Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2023 i Classic Rock

There comes a point in every Hollywood superhero tale when it’s time to tell their origin story: how did Batman come to be? How did Spider-Man’s odyssey begin? Well, this month it’s the turn of those rock superheroes Queen. To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the release of their debut album Queen, we trace the route (involving the No.9 bus, no less) that Brian May, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor and John Deacon took to begin to make their mark on the world and bring that first record to fruition (p30). And while we’re talking Queen, we also talked to Brian May about his collaboration with Eddie Van Halen on the Star Fleet Project album, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. During the making this issue, the sad news…

British singer Linda Lewis, who sang with David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam – has died peacefully at home at the age of 72. Born Linda Ann Fredericks, Londoner Lewis, who was kown for having a five-octave vocal range, provided backing vocals for a string of top artists as well as having a solo career, in which she had a hit with her 1975 version of the Cherpopularised It’s In His Kiss. Yusuf/Cat Stevens commented: “I’m so sorry to hear of Linda’s passing. She was a good soul-friend and fine artist. What a voice!” Joan Armatrading also released a statement, saying: “I’m so sad to hear of the death of Linda Lewis. She had a beautiful voice and was a really lovely person.” Lewis married former Family and Cockney…

With 2024 marking the 50th anniversary of the debut album from Rush, some fans are hoping that the band’s two surviving members, bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson, could find a way of working together again. The idea gained traction when former Coney Hatch bassist Andy Curran, a former bandmate of Lifeson in Envy Of None, was asked about such a possibility. “I’m going to answer that in two ways,” Curran replied. “I hope they do [reunite] as a Rush fan. There’s a lot of race left in both of those horses. Those guys are extremely creative… I would be shocked if they didn’t do something together; that’s maybe the hopeful side of me.” He added: “I think [they are] enjoying being their own guys with a bit of…

“All the songs come from a place of hurt or experience, so it’s a therapy thing.” Upcoming guitarist, singer and songwriter Ashley Sherlock recently toured Germany as part of a package tour for his label Ruf Records. “It was beautiful,” he tells Classic Rock. “We were playing to clubs of 250-400 people a night, and what they were talking to me about was the songs, the songwriting. It’s been awesome to have that feedback from people whose first language isn’t necessarily English. They still understand, they still clap in the same parts.” Affable Manchester lad Sherlock can belt out an emotional tune and wield a Gibson with the best of them. So many German gig goers told him his guitar style reminded them of Rory Gallagher that it became a…

“Sir, are you married?” asked Marianne, a pupil in Mr May’s mathematics class. “Sir, if you’re married, why doesn’t your wife iron your shirts?” she added, giggling. Marianne Elliott-Said attended Stockwell Manor School in Brixton. It was spring 1972. Queen were making slow progress, so Brian May took a student teacher’s job while he worked on his PhD. Marianne and her friends liked Mr May. He looked a bit like Mick Robertson from children’s TV show Magpie, and sometimes brought his guitar to class. He lived with his future wife, Chrissie, in a bedsit with limited space for ironing clothes. “Brian was a very good teacher,” Marianne recalled, decades later. “But he used to come in with his long hair and holes in his shoes, and we used to tease…

LBUMS Kicking out the jams. As it similarly affected so many artists, the pandemic lockdown temporarily curtailed Gov’t Mule’s gigging schedule, a grievous blow for the kings of the jam band scene. So they decided to put some serious effort into recording and checked into the Power Station in New England for an extended stay. Within a week they had decided to make two unrelated albums, and set up in two rooms, each with its own equipment and instruments. They then proceeded to switch between the two at will. Heavy Load Blues was released in 2021 and does pretty much what the title suggests. Now comes Peace… Like A River, which is a song-based collection and harks back to their 2017 release Revolution Come… Revolution Go, which they started recording…

REISSUES When it came to the application of a preferred gender pronoun, it made things a lot easier for the broadly baffled early 70s zeitgeist, when faced by early (largely inconclusive) press shots that Alice Cooper were a ‘they’. Kohl-caked Coop singular, staggering about on heels and wearing that most gender-neutral of all garments, the straitjacket, made for a confusing spectacle, and audiences were more than ready to dismiss both singer and collective entity as a hype-driven gimmick with way more hair than strictly necessary. Until, that is, they heard Killer. The Coopers’ second album of ’71 was their fourth in all, and second with producer Bob Ezrin. Learning on the job, getting to know and capitalise on the band’s strengths, Ezrin distilled the essence of their Love It To…

Queen guitarist’s long-lost 1983 mini-album gets lovingly dusted down. That Queen guitarist and avid astronomer Brian May looked to the stars for his first solo project was no surprise. That the resultant three-track minialbum was inspired by a Japanese kids’ sci-fi TV show starring Gerry Anderson-style puppets and featured fellow guitar hero Eddie Van Halen was more of a curve ball. Released in 1983 and credited to Brian May + Friends, the original Star Fleet Project release is an overlooked curiosity in the extended Queen discography. The main song is a faithful, if elongated, eight-minute cover of the TV show’s closing theme, featuring vocals from May and some impressive guitar tag-teaming from the him and Van Halen. The two other tracks head off in a completely different direction: Let Me…

★ It’s difficult to know where to look. Metallica are running around a ring-shaped stage in the centre of Amsterdam’s Johan Cruyff Arena, with the majority of the 71,000-strong audience outside it; several hundred lucky punters are inside the coveted ‘snake pit’ area, within touching distance of the band. Eight towers surround them, capped by video screens. As far as metal shows go, this is big. It’s the first date of the quartet’s M72 world tour, in support of 72 Seasons, their eleventh album, on which they’ll play two shows per city, each with a different set-list and different support bands. Tonight they open with Orion, Master Of Puppets’ much-loved instrumental track, and James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett end it with a brotherly fist bump, setting the tone for an…

★ Plainride offer a perfectly fine – if slightly pedestrian – take on Black Stone Cherry-like southern rock via Nickelback, but invariably the band’s brightest moments come when they ditch the placid radio rock and break into epic cosmic jams. Appearing amid a green haze, Corrosion Of Conformity bassist Mike Dean leads the band through a Sabbath-flavoured Bottom Feeder to kick off their headline set, building in intensity until the arrival of Pepper Keenan sees the group launch into a jetfuelled Paranoid Opioid. From there it’s a master class in stoner via heavy-metal maximalism, the likes of Shake Like You, Diablo Blvd. and Wiseblood delivering a colossal din of careening riffs, wailing guitar leads and thunderous drum fills. Even slow burners 13 Angels and Albatross don’t feel so much like…

GETTY It’s clear that appearing at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall, more than half a century into one of pop’s most enduring and unique careers, marks a significant wish fulfilled for Sparks’ Ron and Russell Mael. It’s clear because Russell keeps telling us so, recalling how the self-confessed Anglophile Californian brothers – relocated in England to record their ’74 Kimono My House breakthrough album – would often walk past the imposing edifice “where the big bands played” and dream of one day gracing its stage. On this second of two successive nights, Sparks are in astonishing form, rising to the momentous occasion to deliver a show that surpasses all expectations. They are no mere heritage act; tonight they showcase seven songs from The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte, an…

“This is a big-ass venue, fucking hell!” observes David Damiano. “Very good to be here, let’s make it memorable.” These neo-glam sex-rock gladiators certainly deliver balls-out mega-sized spectacle. Two years after many dismissed them as a short-lived Eurovision novelty, the Italian quartet are bigger than ever, with Top 10 albums and streaming figures in the billions; this orgy of party-metal anthems, feather boas and irony-free leather trousers sold out in minutes. Across two hours of melodrama, Måneskin play more solid pop-metal bangers than full-blooded anthems. Even so, they deliver passion and showmanship by the bucketload, all boosted by a dazzling high-tech light show. However slick and melodic their albums may sound, they also rock like bastards live, with guitarist Thomas Raggi fully flexing his maximalist grunge-metal muscles on explosive shredding…

During the nu-metal comedown of the late 90s, for anyone who had forgotten what a ‘proper’ Californian rock band was supposed to sound like, Buckcherry were on hand to remind them. The band’s sleazy anthemics drove breakout hits such as Lit Up, and their feral singer Josh Todd was briefly in the frame to front the project that became Velvet Revolver. That never happened, but Todd cleaned up and kept on, steering Buckcherry through a 10-album catalogue. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING Once a week, my mother put on music to clean the house, and my sister and I would play while she vacuumed. One of the first records I remember hearing was Rod Stewart, Blondes Have More Fun. I remember looking at the record cover and thinking this…

Jon Povey August 20, 1942 – May 9, 2023 Between 1967 and 2007, Jon Povey had four spells as keyboard player and backing vocalist with The Pretty Things. He played organ, sitar, Mellotron and percussion as well as singing on their celebrated 1968 album SF Sorrow, one of the first ever rock operas. Povey had fought a brave battle with cancer, which he believed he had won, but sadly, those hopes would prove false. He was 80 years old. Tim Bachman August 1, 1951 – April 28, 2023 Born in Winnipeg, along with his brothers Randy (guitar, vocals) and drummer Robbie, who died in January, Tim Bachman was a co-founder of Canadian heavyweights Bachman-Turner Overdrive (the line-up was completed by bassist Fred Turner). He left BTO in 1974, and did…

Bryan Adams and Michael Des Barres are among those who have lauded the singer-songwriter who wrote If You Could Read My Mind, Sundown and The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, following his death at 84. Gordon Lightfoot’s best-loved song, the folk classic If You Could Read My Mind, which he released in 1970, was later recorded by over 100 other artists including Herb Alpert, Johnny Mathis, Don McLean, Liza Minnelli, Olivia Newton-John, Barbra Streisand and Andy Williams. Bob Dylan said of Lightfoot: “Every time I hear a song of his, it’s like I wish it would last forever.” Former Silverhead/Power Station singer Des Barres described Lightfoot as “the Mark Twain of folk music”. Bryan Adams said: “The world is a lesser place without him.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid…

Rick Allen has spoken about his recent violent assault in Fort Lauderdale. The Def Leppard drummer was knocked to the ground by a stranger and smashed his head on the pavement. “I said [to the man who attacked me]: ‘I am no threat to you.’ I don’t think he knew who I was, but he must’ve seen I wasn’t a threat because I’ve only got one arm,” Allen said. Veteran American hard rockers Kix are to end their 45-year career over the coming months. “Last November, Jimmy Chalfant [drummer] collapsed on stage with a near-death heart attack,” says lead singer Steve Whiteman. “I’m sixtysix and my wife is ready to retire. We just wanna enjoy life.” Rammstein have responded to an online allegation from a fan that she was drugged…

Cardeilhac were a short-lived early Swiss prog rock band from Lausanne. Their influences can be heard from the keyboard-driven British scene at the time, with bands such as Deep Purple, The Nice, ELP, Yes and Uriah Heep springing to mind. While musically competent, the album does suffer from a rather flat production, which doesn’t quite give the material what it deserves. Opening track Pick Up Your Gun is by far the most memorable, due largely to its excellent chorus, which includes the line: ‘I know you don’t like the way I dress, my hair’s too long and I am a mess.’ Its upbeat military-style shuffle beat during the verse and Keith Emerson inspired keyboard breaks during the mid-section display well-crafted intentions. ‘A hard rock sound and influences from blues, jazz…

Brian Johnson believes that AC/DC’s upcoming appearance at the Power Trip Festival in California could breathe life back into the band touring-wise. In October, AC/DC join Ozzy Osbourne, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Metallica and Tool at what will be their first live show in more than seven years. In conversation in a podcast called Fuelling Around, the AC/DC singer expressed an “eagerness” for the group to hit the road for their most recent record, Power Up, which came out in 2020. He said AC/DC had been ready to return to stages circa Power Up, but plans were scuppered when lockdown came into force. “We had rehearsed in Amsterdam,” he explained. “Phil [Rudd] was back on drums, I had this new earpiece that we’d invented [to bypass his hearing issues].…

The word ‘indomitable’ comes to mind when speaking to Mike Peters. After The Alarm star, 64, returned from tour in April 2022, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. The leukaemia he’s battled for decades had come back with life-threatening vengeance, and his drug treatment was no longer working. He spent most of that year either in hospital or at home recovering, and then – coming back from the brink – he thought he’d lost his voice forever. But with a successful new drug regimen (and his relentlessly positive attitude), Peters is coming back strong with spirited new Alarm album Forwards, and acoustic shows too. How are you feeling right now, in this moment? I feel really good. The new drugs are working better than anyone could have hoped for. I’m on…

ALBUMS Desert-rock superstars return to reclaim their crown on album number eight. There’s a real sense of digging deep into the Californian desert sands to rediscover the roots of Queen Of The Stone Age on In Times New Roman; a desire to reclaim the magic that made them so special and so insanely cool when they broke through with the timeless Rated R at the turn of the century. It’s six years since their last album, Villains, which was produced by pop-funk superstar Mark Ronson. With their new album they’ve left the celebrity schoolyard behind – it’s just the band, producing their own work from frontman Josh Homme’s own studio. Getting into the bunker and away from outside influences was absolutely the right thing to do, because this is the…

Exorcist ALLIGATOR After a decade on the Alligator label, Florida bluesman Birchwood is a seasoned triplethreat, serving up guitar parts with stubble and grease, a vocal that blows your house down and songs that duck expectations. He isn’t the first to make devious women his subject, but tracks like Horns Below Her Halo and the title one are some of the best in their class, the bandleader deploying fruity horns and sweating out his ladies’ hexes (‘If this witch steal my will to resist, I’m gonna need an exorcist’ he hollers on the latter). Birchwood is even better when he trawls the underbelly of his home state, with the swaggering Florida Man spliced with the babble of local TV news (“A man has been arrested for keeping a boa constrictor…

Black Sabbath’s fall from grace following their reinvigoration with the Ronnie James Dio fronted Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules albums was precipitated by behindthe-scenes dramas that dominated the production of Live Evil, the band’s first officially sanctioned live album. Recorded in Seattle, San Antonio, Dallas and Fresno in the spring of 1982, what should have been a victory lap instead became an obituary. The subsequent tensions split the band down the middle, with guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler on one side, and Dio and new drummer Vinny Appice on the other Speaking to this writer in 2010, Iommi lamented: “When we got the [live recordings] in the studio, they were just bloody awful. It was so badly recorded that we had a big problem with it. We…

★ Endorsed by Motörhead’s Phil Campbell and Marc Ford of The Black Crowes, Tom Jenkins hopes that next time the UK’s mobile phones ring out a warning of imminent apocalypse it will be to the sound of his song Products Of The Western World. This evening, with it played alone via voice and guitar, that scenario is tough to imagine, but the Welshman’s world-weary tales of heartbreak and coal-mine dust land squarely even without a backing group. Surprise, surprise… the band who made one of the finest albums of 2022 are even better live. Fresh from wowing fans of Peter Frampton on his farewell tour, Cardiff six-piece Cardinal Black play an irresistible brand of soul-drenched 21st-century blues. Chris Buck is an amazing guitar player, for the most part deploying economy…

LIVE! ‘Some of the world’s greatest guitarists pay their respects.’ There is a mixture of sadness, gaiety and wonder in the air as the second of two shows organised by Jeff Beck’s widow Sandra and his closest peer Eric Clapton gets under way. They have assembled an incredible team of musicians, but the show is all about the one man not taking the stage. As they queue up to pay their respects, a selection of the world’s greatest guitarists find themselves standing beneath a very long shadow. Clapton kicks off with a dive into his and Beck’s old group The Yardbirds, and somehow manages to turn Shapes Of Things into I Shot The Sheriff, until Doyle Bramhall II’s edgy guitar solo with its distressed, upside-down bends wrests the song into…

Whichever joker decided to play Van Halen’s Jump over the PA after Mdou Moctar leaves the stage at the end of tonight’s show should be shown a red card; the Niger-born guitarist has been called the Eddie Van Halen of West Africa so often it’s become a howling cliché. It’s also inaccurate. Moctar, whippet-thin and white robed, sounds like no one else out there, then or now. On record he blends the music of his home region with the punch of Western rock. Here, he uses the songs from his past five albums as the jumping off points for a series of euphoric musical minijourneys. Songs ebb and flow in intensity, Moctar drawing big, hypnotic circles with his guitar, occasionally breaking off to shoot a catherine wheel of notes over…

The current members of Curved Air have announced the passing of their co-founding keyboard player at the age of 73. Francis Monkman was also a key factor in the success of the classicalmeets-rock band Sky, and later had a distinguished career composing film music, notably for 1980s The Long Good Friday, and played on the soundtracks for The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark. As well as recording albums including Energism, Pictures In The Mind and Dynamism, he worked with, among others, Renaissance, Al Stewart, and both Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno in the band 801. Curved Air frontwoman Sonja Kristina commented: “During the lunar eclipse on May 5, Francis Monkman and I shared a last wonderfully vibrant conversation about our music, life and death – and…

Andy Rourke, bassist with The Smiths, has died aged 59 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The band’s guitarist Johnny Marr said: “Andy will be remembered as a kind and beautiful soul by those who knew him and as a supremely gifted musician by music fans.” Frontman Morrissey said Rourke “will never die as long as his music is heard”, adding: “Andy didn’t ever know his own power, and nothing that he played had been played by someone else. His distinction was so terrific and unconventional and he proved it could be done.” The Smiths released four albums during their time as a group, from The Smiths in 1984 to Strangeways Here We Come three years later. After they disbanded in ’87, Rourke went on to play with a…

The former frontman with cult NWOBHM band Tank and bassist with The Damned and The Saints, Algy Ward, has died of unknown cause, aged 63. He’d had serious health issues for some time. Born Alasdair Mackie Ward in Croydon, he joined Brisbane punk band The Saints after they relocated to London in the summer of 1977. Two years later he became a member of The Damned, and played on their third album, Machine Gun Etiquette. Ward then formed metal-punk band Tank, whose 1982 debut album Filth Hounds Of Hades became a NWOBHM classic. Tank disbanded in 1989, reunited in 1997 then split up again in 2006. Two years later Tank reunited without Ward, who responded with a rival version. Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield paid tribute to Ward, who…

Bryan Adams has written an emotional anti-war, pro-peace anthem calling for an end to global conflict. He says that What If There Were No Sides At All is a “response to worldwide conflicts, lack of constructive peace talks, and the billions of dollars spent by governments to fund these endless and aimless wars”. Glenn Hughes has ended his time with The Dead Daisies after four years and two albums. The former Deep Purple frontman and bassist is currently recording a new album with Black Country Communion. He is replaced in The Dead Daisies by ex-Mötley Crüe singer John Corabi, into his second stint in the line-up, and bass player Michael Devin, once of Whitesnake. A new Daisies ‘best of’ is released on CD and vinyl on August 18. Dug Pinnick…

David Coverdale has no plans for an autobiography. “It would be a spilling of the beans,” says the 71-year-old Whitesnake frontman. “I’m not interested in hurting anybody, particularly my family.” According to a report in the Mirror, nineyear-old Prince George is a fan of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, presumably influenced by his father Prince William who once declared: “There’s nothing better than, on a Monday morning, when you’re blearyeyed after the weekend and trying to get yourself back into the grind, listening to Thunderstruck.” A battered and broken black Fender Stratocaster guitar once owned by Kurt Cobain and gifted to Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees, and signed by all three members of Nirvana, has sold at auction for almost $600,000. Cobain gave the guitar to Lanegan, who died in…

His accent has hardly changed in more than 70 years. He may have made his home in the USA, in Utah, where he lives with Gloria, his American wife of 43 years, but nothing has taken the working-class Brummie out of Geezer Butler. His roots remain obviously preserved in his doleful speaking voice; the downbeat, sing-song cadences that make him sound as if in a continual state of surprise, every sentence ending like the punch line to a self-deprecating joke. These days, Butler mournfully intones, he is not doing very much of anything. As he describes it, generally he wakes up each morning with three cups of tea – Yorkshire Gold, always. He has his two dogs to walk; he lost his eldest dog just the other day. The Butlers…

It’s a fair bet that Luke Morley doesn’t have any hobbies. Not for him days spent on the greens of the south coast hacking away at a golf ball, working on his stroke. And while the seemingly endless days of covid gave most people a few extra pounds around the middle and a newly found drinking habit, Morley used the time to write a two-disc Thunder album, and somewhere in between those songs he unearthed these 10 glittering gems. By his own admission, these songs were never going to fit on a Thunder album. The thrumming opener I Wanna See The Light probably comes closest, but Songs From The Blue Room is a solo record in the truest sense, with Morley singing and playing everything except the drums. Yes, singing,…

★ In an age when the prospect of the robots eating us – or at least taking all of our jobs in copywriting, or trying to sound like Drake – has become frighteningly real, at least the Flaming Lips are here to make our new AI overlords look cuddly. ‘One more robot learns to be something more than a machine,’ Wayne Coyne sigh-sings in One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21, from inside a bubble as a rank of giant colourful mechadroids inflate around him like tube men outside a dealership for secondhand warbots. It’s a 20-year-old song tucked within a full anniversary rendition of 2003’s majestic Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots album, but it plays out like a prediction of ChatGPT’s recent escape attempts. The accompanying Hendrix-vision visuals might be full of…

Walter Trout ends his UK tour with a show of unexpected extremes. Looking like the villain in a slasher movie, he hefts a battered Stratocaster across his brawny frame as he sets off with I Can Tell, an explosive 12-bar blues-rock shuffle that startles the ghosts of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rory Gallagher. “I’m seventy-two,” Trout tells us, several times. But he still feels like rocking on Wanna Dance, a big-chorus, soft-rock anthem about the rejuvenating power of music, with smart harmony vocals from guitarist Andrew Elt. Trout prefaces a thunderous reading of Say Goodbye To The Blues with an old story about his chance meeting as a teenager with BB King. Then he wrenches the show into the present with no less than five songs from his latest album…

Hands up if you ever thought you’d see Def Leppard, in 2023, tear through Wasted in front of just 850 rabid fans in their home town. Hands still down? Ours too. But tonight’s show is no tantalising mirage. Days before a blockbuster double-header stadium show with Mötley Crüe, the mighty Leps take over The Leadmill for a seriously rare low-key show – albeit one that’s being live-streamed worldwide. It’s part warm-up, part fan service, and, crucially, net proceeds from tonight are going to the UK’s Music Venue Trust charity. There’s a big-gig feel in the air, and even a few national news crew bods have turned up for a slice of the action. “Good evening, Sheffield! Good evening, world!” Joe Elliott shouts, launching the band into their riproaring cover of Sweet’s…

Fifteen years after he laid alt.rockers Reuben to rest, Jamie Lenman admits he’s still got some misgivings about this rock’n’roll business. “The last couple of nights we played Stoke and Blackpool, and maybe fifty people came,” he tells a decidedly more numerous Wolverhampton audience. “I thought my career might be over!” Playing his latest album The Atheist in full with an expanded three-piece line-up, Lenman certainly doesn’t seem like an artist on his last legs as he orchestrates healthy singalongs to power-pop gems Talk Hard, Lena Don’t Leave Me and Bad Friend. His reinvention as a beloved solo artist in his own right over the past decade has seen experimentation with everything from mathcore and folk to alt.metal, but tonight Lenman plays things (relatively) straight, dropping grindcore Popeye theme covers…

‘Def Leppard’s show is big and slick and polished.’ Bramall Lane stadium doesn’t host too many gigs. The last big artist to play here was Rod Stewart four years ago. The one before that was Bruce Springsteen in 1988. But tonight this grand old stadium, home of Sheffield United FC since 1889, is the setting for a homecoming by the most popular thing to come out of the city since the stainless steel fork. This is the first European stop-off on Def Leppard’s seemingly never-ending tour with Mötley Crüe. It’s ostensibly a co-headlining affair, but no one is under any illusion whose show it really is tonight. Vivas are an odd fit as openers. Their middle-ofthe-bill-at-the-Leadmill indie rock is closer to the city’s more recent local heroes the Arctic Monkeys…