Sommaire pour Issue 21 de Planet Rock

Don’t know what you got till it’s gone, Cinderella’s Tom Keifer sang on the Philadelphia glam rockers’ biggest hit single. That’s a thought that’s entered my head more than once since ‘lockdown’ was implemented across the planet. In the past, we’ve all turned down nights out with mates in favour of a quiet night in, or skipped out early on work parties, or decided not to bother going to see one of our favourite bands because they’d be back around in 18 months anyway. What wouldn’t you give right now to have options like that? Fortunately, we’ll always have music, and while gigs are on hold, we’ve been revisiting our favourite concert recordings, which has ultimately led to the issue you’re holding right now. If we can’t attend festivals in…

Metallica have made two vinyl picture discs available with a limited-edition Batch 100 box of their Blackened whiskey. The two 12-inch records feature live recordings plus studio tracks from the quartet. Sadly, Blackened is only available to buy in the US. Rainbow will receive the coffee-table book treatment with the release of In The Shadow Of The Wizard: Rainbow 1975-1976, a 224-page book to be published by Wymer on September 4. Kris Barras, Those Damn Crows, The Quireboys, H.E.A.T. and Cinderella’s Tom Keifer are among the performers lined up for the postponed 10th anniversary staging of Steelhouse Festival. The event will take place on July 23-25, 2021. Neil Young is to release his ‘lost’ Homegrown album on June 19 via Reprise Records. Recorded in 1974/’75, the album is described by…

Hunter & The Bear London alt. rockers Hunter & The Bear roared back into action in March with the release of new single Digital Light, and have also recently added their soulful cover of Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman to their Bandcamp page. The band hope to hit the road again in September. Find out more at: hunterandthebear.co.uk Sky Valley Mistress Stoner rock fans will recognise the nod to scene legends Kyuss in this Blackburn quartet’s name, and SVM actually travelled to the Californian desert to record their hard-grooving, riff-filled debut album, Faithless Rituals, at the legendary Rancho de la Luna studio with Dave Catching. Find out more at: facebook.com/skyvalleymistress Doomsday Outlaw Derbyshire’s Doomsday Outlaw began ruffling feathers nationally with the release of their Hard Times album on Frontiers in 2018.…

WHO: Motörhead WHERE: Malvern Winter Gardens WHEN: December 5, 1979 Way back in December 1979 I indulged in a noisy night out in Malvern, as Motörhead were in town! An added bonus was the presence of Saxon supporting them, a kind of ‘buy one, get one free’ deal, which for me being a skint student was epic! Myself, and a motley gang of fellow students, piled into a minibus in Evesham and travelled the 20-mile trip to Malvern. Saxon were deafeningly loud… and then Motörhead blew the bloody doors off! I recall waiting ages for them to arrive as they’d been recording Top Of The Pops the same day (doing Bomber) and so they didn’t arrive until about 10pm. I was at the front, soaked in sweat, my ears bleeding,…

DATE OF BIRTH: 1981 WHEN RETIRED: 1986 WHERE FOUND: Belfast “I first became aware of Riot around early 1979,” says Colin Graham, from Carrickfergus, County Antrim. “Sounds would publish Heavy Metal charts compiled by Neal Kay, and tracks from Riot’s debut album Rock City would feature most weeks. I was intrigued and sought out an import copy. I was immediately struck by the strange, colourful mascot on the cover… and later my jacket. I did all the embroidery myself, much to my dad’s amusement! I met Riot when they toured with Saxon in October ’81, and Kim Leming, their bassist, was totally enamoured with my jacket and would have gladly blagged it!” HOTTEST BAND IN THE WORLD “The Hottest Band In The World patch above the main logo was repurposed…

Spend time around people who are much better at doing what you’re trying to do It’s good to be with people who are more talented, knowledgeable and experienced in any area of interest or discipline. You can learn a lot, yet still find your own way. Travel as far and wide as you can, as often as you can Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one’s lifetime.” There is no better way to learn than to get out there and see it for yourself. There is no such expanse of existence as…

FOR LUFTWAFFE PILOTS dropping bombs on London during the Blitz, the cream-painted chimneys and vast turbine hall of Battersea Power Station, sited on a distinctive kink in the Thames, was a plum target. But despite several direct hits, it escaped major damage; the surrounding area, however, suffered terribly. One of the few buildings left standing on Thessaly Road, a nearby residential street, was the hall of St Andrew’s parish church. “I think it must have been blessed by God,” says former Who road manager John Wolff. Today the building is a doctor’s surgery, but 47 years ago it was home to Ramport Studios, where in 1973 The Who’s creative genius, Pete Townshend, was battling to make an audacious new album that would put everything else his band had recorded in…

Purple Haze (Track, 1967) The sound of the rug being pulled from under 1960s rock, a dizzying, poetic, psychedelic jam announcing the arrival of a major new talent. Burning Of The Midnight Lamp (Track, 1967) Shimmering wah-wah guitar, choral harmonies, harpsichord, and dreamy, soulful melodies to transport the listener to another realm. Crosstown Traffic (Track, 1969) Pure exhilaration, two minutes and 18 seconds of overwhelming acid-psych-funk groove, guaranteed to leave tyre tracks all across your brain.…

Your hand-picked selection of essential releases… Mark Lanegan, p94 Massive Wagons, p96 Larkin Poe, p97 Wino, p98 Louise Patricia Crane, p99 Dion, p100 Gathering Of Kings, p100 Nasty High, p100 Kansas, p101 Paradise Lost, p101 The Outlaw Orchestra, p101 U.D.O., p101 Alain Johannes, p102 Bad Touch, p102 Fake Names, p102 Goldray, p102 Koyo, p103 Me And That Man, p103 Vandenberg, p103 Rush, p104 Toby Jepson, p106 Manic Street Preachers, p106 NWOBHM Thunder, p106 Iggy Pop p106 Iron Maiden p106 PLUS BOOKS & DVDS Shellshock Rock, p108 Steve Hackett, p109 Marilyn Manson, p109 Steve ‘Smiley’ Barnard, p109 Ted Templeman p109 AND … NO LIVE ACTION AT ALL. INSERT SAD FACE EMOJI.…

Self Made Man TRICKI-WOO “It marries the old and authentic with the modern…” Excellent fifth outing from the talented Lovell siblings. FINELY TUNED after 18 months on the road promoting 2018’s Venom & Faith and emboldened by that album’s Grammy nomination and Number 1 placing in the US Billboard Blues chart, this Atlanta bred, Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist sister duo deliver a follow-up of 10 adventurous, self-produced, mainly self-penned songs, recorded at their friend and engineer Roger Alan Nichols’ Bell Tone Recording studio in Nashville. Highpoints are many and include the defiant title track, a future anthem-in-the-making with its empowering optimism and signature Southern blues-rock riffage. Lyrically, it subverts the age-old phrase ‘a self-made man’ with what they describe as ‘a feminine facelift’ to tell their singular story with its universal message…

Blues With Friends KTBA Returning ’60s icon best known for The Wanderer feels the love. With liner notes by Bob Dylan, guest spots from stars including Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, Brian Setzer and Bruce Springsteen, and a release on Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping The Blues Alive label, Dion’s self-explanatory Blues With Friends certainly has fine credentials. Still, while it’s lovely to hear the aforementioned guitar heroes stamp the Bronx-born Dion’s latest songs with their signature stylings, elsewhere energy and impetus sometimes bleed away. Gifted younger gun Samantha Fish, suitably thrilled to be in such A-list company, brings impressive firepower on What If I Told You, and Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa certainly don’t phone-in their parts on Hymn To Him, which Dion first recorded for his 1986 gospel album Velvet &…

The Absence Of Presence INSIDE OUT Those wayward sons are carrying on beautifully. The recruitment of vocalist Ronnie Platt in the wake of Steve Walsh’s retirement has certainly reinvigorated Kansas. The legendary prog rockers had been treading water over the last 30 years with sporadic album releases, but 2016’s The Prelude Implicit changed everything. Despite drummer Phil Ehart and guitarist Rich Williams being the only original band members left, Kansas were back in the game. And now they’ve made an absolutely phenomenal new studio record that, while nodding a well-weathered Stetson to their ’70s legacy, finds them sonically very much in the 21st century. So much so that Throwing Mountains actually sounds like the aural equivalent of prog rock gods slinging chunks of the Alps at each other. The title…

We Are One AFM Former Accept singer goes orchestral. Should you care to ask Udo Dirkschneider the question of him and whose army, you’ll get a bold answer: the German army. Or, at least, the Musikkorps der Bundeswehr (Concert Band Of The German Armed Forces), who join forces with Udo on a concept record dealing with the idea that “We have no planet B”. The addition of mighty orchestral muscle to Udo’s thick-hided sound works rather well, with their flashes boosting his heavy metal thunder brilliantly, leaving a result that mixes riffs and drama on songs like Pandemonium and Love And Sin. At 68, Herr Dirkschneider’s voice is as abrasive as ever, and with this bold, ballsy endeavour, he’s also just as metal. BEST TRACKS: Pandemonium, Love And Sin…

Fake Names EPITAPH Members of Bad Religion, Refused and Girls Against Boys unite for satisfying debut. While the musicians who make up Fake Names would surely baulk at the term ‘punk supergroup’, it would take a MAGA hat-wearing fool to doubt their pedigree. Formed by childhood friends Brian Baker (Bad Religion, Minor Threat, Dag Nasty), Michael Hampton (S.O.A., The Faith, Embrace) and Johnny Temple (Soulside, Girls Against Boys), the band invited Refused vocalist Dennis Lyxzén to front the band. Fake Names – rounded out by Holy Fuck drummer Matt Schulz – originally recorded these 10 tracks as a demo to present to Epitaph, but label boss Brett Gurewitz suggested they release the album in its original form. It was a shrewd move; from the stomping opener All For Sale to…

New Man, New Songs, Same Shit: Vol. 1 NAPALM Album number two from Behemoth frontman Nergal’s alter-alter ego. If the Devil has the best tunes then Adam Darski is resolutely in league with Satan. But, far from his day job as Nergal, vocalist/guitarist of death metallers Behemoth, here country and blues rock vibes resonate through the follow-up to 2017’s Songs Of Love And Death. Perhaps the only thing Me And That Man has in common with his extreme metal counterpart is the deliberately provocative lyrics on the rollicking stomp of Run With The Devil and the shanty-esque Burning Churches, only here there’s a forked tongue planted firmly in cheek. There are folk influences (Męstwo), a dash of rockabilly (Deep Down South) and even shades of gospel (Surrender). Though Darski’s mates…

Permanent Waves 40th Anniversary Edition UMC/MERCURY “Rush hold up a mirror to their changing lives – and their audience’s too…” Canadian trio transition seamlessly into a new decade on their seventh studio album, expanded for its 40th anniversary. IN MARCH 1980, Top Of The Pops hosted an unusual appearance: Legs & Co struggling through a dance routine to Rush’s new single, The Spirit Of Radio. The producers pulled out every visual trick in the book, from flashing lights to dancer Sue Menhenick wearing what appeared to be a Bacofoil one-piece and clutching a transistor radio to her ear. None of it worked. Nobody could dance to Rush; something their devoted fanbase probably took great pride in. Those same folks are well catered for here. The Spirit Of Radio and its…

Ignorance Is Bliss JEPSONGS RECORDINGS 25th Anniversary reissue of a hugely overlooked debut solo release. It seems incredible that Little Angels, after three sublime albums on Polydor, packed it in back in 1994 and frontman Toby Jepson’s next appearance was a criminally ignored, barely available debut on the miniscule Cottage Industry label. Ignorance Is Bliss could be viewed as being very much of its time, full of down-tuned guitars and downbeat subject matter, which is as to be expected of an era where the whole music industry went to Seattle in a handcart. To be fair to Jepson, this album demonstrates he made the musical transition very well indeed, as befits his sterling songwriting capabilities. Today, Ignorance…, with the addition of two bonus tracks, demands to be looked upon more…

Steve Hackett WYMER PUBLISHING Former Genesis guitarist’s trick of the tale. Steve Hackett was with Genesis for seven years, writing and playing on the likes of Foxtrot, Selling England By The Pound and Wind And Wuthering. He left in 1977, and has pursued an eclectic solo career since. This is the story of a rather shy, reserved, music-mad youth, who came of age in ‘60s London and suddenly found himself part of the upper-crust, public-school boot camp that was early Genesis. Hackett’s observations about his bandmates are often very dry and funny, but never waspish. Did he regret leaving? He doesn’t say it out loud, but you sense there must be times when he does – a bit. Then again, you couldn’t imagine him doing the funny walk in the…

Ted Templeman As Told To Greg Renoff ECW PRESS Legendary Van Halen producer finally reveals all. TED Templeman played in twee sunshine poppers Harpers Bizarre and enjoyed fly-on-the-wall access to Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley recording sessions prior to his own esteemed career producing everyone from Montrose to Captain Beefheart. It’s the six albums he made with Van Halen that get most air-time here, as he chats to sometime Halen biographer Greg Renoff about such revealing incidents as Eddie Van Halen smashing a mandolin, a kilted David Lee Roth playing bagpipes, and how The Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald came to co-write Halen’s I’ll Wait. Notably modest and honest, Templeman admits he didn’t initially like Halen smash hit Jump and worried that Roth’s lyric might promote suicide. As the band’s story…

Pat Gilbert is a former editor of MOJO magazine, Planet Rock’s Associate Ed, and author of Passion Is A Fashion: The Real Story Of The Clash. His solo album, The Tragedy Of Dirk Munro, will be released in August. He writes about The Who’s Quadrophenia LP on page 38. Bob Mehr is the New York Times bestselling author of Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements. A 17-year MOJO veteran, he resides in the birthplace of rock’n’roll, Memphis, Tennessee. His interview with Jeff Lynne was conducted in Beverly Hills. Lois Wilson is a regular contributor to MOJO, Planet Rock and Record Collector. She was the deputy editor of the late MOJO Collections and founded both People Powered concerts and the @NHS1000Maestros campaign. Dahren Davey has worked as a lecturer…

One of the architects of ’50s rock’n’roll and the man who taught The Beatles how to go “whoooo!”, the great Little Richard left us, age 87, on May 9. He’d devoted his last years to his Christian faith. Phil May, singer with Brit R&B bad boys The Pretty Things, died on May 15 following a cycling accident. His LSD-inspired lyrics were key to the Pretties’ ’67 psych masterpiece S.F. Sorrow. The Stranglers’ keyboard maestro Dave Greenfield passed away on May 3 from COVID-19. His Doors-y organ parts distinguished the group from other punk acts, and included the jazzy riff to their 1982 smash Golden Brown. Brian Howe, who replaced Paul Rodgers as Bad Company’s singer in 1986, passed away on May 6. His CV also featured NWOBHM group White Spirit…

JACK [BESSANT, Reef bassist] and I moved to London from Somerset in 1993 to find fame or fortune, or at least form a great band. After we met Kenwyn [House, guitar] and Dom [Greensmith, drums] we all moved into a place together in Isleworth in West London. Within six months, we got signed to S2, and were flown out to New York to shoot a Sony MiniDisc TV ad, which featured our song Naked. It was all very exciting. By the time we started writing songs for our second album, Glow, we’d already had a Top 10 album (Replenish) and three Top 30 singles. Everything was going great, and we were bursting with ideas. Our initial plan was to record Glow at Abbey Road, with [producer] George Drakoulias. We first…

Danny Bowes Presents Back in 1981, when I was 13, I saved up my pocket money to buy the new Adam And The Ants album, Prince Charming, from my favourite record store, Downtown Records in Romford. I didn’t tell my mum and dad what I was saving for, though, as I knew they wouldn’t approve. As I was leaving the house to catch the bus to Romford, my mum asked me why I was so excited… and like an idiot I told her. My mum phoned my dad at work to see what he thought. What followed that evening was a debate around the dinner table that would have put Question Time to shame. It finished with my dad telling me that If I wanted to waste my money on…

JEFFREY LYNNE BORN December 30, 1947, Erdington, Birmingham OCCUPATION Musician Producer YEARS ACTIVE 1963-present ASSOCIATED ACTS Electric Light Orchestra Jeff Lynne’s ELO The Traveling Wilburys The Move The Idle Race IT’S A LONG WAY FROM BIRMINGHAM’S SHARD END TO Beverly Hills’ Benedict Canyon – 5,344 miles to be exact – but it doesn’t seem so distant this afternoon. Sitting in a very English garden, surrounded by high shrubs and perennial flowers, with a cup of tea in hand, Jeff Lynne basks in the California sun. The mastermind behind Electric Light Orchestra is instantly recognisable, with his signature mop of curly hair, close-cut beard and oversized shades. Yet, as with his hero Roy Orbison, the similarly shy Lynne admits his ‘look’ is also his disguise, a way of hiding from the…

TO A GENERATION of rock fans raised on 1980’s MTV, Adrian Vandenberg is forever enshrined as the blond bombshell guitarist flanking David Coverdale in the glossy videos for Still Of The Night, Here I Go Again and Is This Love, the hit singles from Whitesnake’s 1987 abum which helped David Coverdale re-invent his band. But the Dutch guitarist was playing arenas with his own group, Vandenberg, long before being recruited for the re-booted ’Snake. Now, at the age of 66, the unassuming guitar hero has rekindled his first love, and is keen to make up for lost time. Who or what first inspired you to pick up a guitar? Jimi Hendrix. I used to play piano but one day I heard a Hendrix song on the radio, and thought, “Wow,…

BUSH’S WEBSITE CURRENTLY displays the dates of a 34-city arena tour Gavin Rossdale’s band are scheduled to play with Live this summer. Asked if he has any confidence in this tour going ahead as planned, Rossdale sighs and admits, “never in a million years”. The 54-year-old Londoner is admirably level-headed about the disruption this will cause to promotional plans for his band’s new album, The Kingdom. “Like everyone else, I’d love to be doing what makes me happiest, but I’m OK,” he says. “It’s horrific what people are going through on the frontline. So many people are suffering so heavily that if you’re not directly suffering, you need to zip it, put your head down, and wait for instructions. Rock shows will happen again.” Meanwhile, here’s Gavin’s choice for the…

Straight Songs Of Sorrow HEAVENLY “It brims with images of death, violence, pain and broken promises…” FULL CREDIT to Mark Lanegan, he’s not afraid to spell things out in an unambiguous way. For those aware that Straight Songs Of Sorrow, the former Screaming Trees frontman’s twelfth solo album, is a companion piece to his recently published autobiography, Sing Backwards And Weep, hearing that the 15-track collection brims with images of death, violence, pain and broken promises should come as no revelation. For those innocents stumbling upon this set with zero preconceptions as to the nature of Lanegan’s art, however, perhaps as a result of seeing his book on the Sunday Times bestsellers list, the 55-year-old singer-songwriter thoughtfully opens the album with the lyrical equivalent of the Lasciate ogne speranza, voi…

Forever Gone RIPPLE MUSIC “Johnny Cash for the headbangin’ fraternity…” Doom ledge from The Obsessed and Saint Vitus in unplugged (and post-punk!) mode. SCOTT WEINRICH is a rock lifer with an infinite supply of tales to tell. In the early ’80s, the inevitably abbreviated Wino was fronting punked-up NWOBHM-style metal trio The Obsessed, while shacked up in a fabled group domicile in Rockville, Maryland. Ever attracted to amplified music’s darker corners, this emerging stoner icon was quick to tune into the post-industrial bleakness of Joy Division. Where many Stateside listeners will have first come by Ian Curtis’s baritone tragedies on college radio, Wino had a cooler introduction: resident in that same Rockville house at the time was Joe Lally, future bassist with post-hardcore game-changers Fugazi. Wino later appeared on Lally’s…

Discovery RN Swedish rock royalty pomp up the volume. Put together by Ron and Nina Dahlgren, with a view to creating an AOR project along the lines of Mel Galley’s Phenomena or Tobias Sammet’s Avantasia, Gathering Of Kings deliver a pomp-rock joie de vivre on the follow-up to last year’s First Mission. Although some of that debut’s big hitters – Erik Mårtensson (Eclipse) and Björn Strid (Night Flight Orchestra) – are missing, the overall results show this album to be a slicker and more cohesive affair. Driven by huge swathes of keyboards, GOF are akin to num in their more Mag-AOR moments, typified by the likes of tracks light and Kiss Moon-From Above. That there’s a revolving door of lead singers never intrudes, while the keyboard work of Victor Olsson…

Obsidian NUCLEAR BLAST Another triumph for one of our most enduring metal institutions. Times of darkness, uncertainty and fading hope are basically weekdays for Halifax gloom legends Paradise Lost, having stared into the abyss until it stares back and turned the results into brilliant goth metal for over 30 years now. But they’ve never been monochrome about it, serving things up in a surprisingly rich variety of colours, all of them black. Thus on Obsidian – the band’s 16th album – we find Nick Holmes and crew serving up massive riffs that sound like The Cult gone metal, with Nick’s shredding vocal rasp snarling over the top, dripping with sneering bile. Occasionally, Gregor Mackintosh’s guitar melodies echo very loudly their 1995 classic Draconian Times, but by traversing a kaleidoscope of…

Hum IPECAC Third solo album from former Chris Cornell/QOTSA collaborator. Musician, songwriter and producer Alain Johannes has spent much of his career at the service of other artists, perhaps most notably Queens Of The Stone Age. But in late 2019 the Chilean multi-instrumentalist was seriously ill, laid up in bed and barely able to breathe. Thoughts turned to his late-wife and former Eleven bandmate Natascha Schneider, and lamented Soundgarden vocalist and close friend Chris Cornell. Hum is the product of Johannes wrestling with memories of those loved ones during his recovery, its music an evocative blend of layered acoustic guitars, sitars, gentle percussion and blankets of harmonies cinematic in scope, the mood landing somewhere between expansively epic and delicately fragile. There’s an inherent beauty in the songs’ simple structures, providing…

Feel The Change AKASHIC Anglo-Swedish psychrock duo return with heady second album. Celebrating their tenth birthday this year, Goldray are hardly the world’s most prolific band, the duo having released just one mini-album (2014’s self-titled Goldray) and one full-length (2017’s Rising) to date, but their name has become synonymous with psych-rock of the highest calibre. Heavier, darker and more trippy than their debut, Feel The Change further enhances their reputation, channelling ex-Reef guitarist Kenwyn House’s impeccable influences (Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Doors) and Swedish vocalist Leah Rasmussen’s stunning, captivating voice into eight timeless tracks which evoke the freewheeling, freak flag-flying spirit of 1969. Unashamed in their debt to past masters – House’s insistent riffing on The Forest Part 2 is pure Tony Iommi, while Rasmussen undeniably evokes…

2020 MASCOT Ex-Whitesnake guitarist and ex-Rainbow vocalist joins forces. Adrian Vandenberg made a smart call in recruiting Ronnie Romero, last seen flanking Ritchie Blackmore in Rainbow, to front the band he put on ice in 1986 upon answering David Coverdale’s call to join his all-new, MTV-endorsed Whitesnake. While a remake of Burning Heart, a Top 40 US hit in March ’83, offers continuity with Vandenberg’s past, Romero’s impassioned vocals ensure that 2020 boasts an admirable vivacity and bravado. Those of a certain age may find it hard to let go of the image of Vandenberg thrashing his guitar with a violin bow in the video for Still Of The Night, but the Dutchman has always been a tasteful player, and there’s an elegance to melodic rockers Hell Or High Water…

The Bowie Years UMC The Idiot, Lust For Life plus five bonus discs from Ig’s Berlin era. David Bowie was just going electronic circa Station To Station when he spotted his old mucker Iggy in narcotically challenged post-Stooges circumstances in LA in ’75, and the two soon decamped to Europe to withdraw from drugs and take stock. Over the ensuing 18 months, they made two brilliant, vastly influential records. The Idiot was partly cut at Munich’s Musicland at night, while Thin Lizzy kickstarted Johnny The Fox by day (imagine those handover conversations!); it coined a stark, mechanical sound subsequently much-aped (Mass Production invented Swans). Once ensconced in Berlin’s Hansa Tonstudio, their collaboration was fracturing, but 1977’s Lust For Life captured Mr Pop reborn as an imperious punk icon. Between the…

Gold Against The Soul – Deluxe Reissue (COLUMBIA/SONY) Pricey expansion of the Manics’ “unloved” second album. Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire freely concedes that 1993’s Gold Against The Soul isn’t his band’s finest hour, admitting, “It’s kind of misunderstood and unloved by us.” The most commercial album the Blackwood group recorded while guitarist Richey Edwards was in the band, it exchanges an early-career fascination with The Clash, Public Enemy and Guns N’Roses for a bewildering pivot towards radio-friendly US rock. With classy, melancholic singles From Despair To Where and La Tristresse Durera (Scream To A Sigh) the Manics maintained a singular presence in the UK indie scene, but the release, just 14 months later, of their masterpiece, The Holy Bible, completely overshadowed GATS. Among the demos and B-sides appended,…

Alternative Blasts From Northern Ireland 1977-1984 Cherry Red “It sums up the scene’s passion and energy…” Northern Ireland’s late ’70s punk scene celebrated in 3CD/DVD time capsule. AMID THE pen portraits of every artist featured on this compendium of Northern Ireland punk acts, there’s a quotation from local legend Terri Hooley, the man who prodded The Undertones into the limelight after selecting Teenage Kicks for release on Good Vibrations, the independent record label he named after his Belfast city centre record shop. “When it comes to punk,” Hooley’s quote runs, “New York had the haircuts, London had the trousers, but Belfast had the reason.” While diplomat’s son Joe Strummer yearned for a riot of his own in West London, teenagers in Belfast, Derry, Portadown and Newry were well served on…

Steve ‘Smiley’ Barnard GATECRASH THE PARTY Entertaining memoir of a jobbing rock drummer with a very long CV. There’s a telling moment in Clang! – so called because its author inserts that word every time he namedrops, which is constantly – that illuminates the strange life of your unsung working musician. As drummer in Joe Strummer’s Mescaleros, in 2000 Steve ‘Smiley’ Barnard was hanging around in the support band’s dressing room at Sheffield Arena when The Who’s road manager asked him to dep for a late-running Zak Starkey. For two anxious minutes Smiley was in The Who – then Zak, his mate since they were teenagers together in Berkshire, arrived, and a truly golden clang! moment evaporated. This good-natured romp is full of such curious instances, whether the affable sticksman…

1 In 1970, Steve Hackett placed an ad in Melody Maker, “seeking musicians determined to strive beyond existing stagnant musical forms”. It landed him an audition with Genesis. 2 At an early concert at Eton public school, the band members were invited to sign the wing collars of the pupils/future Conservative MPs and captains of industry. 3 Genesis’s 1972 song, The Fountain Of Salmacis, based on the Roman myth of Hermaphroditus, an androgynous being, was banned by Italian radio for being “too sexy”. 4 Genesis’ theatrical lead singer Peter Gabriel was an early pioneer of crowd surfing. He once broke his ankle when the crowd parted just after he’d dived off stage. 5 The band recorded part of their 1974 album, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, at Headley Grange, a…

OOOH, IT’S A KILLING MACHINE FIRST-CLASS MAIL Judas Priest is the greatest heavy metal band of all time. Sorry Black Sabbath! Just compare their discography with any other band and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing’s guitar work redefined completely the sound of heavy metal – they are so underrated – Rob [Halford] truly is metal’s voice and the thunderous rhythm section of Ian Hill and Scott Travis is solid and powerful. They are still releasing great material, over and over, after all these years, something that a lot of the world’s other ‘big’ metal bands haven’t done for decades. So stop taking your fans for idiots, a 50th anniversary tour without the Tipton/Downing duo is a bit of a joke, isn’t it? Let’s bring…

1 DO YA (The Move, single B-side, Harvest, 1972) Later re-recorded by ELO, this 45 by Lynne’s earlier group The Move blueprinted his sound: fat power chords and a hook large enough to land a school of whales. See also the A-side, California Man, another Lynne composition, later covered by Cheap Trick. 2 SHOWDOWN (ELO, single, Harvest, 1973) Broody bittersweet orchestral rock (later sampled by Paul Weller) and a Top 20 UK hit. Lynne’s mournful vocal – “It’s raining all over the world” – sets the mood, accentuated by ELO cellist Michael Edwards, sadly killed by a runaway hay bale in 2010. 3 LIVIN’ THING (ELO, single, Jet/United Artists, 1976) Lynne’s great gift is to make the complicated sound easy. Livin’ Thing’s big seesawing riff is offset by a flamenco…

WE FIRST MET at a party in Ringo Starr’s flat. I’d been invited by Chas Chandler, former bass guitarist with The Animals now turned band manager. In my job writing for Melody Maker, I’d once written a story with a headline suggesting The Animals had been a “flop” in America: “Don’t be soft,” Chandler forcefully told me. It was only after a drinking contest in Soho night club Le Kilt – he won – that he agreed to bury the hatchet. So, it was good to hear him on the phone to the Melody Maker office one morning in September 1966 raving about a guitarist he’d discovered in New York. Chas had brought him to London and the plan was to release a cover of Hey Joe as a single…

100 ROSE TATTOO ALL THE LESSONS… LIVE IN ’ 81 (Rose Tattoo, 1981) The Angry brigade storm Reading Rock ’81. “We’ve only got 45 minutes together so let’s not waste it,” Angry Anderson orders as Rose Tattoo face down a lairy Saturday evening Reading crowd. Greeted by a barrage of warm beer and bottled piss, the Aussie bovver boys grab their audience by the throat (“If you’re standing next to an imbecile throwing cans, spit in his eye!”) and emerge triumphant thanks to a bullish set list including Assault And Battery, Rock’N’Roll Outlaw and Nice Boys. An unofficial soundboard-recording bootleg, much too filthy to be legal. PB 99 MINISTRY IN CASE YOU DIDN’T FEEL LIKE SHOWING UP (Sire, 1990) Industrial-metal masterclass, pre-figuring Psalm 69. Memories of Ministry’s synth-pop past were soundly…

House Of Noise EARACHE “A riotous culmination of blood, sweat and beers…” Guts and glory galore on the Lancaster quintet’s fifth full-length. EVEN WITH the best of intentions, ‘pub rock’ can be a bit of an ambiguous term. On one hand it evokes a sense of familiarity and authenticity – of staying true to music’s grass roots by playing small rooms and winning crowds the good old-fashioned way; on the other, it rather hints at the notion that there is a glass ceiling preventing a group’s rawness and hard efforts from translating to larger audiences. For Lancaster quintet Massive Wagons, who’ve been labelled pub rockers since forming in 2009 and include quarrymen, electricians and truck drivers within their ranks, that blue-collar attitude and work ethic accounts for a sizeable part…

Deep Blue PECULIAR DOLL “A sensuous and seductive siren call to worlds filled with wonder…” King Crimson and Jethro Tull men assist on bewitching, transporting debut album from Belfast-born vocalist. WHEN REALITY bites too hard, art which offers escapism acts like a soothing balm. The timing of the release of Louise Patricia Crane’s debut album, then, could hardly be more opportune. Taking Kate Bush’s 1985 album Hounds Of Love as an inspirational touchstone, Crane envisaged Deep Blue being a conduit for “escaping the corporeal realm”, and in this respect the Irish singer has succeeded gloriously. Seductive, sensuous and immersive, the eight-song collection serves as a siren call to alternative worlds, filled with wonder and ripe with new possibilities. In these uncertain, turbulent times, it’s a hugely enticing portal to step…

Where The River Runs ABSORBING RECORDINGS Hair metal heaven from Rock City. Nottingham’s Nasty High have been in existence for a few short years, peddling a brand of modern-day hard rock that owes a debt of gratitude to ’80s acts such as Winger, Dokken and FireHouse. Their debut album, Liquid Scream, from 2017 showed the kind of potential that marked them down as ones to watch, and Where The River Runs delivers on that promise. As soon as Make ’Em Pay rips out of the speakers with its Dokken-esque riffs, high-pitched squeals and huge chorus, it’s like the ’80s never went away for these boys. Flying in the face of fashion, they serve up with aplomb and panache arena-straddling anthems like Don’t Leave The Light On and the keyboard-infused Believe…

Pantomime Villains VOODOO QUEEN Goodtime rock’n’roll from Southampton. If you like your rock music laced with a generous dose of country and bluegrass, The Outlaw Orchestra may be the band you need. Channelling the sounds of the Deep South – by way of Southampton – the UK four-piece have named the rambunctious noise of their debut album as ‘Heavy Grass’. Gritty rock riffs are interspersed with finger-picking banjo on tracks such as Take A Bow and Chicken Fried Snake, there’s a dash of old-school rock’n’roll within Jumpin’ Jive, and even a taste of old New Orleans by way of the mariachi in Voodoo Queen. If some of the lesser material is mired in pub rock, and the shoehorning of British humour into a Southern Rock vibe may not always land,…

Kiss The Sky MARSHALL Norfolk’s rising rockers aim high and deliver. Getting to cut an album at the legendary Rockfield studios and then master it at Abbey Road is an incredibly rare privilege for a band like Bad Touch, especially in this day and age. They’re the kind of experiences every musician yearns for but few are able to afford and even fewer could dream of recouping on. Which is precisely why, on the Norfolk quintet’s fourth album, it’s easy to detect the amount of pre-production that went in. These songs feel watertight and well-considered, rich in Southern charm and wonderfully dynamic, with some of Stevie Westwood’s catchiest vocal hooks yet. Slinky Fenders are balanced with growling Gibsons on tracks like I Get High and Can You Save Me in…

You Said It 88 WATT Leeds-based progressive rockers wrestle with moderation on mature second album. Koyo represent the intersection where prog, psychedelia and shoegaze meet, earning such disparate comparisons as Hawkwind, Radiohead and The Verve in the process. Whatever their reference points, though, there’s no denying this five-piece aren’t always at their best when trying to do too much. There’s many a promising song on You Said It – opener Same Mistake Twice for one – that labours under the misapprehension that more always equals more, and is ensnared by its own musical eccentricities. The upside to making busyness your business, however, is that when the going is good, which it often is here, there are many differing paths to success. While Circles finds Koyo dispensing with bombast in the…

Rock In Rio PARLOPHONE Maiden’s live millennium triumph remastered and reissued alongside 1985’s Live After Death. Five songs into this headline set at 2001’s Rock In Rio festival, Bruce Dickinson throws down a curious gauntlet to satellite television viewers: “This is fucking metal and it ain’t fucking cool and we’re gonna tear your fucking heads off!” Having reinstated Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith after a middling ’90s, Iron Maiden probably felt compelled to prove themselves to the world once more. Admittedly, there are better set lists. Spirited but long-winded choices from 2000’s Brave New World prove they had yet to resume their galloping stride in the studio, and not even a boisterous Latin American crowd can rise to Sign Of The Cross. However, ’Arry’s ’Ammers are untouchable once tearing through…

NWOBHM Thunder 1978-1986 CHERRY RED A 3xCD snapshot of Blighty’s metal rebirth. Naturally, British punk’s DIY ethic found an echo in metal as high-voltage acts from Wandsworth (Girlschool) to Whitley Bay (Tygers Of Pan Tang) sought to emulate hard rock’s long-established greats on a smaller, often shoestring budget. This set – twinned with 2018 anthology NWOBHM: Winds Of Time – sniff outs more denim’n’leather-clad riffage from the period, familiar anthems including Saxon’s Heavy Metal Thunder rubbing shoulders with less celebrated fare such as Dark Star’s choogling Lady Of Mars and Witchfynde’s daft call to rebellion, I’d Rather Go Wild. If it’s largely a who’s who of UK metal support acts of a certain vintage – we all caught Praying Mantis and Phil Collen’s able, pre-Def Leppard glam act Girl, right?…

Perou REEL ART PRESS The self-styled ‘God Of Fuck’ at his most iconic. Celebrated British style mag photographer Perou first shot Marilyn Manson pulling Jesus Christ poses for a provocative Easter cover of Time Out magazine in 1998, initiating an on-off friendship/collaborative partnership which endures to the present day. Their relationship has been spiky – “When you presented me with this white fluffy outfit, I thought, This guy’s an asshole,” Manson writes in the amusing text which accompanies the images in this stylish, often macabre, 272-page coffee table book – but together they’ve conceived some striking iconography. Here’s Manson on stilts in Death Valley with an elephant named Ethel, with a machine gun and face mask in the Hollywood Hills, naked on the floor in an Andy Warhol wig, with…