In 2016 Grammy-nominated blues rock singer Beth Hart named Les Claypool as her prog hero. At the same time she told Prog how she’d discovered his work with Primus after first falling in love with the bass via Rush and their alleged “worst’”album.

“When I was a kid, I was a really huge classical buff, and I still am. My mum turned me on to jazz and blues: Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, stuff like that.

Then the neighbourhood kids started turning me on to Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and when I was about nine or 10, they got me into Rush as well.

At that time, Rush were pretty big in America and Moving Pictures had just come out. I fell in love with that record, although my husband [road manager Scott Guetzkow] and my guitar player Jon Nichols always laugh at me because they say it’s the worst record of their whole career!

It was Geddy Lee’s bass playing that did it for me – and to this day, he’s probably my number-one favourite bass player.

But the band that really pushed me over was Primus – I thought Les Claypool was so ridiculous. I started listening to Sailing The Seas Of Cheese and that’s when I decided to learn how to play some of it on bass. I would have been about 22 or 23 at the time.

All the music I’ve ever been turned on to has been through my brother, my mother or friends, so I’m sure that’s how I got into Primus. I would never go to a record shop and I didn’t really listen to the radio – I thought it kinda sucked.

My bass player, Bob Marinelli, is a wonderful bassist and does a lot of bass lessons with me. I always like to do a couple of lessons every week when we’re on the road so a few days ago, the band and I were hanging out at a barbecue and I just started playing a bunch of Primus on my music machine. Bob said, ‘Jeez, this guy is good!’

Primus are definitely one of my favourite bands; they have such great music and great lyrics, and Les Claypool is so frickin’ wacky in the way he sings. To me, they’re on the same wavelength as Rush.

You know, it’s one thing to have talent but it’s a whole other thing to have so much talent that you can actually invent a whole new way of approaching music. It’s these legends who have done just that. What an amazing thing to be able to accomplish.”

Former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur has announced the forthcoming release of Bass Womb Room, featuring her first new music in over 15 years.

The album, Bass Womb Room: My ‘90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings, to give it its full title, will incorporate old and new music, and include previously unreleased four-track demos Auf der Maur recorded during the '90s, in addition to eight new 'interlude' compositions created for an upcoming exhibition of the Canadian musician's photography.

"I wrote these songs in the context of rising pressure from the major label-driven music industry on myself and my peers to make glossy hit songs to dominate radio airwaves," Auf der Maur says in a statement. "These songs are the sound of my internal experimentation and a way of keeping the Montreal art girl alive inside. These sounds are the quiet and private side of the girl who joined the big American major label rock band."

Auf der Maur first spoke about the project during a March interview with Louder.

"The museum exhibit of my photography that's coming out with my book [My ’90s Rock Photographs]opens in Toronto in September, and it's up for a year, and then it will travel internationally," she told this writer. "It's a very large exhibit, and one room is an ode to my bass and the fans, and it's called the Bass Room, and I'm building a sonic score to the installation. So I've actually been in the studio, and I'm returning to music, but in a very bass forward way. It will be an hour long piece that goes throughout the exhibit, an audio journey.

"But, and you're the first person I'm telling this, I also found some of my early four-track song recordings from the '90s, and they are actually working really well within this ambient score. So I am going to be releasing, with the photo book, a new body of sound. And I'm really excited about it, because I think it's the way that I'm going to ease myself back into sound. I need to come back in through the innocence place."

Bass Womb Room will be released on September 4 via Envision Records. Melissa Auf der Maur: My ‘90s Rock Photographs opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario on September 2.

It's fair to to say that Nancy Spungen was a divisive presence on London's punk scene in the 1970s: Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious loved her, everyone else hated her.

Known as 'Nauseating Nancy' by the English media, Philadelphia-born groupie Spungen came to London with The Heartbreakers in December 1976, ahead of the New Yorkers jumping aboard the Sex Pistols' ill-fated Anarchy Tour, and immediately latched onto bassist Vicious after being rejected by Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon).

The relationship between Spungen and Vicious was tempestuous and violent, not helped by the young lovers both developing addictions to heroin. In January 1978, following the Pistols break-up on their debut US tour, Spungen and Vicious relocated to New York, taking up residence at the city's iconic Hotel Chelsea. It was here, in room 100, that Spungen was found dead on October 12, 1978, aged 20: she had been murdered by a single stab wound to the abdomen, the murder weapon being a knife Vicious owned. The English musician gave conflicting accounts of what had happened, and was immediately arrested, and charged with second degree murder: however, his lawyers were able to get him released on $50,000 bail, on condition that he would not leave New York.

The news of Spungen's murder caused far less shock in London than one might imagine.

"Normally in a situation like that, there would be an emotive response from family and friends alike," Chrissie Hynde, who Vicious once offered to marry, wrote in her autobiography Reckless. "'Sid? He would never do anything like that - not to the woman he loved!' However, the nonchalant shrugging of shoulders like a Mexican wave making its way across London's punkerage was palpable. No one who knew them was particularly surprised to hear that Sid had inserted a blade into exhibit 'N'. We were only surprised that he'd stuck it out as long as he had."

The bleak and brutal end to what was a seemingly doomed relationship was partly what drew English film-maker Alex Cox (and his co-writer Abbe Wool) to make Sid & Nancy, his 1986 biopic about the pair: that, and rumours that a Hollywood studio was interested in casting Madonna and Rupert Everett in a film about the ill-fated lovers.

"In the spirit of punk," Cox told Clash magazine, "Abbe and I felt this had to be stopped, or at least pre-empted."

"I thought, for the times, the story was a good one to tell," the film-maker told money-into-light.com. "Sid and Nancy were terrible fuck-ups and they betrayed the punk ideal, but in the midst of all this chaos was a romantic story. It was all so tragic the way it played out."

Once Cox had secured a $4 million budget for the film, he set about casting the two lead roles. Daniel Day Lewis was considered for the role of Vicious, but the part was ultimately given to a young Gary Oldman, who would later claim that he turned down the role twice, which Cox denies.

"Gary came from the same neighborhood as Sid, Bermondsey," Cox told Money Into Light, "and he had the same understanding and desire to escape, to create a new persona and life for himself."

Courtney Love pleaded for the chance to play Spungen, but eventually accepted a part as fictional character Gretchen, while American actress Chloe Webb was cast in the title role.

Iggy Pop also had a minor part in the film, while the members of Guns N' Roses were employed as extras for scenes shot in a Los Angeles club, for which they were paid $100 per day. "It wasn't much fun," Slash recalled in his 2007 autobiography. "Actually it was like jury duty... I was the only one of us pathetic enough to show up for the duration."

At the conclusion of the film, after Spungen is stabbed during an argument with her drugged-up lover, Vicious is collected in a New York taxi, and in his confusion, he believes that Nancy is still alive and in the back seat, and the pair are driven away from the crime scene. In reality, after a stay in prison, Vicious died of a heroin overdose on February 2, 1979.

"The end feels bogus," Cox admitted 30 years on. "We should have shown Sid dying in a pool of vomit. Instead we opted for a touchy-feely way out."

The ending irked Vicious' friend John Lydon, who called it "stupid."

"To me this movie is the lowest form of life." Lydon stated. "I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction."

"It's all wrong," he wrote in his autobiography. "It was all someone else's fucking fantasy, some Oxford graduate who missed the punk rock era. The bastard."

Cox, however, defended the film in a 2017 BFI article.

"The most important scene in the film, from the perspective of [co-screenwriter] Abbe Wool and myself, was in the methadone clinic, where Sy Richardson plays the guy who won’t hand over their dose of methadone until he’s delivered a lecture about how they’re screwing up," Cox wrote. "Essentially, Sid and Nancy betrayed the punk movement. They should have been out there on the barricades, but instead they became another example of junkie rock stars getting high in a hotel room.

"That’s what we wanted to say, how they’d become such a disappointment to punk, but because the film got deeper and deeper into their horrible little world, everything outside them got a bit lost. The last we see John Lydon, he’s in the corner of some club, fading away. All that explains a sort of misunderstanding in the UK, where it was taken to be a film about the punk scene. The reception in America, where it was viewed as a horrific love story, was closer to our intentions."

In this week's podium of greatness, we have three English bands. Triumphing in our latest Tracks Of The Week tournament, Juliet's Not Dead – originally from the North East – saw off a worthy challenge from Lancaster's Massive Wagons, while Torquay-born Kris Barras and his Band took out third place, in the process consigning the entire rest of the globe to ignominy. Like a World Cup that England actually wins, if you like. So congratulations to them all.

By the time you read this, our latest competition will already be underway, with challengers from Greece, New Zealand and the Turkish precinct of Los Angeles challenging the usual Brits and Americans. Enjoy!

Villagers Of Ioannina City - Veneremos

These hard rockers from the North West of Greece combine heavy metal and stoner sensibilities with the traditional flavours and instruments of their homeland. It’s a commanding combination, not least on this title track from their upcoming album. Galloping Iron Maiden-meets-Metallica oomph comes with primal, hypnotic heat, courtesy of old-world Hellenic folk streaks – think heady woodwind screams from Greece’s rugged, mountainous Epirus region. The music video involving castles and cloaked figures also helps, natch.

HOLID4Y - Veridream

2026 is turning into the year of the Rivals Sons solo album, as guitar maverick/moustache-twirler-in-chief Scott Holiday releases this expansive, cinematic first taste of his new solo project (following Jay Buchanan’s Americana-fuelled singer/songwriter fest earlier this year). It’s *not* what you’d expect – in a good way. Opening with 70s prog synth textures, Veridream grows into a psychedelic but hooky adventure. A strange, trippy beauty, paving the way for the full album, Topology, coming later this year.

Split Dogs - Suffer

The UK punk’n’rollers veer into beefier heavy metal territory on this game-raising new single. At first it’s pure heavy-booted Sabbathian doom, but then Harry Martinez starts singing and everything kicks into a bouncier gear, creating a rough-throated, theatrical world of cobwebs and black leather that invites much dancing of the not-cool kind (i.e. the most fun kind). “The song deals with the struggle of letting the past dictate your happiness,” Martinez says, of the personal lyrics here, “but ultimately it’s about taking your power back, knowing your worth, and moving forward.”

Queens Of The Stone Age - Easy Street

Back in our lives with a beautifully weird, catchy swirl of lo-fi alternative sweetness, psychedelia and shadows, QOTSA team Josh Homme’s warmly heartbreaking croon with the countrified harmonies of singer/songwriter Nikki Lane. Built upward from gentle acoustic strumming and hand claps, Easy Street comes with a video cast of oddball characters, and it all gets…well, stuff happens. It’s probably best if you watch it. Tender, dark and ultimately kind of lovely.

Ricky Warwick - Seek Zen Destroy (feat. Phil Collen)

Almighty frontman, voice of Black Star Riders and solo artiste, among other things, Ricky Warwick has always had a way with a tune, and this one’s no exception. A bright yet dirty, strutting rock’n’roller with a touch of Prince under its skin, it features Def Leppard’s Phil Collen on guitar and backing vocals.“I wanted to make an album that captures everything I love about rock’n’roll,” Ricky says of parent album Fire & Vengeance, “its power to bring people together, to make us dance and connect with one another, even in a world that often feels consumed by fire and vengeance. At its core, this record is about finding hope and unity in the chaos.” Amen to that.

Eddie 9V - Blowin’ Up

In our experience, the best country-fried rock’n’roll has an edge to it, a little bit of a dark side, even. Such is the case with Dan Auerbach-produced Atlanta dude Eddie 9V. Yes his name sounds like a battery or piece of gear, but Blowin’ Up is swell – a deliciously greasy, easy-on-the-ear Southern groove machine with a laidback funky blues kick, its musings on breaking through as an artist flipped into an actual, explodey-explodey ‘blowing up’ situation in the video. Fine summer holiday fun.

Powder Chutes - Rivers

We somehow managed to miss this when it came out a couple of weeks back, but we're putting that right now because Rivers is an absolute beast of a song, driven by the angriest riff you'll hear this week, the kind of savage, lurching stomp that'll prompt listeners to check that Godzilla isn't rampaging through their neighbourhoods. It's the first new song to emerge from the feisty New Zealanders since last year's (rather excellent) debut album, and it bodes well for whatever big noise they have lined up next.

Ölüm - Yılan Kadın (Snake Woman)

Ölüm are a Los Angeles-based Turkish psychedelic rock band, so it won't surprise you to learn that Yılan Kadın (Snake Woman) is both mysterious and exotic, with a video populated almost entirely by extras who appear to have been freighted in from an underground shisha lounge in Istanbul circa 1975. It's beautifully crafted – melodically as well as aesthetically – with a slinky groove, excellent use of Middle Eastern melodies, and a keyboard player who wears a towering hat.

Liam Gallagher has shot down hopes of a new album from Oasis, suggesting that the expectations for the record would be so great that nothing the band might release could live up to what fans are hoping for.
Gallagher made his comments on X, in response to a fan who suggested that a new album from the Manchester band "will actually change lives".

"NO," Gallagher replied bluntly. "I’m just not prepared for the criticism if it doesn’t sell 100 million copies in the first hour, cure bad breath and constipation for the nation, if it doesn’t turn back time for Cher and some other shit. Let’s just do some gigs and be happy, thank you."

As you may have detected, Gallagher's response was not entirely serious.

Oasis' last studio album, Dig Out Your Soul, was released in October 2008, just 10 months before the infamous backstage argument in Paris between Liam and Noel Gallagher that led to the band's break-up.

In 2024, after the band's Live 25 reunion tour was announced, Liam Gallagher told fans on X that a new record from the band was "in the bag", adding that he was "blown away" by the new songs his brother has written for said record.

This turned out to be the singer's idea of a joke.

"I was fucking joking," he later admitted, "and the reason being because everyone is a little uptight these days. I’m sorry if I have upset anyone but fuck me it was a laugh."

Rumours persist that Oasis will play more live shows in 2027, following the extraordinary success of their 2025 world tour.

They were the New Romantic group who spurned their pop audience to create bleak, beautiful music that inspired Marillion, Porcupine Tree, White Willow and many others. In 2012 we asked the question: how prog were Talk Talk?

“There were three bands in the 80s who, for me, just defined how music could be arranged: The Blue Nile, Japan and Talk Talk,” says Marillion vocalist Steve Hogarth. “I’d first heard Talk Talk on the radio with [1984’s] It’s My Life and the other hits, and I thought they were a cut above the usual chart stuff. But it was with [1986’s] The Colour Of Spring that they came well and truly onto my radar.”

Teetering in from the fringes of the new wave and New Romantic movements, London band Talk Talk supported Duran Duran in 1981, and released their debut album The Party’s Over a year later. The band – late vocalist Mark Hollis, drummer Lee Harris, bassist Paul Webb and keyboard player Simon Brenner – played sleek synth-pop. The single Talk Talk was a belated Top 30 hit, earning the group an appearance on Top Of The Pops.

However, admitting to any influences from the progressive rock era in the 1980s was terminally un-hip. So the fact that Hollis used to carry around a set of King Crimson’s 70s LPs for inspiration, or that Can’s Tago Mago was a source for rhythmic sustenance, went unreported. After Simon Brenner’s departure, the band made their second album, 1984’s It’s My Life, as a trio with producer Tim Friese-Greene becoming George Martin to their Beatles.

While It’s My Life retained many familiar 80s signifiers, such as glistening synths and sliding bass, the seeds of change were sown. Guest musicians such as trumpeter Henry Lowther and pianist Phil Ramocon help evoke a glacial cool that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the German jazz label ECM.

But the changing sound that so appealed to Steve Hogarth was more evident on 1986’s The Colour Of Spring. Talk Talk’s growing experimentation was assisted by former Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson’s vamping on Happiness Is Easy, ex-Traffic man Steve Winwood’s vibrant Hammond organ and the searing guitar work of ex-Random Hold member and Peter Gabriel associate David Rhodes on the single Life’s What You Make It.

“I went in for one evening, taking my pedals and guitar,” recalls Rhodes. Having played the backing track, Mark Hollis asked him to make the guitar sound “poxy.” “I pressed some pedals and asked if that’s that they meant, and he said ‘yes’. The other thing Mark asked me – which was very funny – was if I knew of Acker Bilk, the clarinetist who’d had a hit with Stranger On The Shore; and if so, could I play the riff like that?!”

Life’s What You Make It went to Number 16, with The Colour Of Spring reaching Number 8. Just when Talk Talk might be expected to make another record bristling with hits, they confounded all expectations. In February 1987, along with Tim Friese-Greene and engineer Phill Brown, the band went into Wessex Studios, the converted church in Islington where King Crimson recorded their first three albums, to begin work on Spirit Of Eden. There they would stay for more than a year, in a secluded, womb-like environment, bedecked with 60s-style psychedelic oil lamps, strobe lights and incense, embarking on a remarkable journey that would lead far away from their pop origins.

“I loved The Colour Of Spring but in retrospect it seems like the link between the pop/commercial era and the darker, more intense and beautiful two albums that followed,” says Porcupine Tree’s Richard Barbieri. “1988’s Spirit Of Eden and its 1991 follow-up, Laughing Stock, are quite simply works of art. Such fragile beauty and use of space in music is rarely found; and however long and hard the journey was in creating these, the overall feeling I get is one of spirituality and intuition. My desert island discs, for sure.”

Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock were seen as a significant departure. Brilliantly unpredictable, the handful of pieces on each album transcend the usual notions of song structure, becoming one amorphous, dream-like suite. The ingredients include echo-drenched bluesy licks bleeding into Messiaen-like chamber music interludes of viola, clarinet and bassoon; squalls of distorted harmonica merging with ghostly choirs; jagged guitar chords and teeth-rattling percussion; sonorous organ and icy piano.

But having abandoned the trademark synthesizers used on their previous records, there was nothing that could be described as a radio-friendly hook. In making this decisive break with their past, it’s no coincidence that almost three minutes and 30 seconds – the optimum running time of a single – elapse before Mark Hollis starts singing on Spirit Of Eden’s opening track The Rainbow.

Jacob Holm-Lupo, guitarist with the Norwegian art-rock band White Willow, believes the two albums – and Spirit in particular – represented a liberating force that went against the prevailing mood of the times. “The 80s were a time of rigidity in music,” he says. “Rhythms were being sequenced and time-locked, the harmonic vocabulary was solidifying into a set of effective but predictable clichés. Talk Talk loosened everything up. Time stretched and slowed, harmony was disassembled and reassembled. I was 15 when Spirit Of Eden came out. I had already discovered 70s prog, but this was the first time I found that similar sense of freedom, and that rainbow of possibilities, in contemporary pop.”

In a 1988 interview Hollis shone some light on the record’s progressive sound: “Well, it’s certainly a reaction to the music that’s around at the moment, ’cos most of that is shit. It’s only radical in the modern context. It’s not radical compared to 20 years ago. If we’d have delivered this album to the record company 20 years ago they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.”

Theo Travis, sax player with Soft Machine Legacy and Steven Wilson’s current live band, is an admirer. “There are very few who’ve managed that trajectory from pop into... I don’t know what. Spirit Of Eden isn’t pop people playing at something jazzy or experimental. It’s a very mature album in itself and, musically, beautifully successful.

“On Laughing Stock there’s an absolutely classic drum sound which was recorded by a single microphone 30 feet away from the whole kit. That technique which Phill [Brown] brought to Talk Talk and on Mark Hollis’s self-titled solo album was extremely important and really quite unique.”

“Minute by minute, Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock are beautiful, sumptuous records,” says Radio Massacre International’s Steve Dinsdale, “a colourful tapestry of timbres blended to perfection, surrounded by hallowed silences and spaces. I didn’t know what to make of it as there weren’t many precedents.”

Spurred on by the momentum of expectant fans hoping for ‘The Colour Of Spring Part Two,’ Spirit Of Eden was by no means a commercial disaster, reaching Number 19. However, with no obvious hit single, and without a tour to promote the album, Talk Talk were no longer a viable chart act. Moving labels to Polydor, final album Laughing Stock was even more uncompromisingly stark and obscure. “They were just growing up and challenging themselves and taking things into a more esoteric area,” suggests David Rhodes.

But could they be considered a prog band? Theo Travis thinks so. “You could call them progressive in a non-generic way. Where ‘progressive music’ means a music that’s very ambitious to move forward, then Talk Talk absolutely fit the bill.”

In 1992 No-Man vocalist Tim Bowness was under the wing of Talk Talk manager Keith Aspden. “Steven [Wilson] and I definitely heard a kinship with progressive artists in the band’s eclectic influences,” says Bowness. “With each successive release, Talk Talk sounded purer and more focused than on their previous one. I could hear late-1960s Miles Davis in Laughing Stock and Spirit Of Eden, especially in the production and the restless and insistent drum patterns.

“I think the band’s fusion of sophisticated classical and jazz-derived chords with Mark Hollis’ soulful voice had something in common with similar approaches in the music of Traffic, Procol Harum and early Genesis.”

“I think ‘prog’ is such a strange word,” says Steve Hogarth. “It’s generally used to define a kind of music that was progressive in 1977. Bearing in mind we’re 30 years-plus on from there, it must mean it’s regressive by definition. If you stretch the word ‘prog’ back out to progressive again then any band that tries to reach out into the darkness and push their boundaries are by definition progressive – and that certainly applies to Talk Talk.”

By no means the first artists to make the journey from brightly-lit pop to rarified, sepulchral introspection, Talk Talk followed their muse no matter where it led. After 1998’s sparse, Zen-like acoustic solo album, Mark Hollis left the music industry. Since then, there’s been no hint of a Talk Talk comeback or reunion; only a profound silence.

Harold Pinter, whose plays are as famous for their dramatic pauses as the actual content, said: “When true silence falls, we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness.” Pinter understood that when the words stop, truth can resonate more clearly. The same could be argued of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis, whose mysterious allure remains untarnished.

In January 2015, just eight months on from the May 2014 release of their self-titled debut album, Los Angeles 'power trio' California Breed announced that they were splitting up. Original drummer Jason Bonham had exited the band in June 2014, and although vocalist/bassist Glenn Hughes and guitarist Andrew Watt recruited ex-Queens of the Stone Age drummer Joey Castillo to replace Bonham for live shows, former Deep Purple legend Hughes decided that the project had run its course. At the time, the least-well known member of the band, Andrew Watt made it clear that he didn't want the band to break up, and pledged to "continue the quest to bring rock n roll back to the people that are hungry for it."

Eleven years on, it's fair to say Watt has over-delivered on that promise. In the last year alone, the 35-year-old New Yorker has produced albums for The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, performed alongside Guns N' Roses duo Slash and Duff McKagan as a tribute to his friend Ozzy Osbourne at the Grammys, played in Eddie Vedder's backing band at his Ohana festival, and appeared on US TV alongside Michael Stipe (ex-R.E.M.). Dig a little further back, and he's also produced albums for Iggy Pop (2023's Every Loser), Pearl Jam (2024's Dark Matter), and Elton John and Brandi Carlile (2025's Who Believes in Angels?). Oh, and he also co-wrote and produced a couple of songs on the new Madonna album, Confessions II: chances are that he's not pining too much for the days when California Breed supported Alter Bridge. Not that working with legends comes without a different type of pressure.

"If I make the shittiest Rolling Stones album of all time, it’s on me," Watts admits in a new interview with The Times newspaper. "It’s not on them because they can play You Can’t Always Get What You Want for the rest of their lives. I put myself on the line to potentially get the shit kicked out of me."

Watt reveals that he was working with pop star Dua Lipa when he got an invitation to tea with Mick Jagger, as a prelude to working with The Rolling Stones.

"If you talk to anyone who’s worked with the Stones, they’ll say the same thing: there’s always a point where it’s informal, but Mick is interviewing you," Watt says. "We were chatting, listening to music, and suddenly Mick was grilling me: what my process was, what I would do with the band. I thought we were just having a cup of tea and some biscuits."

Asked if the Stones are willing to be bossed around in the studio by a 35-year-old, Watt says, "I’m a New Yorker. I say what’s on my mind. I am here to produce, to give my opinion -otherwise what the fuck am I doing? So I do. On everything. And these guys were gracious enough to come down to my level and listen. They might not agree with me, though."

In the interview, Watt also pays tribute to Paul McCartney's tireless energy.

“Paul McCartney has more energy than you and I combined" he tells interview Will Hodgkinson. "Paul is playing two-and-a-half-hour shows each night, he gets on the bus with his boys afterwards, a margarita is poured for him - he’s unbelievable."

As long-serving co-vocalist and bassist with The Moody Blues, John Lodge helped keep the Moodies’ flame burning even after the band had stopped touring. Born on July 20, 1943, his distinctive falsetto harmonies and bass-playing helped shape the band’s iconic sound and cement their status. In addition to gigging right up to his unexpected death in October 2025 at the age of 82, he also released a handful of solo albums, including his 2023 updated version of Days Of Future Passed, which was praised by critics and fans alike.

Right to the very end, John Lodge, The Moody Blues’ bassist, co-vocalist and songwriter never lost his passion or drive for playing and recording music. “I play music every day,” he told this writer in 2024. “I’ve loved it since it took hold of me when I was 13. And I love writing songs and discovering something new all the while.”

It was precisely that sense of wonder and exploration, coupled with a technical finesse and melodic flair, that propelled Lodge from his earliest musical beginnings until his final days. And in anchoring The Moody Blues for 50 years, he helped the band become one of prog rock’s most pioneering, enduring and biggest-selling forces. His bass playing was never just about rhythm; it carried a tunefulness and emotion that set him apart from so many of his contemporaries.

Lodge’s story began in Erdington, Birmingham, where he was born on July 20, 1943 to working-class parents, Olive and Charles. While there were no instruments, gramophone or sign of Lodge’s future talents, his musical curiosity was piqued when his uncle made him a cat’s-whisker crystal radio just at the moment when electrifying new sounds came sweeping from across the Atlantic.

“My first real musical encounter was rock’n’roll on Radio Luxembourg 208,” he recalled. It was through that crackling static that a lifetime’s obsession began as Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis took up residence in the young Lodge’s imagination. By his early teens, his fascination evolved into active experimentation. During lunch breaks from Central Grammar School, he would sit in Eddie’s Café listening to those same artists belting out of a Rock-Ola jukebox.

Fascinated with the left-hand lines of the rock’n’roll pianists that he heard, he began translating them to the bottom four strings of his acoustic guitar – and so unwittingly developing the distinctive and melodic style that would come to define his playing.

But it was at a performance by local act The Tremors that Lodge experienced the revelation that would change his life – the sight of a real electric bass. Soon after, he made his way to Jack Woodruff’s music shop in Birmingham and bought a Tuxedo bass, which soon gave way to the sunburst Fender Precision bass that underpinned many of The Moody Blues’ most celebrated recordings.

His path to The Moody Blues was set in motion in the early 60s. Joining El Riot And The Rebels, he formed lifelong friendships with future Moodies bandmates Roy Thomas and Mike Pinder, while the band cut their teeth in a fiercely competitive local scene that also included The Spencer Davis Group and various factions of The Move such as Carl Wayne And The Vikings.

Though he turned down an offer of turning pro by joining The Moody Blues in favour of continuing his mechanical engineering studies at the Birmingham College Of Advanced Technology, Lodge never stopped playing, honing his craft with a variety of local bands.

In the wake of The Moody Blues’ struggle to follow the global success of their 1964 hit Go Now and the lukewarm response to their debut album The Magnificent Moodies the following year, the band began to lose momentum. Disheartened by their inability to recapture that early success, singer-guitarist Denny Laine and bassist Clint Warwick both left. It was then that Lodge – along with singer-guitarist Justin Hayward – accepted the invitation to join, marking the beginning of a bold new era for The Moody Blues.

After famously being told that they were the “worst fucking band in the world” by a disgruntled audience member after a show in Stockton, the band set about reinventing themselves. Recognising their core sparks of four voices, Hayward’s acoustic guitar, Thomas’ flute, Lodge’s melodic bass playing, Graeme Edge’s drumming and a desire to write their own material, their new direction was cemented with the introduction of Mike Pinder’s strange new tape-based keyboard, the Mellotron.

While many commentators have, over the years, cited that as the band’s secret weapon, it was the combination of these elements that truly created the magic for which the band became known. As Lodge later noted, regardless of who wrote a particular song, it would become a Moody Blues number by virtue of the individual members’ contributions in bringing it to life.

In 1967 that alchemy came into its own. When Decca asked them to fuse Dvořák’s New World Symphony with pop for their new Deram imprint – a label set up to show off the company’s advances in sound fidelity – the band saw their moment. Instead of following orders, they filled the studio with their own songs, resulting in their groundbreaking second album Days Of Future Passed. It’s widely acknowledged as one of the very first progressive rock albums.

“We weren’t thinking about being pioneers,” Lodge recalled. “We were just young and couldn’t believe our luck recording our own music.”

His early compositions were small in number but big in impact. His main writing credit on the album – the urgent, propulsive Lunch Break: Peak Hour – hinted at the energy and invention he’d soon bring to the band’s sound. He wasn’t content to simply hold down the bottom end. Treating the instrument as a melodic engine, he soon established himself as one of the true bass innovators of the era.

His approach came fully into focus with Ride My See-Saw (1968), a song whose surging energy often brought their concerts to a euphoric close. By the following year, on Eyes Of A Child, Candle Of Life and Send Me No Wine, Lodge had broadened his palette as a songwriter, while keeping his bass lines rooted at the heart of his sound. And as his confidence grew, so did his voice – either blending harmonies or taking the spotlight – to stand with Hayward not as a foil, but as a true counterpart.

Fuelled by a combination of youthful exuberance and a formidable creative drive, The Moody Blues released three albums in short order – In Search Of The Lost Chord (1968), On The Threshold Of A Dream and To Our Children’s Children’s Children (1969). Between the recording sessions, the band also completed two successful North American tours. These were the heady days of flower power and psychedelia, and while Lodge’s bandmates and musical peers sought to find meaning via chemically-altered states of consciousness and Eastern philosophies, the bassist found comfort in his Christian faith.

Notably, unlike many of the musicians of the time whose words were treated with almost mythical reverence, Lodge never claimed to hold the answers to the social, political and philosophical questions of the day. Indeed, The Moody Blues’ final two singles before their 70s hiatus – the Lodge-penned Isn’t Life Strange (1972) and 1973’s I’m Just A Singer (In A Rock’n’Roll Band) – found them sailing against the prevailing tide of The Big Artistic Statement, which, somewhat ironically, were both big statements to make while entirely in keeping with Lodge’s clear-eyed view of the world.

By the end of the 60s, The Moody Blues were looking to take full control of their destiny, a move precipitated by Decca’s marketing team suggesting a cover of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. With the blessing of Decca chair Sir Edward Lewis, the band launched Threshold Records, one of the first artist-run labels. Initially designed as a home for their own albums, the band set about signing other artists – with Lodge discovering and producing Trapeze, featuring Glenn Hughes and Mel Galley, who’d later find fame with Deep Purple and Whitesnake respectively.

Though he enjoyed the experience, the label’s success alienated Lodge. “It got too big,” he later recalled. “I remember later going to the Threshold Christmas lunch and, apart from the band, I didn’t really know anyone there!”

The passing of time has obscured just how huge The Moody Blues were as the 1970s began; this was a band so ambitious they ended up reshaping the sound of live music itself. Touring American arenas alongside Canned Heat and Jefferson Airplane, they found their lush, orchestral sound struggling to fill the space. Enter young Philadelphia engineer Gene Clair, whose ingenuity would change everything. He built the Moodies the world’s first hanging PA system – a breakthrough that brought power and precision to their live shows and became the blueprint for modern touring.

That newfound clarity was evident in the studio. On A Question Of Balance (1970), the band stripped things down, chasing the immediacy of the stage. The result was leaner and more direct – from Lodge’s driving Tortoise And The Hare to the lilting Minstrel’s Song, along with his bandmates’ contributions – a record that fused technical innovation with a human touch.

The band’s six-year hiatus between Seventh Sojourn (1972) and Octave stemmed not from internal tensions but maturity. While Pinder wanted to move to the US, Lodge didn’t want to miss his children growing up, though he did find time to record Blue Jays with Hayward in 1975, while his solo album Natural Avenue two years later saw him cutting loose with Faces’ Kenney Jones, among others.

The Moodies’ renewed commercial success throughout the 80s found them in the unusual position of bringing together serious prog aficionados with mainstream pop fans, something that Lodge would later attribute to the “truthfulness” that lay at the heart of their music. But as the musical landscape shifted in the 1990s with the rise of MTV, they made the strategic choice of leaning into touring and releasing long-form live videos rather than pushing new albums. Their reputation as a live act grew – and Lodge’s role remained vital as his voice and bass playing continued to provide the band’s foundation.

Playing into his 80s, he never lost the enthusiasm and passion that music had given him since childhood; and his pride at being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2018 was enormous. His final release, the EP Love Conquers All, was both a celebration and an acknowledgment of the health challenges he’d recently faced. With his wife Kirsten, son Kristian, and his son-in-law, Yes singer Jon Davison, all contributing, the record became a family affair.

Lodge’s passing leaves an undeniable void, but also a legacy for the ages. Unburdened by trends or sell-by dates, his songs remain timeless and his bass lines continue to burrow deep into both the ear and the heart. Through them, the joy, curiosity, and humanity that defined his music live on, resonating as vividly as ever.

On May 18, 2017, Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell tragically took his own life aged 52. When news began filtering through of Chris' passing, Metal Hammer began working on a special feature to honour the beloved frontman, reaching out to many of his friends and peers to pay tribute to a truly generational talent.

One of those friends was Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington - a man who looked up to Chris, had toured with him, and who had sung live with him at numerous shows prior to his passing. Chester had even been invited to sing at Chris’s funeral service at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on May 26, 2017, and it was only one week later that he spoke to Hammer about his memories of the Soundgarden man and their close friendship. Though it was clearly hard for him to talk about, Chester was gracious, generous with his time and thanked us for “taking the time to write a nice piece on someone who’s contributed so much to so many people’s lives”.

Devastatingly, Chester would take his own life just two months later. In a strange twist of fate, he died on what would have been Chris Cornell's 53rd birthday - July 20, 2017. It was another loss felt keenly by the rock and metal community, and one that inspired a similar outpouring of grief and love. It gave this interview - his final one given to Metal Hammer before his passing - an elevated emotional significance.

First of all, could you talk us through how you and Chris met?

Chester Bennington: “We’d done a tour in the US called Projekt Revolution, which was a semi-annual festival that Linkin Park used to put on. And we’d bring in tons of different acts, and Chris Cornell was on one of our tours [in 2008]. I think this was when we were touring [third album] Minutes To Midnight. Anyway, we met then. We got along really well right away.

“I grew up listening to Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Nirvana. I don’t think any music scene influenced me as much as the scene that came out of Seattle. There was so much great music that came out of Seattle at that time. So it was really cool for me to be out there with one of my heroes, and we got along really well. Vicky [Cornell] and my wife, Talinda – they became best friends right away. Every day they’d be hanging out, and we got really close over that tour. Our friendship really grew during that time.”

How did it develop from there? It sounds like it became more than just a touring buddies thing quite quickly

“I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but sometimes you meet somebody and it’s like you’ve known them forever. And that was really the case between our families. After that tour, we stayed in touch and that developed into Chris and Vicky asking me to be the godfather of their son, Christopher. One of my favourite memories of our friendship was the baptism and the christening and taking on that promise to the family. That was really great. Whenever they were in town we would try to connect – sometimes it was difficult because we’re all so busy. Chris and I were similar in many ways in that we had a lot of dear friends but we didn’t necessarily see them all the time, because our personal lives are so busy, and our dedication to our families is so strong.”

I guess the fact that your families came together so quickly, not just you and Chris personally, made that easier?

“Yeah, I think if it was just me and Chris talking, hanging out, you know, we would be good acquaintances. But the friendship between our wives, you add that into the mix and things escalate a little bit more! Ha ha ha! In terms of closeness, in terms of intimacy, it was really quite special. Our friendship grew beyond just respecting each other for what we do musically.”

How would you describe what Chris was like offstage?

“Chris was a great father, really dedicated to his family, loved his kids more than anything. Really quiet. When you got him alone, he was really talkative. Get him into an intimate setting and a lot of personality comes out. Outside of that, pretty quiet and reserved. Really soft-spoken and very gentle.”

As someone who grew up as a fan of his music, I guess you must have had a strong perception of Chris. How was he compared to how you’d imagined him before you started spending time together?

“Luckily, my experiences have been more positive than negative, but I’ve had the opportunity to perform with a lot of the people that I really admired growing up, and who had a lot of influence on me. And 90% of the time it’s been really wonderful, and friendships have developed. The other 10% of the time it doesn’t go so well and you kinda go, ‘Man, I wish I never met that person!’ Ha ha ha! It ruins the whole thing! For me, at least. Like, ‘Oh, man. I met that guy from that band I love and he was kind of a douche. I wish I’d never met him so I could still listen to the music.’

“So meeting Chris was really… it’s not like everybody gets the opportunity to do those things. And that’s probably what I’ve enjoyed the most in the success of Linkin Park is being able to go on tour with a lot of these guys. I do a lot of all-star band stuff; I’ve played gigs with Alice in Chains, I’ve done shows with Jane’s Addiction, I’ve done shows with Stone Temple Pilots, I’ve done shows with Chris Cornell. I’ve had the opportunity to play with my favourite band, Metallica. It’s just been an honour. And so Chris was definitely a highlight. And in terms of his ability to perform, the guy is in the top three male vocalists of all time. Up there with Jeff Buckley and Jimmy Gnecco from Ours.”

What do you think was so unique about Chris as a performer?

“Obviously his vocal range is incredible. The sheer power. But I think it’s his songwriting that really stands out – the time signatures he uses, the chord progressions. It’s a delicate balance to get technical and smart with the way you play. Especially with Soundgarden – their rhythm section was incredible. The progressions that they played were really complicated, but they had a groove. And I think that’s something that’s super, super difficult to pull off.”

And as a performer, did you take anything from him from touring together and getting to see him play every night?

“When you watch greatness, you don’t need to be convinced. You just watch and go, ‘Wow.’ I’m getting goosebumps now just thinking about it. And so when you see someone who is truly talented and gifted do what they do, and love doing it, it’s so special. When we were touring on that Projekt Revolution tour, I got to go out and sing [Temple Of The Dog’s] Hunger Strike with Chris. And Eddie Vedder is a huge influence on me too, and that was one of my favourite songs. I loved hearing those two guys do that song, so when he asked me to do it I said, ‘OK, I’ll come out and sing Eddie’s parts.’ He’s like, ‘Nah man, you’re gonna hit the high ones.’ I was like, ‘Crap!’ Ha ha ha! ‘Oh, no!’

“There are two times I’ve been super-nervous about singing with someone. One was with Paul McCartney during the Grammys, and I had to sing high harmonies on Yesterday. You can’t really screw that up! And then doing Hunger Strike with Chris, and I had to hit the really high parts. The best compliment I ever got was from Chris. After we did it, he laughed and said, ‘Dude – you’re not supposed to be able to do that, man! I made you sing that on purpose so you wouldn’t do it as well!’

"So that was a huge compliment to me. It’s kinda funny but my wife would always tease me because when Chris and I would do that song, we would always stare at each other. She’d be like, ‘Look at you guys, staring at each other onstage all night!’ That was just because of my admiration for him as a person and as a performer, and the friendship we were developing. It was just really special, it was a special time.”

What’s your fondest memory of Chris?

“Definitely the times we had just hanging out – which were very few and far between. Sitting by the pool with the kids, just kinda talking. Obviously, the christening of his son, Christopher, and being invited into the family. That was really special.”

You sang at Chris’s funeral. How did that come about? Were you asked to do that, or was it something that you put yourself forward to be involved in?

“I’m not sure exactly how the idea came up, I was just asked to sing. There was talk of maybe 10 people speaking, and it came up that maybe it might be good for someone to come in and do something musical to split up the eulogies. And so I was asked to sing, and of course I knew it would be tough. I wanted to make sure it was tasteful, and it was the right song. But Vicky wanted me to do it, so I did it. It was really up to her. She obviously said yes, but I didn’t ask – I was asked to perform. I’m not sure who brought up the idea.

“So I just prayed on it a little bit. I said, ‘Chris – I know you’re up there, and I wanna make this special. I want it to be the right song. Put one in my head, give me the little tingly feeling. Give me something, y’know?’ And I knew from our conversations that he’d been friends with Jeff Buckley and they were close, so I felt that Hallelujah would be a good song. It’s my favourite song of all time – I think it’s the best song that’s ever been written – and of all the versions that have been done, Jeff Buckley’s is my favourite.

"So that was a nice tie, you know, somebody that Chris was close to. Another one of my favourite vocalists. And so I did that song, and I spoke with Lily, his daughter, and apparently it was something they used to sing together. Lily and [Chris’s other daughter] Toni and Chris would sing together. I didn’t know that until after I’d performed it, but it turned out to be a very special moment. I’m just really honoured that I was able to participate in a positive way.”

It’s a wonderful song, but it’s so heart- breaking. We can only imagine what it must’ve been like to sing a song like that at such a sensitive occasion.

“It was tough. I believe everything is random in this universe, but that there are no accidents. That’s what I believe. We were set to play Jimmy Kimmel a few days beforehand, and we switched things up. We were going to play Heavy on Jimmy Kimmel that night, but Chris had just passed so we felt like dedicating One More Light to him would be appropriate. I got to sing through that a few times, break down, cry a little bit, pull myself together. And I got to run through that experience a little bit, so I felt like that prepared me for the funeral. So I was able to keep it together pretty well, but it was tough.”

What do you think Chris’s legacy will be?

“His legacy are his children and his wife. His family will be his legacy. I think, musically, he stands without question as being one of the greatest influences of our time, from one of the greatest bands of all time. His contribution to music is unrivalled. Obviously there’s tons of great musicians who contribute to the history of music, but I think Soundgarden in particular – as well as Chris on his own – will be recognised as being among the greats. In terms of his music, I think that’s undeniable. In terms of him as a person, who he was as a father, as a husband, family man, friend – he was a great person, and a good person. And I think his kids will grow up to do special things with their lives.

Samaritans are available for anyone who needs support, at www.samaritans.org. You can call any time for free on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org

In 2006, an obscure Swedish death metal band named Repugnant dropped their one and only album, Epitome Of Darkness.

They’d been kicking around the Scandinavian underground since 1998, led by pseudonymous singer and guitarist Mary Goore. A handful of demos, seven-inchers and EPs had made their way out of the murk, though what little buzz they’d created was confined to specialist websites and underground connoisseurs.

But now came Epitome Of Darkness, their shot at the death metal big time. It was a decent record – harsh but almost tuneful, almost like the person who was writing the songs listened to more than just brutal noise caked in grave-dirt and acne cream. Except that the band who made it had already split up, having barely made a ripple in DM circles, let alone outside of them.

That may have been deflating, but it wasn’t the end of the world. By the time Repugnant’s lone album finally crawled out into the gloom, Mary Goore had already started a brand new, occult-themed one-man project. This new outfit dispensed with death metal, favouring a sweeter yet eerier sound that owed more to Mercyful Fate and Blue Öyster Cult than Morbid Angel or Death. The name of this new band was Ghost. And the man behind it, the man who once called himself Mary Goore? Tobias Forge.

“It broke my heart,” Tobias told Metal Hammer in 2023 of Repugnant’s failure to make an impact. “I wanted us to be signed to Roadrunner and support Slayer. That never happened, unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, as it kept me grounded for a few more years and if those things had happened maybe I wouldn’t be here today.”

Repugnant weren’t Tobias Forge’s first band. He’d started out in school-age black metallers Absurdum in his hometown of Linköping in the mid-90s, before briefly joining another band, Malign. They weren’t his only band even when he was fronting Repugnant,– he pulled double duty in glam rock revivalists Crashdïet between 2000 and 2002 and alt-rockers Subvision from 2002 onwards.

But none of those seemed as close to his blackened heart as his pet death metal band. Tobias had begun listening to rock before he even reached double digits, introduced to it via his older brother Sebastian. He gravitated towards increasingly extreme sounds as he got older: Slayer, Morbid Angel, Death, Possessed.

Repugnant was where that love truly came out. Tobias adopted the nom-de-death Mary Goore, a play on ex-Thin Lizzy guitar hero Gary Moore. Early drummer Chris Piss and bassist Roy Morbidson came and went, before the line-up settled on Tobias, guitarist Sid E Burns (aka Johan Wallin), drummer Tom Bones (born Thomas Daun) and bassist Carlos Sathanas (Gustaf Lindström to his mum and dad).

If the names were jokey, the intention behind it all was anything but. “I really wanted to become a big band,” Tobias told Loudwire.

The rough-as-sandpaper debut seven-inch, 1999’s Hecatomb, plugged into the lineage of Swedish death metal bands stretching back to Grave, Carnage and Nihilist (later Entombed). A split single with Dutch bruisers Pentacle followed in 2002, followed by another split, Live in Stockholm 21.03.2003, in 2003, and the four-track Premature Burial in 2004.

In the era of nu metal, Repugnant were a tough sell. A few labels sniffed around them; they signed a deal early on with Dutch label Hammerheart, who promptly stuck them out on tour in Sweden with US death metal malcontents Macabre. But differences of opinion meant the band and the label parted ways, and there wasn’t much other interest coming their way.

“I learned the hard way in the late ’90s that wanting to play 80s-inspired death metal with my band was painfully out of touch with what was going on at the time,” Tobias told Metal Hammer.

That didn’t stop them recording the album that would become Epitome Of Darkness in 2004. But the band fell apart that same year, holed beneath the waterline by disinterest and frustration.

“Everything was just shit,” Tobias told Sweden Rock magazine in 2010. “There were only setbacks and everything was extremely negative. The mood was negative. We received no response. It was one of the big reasons why it all went to hell.”

Years later, Tobias would look back on the situation with a more realistic viewpoint. “I don't know if we were good enough or whatever,” he told Loudwire. “Now, knowing a lot of the things that is required, how many stars that need to align and all the decisions you have to make, I can definitely look back on myself as a 21-year-old and quickly see why I didn't achieve that with Repugnant. I wasn't mature. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't there yet.”

Epitome Of Darkness would finally be released in 2006 by Dutch label Soulseller. There were no reviews, no interviews, no advertising. A man who would become one of the most famous musicians of the following decade had released an album without anyone noticing.

Tobias spent the second half of the 2000s focusing on Subvision and, later, Ghost. He got married and had twin children. The window on becoming a successful musician was closing. He was, by his own admission, getting “desperate”.

Repugnant themselves had seemingly been consigned to the grave by 2010. But two things happened to change that. On March 12 that year, Tobias’ brother Sebastian – the person who had introduced him to metal in the first place – died unexpectedly from a heart attack.

Coincidentally, Tobias had uploaded the first Ghost songs he had recorded to MySpace the same night, catching the ear of Rise Above Records boss Lee Dorrian, who would eventually release their debut album, Opus Eponymous. Equally coincidentally, he’d been planning to resurrect Repugnant, albeit with a new line-up. They’d scheduled their first rehearsal for March 13, but Tobias was at Linköping hospital that night, dealing with the aftermath of his brother’s death.

“[Sebastian’s death] happened the night before our first rehearsal, which is quite eerie,” Tobias said in 2010. “It changed a lot of my views on the whole thing. The first rehearsal was extremely emotionally charged. Well, technically, the second rehearsal,” he added, referring to the fact his bandmates jammed without him at their initial get-together.

The resurrected Repugnance gave Tobias the catharsis he needed. “For me, it felt like a calling to do this again,” he said in 2010. “There’s only one way I can do aggressive music and that is through death metal, and that, in turn, I can only do through Repugnant. The band had to be resurrected so I could get out what I have within me.”

This latest version gigged sporadically over the next year or so, including at least one show with fellow Swedes Watain and an appearance at the 2011 Maryland Deathfest, where both Repugnant and Ghost performed on the same stage on the same day. Tobias even announced that he was writing a new album, to be titled Toxic Contagion.

Except that never happened. Papa Emeritus-shaped commitments forced Tobias to lay his death metal band to rest once more, along with the mooted album. And that’s where they’ve laid ever since, never to rise again.

Or will they? While Tobias has made it clear that he’d never cross the beams and write a death metal song for Ghost – “It would just feel strange, I feel, in that setting,” he told Loudwire – it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for this death metal lifer to reanimate Repugnant one more time.

"I still get the same kick out of things that I liked as an 11 or 12-year-old, when I really started listening to that and when death metal was this really dangerous animal that you can just go to this one store to find” he said. "And I'm still sort of chasing that."

By 1980, punk had not so much swept the country as hoovered and dusted the country and steam-cleaned the seat covers. The Who adjusted to the new wave with Who Are You, but the death of Keith Moon sent the band into a hiatus interrupted only by retrospective projects. Empty Glass was Pete Townshend’s response to all the above.

There are songs about NME writers (Jools And Jim), songs about coping (Keep On Working), songs about love (Let My Love Open The Door) and songs Roger Daltrey wanted for The Who (Rough Boys).

The result is an album full of superb songs that sound modern (lots of synths and skinny-tie snappiness), feminine (the gorgeous And I Moved, a cousin to Angie’s Townshend-written Peppermint Lump) and simultaneously resigned and furious. It's the best thing any member of The Who did in the 80s, and well worth two of anyone’s ears.

Widely regarded as Townshend's first debut album proper (1972’s Who Came First being wrapped up in devotion to his spiritual guru, Meher Baba), the album gave the guitarist his biggest solo success away from The Who. It reached No.11, while the rampaging opener Rough Boys cracked the Top 40.

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Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.

Join the group now.

Other albums released in April 1980

• Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden
• British Steel - Judas Priest 
• Wild Horses - Wild Horses
• Hypnotised - The Undertones
• Seventeen Seconds - The Cure
• Heaven and Hell - Black Sabbath
• Flush the Fashion - Alice Cooper
• Go to Heaven - Grateful Dead
• Give 'Em Hell - Witchfynde
• Growing Up in Public - Lou Reed
• Los Angeles - X
• Marauder - Magnun
• Middle Man - Boz Scaggs
• Sky 2 - Sky
• Snakes and Ladders - Gerry Rafferty
• Waters Edge - Sweet
• Solo In Soho - Phil Lynott

What they said...

"When Townshend sings 'When everybody seems unkind / I’ll give you a four-leaf clover /Take all the worry out of your mind', his simple yet naked emotion is sincere, a notion that comes through in his overdubbed, barbershop quartet-style backing vocals and the song’s charming, three-chord arrangement." (Pop Matters)

"Since this is Townshend, it can be a little artier than it needs to be, as on the pseudo-Gilbert & Sullivan chorus of Keep on Working, but the joy of Empty Glass is that his writing is sharp, his performances lively, his gift for pop hooks as apparent as his wit. (AllMusic)

"On his earlier solo excursions, the casually reflective mood suited his light timbre. Here he's coming to terms with love, frustration, punk, and other subjects that overtax his capacity for urgency and anger (and understanding). Who fans find the gap between aspiration and achievement touching, even thematic. Nonbelievers find it whiny. And they hate those ostinatos (Robert Christgau)

What you said...

Mike Canoe: I know I've listened to Empty Glass a few times over the years but nothing has ever made as much of an impression as Let My Love Open The Door or Rough Boys. The former is one of the most perfect pop songs ever written and the latter is like Quadrophenia boiled down to four angry brawling minutes.

Paying closer attention to Empty Glass than usual this week, I like several more, including rockers Jools and Jim and Cat's In The Cupboard as well as the more experimental I Am an Animal and Keep on Working. I haven't really examined the lyrics closely so most of the confessional stuff is lost on me. I start to lose interest hallway through side two as the songs start to get slower and/or longer. Still, a generally enjoyable album by one of the greats.

Adam Ranger: The track A Little is Enough sums up my feelings on this album. Opening track Rough Boys is good, so is the closer Gonna Get Ya. The rest? Not so good. The album suffers from lack of a good vocalist. Some tracks have promising excerpts, but ultimately leave me unimpressed. It seems people really like the track Let My Love Open The Door, but again, I could not get through the whole song. In fact, I cringed a bit. A little is enough for me.

Evan Sanders: Empty Glass was a good listen for Who fans when it came out, during a time when the The Who's future was unclear and their guitarist and singer still had quite a bit to say. The introspective nature of the songs continues a theme we'd been hearing on The Who By Numbers and Who Are You, letting us connect the dots from However Much I Booze to The Music Must Change to "My life's a mess ... I hold an empty glass".

In addition to the lyrics, the album is strong musically, and this group has pointed out the keyboard-forward songs, which also were the case on Who Are You and would be the case on The Who's Face Dances a year later. Some people didn't care for the pop melodies on Let My Love Open The Door and A Little Is Enough, and I respectfully disagree, seeing these as good songs that just wouldn't work with Roger Daltrey singing lead.

Thinking of how The Who turned into almost a tribute band in later years, I wonder about an alternate universe where they would have taken a page from Led Zeppelin and retired the band's name after Keith Moon's death. Empty Glass would have stood out as Pete Townshend's farewell to his band, while setting the stage for his solo career. 7 or 8 out of 10.

Mark Veitch: Average.

Paul Cropper: Very good album. Better than the contemporaneous Who albums. Rough Boys is a great song. Love the video too. Think Daltrey said Rough Boys would have been a great Who song but Townshend disagreed.

Neil McCormack: And I Moved is one of Pete's finest, most beautiful compositions.

Greg Schwepe: This album was played heavily on the FM station where I grew up and was another “senior year album” that gets recalled when remembering albums that were released during my final year of high school. And back then since there was no internet, your musical knowledge of how many and what were the names of the albums someone released was based on what you might have seen in the racks in the record store. And I was sadly mistaken back then when I thought Empty Glass was the first solo album released by Pete Townshend. Wrong!

This started a successful string of 80’s solo albums that I purchased at some point. I mean, Townshend wrote, what, maybe 90% of The Who’s songs? So, his solo stuff should be just as good, right? And you have a little irony with the title as Townshend had a little alcohol problem at this time and has been noted that some of the songs may have been somewhat autobiographical.

The slashing guitar of Rough Boys kicks this one off, but what you may notice here and through the rest of the album, is the great use of interesting keyboard pieces and textures. Townshend may be a guitar smashing guitar hero, but that’s not the only instrument that’s prominent here. Guess that’s not surprising considering how keyboard heavy Who Are You was.

The cascading, repeating piano intro of And I Moved is an excellent example of these keyboards. And that continues with Let My Love Open The Door, another radio regular in my neck of the woods.

Jools And Jim is evidently a dig at journalists who had some not so nice things to say about Keith Moon after his death.

The vinyl started side two with Keep On Working, probably my least favorite song on the album. But it does have a bit of mini-opera feel to it like A Quick One, While He’s Away.

The keyboard-strong songs continue with A Little Is Enough. Maybe my favourite of the songs that were not prominent on the radio. Gonna Get Ya finishes the album with more slashing guitar, you can envision Pete windmilling through this one.

8 out of of 10 on this one. I followed his solo career closely after this, buying the first two solo albums I initially was not aware of, and even all the Scoop series with outtakes, demos, and the like. A very prolific and talented artist that kept busy away from his day job.

Michael J. Culver: I really consider this his first solo album and it is glorious. Rough Boys is about the Sex Pistols, which is also very cool.

Brian Hart: Pete Townshend’s Empty Glass is a little outside my wheelhouse but I’m always open to discovering new music. I’ve always been a fan of The Who but I’m more of a greatest hits fan.

I wasn’t completely unaware of the music on Empty Glass. I grew up hearing Rough Boys and Let My Love Open the Door. These songs are still bangers today. I also really enjoyed Cats In The Cupboard. Everything else on the album is OK but still listenable. A few people have posted that had this album been worked on by the rest of The Who, it probably would’ve been taken to a higher level. I can’t say I disagree, but who knows?

What I can say is that Pete Townsend is a talented musician and songwriter who certainly knows how to craft a song. Even though I probably won’t give Empty Glass another spin, Rough Boys and Let My Love Open the Door will definitely be added to the Spotify list. I give this album 5 out of 10.

Philip Qvist: This is not a bad album at all, and I guess it shouldn't be considering that Pete Townshend was the primary songwriter for The Who. Many have considered Empty Glass to be the best Who album never recorded by the band, and I concur.

I was quite familiar with opening track Rough Boys and Let My Love Open The Door as both got decent coverage down here in South Africa, while my other picks are Am I Moved, A Little Is Enough, Empty Glass and Gonna Get Ya, with a decent support cast from the likes of Tony Butler, Rabbit Bundrick and Simon Phillips.

If I do have a small quibble then it is over the fact that I reckon Roger Daltrey would have taken a few of the songs on this album to the next level, especially Rough Boys and Empty Glass. But that is a relatively minor issue as this is a good album that deserves a few spins.

Nigel Mawdsley: I bought some of Pete Townshend's solo work after seeing the superb Let My Love Open The Door on television many years ago.

I seem to remember that the music papers I was reading when Empty Glass was released gave the album mediocre reviews. Okay, Pete Townshend hasn't got the same vocal chops as Roger Daltrey, but there are some great songs on here.

Rough Boys, Gonna Get You and Empty Glass wouldn't have been out of place on a Who album, whereas Keep On Working sounds like The Kinks. (I read in an interview, again many years ago, when Pete Townshend stated that Ray Davies was a better songwriter than him, a very humble statement.)

Another track I really like is the Peter Gabriel-esque A Little Is Enough which deserves repeat plays.

As stated, Pete Townshend's voice is an acquired taste and although some of his solo material 'melds into one' for me there are still some truly excellent songs from his solo catalogue. 7 out of 10 for Empty Glass.

John Davidson: I dont think I've ever heard this before.

Who Are You was a huge hit and The Who seemed to embrace the challenge of punk. They morphed from mods to hard rockers and, despite producing rock operas, managed to avoid being labelled as prog, so they had plenty experience in navigating the fickle, changing nature of music and youth culture. But then Keith Moon got too ill to work, Roger Daltrey tried acting and this left old Pete at a loose end. Enter Empty Glass.

Townsend can certainly write great songs and plays a mean guitar, but I don't care much for his singing.

Rough Boys would sound better with Daltrey at the mic, but is otherwise a decent song. I Am An Animal reminds me of Behind Blue Eyes, at least in the vocal phrasing. And I Moved starts the slide into quirky new wave pop that characterised the rest of the album, but Squeeze had better phrasing and more wit, Elvis Costello had more grit and The Pretenders and Tom Petty had better tunes.

Let My Love Open the Door is a low point. There are also throwbacks to some almost Beatles-esque sequences (like on Keep On Working) that sound out of place. Apart from Rough Boys, there's nothing here I'd want to hear again.

Final score: 7.33 (51 votes cast, total score 374)

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The new book by Classic Rock and Prog writer Paul Sexton is Rock Goes to College: The Campus Music Scene That Shaped A Generation. It tells a story of British music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a focus on the live music presented at universities and polytechnics all over the UK, a lively if amateurish scene that hosted Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, Queen, The Kinks, Elton John and many more. In the excerpt below, members of Genesis recall their earliest shows.

On 1 November 1969, with pop tastes in Britain stretching on disc from the Archies to Abbey Road, Pink Floyd were setting the controls for the heart of the sun in the Main Debating Hall of Manchester University. Yes were in the same city, playing Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. Meanwhile, down in Uxbridge, Middlesex, Caravan were at Brunel, supported by the Idle Race (Jeff Lynne and all) and by a largely unknown band giving their first-ever public performance. This was the genesis of Genesis.

"We were facing the wrong way and three deep because we weren’t used to proper concert set-ups," guitarist Mike Rutherford later remembered with a laugh. "It was hard to keep so many 12-strings in tune." To do so, he added, "we used to spend ages in the toilet." Genesis didn’t even make the bill by name on the ticket and were simply listed as "guest group."

Admission was eight shillings in advance, ten on the door and six shillings for ladies ("Men must show S.U. cards"). Alongside the main groups were the somewhat unattractively named south London "psychedelic blues" quintet Screw, who might be little remembered these days but had played at the Rolling Stones’ famous Hyde Park show that summer. In the spring of ’69, they had recorded at least two songs produced by a distinguished college rock graduate, Floyd drummer Nick Mason.

Memories of that night at Brunel remain vivid for Genesis co-founder Anthony Phillips, too. "It was really important," he tells me, "because we had all these agents coming along. I just remember us being completely out of our depth, in quite a big room. We knew the pressure was seriously on. We’d rehearsed and rehearsed, but we hadn’t ever properly played live. We’d played at someone’s party a couple of weeks before [down the road in Chobham, Surrey].

"Everyone argued about where the PA should be. Peter Gabriel kept moving it to one position, then somebody else kept moving it into another position. We finally got to the first number, and I’d made the mistake of restringing my Strat just before the gig, which you don’t do."

Phillips continues: "We kicked off with a song called In the Beginning that has a nice riff, but then it comes to an instrumental break where everything stops and I have to go 'da-da-daa.' And suddenly, I realised that one of the strings had slipped, it was completely out of tune, and I couldn’t tell which string it was. These guys hadn’t heard us before, and they were looking at us like we were some sort of avant-garde outfit. It was so embarrassing, I could have died. It was like scoring an own goal in a cup final.

"I just remember turning the machine head, just guessing. Sheer panic. It was terrifying, but somehow we got through it, despite this complete amateurishness, and then this sort of semi-disaster, when people could have just walked out at that point and thought, 'Who are these guys?'

"I don’t know what I was doing, but somehow I must have tuned it the right way," he adds. "And I learned then. I think I had a loose machine head, but don’t restring just before you go on stage! But we got some dates that came out of it. We did start getting asked to do more gigs in techs and universities."

The band’s opportunity to find their progressive identity would have been sunk without the fairly anonymous surroundings of college bookings. The Genesis datebook for the 1969–1971 period had a wealth of engagements, amid working men’s clubs and youth centres, at places like Twickenham Tech and Thames and Teesside Polys.

At their earliest university shows, the perils of being unknowns were palpable. "We were like an appendage to them boozing," says Phillips. "Because of the size of the colleges, there were lots of people there and lots of noise, and if you were doing poncy, quiet 12-string songs, you basically weren’t listened to. We gradually excised all our quiet songs, virtually. They just all died a death."

It was the same for their sometime gig partner Nick Drake, a brilliant but entirely miscast sensitive singer-songwriter and former English literature student at Cambridge, where his reading of Wordsworth and Blake helped inform his beautiful, fragile lyrics. "Poor old Nick," says Phillips. "We played with him quite a lot of times, and we never had the chance to do more than say 'Hi, Nick' and goodbye.

"He should have been doing club or pubs or folk gigs, and here he was doing the biggest places, where people didn’t listen. You haven’t got the PA. He should have been doing concert halls, and you felt so sorry for this guy."

That point was underlined when Drake played at Westfield College in London in June 1970, in a line-up with Elton John, Stefan Grossman, John Martyn and the Humblebums, featuring the young Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty. Martyn was there with his friend and collaborator, film composer John Altman, who remembered that Drake’s set, or rather its reception, was a disaster – even though the entertainment didn’t begin until after the World Cup Final, won magnificently by Brazil.

The two Johns "spent an hour trying to convince Nick Drake not to get disheartened by university bar gigs and give up live performance," said Altman, as quoted in johnmartyn.info. "We missed Elton John’s set but caught Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty."

In a July 1971 analysis of the UK folk scene, Melody Maker’s Karl Dallas damned Drake with undeservedly faint praise for his records, which he described as ‘very nice," and was overtly scathing about his live persona. "His stage presence has been virtually nil," he wrote, "a private communion which it is very hard to join."

Genesis and Drake were on a Ewell Tech bill in January 1970, supporting Atomic Rooster, who still featured the soon-to-be P in ELP, Carl Palmer. Soon afterwards, the prototype progsters opened for those rockers again at Watford Tech, where Genesis had some weeks earlier supported the progressive-rock outfit Spirit of John Morgan, named after their keyboard player.

Ewell’s booker was now Lindsay Brown, another future industry executive at Polydor, Eagle Rock and other companies. He secured an early show by Queen, who played not on the stage but on the floor. Briggs, on a gap year but still at the gig, remembers that even years before anyone was really taking notice, Freddie Mercury had a hairdresser.

One shudders at how Nick Drake would have struggled to be heard a few weeks later in May, when, for example, he was bottom of the bill at an all-night Bedford College ‘initiation’. Running from 9.30 p.m. to 6 a.m., it also featured John Martyn, Spencer Davis (without the titular Group that had split the year before, only to reform in 1973), Jo-Ann Kelly, and groups including East of Eden and the Climax Chicago Blues Band, with erstwhile pied piper of British rhythm and blues Graham Bond atop the bill.

Cambridge’s Caius College was an important incubator of the local folk scene, and Drake had played its May Ball in 1969. As David Quinn wrote on the university’s varsity website in 2024: "The event seems strange from a distance. It’s difficult to imagine the reserved Drake gently singing Cello Song against a bustling backdrop of dancers dripping with jewels and feather boas."

Further emphasising the remarkable shows that were being laid on by colleges across the country every weekend, Genesis and Nick Drake also shared a bill at Leicester University on Saturday, 14 February 1970 – at the exact moment The Who were just up the road in Leeds, immortalised on disc.

"We were memorably called 'snotty-nosed bastards' by the guy at Leicester," laughs Phillips. ‘I think we were just nervous and shy. We certainly weren’t strutting around like Deep Purple. My God, they had a lot of fun. We did not have fun, we were just a bit edgy. But that quote went down in history.

"At the pub and the club gigs, people were coming to see a band,’ he reflects. "You might be supporting, but they were coming to see somebody specifically. The thing about the tech and university gigs was that it was a Friday night out for the lads. We played at Queen Mary College [in London], where there were about six or seven stages and loads of different groups. Alan Price was in one place, we were in another.

"If you’re going to get [students’] attention, for a start you have to have volume. Secondly, you have to have something which captures their interest. So we really tailored our set. You could argue that the people that like the more lyrical stuff might have been a bit miffed at losing some of their songs, but it definitely encouraged Genesis to go heavier, and more dramatic."

Just six weeks later Genesis returned to Brunel, and things were already looking up. "The second time we played there, we had an audience that listened more," recalls Phillips. "We played with Fairport Convention, who’d been a huge influence on us. There was a short track at the end of What We Did On Our Holidays called End Of A Holiday, which was gorgeous. Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson had gone by the time we played with them. But that was one of the few gigs which I remember being really successful.

"We never went to the pub or a restaurant," he adds. "We had to drive the van back to the cottage in the country we were sharing, and if it got too late, we had to bring all the gear out of the van, unpack it up the bloody 39 steps every night and in the snow, and it was a dodgy winter."

Catching himself sounding like one of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen, he quotes them with a laugh: "'Luxury!' I was really going there, wasn’t I?!"

Paul Sexton's Rock Goes to College - The Campus Music Scene that Shaped a Generation is out now, published by Harper Collins.

A previously unheard tape of an early Guns N' Roses rehearsal has surfaced online. The 40-year-old recording contains early – often significantly different – versions of several songs that featured on the band's debut album, Appetite For Destruction, including Nightrain, My Michelle, Out Ta Get Me and Rocket Queen, as well as Move To The City, which appeared on the band's debut EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide.

"Here is a completely unreleased rehearsal tape from 1986 of Guns N' Roses," says uploader Red's GNR Videos! "Some of the recordings are incomplete, unfortunately. Once again, this tape has been hoarded for a long time by select members of the GNR community who believe hoarding these rarities for no good reason is better than letting the community hear them. For the love of God! Please release the rarities!"

It's not clear when the recording was made. The cassette is dated January 1, 1986, but the writing has been crossed out, suggesting that the songs may have been taped on another date. However, it's likely they were recorded at the Gardner Studio, a rehearsal space behind the Sunset Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, where Guns N' Roses spent several months working on their songs in late 1985 and early 1986.

"We stole wood, we built a loft and slept above the equipment," frontman Axl Rose told Hit Parader in late 1986. "But, you know, we almost miss it. Every weekend, the biggest party in LA was down in our place. We'd have 500 people packed in an alley and our old roadie was selling beers for a buck out of his trunk. It was like a bar and everyone had their whiskey. We could get away with whatever we wanted, except when the cops came."

Guns N' Roses signed to Geffen Records in March 1986, and Appetite For Destruction emerged in July 1987.

Dennis Atlas joined Toto in 2024 at the age of 28. He’s made the most of the experience by assembling new solo album Principle, which features s seriously impressive guest list. Atlaes tells Prog what he’s learned since going it entirely alone on his debut record.

At 28 years old, Dennis Atlas became the second keyboardist of Toto in 2024, a role that’s grown since the retirement of Greg Phillinganes. Now the Californian has released his second solo album, Principle, featuring a raft of special guests including Aristocrat Marco Minnemann, Bumblefoot from Sons Of Apollo and Toto alumni Steve Lukather and David Paich.

But those expecting high-energy rock are in for a shock. Prog-friendly keyboards and time signatures find him treading a more emotional path. He tells us he’s always been a progger at heart.

You fell in love with music via the pomp of Queen, Rush, Kansas and Styx. What was it about them?

I have very eclectic taste in music, but all of those bands have real depth. Every time you listen to them you discover something new. That’s what I loved about prog, even before I knew what it was.

Your keyboard solo at Wembley Arena with Toto incorporated segments of songs by ELP. How deep does your connection with progressive rock go?

Extremely deep! Prog was all that I listened to in my most formative years. ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery made me wonder what on earth was going on in the minds of those three guys. I also loved Yes, and later on Dream Theater, Symphony X and Haken.

Who are tour keyboard influences?

Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, of course; Dennis De Young and Lawrence Gowan of Styx; Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess and Kevin Moore. Diego [Tejeida, ex-Haken] is on a whole other level.

How did you come to join Toto?

I jammed with Ron Thal – Bumblefoot from Guns N’ Roses – and we became friends. One day, right out of the blue, he sent a text saying he’d recommended me to Toto. They needed someone right away. Ron’s text was on a Thursday; on the Saturday or Sunday, after they’d looked at my videos, Steve Lukather called asking, “What are you doing this summer?”

Within four seconds of Principle opener Surprises From Within, we know your album is keys-friendly.

Yeah! It’s the Keith Emerson thing where you hear that heroic synth part and it pulls you in. That’s the intention anyway.

With your solo debut, 2021’s My Magical Wonderland, you performed all the instruments – keys, guitar, bass and drums – as well as singing. This time you have a list of special guests. Is Principle a concerted attempt to commercialise things?

When I made that first album I had a lot to learn on all of those instruments, and when it was finished I said, “OK, I’m never doing that again!” This time I’ve found people who can take it up to a whole other level, leaving me to refine my keyboard skills. Bringing in Marco Minnemann on drums certainly doesn’t suck!

How did you get Marco to appear?

We became friends through the same Queen, Rush and Styx tribute band where I met Bumblefoot. Marco would get up and jam.

Several past and present members of Toto appear on the album, including ‘Luke’ Lukather, current singer Joseph Williams, original keysman David Paich and saxophonist Warren Ham.

It’s definitely a family affair, and there are a few you didn’t mention. Shannon Forest plays drums on six of the album’s songs; his groove provides its backbone. Greg Phillinganes played some additional keyboards, and Steve’s son Trev not only mixed the album but also played some rhythm guitar.

Luke’s contribution to the super-rhythmic Candy On Mars is fascinating.

Luke is so much more than just a shredder. With that song I wanted more of a funky, improvisational thing. I just gave him the drumbeat and asked him to come up with something. At the end he moved the guitar and it collided with a mic stand, so he banked the guitar against it and made it a feature of the song. I don’t even understand how he did that!

How was it working with David Paich on the album’s longest song, We Can Be the Future, which closes the record?

Paich is such a hero of mine, but he’s so unassuming. If you ran into him at the grocery store there’s not a chance you’d know that he’s a rock star. We sat at the piano and jammed and he threw out these titbits – some chords and a bunch of organ – that really improved the song, and all the while he made me feel so comfortable.

Are you hoping to do some solo live shows?

That would be the dream of my lifetime. It’s what I had in mind when I composed these songs. I’m very much committed to Toto’s live schedule but it does have some breaks. I’m already putting together some guys in my studio so that we’ll be ready when the time comes.

We know you could front the show because you did a great job of handling those tricky Fergie Frederiksen-voiced songs on material from Toto’s Isolation at Wembley.

It’s my extreme honour to do that. I came aboard to play keys and sing high harmonies, but Luke said, “He sounds like Fergie – let’s add some of those songs.” We’ve been doing two from Isolation, but we’re going to add a third.

Do you consider Principle a prog rock album?

Absolutely. It has everything a prog listener will want. It’s melodic and singable, but it’ll hook you in. It gets deeper and deeper as it goes on, and it ends with We Can Be The Future, which I believe is completely within the realm of Styx, Queen, Gentle Giant and Kansas. Listen to it – it’s undeniably been made by a prog lover.

Principle is on sale now.

Journey’s transformation from jazz-rock noodlers into the hard rock behemoth behind Don’t Stop Believin’ coincided with the arrival of singer Steve Perry in 1977.

But Perry wasn’t the band’s first lead singer. Keyboard player Gregg Rolie was the band’s original vocalist. But between the two was Robert Fleischman, recruited by Journey’s manager, Herbie Herbert, to give the largely faceless band more of an identity.

Fleischman’s tenure in the band lasted a matter of months. He left after clashing with Herbert, who described the singer as “a pain in the ass – a pampered poodle of person.”

But Fleischman still played a significant part in Journey’s – pardon the pun – evolution, co-writing future hit single Wheel In The Sky, a song that helped point the band in a bold new direction.

After he parted ways with the band, Fleischman ended up singing on the first album by ex-Kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent's band, the Vinnie Vincent Invasion before embarking on a solo career. He hasn’t been written out of Journey’s history, but he the part he played in their reinvention is often overlooked.

In 2012, he spoke to Classic Rock to share his memories of his time in the band, and the part he played in laying the groundwork for his successor, Steve Perry.

How did you join Journey?

Robert Fleischman: “I guess Journey wasn’t doing too well at the time, and bands like Boston and Foreigner were becoming popular. So to fix Journey they decided to add a lead singer. That was the formula.”

Were you made to feel welcome in the band?

“Yes, they were very nice to me except when we were on the road. They let me know that I was getting it easy because they had worked so hard to get to where they were at before I joined the band. Still, it was great to be in a group that was so well organised. Gregg Rolie was the most generous to me. He let me stay in his house; it was nice. Management – that was another story.”

What do you remember about touring with Journey in 1977?

“We started in Texas for some practice shows and played with REO Speedwagon and Judas Priest. Later on we opened up shows for Emerson, Lake & Palmer in Canada and some dates in the USA.”

What was the reception like from the fans at live shows?

“The band would do about three or four songs, then they would introduce me. The front row was always diehard Journey fans and they would flip me off and say, ‘Fuck you!’ It was hard for them to see a frontman in the band so every time I got up on the stage that’s what I was up against. But at the end of the show we won them over.”

Did Neal Schon have specific ideas about what he wanted from you as a vocalist?

“No, there were no demands, plus they had never played with a lead singer and songwriter before. I think it was a big education for the both of us. At that time they were the rock fusion band and I was a pop songwriter, but it worked.”

What do you remember about writing Wheel In The Sky, which ended up on Journey’s 1978 album, Infinity?

“Neal and the band had the music already; I came up with the melody. One day I was given a poem that was written by Ross Valory’s wife, Diane. So to make everyone happy I plucked out the line ‘wheel in the sky’ and then I wrote the rest.”

What was your relationship like with Journey’s manager Herbie Herbert?

“I liked Herbie but later I found out he didn’t like me. He thought I was cocky. But name me one lead singer who’s not a little cocky? I was always professional, but I do think he was a great manager. He was ambitious, he put the band on the map, he sold them like a candy bar. Who wouldn’t wanna manager like that?”

What ended your tenure in the band?

“Like any relationship you want out of, it’s always a personality difference that’s the excuse. I heard later the band was mad at him [Herbie Herbert] for squeezing me out.”

This article originally appeared in Classic Rock Presents AOR

Released in 1987, Celtic Frost’s Into The Pandemonium remains one of the most adventurous albums to be released by a metal band. In 2005, singer and guitarist Thomas Gabriel Fischer revisited the pain and agonies of making an avant garde metal masterpiece.

It took six months to write, four months to record, was peppered with constant arguments between the band and almost everybody around them, and ultimately led to the demise of the band. But Into The Pandemonium, the third album from Swiss mavericks Celtic Frost, changed everything for them.

Thomas Gabriel Fischer, aka Tom G. Warrior, was the band’s spine and nerve centre. He recalls the turbulent circumstances around the making of their most feted album with mixed feelings, though he’s in no doubt what so ever about the crucial nature of the record itself.

“We were sure we had gone too far with our experiments,” explains the guitarist and singer. “We’d didn’t know where we were going. But this was the album that single handedly made Celtic Frost. It’s the band’s most important release.”

Celtic Frost were formed in 1984. They evolved from Fischer’s previous band, extreme metal pioneers Hellhammer. Joining Fischer were Swiss-American bassist and fellow Hellhammer refugee Martin Eric Ain, plus drummer Stephen Priestly. The trio recorded the band’s debut album, Morbid Tales, which was released by German label Noise Records in late 1984.

Priestly didn’t last long and was replaced by American drummer Reed St. Mark for 1985’s mini album Emperor’s Return. There was another disturbance in this Celtic Frost line-up – one of many throughout their career – when Ain was briefly displaced by Dominic Steiner, who played on 1985’s extreme metal classic To Mega Therion. Ain swiftly returned for the following year’s Tragic Serenades EP.

But it was with Into The Pandemonium that the trio stepped away from the death metal caucus, taking both themselves and the genre into unchartered and turbulent waters. The songs they were writing for the new album went far beyond the boundaries of metal. They brought in cello, viola, violin and a female vocalist for the proto-symphonic metal song Tristesses De La Lune, covered the song Mexican Radio by oddball LA new wave band Wall Of Voodoo, introduced R&B-style backing vocals on I Won’t Dance and even dabbled in primitive industrial hip hop on One The Pride. And then there were Fischer’s vocals, which interspersed his instantly recognisable death grunts with distinctive, unsettling moans. most notably on Mesmerized.

“You have to understand that we were always an extreme band,” recalls Fischer. “In fact, when Noise Records signed us they said, ‘We want the most extreme band in the world, and you guys are it.’ What they didn’t realise was how extreme we really were. Martin and I had so many influences that we were determined to incorporate into our music. In fact, from the start we had a game plan for the band. Celtic Frost would do three albums, and that’s it. We had the basis worked out for all of them – even some song titles! – lyrical ideas and artwork concepts. That’s how far-reaching we were.

“The other thing you must understand is that when we began to work on Into The Pandemonium, we were still just kids, and it had been less than two years since Hellhammer had split up. That band was very dismal and ultra heavy, but so far removed from our vision for Frost. So, things had happened really fast.”

In a taste of what was to come, the band locked horns with Noise from the very beginning of writing sessions. The label wanted Celtic Frost to play safe, which was the last thing Celtic Frost themselves wanted to do.

“They wanted us to play safe. What they were after was a Slayer or an Exodus album,” says Fischer. “Just another thrash metal record. No way could we do that. We always took chances, and always will. The day that we compromise on what we do is the day we completely give up. We have to take risks – it’s what drives us. At the time, Metallica were still a little way from becoming mainstream, thrash was a very young concept. Any band trying to make their way in this area of music was expected to be obvious, and to conform. We went against everything. We wanted to do an album that brought in goth, dance, electronica, as well as our metal influences. For Noise that was rather frightening.”

“They heard what we were trying to do, and freaked out. The arguments got so bad that in the end the financial and mental pressure on the band led to us splitting up. It got that horrible. Now I can perhaps appreciate their viewpoint a little more, because we were really going for something so different it was scary. At the time, though… it was war!”

The band didn’t want to self-produce the album, believing that their inexperience would go against them. The boldness of the concept called for a producer who understood both their philosophy and could bring it to fruition in the studio. They drew up a short list of potential producers, including Rick Rubin (“before he became a household name”), and Michael Wagener (“who’d had a lot of commercial success – we liked the sounds he got”), but every advance met with a brick wall.

“Noise told us that everyone they’d approached had either turned it down, or wasn’t available. I still don’t know if that really was the case, but we ended up producing the record ourselves, which wasn’t what we wanted at all. We got in Arabian musicians, an orchestra, an opera singer… and they were being directed by three kids with precious little experience. Not ideal at all.”

The whole recording process took nearly four months, and the already strained relations between the band and label were deteriorating to the point of no return. The fact that the band were stubbornly determined to pursue their own creative path didn’t help relationships with the label. Opening the album with that leftfield cover of Wall Of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio was a case in point.

“Why did we do it? Because both Martin and I loved that band and that song,” says Fischer. “Reed fought against us doing it, and it took four takes to get it right. After the third one, I was ready to give up and scrap the whole idea, but we went for one more – and it was exactly how we wanted it. Originally, it was going to be a bonus song, but came out so well we decided to start off the album with it. I think it confused a lot of people who just expected the usual diet of thrash and heaviness from us. That was in there, but we were determined to make a statement from the beginning.”

Noise Records, who had signed the band in the hope of capitalising on the burgeoning popularity of thrash, were beyond unimpressed with the completed album.

“I vividly recall that, when we finished the record, people from the company came down to hear it,” says Fischer. “I will never forget the looks of horror on their faces. They didn’t understand what we’d done, and saw it as commercial suicide – which I suppose it was. The phrase ‘put the album on ice’ was used by Noise at the time. They couldn’t afford to scrap it, because comparatively too much money had been spent on it. But marketing budgets, for a video and advertising, just disappeared overnight. Noise did try as hard as they could to interfere artistically, but we held firm. There was no way we were gonna change a thing. For years I was bitter and resentful of their attitude, but now I’m not so vengeful. I’ve moved on. I don’t hold any grudges against them.”

The album was released on June 1, 1987, and was hailed as an instant classic by those who were tuned into the underground – the phrase ‘avant garde metal’ was coined to describe it. But its genius didn’t translate into mainstream recognition – Celtic Frost were too far out there for all but the most open-minded metal fan. This writer spent time with the band at Ain’s flat in Zurich around the album’s release, and they were bemused and angry at their situation.

“I don’t know if this band can exist for much longer,” a depressed Fischer explained at the time. “We are so proud of what we’ve achieved, but maybe the world isn’t ready for a band who adore Dead Can Dance and Wall Of Voodoo as much as Slayer and Metallica.”

Their mood wasn’t helped by the fact that Noise refused to finance a tour in support of the album – Fischer says that the band’s own manager stumped up the money. “Everything that surrounded the record was just a nightmare. And it eventually got to us,” he says. “We split up on stage in Dallas in December of 1987. Perhaps if we’d been a little older, wiser heads may have prevailed and we may have gotten through all the troubles. But we were still so young, the whole business destroyed us.”

Fischer re-activated a new incarnation of band (without Ain and St Mark) for 1988’s controversial Cold Lake album, a record despised by the frontman to this day. That was followed by 1990’s Vanity/Nemesis, which saw Ain returning to the fold. The band split three years later, but Fischer and Ain reunited under the Celtic Frost banner in 2001, releasing the 2006 comeback album Monotheist, before splitting once again in 2008, seemingly for good (Ain passed away in 2017 at the age of 50).

The pain of making Into The Pandemonium clearly lingers for Fischer, but with hindsight, he can appreciate the positive aspects of the album alongside the negative ones.

“I am so proud of what we did,” he says. “And to some extent it was this combination of innocence and arrogance that drove us to do what we did. The day we lose our innocence will be the day we give up making music. But we did make mistakes in the studio – this is not a perfect album. One In Their Pride, for instance, went too far.

“I can listen back now, and hear where we went wrong. But what matters is the overall atmosphere and vision. If you think back to the albums being made at the time, nobody was pushing as hard as we were. It was insane and it could have been a disaster, but we pulled off something fantastic. Bands with 10 times our budget weren’t making albums that had 10 percent of our innovation.”

It may have been a traumatic experience for the band who made it, but Into The Pandemonium has become one of the most influential metal records of the 80s. Everyone from Darkthrone and Dimmu Borgir to Nirvana – who used to listen to it in their tour van – has held it up as an inspiration. But back in 1987, shortly after the release of Into The Pandemonium, Celtic Frost weren’t sure if they had any future at all. Yet even then Fischer was defiant.

“If this is our last record, I think history will judge us as doing something that will make its mark. I know in 20 years’ time, people will be talking about this,”

All these years later, he’s been proved right.

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 144. Updated August 2024

As much as the music press of the day might’ve liked to have pigeonholed The Damned as British punk rock’s clown princes – all mohair jumpers, custard pies and foul-mouthed goofiness – there was always something darker and more sophisticated lurking in the shadows of their fizzing creativity.

Even as far back as the band’s 1977 debut album, Damned Damned Damned, songs like Fan Club and Feel The Pain showcased a penchant for back street menace and macabre shifting shadows, frontman Dave Vanian’s potent baritone suavely bringing a dash of Hammer Horror melodrama to the album’s trashy post-Stooges clatter.

On 1979’s belligerent Machine Gun Etiquette album, Vanian repeated the trick, donning metaphorical black leather gloves and raising a callous eyebrow, duly morphing into the demented circus clown of These Hands.

Up until the mid-80s Vanian’s affinity with all things cobwebbed and sinister was consistently offset by the pop and psychedelic sensibilities of co-songwriter Captain Sensible. Most people’s perception of The Damned hinged primarily on the hook-heavy punk rush of Love Song and Smash It Up, rather than anything more overblown, but that all changed when the band released The Black Album in 1980.

Although still brimming with brisk melodic gems like Wait For The Blackout and Drinking About My Baby, Vanian’s confidence as a songwriter was clearly growing: on the creepy Twisted Nerve, the self-explanatory Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde and the genuinely unsettling Therapy, his personality cast an ominous shadow across The Damned’s signature snottiness. Best of all was the album’s epic denouement, the 17-minute Curtain Call. Vanian’s frilly-cuffed pièce-de-résistance, it moodily proclaimed that the band’s ambitions extended beyond chaotic appearances on TOTP. Similarly, on 1982’s Strawberries, Vanian’s haunting ode to a prostitute, The Dog, stood apart from the rest of the album, a gothic Grand Guignol of subtlety and subversion.

Also in 1982, Captain Sensible sniggeringly reinvented himself as a pop star, scoring a number one hit with Happy Talk and conquering mainland Europe with the gurning pop-rap of Wot. Bewitched by the promise of a successful solo career, he quit The Damned in 1984, inadvertently paving the way for Dave Vanian to write the album that hindsight suggests he was destined to make, and one that would also become the most successful record of his band’s chaotic career.

Recorded at Eel Pie Studios in London in the spring of 1985, Phantasmagoria amounted to a wholesale reinvention for The Damned and, to a great extent, a last-ditch attempt to keep the whole show on the road.

With a line-up now featuring Vanian, long-standing drummer Rat Scabies, Sensible’s replacement Roman Jugg (who had played keyboards on Strawberries) and new bassist Bryn Merrick, the band put a temporary end to years of record label turmoil by negotiating a contract with MCA, who saw their chart triumphs with Sensible as some indication that The Damned were a talent pool worth plundering further.

Their faith was immediately rewarded when the album’s pre-emptive single release, Grimly Fiendish, put Vanian and his cohorts back into the Top 40 singles chart for the first time since Smash It Up in 1979. Swaggering into life with some jaunty harpsichord, the song – essentially a Roman Jugg composition with lyrical assistance from Doctor And The Medics’ Clive ‘The Doctor’ Jackson – was named after cartoonist Leo Baxendale’s Grimly Feendish character that appeared in 60s comics Wham! and Smash! and only offered a vague hint as to Phantasmagoria’s unexpectedly dark detours, slithering up to number 21 and notching up some significant radio play.

The album’s second single was the clincher. The Shadow Of Love, a reverb-drenched slab of prime gothabilly topped with Vanian’s booming croon, was another chart triumph and led to a memorable Top Of The Pops appearance for Vanian’s now-towering duochrome bouffant.

Released in July 1985, Phantasmagoria was Vanian’s album through and through. The majority of the music had been written by Roman Jugg, but it is the frontman who dominates.

Ushered in by some overwrought saxophone courtesy of session player Gary Barnacle, the opening Street Of Dreams was a sustained rush of vampyric bombast, with Vanian moodily intoning about beauties, beasts dead beats and the dispossessed.

Bearing a similarly slick sheen to the album’s first two singles, There’ll Come A Day, Is It A Dream and The Eighth Day retained some of The Damned’s pop credentials, but with a bigger sound befitting of 80s pop’s scant regard for the understated.

The greatest moment on Phantasmagoria, and the most pointedly gothic piece of music the band have ever recorded, came at the end of the album’s first side. Six-and-a-half minutes of nightmarish grandeur, Sanctum Sanctorum was a wildly indulgent sprawl of ghostly pipe organ, concert hall piano and thunderstorm sound effects that brought Vanian’s grimly poetic tale of doomed love vividly to life.

The song’s enthralling atmosphere was mirrored by Phantasmagoria’s astonishing cover art, which could hardly have been more in tune with the gothic scene’s aesthetic preferences if it had come with free bat wings. Featuring a beautiful but ashen maiden wearing a black, hooded cloak, traversing a shadowy graveyard, the cover scores maximum goth points even without the knowledge that the woman depicted was in fact Susie Bick, renowned model and now wife of goth-approved great Nick Cave.

Swiftly outstripping all of its predecessors, Phantasmagoria peaked at number 11 in the UK album charts and went on to earn The Damned a silver disc. While most of their punk peers had either given up the ghost or succumbed to the law of diminishing returns, Vanian and co were now authentic pop stars; an achievement consolidated by the release of their much-loved cover of Eloise, a suitably grandiloquent slice of motoring melodrama originally recorded by 60s pop singer Barry Ryan. Transposed to a lower key to suit Vanian’s voice, the song was inescapable during the autumn of 1985 and took The Damned to number three in the UK charts via another dry ice-shrouded TOTP appearance.

The band’s moment of glory was short-lived. Their next album, 1986’s Anything, was a pale shadow of its predecessor, failing to resonate with either pop or gothic audiences. MCA dropped the band soon after and a disillusioned Vanian returned to the shadows, emerging in the early 90s alongside Roman Jugg with a new band, The Phantom Chords, that echoed Phantasmagoria’s schlock horror fixation without emulating its success.

A new incarnation of The Damned, replete with a returning Captain Sensible, would continue the band’s legacy in the mid-90s and they continue to tread the boards to this day, but the fabulously grandiose Phantasmagoria remains Dave Vanian’s defining statement and his masterpiece.

Originally published in Classic Rock Special: Goth.

L7 bassist Jennifer Finch has died at the age of 59 after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

The US band announced the news on Saturday July 18 via a statement on Instagram: “With a very heavy heart we announce that our beloved bandmate, friend, and fellow troublemaker Jennifer Finch has passed away today.

“She had a long courageous fight with brain cancer and was loved by many wonderful friends, musical peers and fans worldwide. We love you Jennifer.”

In a subsequent statement, the band said: “We are shattered by the loss of our beloved bandmate, sister and friend Jennifer Finch, whose fierce spirit, humor and boundless creativity helped shape L7 and changed all of our lives forever.

“Jennifer was a true original who lived entirely on her own terms, and the impact she made on music, art and everyone lucky enough to know her cannot be measured. We love her beyond words and will carry her with us always. Rest in power our dear friend.”

Finch’s illness was publicly revealed last week, when the band launched a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for care and rehabilitation following “multiple surgeries and serious complications”. The campaign raised almost $400,000.

Finch was born in Los Angeles in 1966. Her first notable band was Sugar Babydoll, playing alongside of future Hole singer/guitarist Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland, who would go on to form Babes In Toyland.

She joined L7 in 1986, and played on their first four albums, including 1992’s Bricks Are Heavy, which produced the hit single Pretend We’re Dead.

After quitting L7 in 1995, she went on to front OtherStarPeople in the late 1990s before forming The Shocker in 2002 and, later, Sex In Progress.

She also worked as a photographer, having originally started out shooting the early 80s LA punk scene as a teenager.

L7 reunited in 2014 after a lengthy hiatus, with Finch rejoining her old bandmates. In 2026, she was forced to sit out the band’s farewell The Last Hurrah Tour due to her illness.

Evan Rachel Wood has given an in-depth interview about what she has learned about narcissism following her high-profile relationship with Marilyn Manson.

Actor and singer Wood alleged in 2021 that she was “groomed” as a teenager by Manson, before he “horrifically abused’ and “brainwashed” her.

Manson – real name Brian Warner – has always denied the allegations and in 2022 he sued Wood for defamation in the wake of her documentary Phoenix Rising in which she described the alleged abuse.

Manson's lawsuit alleged that Wood and associate Illma Gore hacked into Manson's computers and social media accounts, manufactured evidence that he was emailing illicit pornography, impersonated an FBI agent, provided checklists of alleged crimes to prospective accusers, and knowingly made false statements and defamatory claims.

He later dropped that suit and agreed to pay Wood's legal fees.

In January of this year, a Los Angeles judge reinstated a lawsuit filed against Manson by his former assistant Ashley Walters. It had previously been dismissed as it exceeded the maximum time period for legal proceedings to be initiated, but a change in the law allowed the case to be revived and it is ongoing.

In a new interview with Andrew Gold, which can be viewed in full below, Wood is asked about her previous assertion that she believed Manson had "studied" manipulation.

Asked what led her to believe this, Wood says: "If you take a wander in his library ... he had a lot of books on cults and a lot of books on mind control and manipulation. He also studied Scientology and things like that as well.

"Cults have different names and different styles but ultimately they're the same tactics. I think he was very, very well-versed in these tactics.

"He also made it very clear that he would retaliate against anybody that went against him or, in his words 'betrayed' him in any way. And a betrayal would be to expose him. I think he was also very well-versed on what to do if that ever happened and how he would retaliate.

Asked if she believed Manson to be a "psychopathic narcissist, she adds: "I think so, yeah. I think there was a time when I wanted to believe that there were maybe still good times and that we had just had a few bad times. But the more I started to read the stories that were popping up online, the more people that contacted me and told me their stories, there was just no way to think otherwise."

In the wake of the alleged ordeal, Wood has sought trauma therapy and has learned a lot about how to recognise narcissistic traits in people, including the slipping of the mask.

On Manson, she says: "Really the thing that scared me the most was when I saw the mask go on. That's when I really knew.

"He was about to go do an interview and he was just on a tirade. One of, I call them his narcissistic rants, of just berating everybody. Whenever he had to get ready for some sort of event or interview when he had to put his persona, makeup and everything on – it was guaranteed that it was going to be a bad night for everybody.

"I locked myself in the bathroom. He was going off and he would wreck things. He would wreck the house and he would yell at people. I came out right before he was about to go on and he was just ... this darkness, these dark eyes. And you saw him slip into the Marilyn Manson persona and then he went out and he was doing that calm, well-spoken Marilyn Manson thing.

"And that's when I realised. That's when you go back and you think about every interview that he's done in that persona. You think 'Oh my God'. What was going on behind the scenes? Was it ever real? Because I just saw you put that face on and I know that's not you. I know that face only goes on when the cameras are rolling or when you're manipulating somebody.

"It blew my mind and I didn't know what to call that until I was learning about narcissism and psychopathy and they talk about the mask and when you see the mask slip. That's exactly what it felt like."

Elsewhere in the interview, Wood discusses The Phoenix Act which she co-authored with California Senator Susan Rubio to extend the statute of limitations for domestic violence crimes.

If any video sums up Van Halen's 1980s, it's Hot For Teacher. Carefree and ribald, it features a socially awkward schoolboy (Waldo) and underdressed two models: Miss Canada runner-up Donna Rupert and former Playboy Playmate of the Year Lillian Müller. It's not the kind of video anyone would commission today, but as a time capsule it's alive with the spirit of the age.

Starring along side Waldo, the models and the band were four young actors employed to play the members of Van Halen as children. Amongst them was Van Halen nut Yano Anaya.

How did you end up playing a junior version of Michael Anthony in the Hot For Teacher video?

Yano Anaya: I was thirteen years old, and Van Halen was one of my favourite bands at the time. I’d done some commercials and a movie, A Christmas Story, before that, so when I got a message from my manager on the answering machine that I had an audition to play the part for Michael Anthony Jr in an upcoming Van Halen video, I swear to god I was so excited. In my mind I was thinking: “Holy crap, I look just like Michael Anthony – this is my job.”

Did you know any of the other kids before you met them on the shoot?

No. I went to an audition in Hollywood, then I got a callback two days later, then two days after that I got the call that I actually got the job. I didn’t meet anybody else until I got to the location, which was at a high school [John Marshall High School] in Los Feliz. The school wasn’t operating, because they used it so much in movies and commercials.

What do you remember about the day of the shoot?

The shoot took four days. I got there on the first day at nine-thirty in the morning, and I told my mom: “I need to go meet the band, that is my priority.” So I found their trailer and knocked on the door. Alex Van Halen answered, and he looked at me and went: 'What's up, kid?' And I went: “I'm part of the cast, I'm playing Michael Anthony Jr. I just wanted to see if I could hang out with you guys.” And he went: “Come on in.” I was like: “Yeeeeahhhh!”

You were a thirteen-year-old kid. Were they on their best behaviour when you were with them?

Well, their best behaviour for Van Halen. Cos there was no filter. Alex was like: “Hey, man, why don’t you go to the back and grab us a couple of beers?” So I walked back there, and Dave Lee Roth was there. He looked at me and went: “Who the fuck are you? Why is there a kid in our trailer?” And Alex was like: “Don’t worry about it, man, he’s part of the cast, he’s hanging out with us.”

They had an ice chest in the back with nothing but Coke and Schlitz Malt Liquor beer. So I grabbed two of them and went up the front, and Alex challenged me to a shotgun. I’m like: “I’m thirteen years old, it’s ten-twenty in the morning, and I'm a drinking a Schlitz beer with Alex Van Halen.” I drank that one beer, and I was so drunk.

What was the real Michael Anthony like?

He was very cool. He was just chilled. Eddie was kind of quiet as well. And I don’t think Dave was into hanging out with some kid. But Alex was the one. He wanted to know who I was, where I was from.

What's your favourite memory of actually shooting the video?

The thing that stuck with me the most was the part where the teacher was dancing on the table and all the kids were looking at her legs. The director was shouting: “Grab her legs!” I looked at my mom: “Should I actually do that? Is that okay?” And my mom was like: “Do your job, son.” I was so embarrassed to do that.

Did you get to spend much time with Eddie?

Yeah. I grew the balls to ask him to play the intro to Running With The Devil, which was my favourite song. He took me to the back of the trailer, pulled out a tiny little amp, pulled out his guitar, and literally played the whole thing for me, in person, by myself, just for me. That experience was epic.

Jonathan Davis was a surprise guest at X Japan star Yoshiki's performance in Los Angeles this week – where the pair performed a soaring orchestra-backed version of Korn's nu metal classic Freak On A Leash.

Yoshiki was performing the first of a two-night stand at LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall when Davis joined him for the performance in which they reimagined the track with the help of a full orchestra.

Yoshiki accompanied Davis on piano before switching to the drums for the rousing climax of the track.

Watch the performance below.

Freak On A Leash was the second single to be released from Korn's third album, 1998’s Follow The Leader.

The song was one of the first ideas to come from the album's writing sessions.

Davis previously told Metal Hammer: "Oh, we loved that song from day one. I remember coming up with all these lines. It came a lot easier than other songs."

On the track's memorable 'scat' breakdown, Davis adds: "We were jamming and I started mixing beatboxing and this scat thing I do.

"I loved vocal percussion – dudes like Doug E. Fresh and his beatboxing from back in the day. I listened to a lot of old school hip hop and New York freestyle – that’s what I listened to with all the 80s new wave stuff."

Korn kick of a UK and European tour in October.

Korn UK and Europe tour dates 2026

Oct 18 Stuttgart Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle
Oct 19 Munich, DE, Olympiahalle
Oct 21 Cologne, DE, Lanxess Arena
Oct 23 Paris, FR, Accor Arena
Oct 26 Leeds, UK, First Direct Arena
Oct 28 Birmingham, UK, Utilita Arena Birmingham
Oct 30 Newcastle, UK, Utilita Arena Newcastle
Oct 31 Manchester, UK, AO Arena
Nov 2 Dublin, IE, 3Arena
Nov 4 London, UK, The O2
Nov 8 Amsterdam, NL, Ziggo Dome
Nov 9 Antwerp, BE, AFAS Dome
Nov 11 Hamburg, DE, Barclays Arena
Nov 13 Hanover, DE, ZAG Arena
Nov 14 Berlin, DE, Uber Arena
Nov 16 Prague, CZ, O2 Arena Prague
Nov 17 Krakow, PL, Tauron Arena
Nov 19 Vienna, AT, Wiener Stadhalle
Nov 21 Milan, IT, Unipol Forum

When Rush released their ninth studio album, Signals – their final record with longtime producer Terry Brown – one thing was clear: they had no intention of making another Moving Pictures. Marking the 40th anniversary reissue in April 2023, Prog uncovered the space shuttle launch and unique Chemistry that inspired the birth of their keyboard era.

The launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981 was the biggest leap forward in the Space Race since the Moon landing 12 years earlier. This was the very first reusable spacecraft, able to orbit the planet and return safely to Earth in one piece after its mission was complete.

Several NASA employees and a group of specially invited guests had gathered at 7am in a private viewing area within the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida to watch billions of dollars’ worth of technology and two flesh-and-blood astronauts be fired into orbit. And among that group of onlookers were the three members of Rush.

The Canadian trio were guests of Kennedy Space Centre deputy director Gerry Griffin, who’d given them a tour of the facility, including the assembly building, a room so vast it had its own indoor cloud system. They’d also had a cheeky go on the Space Shuttle simulator during the tour, only for guitarist Alex Lifeson – a qualified pilot – to crash the computerised craft headfirst into a swamp.

The launch of the real thing was originally scheduled to take place two days earlier but it had been delayed due to technical problems. The change of date meant that Rush had to hightail it to Florida immediately after a show in San Antonio, Texas, then head back straight after to play another show in Fort Worth. But there was no way they were going to miss this.

And so Lifeson sat with bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee and drummer Neil Peart on a blanket on the viewing area’s grass lawn, gazing over the lagoon in front of them to the launch pad a few kilometres away. As the countdown began, the already electric atmosphere began to intensify: five, four, three, two, one... Flames billowed from the shuttle’s booster rockets, a huge roar swept across the lagoon, and the Columbia lifted off.

“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard,” says Alex Lifeson now, his voice still edged with awe. “It was so loud – the low end rumble of the rocket was incredible. It just screamed off in a plume of exhaust as it rose into the sky, and then it was gone into space and there was this eerie quiet. In this lagoon that was right in front of the viewing area, these dolphins came up and they started swimming in their little pattern. Here we are at the peak of human technology, and there’s such a great example of ancient nature right before us. The contrast was amazing.”

As the magnitude of what they had just seen sank in, Lifeson and his bandmates glanced around at their fellow guests. That’s when they spotted some familiar faces. “We looked over and, a couple of spots to our left, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were sitting on a similar blanket,” says the guitarist. “We didn’t know each other, but we just looked and nodded and smiled at the whole experience that we’d just had.”

Even the proximity of two Hollywood A-listers paled into insignificance next to the launch itself. Neil Peart was still processing what they’d witnessed as he boarded the plane they’d hired to get them to that evening’s gig.

“I remember thinking to myself as we flew back to Fort Worth after a couple days without sleep, ‘We’ve got to write a song about this!’” the drummer and lyricist later noted in a diary he wrote for Sounds magazine in 1982. “It was an incredible thing to witness, truly a once-in- a-lifetime experience.’

Rush did indeed write a song about what they saw on that April morning. Countdown would appear as the propulsive closing track on their ninth album, Signals, its build-and-release energy mirroring the launch of the shuttle itself. As real-life voices from the NASA control room punctuate the song, Peart’s words capture the wonder and promise of the moment. ‘This magic day when super-science/Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams,’ sings Geddy Lee, bringing the drummer’s lyrics to life.

Signals was Rush’s own space shuttle moment. A bold step into the future that saw them embracing new sounds and new technology (and in the case of Lifeson, a snazzy new wave haircut), it opened up the rest of the decade for them. The album’s shorter songs and increased reliance on keyboards and synthesisers alienated the more obdurate section of their fanbase, but Signals was ultimately the sound of a band ready for the oncoming technological rush of the 1980s.

“I guess you could stay where you are and do the same thing over and over and over again, but that’s not the kind of band we are,” says Lifeson. “Progress is important to us. We always need to go somewhere else. We always wanted to evolve.”

Few Rush albums are as representative of that desire to move forward as Signals, yet it didn’t come completely out of the blue. The shift towards shorter songs had properly begun two albums earlier, with 1980’s Permanent Waves, while synths and keyboards had been an integral part of Rush’s sound since 1977’s A Farewell To Kings.

But it was with 1981’s Moving Pictures that Rush took a big leap forward. Sleeker and less concerned with the (admittedly glorious) instrumental grandstanding of the past, it was the closest the trio had come to making a contemporary rock album.

Buried at the end of that record was a song that signposted what was to come next. With its squelching keyboards, fluttering synths and Police-esque reggae breaks, Vital Signs sounded like nothing Rush had recorded before – prog sensibilities in a new wave wrapper. But the biggest tell came via Peart’s lyrics. ‘Everybody got to deviate from the norm,’ sang Lee, inadvertently foreshadowing Rush’s own next move.

“It was the last song we wrote on the record, and we wrote it in the studio,” the singer told Prog in 2021. “Certain albums have that one spontaneous song, and it’s funny because those types of songs end up being a precursor for some styles that we might do on the next record. Like a segue, almost. So Vital Signs really kicked us off towards Signals without us even knowing it.”

Moving Pictures was the most successful album Rush had released to that point, and an intensive, 10-month long tour followed. It was during those dates that Rush began formulating ideas for their next album. “We were touring so much that we were limited in the time we had to write for a record, so we utilised soundchecks or even days off, when Ged and I would sit down with a couple of guitars and do a little bit of writing,” says Lifeson. “But soundcheck was the best opportunity for us to throw some ideas around – we’d play a couple of songs in full, but also do a little bit of writing. I’m sure there are ancient cassettes somewhere with snippets of ideas that ended up on all our records.”

One song that emerged in nascent form from these jams was Chemistry, which would eventually become the third track on Signals. In his diary for Sounds, Peart recalled the song’s inception at some forgotten North American venue. “On this particular day in ‘Somewhere USA’ we will unknowingly write a whole song at once, each of us playing a different part,” the drummer wrote. “While Geddy plays what will become the keyboard melody for the bridge section, Alex is playing the guitar riff for the verses, and I’m playing the drum beat for the choruses. Just like that!”

Lee and Lifeson would refine the song further at the bassist’s house on the shores of Lake Simcoe, 60 miles north of Toronto. The guitarist headed up to his bandmate’s place after the Moving Pictures tour wrapped up in July 1981. He bought with him a tiny, cigarette packet-sized practice amp that he’d been given, and the pair proceeded to construct a primitive record booth by placing the amp and microphone in his guitar case. “It was our way of isolating the sound,” he says. “Chemistry was one of the songs we worked on while I was there.”

Chemistry remains the only Rush song to feature a joint Lee/Lifeson/ Peart lyric credit. “Geddy and Alex together came up with the title and concept for the song, wrote out a few key phrases and words that they wanted to get in, then passed it along to me for organisation and a little further development,” wrote Peart in Sounds in 1982.

Another track that took shape during the band’s on-the-road jam sessions was Subdivisions, Signals’ eventual opening track. The trio would pick the latter song up when they began mixing the live album Exit... Stage Left with longtime co-producer Terry Brown in September 1981 at the Le Studio recording facility in Morin-Heights, Quebec, 50 miles north of Montreal.

“We were getting a little bored with inactivity,” wrote Peart in his diary. “During the mixing of Exit... Stage Left there was really not much for us to do except say ‘It sounds good’ or ‘It doesn’t sound good.’” The drummer used the time to work on lyrics, including those of Subdivisions, an empathetic look at growing up in the suburbs, with all the emotional, psychological and cultural baggage that came with it.

“One afternoon as I was idly polishing my car, Alex and Ged returned from working at the little studio, set up a portable cassette player right there in the driveway, and played me the musical ideas they had come up for it,” wrote Peart. The drummer liked the tricksy, shifting time signatures and the interplay between guitar, bass and keyboards, and the three of them fashioned it into a completed song in between mixing sessions.

Subdivisions would be road-tested at shows in Europe and North America on the Exit... Stage Left tour in November and December 1981. Bootlegs from the time capture a song that’s virtually identical musically and lyrically to the finished version, though Lifeson’s jagged guitar was far more present on those early live performances. That would eventually become a bone of contention, but for now, all three members were pulling in the same direction.

At the beginning of 1982, the band decamped to Windermere Lake in Northern Ontario with Terry Brown for pre-production. The English-born Brown had co-produced every Rush album since 1974’s Fly By Night and was their unofficial fourth member. The fact that it was off season meant they could rent an entire ski resort for themselves.

“The place was completely empty – it was like The Shining,” says Lifeson. “There was a big venue and we locked ourselves in there for a month or so and rehearsed and finished the songs for the album.”

The one thing that they emphatically didn’t want to do was make Moving Pictures II. “That would have been boring,” says Lifeson. “The style of the songs we were writing was very much of the 80s, and what was prevalent at the time. ”

Rush were as plugged into what was going on around them musically as they had been a decade earlier, except where Yes and Led Zeppelin had been their twin north stars in the early 1970s, now it was everyone from The Police, Ultravox and early U2 to Discipline-era King Crimson and UK. “There was a lot of crappy music back then too,” says Lifeson, laughing.

But while they were woodshedding the songs in that big empty winter resort, they shut out all external musical stimuli for fear of it explicitly influencing what they were doing. “Typically, the three of us seldom listened to any outside music when we were working on a record,” says Lifeson. ‘That was an unspoken rule.”

The early versions of the songs hewed close to the finished article, albeit in more bare-bones form. “The demos sounded really good, but of course lacked the sophistication of sound and performance that one fine-tunes in the studio,” says Brown. “In terms of arrangement, they didn’t change a whole lot, but in terms of production values, the vocal perspectives on Subdivisions, the unruly mob on The Weapon, and all the sound effects on Countdown were big production values that weren’t tackled in the pre-production stage.”

But even in this formative stage, it was clear that these songs were a step on from what had come before. There was a pronounced reggae feel to one new song, Digital Man, even more so than past dabblings in the genre on The Spirit Of Radio and Vital Signs. “I don’t know if any one of us was a reggae fan specifically, but it was in the air,” says Lifeson. “There was never a case of, ‘Let’s sit down and write a reggae song.’ It was just part of the mix of styles that we absorbed.”

One person who was surprised by the growing presence of reggae in Rush’s music was Terry Brown. “I was a little taken aback by the reggae/ska influence,” says the producer, “but juxtaposed to Subdivisions, Countdown, and The Weapon I felt we had a really strong record.”

Something else that was increasingly part of the mix was the growing prominence of keyboards. Lee, especially, was the band’s resident gadget-head. “The synthesiser is a wonderful thing in that it opens up so many areas of expression for people who don’t have the technique a keyboardist might have,” he told Northeast Ohio’s Scene magazine. “You really don’t need technique because with a synthesiser you can use your own technique. As long as you have a sense of how to write a melody, you can use the synthesiser to express yourself.”

Lifeson is sometimes painted as a keyboard refusenik, unhappy with the presence of synthesisers within Rush’s sound. Not so, he insists today. “I know I’ve come across as being very down on us using keyboards, but that’s not the case,” he says. “From the beginning, when we started using keyboards and bass pedals and things like that, it was a group effort. We wanted to expand our sound but we didn’t want to add any more members. I was happy to use them, I thought they did a great thing for our sound. But when they started taking priority, that’s when I started having some issues with keyboards.”

By the time Rush made their latest trek to Le Studio with co-producer Terry Brown and engineer Paul Northfield in May 1982 to record Signals, the place felt like home from home. They’d made their last two studio albums at the studio, located in the Laurentian Mountains, as well as mixing Exit... Stage Left, there.

The recording facility was built on one side of a lake; the house where Rush team were staying was on the other side. Getting from one to the other entailed walking through the woods or, even more idyllically, across the lake via canoe or rowboat. “There were huge windows overlooking the lake in the studio and windows in the control room too so you never had that feeling of being in an airtight studio, where you could never tell whether it was two in the afternoon or two in the morning,” says Brown, who Lifeson describes as “really like a fourth member – he understood our music, he was a great producer, a great engineer in his own right. He was a brother.”

They put in long hours at the studio, starting at 11 o’clock in the morning and finishing around two in the morning, with a 90-minute break for an evening meal. Any distractions were deliberately self-created. A volleyball net was set up at the house to unwind after spending countless hours in the studio.

“After we finished a session, we’d come back and we’d play volleyball until five o’clock in the morning, when the sun was coming up,” says Lifeson. “It was an opportunity for us to let off some steam, get a little exercise, drink copious amounts of brandy, smoke lots of pot.”

Brown remembers it a little differently. “Ged had an obsession with baseball so that was our focus in our downtime,” he says. “We practised on a daily basis until Ged was confident that we could tackle the girls’ team in Morin-Heights.”

Whatever sport they played away from the studio, the atmosphere during work hours was both intense and, Rush being Rush, light-hearted. “Cutting the bed-tracks was a lot of fun, but some of the vocal sessions were tense,” recalls Brown. “I remember wanting to record Ged’s vocals in the chorus of Subdivisions with the sound that you hear on the record – I felt it would inspire him to deliver the lyric in a very sincere and emotional way, but it took time to set up and he found it quite frustrating.”

Lee wasn’t the only one to be frustrated with Subdivisions. When it came to mixing the song, Lifeson noticed the stabbing guitar that had been present in early live versions was now buried under banks of Lee’s keyboards.

“We would all get behind the console and we would all have jobs – turning a knob, pushing a fader at a certain point, those sorts of things,” says Lifeson. “I was sitting there thinking, ‘I can’t hear guitar.’ I’m a very easy- going guy, but I thought, ‘This is not right.’ So I pushed that fader up. I do remember Terry turning to me and smiling and reaching over and pulling it back down. I haven’t forgotten that.”

Terry Brown remembers the polite yet borderline passive-aggressive tussle with Lifeson over the volume of his guitars, but says he wasn’t aware of any deeper differences of opinion at the time. “I’m not so sure that those differences were resolved,” he says now. “Especially since it wasn’t until after the record was released that those feelings became evident.”

The balance between Lifeson’s guitar and Lee’s keyboards was more equitable on the sparkling The Analog Kid, Peart’s semi-autobiographical exploration of adolescence. The song dated from an unlikely holiday in the British Virgin Islands at the start of 1982, where the band and Brown had spent a week on a schooner the drummer had recently purchased.

“Neil had been talked into buying this beautiful boat,” says Lifeson with a laugh. “It cost him a lot of money and he got rid of it after a year or two, but not long after he got it, he refurbished it and invited us all for holiday. We had a week on a boat, just sailing around the British Virgin Island and being pretend pirates.”

Peart recalled Lee playing him some ideas he’d been working on at home, including an electronic instrumental that would form the basis of Signals track The Weapon (the second part of the ‘Fear trilogy’ that had begun with Moving Pictures’ Witch Hunt). The drummer reciprocated by sharing a couple of things he’d been working on himself.

“That night as we lay at anchor in Virgin Gorda, Geddy and I went down below after dinner, and I showed him some of the work that I had been doing. I had written The Analog Kid as sort of a companion piece to Digital Man.... He told me what he liked, and what he didn’t like, and gave me some good points to go to work on. We put an end to the ‘shoptalk’ and went back to our holidays.”

Signals also featured one of Rush’s great unheralded classics, the slow-burning semi-ballad Losing It. Inspired in part by Ernest Hemingway (‘The bell tolls for thee’ is a reference to the American author’s 1940 Spanish Civil War novel For Whom The Bell Tolls), the song was Peart’s treatise on the passage of time and the loss of youth. Its emotional pull was amplified by the spine-tingling contributions of violinist Ben Mink.

Like the members of Rush, Mink grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, though he didn’t properly get to know them until his band, FM, were invited to open the North American leg of the Moving Pictures tour in 1981. The following year Mink got a call from Geddy Lee asking if he wanted to play violin on a track on the band’s new album.

“He said, ‘We have a song that we think would work really well with a violin part,’” Mink recalls today. “They sent me a cassette of the working arrangement. It had all these ridiculous time signatures, and I didn’t really know what to make of it. But I was honoured to be asked, and I could always use a trip to Montreal.”

Mink ended up spending a few days at Le Studio, where he got to see first- hand how Rush worked. “They grew up playing together, so they had their own code and their own language,” he says. “They would communicate with each other via eye contact and head movements: ‘Let’s do this, let’s not do that.’ It was amazing how many long, nuanced phrases they could play that way.”

Mink also became part of an impromptu side-project during his time at Le Studio. The Ziv Orchestra (named in part after Lifeson’s real Serbian surname, Živojinovic) found Mink and the guitarist swapping instruments, with the former on guitar and the latter on rudimentary violin, with Peart playing along on snare drum. Their repertoire consisted of wedding band standards such as Al Martino’s Spanish Eyes and The Surfaris’ Wipe Out. “It was just us goofing around, but we did have a photo taken of us, kind of a hammed-up picture,” says Mink.

The business of recording Losing It was more serious. The band gave Mink a sense of what the song sounded like and what it was about, but essentially left him to do his own thing. Fuelled by espresso, he laid down the parts for the body of the song on a five-string electric violin before shifting to Canadian Club whisky for his solos.

“We used echo and delay to give a sense of grandeur, which I think matches the sentiment of the song,” he says. “I spent an hour or two laying down a bunch of solos, and then when it was done I went into the other room and left them alone to compile a version of what they felt were the best moments.”

“Right off the bat, what he played was just so perfect and so dripping with feeling,” remembers Lifeson. “We were all sitting in the control room when he was doing his part, and we were just blown away by it. I might have had tears in my eyes, actually.”

As with the 11th-hour addition of Vital Signs to Moving Pictures, the final piece of the Signals jigsaw fell into place in the studio. “We were pretty much done with the record, but we thought, ‘Why don’t we just throw on one more track?’” says Lifeson. That track was New World Man, the album’s first single. According to Lifeson, it was written in a couple of hours and finished within the day.

“We’d usually spend months rehearsing and writing and then months recording, so to finish a song so quickly was really unusual for us,” says the guitarist. “It was one of those songs that happened so instinctively and so suddenly.”

Like Digital Man, New World Man bore the imprint of the white reggae popularised by The Police. But Lifeson’s guitar had a brittle new wave edge to it too, the guitarist seemingly determined to leave his mark on at least one part of the album. Yet any discontent he did feel over Signals was pushed down for the greater good of the record.

“It was smooth sailing,” Lifeson says now. “We loved being together, we were in a rock band, in a recording studio, making a record – how does life get better than that?”

When Signals was released on September 9, 1982, housed in another memorable sleeve designed by their longtime art director Hugh Syme, it divided opinion. While some fans understood the band’s need to constantly move forwards, a more vocal section of their following viewed it as a betrayal of Rush’s core values.

“There was always a complaint with Moving Pictures that, ‘Oh, now they’ve become commercially successful, they’re no longer our band, they’re everybody’s band,’” says Lifeson of this pre-internet gatekeeping. “But you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.” Still, the guitarist admits that he wasn’t unsympathetic to those who felt let down by the record: “I remember feeling disappointed that we had disappointed those earlier followers, because they were really important to us.”

This much was proven on the subsequent tour, which began on September 3, 1982 in Green Bay, Wisconsin and ended 109 shows later on May 25, 1983 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Though seven of Signals’ eight songs were featured in the set (Chemistry was dropped towards the end of the tour), they were outnumbered by tracks from the band’s older albums.

Yet there was an undeniable sense that Rush were moving into a new era, and not just because of Geddy Lee’s shiny new synth set-up. Visually, too, they were kicking it into the modern age. For Countdown, the band contacted their old friend Gerry Griffin, deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center, and told him they’d written a song inspired by the space shuttle launch they’d seen in 1982.

“He said, ‘Well, that’s incredible. Let me talk to our media department and see if we can get you some film footage of rocket launches and things like that which you can use in your show.’ And they provided all kinds of stuff, some of which had never been seen by the public before. We used it in a montage for the rear screen projection.”

Ironically, the one Signals track that wasn’t played live was the one that had Alex Lifeson welling up in the studio. “We always had one song on every record that we knew we weren’t going to play live, so we would stretch out a little bit and do things that we couldn’t replicate live,” says the guitarist. “Losing It was that song on that record. We never intended to play it live.”

Except they did play it live, albeit 33 years after it was released. Losing It finally received its live debut at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on June 19, 2015, halfway through the band’s R40 farewell tour. As if the poignancy of the song’s lyrics wasn’t enough, they enlisted special guest Ben Mink to recreate his electric violin parts onstage.

“It was tremendously nerve-wracking,” says Mink, who made a second appearance a month later in Vancouver. “It was supposed to be a surprise, so I couldn’t tell anybody, not even some of my closest friends. It was a little difficult for me, because my violin was way louder in my in-ear monitors than it had been in soundcheck, but from what I could tell, people were thrilled to hear it. They’d waited a long time to hear the song live. I don’t think they expected that it would ever be performed.”

Losing It was played just five times in total on the R40 tour, with Johnny Dinklage (brother of Game Of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage) standing in for Mink for the remaining performances. “It was a very powerful moment in the set,” says Lifeson. “I won’t deny being choked up most nights when we played it.”

As much as Signals marked the start of a new era for Rush, it represented the end of another. It was the last of the band’s records to be co-produced by Terry Brown. “It wasn’t an emotional decision for me, since it was the band that wanted to make the split,” says Brown now. “They needed to work with some other producers and get some other influences. Certainly producers that could accommodate a lot of keyboards,” he adds wryly.

Brown has the view that Signals came at a point where Rush were “heading for a midlife crisis, which they handled really well, and I admire them for their tenacity,” though he says he would like the chance to remix Signals with today’s digital techniques. “I’d fine-tune some of the details in the rhythm section and push the sonic footprint up a few notches,” he says.

More than 40 years after it was released, Signals remains a contentious album to some for its apparent embrace of all things 80s, though the cyclical nature of music means its synth-heavy approach sounds less dated today than the glossily produced albums they released later in the decade 80s.

Yet for others, the album has only grown in stature and significance in the years since its release. It’s a stretch to claim that Signals saved Rush at a time when traditional progressive rock was cast out in the wilderness, but, like Genesis before them and Yes after them, it brought the band in line with what was going on around them, drawing up a roadmap that helped them navigate the rest of the decade.

“I think if I had any regrets with Signals, it was in the actual production of the record, which when all was said and done, sounded a little small,” says Lifeson. “On my personal scale of importance, Signals would be somewhere in the middle – it wouldn‘t be high on my list. But it was a pivotal record for us as a band, because it continued a writing style that we’d embraced with Moving Pictures and it was a step towards what we did next.”

Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures had eased Rush into the 1980s, but with Signals they dived in headfirst. And for better or worse, they wouldn’t resurface until it was over.

Think of his Bach-influenced Vox Continental organ hook on Light My Fire. Try to imagine Riders On The Storm without his ghostly electric piano. Witness his funked-up organ motifs on Peace Frog and The Changeling, or his delicate, modulating piano on Waiting For The Sun’s Yes, The River Knows. Ray Manzarek was one of rock’s most distinctive and innovative keyboardists, a true renaissance man drawing from a vast pool of diverse influences.

Jim Morrison’s lyrics aside, the palpable dread and foreboding of The Doors’ music (is there a creepier summer song than Summer’s Almost Gone?) was in the main evoked by Manzarek’s keys. Robby Krieger and John Densmore were no slouches in the chops department either, but it was Ray who had the sounds and imaginative gravitas to carry that weight.

“The beauty of the LA scene in late 1965-1966 was that every band was totally unique”, Jac Holzman, the man who signed The Doors to Elektra, told this writer in 2007. “Morrison hadn’t ignited in the first three Doors performances I witnessed. It was the musicians in the band that kept me coming back. I was fascinated by the substitution of the bass guitar with piano bass, and the clean architectural line of the music was very striking.” Contentious, perhaps, but you could argue it was primarily Manzarek who got The Doors signed.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on February 12th, 1939, he shared a birthday with Abraham Lincoln and was christened Raymond Daniel Manczarek (sic) Jr. His grandparents had emigrated from Poland in the 1890’s; his father, Ray Sr, was a tool and die maker while mum Helena kept house, looking after him and his three brothers. His parents were crate-diggers, seeking out old 78 rpms of blues singers such as Bessie Smith. Mom sang well and dad played guitar and ukulele.

Ray was six foot tall by the time he was 14, loved basketball, and soon achieved a first-rate IQ score of 135. He was schooled in the ways of Bach and Chopin by his first piano teacher, but in his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life With The Doors, Manzarek recalled it was his second piano tutor Bruno Michelotti – “a dance band leader and a real cool cat” – who taught him “virtually everything I know about music”.

Michelotti helped Manzarek unlock the mysteries of boogie-woogie piano, empowering Ray’s left hand to become The Doors’ bass player, too. Boogie-woogie also seemed synonymous with Manzarek’s sexual awakening: “It was the rhythm of the act of love. The sway of a woman’s hips. The thrust of a man’s haunches.”

In 1958, Manzarek saw Muddy Waters up close and personal at Chicago’s Pepper’s Lounge; he and his two pals the only white kids present. Watching Fritz Reiner conduct Debussy’s La Mer was another epiphany. While studying economics at Chicago’s De Paul University, Manzarek became a culture vulture, soaking-up the best of musical theatre (Bernstein’s West Side Story) and world cinema (Truffaut; Bergman; Kurosawa). He’d barely smoked a joint, far less dropped acid, yet, but, artistically speaking, the doors of perception were already wide open. No wonder he and Jim Morrison had such a meeting of minds.

Manzarek’s parents wanted him to become an attorney, but their son had other ideas. Enrolling in the University Of California’s Department Of Cinematography in 1962, Ray met future wife Dorothy Fujikawa there and had her act in his student films, but it was Manzarek’s meeting with fellow UCLA student and aspiring auteur Jim Morrison that made history. Exchanging dreams and ideas, Morrison and Manzarek would spark the full-flowering of each other’s artistry.

At UCLA they studied under resident tutor Josef von Steinberg, German Expressionist director of Marlene Dietrich in films such as The Blue Angel. Steinberg’s influence upon Manzarek and Morrison was profound, his darkly adult films and philosophical lectures firing their youthful imaginations.

“I thought Steinberg was an amazing intellectual and his movies’ existential ominousness had a direct impact upon The Doors’ music”, Manzarek told this writer at his tasteful, Bauhaus art-appointed Beverley Hills home in 2003. “In the early days I always felt that I was Joseph Von Steinberg to Jim’s male Dietrich, kind of helping to direct him.”

Graduating by May 1965, aspiring poet Jim and classically-trained jazz/blues buff Ray were faces on the emerging ‘heads’ scene, hanging out at Jim’s bohemian apartment in Goshen, West LA. They devoured Huxley’s The Doors Of Perception and Kerouac’s Beat classic On The Road, Manzarek citing the latter as “a book that instilled a sense of search and freeing myself.” Fuelled by marijuana and Tecate beer, Ray and Jim’s discussions also took in the on-going war in Vietnam, Sonny Rollins versus John Coltrane, Debussy versus Stravinsky and many other hot topics.

Fittingly, The Doors formed that same year after Manzarek met Robby Krieger and John Densmore at an LA transcendental meditation class led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the same guru who would later instruct he Beatles in India.

“The leader guy at the class, Jerry Jarvis, asked if there were any problems”, Krieger recalled in 2007. “Ray stuck his hand up and said, ‘Yes. No bliss yet!’”

The group’s breakthrough single Light My Fire was a brilliant Krieger composition, but it was Manzarek’s calling card organ motif which made it irresistible, one of the most distinctive things on the airwaves. “I said, ‘You guys take a walk to the ocean and I’ll have something by the time you come back”, Manzarek told me in 2007, recalling being tasked with the song’s intro. “The muse jumped into my fingers and made my JS Bach studies come out. I did a [harmonic] circle of fifths and stumbled a bit with the filigrees, but it all resolved itself in 10-15 minutes.”

Elsewhere on The Doors self-titled 1967 debut, Manzarek responded to John Densmore’s bossa nova intro to Break On Through (To The Other Side) with an in-the-pocket organ groove inspired by Brazilian master of the form João Gilberto. He also played the Marxophone (a kind of zither) on The Doors’ theatrical cover of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar) . In 1967, such sparks of inspiration and informed plundering made The Doors sound very fresh. They were not one thing, but many things. A dazzling hybrid with a dark, bluesy underbelly.

Manzarek’s playing subtly changed across the six Morrison-fronted Doors albums. It became more refined; broader in scope. The “little Chopin polonaise” he brought to L.A. Woman’s Hyacinth House sounds like the prototype for Dave Greenfield’s organ runs with The Stranglers. Long freed from in the-studio bass-line responsibility by that point, Manzarek also let his imagination run-free on L.A. Woman’s title track while Densmore, Krieger and sometime Elvis Presley bassist Jerry Scheff laid down the groove.

It was mainly Morrison and Krieger who wrote the Doors songs credited to all four of them, but Manzarek was their ideas man. Not the only one, obviously, but Ray tended to ice - and spice - the cake. His intro to Unhappy Girl from Strange Days is all-important, and he added backwards piano to the song after what he described as “a great visitation of energy” in the studio. He also played percussive tack piano – a tinny, altered instrument with drawing-pins or nails placed on its felt-padded hammers – on People Are Strange, giving it edge and character.

Manzarek may have pushed the envelope musically, but he was less of a libertine than Morrison personality wise. Still, he certainly partook of mind-altering substances. “Acid is
a spiritual thing, a sacred sacrament”, he said. “For me, you took LSD when you went to the forest or the beach to attune yourself to the vibrations of the planet.”

As for sex, it was certainly something Manzarek talked about enthusiastically - and sometimes in a slightly icky way. His memoir has some rather graphic details about the carnal misadventures of the passionate part of himself he refers to as ‘Little Ray’, and nor was Manzarek more prudish in interviews or in public. Introducing People Are Strange at a 2004 Wembley Arena concert by The Doors Of The 21st Century, he invited the crowd to “play with each other’s genitals ever so gently.”

While Morrison became the wild man, Manzarek like to retain control. The singer had the looks, the voice, the way with words, but he needed direction, a vote of confidence. The oldest member of The Doors by four years (and older than Krieger, the youngest, by seven), he was best-placed to provide these things, his seniority granting a certain authority even if Jim got the girls and the adulation and the headlines.

In later interviews, Manzarek spoke articulately and performatively, that IQ of 135 on display. There was a sense of him not suffering fools gladly and he could seem a tad pretentious as he waxed lyrical about “the 12 astrological archetypes”, explaining how Morrison was “Dionysian” (excessive, addictive, charismatic), while he, by contrast, was a balancing “Apollonian” sort (driven, ordered, favours thinking over feeling).

Perhaps Manzarek was just trying to breathe life into a story that had been told and re-told. He portrayed Riders On The Storm as a portent of Jim’s death: “That whispered voice you hear was the last vocal Jim recorded on planet earth. It was the voice of the spirits, calling the shaman out of his physical form and into the next realm of existence. Had I known that Jim was so close to death, I would have seen it as a sign, maybe even a cry for help. But he was only 27 years old and it was impossible for anyone to believe that Jim was about to die.”

After Morrison’s death in Paris in 1971, Manzarek - and sometimes Robby Krieger - led The Doors from the front on 1971’s Other Voices and 1972’s Full Circle. Alas, there was no getting over the charisma-deficit in Jim’s absence, and Ray and Robby’s vocals aren’t great. They did notch up one final hit in mainland Europe and Latin America with Manzarek’s The Mosquito, a hooky novelty song that found him rhyming ‘mosquito’ with ‘my burrito’ as he sang about a pest-compromised snack.

In 1978 came the final ‘new’ album to bear The Doors name, An American Prayer. It grafted recordings of documentary dialogue, live concert talk and Morrison’s poetry to music old and new. Some deemed it a travesty. Former Doors producer Paul A. Rothschild went further, calling it “a rape of Jim Morrison.” Here were the seeds of the controversies and internal feuds that would dog the surviving members’ handling of The Doors’ legacy from there on in.

A few years earlier, Manzarek’s 1974 solo debut The Golden Scarab had already cemented the sense that, musically speaking, he could be something of a loose cannon. Packing esoteric spoken-word and riotous percussion, it was ridiculed and praised in fairly equal measure, but its new-age Afro-funk is ripe for reappraisal, even if song titles such as Oh Thou Precious Nectar (A Little Fart) are off-putting.

The same year found Manzarek teaming with Iggy Pop, whom he’d long thought of as the ideal successor to Jim Morrison in The Doors. Having just left The Stooges, Iggy was being managed by Doors overseer Danny Sugerman. He and Manzarek rehearsed for months and even played live together (no tapes or footage have surfaced), but it wasn’t to be, perhaps because Iggy’s drug addiction was raging, and he’d need to follow David Bowie to Berlin to dry-out.

Instead, 1975 brought Manzarek’s second solo LP, the jazzier, bluesier The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It’s Out Of Control. It featured Joe Walsh and Patti Smith, but not even they could save it from obscurity and poor sales.

Re-booting again in 1977, Ray formed Nite City, whose members included future Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison and drive-time radio friendly singer Noah James. But despite chart-friendly AOR leanings, the group failed to make an impact. That their second and final LP, 1978’s Golden Days Diamond Nights, was only released in West Germany spoke volumes.

Manzarek would soon busy himself producing LA punk band X’s debut album Los Angeles (which included a cover of The Doors’ Soul Kitchen), and their next three records. His 1983 solo album Carmina Burana occasionally brought a hitherto unimagined Chas’n’Dave vibe to Carl Orff’s demonic-sounding 1935 cantata, but with famed composer Phillip Glass co-producing it was also further proof of his pedigree.

As the 80s rolled on and appreciation for his former’s band’s legacy grew, Manzarek’s work with The Doors was a passport to all kinds of collaborations. In 1987, when Echo & the Bunnymen recorded a cover of People Are Strange for vampire flick The Lost Boys, Manzarek was invited to recreate his parts and subsequently brought his organ prowess to the Bunnymen’s Bedbugs And Ballyhoo, a song from the British band’s self-titled 1987 album.

More than a decade would pass before his the surprise resurrection of The Doors. The catalyst was a 2000 episode of VH-1’s Storytellers series dedicated to the band. An ecstatic Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction and Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots were among the stars booked to sing live backed by Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore, but it was another guest - The Cult’s Morrison-esque singer Ian Astbury - who got the gig fronting an incarnation of The Doors which began touring again in 2002.

Densmore was supposed to be involved in the reunions, but he pulled out, claiming tinnitus issues, and eventually ended up gaining an injunction which forced Manzarek, Krieger and Astbury to perform as ‘The Doors Of The 21st Century.’ A Morrison-less Doors wasn’t worthy of the name, Densmore now griped. But Manzarek was quick to defend himself via CNN news: “The guy who put the band together is performing with the guy who wrote Light My Fire. If we’re not The Doors, who is?”

Densmore and Manzarek had often feuded and had long-standing differences about how the Doors’ music and estate should be managed (the part in Manzarek’s memoir where he recalled telling Jim to regard John as “his dumb kid brother” probably didn’t help). But the pair made their peace prior to Manzarek dying of bile duct cancer in Rosenheim, Germany on May 20, 2013. “I called him and thank God he picked up and we talked about his illness”, Densmore recalled in 2023. “I felt so much better.”

“If you’re going to become a legend - one of the immortals, a god,” Manzarek himself said in 2011, “then you have to die. That’s the tragedy.”

He was talking about Jim Morrison, of course, but his own passing aged 74 brought a kind of immortality too. Ray Manzarek is alive again every time we hear Light My Fire.

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents: The Doors

Jethro Tull have attracted some unlikely fans over the years, from Stephen King to Nick Cave. But among the most surprising are a pair of punk singers whose own music sits worlds away from the prog giants.

The brand new issue of Prog magazine sees Tull frontman Ian Anderson answering questions from a range of famous friends and fans, including members of Yes, ELP, Opeth and more.

One of the questions comes from ex-Stranglers vocalist Hugh Cornwell, who asks Anderson whether he felt like the rise of punk was “a seismic moment in rock music or just another phase in its history”, leading to an amusing story about an iconic punk singer who sheepishly asked Anderson for an autograph.

“I saw the whole thing as being somewhat inevitable,’ says Anderson in response to Cornwell’s question. “The MC5 was punk to me, then along came the Ramones. And then it crept into the world of British music in the mid-70s.

“I do remember Joey Ramone coming up to me at one point to ask for an autograph. He was a bit bashful: “It’s not for me, it’s for my mother.”

Ramone wasn’t the only punk musician who expressed a sneaking admiration for Jethro Tull. Answering a question from ex-Gentle Giant singer Derek Shulman about the most unexpected Tull fans he’s ever met, Anderson responds: “There have been a few unlikely musicians, none more so than [ex-Sex Pistols singer] John Lydon.

“He once came over to me at an event. He had obviously had a few beers, but he was being completely over the top, saying how much he loved the Aqualung album and that particular song.”

Read the full interview with Ian Anderson in the brand new issue of Prog. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.

At the point in their career when they recorded Love Will Tear Us Apart, Joy Division were one of the most vital new bands in the country.

Fronted by charismatic singer Ian Curtis, their charged and foreboding soundscapes were the work of intensely driven young men inspired by the Sex Pistols to create a new rock music of fearsome power – and meaning – out of post-industrial pre-gentrification Manchester’s urban decay.

On their 1979 debut album Unknown Pleasures the one-time outsiders of Manchester punk had, through hard work and a crucial relationship with maverick producer Martin Hannett, defined a compelling and audacious landscape of apocalyptic dread.

In the months that followed Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division had moved on even further. One of the songs they wrote was , Love Will Tear Us Apart, which signalled a major shift in their sound, with Bernard Sumner’s previously abrasive guitar replaced by svelte keyboards, all the better to gild Peter Hook’s haunted, memorable bass melody line.

“It came from the dirty streets of Salford,” says Hook. “It’s a thing that I still wonder about: where does any music
come from? The part of your brain when you write music that’s unconscious?

“It was written on the bass and drums and then Bernard put the keyboard on it. I was just playing around with a riff and Ian spotted the melody,” Hook continues. “He jumped on it and goes: ‘That’s good, that’s good… Now put some drums on.’

“It was the way we always wrote. Ian didn’t write the music but he could spot it. We’d jam, he’d sit there and pick out the bits he thought were good.”

The band’s working process was open-ended, primitive and combustible.

“Strange as it may seem, there wasn’t tape recorders in those days so everything was in your head,” says Hook. “That was one of the wonderful things about Joy Division: we didn’t have tapes of us rehearsing the songs, they only existed when you put the four people together.”

The decisive factor in shaping Love Will Tear Us Apart came from Hannett, who arranged the elements to highlight Curtis’s exacting but resigned baritone. Arranged for mounting effect, with its swooping and soaring, it creates an indelible imprint.

“It was a funny song for us because it was quite poppy, a contrast to the rest of the Joy Division stuff,” Hook says. “We weren’t that struck with it. The ones that were our favourites were ballsy and angsty, like [earlier songs] Shadowplay or Transmission, because you could hide behind the song. Love Will Tear Us Apart was fragile and a lot lighter. We knew it was good but not great.”

Curtis insisted that his lyrics were open to interpretation, but his words to Love Will Tear Us Apart may have been partly inspired by his crumbling marriage to his wife Deborah: ‘Why is the bedroom so cold? You’ve turned away on your side/Is my timing that flawed? Our respect runs so dry,’ he sang in a rich croon. Tony Wilson, head of Joy Division’s label Factory Records, reportedly gifted Curtis a set of Frank Sinatra albums, which is thought to have influenced his vocals.

“Tony and Martin Hannett seemed to think it was a good idea for Ian to sound like Frank Sinatra,” says Hook. “We laughed at the idea. We were young punks full of fire, the last thing we wanted to be was subtle.

“That was Martin Hannett’s doing, something I thought would be impossible to do,” continues the bassist. “But it’s the subtlety that makes it last. Bernard and I would just have done it balls-out, legs akimbo like Status Quo, and probably would have fucked it up in the process. Martin gave us a depth that 20-year-old kids couldn’t have got on their own.”

Capturing that subtlety was easier said than done. The band recorded a version of Love Will Tear Us Apart at Penine Studios in Oldham in January 1980. But Hannett wasn’t happy.

“I couldn’t understand why he was constantly remixing it – four or five times in different studios,” says Hook. “I remember getting phone calls at 3am – I had to get down to the studio immediately because Martin was remixing Love Will Tear Us Apart again. He was obsessed with it.

“Martin sensed it was a song that was going to last forever and wanted to make
it really special. We recorded a lot of versions of the song, because back then nothing was too much trouble.”

Hannett was right, but Curtis wouldn’t live to witness its impact at the time and subsequently. The singer had epilepsy, and would sometimes have fits onstage. But he kept his feelings about his condition – and the turbulence of his personal life – guarded, choosing to obliquely explore them in his lyrics.

“We never talked about our music, we just got on with it, we didn’t analyse it,” says Hook. “It’s only when you read his lyrics you realise… If anyone had done that they would have steamed in straight away. But we didn’t, we just used to go by what Ian told us, and he always told us he was fine.”

It turned out that he was anything but fine. In the early hours of May 18, 1980, Ian Curtis took his own life, hanging himself in the kitchen of the house he owned with Deborah. He was 23.

Love Will Tear Us Apart was released as a posthumous standalone single in the UK a month later, giving Joy Division their first Top 20 hit. It was followed in July 1980 by the band’s second and final album, Closer. His surviving bandmates would reconvene as the more keyboard-orientated New Order, with Bernard Sumner stepping up as singer.

Curtis’ death robbed the world of a remarkable, magnetic talent. His gravestone bears five simple words: Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 119 (June 2008)

In 1975, young illustrator Colin Elgie was approached with a brief he couldn’t resist: to design the cover for Genesis’ first post-Peter Gabriel album A Trick Of The Tail. The catch – there were no songs, no lyrics and he hadn’t even met the band. Marking the record’s 50th anniversay, Elgie looked back on the commission that helped establish his career.

Colin Elgie is, as he cheerfully admits, “a lucky bugger.” As a young man he studied at East Ham Technical College under the tutorship of George Hardie, the graphic designer and Hipgnosis affiliate behind covers for the first Led Zeppelin album, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, and 10cc’s Sheet Music.

Elgie recalls that “prospects for getting work were not very good” as he neared the end of his course – but some helpful advice from his teacher provided a handy shortcut to employment.

“When I left the college after three years, Hardie said, ‘Go and see the guys at Hipgnosis,’ so I did, and that was about it! Over the course of 10 years I worked freelance. I was never part of the inner circle, but I was often there or thereabouts!”

In 1975 a particularly appealing assignment dropped into Elgie’s lap – Genesis were looking for someone to provide artwork for A Trick Of The Tail, their first album after Peter Gabriel’s departure. “They had always had illustrated covers,” says Elgie. “They had the Betty Swanwick one [Selling England By The Pound], which I loved. Before that they had the trilogy of Paul Whitehead designs, and those were really nice.

“But Hipgnosis were photographers, so it wasn’t something they could really do. I remember Storm Thorgerson saying, ‘The album’s got all these different characters, so make it a theatrical thing, like they’re all in a row, taking a bow.’ That’s what I went with.”

While Genesis were beavering away in Trident Studios on their new material, Elgie had virtually no contact with the band. Instead he was given a few song titles and the rest was left to his imagination.

“I’d worked out the characters I wanted to draw, but really they have nothing to do with the characters in the songs. I got a tracklisting – because there was nothing to listen to yet – and maybe some brief notes about what each track was about. I don’t even think there were lyrics; it was really vague!

“I now realise that their squonk looks nothing like my squonk! But I put together scenes with two or three characters interacting, and the band liked it. I did a rough version of the cover and they said, ‘Fine – go with it!’”

In contrast to previous outing The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’s modernist imagery, A Trick Of The Tail’s rabble of eccentric characters was purposefully designed with an quasi-Victorian feel. “I always loved those kinds of engraved cartoons and illustrations,” says Elgie. “I’ve got loads of books about old Punch magazines with lovely engravings in them and the satirical prints you used to get. I love the texture of it. It was a perfect fit for the music, I think.

“It was all done with a pen, and the background was done separately. The characters were done in black and white, and then toned into sepia or whatever it was.”

Elgie did finally get to meet Genesis at the Hipgnosis office in London’s Denmark Street, sometime after A Trick Of The Tail was released. “They were in for a photoshoot, I believe. They were very nice; very charming. Subsequently I did some work for Mike Rutherford on his solo album, Smallcreep’s Day – which he rejected!

“The only time I ever saw Genesis play was when they gave me a freebie ticket. They weren’t my favourite type of music at the time; I was into more bluesy stuff. But I was knocked out by their show.”

Genesis would employ Elgie again for their next album, Wind & Wuthering. He also found himself in demand with other artists, notably Al Stewart for his big-selling Year Of The Cat album, and Renaissance’s Scheherazade And Other Stories.

“Wind & Wuthering was completely different,” he says. “It’s a watercolour with a tree – very wild and very free. Then I did Year Of The Cat in another style I was into at the time; this very airbrushed look. If you saw all three of them, you wouldn’t think the same guy had done them at all. I like that.

“With the Renaissance album, the miniatures were so detailed, so beautiful, and I could’ve spent a lot more time doing it. But in all the time I was doing albums, no one ever wanted me to change anything. The bands were always far more concerned with the music!”

Still busy with an assortment of projects, Elgie quit the album cover game over 40 years ago, but has subsequently contributed to occasional reissues and box sets, Wishbone Ash’s Live Dates included. Meanwhile, he admits to being thrilled to be talking about A Trick Of The Tail 50 years on.

“I’ve realised lately that 1976 was an amazing year for me! The music and the artwork was a perfect marriage. That’s why those things have lived on. At the time I probably wouldn’t have expected them to last the way they have. If I’d known, I would have tried to do it all better than I did! The bands might say that about the music too; it’s all easy with hindsight!”

In 1996, while discussing ZZ Top’s career-reviving MTV surge circa Eliminator more than a decade earlier, Billy Gibbons was asked if he and bandmate Dusty Hill had considered shaving off their beards and becoming Duran Duran.

“For about this long,” replied the guitarist, holding his thumb and forefinger a smidgeon apart. “One look in the mirror and we ain’t gonna make that one!”

Watching videos for Eliminator songs on MTV at the time, ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill concurred with Gibbons’ grave assessment of their looks.

“I don’t belong on TV, I should be in a circus!” he told his bandmate, lamenting his “17-inch neck”.

In lieu of chiselled jawlines, peroxide-blond highlights and guy-liner, ZZ Top had charisma, eccentricity and raw talent. With various leggy models starring alongside them in their promo-videos, moreover, ZZ’s dearth of sex-appeal scarcely mattered.

Self-aware and business savvy, Gibbons, Hill and drummer Frank Beard weren’t done with MTV yet. More importantly, MTV wasn’t yet done with ZZ Top. It helped that Eliminator’s 1985 follow-up, Afterburner, also traded
in playful, sassy videos, and was again big on gritty ‘cyber-blues’ part built upon sequenced synthesiser and drum-machine.

Better yet, Gibbons and Hill weren’t for shaving. Their sizeable beards weren’t just camouflage; they were key to the look that made them so recognisable. So as Afterburner launched - replete with futuristic cover-art that saw ZZ’s 1933 Ford Coupe hot rod morph into a space shuttle - that little ol’ band from Texas still had pep, momentum and commercial appeal.

MTV’s support for the album’s US No.8 single Sleeping Bag said as much. Its attendant video reprised visual tropes from the promos that had helped propel Eliminator, and again featured statuesque actress and model Kymberly Herrin, who had starred in the video for ZZ’s 1984 single Legs. Eliminator and Afterburner’s titles, meanwhile, chimed and felt sequential; crafty record company-speak for ‘here’s more of what you loved before’.

It was all clever, somewhat calculated stuff, but few folks if any begrudged Gibbons, Hill and Beard more music-television-fuelled celebrity. Madonna’s rep as ruler of 80s MTV was hardly under threat, but the better singles from
ZZ Top’s ninth LP - Sleeping Bag; Rough Boy; Velcro Fly - kept them on-screen and in households. Fun, too, to watch three gnarly dudes in shades and Stetsons disrupt Madge’s reign every hour or so, their videos on heavy rotation.

Afterburner was the first ZZ Top LP since 1972’s Rio Grande Mud not to feature input from trusted engineer Terry Manning, who was unavailable. Recorded from March-July 1985 at Ardent Recording in Memphis with long-term producer Bill Ham, it peaked with the down-tempo power ballad Rough Boy. The album’s third single thrived on the contrast between its poppy keyboards and Gibbons’ filthy, pinch-harmonic-spitting guitar.

“The pretty music had to have a rough boy in it,” the guitarist told Spin in 1985, while Dusty Hill later recalled “I like that song so much, I had it played at my wedding.” Hill and his wife Charleen McCrory had been an item for at least
a decade before they married in 2002. Rough Boy’s lyric about a guy who thinks he’s punching above his weight girlfriend-wise might explain why it took Hill so long to pop the question.

Elsewhere on Afterburner, things were more typically ZZ Top, i.e. graphic rather than romantic. It’s safe to assume that straight-ahead, synth-bass-underpinned rocker Woke Up With Wood isn’t about a sleepover at the abode of a certain Rolling Stones guitarist, while Dipping Low (In The Lap Of Luxury) is unadulterated filth set to a riff that shares DNA with that of Eliminator’s Gimme All Your Lovin’.

Afterburner reached No.2 in the UK Album Charts and would eventually go five times platinum, but it didn’t have as much wit, imagination and quality-control as Eliminator. The title Afterburner made perfect sense, moreover, since it was primarily the residual white heat of Eliminator’s success that steered folks to the follow-up. But Rough Boy was genius; right up there with the Eliminator hits.

Remarkably, ZZ Top’s May 16, 1986 slot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was the trio’s first ever live TV performance. Carson’s musicians, The NBC Orchestra, supplied ZZ with a brass section, while bandleader Doc Severinsen and Carson himself sported fake beards and shades for the occasion.

A nervous Billy Gibbons fluffed his vocal entry on Sharp Dressed Man, but he soon recovered for some synchronised choreography with Dusty Hill. The pair wore shades, sharp suits and pink baseball caps, and had matching Gibson Explorer-shaped guitars. Beard’s fingerless leather gloves were as close as he got to sartorial excess.

The Afterburner World Tour stretched well into 1987. Its futuristic, state of the art stage set was designed in conjunction with Ty Reveen, son of Australian illusionist Peter Reveen, and the pièce de résistance was a 20-foot-tall longhorn skull with laser beams for eyes. At curtain-up, the bull skull would snort up the white sheet covering Frank Beard’s drums. Hey presto: a playful simulation of the era’s ‘chop ’em out’ excesses.

Meanwhile Warner Bros released The Six Pack, a box-set of ZZ Top’s first five albums plus 1981’s El Loco. All six LPs had been bastardised with new, ‘more contemporary’ drums and guitar effects, in a misguided attempt to milk the Afterburner effect.

It was perhaps wise that ZZ now laid somewhat low until 1990’s Recycler. The record’s title suggested it was part of a stylistic triptych with Eliminator and Afterburner, but though it had been envisaged as such, it marked a change of direction.

“Under the microscope, the previous two albums would be classified as our most production-orientated records,” said Gibbons. “We really were getting experimental. But with Recycler, we set up in the studio in Memphis and the first thing we did was My Head’s In Mississippi, our homage to Howlin’ Wolf and the gang. We’d been to the Delta Blues Museum [in Clarksdale, Mississippi] and it influenced us quite a bit. We got a bit bluesier again.”

A longer version of this feature appears in Classic Rock Presents ZZ Top, a brand new magazine dedicated to the Little Ol’ Band From Texas. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.

Metallica will launch their extended Life Burns Faster residency at the Sphere Las Vegas on October 1, and drummer Lars Ulrich is already excited about the challenge of staging the ultimate Metallica live experience at the "intimidating" high-tech Nevada venue.

With the San Francisco quartet's massive M72 World Tour, now officially certified as the 10th highest-grossing tour of all time, finally complete, the band are turning their attention to their upcoming stay at Sphere, where they have shows lined up in October and November, plus January, February and March 2027.

In playing at Sphere, Metallica will follow in the footsteps of U2, Eagles, Phish, Dead and Company and more, and Ulrich is aware that past residencies at the venue have raised the bar for live concert experiences.

"I was there opening night [of the U2 residency]," the drummer tells U2 guitarist The Edge on his Close To The Edge show on SiriusXM, "and was so just fucking awestruck, inspired, energized, all of it. And it was just, like, Holy shit, this is somehow another frontier.

"Obviously, you guys were the first ones in," Ulrich continues, "and it was just so incredible to see that night. And so in that spirit, three years later, when we start here in a few months, we're so excited and definitely have heard from a few folks about the filming and all of it.

"It's gonna be challenging... it's overwhelming and fucking intimidating. But hopefully when we step out on stage that first night, we'll have it somewhat together. And as you know, that's a place maybe we don't end up in often enough, because we have a tendency to put ourselves in environments that we completely control and know. And so I think it's really good to be able to throw yourself for a loop like that."

Metallica Life Burns Faster at Sphere Las Vegas

Oct 01: Las Vegas Sphere, NV
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The Rolling Stones may not have announced any live dates in support of their recently released Foreign Tongues album, but guitarist Keith Richards has hinted that the band are considering options for future live shows.

In the week that the rock 'n' roll legends notched up their 15th UK number one album with Foreign Tongues, Richards revealed that the Stones are looking at "a different way of taking the thing on the road."

"I know that this is all being kicked around," Richards said in a cover story interview with US music industry bible Billboard. "This year, we just decided, ‘Look, let’s get the record out, and let’s not rush things.’ So I see no reason why next year - I don’t see anything this year, I can’t rush it that much - but I see no reason why next year, good Lord willing, we shouldn’t be able to, as you say, maybe a residency, something. Maybe you find a different way of taking the thing on the road. Bring the road to us. That’s my suggestion."

Taken at face value, Richards' comments seem to suggest that The Rolling Stones are weighing up the possibility of undertaking some live residencies in selected cities worldwide, perhaps taking inspiration from artists such as the Eagles, U2, Phish and Metallica, who locked multiple dates at the state-of-the-art Sphere Las Vegas venue in recent years as an alternative to multi-city tours, or pop star Harry Styles who recently announced plans to promote his new record Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally with a 30-night residency at New York's Madison Square Garden, beginning on August 26.

"I don’t know if tours are possible," Richards admitted in an interview with UK music magazine Uncut earlier this summer. "It’s the traveling that takes it out of you. But I do see the possibility of us doing a residency somewhere. Wherever it is, London, New York, Paris, anywhere. I’ll play Rome! But I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to throw some shows together in a new format."

Last year, Brian May said that he and Roger Taylor were "having conversations" about staging a series of shows at Sphere under the Queen + Adam Lambert banner.

He told Rolling Stone: " I’m very keen on the Sphere. It’s got my mind working. I sat there watching the Eagles, thinking, We should do this. The stuff that we could bring to this would be stupendous."

Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne has revealed one of his favourite methods of trolling and upsetting his friend and Fantômas bandmate Mike Patton: he simply 'credits' Patton for inspiring the birth of nu metal via his ground-breaking work with Faith No More.

Faith No More - and specifically their breakthrough album The Real Thing (1989), Patton's debut with the San Francisco band, plus it's bold and brilliant follow-up Angel Dust (1992) - have long been cited as a major influence by members of Slipknot, Deftones, System of a Down, Korn and Limp Bizkit. But Patton has never been shy about expressing his disdain for nu metal, refusing to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the music made by artists who cite him as an inspiration.

"Faith No More spawned an awful lot of shitty bands," the singer joked to Kerrang! in 1999. "Most of those bands I don't like at all, and I'd hate to take credit for what they're doing. I think you have to have a very vivid imagination to link them and Faith No More."

"Do you think I listen to any of that stuff at all?" he once asked Metal Hammer. "No, it's for 13-year-old morons!"

Nevertheless, the association is never going to go away, which is why Buzz Osborne, a musician forever identified as a pivotal influence upon Seattle's grunge scene, delights in using the link to wind up Patton.

Speaking with Patton's Tomahawk bandmate Duane Denison (also the guitarist with The Jesus Lizard) in an interview hosted by Consequence, Osborne said, "I used to have a joke with Patton, ’cause he’s called influential as well. And I would go, I’ll take Nirvana and Soundgarden and you can have Limp Bizkit and Korn. He’s like, ‘Fuck you.’ [laughter] That was always funny. But I mean the whole nü-metal thing to me it all sounded like Helmet ultimately."

"I think that the word influence is misused," Denison says. "I think maybe we inspire them to play, but I don’t think we influence their music. I think that, you know, people, they tend to name-drop when they use the word influence. And they, ‘Oh I’m influenced by Stockhausen and Miles Davis.’ And then you go to their house and it’s all Mott The Hoople and Bob Seger."

Tomahawk and Melvins are touring North America this summer on their amusingly-titled A Huge Waste of Your Time and Money tour, which kicks off in Nashville on July 18.

"In the spirit of the Olympics, Team Tomahawk has decided to rise up and go for the gold once again," Denison said when the tour was announced.

Anyone else done with summer yet? Now, we're not saying we hate the long, glorious hours of daylight, but a bit of crepuscular cooling wouldn't go amiss. Still, we're right in the thick of it so far as festival season is concerned, with Inkcarceration happening in the US this week, while Wacken, Bloodstock and ArcTanGent are all to come in the next few weeks.

But, we digress. We're here to talk about new music, so let's round-up the results of last week's vote! Indian prog metallers Fallen Letters sailed into third place with A Familiar Absence, while thrash legends Anthrax nabbed second with The Edge Of Perfection. Our overall winners however were Japan's Hanabie., Life Is Short, O Brave Girl almost taking double the votes of the competition.

It's all to play for this week as we have returning metal veterans and exciting new talent alike with the likes of Mastodon and In This Moment up against Burner, Brat and Loathe. Don't forget to cast your vote in the poll below, and have an excellent weekend!

Loathe - No Stranger To You

It's been a long wait for a proper follow up to I Let It In And It Took Everything. But Loathe are back and swinging for the fences on new album A Stranger To You, latest single No Stranger To You capturing the band at their most shoegaze inspired with a sense of both heft and gorgeous, weightless melody.

Mastodon - Snakes For Dinner

Speaking of new albums with a lot of hype and interest, Mastodon have announced their upcoming ninth album. Titled Marrow Deep, it's their first without founding member and lead guitarist Brent Hinds, and will be out August 28. The retooled 'Don have been out on the road since last summer so we kind of already knew they were still firing on all cylinders, but Snakes For Dinner confirms it with delightful gusto, the band even drafting in Josh Homme for a surprise guest vocal that fits surprisingly well amidst their cosmic-yet-earthy sound.

In This Moment - Crawl

With some real pop'n'lock industrial beats, In This Moment are getting good and sweaty in the club on new single Crawl. Taken from new album Witch, due August 28, it's a seriously infectious track that makes us want to shimmy and headbang till our spines crumble like stale cookies.

Red Method - Detonate

Championing the heavier end of the nu metal revival, Red Method are in full feral force on newest single Detonate. Tight, claustrophobic grooves are met with what sounds like a wolverine operating a turntable, old school record scratches fitting in well amidst this delightfully vicious showing from the band's new EP As In Life, which is out today.

Bury Tomorrow - Sx

While this isn't the first time Bury Tomorrow have made a stylistic shift, we'll admit we were pretty surprised to hear them swinging for some industrial thump on new single Sx. Coming with the announcement they've launched their own independent label imprint Death Records, it sounds like the British band are tiring of the metalcore pool and looking to expand their sonic horizons.

Employed To Serve - A Moment Gone Too Soon

It's always oh so gratifying to hear Employed To Serve let rip. Whether it's the booming swing of I Spend My Days or the Araya-like howl of Treachery, they've shown they know how to go hard in a satisfying way, and new single A Moment Gone Too Soon is no exception to that form. From it's blast like opening to the steady rhythmic bombardment that lends it a sense of infectious invigoration, it's exactly the kind of tune that's made for sweaty club pits. Lucky that there'll be plenty of chances to see them on tour in the UK in November, then.

Scene Queen - Metalicious

They don't call her the queen for nothing. Bimbocore pioneer Scene Queen is offering up a crash course in the subgenre on newest single Metalicious, taking 00s pop and culture then brutalising it with some thick, thumping grooves and riffs. It's short and straight to the point, and while it might not have the killer hook of 18+ or Finger, it has an addictive quality that'll have the refrain "I'm hitting the mosh" sticking in your head for days. The full Metalicious EP is coming September 11.

Brat - Manslayer (Hell Hath No Fury)

Surely a Brat/Scene Queen tour would be a slam dunk? Granted, Brat profess to be champions of Barbiegrind rather than bimbocore, but we reckon the overlap between two audiences is nothing to sniff at. Nor is Brat's latest single, for that matter, Manslayer (Hell Hath No Fury) a straight ahead brute of a track that shows Brat aren't fucking about when it comes to the nasty stuff with lashings of 90s death metal chucked in for good measure.

The Ocean - Belligerence

We're starting to get a real sense of what this new line-up of The Ocean is all about now. Where previous single Light Pollution was based heavily on melody, Belligerence balances the melody out with the seismic, crashing-tectonic-plate riffs that were so prevalent on their earlier records when the band leaned harder towards post-metal than prog. New album Solaris is coming on September 25 and promises to be an odyssey.

Burner - What Will You Give? (ft. Josh Middleton)

After gatecrashing their way into Hammer's Top 50 albums of 2023 with their debut It All Returns To Nothing, Burner are back with a new record. Titled No One Is Coming To Save Us, it's due September 25 and first single What Will You Give shows off some deft extreme metal nuances, one minute a slavering, death metal brute, the next chucking hardcore pace-shifts like Hatebreed gorging on Cannibal Corpse. With a guest appearance from Sylosis' Josh Middleton, they're clearly looking to stake their territory in the British metal landscape.

Soulgrind - Jylhä metsämies

Careening in on a hard riff and then unleashing some of the gnarliest, tumorous vocals we've heard in a hot minute, Soulgrind might take the prize for the hardest single of this week. The Finnish extreme metallers clearly delight in chucking out curveballs: kicking around since the 90s, they started out doom but these days have more of a blackened bent, albeit with surprise forays into prog that add a nice twist to their sound. New album Ad Pulchram Mortem comes on August 14 - stick it on if you want your brain melting a bit.

Native James - Never Been Scared (ft. Frisco)

Grime metal is still in its infancy, but Native James looks to be stepping up as one of the subgenre's stars. Intense flows meet clanging, juddering riffs as James spits his flows with guest vocalist Frisco. The pair debuted the track at this year's Download Festival and if you're looking for a harder strain of rap metal, you'd do well to give this a spin.

Evanescence’s Amy Lee says it was “so fun” supporting Metallica on the Australia and New Zealand leg of the San Francisco titans’ three-year-long M72 world tour.

Lee’s Arkansas band played their six shows stadium with Metallica and openers Suicidal Tendencies in November 2025. The singer calls the headliners “so gracious”, even letting her bring her grand piano onstage for the entirety of her five-piece’s hour-long sets.

“You never know how it’s going to be coming into somebody else’s world,” Lee tells Loudwire. “It’s their show and [you give] full-on respect: OK, it’s Metallica, we’ll back off. But also, can we have some good production? What exactly can we get away with?”

She continues: “And they ended up being so cool. They let me put our grand piano out on the snake pit thing, so it could just live there and I could go for the couple of moments that I spend at the piano, just surrounded by the crowd.”

The singer also reflects on bringing her then-11-year-old son onto the tour, and watching Metallica with him at the end of each night.

“[He was] the perfect age to fall in love with metal,” she says. “So, him getting to experience that in the stadium, rain gently starts falling during Nothing Else Matters, just watching his mind go like, ‘I’m in!’ It was such a good, good thing for my heart, and just took me back to being that age and falling in love with music.”

The 2025 shows marked Evanescence’s first time supporting Metallica, as well as their first time playing in stadiums. Talking to Minnesota radio station 93X last August, Lee said that she wasn’t “scared at all” ahead of the tour.

“It’s a lot of bands, so we’re not responsible for carrying more than like our portion of the weight and [these will be] Metallica shows, so fans are gonna be stoked,” she explained (via Arrow Lords Of Metal).

“But at the same time, I know how those fans can be. I’ve been in this game for a while. I know what it is. I know what I’ve gotta bring. I know what not to play. So, we’re just gonna bring it and have a blast.”

Metallica have a reputation for going above and beyond to make their support acts feel welcome. Ahead of the November 1 show on the Australian tour, the band presented Lee with a M72-inspired cake.

Similarly, talking to Hammer last year, Mammoth singer/multi-instrumentalist Wolfgang Van Halen revealed that he was given a ‘Perfect Attendance Award’ for supporting them at every venue on the M72 tour’s 2023 and ’24 legs.

“Opening for Metallica was unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of,” Van Halen said. “It was really, really crazy.”

Metallica recently ended the M72 run with a summer European leg, supported by Gojira, Knocked Loose, Pantera and Avatar. The band posted tributes to each of the four openers via social media earlier this week. Avatar responded in a statement to Loudwire, calling the shows “something we will always be grateful for”.

The M72 tour may have ended, but Metallica won’t be away from the stage for long. In October, they’ll return for a residency at Las Vegas multimedia venue The Sphere. They’ll be the first metal band to play the space, which has previously hosted U2, the Eagles, the Backstreet Boys and more.

Meanwhile, Evanescence released their new album, Sanctuary, last month. Their breakthrough hit, 2003 single Bring Me To Life, has just been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

California Grammy-nominated metal band In This Moment have returned with anti-abuser single Crawl, the first taste of their newly announced ninth studio album Witch.

The song, released today (July 17), comes with a glossy music video, available to watch below. Singer Maria Brink calls the lyrics “a reckoning – a reflection that those who dominate and cause pain will ultimately reap what they sow”.

She continues: “As above, so below. The fall is inevitable. Bearing witness to the harm they inflict, the song declares that those who once stood tall will be brought to their knees.”

Guitarist Chris Howorth adds: “Crawl is a visceral track that delivers the undeniable observation of powerful entities dominating and abusing the weaker and compromised masses: something that continues to repeat itself throughout human history. The song empowers and, at its core, is about standing up and fighting back.”

Witch, the follow-up to 2023’s Godmode, will come out on August 28 via Better Noise (Five Finger Death Punch, Sabaton, The Hu), marking the band’s first release through the label. Press materials say the new album “showcases every side of In This Moment: the fury, the femininity, and the fire. It’s an 11-track opus that does not relent in intensity and introspection”.

The tracklisting and artwork have been revealed and can be seen below, as has the list of guest stars who’ll appear. US post-hardcore outfit Dayseeker will be on opener I Want To Believe, with Aussie alt artist Kim Dracula on Heretic. L.A. Ink TV host Kat Von D is lined up to perform on a cover of Pink Floyd’s 1979 three-part suite Another Brick In The Wall.

Brink says of the album: “Witch is my declaration of inner transformation. It’s about embracing the duality within – taking pain, persecution and struggle – and alchemising them into strength and power. The album reflects both ancient trials and my own journey: where being a ‘witch’ means being a creator, connected to the universe, manifesting my own reality.”

In This Moment have a busy autumn touring schedule in place for after Witch’s release. Following a standalone show in La Crosse, Wisconsin on September 17 (supporting labelmates Nothing More) and a set at Louisville festival Louder Than Life on September 19, the band will co-headline across the US with Hollywood Undead.

Tickets are available now. Head to the In This Moment website for dates and details.

Formed by Brink and Howorth in 2005, In This Moment broke through with their 2014 album Black Widow, which reached number eight on the US Billboard 200 chart. In 2021, their song The In-Between was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance, but lost to Bum-Rush by Body Count. Their 2013 single Whore was certified Platinum in the US in 2022.

The band have collaborated with a number of successful musicians, such as Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, Shinedown singer Brent Smith and former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Gus G. They’re also known for their array of cover songs, including takes on material from Radiohead and Phil Collins.

In This Moment – Witch:

1. Shame
2. I Want To Believe (feat. Dayseeker)
3. Crawl
4. Into The Dark
5. Sleeping With The Enemy
6. Wrapped Around Your Finger
7. Heretic (feat. Kim Dracula)
8. Father
9. Without Me There’s No You
10. Another Brick In The Wall (Pink Floyd cover; feat. Kat Von D)
11. Something I Can Never Have

Birmingham will celebrate its most metal son, late Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne, with a day of festivities, music and film screenings on the one-year anniversary of his death.

On July 22, the city will host ‘Ozzy Day’ to commemorate the Prince Of Darkness, who died at his Buckinghamshire home following a heart attack aged 76, 17 days after retiring from the stage at Villa Park near his birthplace in Aston.

According to a press release from the Birmingham City Council, the day will feature “a free programme of live music, public art, special performances and shared moments celebrating the life, legacy and Birmingham roots of the Prince Of Darkness”.

The Bostin Brass band, who performed brass arrangements of classic Ozzy and Sabbath songs as the singer’s funeral procession passed through Birmingham on July 30 last year, will return to various locations around town to put on multiple free shows.

One stop will be at the iconic Black Sabbath Bench on Broad Street, which features tributes the band’s four founding members: Ozzy, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward.

See the band’s full live schedule for the day below.

Another musical performance will be put on by the City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) at the Bullring shopping centre in the centre of town at 12:15pm.

The branch of Selfridges at the Bullring will sell an exclusive Ozzy Day t-shirt during the day. The shirt will feature a graphic of Ozzy at his retirement show, Back To The Beginning, and a list of the 52 gigs he played in his hometown, both as a solo act and with Sabbath.

Nearby, at Birmingham New Street station, fans will be able to have free Polaroid pictures taken with the moving statue Ozzy The Bull, which was named after the Prince Of Darkness following a 2022 poll. The 10m (33ft) sculpture will be made up to resemble his namesake singer.

In addition, local arts and events producers Outdoor Places Unusual Spaces (OPUS) will screen a number of short films about Ozzy and Ozzy Day around town. The Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero exhibition at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery will remain open and have the singer’s throne from Back To The Beginning on display.

A free map of the city and its festivities will be available across town, including at New Street station.

Sam Watson, Chair of co-organisers Central BID, comments: “Ozzy Day is a fantastic example of Birmingham working together to celebrate the legendary Ozzy Osbourne. By bringing together businesses, cultural organisations and public spaces, we’re creating a city centre wide experience that encourages people to celebrate the legacy of a truly global, Birmingham-born icon.”

Councillor Deborah Harries, Cabinet Member for Culture, Birmingham City Council, adds: “Ozzy Osbourne is one of Birmingham’s foremost cultural figures, and we continue to honour his legacy here in the city, where his journey began. I am glad to see the city partners coming together to celebrate Ozzy’s influence on music and his pride in his hometown.

“Black Sabbath’s contribution to Birmingham was recognised when they were awarded Freedom of the City on 30 June 2025. All of these anniversary events are an opportunity for residents and visitors to celebrate this legacy, while showcasing the creativity, culture and character that make Birmingham so special.”

Widely recognised as one of the most successful rock singers of all time, Ozzy Osbourne enjoyed a lengthy recording and touring career which spanned seven decades. After his original stint in Sabbath from 1968 to ’79, he launched a solo career with 1980’s multi-Platinum-selling album Blizzard Of Ozz. He rejoined Sabbath for multiple reunions, starting in 1999.

Between Sabbath and his solo output, Ozzy sold more than 100 million albums worldwide. He won five Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2006 and became a television star following the launch of his family’s Emmy-winning reality series The Osbournes.

Back To The Beginning was Ozzy’s first time onstage after announcing his retirement from touring in 2023, due to health issues stemming from Parkinson’s disease and a fall he suffered at home in 2018. He performed a set with his solo band and another with his fellow Sabbath co-founders, marking the first time the four men played together onstage since 2005. The all-day show was livestreamed and viewed by more than five million people worldwide.

Ozzy Day: Bostin Brass band live schedule

• 08:30: Birmingham New Street
• 10:00: Outside Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
• 11:30: Selfridges
• 12:45: Black Sabbath Bench
• 15:00: Martineau Place

It’s a summer evening in 1976, and this writer is sitting in a BBC studio watching his teenage hero John Peel stoke the coming punk revolution by playing several tracks from the Ramones’ recently released debut album. On meeting the DJ who soundtracked the previous decade’s counterculture uprising for the first time, the humble legend confesses he was initially as frightened by the Ramones’ intensity as the first time he heard Little Richard.

“The songs are all the same but they’re all different, if you know what I mean?” he says. He is already anticipating the negative abuse he will receive from old-guard listeners, he says, with a mischievous gleam.

Peel’s support crystallised and consolidated the huge impact Ramones had on British rock – more than anything since David Bowie’s The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust four years earlier.

Although much has since been written about Ramones, which arrived in April 1976 like a cluster-bomb blueprint for the burgeoning UK punk movement, it’s still hard to convey the scale of the album’s arrival to those who didn’t experience it first-hand.

Notwithstanding Patti Smith’s Horses, Ramones was setting punk’s templates, tempos and attitude, along with its eternal uniform, before any of their CBGB contemporaries started making their presence felt on vinyl. The album’s initial impact in the UK was like a joyful earthquake, thrusting a red-hot poker up rock’s tired arse and igniting a revolution.

I still remember the May morning 50 years ago when my copy of Ramones arrived from Sire Records in New York. Opening the package revealed Roberta Bayley’s striking monochrome cover shot of Johnny, Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee, skulking like a street gang against a wall (in the community garden on Second Street between Bowery and Second Avenue, now rechristened Joey Ramone Place). No sleeve or band had looked so brazenly different since the first Rolling Stones album. It set the tone perfectly for the thrills to come.

The opening triple header of Blitzkrieg Bop, Beat On The Brat and Judy Is A Punk have been part of punk’s DNA for half a century, but hearing the Ramones hurtling out of the speakers for the first time hit like an express train, every stop an epiphany.

Startlingly direct, stripped of excess flab and even guitar solos; Joey’s mutant NY street-jive vocals rode the band’s blazing block-chord powerriffing, continuing through Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, Loudmouth and I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement (its longest track at 2:38).

Yearning slowie I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and a breakneck cover of the Chris Montez 60s hit Let’s Dance affirmed the band’s incisive referencing of classic pop, from 50s doo-wop to Herman’s Hermits – stripped down and sped up in a cartoon world of psycho killers, glue sniffers and endangered rent boys on 53rd & 3rd. The glorious home stretch of I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You and Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World put the cap on one of the landmark rock’n’roll debuts.

Even on that first day blasting the album, it was obvious nothing was going to be the same again. The approaching long, hot summer of ’76 already had its scorching soundtrack.

At a time when the music papers could ignite cultural movements, Nick Kent’s lengthy NME review proclaiming: “If you love hard-ass retard-rock you’ll bathe in every groove” set the Ramones ball rolling. Reviewing for Zigzag, I wrote: “From the opening call to action of Blitzkrieg Bop to the last strung-out power chord of Today Your Love, Tomorrow Your World, this is a high-energy sizzler with enough power to light up New York City for a week! It only lasts 29 minutes – but if you travel at double the speed you get there in half the time.”

Ramones sent shock waves through the UK’s burgeoning punk community, notably in its London epicentre. In October 1976, Joe Strummer told me Ramones made him decide to accept Mick Jones and Paul Simonon’s invitation to join the band they were forming. “It can’t be stressed enough how great the Ramones’ first album was to the scene in London,” he reflected later. “It was simple enough to be able to play. Me and Paul would spend hours, days and weeks playing along to the record.”

That same October, I sat up all night with Sid Vicious at his Shepherd’s Bush squat while he attempted to teach himself bass playing along to Blitzkrieg Bop on repeat. Ramones also had a profound effect on Lemmy, vindicating and further revving up the early Motörhead.

“When that album came out, all the English bands tripled speed overnight,” said Generation X bassist Tony James. “Before the Ramones, bands might sound like the MC5, but punk rock is totally down to the Ramones.” Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue also gave Mark Perry the name for his original punk fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue.

The album’s inestimably influential effect was compounded by the Ramones making their UK debut, at London’s Roundhouse then Dingwall’s, over July’s American Independence weekend. Finally, these mysterious black leather aliens were here in the flesh, like cartoons come to life.

In the 50 years since, the Ramones’ unbelievably dysfunctional back story has been told many times, including Joey’s crippling OCD, Johnny’s military-style operational regime, Dee Dee’s drug-guzzling battles with mental health problems, and original leader Tommy’s vision of the band as a conceptual art piece with him as producer.

All that would emerge later. But when Ramones appeared in 1976, followed closely by the band amping it up on stage, there was an almost innocent charm about the four disparate misfits from Forest Hills, Queens, who came together in the wake of the glam-punk uprising sparked earlier that decade by the New York Dolls.

Ramones made their live debut in March 1974 at the Performance Studio on 20th Street, which Tommy ran with future Ramones tour manager Monte Melnik. Dee Dee found it impossible to sing and play guitar at the same time, Joey made a flailing cacophony on drums, and the three stopped during songs to argue. At Tommy’s suggestion, Joey took over vocals. He ended up playing drums himself, after showing the beats to auditioning hopefuls.

Joey told me his songs were inspired by horror movies (such as Chainsaw’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre tribute), trash culture and “our frustrations and feelings of alienation and isolation”, along with The Dictators’ locker-room anthems and the Bay City Rollers’ terrace-pop formula, Saturday Night influencing his chorus on Blitzkrieg Bop and its release as the Ramones’ first UK single. Having said that, Beat On The Brat was written after witnessing an obnoxiously noisy kid in a local playground.

For Tommy, Joey’s Judy Is A Punk clinched the Ramones’ potential to become the band he envisioned. “Once I heard that, I saw this was totally different and unique,” he said. “They were so original – we had something incredible. These guys didn’t know what they were doing. They weren’t just doing a song, but inventing a whole new genre together.”

The leather jacket, ripped jeans and sneakers image came from Marlon Brando’s The Wild One, Henry Winkler’s Fonz in Happy Days, and The Dictators; puddingbowl haircuts courtesy of Brian Jones and garage bands like The Seeds. “We concocted a unique sound and style, all our own trademark,” Joey told me, with great pride.

Needing their own Cavern-like club to develop and hone their sound, on the recommendation of scene dynamo Wayne (later Jayne) County, the band tried out at Hells Angel and homeless-favoured Bowery bar CBGB, opened by Hilly Kristal the previous year. According to Joey, Kristal said: “Nobody’s gonna like you guys, so I’ll have you back.” He booked them 24 more times that year.

Making their official debut that August supporting the pre-Blondie Angel & The Snake, their 15-minute set dissolved into chaos as they crashed through I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You, Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement, Judy Is A Punk and I Don’t Care. Suicide’s Alan Vega told me: “I caught their first gig and I laughed my ass off. I thought it was great. It was the best thing I’d seen since The Stooges. The intensity was astonishing.”

“At first we played to five people,” said Johnny. “Six months later we were playing to thirty people. It was really slow. It didn’t seem like the writers were going out to discover new talent. Finally, [Hit Parader editor] Lisa Robinson came to see us. She went and told other people, and everybody came for the second set. In between sets we got more people. After that, everything started building.”

After loving the CBGB debut, local artist Arturo Vega became Ramones’ artistic director and lighting man for the rest of their career, and designed their famous logo around the US presidential seal. Tommy approached former Dolls manager Marty Thau, who had produced the band’s first demo in February 1975. He declined doing that again, but organised the recording of Judy Is A Punk and I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend at an upstate studio.

The Ramones continued playing CBGB, Arturo’s loft, Performance Studio and Max’s promoter Peter Crowley’s Mother’s with Blondie through 1975. Every gig tightened their sound into the fullpelt onslaught that would be unveiled on the album.

“Guitar solos slow us up and bog us down,” Johnny told me in 1976. “The chords are doing everything. I’m driving away where the guitar breaks would be. The way that came about was we would write a song and it would end up being two minutes. The songs end up being short. We don’t do any stopping. If we stopped and talked to the audience that would add another ten minutes to the set. We really feel that what we are doing should be done in half an hour.”

“They were jaw-dropping,” says Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz. “Joey was a true original outsider artist who never failed to deliver his all. Even in the early days when he couldn’t hear himself, Joey’s singing was pitch-perfect. He performed with complete conviction and with a seriousness that defined the Ramones’ on-stage presence. He rocked the crowd without moving around at all, and he did this with the power of his voice.”

Feeling their way into regular gigging and honing their sound, igniting punk revolutions was never on the Ramones’ agenda. Internally, they weren’t together enough for that anyway.

“CBGB wasn’t punk in the way it got heavily defined,” says Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye. “In the little soupçon cauldron that was CBGB there was what you would call a punk sensibility, but the bands were so different from each other. When the Ramones came, this idea of punk provided a template for what would be British punk with very simple hard songs and kind of nihilistic lyrics. To me they were just one of the seven or eight characteristic bands out of CBGB. When punk became Punk with a capitol ‘P’, Ramones would be the template. A Ramones song is remarkably easy to play.”

Sire Records A&R man Craig Leon first saw the Ramones in the summer of ’75. He had to convince label boss Seymour Stein to sign them, until Stein’s wife Linda loved them so much that she became their co-manager along with a similarly smitten Danny Fields, the former Elektra A&R man who signed the MC5 and the Stooges.

With the band eventually signing in January 1976, Leon and Tommy produced Ramones in one February week at New York’s Plaza Sound studio on the top floor of Radio City Music Hall for an incredible $6,400 (about $36,000 now). The 1930s Art-Deco spread with huge rehearsal space, originally used by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, also boasted a pipe organ, which the Ramones used on Let’s Dance. Leon would produce Blondie’s first album here too.

In his notes to Ramones’ 40th-anniversary box set, the producer recalls: “We agreed that the group had to make a defiant, vibrant, edgy, radical statement with their first effort.”

He recorded the band playing live in the studio, with their equipment in different rooms to enable stereo separation like early Beatles records; drums in the middle, bass left, guitars right, Joey’s vocals double-tracked.

“I credited Tommy with associate producer because it was basically his concept on that album,” said Leon. “He didn’t execute anything, but the whole thing about the band was him. It wasn’t a particularly live record, like everybody tries to say it was. Tommy was very regimented, but Joey was coolly professional; unlike Dee Dee, who was almost impossible. Joey did a lot of punching in and double-tracking really well.

"There’s not a lot you can do with the Ramones, just a lot of layering and texturing, but it’s all purposefully subtle. I did a lot of arranging, rearranging and restructuring of material – plus getting them to end and begin at the same time!”

According to Leon, Joey genuinely hoped the album would make the Ramones pop stars. “He was very into sixties British pop, like Herman’s Hermits. We were talking about it at their apartment one day and he was seriously wondering if the Ramones would ever make it as big as the Bay City Rollers, rather than anything to do with going into the studio.

"It was this innocence that was an integral part of the band; the poppiest element was his persona. He was such a fan that you got that kind of bubblegum-pop mentality, and he really believed in that. He was the most disappointed when they didn’t go to number one with Blitzkrieg Bop.”

After that Ramones’ London Dingwall’s gig in July ’76, I sat on a low brick wall outside talking with Joey, Tommy, Dee Dee and Johnny about the record.

“We’re really happy with it, we tried to combine as much of the live sound without losing the studio quality,” said Tommy.

“There’s fourteen singles on our album,” declared Johnny. “We write singles, but the album’s a concept. It’s good party music. It’s a good pickup in the morning too.”

“You have to wake up, smoke a joint and put it on,” Joey added with a dreamy smile.

Although the album was raved about by American critics including Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau, it reached only No.111 on the Billboard chart, selling around 6,000 copies. Although the Ramones would go on to release 13 more studio albums and tour the world for another 20 years, that debut stands as a benchmark for rock to this day.

Sitting in an East Village bar with Joey in 1987, he reflected: “Doing the album in a week and bringing it in for $6,400 was unheard of, especially since it was an album that really changed the world. It kicked off punk rock and started the whole thing – as well as us.”

Singer John Bush turned down Metallica in the early 80s when they sought him as their singer, and was with Anthrax from 1992 to 2005. These days he fronts, walks and talks Armored Saint, whose latest album is Emotion Factory Reset.

The press release/biography for Emotion Factory Reset says it’s a “resurrection of sorts, a tearing down and a rebuilding”. That’s quite a dramatic statement.

That comment came from the biography writer Katherine Turman [laughs]. But I’m very proud that Armored Saint is a band that keeps on expanding. We’re inspired by those great bands from the seventies that wrote such great songs – UFO, Queen, Judas Priest – but we’re always willing to try something different.

Maybe we should have expected that, given that a year ago the band covered One Chain (Don’t Make No Prison), a 1974 hit for Motown vocal group The Four Tops.

Yeah. I’ve always loved old-school soul and R&B. I wish I was some Black dude from 1972, but I’m not. I’m a small white guy, but a lot of that music has shaped the way that I sing.

What do you think the casual fan’s perception of Armored Saint might be? Do some still consider you to be a thrash metal band from the eighties?

Some might even think we’re a hair band. We also get called power metal. Throughout our whole career, the biggest problem has been where do we fit in.

Longevity and success bring artistic freedom. What can Armored Saint do now, on album number nine, that would have been out of the question on the debut March Of The Saint, released forty-three years ago?

That album had some cool songs, but by the time of [1985 follow-up] Delirious Nomad we knew we had to diversify. The record label [Chrysalis] didn’t understand, and they dropped us after a third album. It wasn’t until Symbol Of Salvation that we caught our groove.

And then I left the band [laughs]. But it was 1991 and the beginning of grunge. When we reunited [in 1999] we just got back into that mindset of doing our own thing. The records we’ve made since then have been really solid.

The new album has a song called Hit A Moonshot. Is that a baseball reference?

Slightly. It’s a mildly sarcastic response to the people that are way too full of bravado. Y’know: “Look at all these moonshots that I keep hitting.” I don’t like to write in a way that’s too obvious.

The song Buckeye is an emotional tribute to your daughter.

Yeah. It’s my most personal statement on the record, obviously. I think of it as a very cool and emotional song – I hope so.

Armored Saint play at this summer’s Stonedead Festival. It’s a one-stage, multi-band event modelled on the simplicity of the old Monsters Of Rock.

We were never big enough to play Monsters Of Rock, and at this point we can’t get onto Download, so this will be our Donington moment. Bring it on.

Any plans for a UK tour?

Last September we played some British shows with W.A.S.P., so realistically it probably won’t happen till 2027.

Emotion Factory Reset is available via Metal Blade.

With its seductive snarl and hooky riff, One Way Or Another provided a bridge between Blondie’s grimy, CBGB past and glossy commercial future. It is in many ways the quintessential moment from the ultimate new wave album, 1978’s Parallel Lines, which yielded six singles in the US and UK and sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Those statistics would have been inconceivable just two years earlier. Blondie were the least likely candidates for global fame to emerge out of New York’s seedy punk milieu. Ramones, Television and Talking Heads were all marked out for critical, if not commercial, success. Blondie, by contrast, were regarded as a joke, with their attempts to bring girl- group sass to garage rock.

And then in 1977 their single Rip Her To Shreds, from their self-titled debut album, became a Top 5 hit in Australia. Suddenly it didn’t seem ludicrous at all that this platinum-blonde sexpot backed by four identikit, dark-haired male musicians should become a mainstream staple. And by 1978 that’s exactly what happened: Denis, (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear and Picture This reached numbers 2, 10 and 12 respectively in the UK chart.

But the group still hadn’t cracked the US market. Enter Mike Chapman, the bubble-glam producer for The Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Mud, among others, who was brought in to finish the job that Richard Gottehrer, producer of Blondie’s previous album, Plastic Letters, had started: to make them worldwide stars.

“I don’t know if it was that deliberate,” the band’s guitarist and main songwriter, Chris Stein, considers, “but certainly Mike Chapman had been involved in a lot of number one records.”

Stein agrees that Chapman gave Blondie an essential polish, notably on One Way Or Another: “It definitely connects punk and pop, especially in the vocals and the raw guitars. It’s got the snarl of punk and the glossiness of pop.”

One Way Or Another was recorded between June and July 1978 at the Record Plant studio in New York. It packed a lot into its three-and-a-half minutes: a snappy guitar riff, keyboards, bass and drums that achieved the perfect blend of tunefulness and menace, some swirling organ, a police siren sound, and a coda that nodded to the band’s 60s garage roots.

Then there was Debbie Harry’s voice. It started off gently, carrying just enough icy disdain. Soon, though, louche irascibility set in for the ‘get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya’ hook, which swiftly turned into ‘meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya’. At this point, it became unclear who Harry was playing in this song about a stalker: the protagonist or the prey.

“He was so wild, I had to move out of New Jersey,” she has said of her ex-boyfriend who worked all day in a chemical plant and drank all night, at which point he would “start after me”, calling her on the hour, every hour, and then hanging around outside her door.

“The girl in that song is certainly not a victim,” says Stein. “The protagonist is a self-empowered figure.”

The lyrics to One Way Or Another were written by Harry, while the co-writing credit went to the British-born Nigel Harrison, who had joined the band as bassist after Plastic Letters. The basic musical structure was Harrison’s, but the details and flourishes could have come from any of the musicians in the band. “Everybody played their part, and the songs were shaped in the studio,” says Stein.

Those studio sessions were fraught. Chapman, an Australian living in LA, found his first meeting with Blondie, at the Gramercy Park Hotel, decidedly “unnerving”, perhaps because they sensed that he had been brought in to clean up their act – or rather hone it until they became a well-oiled chart machine. “They were all over the place, musically,” he said. “The group didn’t know what hit them.”

Chapman’s memory is of the “dark, silent and serious” Harry. As for the others, there was no little antagonism when they realised how hard he was going to work them to turn their demos – “embryos of a musical masterpiece”, as the producer put it – into finished works of pop art.

“He [Chapman] was a hard taskmaster,” Stein says with a laugh. “He would go over and over a part until we got the right version. That’s something we hadn’t been familiar with prior to working with him. By the time we got to [1979’s] Eat To The Beat it was much more loose. That was like ‘school’s out’ compared to Parallel Lines.”

Stein got off lightly – during one session Chapman claims to have “rode [Harrison] so hard he threatened to take me apart piece by piece if I didn’t back off. No one,” he adds, “was happy with my technique.”

It worked, though. One Way Or Another, although never released as a single in the UK, became such a favourite with audiences it felt as though it had been. In the US it reached No.24. It presented a new type of female role model: the intimidatingly glamorous, every bit as tough as Poly Styrene or Siouxsie Sioux, but with added boho, SoHo chic, as though Patti Smith had been remade/remodelled by Warhol.

Surprisingly, for all its qualities, Stein didn’t think One Way Or Another would make a good single, let alone a hit. “You’re never 100 per cent sure,” he says.

With a little help from One Way Or Another and its parent album, Blondie became one of the biggest bands of the era. They also invented a new paradigm: catchy, danceable new wave, the sort that has been unavoidable these past few years.

Asked whether he’s amazed at their achievement, Stein’s wry reply is as pure New York cool as the song itself. “Somewhat,” he says, “yeah."

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 160, published in June 2011.

It’s hard to believe, but had his life not been cut so tragically short, AC/DC’s Bon Scott would be turning 80 years old this month. In an alternate universe, is he still fronting AC/DC with his pirate’s smile and larger-than-life stage presence?

AC/DC are still out on the road, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney are both older, and they’re both still out there doing it, so I think it stands to reason that Bon probably would be too. Sadly, though, our universe had other plans, and we lost Bon back in 1980, but his legacy remains. And I wager it always will.

This issue, Kurt Squiers, AC/DC expert and creator and host of the Beyond The Thunder podcast, remembers the glorious enigma and contradiction that was Ronald Belford “Bon” Scott in the company of those who knew him, admired him, or spent time with him.

This issue we also talk to Rob Halford about his songwriting and his life in Judas Priest; venture back to the 80s to look at the making of Ozzy’s The Ultimate Sin album; collar Alice Cooper and Joe Perry to talk up their forthcoming Hollywood Vampires tour; go to Canada with The Sheepdogs; chat to Ronnie Wood about the new Rolling Stones album and so much more.

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Features

Bon Scott At 80
A Celebration AC/DC’s former frontman, rock’s most beloved rogue remains impossible to define but easy to admire.

Ozzy Osbourne
Forty years after the release of The Ultimate Sin, we tell the story of how a fragile but defiant Ozzy Osbourne conquered personal demons to eclipse Black Sabbath.

Frankie Miller
When he and his band played a gig to a captive audience at San Quentin prison in 1975, things could have turned nasty.

The Sheepdogs
In Canada’s modern-day rock’n’rollers we found the beating heart of a band who wield retro tastes like superpowers.

Judas Priest
Rob Halford opens up about the classic tracks, the hard times and the no-compromise that forged the metal gods’ identity.

Regulars

The Dirt
'Whispering' Bob Harris steps down; Tony Iommi and Maiden manager Rod Smallwood in King's birthday honours list; concert, exhibition and tribute album to mark Syd Barrett's 80th. Welcome back CJ Wildheart and The Menzingers. Say hello to Frenzee and The Gnomes. Say goodbye to Dave Greenslade, Walter Parazaider and Sonny Rollins.

The Stories Behind The Songs: B-52s
How Rock Lobster, kooky song about undersea life, became a new-wave dance classic.

Q&A: Ronnie Wood
The Rolling Stones guitarist and own band leader on the new Stones album, its guest appearances, a new Faces album, Einstein and more.

The Hot List
We look at some of the essential new tracks you need to hear and the artists to have on your radar. This month they include These Wicked Rivers, Dead Pioneers, Split Dogs, AA Williams, Public Opinion, John R Miller, Getdown Services and more.

Reviews
New albums from Foreigner, Muse, Robyn Hitchcock, Big Country Redux, Fantastic Negrito, Armored Saint, King Crimson, Koyo Bloom, Bywater Call and more. Reissues from Thin Lizzy, Small Faces, Sendelica, Hawkwind, My Chemical Romance, Motörhead, Frank Zappa, Clutch, Status Quo, Supertramp and more. DVDs, films and books on Clem Burke, Def Leppard, David Bowie, Paul Di'Anno, Bruce Springsteen, Sex Pistols and more. Live reviews of Linkin Park, Dogstar, Skindred, Guns N' Roses, Limp Bizkit, B-52s, Jason Isbell, Jon Spencer.

Buyer’s Guide: Levellers
The recorded manifesto of the politically charged folk-punk-rock survivors are still casually ignoring musical trends.

Lives
We preview tours by Saxon, Hollywood Vampires and Tuk Smith. Plus gig listings – who’s playing where and when.

The Soundtrack Of My Life: Bruce Watson
The Big Country Redux guitarist picks his records, artists and gigs of lasting significance.

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Ratt were there at the birth of the Sunset Strip glam metal scene, notching up a string of platinum albums throughout the 80s. But grunge nearly sank their career – though it was hardly as damaging as the ongoing bickering between the former band members. In 2005, singer Stephen Pearcy, drummer Bobby Blotzer, guitarist Warren DeMartini and bassist Juan Croucier looked back over the epic highs, tragic lows and ongoing soap opera that was their career.

Ratt’s world is a turbulent one – in 2005 it’s unclear who exactly is entitled to the ‘Ratt’ name. Is it singer Stephen Pearcy (who tours as Stephen Pearcy & The Rat Bastards), or guitarist Warren DeMartini and drummer Bobby Blotzer (who tour as Ratt, with replacement, non-original members)? Add to that the fact that one of their most identifiable members, guitarist Robbin Crosby, died in 2002, while bassist Juan Croucier is out of the picture entirely, and it’s a miniseries waiting to happen.

But in the heady days of the 1980s, it was a different story. Hollywood’s Sunset Strip had been a punk rock haven, but by the time 1982 rolled around, one-time Strip regulars Van Halen had inspired a legion of bands. “It was crazy, anything went,” remembers Pearcy today. “People were fucking and pissing and partying and drinking. It was like that Doors movie, but it was in the early 80s.”

The soundtrack to this hedonism was supplied by bands that would go on to spearhead the glam/pop metal scene: Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, WASP, Stryper and Great White. And one called Mickey Ratt.

San Diego native Pearcy recalls stumbling upon a then-unknown band, which changed his life. “I used to travel up [to LA], and got to meet Van Halen before they got signed. I used to sit on the stage at the Whiskey A Go‑Go when Van Halen played in front of 18 people. I’d be shitting my pants, thinking: ‘This is crazy, I have to tell my friends.’ But nobody believed me that there was a new thing. I said: ‘I’m going to LA.’” Soon after, Mickey Ratt were born.

But Mickey Ratt’s initial members failed to match Pearcy’s desire to – as Kiss would have it – rock’n’roll all nite and party every day, as bandmates came and went, including guitarist Jake E Lee. “Jake was in the band for nearly a year; he was getting noticed as we were getting noticed. Dio auditioned him, then Ozzy auditioned him.”

Knowing that he needed a six-string hero to launch the group, Pearcy tracked down another San Diego musician, Warren DeMartini. Soon after, mutual friend Robbin Crosby joined as second guitarist, and through the local musicians’ grapevine the line-up was completed with bassist Juan Croucier and drummer Bobby Blotzer. Mickey Ratt were now simply known as Ratt.

Blotzer recalls “hunger, lack of food, fire in our veins – a lot of fun and good times” and “a lot of camaraderie going on” with other bands. But one particular group stuck out among all the party animals: Metallica. Blotzer not-so-fondly remembers sharing a stage with Lars Ulrich and friends.

“I remember Metallica opening for us in some church in Pasadena,” he says. “It wasn’t an active church any more; they were using it for shows. Metallica always had an attitude like they were better than everybody else. I didn’t get their trip then. We were trying to write catchy ‘airplay’ songs that still had a rough edge. They were playing the shit that we wouldn’t want to play – over-riffing and not catchy. But who’s got the last laugh?”

With their peers getting signed, Ratt felt left out in the cold. Quickly, they devised a plan – record an indie EP in hopes of attracting the labels. But friction was never far away. DeMartini: “When you rehearse all week, you get up on stage and someone is wasted on Jack Daniel’s, it’s easy to blame ‘that guy’.” DeMartini exited briefly, before Crosby convinced him to reconsider.

This also proved to be a tricky time for Croucier, who was under contract with Q Prime Management to play bass in Dokken. “[Q Prime] had me on small salary – I was a starving musician. It came down to deep soul-searching. I’d rather be happy and be in Ratt than be miserable and have a deal with Dokken. I chose Ratt.”

Recorded in two days, Ratt’s self-titled EP created a buzz when a local LA radio station picked it up. “KLOS had a show called Local Licks and they played You Think You’re Tough,” says DeMartini. “That led to Atlantic coming down.”

With a showcase set for July 27, 1983 at the Beverly Theater, Ratt delivered. Blotzer: “It was like one of those stories that you hear about where all these labels are backstage, and they’re all jockeying to get into the dressing room. Doug Morris, the president of Atlantic, made it in. We got the deal that night.”

With a label now in place, Ratt got to work on their full-length debut album with producer Beau Hill. Pearcy: “All I remember is having a great time – fucking chicks in the lobby.” While the resulting record, 1984’s Out Of The Cellar, contained several subsequent Ratt staples – Wanted Man, Back For More – there was one song in particular that would break the band.

“When Beau heard Round & Round he said: ‘What’s this?’ We’re like: ‘I don’t know, it’s not really tight.’ Beau’s like: ‘We’re going to make it tight.’ The next thing you know, it’s the single,” recalls Pearcy.

DeMartini: “We did all the things to assemble [the album], then there was this calm before the storm. For six or eight months… nothing. Out of the blue, we got a call that we were going to make a video. It just exploded. We were doing our own club tour, and then we got on a national tour.”

Pop metal was all the rage during the summer of 1984, as Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister were all over MTV. Ratt thrived under this rock-friendly climate, as the Don Letts-directed Round & Round video and a tour supporting Ozzy Osbourne catapulted Out Of The Cellar into the US Top 10.

In addition to all the attention they were getting at home, Ratt were massive in Japan. “It was just like the films you see of The Beatles,” says Blotzer. “We couldn’t get out of the hotel. It was true rock stardom.”

While the others were enjoying the wave of success, Pearcy looked beyond. “We wanted big parties, big money, big everything.” As a result, the singer developed his own philosophy. “The Three Ps – pussy, party, paycheck. I live by that motto to this day.”

After the tour ended, Ratt regrouped in Maui to write their second album. But the good vibes quickly turned sour for Robbin Crosby. Music writer Mitch Lafon spoke to Crosby in the early 2000s. “Everybody got their own little room, or condo, but that was the beginning of the end,” Crosby said. “Everybody took their girlfriends, wives and kids, but in my opinion it was a time to work.

“Everybody was doing their own thing. We were supposed to write together but Warren had his wife and a new baby that he hadn’t seen in months. It was the same for Juan. Stephen had his own place. I just remember feeling really alone. Nobody ever came over to my place. We all wanted to get some time off but if we went surfing or fucked around, the manager was saying: ‘When are you guys going to get together and write?’”

Released in 1985, Ratt’s second album Invasion Of Your Privacy was another American Top 10 hit on the strength of tracks such as Lay It Down and You’re In Love. But the group’s musical approach was changing, and they were beginning to favour pop gloss over their early raw-and-rocking approach.

Invasion Of Your Privacy established Ratt as a major US concert draw (especially when teamed with a pre-Slippery When Wet Bon Jovi). Blotzer, for one, enjoyed the lifestyle: “Sold out, a lot of money, hot chicks. Young and fucking rich was a good way to be. After Out Of The Cellar, I bought a new car and house. After Invasion Of Your Privacy, I bought everybody in my family cars and my mom a house.” Like most successful 80s groups, Ratt weren’t immune to the trappings of stardom. “You had big everything. Big drugs, big money, big parties. And it’s all free, the more the merrier. Heroin, booze, blow – it was everywhere,” recalls Pearcy. “Me, I always went towards the pussy and the paycheck.”

Blotzer remembers that drugs weren’t really a problem. “The problem was getting them, like when were in places like Montana!” he laughs. “We snorted blow and drank, smoked weed. But then, everybody snorted blow – you’d snort blow so you could drink longer.”

DeMartini admits not learning from others’ mistakes: “Everybody ignored what happened to our heroes in the 60s. It was a free-for-all.”

While the other Ratt members appeared to be able to handle their vices, Robbin Crosby went off the rails. “I met my wife [Playboy model Laurie Carr] at the very end of the Invasion Of Your Privacy tour,” he said. “When I got home I was really burned out, so I started smoking heroin. That became a ritual. I was doing a couple of hundred bucks a day. I just liked the way it made me feel better and I didn’t get all drunk and hungover. I thought it was great. I went through the whole ‘it’s not going to happen to me’ and ‘I can handle it’ thing.”

Ratt were rapidly becoming part of the pop metal elite but the band blundered while preparing 1986’s Dancing Undercover. “We weren’t even ready,” remembers Blotzer. “Our manager supposedly put down some deposit on a studio that we’d lose if we didn’t go ahead. We were in rehearsal with just a handful of ideas – Pearcy never showed up. It ended up being okay and it sold well, but for me, side two I can’t even hear because of Stephen’s lyrics.”

Still, MTV backed Dancing Undercover – especially Dance, Body Talk and Slip Of The Lip. And the resulting tour was pretty successful, as power pop veterans Cheap Trick and a fast-rising Poison opened for Ratt, resulting in strong ticket sales.

On Ratt’s next release, 1988’s Reach For The Sky, a union with ex-Queen producer Mike Stone seemed promising. However, Stone was fired before the sessions wrapped and Beau Hill was reinstated.

“It fell short again,” shrugs DeMartini. “I liked working with Mike Stone but that record started out one way and finished another.” Pearcy agrees that the album marked “a weird time – everybody was into their own worlds”.

Crosby recalled that even the tour rehearsals were stressful. “For live shows, [Stephen] rarely sang in rehearsals. He’d show up a week before and maybe make it through a set and then that was that.” And it didn’t get any better for Crosby once the tour began. “I’d never use on tour. I’d just go cold turkey and the first weeks were kind of a drag, but the Reach For The Sky tour was difficult for me ’cause I got strung out from all that time off.”

Despite the album not being up to scratch, the Aerosmith-esque Way Cool Jr enjoyed significant radio airplay, and a career highpoint occurred – a gig at Japan’s Tokyo Dome. “We played New Year’s Eve with Bon Jovi,” remembers Pearcy. “It was the craziest show ever – like 80,000 people indoors. You’re looking at dots and the stage is like 50-feet high.” Blotzer remembers it for other reasons: “We did five dates, and got paid like a million dollars.”

For 1990’s Detonator, Ratt had some songwriting help from Desmond Child and Diane Warren. However, changing musical tastes couldn’t be ignored. DeMartini: “If we had done [Detonator] when Dancing Undercover or Reach For The Sky came out, it would have fared better. The genre had changed so much – as good as Detonator was, it was kind of an anachronism.”

Croucier had other ideas for the album. “I wanted to go back to the spirit of the indie EP we did at the beginning of our career. Lose the big production, and get right back in your face. Someone said to our manager: ‘How about if we get someone like… Desmond Child?’ Which was the last thing I wanted to do.”

Blotzer remains unimpressed with the genre that caused Ratt’s career to stutter to a halt. “By and large, I didn’t really like grunge,” he admits. “I thought Nirvana had a handful of good songs, but to this day, I hear Nevermind, and after four or five songs, I’ve had enough. I didn’t think grunge had anywhere near the staying power that our genre – hard rock/metal – had. But it definitely put us all out of business.”

As if changing musical tastes weren’t detrimental enough to Ratt, Crosby’s addiction was getting worse. “I didn’t know Robbin was taking heroin,” claims Blotzer. “He went to rehab, came out, we toured Japan, then he relapsed. He was really out of it. Going on tour was not going to help his plight. He couldn’t be around that atmosphere and stay clean.”

It was obvious to Croucier that his friend was quickly becoming a drug casualty. “What was affected the most was his creativity,” Croucier recalls. “He started withdrawing from the band and isolating himself. There became an issue between Warren and Robbin about the guitar work – Warren wanted to play more lead. Robbin’s feelings were really hurt by that. It launched him into a depression and more drug abuse.”

With Michael Schenker taking Crosby’s spot, the tension increased. “We weren’t selling tickets like normal,” states Blotzer. “We’d be at a 12,000-seater with 5,000 people there – it was wearing on everybody’s nerves. We were fighting within the band – it was a shitty tour.” Shortly after the 1991 collection, Ratt & Roll 81-91, Pearcy exited, spelling Ratt’s first break-up.

From a business standpoint, it was the worst time to split. “It put us in a world of shit, because we had already taken an advance from Atlantic on a record that never got made,” Blotzer fumes. “We owed a lot of money from a merchandise advance we took for the Detonator tour. Only a quarter of that was paid back, and we took a million bucks. We were all on the hook for about $150,000 we had to pay back. Typical Pearcy move – doesn’t care about anybody but himself.” Soon, lawsuits were flying.

While the others were able to fend for themselves, Crosby was the worst off. Croucier: “He got the old ‘one-two rock’n’roll punch’. He loses the band, and out the door goes the old wife. She files for divorce, and they held his feet over the fire. His bankruptcy had to do with his personal thing following his divorce. I’m sure the Ratt problems didn’t help.”

Later in the 90s, reunion talk began. But the others soon realised Crosby was in no shape to tour, as he had contracted AIDS from intravenous drug use, gained weight from a thyroid condition and was bedridden for extended periods. Crosby broke his silence shortly before his death. “I have fullblown AIDS. Basically, it’s killing me,” he revealed. “I’ve got a terminal disease. Recently, I went in for surgery ’cause my back hurt so bad, and they got all this infectious fluid out. Then they found that my bones were not getting oxygen under the infectious fluid [a condition known as osteomyelitis]. I’ve been in the hospital for eight straight months and in and out for over seven years.”

Without Crosby present and with Croucier opting out (“Nothing had changed with Stephen – he was still drinking heavily, very stubborn, just a tense situation”), Pearcy, DeMartini and Blotzer relaunched Ratt. The trio compiled an album of unused tunes, 1997’s Collage, and hit the road – eventually releasing a 1999 selftitled album on the Portrait label. “Bobby, Stephen and Warren decided [Robbin] wasn’t going to be in the band,” recalls Croucier. “But they didn’t so much as call him to tell him. So Robbin was really upset about that. His disease became worse – eventually they put him in a hospice.”

On June 6, 2002, Crosby died at the age of 41. “All of his friends abandoned him,” says Croucier. “The truth is that he was furious with the guys from Ratt, because they hadn’t shown any interest until the last maybe six months of his life. That’s what he told me. Which is really sad because he loved those guys.”

But before Crosby died, Pearcy was no longer seeing eye to eye with the others. “I told the other guys: ‘Stop. We have to take a step back. People aren’t showing up. There’s no single, no video, no development – it’s a brick wall.’ They wanted to go to Japan. I said: ‘I ain’t payin’ for my own trip. I’m going to take a break.’ They said: ‘We’re going to grab a new singer.’ I went: ‘Well, don’t forget that I have major interests in both entities.’ Long story short – went to court, they sued, I tried to get them back, and they got away with making the courts believe [otherwise].”

DeMartini’s account of what happened differs. “The final leg of the tour was booked. Then we had a falling-out and Stephen decided to leave the band, start a solo band and go on the road with that. We learned through the testimony in this trial he was already working on the solo thing when he assembled the tour. We could have just taken a break. I never understood why he insisted that we book a Ratt tour, and then at the same time start working on a solo thing. Anyway, he quit the band and the tour had to be cancelled. He went on the road with a solo band, so we got a new singer and continued.”

Continue they did. DeMartini and Blotzer toured in the summer of 2005 with ex-Love/ Hate singer Jizzy Pearl on the Rock Never Stops tour alongside Cinderella, Quiet Riot and Firehouse. Pearcy was also busy this summer, touring as part of American Metal Blast 2005 with WASP, LA Guns and Metal Church. Additionally, Pearcy recently released several albums, including Fueler and Rat (sic) Attack, and Croucier, at the time of writing, was readying Demos From The Ratt Years.

Despite all the lawsuits, there was an attempt to unite Pearcy, DeMartini, Blotzer and Croucier. “[Pearcy] tried to get this thing back together, but his terms were asinine beyond belief,” says Blotzer. “He sent some nutty email stating he wants half the merchandise, he wants to manage, produce, call all the shots. It was a joke. Stephen badly needs counselling in my opinion.”

Pearcy offers a different take. “I made a proposal to them. ‘These are mostly my songs, it’s my band down to the logo. I propose an album and a tour.’ DeMartini shot it down, and I said: ‘Okay, I can see you’re staying true to your destruction of this band.’ It would have given the fans a 20-year anniversary record and a tour, like Mötley Crüe, actually before the Mötley thing was exposed. So they dropped the ball on that, and actually put an end to Ratt.”

Croucier, on the other hand, doesn’t agree with either side. “I’m embarrassed by Bobby and Warren calling themselves Ratt. It’s not Ratt. Three-fifths of the guys are gone; the guys who did most of the writing are no longer in the band. I can understand they need to make money, but to take the name and abuse it doesn’t seem like a respectful and intelligent thing to do. Ironically, I know if Stephen had the chance, he’d be out there doing it too. The damage is done at this point.”

Looking back before his death, Crosby offered an honest assessment. “I ate, slept and drank rock’n’roll since I was 10 years old, and my dreams have all come true. And then some have been dashed against the rocks, by some people that I didn’t even really respect at times.”

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 83 (summer 1985). Since then, the surviving members of Ratt reunited in 2007 (initially minus Juan Croucier), split in 2014, only to re-emerge as two different versions of the band in 2015, featuring Blotzer and Croucier, respectively but not Pearcy or DeMartini. In 2016, Pearcy, DeMartini and Croucier reunited to tour as Ratt. Pearcy has sporadically reformed Ratt with different line-ups since then. We think that covers it.

We Are Rewind are keeping cassette culture alive with their range of high quality portable players and boomboxes, with the French audio firm forging partnerships in the past with everyone from Duran Duran and the Elvis estate, to video game Fortnite and online music database Discogs.

Now they’ve collaborated with Pink Floyd to launch a limited-edition WE-001 cassette player inspired by The Dark Side Of The Moon - and the pack also comes with a specially remastered, high quality tape of the iconic album, which is exclusive to the box set.

On the collab, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason says: “I still have enormous affection for the cassette. It really was a major breakthrough – not only with the Sony Walkman but with some of the more up-market recorders. I still have my Nakamichi on the shelf and look forward to testing it with the new The Dark Side Of The Moon cassette.

“Am I correct in assuming that the next major issue will be The Dark Side Of The Moon in a large package consisting of the album divided up into 78 RPM discs?”

The WE-001 cassette player is made from aluminium, features metal buttons, a rechargeable battery with up to 12 hours of playback, a 3.5 headphone output, and it also has Bluetooth 5.1 so you can connect a pair of wireless headphones. We Are Rewind also say that it’s “optimised for 2026 with true hi-fi sound” and “a unique headphone amplifier designed with cassette playback in mind.”

We Are Rewind founder and CEO Romain Boudruche adds: “To call The Dark Side Of The Moon a classic album is an understatement. In many ways, it set the tone for what an album experience should be as a continuous piece of sonic art but also used state-of-the-art production techniques and sounds which make it a true musical experience.

“We're happy that We Are Rewind can play a part in helping preserve the physical album experience.”

The limited-edition package is available to buy now from We Are Rewind, and is priced at $199/£159/€179.

It seems that mysterious microtonal math rock performed in papier-mâché masks isn't for everyone .

Devin Townsend has revealed that he's been irritated by the hype surrounding Angine de Poitrine.

In an interview with Jorge Botas' Metal Global podcast, Townsend says that although he's not listened to the Québécois duo enough to give an "accurate musical assessment", he admits that he has a slight problem with the band's image and the hype surrounding them.

The monochrome duo – guitarist Khn and drummer Klek – went viral in February this year after their Seattle radio KEXP session garnered millions of views.

"It just makes me crazy because it's the mask thing," says Townsend. "It's like he's got a big polka dot nose and so everybody really likes it.

"OK, first off, I haven't listened to it enough to give an accurate musical assessment of it," he adds for clarity. "It's not to say that they're not cool, but would they have that same attention if they weren't wearing big clown noses?"

Townsend says that he was overwhelmed by people recommending that he check the band out following the KEXP session.

"I just refused to listen to it," he continues. "My perspective on it is only that I've been irritated by it so far. But there are people in my life who are close to me who say it's very good. So please take my assessment of it with a grain of salt."

Townsend recently announced details of a solo tour in support of his new album The Moth. Full dates below.

Devin Townsend ‘Metamorphosis’ Solo UK & European Tour 2026

Sep 01: Birmingham Glee Club, UK
Sep 02: Bath Komedia, UK
Sep 03: Southampton The 1865, UK
Sep 04: Exeter Phoenix, UK
Sep 06: London Union Chapel, UK
Sep 07: Oslo Sentrum Scene, Norway
Sep 09: Gothenburg Pustervik, Sweden
Sep 10: Stockholm Nya Cirkus, Sweden
Sep 12: Helsinki Finlandia-talo, Finland
Sep 15: Hamburg Markethalle, Germany
Sep 16: Warsaw Klub Stodoła, Poland
Sep 18: Vienna Simm City, Austria
Sep 20: Zurich Volkshaus, Switzerland
Sep 22: Paris Le Bataclan, France
Sep 23: Marseille Le Silo, France
Sep 26: Munich Werk 7 Theatre, Germany
Sep 28: Cologne Stadthalle, Germany
Sep 29: Utrecht Tivoli Vredenburg (Grote Zaal), Netherlands
Oct 01: Brighton The Old Market, UK
Oct 02: Cardiff The Gate, UK
Oct 03: Glasgow Òran Mór, UK
Oct 04: Manchester RNCM, UK
Oct 06: Leeds Howard Assembly Room, UK

Rick Wakeman has announced that he will release his new progressive rock album, Return To The Red Planet, through Madfish Records on October 16. The album is a sequel to Wakeman's The Red Planet album, which he released back in 2020.

The album sees Wakeman reunited with his English Rock Ensemble band of Lee Pomeroy, Dave Colquhoun, Adam Falkner and Mollie Marriott. You can watch a video trailer for the new album below.

"Once I started looking at the new data and photographs, I realised there was an entirely new album waiting to be written," Wakeman explains. "There was simply too much more to say about Mars - musically and spiritually - not to return.”

Wakeman had previously told Prog about the making of the new record, revealing that he drew on his experience playing with David Bowie back in his pre-Yes days. “When we did Life On Mars? we talked a lot about it; he was fascinated with Mars – not to the depth that I am, but it intrigued him. So I wrote a track, almost like a tribute to David, called Bowie’s Vision. I’m very pleased with it.

“Then there’s one I’ve done on the three epochs of Mars – very proggy, based around the fact that Mars was essentially created in three periods of time over billions of years. So I’ve separated those and made a suite of that.

“There’s also a track called Martian Dust Devils, which is a term astrophysicists use for massive swirling storms. We get them on Earth, in deserts, and they’re pretty wild. But imagine something 1,000 times more powerful! That was a great idea to write, too. It was great fun.

“It was just like the old days – it’s the closest I can remember coming to how it was in the early 70s, the very early days of Yes, preparing for a new album.”

Return To The Red Planet wil be available as crystal clear gatefold Vinyl LP, classic black gatefold Vinyl LP, digipack CD With 20-page booklet, a CD/Blu-ray edition, which includes CD of the studio album + Blu-ray disc featuring Dolby Atmos, 5.1 Surround Sound & Hi-Res Stereo Mixes and The Making Of The Return To The Red Planet documentary and 20-page printed booklet and as a digital album.

Pre-order Return To The Red Planet.

Rick Wakeman: Return To The Red Planet
1. The Jezero Crater
2. Bowie’s Vision
3. Noctis Labyrinthus
4. Noachis Terra (Land of Noah)
5. Witch Hazel Hill
6. St Paul’s Bay
7. Martian Dust Devils
8. Medusae Fossae
9. The Epochs of Mars

Jason Newsted has revealed that Metallica once had darts thrown at them during an arena show in Canada in the late '80s.

The Chophouse Band frontman traded tour stories with Blackberry Smoke's Charlie Starr as part of Rolling Stone's Nashville Podcast, as the pair are currently on the road together with their respective bands in North America.

During the 30-minute conversation, he said that he witnessed a dart just miss James Hetfield's feet during their show and had to halt the performance so the attacker could be reprimanded.

"As we played across Canada, we wouldn't always sell those arenas out in the middle of wherever it might be, somewhere out in the woods a little bit," said Newsted. "[It was a] 6,000 seat hockey arena, and they put the big rubber curtain up in the middle because we only sold 3,000. So, partly for sound and partly for vibe. So that pushed your stage all the way up close to the seats.

"So kids are about like this up above you," he continued. "We're playing a few songs, and all of a sudden, it's a dart, right? I look over at James and then there's another one. I go, 'Dude'."

"The next one on James singing, shoot, it was this far from his tennis shoe," he added. "We always wore tennis shoes, soft tops and stuff, right? There were darts. And so he stops it. It was maybe the fourth time I remember that we ever stopped a show and it was usually for something like this. When we saw too much blood or too much of this or somebody's arm getting pulled out or whatever, that kind of thing, we'd stop the show for a second."

The former bassist goes on to say that once the show was stopped, fans were quick to point out the culprit to the band and security.

"The security guys and the kids and whoever had the laser pointers at the moment, all [had them] on the kid that threw them, just like that," he laughs. "They all jumped on him."

Watch the whole interview below.

In May, Newsted revealed that he had been given the all-clear after undergoing treatment for throat cancer.

"They went in with lasers and took a bunch of shit out," he said on the Let There Be Talk podcast. "So the cavern inside my head is different than it was, but we got it early. And I got my 'free and clear' about three weeks ago. So I beat it."

Newsted is currently working on his memoir and already has "130 chapters." No date for its publication has been set as yet.

Echo & The Bunnymen have announced the forthcoming release of Apples For Isaac, their first new album in 12 years.

The Liverpool indie veterans will release what will be their thirteenth studio album via BMG on September 18.

The album, the follow-up to 2014's Meteorites, features late Blondie drummer Clem Burke - who passed away, aged 70, in April 2025 - on 10 of its 11 tracks.

In a statement accompanying the album news, the band say, "The mighty, legendary Clem Burke – longtime friend of Mac [frontman Ian McCulloch] – was integral to the making of the album, and heartbreakingly passed away during its completion… love you Clem X"

The tracklist for Apples For Isaac is:

1. Take Me By The Hand
2. Can’t Be Sold
3. Brussels Is Haunted
4. I’ll Be Your Sunshine
5. Hijacked
6. The Honey
7. Unstoppable Force
8. The Light That Surrounds You
9. Lab Rats Ran
10. Asimov
11. We Prayed In The Dark

As a preview, the release of the record is preceded today, July 16, by the release of its first single, Brussels Is Haunted.

The lyrics to the first verse of the single run:

"Here comes Plastique and Bert Bertrand
We danced at The Classic all night long
Enchanté Belgique et Le Place Grande
We drank Rum and cassis and beer blonde"

Watch the video below:

The band have a brace of shows in London and Glasgow later this year.

They will play:

Sep. 22: London Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Sep. 23: London Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

Dec 20: Glasgow Barrowland
Dec 22: Glasgow Barrowland

The quintet were recently hand-picked to support My Chemical Romance at Liverpool's Anfield Stadium, with MCR frontman Gerard Way hailing Ian McCulloch's band as "one of the great bands of all time."

Bob Dylan has announced a run of UK shows for later this year. The 85-year-old will kick off a run of ten dates at the BIC Windsor Hall in Bournemouth on November 25, before heading to Birmingham, Sheffield and Blackpool. The schedule will climax with five nights at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank on December 3-8.

Promoter and venue presales begin on Monday (July 20) at 10am local time, with the general sale kicking off two days later at the same time.

The tour's announcement follows some disruption in Dylan's touring camp, with two established sidemen quitting. Guitarist Doug Lancio, who joined the band in 2021, left last month, and was followed a fortnight later by fellow axeman Bob Britt, who joined in 2019. They've been replaced by jazz virtuoso Julian Lage, Memphis-based R&B guitarist/vocalist Jad Tariq, and Chicago-based roots, jazz, and blues guitarist Joel Patterson.

Like the 2024 leg of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, the new run of shows is being promoted in partnership with tech firm Yondr, whose technology is designed to prevent fans from documenting live performances on their devices. Ticket holders will be required to insert smartphones and cameras into protective pouches that remain locked while the concert is in progress. Fans needing to use their devices during the shows will need to step outside the phone-free area to unlock their pouches.

The technology, which was launched in 2020, was famously adopted by Ghost on their 2025 world tour, and has also been used by Jack White, Guns N' Roses and Alicia Keys.

Dylan is currently on tour in North America. His next show is this evening (July 16) at the Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston, MA. Full dates below.

Bob Dylan: 2026 tour dates

Jul 16: Boston Leader Bank Pavilion, MA
Jul 18: Gilford New Hampshire Bank Pavilion, NH
Jul 19: Bridgeport Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater, CT
Jul 21: New York Queens Forest Hills Stadium, NY
Jul 23: Richmond Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront, VA
Jul 24: Vienna Filene Center at Wolf Trap, VA
Jul 25: Vienna Filene Center at Wolf Trap, VA
Jul 28: Raleigh Red Hat Amphitheater, NC
Jul 29: Wilmington Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park, NC
Jul 31: Atlanta Synovus Bank Amphitheater at Chastain Park, GA
Aug 01: Nashville Ascend Federal Credit Union Amphitheater, TN

Nov 25: Bournemouth BIC Windsor Hall, UK
Nov 26: Birmingham BP Pulse Live, UK
Nov 27: Sheffield Utilita Arena, UK
Nov 30: Blackpool Opera House, UK
Dec 01: Blackpool Opera House, UK
Dec 03: London Royal Festival Hall, UK
Dec 04: London Royal Festival Hall, UK
Dec 05: London Royal Festival Hall, UK
Dec 07: London Royal Festival Hall, UK
Dec 08: London Royal Festival Hall, UK

Find Bob Dylan tickets.

Ghost are set to release a full-length concert film in cinemas and IMAX theatres worldwide from August 26 for a limited run.

Directed by Amir Chamdin, 2 Big to Rig captures the band on 16mm film over the course of their two sold-out shows at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes in September last year.

“[It] creates a nostalgic experience and a fitting farewell to an era for fans," says Kymberli Frueh of Trafalgar Releasing, who worked with the band on their previous concert film Rite Here Right Now in 2024. "We’re proud to share it with cinema audiences worldwide before Ghost takes a well-publicised break. It’s the perfect way to close such a significant chapter in the band’s history and give fans a chance to relive this moment together.”

Tickets for 2 Big to Rig on sale from July 23 via the movie's official website.

Shortly after the end of the tour in support of the Skeletá album in February, frontman Tobias Forge announced that he was taking a break from touring.

In an interview with Full Metal Jackie, he explained that he wanted to spend more time with his wife and children and “get some new inspiration” for other musical projects.

“I’ve had two kids waiting at home with my wife for 15 years,” says the singer, who performs onstage as Ghost’s masked leader Papa V Perpetua. “And maybe that says something about me that it wasn’t a pushing enough factor during those years. Believe me, I felt bad, but I’ve definitely come to a point where I feel, physically and mentally, I need to be home. [My kids are] 17; they’re not gonna be around for an eon.”

Members of Tool, Pearl Jam, Korn, Garbage, Fugazi and Bikini Kill are among the musicians who have made donations to the GoFundMe campaign set up to help L7 bassist Jennifer Finch with medical treatment expenses following her recent brain cancer diagnosis.

As the 59-year-old Californian musician is undergoing treatment, she will no longer be able to participate in the Los Angeles punk band's Last Hurrah Tour scheduled to take place in North America later this year, but she has urged her bandmates to continue in her absence while she receives medical care.

At the time of writing, the GoFundMe campaign set up on July 13, had received donations totalling $365,382, surpassing its $350K goal.

The fund will assist:

Professional in-home nursing care, physical and speech therapy, medical equipment, and other essential care for Finch.

Covering home-care expenses that will allow the bassist to remain safely and comfortably at home.

Recouping significant out-of-pocket medical expenses and legal fees

Preserving Jennifer’s legacy by creating an archive of her artistic and creative work and the completion of a significant creative project that was scheduled for release next year.

Among the contributions, Garbage have donated $8,000, Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament has donated $4,500, Bikini Kill vocalist Kathleen Hanna has given $5,000, Tool's Maynard James Keenan has donated £2,500 and Korn guitarist Brian 'Head' Welch has pledged $1000. Together with his wife Gina, Brett Gurewitz, the former Bad Religion guitarist and owner of Epitaph Records, has made a $10,000 donation.

In an update posted on July 14, the organisers of the campaign wrote, "We are absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the support, love and how far this campaign went yesterday. We are all so grateful for the community showing up far and wide to support Jennifer.

"One comment we received said, 'you have an army behind you', and with the support we are receiving we truly feel that. When that comment came in I immediately read it to Jennifer and it touched her so much."

To make a donation towards Jennifer's GoFundMe campaign, go here.

Nicko McBrain has revealed his favourite Iron Maiden studio albums from worst to best.

The drummer, who retired from touring in 2024, took part in a recent fan event at his Rock n Roll Ribs restaurant in Coral Springs, Florida, led by Iron Maiden fan and podcaster Capnharris.

The albums were offered randomly, and the drummer was asked to place them in order of greatness on a presentation board featuring his flaxen puppet pal Sooty.

In a move that may shock and surprise fans, McBrain placed the band's 1980 self-titled album at the bottom of the list.

"I'll tell you what, the production on that wasn't the greatest, but nevertheless, still a good album," says the drummer.

McBrain picked the band's 2006 album A Matter of Life and Death as his favourite studio album.

"That's definitely my favourite album," he reveals. "For the Greater Good of God, Lord of Light, The Legacy. It's all pretty much perfect."

Here's how the drummer placed each album in order of greatness.

17. Iron Maiden
16. Virtual XI
15. No Prayer for the Dying
14. The X Factor
13. Killers
12. The Number of the Beast
11. The Final Frontier
10. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
9. Fear of the Dark
8. Somewhere in Time
7. Brave New World
6. Dance of Death
5. The Book of Souls
4. Powerslave
3. Senjutsu
2. Piece of Mind
1. A Matter of Life and Death

McBrain will publish his autobiography Hello Boys And Girls through Harper Nonfiction on October 22.

The drummer says: "It’s been a real honour to write my very own autobiography and have the chance to walk down memory lane, revisiting all the experiences that have made me who I am and brought me to where I am today. And I’m thrilled and delighted to be taking those stories on the road and share them all with you. I feel truly blessed to be able to say Hello Boys And Girls to you all in person later this year. We’re going to have a lot of fun together, so come and join me for a great night out. I’ve got a LOT of stories I want to tell you all!”

He'll embark on An Evening with Nicko McBrain tour from October 26 to promote his book. For tickets and dates, visit his official website.

On October 14, 2006, My Chemical Romance scored their first (and, to date, only) UK number one single with Welcome To The Black Parade, the striking centre-piece of their soon-to-be-released third album third album, The Black Parade. This was a genuinely remarkable achievement for a band who, just five years earlier, were playing basement shows in their native New Jersey and giving away their songs for free on MySpace. But while their commercial break-through was celebrated loudly by MCRmy loyalists in the UK, not everyone was on board with emo's new superstars.

In the same week that Gerard Way's band stormed to the top of the British charts, another fast-rising rock band, homegrown indie darlings Kasabian, hit out at the band for their "weird and dark" music, labelling the quintet "sad" and claiming that they "don’t have anything positive to say."

"It's like ventriloquists’ music," fumed frontman Tom Meighan. "It’s weird and dark...The only good news is that it won’t last. These clowns won’t be around for much longer.Their make-up will flake off and the scene will die out. And it can’t happen soon enough."

“I just can’t relate to it," added guitarist Serge Pizzorno. "We are about decadence, having a good time and getting off your head. We champion youthful rebellion. We’re into peace and love, spreading harmony and having respect for people. But these people are the absolute opposite. It’s sad. These emo kids should get out more and try and have a good time instead."

While this small-minded and inaccurate critique of the band revealed much more about Kasabian's vanilla outlook than My Chemical Romance's music or worldview, the Oasis-worshipping Leicester band's comments were reported all all over the world, and soon reached the MCR camp, who found the English band's ignorance hugely amusing.

"This band has never had a bullshit war ever," Gerard Way responded. "I haven’t found an opponent worthy enough yet. If you’re gonna take me on, you’d better have the balls for it! If you’re gonna talk shit about us, you’d better have the juice. And we haven’t found anybody with the juice yet."

As it turned out, there was room on planet earth for both bands.

Kasabian have since racked up seven UK number one albums, the most recent two featuring Pizzorno on lead vocals following the band's July 2020 dismissal of Tom Meighan, while, 20 years on from the ex-Kasabian man's prediction that they "wouldn't be around for much longer", My Chemical Romance have just played three sold-out shows at London's 90,000-capacity Wembey Stadium to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their defining album.

Not bad for a bunch of "clowns".

In a heart-warming post-script, the 'feud' was settled amicably almost as soon as it started.

"Just after that came out I got on the plane and who was sitting next to us for about eight hours? My Chemical Romance!" Tom Meighan later told Q magazine. "I’m face to face with the singer. We’re looking at each other, so I said ‘Look man, let’s have peace here!’ And he just laughed. He bought me a bottle of champagne and we got pissed. What a sweet man. He’s fucking cool!"

When Jethro Tull released The Broadsword And The Beast in 1982, many of their fans breathed a sigh of relief: it seemed their favourite band had returned to their more traditional folk rock roots. In 2023 Ian Anderson revealed the story behind the recently reissued and expanded album that he reckons contains some of Tull’s best music.

If ever Ian Anderson were to doubt the enduring popularity of Jethro Tull’s 1982 album The Broadsword And The Beast, he gets regular reminders of it when he meets long-time fans of the band. Perhaps not actually written all over their faces, but close enough.

“I’ve been asked to sign many an album-sized tattoo of the cover on somebody’s back,” he says, “which is embarrassing, but I’ve seen very good likenesses in glorious colour on the flesh of human beings. It’s beyond me why people do that sort of thing, but perhaps that’s a reflection of the affinity some fans feel to it.”

They can immerse themselves even more fully in it as the 40th anniversary edition (slightly delayed thanks to that pesky pandemic) has been released, offering an 81-track expanded version of the album replete with Steven Wilson remixes, live renditions, and a handful of previously unreleased tracks.

Its original launch came at a pivotal time in the band’s history, ending their first ever two-year interval between albums following 1980’s A, a record initially planned as an Ian Anderson solo release and featuring a new line-up of contributors (amid personnel-related upheaval often referred to as the band’s “big split” after a Melody Maker headline to that effect). With A having incorporated electronic instrumentation and framed in an overhauled band image reimagining Tull in white boiler suits, as if preparing for a nuclear attack or engagement with extra-terrestrials, it seemed this much-loved cornerstone of the British prog scene was shifting its shape more comprehensively than many fans were prepared for.

All this at a time when critics were busy attempting to ram the whole genre into the dustbin of a rewritten rock history in the wake of punk, and some leading progressive acts were responding with artistic rethinks in a sometimes misguided bid to stay relevant and still get played on the radio.

So when The Broadsword And The Beast emerged in April 1982, it was a relief to find the white coats ditched and Anderson, Martin Barre and friends reborn in the guise of figures from a fantasy novel, amid artwork that suggested a return to territory infinitely more agreeable to their fanbase’s tastes.

The music was still interwoven with the shiny synth sounds and modern production techniques that characterised A, but the playing on tracks such as opener Beastie had a flintier edge and Anderson a demonic twinkle in his eye as he sang of’ the hundred names of terror, creature you love the least’, and the need to ‘exorcise the beast’.

“I guess it’s seen as a return to more traditional Jethro Tull style,” says Anderson, but that perception is not entirely borne out when listening to the record, whether the original album or its demo versions on this reissue. Punchy synth hooks and quintessentially 80s guitar riffs frame Flying Colours, before Watching Me, Watching You is built on knots of squirming synth that could’ve easily found themselves on the band’s next album, the fully electronic-embracing Under Wraps.

There’s also an electronic sheen coating the flute motif of Pussy Willow and the synthesised brass of Broadsword. Unlike on the follow-up album, such modernist touches didn’t feel overbearing and rarely distracted from what was a collection of stirring, often anthemic Tull songs in essence. Either way, though, this was clearly the work of a markedly different band to that which had ended the 1970s with the folk rock trilogy of Songs From The Wood, Heavy Horses and Stormwatch.

Although Barre, Anderson’s chief lieutenant, endured from that incarnation of the band and his guitar work would continue to stand out, even his sound would undergo a makeover. This process had begun with A, whose creation resulted in the messy departure of long-time Tull members Barriemore Barlow, Dee Palmer and John Evan (following the illness and subsequent passing of bassist John Glascock) and the introduction of former Roxy Music man Eddie Jobson as guest keys player and co-songwriter. Before The Broadsword And The Beast had begun to take shape, Jobson in turn made way for tech-savvy keyboardist Peter-John Vettese, while US-based drummer Mark Craney was replaced by former Cat Stevens percussionist Gerry Conway.

Anderson has described new boy Vettese, then 25, as looking like “Gerald Bostock with a synthesiser”, but he undoubtedly made his mark pretty quickly on several tracks, from the techno pulse underpinning Watching Me, Watching You to the piano confections bookending Flying Colours. “He looked younger than his years,” says Anderson, “like a speccy schoolboy. But he was a very bright guy. And he had an amazing natural aptitude for hearing something and then being able to play it and develop it.”

His introduction was evidently a factor in Tull’s continued path towards a more modernist sound, which Anderson looks back on with mixed feelings. Within this early 80s period, though, Broadsword is the moment when Tull most consistently hit a sweet spot between 70s folk rock, 80s FM rock and AOR.

Anderson feels that Conway’s drumming was a key component in that sound (the absence of Conway, or indeed any human drummer, from Under Wraps would go far from unnoticed, and his return for Crest Of A Knave would be widely welcomed), and better suited to the material than classic period sticksman Barriemore Barlow.

“Gerry was very analytical in the way that he played, but he had a great economy of style. He certainly didn’t decorate the drum parts in the way that Barrie Barlow had done, which had become increasingly very complex. Barrie was a very skilled drummer but he didn’t leave a lot of bars without doing something quite specific. That was sometimes a little too much.

“If Gerry played a drum break, it would be very emphatic, relatively simple, but very carefully chosen to do the right thing at the right time. It made him delightful to play with... as long as he could remember what it was he played on the record!” Anderson laughs. “I remember onstage Gerry sometimes would just go blank, thinking, ‘I don’t know where I am in the song’, not knowing what’s coming next. He’d apologetically sort of dig himself out of a train wreck...”

Another aspect of Broadsword’s evolution, often disregarded by the casual listener but pivotal to the musicians creating it, was the choice of producer. Anderson himself has always been hands-on at the production stage of things, sometimes listed as sole producer on Tull records. “I really thought it’d be a good idea to have the independent eyes and ears of a producer,” he recalls, but after Canadian production heavyweight Bob Ezrin pulled out due to family reasons, Chrysalis suggested former Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olsen. However, the new man in the control room jarred with his new charges due to what Anderson diplomatically refers to as “his recreational activities”, and lasted barely a week, after which the singer reverted to an old-fashioned approach.

“I took to the Yellow Pages [business directory],” he says, “and started looking under ‘record producers’. There wasn’t a lot to choose from, but Paul Samwell-Smith’s name cropped up. So I just gave him a call. I knew about his early days [playing] with the Yardbirds, and I think he’d worked with Cat Stevens, so probably with Gerry Conway in the past.”

There were no ‘lifestyle’ clashes in this case, happily. “He was a very gentlemanly, quiet, laid-back guy, didn’t smoke, drink, do drugs, he just turned up on time, listened carefully to the music, made a few suggestions and was able to do the mixing process alongside our engineer Robin Black, which meant I could sit at the back of the room and listen, rather than being just totally engaged all the time with stuff. And I think that was maybe what made Broadsword a fun album to make.”

Ultimately, though, the enduring appeal of this album lies in the songs, which took shape in earnest when Anderson began to explore new ways of writing. “We were without a keyboard player to begin with, so I bought a bunch of what were then state-of-the-art keyboards, and used them probably more than I used guitar for writing the songs.

“I’d set up a studio at home, so we were rehearsing and recording in close proximity, which meant as soon as we had something on the go, we could press the red button and record it. It keeps the ideas very current and stops you kind of going off the boil.”

Positioned in the Tull discography between two albums that seemed to have the Cold War concerns of the early 1980s close to the surface, Broadsword mostly focuses on less topical subject matter. The title track, for instance, was the result of Anderson drawing on the history around his home on the Isle of Skye. “I was picturing the Viking invaders who set about plundering and pillaging the coasts around the northern part of the UK,” he says. “I had a mental picture of a hill fort called Dun Ringill on the Isle of Skye, which was built as a stone keep that would allow the villagers to entomb themselves in the hope that the Vikings couldn’t get at them.

“When you look down the sea loch from there, you get an incredible view for a long, long way, and I always had that image in my head of somebody spying a dark sail on the horizon – a Viking longship, or more likely a fleet of them, coming to set about the place.” As such, it makes the song Broadword something of a sequel to Dun Ringill from 1979’s Stormwatch, which sketched a picture of inhabitants meeting as the skies darken to ‘watch the old gods play’.

Similarly evocative is Seal Driver, a windswept evocation of adventure on the seas, wherein our hero asks, ‘Could you fancy me as a pirate bold, Or a longship Viking warrior with the old gods on his side?’

If there’s a key characteristic to these songs, it’s soul, with a small ‘s’ – a powerful, emotional resonance. The same is undoubtedly true of two more of the most enduring favourites from this album: Slow Marching Band and Cheerio. The former resembles a long- lost cousin of Auld Lang Syne in its elegiac request to ‘take pleasure in your leaving’ and ‘walk on slowly, don’t look behind you’, and at the time Prog speaks to Anderson, it turns out its sentiments are on his mind more than usual.

“Slow Marching Band is a memorial song,” he says. “It is a funeral march, essentially. But I tried to give it some bit of a spin to be positive and upward thinking. And as I sit here today, I’m planning my brother’s funeral a few days hence. “Death is a fact of life and perhaps writing those kinds of songs in its own little way does prepare you for the inevitable. I lost my father prior to the recording of Broadsword, and it’s part of what we all face. So I feel that a funeral service should be a celebration of somebody’s life, not just about mourning.”

Cheerio offers a lullaby-like end to the album, coating apparently unhappy events in similarly hopeful sentiments. “It’s a natural bed partner [to Slow Marching Band], really,” says Anderson. “Although it’s not necessarily about death, just the parting of ways. It could be saying goodbye to family after lunch, it could be saying goodbye to a loved one in a failed relationship, but it is a goodbye, and again something that is intended to be uplifting.”

Cheerio also served as the farewell number in the band’s live shows for many years, and it reflects an approach to ending shows that Anderson feels strongly about. “We refer to it as ‘the bows’. After the encore, we bow to the audience while Cheerio is playing. And for me it’s a very fitting thing: it’s not the end, we’re not going to go and slit our wrists in the dressing room after the show; it’s bidding a fond farewell. And I feel that does somewhat mark Jethro Tull out from a whole bunch of other bands who do this sort of fist-punching celebration load of old bollocks. People who do that make me puke, getting everybody to sing the words with them and all that rubbish. I just have always been repelled by the desperation of bands to get audience participation.

“Frankly, the day I ask the audience to sing my songs, I might as well pack up and go home. It’s hard enough for anybody, even trained singers, to sing these songs, let alone an audience who will massacre it. So my approach, since pretty early days, is to calm things down at the end of the show.”

If those songs still contain sentiments that strike a chord with their author to this day, two of the more pointedly topical tracks also draw on themes that are by no means outdated 40-plus years on. Fallen On Hard Times came out just as the UK was feeling recession bite and is now reissued as the cost of living crisis is particularly acute, while Watching Me, Watching You taps into issues troubling 21st-century citizens even more: the unsettling sense of being spied on wherever you go.

“That song is about that feeling of discomfort I’ve always had about staring at people and them staring at me,” Anderson explains, “but now, of course, it would also be about being observed and captured by people on their omnipresent cellphones. I have to accept that it’s going to happen, but I don’t enjoy that intrusion, especially when I’m somewhere trying to have a private moment, and then there’s somebody videoing me when I’m eating my breakfast. I do get pretty annoyed about that.

“It’s something you have to accept in this kind of line of work. People are going to look at you and think, ‘Is that him? Is that who I think it is? Is it Ian Anderson? No, it could be [politician] Matt Hancock, I’m not sure.’ But I’m as guilty as anybody else. In the song, I’m imagining sitting in a train carriage and looking out the window and staring at people. You tend to look and sometimes people look back at you, and sometimes people catch your eye, and for all I know they might be feeling uncomfortable, feeling that I’m stealing a little part of their soul. But having begun life aspiring to the painterly arts and photography, looking at people and searching their soul is part of what I do as a songwriter.”

At other times as a writer, however, he’s not above settling scores, as was the case on one of the many out-take demos and alternate versions that are included on the 71 extra tracks on this sumptuous anniversary reissue package. Highlights include material that didn’t make the cut onto the original album, such as the robust flute-led rock of Overhang, the Supertramp-like Drive On The Young Side Of Life and the folky, mandolin-accompanied Inverness Sleeper.

But one that stands out for Anderson is a pointed dig at those who, by 1982, had written off Jethro Tull as relics of a bygone age. ‘I won’t lie down,’ he sings in between defiantly proggy keyboard flourishes on Me, Dinosaur. “It’s a great song,” he says, “but a bit childish in its petulant response to the term being applied to progressive rock bands of the 70s. On the War Child album I wrote a similar song [Only Solitaire] digging at music writers after they’d said something nasty about Jethro Tull. It’s not an attractive emotion to express, in hindsight.”

At the time of its release, The Broadsword And The Beast didn’t convince many progophobes to revise their opinion of the band, but it has since built a prominent place in the hearts of long-serving Tullophiles. But while we can immerse ourselves in several different studio versions of he tracks on this reissue, plus live readings of them, there are no plans for any whole-album shows revisiting the LP in full onstage. Nor, alas, will we again see the like of the ornate stage sets that grew from the album artwork, as it was at this point that Ian Anderson finally concluded that things were getting out of hand. A pirate ship jutting out onto the stage? Anderson in a giant latex Beastie costume? What’s not to like?

“It was an honest attempt to come up with something theatrical,” he says. “And we didn’t have video backdrops and screens back then, so I wanted to make the show visually interesting. We weren’t the only people doing that sort of thing, with Pink Floyd having done The Wall. I don’t know if Iron Maiden ever saw it, but they do the same sort of thing very well today.

“But, for me, Broadsword was one step too far. It looked great on paper, when we came to the dress rehearsals, I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s kind of embarrassing.’ It probably looked better when the stage lights were on, but it must have looked pretty naff when people first walked into the venue.”

Looking back on the album now, Anderson reiterates his fondness for it. “It didn’t do very well in America for some reason, but it was particularly popular in Europe,” he says. “I think it still is our highest-selling album in Germany on initial release. And to this day we’ll still regularly play a song or two from the album live.”