Table of contents for Issue 242 in Classic Rock

WELCOME Fifty years. Half a century. Five decades. It doesn’t matter how you slice it, ultimately it’s a very, very long period of time. As the old cliché goes, you get less time for murder… While many bands began their illustrious ascendancy back in the heady days of 1967, there aren’t that many of them who are still very much a going concern. But Fleetwood Mac are one such entity. And this month we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of rock’s greatest, longest-running soap opera. It’s also a first for Classic Rock, because while the Mac have been mentioned in our pages a million times during the magazine’s existence, it’s the first time we’ve put the band on our cover. The Mac of today – Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie,…

RIP Thank you and good night. Grant Hart March 18, 1961 – September 13, 2017 Bob Mould has led the tributes to his Hüsker Dü bandmate Grant Hart, who at the age of 56 has lost a battle with liver cancer. “We made amazing music together,” the guitarist said of the Minnesota-based group’s former drummer. “When we fought about the details, it was because we both cared.” Hart was also a member of the alternative rock trio Nova Mob. Don Williams May 27, 1939 – September 8, 2017 With 17 country music smash hits to his name, including You’re My Best Friend and Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good, Don Williams was a colossus of the genre. He was as a member of the Pozo Seco Singers before hitting…

Dave Hlubek August 28, 1951 – September 3, 2017 GETTY x2 DAVE HLUBEK, A co-founding guitarist of southern rock band Molly Hatchet, has died at the age of 66, reportedly having suffered a heart attack. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Hlubek also sang lead vocals for Molly Hatchet in the group’s early days before the addition of Danny Joe Brown in 1974. He was part of the six-man line-up who recorded the group’s genre-classic self-titled debut, released in 1978, on which the guitar playing was split with Duane Roland and Steve Holland. Hlubek remained with the band for a further five albums before being replaced by Bobby Ingram due to self-confessed “unbearable” levels of rockstar excess and substance abuse. Ingram went on to take over the running of Molly Hatchet, something…

HIGH HOPES Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real A famous dad and Neil Young’s seal of approval help, but this band show lots of real promise. “I’m always so confused when people say that my songs sound so different from each other. To me it just sounds like rock’n’roll.” “FOR A LONG time I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer,” says Lukas Nelson. “I was really into skateboarding and surfing too, but then music took over.” For all his early ambitions, there was a certain inevitability about the career path he would eventually take. Lukas is the son of country legend Willie Nelson, and for the past nine years has been fronting his own band, Promise Of The Real. “Learning to play guitar and writing songs is how I…

HIGH HOPES Gold Key Say what you want about these Floyd-loving punk/metalheads, just don’t use the word ‘prog’. DEREK BREMNER “We made a conscious decision not to look at what our contemporaries in punk and hardcore were doing.” EVEN IF YOU don’t know about Gold Key themselves yet, you might be aware of some of the members’ ‘day job’ bands: guitarist Laurent ‘Lags’ Barnard is the driving force behind hardcore punks Gallows, whom vocalist Steve Sears also produces, while bassist Jack Leach arrives via extreme math-metallers Sikth. So for this heavily tattooed assemblage to record Hello Phantom, an album of intriguing yet ultimately accessible melodious rock – with audible traces of time spent listening to Pink Floyd, QOTSA, Muse, even Radiohead – you’d think it represents something of a left…

The Rumours Years With a new line-up and a new commercial sound, Fleetwood Mac hit new heights of success, while relationships within the band hit new lows thanks to drink, drugs, fights and affairs. Words: Rob Hughes Mick Fleetwood had only popped out for groceries. But a chance encounter with an old PR buddy at a shop near his home in Hollywood’s fashionable Laurel Canyon led to an invitation to check out a newly refurbished recording studio nearby. Eager to find somewhere to record Fleetwood Mac’s next album, he was duly taken to Sound City. In-house engineer Keith Olsen was there to greet him. To demonstrate the studio’s sonic capabilities, Olsen played Fleetwood a track he’d produced for a local duo the previous year: Frozen Love. Its creators, the duo…

NO MORE MR NICE GUY Dave Grohl was supposed to spend 2017 licking his wounds. Instead he retreated into the wilderness, loaded up on wine and wrote a schizophrenic new Foo Fighters album exploring his darkest thoughts. Interview: Marcel Anders DAN BURN-FORTI/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES ADDITIONAL REPORTING: HENRY YATES Even a steaming hangover can’t slow Dave Grohl down. It’s a summer’s day in Los Angeles, and although the frazzled Foo Fighter rolls into the band’s Studio 606 clad entirely in black, his conversation is the usual kaleidoscope of themes. His kids. Metallica. Animal from The Muppets. And, above all these, the fiercely ambitious ninth album, Concrete And Gold, that will scotch any lingering notion of the Foos as Nirvanalite. “This is something,” he tells us, “I’ve always wanted to do.”…

Living the High Life He was a teen prodigy with the Spencer Davis Group, tripped the light fantastic with Traffic, almost joined Cream but was in Blind Faith, and had major success as a solo artist in the 80s. The everrestless Steve Winwood looks back over a glittering career and reveals his unexpected new direction. Words: Rob Hughes GETTY In his 2007 memoir, Eric Clapton vividly recalls hearing Steve Winwood for the first time. The guitarist was in the early flush of his career playing in The Yardbirds when he encountered the Spencer Davis Group in clubland in 1963. Winwood, SDG’s precocious singer/organist, may have been just 15 but, Clapton notes: “If you closed your eyes you would swear it was Ray Charles. Musically he was like an old man…

The Odd Couple A chance meeting in a music shop as an 11-yearold sealed Tyler Bryant‘s fate, and led to him learning about the blues and a whole lot more. Now a shit-hot guitarist with his own band, he shares stages with some of rock’s biggest names. WORDS: Dave Everley PHOTOS: Tina Korhonen Every town below the Mason- Dixon line has a Roosevelt Twitty. He’s the kind of old dude you find in music shops or bars, or maybe out on the street, playing the blues like Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters or Robert Johnson. In another life he might have been as famous as those guys, but in this one the world passed him by a long time ago. Still, as long as he has a guitar and life…

Robert Plant Eleventh solo album with the Sensational Space Shifters, featuring a duet with Chrissie Hynde. MADS PERCHS/PPERRECSHS Carry Fire NONESUCH/WARNER BROS Maybe it’s the times we live in, with the knowledge and diverse resources available to musicians, but despite the parlous state of the industry, for veterans with more than a scintilla of curiosity, age is not necessarily a process of inevitable artistic deterioration. Robert Plant has just turned 69 and there’s a distinctly melancholic, late autumnal feel to some of the lyrics on Carry Fire. However, in its intricate, hybrid weave of folk, rock, North African rhythms and stylings, and even discreet fibres of electronica, this album represents a higher creative point than, say, his somewhat poodle-haired solo work of the early 1980s. Carry Fire once more features…

ELP This huge box set brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘super-deluxe’. ELP: REX/SHUTTERSTOCK Fanfare: Emerson, Lake & Palmer 1970-1997 BMG As Carl Palmer limbers up (you imagine he really does limber up – no one that age stays in that kind of shape without the occasional lunge) to collect the 2017 Prog God gong for his lifetime’s dedication to the music he and his bandmates made and loved, ELP’s label have decided to roll out what can best be described as the big guns. ELP collections are nothing new – the earth has been exhumed and reworked so many times on their past endeavours that even Love Beach managed to accrue some kind of legend, and not just for what Keith Emerson was wearing on the cover.…

Redd Kross The Californians look ahead to their UK support shows. Bassist/vocalist Steven McDonald checks in as the power-poppers prepare for some rare British appearances as guests of The Melvins. The Melvins and Redd Kross touring together means double duty for you, with Dale Krover also playing drums for both groups. That sounds like hard work. We’ll have to see. I’ve done one-off shows before but never a full tour. Dale tells me I should survive it. The two bands play together a lot. Why are they so compatible? Well, for a start there are practical reasons – it’s cheaper to take one rhythm section. But although we might have a different approach to loud guitars, we’re both from the same graduation class. Will we hear more of Redd Kross’s…

Jonny Lang The bluesman gets back to his roots on his latest tour. MOUNT HOLLY: JACOPO LORENZINI/PRESS; JONNY LANG: DANIELLA HOVSEPIAN/PRESS With Eric Clapton among his many admirers, Jonny Lang has enjoyed a meteoric career. Although his style is rooted in the blues, the North Dakota-born guitarist/vocalist adds a contemporary twist. His latest record, Signs, is a homecoming. Of sorts. What’s it like to achieve a platinum record at the age of fifteen, and to be nominated for a Grammy two years later? It’s a fantastic feeling. When all of that [success] started, I was just elated. Does a part of you also think: the only way from here is down? [Laughs] I’ve had that feeling on a couple of occasions, yeah. The new album Signs has a song called…

This month’s contributors HENRY YATES Henry Yates has written for music titles including Classic Rock, Guitarist, Total Guitar and NME, and is the co-author of Walter Trout’s official biography. This month he revisits the tumultuous early history of Fleetwood Mac, and enjoys a plain-spoken encounter with the unsinkable Chris Rea. More at www.yates creativecopywriting.com MIKE CHIPPERFIELD Mike is one half of Brighton design studio Magictorch who’ve been chipping in with CR covers for years now. “I thoroughly enjoyed this one,” he says. “We were channelling Tango In the Night as there’s a bit more visual inspiration in the source material than their other covers. I know it’s cooler to prefer the Peter Green years but I’ve always had a soft spot for Rumours!” DAVE EVERLEY Blimey. We didn’t half keep…

NEWS Iron Maiden release a live package, recorded on their most recent bout of touring, on November 17. Produced by Tony Newton and Maiden bass player Steve Harris, The Book Of Souls: Live Chapter is available via Warner Music on CD, deluxe CD and vinyl audio formats, and a concert film is available to stream free online or as a digital download. As this issue went to press, all four members of Polish death metal band Decapitated were being held in custody in the US on charges of kidnapping and rape. They stand accused of assaulting a woman on their tour bus following a show in Spokane, Washington. They plan to contest all of the allegations brought against them. Singer Mitchel Emms has left The Treatment to pursue other ventures.…

Get a home visit from Gene Simmons! For $50,000 he’ll hand-deliver his new box set to your door. Gene Simmons celebrates 50 years in music with a limited-edition boxed set featuring 150 never-before-released tracks. What’s more, for a mere $50,000 (£37,000) the Kiss bassist/vocalist is offering to travel to your home, deliver the package and even hang around for a couple of hours to chat. Why would anyone spend more than most people earn in a year for that? We’ll let Gene’s biggest fan – himself – answer that. “The Vault is the largest box set of all time; it’s almost three feet tall and it weighs forty pounds, and it spans a lifetime, from my very first song, My Uncle Is A Raft, which was recorded in 1966, right…

MORLY GREY The Only Truth, 1972, Starshine, USA. £700+ Responsible for one of the better locally released US heavypsych LPs of the early 70s, Morly Grey formed in Alliance, Ohio by brothers Tim Roller (guitars) and Mark Roller (bass, lead vocals). Initially a fourpiece, they released a single on their own label in 1969, before stripping down to a power trio, with two different drummers on each side. Limited to 1,000 copies, it has rightly become a sought-after rarity. Opening with Peace Officer, you’re given a good indication of what the rest of the album has to offer; essentially heavy but not all-out bludgeon, featuring West Coast vibes morphing into folk-rock and progressive blues, with a vast array of acid guitar motifs. There appears to be an element of Christianity…

Sharp Dressed Man Rock ’n’ Roll accessories This month, @jamiehibbard is elegantly wasted in these three sartorial stand-outs. Red Wing X Eat Dust Pecos cowboy boot When two uber-cool labels decide to get together, it always piques our interest at SDM. But when those two labels are the purveyors of great boots, Red Wing, and Dutch denim house Eat Dust, we lose our mind a little bit more! Here they’ve come together to produce ED’s favourite silhouette, the Pecos cowboy boot, available only in red and in the UK only at the London Red Wing store. £315, @RedWingHeritage Red Wing Store, London. Needles Rebuild 7 Cut Rock tee Ok stick with us on this one… Needles are an eccentric Japanese label who take seven different fabrics to create a unique…

Heavy Rotation What we’ve been listening to this month 1 Collide Black Country Communion Back in business again, this ‘supergroup’ have never sounded more cohesive. One of the cornerstone songs on the album BCCIV, it sees Glenn Hughes’s vocals neatly complementing Joe Bonamassa’s powerful guitar work. Or is it the other way round? Whatever, there’s an unmistakable charisma that makes it a stand-out celebration. 2 She’s Got To Be Somewhere David Crosby Seventy-six-year old David Crosby’s career renaissance continues apace with his third post-CSN album release. This track, Sky Trails’ smooth-as-silk opener, marries the effortless slickness of Steely Dan with the punchy brass of Chicago, as Crosby’s characteristically ageless vocal chills your spiritual chardonnay while oozing class. 3 Stand By My Girl Dan Auerbach Black Keys man (and collaborator with…

The Road From Hell From industry sharks to cancer and strokes, nothing can sink Chris Rea. Rock’s great survivor looks on the bright side of life. Words: Henry Yates ANDY EARL/PRESS MORRIS 1000 POLICE CAR: ALAMY Few experiences in life are more humiliating than spluttering up the driveway of Chris Rea’s country pile in a decrepit Seat Altea. The veteran bluesman’s home is a trove of automobile porn: a gleaming Ferrari, a pristine Caterham 620, racing overalls, press clippings of Rea himself burning up the track. It’s becoming apparent why he wrote Road Songs For Lovers, his new semi-concept album, on which he admits that he finds peace only behind the wheel. “I love it,” he says with a twinkle, that burnished face crinkling into a walnut. “I always have.…

NO WASTED YEARS Pro pilot, fencer, cancer survivor, author… As you’ll find out from his new autobiography, there’s much more to Bruce Dickinson than just fronting one of the biggest heavy metal bands on the planet. Words: Dave Everley Bruce Dickinson would like you to know that when it came to writing his autobiography, What Does This Button Do?, he didn’t need any outside help. “People ask: ‘So who was your ghost writer?’ and I go: “Actually, I did it myself,’” he says proudly. “I physically wrote 180,000 words, and all of it was on WH Smith pads in actual handwriting, proper old-school.” Writing an entire book by hand is a very Bruce Dickinson thing to do. The Iron Maiden singer is seemingly a man who can turn his hand…

Ch-Ch-Changes Rudderless after the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed ditched New York for London, hooked up with Bowie and created the aptly named Transformer, the defining record of his career. Words: Chris Roberts Photos: Mick Rock “Follow the dotted line,” Lou Reed grumbled at me in 2004. “Look, put all the songs together and it’s certainly an autobiography – just not necessarily mine. I write about other people, tell stories, always did. Any truly creative person could make five albums a year, easily. Each record is just what you did that week. Another week you might have done the same songs differently. But listen – I love every last one of them. Every single second of every last one, okay?” Okay. Fortunately for him, and for us, in late 1972 what…

REISSUES Whitesnake Nice year… We’ll take it. Era-defining Cov’s classic, generously expanded. ALAMY 1987: Super Deluxe Edition PARLOPHONE Alongside Def Leppard’s Hysteria, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and Guns N’ Roses Appetite For Destruction, Whitesnake’s 1987 stands as the high-water mark of the MTV rock era, a blow-dried masterpiece wherein the blues moved to LA, got itself a spray tan and a perm and proceeded to hump the entire western hemisphere and a fair chunk of the eastern one into submission. It was an unlikely success story. Half a decade earlier, Whitesnake had been a strictly niche concern in global terms – an old-school British blues rock band (albeit a glorious one) put together by the singer with the glasses and frizzy hair from Deep Purple who wasn’t Ian Gillan.…

STUFF BOOKS & DVDs What Does This Button Do? Iron Maiden frontman’s autobiography is light on all things Maiden, but probably better for it. Bruce Dickinson HARPERCOLLINS One way and another, Bruce Dickinson has pushed a lot of buttons: as a singer, airline pilot, fencer, broadcaster, author, screenwriter, songwriter, actor, you name it. He’s driven and determined when it comes to achieving the target he sets himself, whether it’s becoming an international rock star, getting a commercial pilot’s licence or curing his throat cancer. He’s also a very affable bloke with a wry sense of humour who can take the piss out of himself. What Does This Button Do? is not so much an autobiography – although it begins like one – but a series of memoirs. Some of them are…

the DIRT Walter Becker February 20, 1950 – September 03, 2017 FOR MORE NEWS: WWW.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM INSIDE THE WORLD OF ROCK NEIL ZLOZOWER/ATLASICONS.COM WALTER BECKER, THE bassist, guitarist and co-founder of Steely Dan, has passed away due to as yet undisclosed causes. The 67-year-old was due to appear with Steely Dan at the upcoming BluesFest shows in the UK and Ireland. According to his Steely Dan partner Donald Fagen, Becker had been “recovering from a procedure” of an unspecified nature. Back in the summer, having been advised by doctors not to leave his Maui home, Becker sat out the band’s concerts in New York and Los Angeles, where he was deputised by Larry Calton, the noted session guitarist who appeared on Steely Dan’s 1980 album, Gaucho, among others. Soon after the…

Galactic Cowboys The metal-with-a pop-centre band return – and this time they’ll be careful not to be seen as "King’s X's little brother”. GALACTIC COWBOYS SIT near the top of the league table of Great Lost Bands Of The 90s. Like a heavier version of fellow Texans King’s X, the Houston four-piece pitched themselves as Metallica-meets- The Beatles, welding the heavy-duty riffing of the former to the latter’s anything-goes approach. Seventeen years after they split up, the Cowboys have returned with a new album, Long Way Back To The Moon. Vocalist Ben Huggins explains how they achieved lift-off again. Whose idea was it to get back together? Bill Evans, who is acting as our rep for [new label] Mascot, called Monty [Colvin, bass] three years ago, asking if we had…

WELCOME BACK H.e.a.t The Swedish band return with a fifth album and a new sound that has so far provoked some fiery reactions... H.E.A.T: KLARA FOWLER EARLY ON H.E.A.T were fêted as melodic rock’s great white hopes. Serving to enhance the extremes of the band’s sound, the addition of Swedish Idol winner Erik Grönwall changed all that. As the Stockholm-based quintet release their fifth album, Into The Great Unknown, Grönwall reveals why they are unfazed by the internet shitstorm caused by its poppier sound. H.e.a.t disappeared for two years to make this album, which was a big risk considering the way the band’s career was taking off – even in the UK. It was a scary decision but we needed some perspective. Had we just made the record in between…

WELCOME BACK Gentle Giant The prog band from yesteryear have had tracks remixed by Steven Wilson and there could be more on the way. FORMED FROM THE ashes of psych-pop hitmakers Simon Dupree And The Big Sound in 1970, Gentle Giant were the quintessential prog band, fusing soul, jazz, rock and classical music into a complex whole. Lack of commercial success failed to deter them, with the band surviving for a decade before splitting up. Major fan Steven Wilson has now remixed selected tracks for the sumptuous Three Piece Suite. Founder member and lead vocalist Derek Shulman, one of three brothers in Gentle Giant, explains all… How did Three Piece Suite come about? Steven’s worked on our stuff before and suggested doing songs from the first three albums. Going back…

The Cranberries Zombie The Irish band had already enjoyed success with their sweet ballads, but this storming left-turn, an incendiary, furious track about the bombings in Northern Ireland, made them massive. Words: Emma Johnston B y 1994, Limerick rock band The Cranberries had achieved international fame with their chart-topping, multi-platinum debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We?, and most people thought they knew exactly what the Irish four-piece were about. As the final days of grunge stormed around them, they were a barefoot, floaty, slightly hippie-ish oasis of calm, the romantic longing of Linger and the fairy tale sugar-rush of Dreams further sweetened by singer Dolores O’Riordan’s girlish, heavily accented vocal style. Then in September, in the run-up to the release of their second album, No…

The Blues Years From 1967 to 1974, the nascent Fleetwood Mac teetered on the line between triumph and oblivion. Co-founder Mick Fleetwood recalls the “wild story” of the band’s early years… Words: Henry Yates It was the fag-end of summer 1967, and the tectonic plates of London’s blues landscape were shifting. On September 9, under cover of darkness, the door of Decca Studios in London opened and house producer Mike Vernon furtively waved in a fledgling band for an after-hours session. There was Mick Fleetwood, the drummer recently ousted from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers for being habitually “loose as a goose”. With him were bassist Bob Brunning and an impish, mischief-making slide-guitar wizard named Jeremy Spencer. More auspiciously, there was Peter Green, the spellbinding guitar hero who had replaced Eric Clapton…

The Rebound Years Buckingham and Nicks returned to the band, Christine McVie left, Christine returned… and another series of episodes of rock’s longest-running soap opera were written. Words: Dave Everley There’s a theory that Fleetwood Mac operate on a 10-year cycle, one that reaches peak success, maximum drama or a combination of both whenever the year ends in a seven. Since they formed in 1967, much of the band’s career has worked to that schedule. The year 1977 produced the worldbeating Rumours, a soft rock masterpiece that played out against a backdrop of romantic complication and personal psychodrama. In 1987 it was Tango In The Night, a Yuppie-era landmark created amid struggles with drug addiction and barely suppressed acrimony that precipitated the departure of Lindsey Buckingham before the album had…

"IF YOUFOOK THIS ALBUM UP IT'S THEEND OF YOUR CAREER" As 1976 came along, Thin Lizzy were just another rock band, with a one-hit past and little in the way of a future. Then they released Jailbreak, and the boys weren’t so much back in town as running it. But after a disappointing follow-up, the pressure was on. Words: Mick Wall For the first five years of their topsy-turvy career, Thin Lizzy had been also-rans – strictly second div, with their 1973 novelty hit Whiskey In The Jar, their earnest ‘Irish rock’ concept albums and their constantly blurring line-ups. Could-have-beens. Maybes. Jokes. They were saved by the bell of their sixth album, Jailbreak, in 1976. For the first time the band successfully showcased their intoxicating blend of rock-funk-folk-blues bloodletting, and…

BRUCE DICKINSON GOING IT ALONE The pick of Dickinson’s solo songs. DRACULA Neither one of his greatest songs nor even really a solo number, this creaky slice of Hammer Horror heavy metal by long-forgotten London band Shots warrants inclusion as Dickinson’s very first recording. A curio, but one that pointed to greater things. SON OF A GUN The Dickinson solo career got off to a flying start with the glorious opening track of his debut solo album, Tattooed Millionaire. A brooding takedown of religious imperialism, it’s one of the finest things he’s written, with or without Maiden. TATTOOED MILLIONAIRE The album itself was a stylistic grab-bag, but Tattooed Millionaire’s title track was a brash pop-metal gem with shades of Def Leppard’s Photograph. Who was it about? Our money’s on Nikki…

ALBUMS Brand New Science Fiction PROCRASTINATE! MUSIC TRAITORS Farewell album from Long Island alt. rockers. Arriving as an emo band in 2000, Brand New have since sculpted their sound and indulged their ambitions to create a niche for themselves in the pantheon of alternative rock. With Science Fiction, their first album in eight years and the last before they will split in 2018, they have written their own eulogy. Seething with anxiety and frontman Jesse Lacey’s trademark sarcastic self-flagellation, and with a gorgeous production that gives the music space to breathe, it’s an emotional, intelligent work of grace and beauty. Early growing pains have been replaced with the older and wiser Lacey’s view of the big picture, the spiderweb-delicate Could Never Be Heaven taking a distinctly grown-up look at the…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder THE CURSE: MICKE KEYSENDAL/PRESS The Curse Calcutta Sunrise BELUGA/GHOST HIGHWAY People sometimes forget, but like 20 years ago, Scandinavia saved rock’n’roll. I mean, it was pretty grim out there in 1999, an endless, numbing void of nu metal and pseudo-industrial pop and washed-out has-beens before the Hellacopters, Gluecifer and Turbonegro rode in on their longboats and straightened us all the fuck out. The Curse follow in their fine anklebooted footsteps with this effortlessly confident display of Swedish action rock, all snarls and switchblades and tight denim and sex-soaked rifforama. Calcutta Sunrise is the band’s third album and it’s a total jammer from end to end. The beauty of The Curse is that they get how rock’n’roll works – every song’s got a hook and they get in…

Steve Miller Band Some people call him Maurice… Comprehensive career retrospective of the Space Cowboy. STEVE MILLER BAND: GETTY Ultimate Hits UNIVERSAL It seems curious that despite a 50-year career, most rock fans’ knowledge of Steve Miller is limited solely to his handful of radio staples – The Joker, Abracadabra, Fly Like An Eagle. A graduate of the Chicago blues scene who arrived in San Francisco in time to embrace psychedelia, Miller navigated his way through the rapidly changing musical tides with a dexterity to match any of rock’s biggest stars. Yet this fascinating figure – a former child prodigy who went to school with Boz Scaggs – remains that rarest of commodities in rock: a household name we know very little about. Miller’s own frustration at this state of…

LIVE! The Doobie Brothers The band preview their first UK shows in seven years, including BluesFest dates. ANDREW MACPHERSON/PRESS “The thing that makes the Doobies is the amount of influences in our music. We never sought one particular direction.” As part of the Californian band’s first UK visit since 2010, the Doobie Brothers are to co-headline this year’s BluesFest in London and Dublin, alongside Steely Dan. Their co-founding guitarist, lead singer and keyboard player Tom Johnston sets the scene. Last month the Doobies played stadium shows in California and New York alongside the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Journey and Earth, Wind & Fire. Were you able to watch the new-look Eagles? Yeah. I saw them in New York and they were phenomenal. Vince Gill fitted right in – as…

LIVE! Mount Holly Former Silvertide man Nick Perri looks ahead to a pair of dates. Nick Perri was a member of Silvertide. The guitarist later played with Perry Farrell and Shinedown, then alongside Matt Sorum in The Darling Stilettos. Now he introduces his latest venture, a rootsy Southern Californian alternative rock band. These two shows are Mount Holly’s third trip to the UK. We’re thrilled to be coming back. I came with Silvertide, and Jameson [Burt, singer] has been here a bunch of times as a solo artist. Silvertide appeared to have it all: signed by Clive Davis, gigs with Aerosmith, Van Halen and Journey, and a triumphant set at Download. What went wrong? It was a combination of personalities and music business conflict. When that band was firing on…

Tour Dates WILL IRELAND IAN ANDERSON & JETHRO TULL KEVIN NIXON W.A.S.P. GETTY THE WHITE BUFFALO…

LIVE! Dan Reed Having successfully battled his demons, the late-80s nearly man is back with a damned fine show in this most religious of settings. London St Pancras Old Church ‘In this setting Reed’s voice, allowed to shine, sounds stellar.’ Dan Reed is trying desperately not to swear. He has already let loose with an accidental “crap”, and looked mortified despite the mildness of the profanity. But it’s a battle he’s always going to lose. The singer is fiddling with the acoustic guitar hanging from his shoulders halfway through tonight’s strippeddown solo performance when he accidentally utters “shit”. He looks upwards and tries not to laugh. “Oh man, it’s the Catholic in me,” he says. At most venues, this would barely even register on the obscenity scale. But St Pancras…

Heavy Load Heavy questions for heavy rockers Ricky Warwick on the bands he’s been in, getting drunk for the first time, life, death and uncomfortable clogs. Interview: Michael Hann RICHARD STOW/PRESS “Seeing Stiff Little Fingers in 1980 literally changed my life.” Ricky Warwick has spent 30 years at rock’s coal face, as frontman, sideman, solo artist and hired hand. He’s been a punk with New Model Army, a rocker with The Almighty and the designated filler of some very big shoes as the man who stepped up to front the post-Phil Lynott Thin Lizzy. That Lizzy reunion evolved into Black Star Riders, who tour the UK in November. Warwick spoke to Classic Rock at his home in Los Angeles. What were you like at school? There were two stages. When…