Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Classic Rock

PURPLE REIGN One band, with its sprawling family tree of members past and present, shaped the sound and look of the golden age of classic rock more than any other: Deep Purple. Words: Paul Rees In no way could Deep Purple’s beginnings be described as auspicious. When the band was formed back in 1968, its three core members were, respectively, a brooding guitarist fresh from Screaming Lord Sutch And The Savages, and two transplanted East Midlanders – one a classically trained keyboard player, the other a drummer – who between them had passed through such ill-starred beat groups as Georgie And The Rave Ons and the Flower Pot Men. What’s more, their initial centre of operations was the unremarkable town of Hertford, population less than 30,000 and where, in 1563,…

PURPLE REIGN THE BUTTERFLY BALL AND THE GRASSHOPPER’S FEAST When Roger Glover was asked to soundtrack a film based on an old children’s poem, little did he know that soon it would become a live extravaganza starring Twiggy and Vincent Price. Words: Paul Rees Of all the many Purple offshoots and projects, there’s none more fanciful or just plain quirky than Roger Glover’s The Butterfly Ball And The Grasshopper’s Feast. A poem for children written in 1802 by historian, art collector, botanist, sometime MP and occasional writer William Roscoe, The Butterfly Ball was adapted in 1973 into a then-popular book by author William Plomer and illustrator Alan Aldridge. Plomer died before it was published, but its success prompted Aldridge to conceive of expanding the idea into an album that would…

PURPLE REIGN TRAPEZE Fronted by the future Voice Of Rock, Trapeze were soon on board the Express To Success. But then Deep Purple came calling and walked off with the golden-throated goose. Words: Paul Rees GETTY Growing up in the mid-60s in Cannock in the West Midlands, Glenn Hughes had three heroes. The first two were those of many other kids: George Harrison and Eric Clapton. The third was a teenage guitarist three years ahead of Hughes at school, name of Mel Galley. It was Galley’s example that convinced Hughes to ditch trombone lessons and pick up the guitar. And when at 17 he was offered the chance to join Galley in a local covers band, Finders Keepers, he leapt at it, switching to bass guitar so as to be…

PURPLE REIGN ALL THE RIGHT NOTES (AND IN THE RIGHT ORDER) The keyboard player who had previously lent his considerable talents to some of rock’s greats, Don Airey is now enjoying being part of the longest unbroken line-up Deep Purple have ever had. Words: Dave Everley Portraits: Kevin Nixon KEVIN NIXON Don Airey has a theory about the great guitarists. “They’re insecure,” he says. “All of them. A lot of the best guitarists don’t know how they do what they do; it’s like it comes from another world, almost. When you’re a keyboard player you just read music and play it. That’s easy.” This is typical Don Airey. You’d be hard-pushed to find a more self-effacing musician, especially one who has played keyboards with some of the greatest acts in…

THE ITALIAN JOB Their music blew the bloody doors off in the US in the 70s, and elsewhere, Premiata Forneria Marconi, aka PFM, remain one of the great trailblazers of European prog rock. Words: Rob Hughes “The English music press didn’t know what to make of us. They didn’t think Italian bands could play progressive rock.”Franz Di Cioccio Greg Lake was knocked out. Having listened to a cassette of tracks by a band called Premiata Forneria Marconi that he was presented with during ELP’s tour of Italy, he couldn’t wait to hear more. Back home in London, he phoned their manager, Franco Mamone. “Greg Lake told him: ‘I can’t believe they can play like this! It’s not possible! Not even King Crimson play 21st Century Schizoid Man the way they…

CHAPTER 2 FARCICAL TIMES IN ’82 “I was drinking heavily. A lot of the time I was semi-conscious.”Graham Bonnet ROSS HALFIN x2 Graham Bonnet’s brief tenure with MSG is remembered as much for the farcical nature of his exit as for the great album he left behind. As he says: “I really made a fool of myself.” He came to MSG with a big reputation. As the singer for Rainbow, his powerful voice had lit up their 1979 album Down To Earth and its two great hit singles: Since You Been Gone and All Night Long. After leaving Rainbow he had another hit as a solo artist with Night Games. “The funny thing,” he says, “is that I never wanted to be a heavy rock singer.” Bonnet had first tasted…

CHAPTER 5 RESURRECTION & THE MICHAEL SCHENKER FEST “I feel better than I did twenty years ago.”Michael Schenker When the idea of the Michael Schenker Fest was first mooted, Graham Bonnet had his doubts. “I thought it would be too much like a talent show,” he says. Robin McAuley knew better. Since 2012, after years working on film soundtracks and jingles, and touring with AOR band Survivor, he’s starred in a classic rock revue show in Las Vegas, Raiding The Rock Vault. “I share a stage with four singers every night in Vegas,” he says. “So I was confident about Michael Schenker Fest.” In these shows, Schenker had Barden, Bonnet and McAuley singing songs from their respective eras, backed by stalwarts Chris Glen and Ted McKenna, plus Steve Mann, ex-McAuley…

ALBUMS REVIEWS Reef Revelation EARMUSIC After the blink of an eye that lasted 18 years, they’re back with their fifth album. Success and fame, as they say about greatness, was rather thrust upon Reef, and they didn’t always wear it well. To an outsider it seemed that all they really wanted was to make their music – and achieve whatever came as a result in their own good time. They appeared to struggle with the work/life balance on a major label, although Sony helped them make and release four fine albums. Nevertheless, after adding five new tracks to a 2003 ‘best of’, Reef splintered. Singer Gary Stringer and bassist Jack Bessant stayed closest, and all four came together sporadically until, in 2014, Jesse Wood took over on guitar from Kenwyn House (who…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder Dead Furies Rock City A Go Go SELF-RELEASED HTTPS://DEADFURIES.BANDCAMP.COM If you’re wondering where all the good times went, apparently they went to Estonia. Straight outta Tallin, Dead Furies are the most rip-snorting sleaze-punk band I’ve heard since the Black Halos called it a day. Just imagine it: a pitch-black night-time world full of flick-knives, greasy hair, high-top sneakers, stolen cars, cheap whisky, working-class zeroes and desperate hopefuls all served up in two-minute wallops of chainsaw guitars and fist-pumping, burn-the-jailhouse-down scream-along choruses. You get it, right? This is the kinda shit we should all be listening to, all the time. It’s swaggering, obnoxious, full-tilt gonzo rock’n’roll created by three dead-enders with nowhere to go and all night to get there. Influences should be obvious given the album title,…

REISSUES REVIEWS Wishbone Ash The Vintage Years 1970-1991 MADFISH Ash blaze, crash-dive and become yacht-rock captains on monolithic box set. GETTY It took eight quid and an impossible decision to launch Wishbone Ash into the world in late 1969. The money bought the Melody Maker advert that attracted guitarists Andy Powell and Ted Turner to audition for bassist Martin Turner and drummer Steve Upton. When they couldn’t decide between the two, they went with both, resulting in the twin-guitar front line format that eventually became part of rock’s very fabric. After 1972’s career-peak Argus, Ash had 20 tortuous years of challenging follow-ups, interband friction and changing line-ups, and released 16 albums before splitting in 1991. Powell and Martin Turner might have battled acrimoniously in court for the name in 2013 (Powell won),…

REISSUES Metallica The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited BLACKENED Metal icons revisit watershed covers EP. Again. Cliff Burton’s death in September 1986 didn’t just mark the end of Metallica’s first chapter, it also changed something fundamental in the band’s DNA. Understandable, given the bassist’s uniquely off-kilter personality. But the bus accident that took his life also stripped Metallica of the feral abandon that fuelled their first three iconic albums. Like AC/DC before them, Metallica dealt with their grief by throwing themselves into their work. Within six weeks they were back on the road with replacement Jason Newsted. Less than a year later, they released The $5.98 EP, a set of wilfully unvarnished NWOBHM and punk rock covers that acted as both a healing exercise and a farewell to the band they…

STUFF BOOKS & DVDs Pin-Ups 1972-82: Ten Years Of Classic Posters From The Punk, New Wave And Glam Era Alwyn Turner and Roger Crimlis CADI Z MUSIC LTD The golden age of rolled-up rock’n’roll marketing. If you’re in your late 50s and you’re reading this magazine, unless you’re in a dentist’s waiting room and so short-sighted that you thought you’d picked up Take A Break, then you’re going to want to own this exceptional book. It’s basically a bound compilation of all the posters that your livid mother tore from your wall and threw away directly after kicking your sorry arse out of the familial home for doing whatever it was that you did. It’s also the sort of thing you can splay atop a coffee table (rather than secrete like…

LIVE! Greta Van Fleet London Islington Academy The Second Coming of Led Zeppelin materialises in London. Hallelujah! ‘It’s the thrill of the new mixed with the comfort of familiarity.’ Back in 1988, a radio station in Detroit began playing a brand new Led Zeppelin song. Titled Get It On, it was exactly the sort of huffing, preening, big-riffing number that Page and Plant coughed out 15 years earlier, right down to the cock-caught-in-a-zipper wail that rocketed it skywards. At least everyone assumed it was Zep; the station never said. But who cared? Heavy rotation and pre-internet buzz followed. The Second Coming Of Led Zeppelin was on! Except it wasn’t. No, this was a brazen music business bait-and-switch. The band were not Zeppelin, but a bunch of soundalike chancers called Kingdom…

WELCOME BACK The Sheepdogs Paying your dues? Try driving five hours to a gig and then having literally nobody turn up. It can be a dog’s life. SLASH: KEVIN NIXON; THE SHEEPDOGS: MAT DUNLAP A ROCK’N’ROLL BAND formed 12 years ago in Canada, The Sheepdogs were on the verge of calling it a day when in 2011 they became the first unsigned band to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. With the band now six albums into their career, frontman Ewan Currie explains why new flavours have been blended into the appropriately titled new album Changing Colours. What prompted the addition of trombone, clarinet, Latin percussion, pedal steel guitar, fiddle and banjo to the mix for Changing Colours? Just a desire to avoid staleness and poke at the…

PURPLE REIGN DIO & RAINBOW Had Ritchie Blackmore not left Deep Purple, we would never have had one of its greatest offshoots, and might never have become aware of one of the greatest singers in rock. Words: Mick Wall GETTY The godfathers of so much that excelled about British rock in the decade that followed their original 1976 demise – Gillan, Whitesnake, Rainbow, Black Sabbath – perhaps the greatest gift Deep Purple bequeathed the world was to help bring forth the exquisite talent and indomitable spirit of American singer Ronnie James Dio. Before Ritchie Blackmore worked with Ronnie Dio, the guitarist had envisaged what eventually became the first Rainbow album as little more than a side project; a one-off solo escapade inspired by Purple’s rejection of a new Blackmore piece…

PURPLE REIGN IAN GILLAN Post-Purple, the singer-songwriter scored some hits as the captain of his self-named bands, but it became clear that the game was over when he was tackled by football legend Rodney Marsh. Words: Paul Rees The first of Purple’s Mk II line-up to leave the band in the summer of 1973, Ian Gillan initially retired from performing and went into business. Among other ventures, he opened a country hotel and took over a recording studio. However, encouraged by his last-minute guest appearance at Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball show at the Royal Albert Hall on October 16, 1975, Gillan went into his own studio the very next week to write songs, intent on putting a band together. Initially this took the form of the Ian Gillan Band, with…

HUGHES / THRALL Glenn Hughes remembers the late 70s as his “dark period”. For him the ringing tills from the Purple years had fallen silent, and the bassist must have wondered if the limp sales of his 1977 solo album Play Me Out were now par for the course. If the public were ambivalent about his solo career, Hughes was only marginally more engaged. “I wasn’t interested in doing very much at all,” he told Classic Rock. But when he met Californian guitarist Pat Thrall in 1981, the old spark returned. “We immediately had all these amazing signatures and this great sound,” he recalls. “We wrote a lot of material.” It proved a false dawn. Recordings in Malibu ran on cocaine, and Hughes and Thrall laboured to get their sound…

PURPLE REIGN ROGER GLOVER After taking a keen interest in how Purple’s producers got the band’s sound on tape, in 1971 their bassist decided to give it a go himself. Cue successful parallel career move, as Deep Purple’s branches spread out to include Elf, Nazareth, Judas Priest, Rainbow and more… Words: Paul Rees GETTY No one during these past 50 years has been better placed than Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover to calculate the combinations of virtuosity, stubbornness, flair, wilfulness and ego that have shaped the Purple legend. After joining the band with his Episode Six bandmate Ian Gillan in 1969, for the next four years Glover made up a rhythm section alongside Ian Paice that was both huge-sounding and agile. With Gillan he established the MkII line-up’s most productive…

AHES TO ASHES With their unique twin-guitar sound, Wishbone Ash conquered both sides of the Atlantic and charted with some classics. The band’s members recall the highs, and reflect on where it all went wrong. Words: Mick Wall Sunday, August 24, 1975. The final night of the Reading Festival weekend. Cold, dark, wet, horrible. Typical British festival weather. We don’t care. We’re used to it. We’re long-haired, flared-jeaned, denim-faded 70s rock fans and we’ve come prepared: white cider, black hash, pasty yellow sulphate and – for the hard-core – cowshit-encrusted magic mushrooms. The rain can piss down all it likes – we’re already strafing the heavens. Why? The Ash, man! Here them roll like thunder through the stately overture to Phoenix, then careen off into the unknown with a new,…

ROUND-UP: BLUES By Henry Yates Joe Bonamassa British Blues Explosion Live MASCOT/PROVOGUE Think of a seminal blues titan, and chances are Joe Bonamassa can do you a decent facsimile. The guitarist has previously channelled his inner Chicago bluesman with 2015’s Muddy Wolf shows, so he was never going to struggle to inhabit the white-boy boomers at this 2016 show from the Greenwich Naval College. Jeff Beck is to the fore, the temperature rising with the knuckleduster licks of Rice Pudding and Spanish Boots, and Jimmy Page gets his due with a coruscating Tea For One and a steroid-abusing How Many More Times. But it’s Clapton who gets the lion’s share, and while Bonamassa fiddles the time line (1974’s breezy Mainline Florida and 1989’s Pretending are a long way from the Ealing…

ALBUMS REVIEWS DeWolff Thrust MASCOT Hungry like DeWolff: Dutch trio deliver a classic rock master class. Rock doesn’t get much more classic in style or exuberantly convincing than this. Not a note sounds as if it was played later than 1978, or indeed in Utrecht in 2017, as is the unlikely case here (somewhere with both Zep and Allmans sessions bleeding in through the walls seems more credible). But within their own gleefully built parameters, DeWolff’s arrangements are so imaginatively freewheeling, and their spirit so open-hearted, that they brim with versatile vigour in the 21st century. This eighth album by a trio still not out of their twenties is a blueprint for classic rock as an enduring form. Singer-guitarist Pablo van de Poel and drummer brother Luka have one not-so-secret weapon in…

REISSUES Rory Gallagher Reissues UMC Rory’s entire catalogue gets a marketing boost for what would have been his 70th year. Rory Gallagher’s legend has undoubtedly grown since his premature death (aged 47, in 1995) with axemen extraordinaire – May, Marr and Slash among them – testifying to his transformative and influential power. Gallagher’s canon – 15 albums plus two posthumous releases – confirms his status as Ireland’s greatest guitar playing poet. However, possibly overshadowed by his exceptional instrumental skills and the impassioned feel of his playing, the specifics of Rory’s songwriting craft is often overlooked. Hot on the heels of his self-titled solo debut (8/10), Deuce (9/10), Gallagher’s second LP of 1971, is a signature album. The track I’m Not Awake Yet presented a new beginning, its modal tuning and spirited…

LIVE! Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction The one-time Prime Movers play three (so far) whole Tattooed Beat Messiah shows. “I like writing new songs and playing gigs and that’s it, basically. That’s what we do. I don’t see this as a career.” Former graphic designer Mark Manning reinvented himself as Zodiac Mindwarp in the mid-80s. Together with his band the Love Reaction, which he put together in 1985, the singer released an immensely popular full-length debut, Tattooed Beat Messiah, in 1988, but criticised for the similarity of subsequent material, the bubble burst shortly afterwards. Three decades later, Zodiac and his latest Love Reaction line-up celebrate the staying power of that debut with some in-its-entirety shows. At present there are only three anniversary gigs confirmed – one at a pub…

LIVE! Brothers Osborne Will the American country-rock duo get their Willie out? Maybe. Siblings duo John (guitar) and TJ Osborne (vocals), three times Grammy nominees, undertake their first headlining tour of the UK in promotion of their second album, Port Saint Joe, which was recorded in the Florida town of the same name. John says he can’t wait. Before moving to Nashville you grew up in Deale, Maryland. How did that affect your music? It’s a small, blue-collar town, and I guess you’d say TJ and I got our grounding in music via jam sessions that took place at our house. We also learned how to drink beer and look after ourselves [laughs]. Which one of you decided to move to Nashville and try to forge a career? I was…

LIVE! Rockin’ The Blues: Eric Gales, Quinn Sullivan, Gary Hoey and Lance Lopez Zoetermeer Cultuurpodium Boerderij, The Netherlands Four blues-guitar hot-shots pool their substantial resources, and a guest appearance from a Dutch master brings a little Focus. KEVIN NIXON ‘Watching Gales is like watching Howlin’ Wolf in the body of Tupac.’ There’s a grey post box in the entrance hall of the Boerderij, with two slots marked ‘Drugs’ and ‘Wapens’. For a moment we wonder if we’ve stepped into some sort of Dutch gangland, in a car park just off a motorway, in a relatively obscure corner of Holland. Our local companions tell us the venue is a classic rock hot-spot, where rock and blues fans head from across the country to catch local and international artistes. Indeed as clean-cut…

LIVE! The BellRays London Camden Assembly Californians give a glimpse of their punk-funk-rock-soul future. ‘The set zooms in, soft-focus, on the songs of passion and devotion.’ BellRays frontwoman Lisa Kekaula raises her hands. “It’s Saturday night,” she announces. “It’s St Patrick’s Day, it’s a rock show, we all got something to do.” We know our duty. We are to rock out as though our devil horns depend upon it. And few bands are more effective rock ringleaders than California’s The BellRays, 28 years and eight albums of “hi-octane rock’n’roll” behind them, and a new dawn ahead. “Why has it been eight years since the last album [2010’s Black Lightning]?” muses guitarist Bob Vennun in the Camden Assembly’s penthouse dressing room. His mind flits across almost three decades of BellRays history,…

Lindsey out of Mac Neil Finn and Mike Campbell in as replacements. GETTY x3 IN A SHOCK MOVE, Lindsey Buckingham is out of Fleetwood Mac, and has been replace by two guitarists: Crowded House’s Neil Finn, and Mike Campbell from Tom Petty’s band the Heartbreakers. Fleetwood Mac have yet to explain the move. Rolling Stone claim Buckingham was sacked over a disagreement to do with the band’s upcoming tour, although apparently his departure had been on the cards for some time. The band’s official statement stressed that Fleetwood Mac “has always been about an amazing collection of songs that are performed with a unique blend of talents”, with drummer Mick Fleetwood adding: “We jammed with Mike and Neil and the chemistry really worked and let the band realise that this…

WELCOME BACK Melvins The band without whom “Nirvana doesn’t exist” return with album number 26, featuring two bass players. MELVINS: CHRIS CASELLA/PRESS FORMED IN MONTESANO, Washington in 1983 and centred on vocalist/guitarist Buzz Osborne and drummer Dale Crover, the Melvins were an inspiration to Nirvana, and prime movers in the experimental rock of the 80s that led to grunge and 90s alt.rock. Their twenty-sixth album, Pinkus Abortion Technician, is a metallic, low-end exploration featuring two bass players: Redd Kross’s Steven McDonald and Butthole Surfers’ Jeff Pinkus. Osborne elaborates. What was the idea with this album? We wanted to do a record with two bass players. We thought that would be cool. We had the idea when we recorded the double album A Walk With Love & Death, which came out…

6 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… Black Foxxes Mental and physical illness, travel and paying their dues are among the things that have shaped them. Words: Polly Glass Photo: James Sharrock SPECIAL THANKS TO GORDON’S WINE BAR, LONDON FOR THE PHOTO-SHOOT LOCATION:gordonswinebar.com IF NEIL YOUNG and Kurt Cobain had a kid, it would sound like Black Foxxes’ Mark Holley. The singer/guitarist writes the kind of songs that speak eloquently to tortured souls. Some call it ‘depression pop’, but that tag doesn’t really reflect the intensity and energy at work. Formed in 2014, the Exeter-based trio – completed by bassist Tristan Jane and drummer Ant Thornton – have inspired a loyal following, with visceral, emotionally charged rock that is both crushingly heavy and beautifully soft. New album Reiði takes this…

PAICE ASHTON LORD Paice Ashton Lord are the neglected branch on the Purple family tree. Not surprising, given that their existence amounted to just one studio album and a handful of live gigs. But it started with the grandest of intentions. When Deep Purple dissolved in 1976, Ian Paice and Jon Lord had two choices: they could start a soundalike band, or they could head off in a different direction entirely. “We thought: ‘If we carry on doing what we’d done before, it’ll be likened to Purple and it’ll never be accepted properly,” says Paice. “So we decided to do something completely different.” Ditching Purple’s Hammond-driven grandeur, the pair envisaged their new endeavour as a hybrid of the blues groups, jazz outfits and big bands they had grown up listening…

PURPLE REIGN IAN PAICE The only original member of Purple in the current – and surely final – line-up, their drummer talks early days, departures, splits, reunions, Blackmore and keeping the Purple ship afloat. Words: Dave Everley GETTY Ian Paice has been in Deep Purple longer than anyone else, but that doesn’t give him bragging rights. “Yes, I have tenure,” he says, “and I’ve been there since day one, but that’s all. This band is a democracy these days, which is why it works.” It’s Paice’s quiet determination that played a key part in keeping the band together during the tough periods. “I’ve never thought of quitting. I had a gig I enjoyed, playing with musicians I like. It’s been hard work at times, but it’s been worth it.” Deep…

Fighting spirit The true punk icons have returned with a commanding new album. But there’s a lot more to The Damned than you might think. Such as train spotting and gardening. Words: Ian Fortnam Photos: Will Ireland GETTY It’s a widely held belief that The Damned are an open book. Few bands maintain an image, both as a group and as individuals, that is quite so clearly defined. As an entity they’re enduring agents of anarchy and chaos who, since delivering the nascent genre’s initial vinyl statement with the seven-inch New Rose in October ’76, have been widely accepted as punk’s ultimate incarnation. The band’s creative core is the chalk-and-cheese combination of founder members Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible, two of rock’s most instantly recognisable characters. Vampiric vocalist and Dark…

CHAPTER 1 GARY BARDEN AND THE EARLY DAYS “I wanted an unknown singer.”Michael Schenker TOP: GEORGE BODNAR ARCHIVE/ICONICPIX; BOTTOM: ROSS HALFIN They were an odd couple, Michael Schenker and Gary Barden – the enigmatic guitar hero who never wanted to be famous, and the printer’s apprentice who had overcome a stammer to chase his dreams of stardom as a rock singer. But it was this partnership that shaped the first two classic albums by the Michael Schenker Group. And it was purely by chance that Schenker found the man he calls “the definitive MSG singer”. In 1979, Schenker was at a crossroads. After quitting UFO, he’d been lured back to the Scorpions, the band in which he made his recording debut, aged 16, on their 1972 album Lonesome Crow. As…

ROUND-UP: PROG By Jo Kendall Lazuli Saison 8 L’Abeille Rôde Eight seasons in a year – how much of a prog-rock concept is that? In their twentieth year together, accomplished French quintet Lazuli can be as fanciful as they like on their latest album, Saison 8, which springs from the traps with a joyous, piano-tinkling opener in the shape of J’Attends Un Printemps. There’s a soupçon of Wanted Dead Or Alive (and Nirvana) in the swagger of Mes Amis, Mes Frères, before prog balance is restored by the Steven Wilson-esque darkness of Les Côtes. Mes Semblables raises its own Zeppelin/Hackett racket, then the semi-acoustic Les 4 Mortes Saisons swirls and enchants to the record’s close. All Legolas hair and dramatic nu-neo melodics, with the wonderful, unique sound of Claude Leonetti’s…

ALBUMS REVIEWS Neil Young & Promise Of The Real Paradox (Original Music From The Film) REPRISE Neil Young Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live Snapshot of past glories, plus a curio from his autumn years. These releases show two Neil Youngs. The first is him at 27 and at his peak, the second at 72, a little careworn and commercially reduced but still questing. From September 1973, Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live (8/10) sees Young christen the infamous nightclub on Sunset (“First topless girl we get up here gets these boots!” he hoots, in a nod to the Roxy’s strip-joint past). While another announcement that “we’re gonna have a few new songs” might reasonably elicit groans, these are no ordinary songs, but the meat of the Tonight’s The Night album that he would…

ROUND-UP: MELODIC ROCK By Dave Ling Shiraz Lane Carnival Days FRONTIERS This little corker had the misfortune to emerge during an insane month when everybody and their pet pooch was busy touting a brand new album. Compared to the army of bigger dogs that forced them to slip through the cracks, Shiraz Lane can be considered mere pups right now, though make no mistake, Carnival Days earmarks them as possible future Best In Show champions of Crufts. Back in 2016 the Finns released a promising full-length debut, For Crying Out Loud, that saw critics compare them to Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith and Skid Row, though naturally such references were used with caution. Big question marks were also raised against the vocals of Hannes Kett and his Darkness-flavoured lapses into falsetto.…

BUYER’S GUIDE Pat Benatar One of the most successful solo female rock artists of the 80s, she became a superstar by doing things her way or no way. It was that extraordinary voice, on classic hit singles from the 80s – Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Shadows Of The Night, Love Is A Battlefield, We Belong – that made her a superstar. But there is another quality to Pat Benatar that has had a powerful influence on her career – call it self-belief, independence or a simple, no-bullshit attitude. All that she has achieved (including those hits, seven US platinum-or-better albums, four Grammys), she has done so on her own terms, whatever the consequences. As a female rock star in an arena at the time dominated by men and…

INTERVIEWS Dan Baird & Homemade Sin The US guitarist/singer rejoins his band after his cancer treatment. Forced to sit out last summer’s touring commitments after developing chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), former George Satellites frontman/guitarist Baird has been in remission for the past three months and this year is set to play two UK tours with his band. How are you feeling now? I’m much, much better. The chemo drugs were hard on the system, but they beat the hell out of dying. The doctors told me that after they wear off the fog would lift, and it’s exactly what happened. You’re now fully in remission? Yeah. The treatment began in September, and by the end of November I was in remission, but you have to complete the course of drugs.…