Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2023 i Classic Rock

KURT SQUIERS Kurt is the owner of SQUiERS, LLC, a video production company from Raleigh, North Carolina, working with global bands from AC/DC to Zappa. Kurt is the producer and host of the charitable podcast series AC/DC Beyond The Thunder, featuring famous fans who’ve been influenced by the band. This issue he offers a staunch defence of AC/DC’s Blow Up Your Video and Flick Of The Switch albums (p41). DAVE EVERLEY This issue Classic Rock’s former deputy editor Dave talked to Rick Nielsen about jamming Chuck Berry songs with AC/DC (p34), found out whether Rush’s Alex Lifeson really hated the band’s 80s ‘synth period’ (p22) and heard Wolfgang Van Halen slap down the “fucking grapes” on the internet (p56). Dave even managed to find time to get some sleep, though…

PEOPLE FROM THE world of blues-rock and beyond have paid tribute to Tony ‘TS’ McPhee, the guitarist, vocalist and leader of pioneering British blues rockers The Groundhogs following his death at the age of 79. His family released a statement that read: “We are deeply saddened to announce that Tony has died peacefully at home from complications following a fall last year.” “What a guitarist he was,” Captain Sensible of The Damned said, describing McPhee as “a lovely bloke and a huge inspiration for myself as a young wannabe muso when I’d plonk myself right in front of the stage at Groundhogs gigs. Brilliant!” Born in Humberston, Lincolnshire, McPhee took a route into music that echoed that of many of his contemporaries. He told Classic Rock in 2007. “My brother…

The covid pandemic made 2020 a tortuous year for everybody, and Lucinda Williams had it rougher than most. That January, a tornado tore through her adopted home town of Nashville, ransacking the alt.country trailblazer’s house. Lockdown was next. Then in November, Williams suffered a stroke. She spent a week in intensive care, the left side of her body frozen. Her recovery is ongoing, including her having had to learn to walk all over again. But she’s still unable to play the guitar, the instrument on which she wrote such stellar records as 1998’s Grammy-winning Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and 2007’s West. Now comes her excellent new album, her fifteenth, Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart. Williams, who turned 70 in January, pieced together its 10 songs with…

"One of the first albums I ever owned was High Voltage, and it was on tape cassette. I would have been eleven or twelve. Even now the sound of that record is incredible. The guitar sound that Angus and Malcolm get is golden, and Bon Scott looked like some sort of superhero from a rock’n’roll band of teenage dreams. He was my first real music hero. “For me, from those first two songs on High Voltage I was hooked. Rock And Roll Singer was basically a blueprint for my life. It’s one of the first songs I learned to sing. I wanted to follow the instructions, the lyrics, and I did: I left school at sixteen and wanted to be a rock’n’roll singer. It’s A Long Way To The Top…

“AC/DC made so many great records, but for me Powerage is unbeatable. Highway To Hell is a great record. Back In Black is an unbelievable record. But it was a different kind of production on those albums. Those were studio records, whereas Powerage really captured how the band sounded live. “It’s also the best-sounding record they made with Harry Vanda and George Young producing. It’s got that live-in-thestudio feel, but it’s also more powerful than Let There Be Rock or Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. And unlike Let There Be Rock, most of Powerage is actually in tune! “There are so many great songs on Powerage. Rock And Roll Damnation – or Rock And Roll Dalmatian, as we used to call it – is a brilliant opener. And then you’ve…

DOWN PAYMENT BLUES From Powerage, 1978  Slash, Guns N’ Roses “Down Payment Blues is one of my all time favourite AC/DC tracks from a catalogue of many favourites! But, this particular track is one of the most gritty and at the same time, one of the most melodically articulate AC/DC songs of all time. Plus, the premise of the lyrics read like my life story.” SIN CITY From Powerage, 1978 Joe Perry, Aerosmith “I’d pick anything off Powerage but leaning towards Sin City. When our manager asked if we wanted to have AC/DC open for us I said, ‘No problem. No one could be that good live.’ And they were. When Angus would drop to the floor, he’d do a couple of moves with his body flailing away. One we…

Ever since Greta Van Fleet released their first EP, Black Smoke Rising, in 2017, the band’s inevitable comparisons to Led Zeppelin have continued to eclipse their career. Yes they’ve been hugely successful and sold albums by the bucketload. But critics have been strongly divided over the band’s musical output and the fact that they so unashamedly aligned themselves with Zeppelin in the first place. And rightly so. While Greta Van Fleet’s 2018 debut album Anthem Of The Peaceful Army and 2021 follow up The Battle At Garden’s Gate showed flashes of promise, too many of their tracks sounded like a second-rate homage to their heroes. On album number three, the cosmically titled Starcatcher, the Michigan four-piece haven’t exactly ditched their trademark 70s rock’n’roll sound. Instead, with the help of producer…

The Pineapple Thief have spent much of the past 25 years caught between a rock and a hard place: too proggy for the rock crowd, too rocky for the prog crowd. Despite that, frontman and creative engine Bruce Soord has quietly built up an impressive body of work, somewhere between the Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead and fellow square pegs Porcupine Tree. How Did We Find Our Way charts the first chapter of the band’s career, bringing together their first five albums and two bonus EPs plus odds and sods, some of which was recorded when The Pineapple Thief were still Soord’s one-man project rather than an actual band. Originally released via influential UK underground label Cyclops, here they’re repackaged across eight CDs in a vinyl-sized box set whose stylish design subtly…

★ The opening concert from a new promotions company bringing rock bands to a 280-capacity venue in Hastings gets off to a bright start. Having left his band at home, tonight Mike Ross sticks to voice and acoustic guitar. It’s swelteringly hot in the venue, but Ross’s enjoyably gritty ditties do a decent job of cutting through the rude chatter emanating from the bar. I’d definitely watch him again. After being blown away by Brave Rival as guests of Corky Laing, I had been anxious to see whether they could cut it as convincingly as headliners. The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’. The Joe Bonamassa-approved band from Portsmouth include the best bits from last year’s exceptional debut Life’s Machine, and preview some songs from an in-the-making follow-up, with Fairytale and…

★ While James Burton’s name doesn’t trip off the tongue with similar familiarity to that of Jimmy Page or Ritchie Blackmore, his session/sideman status is clearly unimpeachable. Here is a man who, across his 83 years, has played on (so we’re told by clipboard and stetson-toting statistician and MC Cerys Matthews) more than 5,500 tracks. He was guitarist with the Wrecking Crew, leader of Elvis Presley’s TCB Band from ’69 to ’77 and, in the words of event organiser and superfan Brian May, the first man to make the guitar ‘talk’. In his solo on Ricky Nelson’s Hello Mary Lou specifically, which a clearly thrilled May then sings, genuflecting to the master during the – still compelling – solo in question. A positively stellar line-up – Ronnie Wood, Van Morrison,…

★ Even though it’s been eight years since their last visit to the UK, My Morning Jacket have lost none of the elasticity that’s rooted in their collective core. Make no mistake, this is a band who like to stretch out and catch the wave of a groove. The circular riff of Gideon gets pulled out just that little bit more, burrowing its way into the inner ear and then down through hips and to the feet. One of the band’s biggest strengths is that their jams aren’t aimless; these workouts are there to expand the mind and move the body. Witness the sheer sensuality of Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Pt. 2, which rises from a pulsing throb into a steady rhythmic movement that pumps with pleasure. Singer-guitarist…

She looks like a model and plays like Eddie Van Halen,” was Alice Cooper’s assessment of Nita Strauss when she joined his live band on guitar in 2014 – but the Californian virtuoso has always made sure it was her fretwork that opened doors. Beyond Alice, Strauss has lent her blazing licks to projects spanning from tribute band the Iron Maidens to this year’s starstudded second solo album The Call Of The Void, while her eclectic listening tastes suggest there isn’t a gig in the world she couldn’t handle. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING My sister and I grew up doing ballet, so we listened to a lot of classical, and Bizet’s Carmen is probably my strongest childhood music memory. THE FIRST RIFF I LEARNT As a young player…

If there’s a single band that is the great galvaniser, then surely it’s AC/DC. Case in point: they’re about the only band that we’ve discovered to date that we can put on the stereo at CR HQ and everyone is happy. There’s just something so tremendously loved and right about the Antipodean heroes. From Angus and Malcolm’s guitars, to the thunderous rhythm section, to Bon or Brian (or, if we’re being completely honest, Axl, on stage a few years back), they’ve seldom put a foot wrong. And it’s not just the CR team who wholeheartedly appreciate their genius. This issue, to celebrate the 50th-anniversary year of their formation, we spoke to the great and good of rock to try to nail why and how AC/DC are so universally admired –…

Blackie Onassis August 27, 1965 – June 13, 2023 The former drummer with Urge Overkill has died of as yet unreported cause at the age of 57. John Rowan Onassis joined the Chicago alt.rockers in 1991, debuting on their third album, The Supersonic Storybook, and playing on the group’s cover of Neil Diamond’s Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon which featured in the film Pulp Fiction three years later. Teresa Taylor November 10, 1962 – June 18, 2023 Texas-born Teresa Taylor was a long-time drummer with the Butthole Surfers. She also appeared in Richard Linklater’s 1990 film Slacker. “Teresa Taylor passed away peacefully this weekend after a long battle with lung disease,” said a statement from the band. In 2021 the then-60-year-old, who “smoked like a chimney”, commented that her…

AS THE GATEWAY to New Zealand’s Mount Aspiring National Park and the Southern Alps, the lake town of Wanaka is the kind of place where the well-heeled own second properties, and winter heralds the arrival of city types with expensive skiing equipment. It’s also the unlikely home of teenage quartet Powder Chutes, whose recent single Moths To The Flame has been grabbing attention beyond the South Pacific. “There are lots of crusty old skiers and snowboarders here,” says 16-year-old bassist Otis Murphy. “So there are lots of people that really like rock music. It’s just a small place, and it’s a real tight-knit community, but once winter hits there are heaps of young people that come to get on the piss and listen to music.” Three of the band are…

To mark this momentous occasion we asked rock’s finest to talk about their favourite albums by the Australian icons. Over the next 15 pages you’ll find Paul Stanley, Joe Elliott, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Biff Byford, Airbourne’s Joel O’Keeffe and many more celebrating the genius of Back In Black, Highway To Hell, Powerage, High Voltage, Black Ice and every other album they made.  Let there be rock……

“With the exception of Back In Black, I don’t think any album could compete with their first four albums. But in terms of how Black Ice stacks up against everything they’ve done I’d say it was a damn fine effort. “We were on their label, Albert, and we toured with them for a year and a half. They kicked off every night with Rock ’N’ Roll Train, which I never heard a single person complain about. They did War Machine every night, Anything Goes, Big Jack. It speaks volumes about how much of a return to form that record was for them. “The tour started in this big sports arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. I remember sitting backstage, getting nervous, and Brian Johnson and Cliff Williams came in and said: ‘Lads,…

“I’ve seen AC/DC a hundred and five times. A hundred and four times I’ve paid to get in, I’ve gotten in free once. They’re the reason I play guitar. I was a drummer, but when I saw Angus I wanted in on that. I didn’t want to have to sit at the back. “There was a period where they kind of went to the wilderness and got away from what they did well. They were still great, but every album would have one or two great songs, versus the old days, when pretty much every song was great. But with Stiff Upper Lip they got back to the essence of what they were about. STIFF UPPER LIP (Albert/East West, 2000) “First thing, they got [drummer] Phil Rudd back in the…

“I got into AC/DC when I was a kid. One of my dad’s mates recorded a load of their albums on to cassette for me. The first time I saw them live was on the Black Ice tour. I saw the four times on that tour in the end. We were just mad for it. “Everybody was excited when things started appearing in magazines a couple of years ago, with the neon sign and the lightning flash: was it a new AC/DC tour? Was it a new album? I think because of what happened with Malcolm, people assumed they were done, but you just can’t keep them down. “Then they came out with Shot In The Dark, which was absolutely the best song they could have come back with –…

“I truly believe that AC/DC’s Flick Of The Switch is a direct result of Malcolm Young pulling back the reigns on a band that had become shot into the stratosphere into a galaxy they simply weren’t ready for. Call it selfsabotage, if you like. “Heavily influenced by Johnny Winter’s production of Muddy Water’s Hard Again, the songs had few hooks, but all energy. It’s hard, no-frills, as blunt as the album’s cover – asimple line drawing of Angus Young on a plain white cover. What Flick Of The Switch does achieve is a band staying true to its roots, filled with blistering tracks like Brain Shake and Landslide rocking out as hard as AC/DC has ever done, and relentlessly not caving into trends. “By contrast, Blow Up Your Video was…

Clutch are no strangers to releasing the odd must-have collectible, so it was perhaps inevitable that the multiple versions of their 2022 album were just an appetiser for yet more walletworrying format tomfoolery. Dubbed ‘The Complete Edition’, the latest iteration of Sunrise On Slaughter Beach arrives as an expensive, very limitededition box set of six hand-pressed seveninch singles, complete with picture sleeves, lyric booklet and turntable slip mat. Highly desirable as a trophy purchase but hugely inconvenient if you actually want to listen to the music, the full album is nevertheless all here now, with three more tracks filling out the back end. The original version of SOSB – just nine songs and a running time of 33 minutes – remains a brilliant although rather concise bruiser, a bit like…

★ Aside from his perplexing hair that defies categorisation, guitarist John 5 – who has replaced the recently departed Mick Mars – has some very broad shoulders. How else to explain his heavy lifting tonight? Drummer Tommy Lee still plays ahead of the beat, behind the beat and occasionally to the side of the beat, so credit to the guitarist as he frequently covers the unintended shifts in tempo. Bassist Nikki Sixx isn’t so much heard as felt, his bottom end rumblings as rudimentary as ever, while singer Vince Neil lacks the necessary lung power. For all that, Mötley Crüe work better in an intimate club environment like the basement Underworld, their brand of sleazy glam-metal hitting harder in tight confines than it does in the open space of a…

★ Given the headlines that frontman Josh Homme has attracted in the years since Queens Of The Stone Age released their 2017 album Villains, the intro music’s refrain of ‘Smile, though your heart is breaking’ feels especially tonguein-cheek. A rollicking Go With The Flow dispels any notion that the band are chastened into meekness, however, and the following Sick, Sick, Sick adds more fuel to a fiery start for QOTSA’s first show in Wales in more than 20 years. “Let’s dance and make fucking merry, shall we?” Homme drawls, and the band settle in for the more familiar recent territory of funked-up rock that, while at times lacking in pace, nonetheless gets audience bodies moving. Between songs, Homme offers profuse thanks in ways far removed from the otherworldly, aloof figure…

★ You’d be forgiven for thinking that Jim Jones has some brass neck for opening with Cement Mixer, the humungous monster that would frequently close his late and eponymous Revue’s shows. But such is the embarrassment of riches on offer here, at the final night of Jim Jones All Stars’ debut UK tour, that it makes total sense. A total surrender to the groove, they roll as much as they rock. Indeed, to witness Jones cherry-pick highlights from Jim Jones Revue (Princess And The Frog), Jim Jones & The Righteous Mind (Satan’s Got His Heart Set On You) and even Thee Hypnotics’ Shakedown is to see a supercharged overhaul of the music thanks to an expanded, nine-piece regeneration that includes a three-saxophone attack, guitarist Carlton Mounsher, singer Ali Jones, drummer…

★ About 15 minutes into Robert Cray’s set, the couple in front of me stand up. “Just give me one more chance,” the penitent man says as he reaches towards the woman beside him. “I can’t live like this any more,” she replies, as a single, lonely tear slides down her cheek. Okay, that didn’t happen, but such a showdown wouldn’t have been out of place given the lyrical landscape of broken promises and shattered dreams. The blues is sad music that makes you feel good, and there’s few practitioners, if any, left who deal it out as well as Cray. He sings with the kind of deep soul, climbing from whisper to piercing falsetto, that indicates it isn’t just the ‘Blues’ section of the record shops he went browsing…

FOR MORE NEWS: WWW.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM INSIDE THE WORLD OF ROCK COPYRIGHT FUTURE 2023 A NEW EXHIBITION focusing on the history of Queen and captured by Brian May with his stereoscopic (3-D) cameras is set to run in central London until September 23. Titled ‘Queen Will Rock You In 3-D’, it pulls together images taken by the guitarist on stage, behind the scenes and more, including informal shots taken on the road and during leisure time, providing close-up glimpses of the band as they have never seen before. From an early age, stereo-photography enthusiast May travelled with a 3-D stereo camera in hand, and on Queen tours and during recordings he was able to capture rare behindthe-scenes moments of one of the world’s greatest rock bands. These images are brought to life…

Mick Hutson, celebrated music photographer, died on Thursday, June 1, 2023, aged 58. Mick was known for his work for Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Q and Select magazines, among others, and he shot many of the biggest names in music. His pictures were used on official album releases by Nirvana, AC/DC, Primal Scream, Queens Of The Stone Age, Mike Oldfield, Judas Priest and more. Mick was born in Newcastle in May 1965. He grew up in Aberdeen, and when he left school went to work on the North Sea oil rigs: 12 hours a day, 14 days on, 14 days off. On LinkedIn he lists his occupation back then as “roughneck”: slang for an unskilled labourer on the drill floor. The Collins dictionary says that a roughneck is someone who…

Rush were holed up in Le Studio, a residential recording facility tucked away in the mountains of Quebec, when it all got too much for guitarist Alex Lifeson. It was the summer of 1982, and the band were mixing Subdivisions, the track that would open their ninth studio album, Signals. Change was in the air in the wider music world. The hegemony of the guitar – for so long the weapon of choice for rock bands – was under threat from the technological advances made in the realm of electronic music. Synthesisers were moving in from the sidelines to become the pre-eminent instrument of the era. Rush themselves weren’t immune to this new trend – certainly not singer/ bassist Geddy Lee, a self-professed “synth geek” who had been incorporating…

“There’s a great quote from Angus Young where somebody said to him: ‘This album sounds just like your last one’, and he goes: ‘No, it sounds like all of our albums!’ So I guess you could say it’s kind of hard to pick a favourite. “There are certain songs that I love. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap is amazing, and Highway To Hell is as nasty and glorious as you can get. But let’s be honest, Back In Black is on another level. “When Brian Johnson joined AC/DC, I was curious – like everyone was – about how that would impact the band and the chemistry they had with Bon Scott. But what they created with Back In Black was just monumental. The way that album starts with Hells Bells,…

“This was my introduction to AC/DC and the wonder that is Bon Scott and his unique singing voice. When I was about seven I was on a Winnebago trip with my mom and dad. We were driving to the Grand Canyon. We pulled over somewhere while my mom went to a store or the bathroom, and my dad said: ‘Hey, check this out.’ And he puts on Big Balls. He was laughing so hard, which made me laugh so hard. Dad loved that song. Every time he heard the bit where Bon goes: ‘Ooooh…’ he just cracked up. DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP (1976, Albert/Atlantic) “Dirty Deeds is such a great album. It’s the one that cemented my love of AC/DC. The title song is fantastic – I love the…

“A buddy of mine saw AC/DC play Sin City on Midnight Special, which was a really popular late TV show, and he was raving about it. Within a few days I’d picked up If You Want Blood from a local record store. Then not long after that I went to see Cheap Trick play in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and I had no idea that AC/DC were supporting them. It was like, ‘Holy shit!’ It’s the only show I’ve ever been at the front for. “They’re one of the few bands to have changed singers and become even bigger – Van Halen are probably the only other band I can think of. Back In Black was a great record, and it was the soundtrack to all the keg parties. “I’ve…

“I knew from the first time I heard AC/DC, when I was nine, at one of my schoolfriend’s houses that they were a great band. It’s about attitude, simplicity and fun. They know how to ride that line between being cool and just having a good time. When you listen to Rock Or Bust it makes you want to hold your beer up in the air and spill it on the guy next to you while you’re singing at the top of your lungs. It’s party music. “When we got to open for them on the Rock Or Bust tour [in 2016], we’d pretty much been given three shows to audition – if Angus liked us we could do the rest of the tour.We did the first show in Tacoma,…

While the playful, sassy music videos ZZ Top made for the singles from 1983’s Eliminator wowed MTV and famously rebooted the Texan trio’s career, not every voyager thrived in that brave new world. In 1982, the year after MTV arrived, the video promo was still finding its feet, and Pat Travers, for one, briefly came a cropper. The promo for the Canadian singer/guitarist’s rather brilliant single I’d Rather See You Dead had a decent enough budget, but its footage of him serenading a deceased fictional lover as she lay pegged-out in her coffin landed bumpily at MTV, even if the corpse did join in at one point. “I remember it was shot in a mansion in New Jersey”, a laughing Travers says today. “We hired a real coffin, and the…

★ Mystic’s setting – an abandoned shipyard where huge cranes tower over derelict warehouses – might be a relic from a bygone age, but the festival’s ethos is very much one of continuity. Over four days, wells of rock and metal lore are drawn from, startling reinventions are witnessed and new forms are unleashed. The power of old-school thrash is channelled on the main stage by Testament’s hyperalertness on the Thursday and Dark Angel on the Saturday, with both Chuck Billy and Ron Rinehart proving charismatically accommodating showmen even as the riffs ramp up towards Armageddon. Voivod’s absurdist off-kilter rewiring gets an similarly rapt response at the indoor stage. Electric Wizard and Lucifer are equally drawn to the late-60s age of occult experimentation, but to very different ends, Wizard’s mantric,…

★ “What you are watching now is an avatar,” says “Peter Gabriel”, claiming that he’s been digitally aged 20 years for the tour around his tenth studio album i/o, and that the real Peter Gabriel is on a beach somewhere “looking like a Greek god”. Gabriel’s standing as visionary on-stage techrocker is virtually unsurpassed and, following an opening section in which he lights a campfire with a falling “meteorite” and his band gather round it for earthy, primordial takes on Washing Of The Water and Growing Up (representing the dawn of language and civilisation), the man who once battled giant lightpods and zorbed around stages accelerates once more into the futuristic technopolis. For industrial lullaby-cum-nightmare Darkness he parades behind a rank of interactive front-of-stage screens, then splashes digital paint across…

★ For a band schooled in the garage rock of the 60s, and a sound reinforced by hardcore and gonzo metal, this steaming North London cave is a natural habitat. And yet The Hives are playing here on a day off between stadium dates opening for Arctic Monkeys, something you can imagine them making the most of given frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist’s unrivalled ability to take control of and convert an audience. On one of those recent dates Almqvist – now in his mid-40s and resembling Eastenders’ Ian Beale reborn as a speed-freak cult leader – cut his head open with his own microphone twirling and played on, and you can see why, as he high kicks, leaps and stage-dives through opener Bogus Operandi, the impeccably stomping recent single, while…

A show only just salvaged. ★ As thousands flock to Glastonbury, many of those left behind in London are here tonight to catch Ohio blues rockers The Black Keys perform their first UK show in eight years. Last time they were at The O2, frontman Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney were still riding high on the huge wave created by their landmark 2011 album El Camino. This time they’re in between albums, with an impending record featuring Beck and Noel Gallagher still a year away. And, to be honest, it shows. Aside from a stunning blues-infused cover of Mississippi legend Big Joe Williams’s Crawling King Snake, it takes the pair a further nine songs before they even begin to ignite the audience with an amped-up dirty-fuzz riffing rendition of…

★ If you remember the 90s, you probably didn’t inhale, but ragged demi-memories are frenetically jogged tonight at the live debut of Mantra Of The Cosmos. Comprising Happy Mondays/Black Grape duo Shaun Ryder (free-form vocals) and Bez (maracas, charisma, vibes), ex-Ride/Oasis guitarist Andy Bell and Beatle-DNA-ed Who/Oasis percussionist Zak Starkey, MOTC have one foot in kosmische and the other in chaos. Tonight’s period showcase plays out in The Box, an extremely 20th-century/Loaded mag corporate facsimile of old Soho located in the former premises of the Raymond Revue bar, on a stage usually reserved for strippers. Fifth member Ian Broudie’s in; project facilitator Alan McGee; the only way it could be more ’93 gossip-column is if Pam Hogg were here… Ah, there she is. So what could possibly go wrong? It’s…