Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Classic Rock

How many times does a freak accident change the course of hard rock history? Not all that often, I’d wager. But had a suspended ceiling in a Swiss casino not caught fire, then Deep Purple’s sixth studio album would have been a very different beast altogether. I’m referring, of course, to Machine Head, and its signature song Smoke On The Water. From page 56, discover the inside story on the making of a true classic, in the band’s own words. This month marks the 50th birthday of Led Zeppelin’s fifth album, so we’re celebrating it this issue. I mean, how on earth did they try to follow up Led Zeppelin IV? Turn to page 26 to find out… We also talk to The Answer (p38), who return with a new…

Mick Fleetwood says that Fleetwood Mac are “done” following the death of Christine McVie last November. Talking at the Grammy Awards, Mac’s drummer speculated that any future prospects for the band were “sort of unthinkable right now”. Twisted Sister played live for the first time since the band’s farewell tour six years ago when they performed three songs during their induction to the Metal Hall Of Fame. Raven, Lou Gramm and Chris Impelitteri were also honoured at the event. Despite Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain’s ongoing feud, Journey played in Oklahoma on January 27, their first show of 2023. The band continue to sue and counter-sue over alleged misappropriation of finances, and bicker about political issues, but the show rolls on. Public Image Ltd will not be representing Ireland at…

Dalton were a heavy prog band from Italy, who were active from ’72 to ’79, and released two albums and two singles. Riflessioni Idea D’infinito, their debut album, is a much-coveted rarity, having been initially released only in small quantities. At a time when the progressive scene in Italy was bursting with talented artists and releases, it was inevitable that many would go under the radar. Dalton were seemingly one of those, despite their longevity and obvious talent. Dalton’s bluesy hard-rock style had elements of Sabbath and Heep, and classical and folk leanings. Although very much a progressive album, it doesn’t stray too far down the mind-boggling avenues of technicality often associated with many Italian proggers of the period. Instead they deliver competent tunes, enhanced by use of Mellotron and…

Astonishing but true: Black Sabbath - The Ballet, a brand new setting for the music of Black Sabbath, begins a five-date run at Birmingham Hippodrome on September 23, with further bookings to be announced at Plymouth’s Theatre Royal and Sadler’s Wells in London. “I’d never imagined pairing Black Sabbath with ballet,” says former Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, “but it’s got a nice ring to it!” Iron Maiden, Soundgarden, Kate Bush, Willie Nelson, The White Stripes, Rage Against The Machine, Sheryl Crow and Joy Division/ New Order are among the eligible names to be inducted into the Hall Of Fame this year. The HOF recently issued a new ‘mission statement’, explaining that it “celebrates the sound of youth culture and honours the artists whose music connects us all”. Metallica (pictured) will…

“I’m taking my influences from people who’ve been influenced by the pioneers of blues.” Last summer, Laura Cox opened for Kiss in torrential rain. Lightning flashed through the downpour, leaving the French festival site flooded. For a while it looked as though no one would play, until organisers U-turned, and Cox and her band found themselves hastily unloading their gear in the mud, hoping they weren’t heading into mortal danger. Happily their set went well. Afterwards they legged it to shelter, leaving the crowd pumped for their headliners. Or at least that was the plan. But Kiss remained in their truck. “The fans were completely crazy,” Cox recalls. “And then the organisers came on stage saying: ‘Sorry, you can go home now.’” Moments like this reflect the whirlwind of change…

What the hell is wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about,” asserted Billy, Dennis Hopper’s wideeyed, mononymous antihero in search of America during a memorable scene in the groundbreaking 1969 road movie Easy Rider. Billy – along with Wyatt, his travelling companion, played by Peter Fonda – represents the hedonistic and rebellious cult of youth, endeavouring to survive in a straight and intolerant society. That Hopper, also the film’s director, chose to model his adventuring and idealistic character – complete with a drooping walrus moustache, shoulder-length hair and fringed jacket – on David Crosby was testament to the pervading influence the free-spirited countercultural icon held on a generation at the tail end of that revolutionary decade. When Easy Rider was released in July that year, Crosby, Stills &…

We’re back with our second Hot List of 2023! And what a list it is, showing once again that rock and its many tributaries are in excellent health, with the promise of more good things to come. In this month’s selection of hot-hot-hotness we’ve got brilliant blues, lush heartland, heavy disco grooves, southern rock, hard rock, original sounds, super-retro vibes and a lot that falls somewhere in between… We’re barely into spring and music-wise the year’s already looking pretty great. Plus almost all the artists covered over the next few pages have UK gigs in their diaries, so if you like what you find then keep your eyes peeled for dates near you. Check out more of the best new rock releases (and vote for your favourite in our Tracks…

Tragedy I Am Woman NAPALM NYC’s ‘disco metal’ tribute tweak a largely played out Dread Zeppelin/Me First template (reinterpreting classics from one genre with the riffs and clichés of another). A tired novelty that fails to maintain its limited appeal beyond track two. 4/10 George Hennessey If You Can’t Find What You’re Looking For Please Ask FACTORY 92 Remember that deluge of soundalike albums that absolutely nobody expected in the wake of Oasis’s overblown blizzard of cocaine über- Britpop minorpiece Be Here Now? Well, here it is. And, incredibly, it’s not at all bad. 7/10 The Telescopes Experimental Health WEISSKALT While haunted by the ghost of the band’s psych-pop past, this fourteenth album is deeper, darker, trippier. Recorded on “broken toys and cheap synths” by sole surviving ‘Scope Stephen Lawrie,…

UMR/EMI Five-CD or three-LP live radio rarities set shows the band’s complex evolution. During a touching 1972 rendition of The Musical Box, the song in which a girl decapitates a boy with a croquet mallet, only for him to be resurrected for a short time during which he begs for sexual intercourse until his nurse kills him (again), Genesis, moving fluidly from restraint to explosions, play with the confidence of a veteran band, although they’d just entered their twenties. What’s gratifying about this sumptuous set, a heartening addition to the group’s legacy, is how it honours and respects those early years as they sought identity, tangled up in vaguely kinky fables and fairy tales, and laid slabs of different genres side by side; late-career anthologies (and farewell tours) have tended…

SAM WILLIAMS Sam is one half of creative studio Magictorch. Based in Brighton, Magictorch began life in 1999 and have been keeping busy with illustration, motion design, design and all things in between ever since. Introduced to the mighty Led Zep from an early age, Sam was more than happy to try on a Hipgnosis hat for our feature opener (p27)! Check out magictorch.com for more of their work. PAUL BRANNIGAN For this issue Paul spoke to fellow County Down men The Answer about their comeback album Sundowners (p38). Paul has written books on Metallica, Eddie Van Halen, Dave Grohl and Lemmy, and recommends you spend this month’s pocket money on Supercluster by Therapy? frontman Andy Cairns’s new group JAAW, or Eliza Clark’s second novel Penance. SIMON HARPER Upon hearing…

Lisa Marie Presley February 1, 1968 – January 12, 2023 Singer and actor Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, has passed away at the age of 54 due to a cardiac arrest. Lisa Marie, who released three albums between 2003 and 2012, married (and divorced) Michael Jackson and then Nicolas Cage and was involved in many charity and humanitarian projects. At her memorial service, an emotional Axl Rose performed a solo piano rendition of Guns N’ Roses’ song November Rain. Floyd Sneed November 22, 1942 – January 27, 2023 The drummer who played with Three Dog Night in the 60s and 70s has died at the age of 80. Canadian Floyd Sneed was the only black man in Three Dog Night, who enjoyed 21 Billboard Top 40 hits.…

THE CO-COMPOSER of some of the best-loved songs in popular music, Barrett Strong has died of undisclosed cause. He was 81 years old. Along with writing partner Norman Whitfeld, who passed in 2008, Strong wrote a string of timeless hits that include Money (That’s What I Want), I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone, War and Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home). Those and other Strong and Whitfield songs were recorded by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Gladys Knight & The Pips and many more. Berry Gordy, whose company Motown Records handed the duo their big break, commented: “Barrett was not only a great singer and piano player, but he, along with his writing partner…

According to Billboard, Elton John’s farewell tour is officially the highest-earning tour of all time. Having commenced in September 2018 and due to end on July 8, it has so far grossed a staggering $818 million (£664 million). Elton’s final UK show will be headlining the Sunday at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. Phil Mogg is recovering well from a heart attack that caused the cancellation of a farewell tour for UFO. The 74-year-old singer revealed: “I have been yodelling at Brighton Electric Studios and finishing up some tunes for a Moggish [solo] album, an eccentric collection of songs that will be in my spring collection and which will put some lead in your pencil. Ho ho!” Ronnie Romero has revealed that after internet criticism of his performances as the singer…

TALKING POINTS “We tried to capture the loose cartoon Saturday-morning kids TV show-meets-Alice Cooper aspect of the band,” Manning says of the song’s video. With fruit and flowers flying out of top hats and the band dancing on what looks like the surface of Jupiter, it all “seemed fine on paper”. “That first visual announcement to the world suffers from our lack of being cultured in the world of video.” Or as guitarist Jason Falkner put it: “Some people were like: ‘This is amazing!’ But the majority were like: ‘These goofballs. What is this?’” Jellyfish were the right band at the wrong time. Their first single, The King Is Half-Undressed, in 1991, sounded like The Beatles, Queen and ELO rolled into one – a baroquerock blitz that should have made…

In drab, recession-hit Britain, 1973 paradoxically was the year of glam rock. Of boys who would be girls who would be boys cavorting on Top Of The Pops in tin-foil costumes, 12-inch stack-heels and trowelled-on make-up. All that glitter had come early for Led Zeppelin, however. Already the most glamourous rock group in the world, the astonishing planetdevouring success of their famously untitled fourth album, aka Led Zep IV, meant Zeppelin were also now the biggest. They had already been Number One in Britain and America simultaneously long before Bowie had acquired his lightning flash or Bolan had begun sticking stars on his funky little boat race. And it was Zeppelin who would release the most fabulously outré album of the year, one that perfectly summed up the joyous anything-goes…

Anew David Bowie was born on a beach near Hastings in the summer of 1980. Bowie was on location filming the video for Ashes To Ashes, the song that would become his second No.1 single, when something happened that, he said, profoundly changed him. Director David Mallet was filming Bowie as he walked up the beach dressed in the pierrot outfit he wore on the cover of Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), when an old man and his dog walked into shot. The director and crew yelled at the guy, asking him to get out of the way. The man – who probably walked there every day – was unfazed: “Screw you,” he said, “this is my beach”. So Bowie took a seat next to Mallet and waited for it…

Uriah Heep Reissues BMG Reissued as picture discs, Sweet Freedom (’73) and Return To Fantasy (’75) – despite bookending 1974’s middling Wonderworld – both capture Heep line-ups (the first with bassist Gary Thain, the second with John Wetton) in fine form, but Sweet Freedom has the edge. Both 7/10 John Lee Hooker Burnin’ CONCORD Mississippi’s King Of The Boogie alongside Motown’s legendary session players the Funk Brothers in the Detroit of ’61. Boom Boom is the timeless hit, but the rolling lilt of Lost A Good Girl is easily worth the price of 180-gram LP or stereo/mono two-CD admission. 7/10 The Barracudas Drop Out With The Barracudas LEMON A cult combination of 60s garage-punk and folk-tinged languid surfpsych, The Barracudas aspired to a jangling Byrdsian authenticity fatally out of step…

ANTHONY ‘TOP’ TOPHAM, the first guitarist with The Yardbirds, has lost a battle with dementia just two weeks after the death of one of his successors in that band, Jeff Beck. Topham was 75 years old when he passed away while surrounded by family. Born in Southall, just outside of London, Topham formed the pioneering British blues-rock band with singer Keith Relf, guitarist Chris Dreja bassist Paul Samwell- Smith and drummer Jim McCarty in May 1963, but under pressure from his parents – he was only 15 at the time – left five months later and was replaced by Eric Clapton. After leaving The Yardbirds, Topham played as a session musician and worked with Peter Green and Christine McVie, and in 1970 released his solo album Ascension Heights. After a…

“We make real music for real music people, and that’s it.” SINCE BLACKBERRY SMOKE first came to the UK a decade ago, several southern rock bands popular in continental Europe – including Whiskey Myers, The Cadillac Three and, more recently, Robert Jon & The Wreck – have looked to gain a foothold in the UK, with varying degrees of success. The latest hopefuls are five-piece Hillbilly Vegas, who last year made their British debut with a showcase in London to promote their good-time shit-kicking record The Great Southern Hustle. Hillbilly Vegas started out as a bunch of Oklahoma-based schoolmates before becoming a group in 2011. “My grandmother, a big fan of gospel music, passed away, and I got some friends together to record a gospel song as a present for…

R obert Fripp is difficult to get hold of. One of rock’s most idiosyncratic figures and one of the chief architects of progressive rock via King Crimson, he rarely gives interviews, and prompts a mix of memories from past and present bandmates. Today he’s the sole remaining founding member of Crimson, who recently were the subject of the compelling documentary film In The Court Of The Crimson King: King Crimson At 50. Now, with Crimson on another hiatus, Fripp has thrown himself into other things. Last year he reissued his 1979 solo album Exposure. He and wife Toyah Wilcox have continued to delight and confound with their Sunday Lunch streams; a surreal, unprecedented dive into the daft for a man with a reputation as serious, impenetrable. But where did it…

Band reunions are frequently daunting high-wire balancing acts as much for the fans as they are for the band. On the one hand, long-term supporters get to bask in the warmth of their youth; a reminder of days gone by when life was a long path stretching ahead and chores could always be put off until tomorrow. On the other, the band in question can line up one more pay day before bidding each other a final farewell. But what to make of those groups who want one more round in the studio? Will they add to their legacy, or fall to the floor by sullying it with substandard tosh that does no one any favours? As evidenced by 2019’s Psychedelic Paisley Soul – their first album in more than…

LEGACY RECORDINGS Historic singles collection from modern indie rock’s Big Bang. The initial run of singles from New York’s down-at-heel brat pack The Strokes is arguably among the greatest since The Beatles’, and in its own sphere had just as huge an impact. Landing in an over-produced and lacklustre 2000 alternative scene virtually indistinguishable from the mainstream, no-fi jives like The Modern Age and Last Nite – revisiting the raw NYC sonics of early Television and the new-wave vivacity of Blondie with a millennial insouciance – sounded like hookline dirty bombs bursting from an East Village basement, levelling the landscape. Within months, a new generation of 21st-century alt. rock culture was formed in their sharp image and at their compulsive pace. This box set of the 10 seven-inch singles released…

Ontheir 2009 debut album Feel The Steel, LA parody-metallers Steel Panther prowled into contention with a fistful of Sunset Strip riffs and #MeToo-baiting tales of Asian hookers and oral sex. Six albums later, the joke still hasn’t worn thin, thanks to the band’s deadly serious musicianship and, as guitarist Satchel reminds us, an appreciation for the giants of metal. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING My parents didn’t crank up music around the house. I got turned on to music by friends who had older brothers that were not afraid to smoke pot in front of them. They would say: “Hey, go into the closet, turn all the lights off and listen to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.” So we would listen to Black Sabbath in the closet until we got so…