 1976 when I first heard Space Station #5. I had to find out who it was. “The next day, I tried to buy the album but couldn’t find it anywhere on my manor, so I jumped on a train into town and found a copy in a little shop in Soho. I played the album to death. “There’s nothing too self-indulgent, just blues-tinged vocals, big guitars and drums and, most importantly, songs you can remember. From opener Rock The Nation through to the end of the closing track Make It Last, the album…

AIN’T NO LOVE IN THE HEART OF THE CITY WHITESNAKE 1978 First recorded by: Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, 1974 Written by: Michael Price and Dan Walsh GETTY x2 Guitarist Bernie Marsden recalls how Whitesnake made the song their own with a killer live version. Bernie Marsden knew Whitesnake were on to a winner with their cover of Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City the very first time they played it. It was 1978, and the guitarist and his bandmates had just laid down the slow-burning version of R&B singer Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s four-year-old single that would appear on their debut Snakebite EP. Now they were debuting it in public. “There were three hundred or four hundred people there,” Marsden recalls of the show, “and two hundred of those…

THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE 1997 First recorded by: Bruce Springsteen, 1995 Written by: Bruce Springsteen GETTYI A song of hardship, it’s easy to see why the LA politicos were inspired to cover it. It was November 1995, and at first glance The Ghost Of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen’s eleventh album, was dead on arrival (it was his first release for two decades to not make the US Top 5). Yet the record hadn’t passed entirely without ripples. “I was a huge fan,” Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello told Classic Rock in 2014. “It was my favourite record for a long time. I think I gave the CD to Zack [De La Rocha, RATM singer] for Christmas that year.” You could see why the…

HALLELUJAH JEFF BUCKLEY 1994 First recorded by: Leonard Cohen, 1984 Written by: Leonard Cohen GETTY With his extraordinary and extraordinarily affecting cover, Buckley polished something lustrous to even more so. For better or worse, there’s an argument that the song Hallelujah belongs to everybody now, with some 300 documented versions spanning from the histrionics of X Factor belter Alexandra Burke to the mannered balladry of John Cale. But in the end only two versions really matter: the original, on its writer Leonard Cohen’s Various Positions album of 1984 that gave the song life, and Jeff Buckley’s spellbinding one-man tour de force, released a decade later on Grace, that still forces all else into the background. Hallelujah was obviously an itch to scratch for Cohen, who drafted 80-some verses and tortured…

JETT POWERED Topping charts around the world, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts’ I Love Rock ’N’ Roll was a huge rock single of the 80s, with its basic but instantly recognisable monster riff. But you’d be forgiven for not knowing it was a cover version. Words: Dave Ling The opening of I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll – an international smash for Joan Jett & The Blackhearts in 1982, topping the US singles chart for eight weeks – is among rock music’s simplest but most memorable guitar riffs. But uncertainty surrounds the identity of the song’s true composers. Former Runaways guitarist Joan Jett had first heard the song seven years before she had a hit with it, when the London-based US/UK group The Arrows performed it on their TV series Arrows.…

LITTLE WING STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN & DOUBLE TROUBLE 1991 First recorded by: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967 Written by: Jimi Hendrix GETTY x2I Only a special Hendrix cover can sit comfortably alongside the original. This is a rare one that does. In 1966, an unknown New York sideman with R&B duo The Icemen started embellishing a song called (My Girl) She’s A Fox with some ear-pricking guitar shapes. Jimi Hendrix – for it was he – already had the seeds of Little Wing. But he was not about to rush it. Something about the studious way the guitarist constructed Little Wing – first the piano-style voicings, his thumb fretting the bass strings; then a lyric personifying the vibe of the Monterey Pop Festival; finally, the intricate version recorded at London’s…

HUSH DEEP PURPLE 1968 First recorded by: Billy Joe Royal, 1967 Written by: Joe South GETTY It’s a staple of Purple’s live sets, but the uber-catchy Hush was first sung by an American country artist. Aracing pulse, shrieking organ fills, impossibly catchy chorus… Hush blasted out of speakers in the summer of 1968, taking the newly formed Deep Purple into the upper reaches of the US chart. First recorded by American country-soul singer Billy Joe Royal, who’d been gifted the song by his friend Joe South, Hush came to define early Purple in its mercurial fusion of psychedelic R&B and hard-nosed rock. Purple’s Hush might not have happened at all, had it not been for Vanilla Fudge’s epic revamp of a Motown classic the previous year. “Vanilla Fudge had covered…

MAMA TOLD ME NOT TO COME THREE DOG NIGHT 1970 First recorded by: Eric Burdon, 1967 Written by: Randy Newman How an unremarkable original that no one knew was turned into a party anthem everyone knows. Rarely has a cover inverted every single thing about the original as much as Three Dog Night’s version of Mama Told Me Not To Come. Written by one of America’s greatest songwriters as an ironic commentary on LA’s hedonistic party scene, it was turned into one of the party anthems of the early 70s. Randy Newman was a rising songwriter when he came up with this tale of a straightlaced stiff who has ended up at a dissolute soirée he can’t wait to get away from. Animals frontman Eric Burdon recorded it first, bellowing…

HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE BLONDIE 1978 First recorded by: The Nerves, 1976 Written by: Jack Lee GETTY x2A With a slick version of the rougher original, Blondie made the song their own and an era classic. As with The Paragons’ 1967 rocksteady tune The Tide Is High, which Blondie also covered, Hanging On The Telephone is also often mistaken as a Blondie composition. The original version was released in 1976 by pioneering power-pop-punk trio The Nerves as part of their sole release, a four-track EP on LA’s Bomp! Records, a label with a rich archive of proto-punk releases whose impressive roster included Iggy & The Stooges, The Germs, Devo and Stiv Bators & The Dead Boys, among others. The Nerves were short-lived. They were fronted by vocalist/guitarist Jack Lee, who…

THE SONGS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ Thousands have bitten off Bob Dylan‘s catalogue, but only a few covers of his songs have become immortal. From The Byrds to Guns N’ Roses, via Jimi Hendrix’s unimpeachable All Along The Watchtower, we look at the covers where the students eclipsed the master. Words: Henry Yates All roads lead back to Bob Dylan. On countless albums since 1962, across any genre, you can find that hallowed surname in the credits. Crunch the numbers – his catalogue of 600-plus songs is eclipsed by more than 6,000 covers – and you’ll start to grasp why the Universal Music Group paid the 80-year-old songwriter a reported £225 million for his publishing rights in 2020. After all, to own Dylan’s originals is not a goldmine to be sniffed…

HEROES, JUST FOR ONE DAY For one night only in 1997, David Bowie and personally invited stars celebrated his 50th birthday with a show at Madison Square Garden. Here’s how the stardust was sprinkled… Words: Niall Doherty Throughout the 90s, David Bowie embarked on an era of course correction. He had come dangerously close to comfort zone territory in the previous decade, and the thought of playing out the classics as a nostalgia act for the rest of his days sprang him into action. Over five albums from 1993 to 1999, Bowie got back to his forward-thinking, progressive best, experimenting with drum ’n’ bass, jungle, industrial soundscapes, jazz, electrorock and more. He was the king of reinvention once more. Amid the audacious march forward, though, there was one night when…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder Sonny Vincent Snake Pit Therapy HTTPS://SONNYVINCENTTESTORS.BANDCAMP.COM Sonny Vincent is a goddamn legend. The dude was playing Stooges-style punk skronk as far back as 1971, and his mid-70s New York City band The Testors were the unsung heroes of the CBGB scene. Like Johnny Thunders, Vincent has kept various incarnations of his band alive for decades, and he’s released dozens of albums along the way. Last year he formed the hard rock supergroup The Limit with doom champ Bobby Leibling, and hot on the heels of their debut comes this brand new Testors album, their first in seven years. Featuring former Stooges bass player Jimmy Recca in this tight, agile line-up, Snake Pit Therapy is a full-on stunner of first-wave New York punk rock fury. Vincent’s snarly…

ALBUMS Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam singer embraces rock stardom on third solo album. Earthling SEATTLE SURF/REPUBLIC For a moment back there it looked like we’d lost Eddie Vedder to the ukulele. The Pearl Jam singer began learning to play this most divisive of stringed instruments sometime in the mid-90s, initially as a joke. By the time of his 2011 solo album, Ukulele Songs, things had become serious. One of the most distinctive voices in rock had become the grunge George Formby. Vedder’s third solo album proper is no less surprising, but for entirely different reasons. Where Ukulele Songs seemed designed to keep the singer’s A-list fame at arm’s length, Earthling finds him fully leaning into it. This is a mainstream rock record by a man who has spent a career…

STUFF BOOKS & DVDs Manic Street Preachers: Album By Album A fans’-eye exploration of Britain’s most scholarly band. Edited by Marc Burrows PEN & SWORD Since their earliest days, Manic Street Preachers have inspired a different kind of fandom to that of most artists. As Catherine Anne Davies, aka Welsh musician The Anchoress, points out in her thoughtful foreword to this book, they have acted as teachers and trusted librarians to their army of eyeliner-smeared followers, as well as a thrillingly smart, eloquent, riotous, combative, sensitive, beautiful and unique band to idolise. With this in mind, journalist Marc Burrows has taken a different approach to the music biography, presenting the Manics’ vast and dramatic history – from their schooldays in Blackwood to their status today as British rock’s elder statesmen…

INTERVIEWS The Zombies The reunited makers of Odessey & Oracle are back on the road. Frontman Colin Blunstone previews a new tour and album (eventually) from the reunited band originally formed in the 60s.Last September The Zombies returned to Abbey Road, birthplace of the band’s celebrated Odessey & Oracle album, for a live streamed concert. What memories and emotions did that stir up? It triggered so, so many memories. Besides working there with The Zombies, I did my first three solo albums at Abbey Road. Odessey & Oracle was made in Studio Three more than fifty years ago, but at times it felt just like yesterday. It made me quite emotional. Will that performance, which had Paul Weller among its guests, ever be released officially? I’m not absolutely sure. There…