Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2018 i Classic Rock

RAW POWER Warren Piece A slice of true 1980s hair-metal history returns. DURING THE MID-80S, Ratt were absolutely massive. Musically more accomplished than many of their contemporaries, and boasting a vocalist in Stephen Pearcy whose delivery was, shall we say, unique, their ace in the hole was – and remains – guitarist Warren DiMartini. His quicksilver runs and technical style were unmistakeable, and in a world where Eddie Van Halen was the undisputed God of Guitar™ it took a great deal for any other guitarist to even be mentioned in the same breath. However, Martini had it in spades, and his guitars of choice came from the lauded San Dimas, California woodshop of Wayne Charvel. Today’s incarnation of Charvel Guitars nestles under the expansive corporate umbrella of Fender MIC, and…

6 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… Turbowolf Who else could play with Korn and The Subways, other than four wild, free spirits from Bristol? Words: Emma Johnston IT’S NOT EASY to dive into the pool of old-school rock’n’roll without drowning in retro cliché, but, thanks to adding a heavy dose of psychedelia, metal, punk, blues and electronica and plenty more genres as well, Bristol’s Turbowolf have managed to pull off that trick. “We’re not revivalists,” explains moustachioed frontman Chris Georgiadis. “We’re looking forward more than anything. There’s so many artists that have made great rock records, but they’ve already made them. There’s no point trying to recreate that. We’re trying to stand out and do something different. That’s what drives us, that’s our passion, trying to find things that…

MEN OF THE MOVEMENT You’ve heard their songs, seen them live and they’ve just hit the Top 10 with their excellent third album. But just who are The Temperance Movement? Words: Polly Glass Photos: Will Ireland It all seemed so charmed. Back in 2011, a group of session players and one disenchanted solo artist decided to join forces and make music they all loved. As The Temperance Movement, they released a sublime debut of revitalised classic rock, almost by chance (it wasn’t really meant to be an ‘album’ as such). It made the UK Top 20. They toured with the Rolling Stones. After recording a heavier, more boundary-testing second album, founding guitarist Luke Potashnik left to devote himself to studio work. Suddenly the dynamic shifted. Frontman Phil Campbell, who’d been…

SET COLLISION COURSE… A confrontational supergroup fronted by Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan, A Perfect Circle have a refreshing approach: they don’t really care whether you take them or leave them. Words: Dave Everley Billy Howerdel vividly remembers the first time he saw Maynard James Keenan on stage. It was 1991, and Keenan’s band, Tool, were playing hip Hollywood venue Club Lingerie. Howerdel knew of the band via mutual friends. The demo tape Howerdel had heard sounded full-on, but he wasn’t prepared for the intensity in the room that night. As the band stretched and pummeled the wet clay of their music, a mohawked Keenan fixed Howerdel with a death-ray stare; he didn’t blink, didn’t look away, just kept looking at him unnervingly. Howerdel worked as a guitar tech for LA funk-rock…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Rick Parfitt Over And Out EARMUSIC/EDEL Postumous first solo album from the late Status Quo guitarist is a fitting sign-off. His Telecaster is silent. That right arm jackhammers no more. But one of the world’s finest rhythm guitarists has left us a gem of a farewell. Two months before he died on Christmas Eve 2016, Rick Parfitt told Classic Rock’s Dave Ling: “In my heart I’m a rocker. I’ve always been… If I’m going to make music, it’s got to rock.” We might therefore expect Over And Out, his first solo album, to be in the vein of the vintage Quo music he revelled in revisiting on the Frantic Four reunions of 2013 and ’14. But it’s not. Instead, this album reflects Parfitt’s acute pop sensibilities.…

ROUND-UP: PROG By Jo Kendall Wilson & Wakeman The Sun Will Dance In Its Twilight Hour BLACKLAKE Prog’s latest dynamic duo, Headspace bandmates Damian Wilson and Adam Wakeman follow their acoustic Weir Keeper’s Tale debut of 2016 with another pedal-off-the-metal set. With connections to Ozzy Osbourne, an Iron Maiden tribute and Les Mis (Wilson played Jean Valjean in the touring version from 1998-2000), some red-blooded theatrics might be expected, but pure songcraft is celebrated here. Wilson is subtle and emotionally on point amid piano, acoustic guitar and cello backing. Joined by guitarist Andy Dunlop (Travis), Strictly’s Hayley Stevenson (also beloved of Wakeman Sr) and Del Amitri drummer Ash Soan (Producers/Trevor Horn Band), this occasionally plants a size nine in Take That territory (Shining A Light On A Miracle) but with enough…

THE HARD STUFF REISSUES Led Zeppelin NEIL ZLOZOWER/PRESS How The West Was Won ATLANTIC/SWAN SONG The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake… There can’t be any doubt that Led Zeppelin were the hottest rock group on the planet when they pummelled the Forum in Los Angeles on June 25, 1972 and destroyed Long Beach Arena two days later. Jimmy Page considered the band were at the height of their powers at the time, following the monumental 1V. It wasn’t a question of how the West was won – America had already fallen – more why they didn’t prove it at the time by releasing a live album. Given that the Stones and The Who were happy to show off their abilities on stage with ‘Get Yer Ya-Ya’s…

LIVE! Nickelback The mega-selling ‘Marmite’ band and their support Seether play UK shows in May. NICKELBACK: RICHARD BELAND/PRESS “Some people treat you great, and others like something they’ve wiped off their shoe. We remember both of those experiences.” With worldwide record sales of more than 50 million, Nickelback are among the world’s most successful groups. They are also one of the most divisive. Their outspoken frontman Chad Kroeger, who once threatened a journalist to a boxing contest, no longer gives interviews, so bass-playing sibling Mike sets the scene for the band’s upcoming arena tour. This tour visits seven of the biggest arenas in the UK. When you’re playing in such huge venues can the flavour of each nation become a bit lost? Or do British audiences have a particular flavour?…

LIVE! The Dead Daisies The revolving-door collective play UK shows in April. Formed five years ago by Australian musician, aviator and businessman David Lowy, The Dead Daisies have had a revolving line-up that has included members past and present of Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Thin Lizzy, Nine Inch Nails and more. Their latest member is former Bad English drummer Deen Castronovo, ousted from Journey in 2015 following domestic violence, unlawful use of a weapon and drug offences. How did you come to join the Dead Daisies? Doug [Aldrich, guitarist] texted to ask whether I was busy and did I fancy a trip to New York. Just three days later I was doing the record. You knew Doug from Revolution Saints and you’d been in Soul Sirkus with bassist Marco…

LIVE! Saxon, Diamond Head, Rock Goddess Cambridge Corn Exchange ‘This is an evening full of mesmerising quality, from Goddess to gods.’ Old-school Brit metal at its finest. Talk about a cross-generational audience. There are certainly those who were here in 1979 when Saxon opened for Motörhead on their Bomber tour, while others have barely crept into their teens, being the same age as the original Rock Goddess trio would have been when they first started out. Now the same Goddess three are on stage showing the same enthusiasm and drive as back then, albeit now tempered with a welcome musical dexterity and a mature focus. Jody Turner remains the earthy fulcrum, as bassist Tracey Lamb and drummer Julie Turner are fiercely combative. The band, though, don’t simply relive old memories.…

WELCOME BACK Adrian Vandenberg The former Whitesnake guitarist and his MoonKings are back. His leopardskin outfit most certainly isn’t. STEFAN SCHIPPER/PRESS ADRIAN VANDENBERG IS best known as the guitarist with Whitesnake during the group’s late-1980s commercial breakthrough period. Before he and David Coverdale parted ways in 1999, Vandenberg remained the singer’s foil throughout much of that decade. Vandenberg’s current band, Vandenberg’s MoonKings, have just released their second album, Mk II. Your group Vandenberg released three critically acclaimed albums in the first half of the eighties. Why did they never make the big time? It was down to lots of reasons. Our management wasn’t strong enough, and in those days bands played in jeans and T-shirts. I wanted to make an anti-statement, and wore a stupid leopardskin outfit. That may have…

JERSEY ROAR The guitars that ruled the world. At least for a while. Kramer Guitars became a genuine alternative to the all-conquering Jackson/Charvel stable for some seriously huge 80s rockers. Founded in Neptune, New Jersey in 1976 by MI stalwarts Dennis Berardi and Gary Kramer, the company first made waves by producing instruments that had aluminium necks, and by the time the hairspray had begun to waft in from Los Angeles they’d already signed up the biggest name of the era, Eddie Van Halen, whose custom ‘5150’ guitar was based on the Kramer Baretta. Kramer also produced both Richie Sambora’s first signature model, and the awesome Nightswan developed by Vivian Campbell (pictured) during his time with Whitesnake. Another innovation was The Sustainer, whose ingenious pickup gave notes infinite sustain, and…

WELCOME BACK Kino The not-prog, not-a-supergroup pop-prog supergroup return with Radio Voltaire after more than a decade away. IT’S BEEN 13 years since neo-prog supergroup Kino called it a day after just one album. But creativity got the better of them, and John Mitchell (Lonely Robot, It Bites), Pete Trewavas (Marillion) and (now guesting on the new album) John Beck (It Bites) are back, with Craig Blundell (Steven Wilson) on drums. Influenced by Moulin Rouge, vaudeville and 18th-century philosophical wit Voltaire, Radio Voltaire is brimming with vast, catchy prog-pop epics – or, as Mitchell describes them, “pop songs we’ve messed about with”. You’ve all been busy with your own projects. What was it that pulled you back to Kino? I spend so much time producing other bands, I wanted to…

Kansas Dust In The Wind A melody that came from practising guitar, a lyric inspired by a book of Native American poetry and loaded with biblical allusions… Together they became a song that would be a multimillion-selling classic. Words: Rob Hughes NEIL ZLOZOWER/ATLASICONS.COM You often don’t recognise a good thing when you’ve got it. In the case of Kansas guitarist Kerry Livgren, idly strumming a melody he’d come up with at home in the summer of 1977, it took his wife to point out its potential. “It began as an exercise that Kerry was doing, to learn how to fingerpick the acoustic guitar,” explains Kansas drummer and percussionist Phil Ehart. “He had the chords, and his wife, Vicci, kept walking by him and saying: ‘Y’know, you ought to make that…

A WILD RIDE OVER STONY GROUND Eleven studio albums, 26 UK hit singles, more than 100 million records sold; one near-fatal car crash, one tragic death… This, and so much more, is the story of the first 40 years of Def Leppard. Words: Mick Wall Photos: Ross Halfin He’s late. Which is unusual. In the four decades I’ve known him, Joe Elliott has always been the total professional – even when he’s been hurting inside. But today, well, hey, he overslept. It’s still early morning in London and he’s just starting what will be a 12-hour day of interviews and promo and whatnot. After years of holding out against the digital tide, Def Leppard finally allowed their entire back catalogue to be available for streaming. The result has seen classic…

Survival Instinct With their past dogged by tragedy, having lost two immensely popular singers, how did Stone Temple Pilots pick themselves up and this year return with an excellent new record? Words: Nick Hasted Photos: Ross Halfin September 2016. The three surviving original members of Stone Temple Pilots are in alien territory. With the Foo Fighters occupying their usual studio, Dave Grohl has lent them the Foos’ 606 Studios in California’s San Fernando Valley, with its owners’ superhero-style ‘FF’ insignia all over the walls. The lights are dim and cameras rolling as, seven months into STP’s search for the third singer of their tragedy-dogged career, 40-year-old former X Factor contestant Jeff Gutt steps up to the mic to give it his shot. Fifteen-thousand hopefuls have already been whittled down to…

Hypno-Therapy In the late 80s, with “one foot in Blue Cheer and one foot in the punk side of Led Zep”, Thee Hypnotics were a band out of time. Now they’re back to save us again. Words: Ian Fortnam Stumbling upon Thee Hypnotics in the flossy, insipid doldrums of the late 80s was like locating a shaft of dazzling clear white light in a seemingly impenetrable murk of corporate spandex compromise. As the broader rock cosmos was becoming ever more mainstream, sonic insurrection was exploding from the stage of London’s Marquee club. Super-fuzzed waves of wah-wah tore rips in the ozone, as a bluff, curtain-fringed assassin sprayed aural ack-ack from his hip-slung guitar across a spiralling, intertwining Mitch-’n’-Noel-style rhythm. Meanwhile, nostrils flaring, Jim Jones is walking on the outstretched hands…

CLASSIC ROCK SOCIAL CLUB Get social, debate and interact with Classic Rock 2,059,015 AND STILL GROWING Join us via email (classicrock@futurenet.com), Facebook or Twitter DEBATE OF THE DECADE (THE 90s, THAT IS) Hello. Of course I disagree with your list of 100 albums, as it would be virtually impossible for two people to compile the same list, and normally I wouldn’t write because of that. But Tesla. I appreciate some classics were left out because you don’t really cover death and black metal, and I’m sure the omission of, among others, Burn My Eyes, Achtung Baby, Come Find Yourself, Korn, Follow The Leader, Smash, Pride & Glory, Candlebox, How To Win Friends And Influence People, Live Through This, Holy Soldier, Jagged Little Pill, Wither Blister Burn + Peel, Draconian Times,…

ROUND-UP: BLUES By Henry Yates DANNY BRYANT: ROB BLACKHAM/PRESS Danny Bryant Revelation JAZZHAUS With Revelation, Danny Bryant is plainly writing not because the album/tour cycle demands it, but because his sanity depends on it, following a brutal six-month period in which he lost his best friend and his beloved father, then fell into depression. The title track suggests the bandleader has been to black places indeed, its desolate piano, funeral-march horns and lyrical imagery of burning bodies and scythes setting up a primal-scream guitar solo and a devastating kiss-off: ‘Called out to my father, swear I heard him cry/Remember him so clearly, the day we said goodbye’. Likewise Shouting At The Moon, a valedictory power ballad chronicling their last night together, is so candid that listening to it feels like snooping. And…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Manic Street Preachers MANIC STREET REACHERS: ALEX LAKE/PRESS Resistance is Futile COLUMBIA/SONY Welsh rockers return to stadium-sized anthemics on their thirteenth album. Four years after they expanded their horizons with the critically feted synth-heavy Euro-modernism of Futurology, the Manics return to their heartland with Resistance Is Futile. The first album to be recorded at the band’s new rural studio in Wales, it has a pleasingly boomy big-room sound, high in polish and rich in ripsnorting glam-metal guitar. With stalwart producer Dave Eringa back at the controls, this is vintage arena-rocking Manics, grandiose in scale and unusually buoyant in mood. The album arrives at full roar with People Give In, which subverts its own wistful message of creeping midlife defeat by erupting into a mighty celebration of…

THE HARD STUFF REISSUES Tom Waits Reissues ANTI The sublime early years of America’s greatest barfly. It’s 45 years since Tom Waits released his magnificent debut album Closing Time (8/10), and, looking back as it – and his following six records – are sensitively remastered and reissued, it becomes apparent that he is, despite outward appearances, ageing backwards. While passing years find him becoming ever more experimental, when he was 24 he was playing the part of an old man beaten up by life, creating soused vignettes of whisky-breathed, rheumy-eyed romance such as Martha, the most heartbreaking portrait of missed opportunities and lost love. He peels himself off the bar stool for The Heart Of Saturday Night (7/10) to head to an after-hours jazz club, tumbling into a timeless space…

Marillion MARILLION: GEORGECHIN/ICONICPIX Brave PARLOPHONE The acclaimed, if unexpected, concept album that put Marillion at odds with EMI. Marillion had flown high and fallen hard in a cloud of acrimony with their former singer, Fish, with the kind of infighting that makes the UKIP leadership battle look sedate in comparison. Exit the lanky Scotsman; enter the floppy-haired former Europeans keyboard player, Steve Hogarth. It’s hard to imagine now, but back then Marillion were something of a chart hits powerhouse with a major conglomerate label on their backs. Cue two hard pop, if sometimes indeterminate, albums (Seasons End, Holidays In Eden) and then a record that would help determine the truly experimental (business models, musically, as performers) band that they’d go on to become. Inspired by a radio report that Hogarth…

INTERVIEWS Nathaniel Rateliff And The Night Sweats Take socks to their gigs – it won’t mean you think they stink. NATHANIEL RATELIFF: BRANTLEY GUTIERREZ/PRESS Having sung with musically differing acts, Nathaniel Rateliff founded the Night Sweats, a soulful R&B combo, five years ago. As they prepare for a tour that includes three nights at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the singer talks to CR about socks, their song S.O.B. and rock’n’roll. You were in your mid-thirties when things really took off with S.O.B.. At that age had you begun to fear that it might not do so? Yeah, I suppose I had been treading water. When that song came out I had thought it was my last effort. S.O.B. was one of the last songs we recorded for the first record.…

the Dirt Goodbye Yellow Brick Road… Skynyrd, Slayer, Elton… and maybe even Kiss, to retire from touring SIR ELTON JOHN: ANNOUNCED A 300-SHOW, THREE-YEAR SWANSONG. ELTON JOHN & SLAYER: GETTY; LYNYRD SKYNYRD: ALISON CLARKE AS THE OLD saying goes, nothing lasts forever. And the past couple of months have seen some big names announce their retirement from the road. Following Back Sabbath’s withdrawal in 2017 and Alex Lifeson’s admission that Rush “have no plans to tour or record any more”, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Slayer, Sir Elton John, Paul Simon and the Pretty Things are among those who have announced that this will be their last year of touring. And as this issue went to press, speculation abounded that Kiss – who undertook a farewell tour in 2000 but then changed their…

HIGH HOPES The Kris Barras Band Having been a cage fighter, the music scene holds no fears for this blues-rock contender. ANDREW KNOWLES/PRESS KRIS BARRAS KNOWS a thing or two about seizing the day. “My dad was the reason I started playing guitar,” says the newest addition to Mascot Records’ renowned blues-rock roster. “I was five years old and I’d go to the pub every weekend to watch him in bands. But he died of cancer in 2012, about six days before his fifty-fifth birthday. It made me re-evaluate things. That was the reason I gave music another shot.” Until that moment, Barras had led a curious double life. Raised in Torquay, his fiery fretwork was forged under the influence of Gary Moore, the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd. But while…

WELCOME BACK Fanny Walked The Earth Millington sisters Jean and June return with an extended band name and the group’s first album since 1974. IN 1970, FANNY were the first all-female rock band to release an album on a major label. Led by Filipino sisters June (guitar, vocals) and Jean (bass, vocals) Millington, the American group made a particular impact in the UK supporting acts including Jethro Tull, Humble Pie and Slade. But five years later it was over. Now they return as Fanny Walked The Earth, with a self-titled album of melodic, soulful rock, and old friend and drummer Brie Darling, who picks up the story. You all knew each other from high-school band The Svelts? We were all in high school, but not the same one. June and…

HIGH HOPES Demob Happy Meet the Newcastle/Brighton trio marrying fuzzy guitars with 60s-tastic harmonies. “The marriage we wanted was The Beatles on a peyote buzz.” THE PLACE WE catch up with Demob Happy has proper rock history: the London property rented by Beatle Ringo Starr in 1965. Ringo would go on to lease it to Paul McCartney (who demoed Eleanor Rigby here), Jimi Hendrix (who wrote The Wind Cries Mary while resident) and John Lennon (who took rock’s most infamous selfie in the basement, used on the cover for his Two Virgins album). Demob Happy are on the sofa, playing a short set of songs from their second album, Holy Doom. Formed at Newcastle College a decade ago, the band were originally influenced by everything from 60s pop to Screamo,…

Songbird With one of the most captivating voices of her era, Sandy Denny seemed assured of major success. But insecurity, mistakes and finally tragedy meant she never fulfilled her potential. Words: Paul Rees Bassist Ashley Hutchings spent not much more than a year playing with Sandy Denny in Fairport Convention, but he has been asked to talk about her for four decades now. Hutchings believed he had said everything he possibly could on the subject, but on this late-winter’s afternoon it occurs to him that there is one acute memory he hasn’t yet shared of the extraordinary woman who fronted Fairport for just a fleeting period in 1968 and ’69. When Denny joined Fairport she was a 21-yearold folk singer, rich with promise but little-known. Hutchings, at 23, was the…

BRITROCK THE REVENGE Ginger Wildheart, Terrorvision’s Tony Wright and Reef’s Gary Stringer share tales of excess and mayhem ahead of their bands’ Britrock Must Be Destroyed! joint UK tour. Words: Johnny Sharp Photos: Will Ireland “Even the squeaky-clean pop people would be up all night doing the same stuff we were doing, it was just they didn’t talk about it.”GINGER WILDHEART There are many famous hotels dotted around the globe that can lay claim to a history of glamour, decadence and celebrity high jinks. From the star-kissed chic of LA’s Chateau Marmont to Singapore’s Raffles to the Paris Ritz, their reputation precedes them. But can you get a bed for the night at one of those for as little as a taxi ride into town, drink all night, get a…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Blackberry Smoke DAVID MCCLISTER/PRESS Find A Light EARACHE Album number six from the front runners to become the new flag carriers for southern rock. So, Lynyrd Skynyrd plan to roll up the Dixie flag and kick off their cowboy boots after one last rodeo. That means a vacancy is opening up for the role of Big Kahunas of southern rock’s outlaw nation. Applicants must have a working knowledge of rock’n’roll, a pickup truck full of Hank Williams records and a lifetime membership of the NRA. Given the febrile state of music south of the Mason-Dixon line right now, there’s no shortage of people waiting in line to throw their Stetsons into the ring, among them The Cadillac Three, Whiskey Myers, Lee Bains III & The Glory…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS The Damned THE DAMNED: STEVE GULLICK/PRESS Evil Spirits SEARCH AND DEST ROY Crowdfunded return, their first in a decade, keeps things neat. At first, the opener on The Damned’s 11th album reminds you of something you can’t quite place. It’s on the tip of your brain. Then the penny drops, from a faraway, unlikely place: it’s the early Moody Blues. Standing On The Edge Of Tomorrow – a distinctly Hayward/Lodge phrase – has all the trimmings of the Brummies’ hippie heyday: harmonies, a richly mixed rush to the refrain, and a dash of the-future-is-now sci-fi. Dave Vanian has said that The Damned hired Tony Visconti (for nine intense days in Brooklyn) because they loved Bowie’s Blackstar. What they got was the Visconti who, in Captain Sensible’s…

ROUND-UP: MELODIC By Dave Ling Perfect Plan All Rise FRONTIERS Another month, another high-quality Scandinavian melodic rock act from the Frontiers Records assembly line, and this little corker appears right out of the blue. Perfect Plan formed in late 2014, but they’ve kept their powder dry until now. All Rise is an exceptional debut. The urgent, modern-sounding keyboards prick up the ears within bars of opening track Bad City Woman, but Perfect Plan’s show stopper is vocalist Kent Hilli, for whom superstardom would have been nailed on back in AOR’s glorious 1980s heyday. Throw in Rolf Nordström, whose tastefully restrained guitar solos have the hallmark of Foreigner’s Mick Jones, and the foundations are complete. What really makes All Rise such a success is the songs – from the first single In…

THE HARD STUFF STUFF BOOKS & DVDs Here To Be Heard: The Story Of The Slits Directed by William E Badgley PLEDGE MUSIC Documentary portrait of punk’s second-most influential band. It’s hard for those who didn’t actually witness The Slits’ arrival into the male-dominated conservatism of late-70s rock – or more specifically, the fractionally more liberated and inclusive punk scene – to understand how much of an impact they made. Just three weeks after guitarist Viv Albertine arrived to complete their classic line-up, they set out as the most impactful of the supporting cast on The Clash’s White Riot tour and changed history. The Clash, despite claims to the contrary, only mirrored the Rolling Stones they sought to replace: shorter of hair, tighter of trouser, but still macho louts dangling…

LIVE! Stone Broken Brighton The Haunt ‘The band skilfully blend musical tropes new and old.’ Black Country rockers step up to headline status, fortified by cups of tea, Vimto, fresh fruit and veg, and the odd ‘stripper song’. It’s the kind of thing that would cause less tolerant musicians to lay waste to their dressing room and piss on the sound desk in uncontrollable rage. But Keiron Conroy of Stone Broken simply looks round the band’s tiny dressing room in Brighton and shrugs: “No teacups. What am I going to do?” His restraint is admirable, for this is no minor issue. We’re talking about a man whose hoodie is emblazoned with the slogan ‘MÖTLEY BRËW’, and whose instagram handle is @bassandtea. It’s his rock’n’roll mouthwash of choice. In contrast, his…