Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Classic Rock

How often is it that a heavy metal band have an absolutely iconic mascot? The list isn’t all that long in terms of figures who have withstood the test of time. Of the big hitters, Motörhead had Snaggletooth, Megadeth hadVic Rattlehead, Dio had Murray. All iconic. But I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that the fella on our cover this issue is probably the biggest and baddest of them all. I’m talking about Iron Maiden’s Eddie, of course. This issue we’re celebrating 50 monstrous years of Iron Maiden with an exclusive Eddie cover and exclusive interviews with Steve, Bruce, Adrian, Dave, Janick and Nicko. It really has been quite the journey. And, as you’ll find out, it’s far from over yet. Until next month… PS.…

Alex Dmochowski Death reported on December 21, 2024 Bassist Alex Dmochowski became a familiar face on the British blues scene playing with John Mayall, Aynsley Dunbar’s Retaliation, Peter Green and Quincy Jones, among others. During the 70s he recorded several albums with Frank Zappa, including the iconic Apostrophe (‘), under the handle ‘Erroneous’. He was 79 when he passed away peacefully at his home in London. Casey Chaos October 9, 1965 — December 20, 2024 Born in Trenton, New York, Karim GeorgeChmielinski was known to most people as Casey Chaos, the frontman with Amen, the confrontational agitpunk-metal band. A former professional skateboarder, the singer was known for his energetic stage persona. He had been dealing with heart issues, poor circulation and high blood pressure for several years. He was 59.…

Fans of Rory Gallagher have reacted with puzzlement and indignation to a new statue of the late Irish guitar hero unveiled outside Ulster Hall in Belfast, a venue he played regularly. The life-size sculpture – designed by Anto Brennan, Jessica Checkley and David O’Brien of Bronze Art Ireland and based upon a 1972 photograph of Gallagher on stage at Ulster Hall – has been widely ridiculed for making its subject look unlike Rory, more like a woman than a man, and also for having Gallagher, a renowned Fender Stratocaster player, with a Telecaster. “What’s a chick with a Telecaster got to do with Rory Gallagher?” wondered one online critic. “As a Rory fan, that is bloody awful! [It] looks more like Madonna,” wrote another. “Rory Gallagher looks like Cher,” declared…

“We were all saying the album is gonna be compact and brutal.” Last Train say their new album, iii, feels like the beginning of the band. The French quartet’s third certainly has the air of a fresh start – an ambitious, expansive rock record that mixes pugilistic, QOTSA-style riffing, Nine Inch Nails moodiness and epic atmospherics that nod to Sigur Rós – but they are far from newcomers. Despite the fact they’re in their late twenties and early thirties, they are already veterans in band years, having formed the group when they met in high school. “We started this band when we were twelve!” frontman Jean-Noël Scherrer says with laugh, talking to Classic Rock with drummer Antoine Baschung. “Our friendship is so important. We started the band because we were…

You can take the boy out of Northern Ireland, but you can’t take the Northern Ireland out of the boy. After 20 years of living in the US – and before that Scotland, Bradford and London – Ricky Warwick has returned to the country of his birth. “I’ve still got a house in LA, but we’ve got this place here in Belfast too,” he says, speaking via Zoom from the latter. “There’s always been a pull for me. I always knew I’d end up back here.” The notion of family and roots are woven into the Black Star Riders and Almighty frontman’s new solo album, Blood Ties. What does the title Blood Ties refer to? It’s about family. It encapsulates the big extended family I have around me, and what…

If Eric Bell closes his eyes and lets the music carry him off, he finds himself right back at the beginning. The scene is London’s Decca Studios, in the biting-cold winter of ’71, and the veteran guitarist is a young man once more, flanked by his Thin Lizzy bandmates, singer/bassist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey. None of the three Irishmen can believe their luck at being across the water, getting paid to do what they love. And it’s about to get even better. “If you’d stuck your head into the studio for Lizzy’s first album sessions,” Bell remembers, “you’d have seen three big joints. What happened was, Philip had a very small piece of hash, and he asked our producer – an American guy called Scott English: ‘Is it…

Benjamin Booker Lower FIRE NEXT TIME Beauty and horror combine on experimental musician’s third. There is one fleeting moment on one song on Benjamin Booker’s album Lower that is genuinely more terrifying than anything even the most brutal of metal bands have ever achieved. The peace of a pillowy bed of distorted, woozy noise rock – influences this time around include My Bloody Valentine and classic hip-hop – is shattered by a sudden, wildly unexpected audio clip of a school shooting, adevastating shock to the system made all the more haunting by subsequent clips of Booker’s baby daughter gurgling, innocence in the face of violence. Having previously released albums of garage rock and 70s-inspired glam, the hypnotic drone and fuzz of Lower, married to dreamy, sleepy vocals, marks another about…

Bloom TRICKI-WOO Nashville siblings serve up more country-infused rock’n’roll on album six. Leaning into country music has been a lucrative and/or cynical career choice for generations of rockers from the Eagles to Kid Rock. Larkin Poe’s Rebecca and Megan Lovell have travelled in the opposite direction. Raised in Georgia on a diet of bluegrass, they got the down-home rootsy thing out of their systems early on before toughening things up with a shit-kicking, lap steel-heavy sound that makes Bob Ritchie sound like the Rust Belt huckster he really is. Like their five previous albums, Bloom has country music in its heart and rock’n’roll in its veins. Mockingbird opens things with some spiralling slide guitar and deep organ, before Rebecca slides in with a vocal that switches up in a heartbeat…

Nektar Journey To The Centre Of The Eye, Expanded ESOTERIC Blowing the hive mind. The welcome revival of the Nektar catalogue continues in reverse gear, reaching their 1971 debut LP. It’s a continuous piece split into 13 tracks built around the concept of a rocket launch and the nuclear arms race. Sonically it’s similar to (but heavier than) the Moody Blues’ Mellotron-loaded To Our Children’s Children’s Children. As well as two mixes of the original album, the five-CD set includes The Boston Tapes, recorded in the US in 1970, prior to their official debut. The previously unreleased sessions see the band evolving musically with the Beatlesque Good Day and the single Do You Believe In Magic?; their version of Sealed With A Kiss owes a nod to You Never Give…

“We don’t travel the world in private jets. For bands like ours it’s become a really hard slog. Now we can get the best of both worlds.” Last September, Uriah Heep announced a final series of world tour dates billed as The Magician’s Farewell. As the trek begins with seven UK dates, ever-present guitarist Mick Box and Bernie Shaw, the band’s singer since 1986, explain that even after 55 years we haven’t seen the last of the Heep just yet. Mick, as Heep’s elder statesman can we assume that saying farewell was your decision? And how did you break it to the rest of the band? Mick Box: Having been there from day one you can kind of say that it came from me, but actually it was a joint…

“This will be our biggest show to date. The production level is going to be elevated like Papa Roach fans have never seen before.” Frontman Jacoby Shaddix sets the scene prior to the veteran Californian nu metallers playing three 25th-anniversary shows in celebration of their multimillion-selling breakthrough album Infest, with support from American metalcore band Wage War. Back in 2000, Papa Roach spoke about the fortitude of the roach (“cut off its head, it can survive until it starves to death”). How come you’re really still here and selling out arenas? This was the goal all along. We didn’t just wanna be a flash in the pan. We wanted to be a band that had a career, a legacy. It’s been a journey, and I truly believe 2025 will be…

See below for dates. Currently April 21 to 27 and July 1 to July 3. See left for dates. Currently June 23 and 26. See below for dates. Currently June 18 to June 21. See previous page for dates. Currently June 29 to July 5.…

‘Tonight might have been the best Paul McCartney concert ever.’ Paris La Defense Arena/London O2 Arena, The first and last nights of the former Beatle’s European tour. Forty thousand people, in Europe’s largest indoor venue, are happy to let it out and let it in. A McCartney show – he’s doing two nights here - is an experience unlike any other. Almost every song, like their singer, is so storied, so famous, so much a crown jewel of pop culture. The 82-year-old does not, however, allow the gig to be a museum, even if most are assuming this tour is their last chance to catch him. He switches at breakneck pace between Beatles classics and his Wings personal favourites, between standards and surprises. A two-and-a-half-hour set is replete with ridiculous…

PAUL ELLIOTT The first gig that Paul ever saw was Iron Maiden at the Guildford Civic Hall on February 26, 1981. It was the Killers tour, with Paul Di’Anno on vocals. And playing drums for the support band Trust was none other than Nicko McBrain. For this month’s cover story Paul spoke to all the members of Iron Maiden in New York during their last tour with Nicko. Read our exclusive interviews from p24. FLORIAN NICOLLE A freelance illustrator since 2009, French artist Florian Nicolle uses a combination of watercolour, pencil, acrylic and digital painting to create striking, expressive portraits and illustrations – including the ones featured in this month’s Iron Maiden cover story (p24). Check out more ofhisworkonInstagram at @neo.innov.officiel and www.Behance.net/neo_innov ALEX BURROWS Classic Rock’s former managing ed…

Developers have expressed their “sincere regret” after the historic house in Sydney in which Angus and Malcolm Young of AC/DC grew up was demolished to make way for a residential development, insisting: “The previous longterm owner did not share this vital part of the property’s background with us.” Down, the longrunning sludge-rock supergroup featuring members of Pantera, Corrosion Of Conformity, Crobar and Eyehategod, are recording a new album to be released later this year. It’s the band’s first full-length record since Down III: Over The Under in 2007. Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes have retired from touring in order to “manage ongoing health issues”. It’s uncertain whether the hugely influential band, formed in 1975, are likely to continue to record new music, or even to play in their locale…

REO Speedwagon played their final concert, in Las Vegas on December R21. Lead singer Kevin Cronin plans to carry forward the group’s legacy, playing their hits under his own name, but not all concerned are happy with that. “Get the facts straight please. [Cronin] did not found this band,” says Bruce Hall, REO bassist since 1977, who had sat out some recent shows due to having had surgery then wanted to return to the line-up, only to be thwarted. “No one forced [Cronin] to re-brand. He wanted to tour with the sub bassist instead of me. The other two owners [of the name, pianist Neil Doughty and drummer Alan Gratzer] said no, and I was scheduled to return in 2025… so he quit.” The dispute led to “irreconcilable differences”, with…

“Nobody gives a shit about your rock-star attitude. It’s not the eighties any more.” With their band name and song titles like Down By The River and Natural Born Vagabonds, you barely need to hear a lick of the New Roses’ music to get an idea of the music they make. Sure enough, they do draw on southern rock traditions to make music steeped in the red, white and blue. But these good ol’ boys are from Wiesbaden, Germany, and (certainly these days) draw more heavily from the harder side of rock. “I’m not sure we’re still that southern rock influenced,” frontman Timmy Rough points out. “Yeah, personally, stuff like Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers is the sweet spot, the right mix of blues, country and rock, but we’ve…

Following his first four years as the frontman with Deep Purple, Ian Gillan and his band Gillan emerged as one of the most popular and colourful rock groups of the late 70s and early 80s. With a high-energy sound that was turbocharged with melody, few will forget their run of appearances on Top Of The Pops for hit singles such as No Laughing In Heaven, Mutually Assured Destruction and their riotous revisions of Elvis Presley’s Trouble and Stevie Wonder’s New Orleans. From an alarmingly non-conformist visual image to Ian’s often quirky lyrics, which included rhyming ‘ultrasonic’ with ‘gin and tonic’, and their choice of subject matter (No Laughing In Heaven was a largely spoken-word paean to a sinner who cleans up his act to avoid going to hell, only to…

Acoustic Sessions DECCA A ‘new’ Thin Lizzy album? We should be so lucky. There’s an argument to be made that the dead go on living in the memories of those who remember and cherish them to the present day. And while it’s difficult to forget the shadow cast by Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy (ask Black Star Riders, who made a magnificent fist of keeping the name and legacy alive for a short while), the reality is that you can no more reinvent the wheel than you can say that Lynott and Lizzy are back in the world and making new music. Acoustic Sessions might be a cash grab – avert your eyes now if you think otherwise – but given the source material you can’t help but admire the…

Our Music Is Red With Purple Flashes EDSEL Classic 60s material outweighs misfiring reunion albums in definitive box set. The Creation were the UK’s answer to the Velvet Underground. Pioneering and forward thinking, both bands pushed sonic boundaries with guitarists whose unorthodox approaches would prove highly influential over the years (and in certain cases wholly appropriated), while drawing heavily on the Pop Art scenes of the 60s. And although each band generated greater interest from beyond their domestic borders, they also remained cult concerns. Unlike the Velvet Underground, The Creation never recorded an album in their heyday. Released in mid-1967, We Are Paintermen was a compilation of their steady stream of singles that failed to trouble the UK chart yet proved popular in Germany and Scandinavia. Indeed, such was their…

“Freddie’s command of his voice was so amazing. I’m drawn to the soft, fragile side.” With deep roots in Finland and India, and a musical palette informed by classic rock, pop, traditional styles and beautiful voices from various genres, Mikko Von Hertzen has a keen sense of the many possible paths to a great song. Together with his brothers – guitarist Kie and bassist/keyboard player Jonne – the singer/guitarist stirs the sounds and sights of a diverse life into enigmatic rock anthems, most recently on their tight yet rich ninth album In Murmuration. These are some of those sounds. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING The lullabies sung by our parents. We always fell asleep while either mummy or daddy or grandma was singing. They were traditional Finnish lullabies, or…

The reunion of The Temperance Movement will be among the most anticipated – and unexpected – comebacks of 2025. Known for their highly emotional brand of blues-charged rock, the five-piece band broke the hearts of fans when singer Phil Campbell left to form the group The Byson Family in January 2020. Talking to Classic Rock in 2023 to promote his solo record City Lights, Campbell said some provocative things about TTM, admitting: “The Bysons will ride again. I don’t think the Temp will.” Describing himself as “broken”, Campbell said he was sober, but that “it’s been a struggle”. When the news of a reunion with guitarists Paul Sayer and Luke Potashnick, bassist Nick Fyffe and drummer Simon Lea came last December, it was received with glee by fans. As a…

Andy Fairweather Low The Invisible Bluesman LAST MUSIC COMPANY Given his collaborators over the decades – Eric Clapton, John Mayall, BB King – the notion that Andy Fairweather Low has never previously released a solo blues album seems like a glitch in the matrix. Yet it’s true. But while this largely live covers set doesn’t necessarily flex the Welsh guitarist’s creative muscles, it confirms him as a musician who has the genre under his fingernails. The album takes a moment to get going. Opener My Baby Left Me is low-octane and a little polite, all strummed acoustics and brushed drums. But something brilliant happens halfway through Gin House Blues, with the guitarist firing off a raunchy electric solo, and with the amp valves finally glowing hot the album is off to…

This Is Music: The Singles UMR Two decades on, the Wigan rockers’ singles compilation still soars, swoops and crushes. There’s always been a boldness to The Verve’s attitude: titling their 2004 singles compilation This Is Music, after its opening track, was intended as a brash, definitive statement, rendering all other sound unworthy. This vinyl anniversary reissue, with its original bonus tracks now replaced with the two singles from 2008’s reunion album Forth, has lost none of its bravado over the past two decades. Its first three tracks lay out The Verve’s initial evolution, albeit non-chronologically. This Is Music, representing 1995’s second album A Northern Soul, thunders in on tides of swirling psych-rock that sound like Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix battling for supremacy over an alternative dimension in which it…

On Track… Sparks 1969-1979 Chris Sutton SONICBOND The Maels’ first decade analysed forensically. The premise is simple: take every Sparks song of the 70s – singles, album tracks, demos, out-takes and oddities such as their work on Adrian Munsey’s C’est Sheep – and explain them with added context. Assisted by assorted Sparks collaborators – but not the Maels – museum manager and playwright Chris Sutton is a mostly reliable guide. He details missed opportunities such as Mick Ronson touring with Bob Dylan rather than joining Sparks and producing Big Beat, or Andy Warhol pricing himself out of duetting with Russell Mael on Beat The Clock. His awkward dismissal of Equator (“it does go on for ages”) might raise eyebrows, but he’s terrific on demos such as the 1978 ones that…

Wooderson Sink Or Swim I’da Called You Woody, Joe Sink Or Swim Blue Jeans And White T-Shirts Señor And The Queen Great Expectations The ’59 Sound The ’59 Sound The ’59 Sound The Backseat The ’59 Sound American Slang American Slang The Diamond Church Street Choir American Slang 45 Handwritten Handwritten Handwritten Stay Vicious Get Hurt A Wonderful Life Painkillers Steve McQueen Painkillers If Your Prayers Don’t Get To Heaven Sleepwalkers Sleepwalkers Sleepwalkers You Have Stolen My Heart Local Honey History Books History Books Positive Charge History Books…