Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i Classic Rock

GONE IN THE NIGHT THE STARS PAY TRIBUTE “Such sad news. I haven’t seen Pete for years but will always have great memories and such unbelievable stories of what we’d get up to.” Ozzy Osbourne “RIP Rockstar. One of my main influences. Of all the people I’ve known and toured with, in his day Pete Way was the most fun, and he remained a good friend. Lights Out In London really says it all.” Nikki Sixx “This year keeps getting worse. One of the ‘characters’ of metal and fellow Aston Villa supporter has passed. Pete supported Deadland Ritual on the show in London. Very funny man.” Geezer Butler “Pete was a friend, a mentor, produced Twisted Sister’s seminal first album, brought us to the gates of the metal kingdom and…

Frankie Banali November 14, 1951 – August 20, 2020 FRANKIE BANALI: AVALON/PHOTOSHOT The amiable, gifted drummer who played on the first heavy metal album to reach No.1 on the Billboard chart has passed away at age 68. Former Quiet Riot member Frankie Banali was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer in April 2019, and despite being given six months to live put up a courageous 16-month fight. New Yorker Banali moved to Los Angeles in 1975, where he met the other members of Quiet Riot. Although guitarist Randy Rhoads quit to join Ozzy Osbourne, their third album, Metal Health, went on to sell 10 million copies, thanks largely to a faithful cover version of Slade’s Cum On Feel The Noize. Despite reworking another Slade hit, Mama Weer All Crazee Now, which…

MY FIRST LOVE Derek And The Dominos The singer-songwriter on a 70s classic. By Jason Isbell LAYLA AND OTHER ASSOCIATED LOVE SONGS “My first love was probably the Layla record. That or around the same time my parents gave me Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. It had all those Sly Stone samples and stuff and I loved that record. So those were the first two records I remember actually flipping over myself, over and over. “But I was a huge Eric Clapton fan. That opened it up for me, cos when I was eleven or twelve years old I listened to Eric Clapton all the time and got all the recordings and really studied his playing. “The first music I heard was family stuff. My grandparents played and sang and…

THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS Iggy And The Stooges Search And Destroy A track that started out with James Williamson “goofing around making machine-gun sounds”, its combination of pounding rhythm and aggressive guitar provided a template for punk. Words: Ian Fortnam Without the apparently limitless chutzpah of David Bowie, the broader musical landscape would be a significantly different place. Prior to Ziggy elevating Bowie to superstar status, he was already empire building. Luckily for posterity, he had both an eye for talent and an attractive compulsion to pay his dues. Major influences on his transformation from parochial folky to pansexual glam star weren’t so much sidelined as celebrated. A stalled and desolate Mott The Hoople were seduced back into existence with Bowie song All The Young Dudes; Lou Reed’s tanking…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder Dirty Princess Band Mad Cat Lives SELF-RELEASED Do you remember that gleefully obnoxious wall of hairy, pulsating distortion dolloped out like scoops of psychedelic ice cream by long-gone 80s neon funsters We’ve Got a Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It? Well, Portland’s Dirty Princess Band are bringing that ear-shredding wall of Day-glo fuzz back, laced into catchy, aggressive, sleazed-up punk anthems that drip with attitude. I can’t begin to imagine what their inspirations might be, but they sure do sound like the Shangri-Las wallowing in some kind of downer ecstasy scene with the Jesus And Mary Chain. Lyrically it’s all over the place, from mental health issues to addiction and sex (and various combinations thereof), but musically it’s just a solid blast of swaggering, in-your-face rock’n’roll. Naturally…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Marilyn Manson We Are Chaos LOMA VISTA Album number 11 from the self-appointed God Of F**k delivers a mixed bag. It seems like a long time ago that Marilyn Manson was America’s number-one bogey man. Who needs to fear a middle-aged goth when there’s an actual monster occupying the White House, troops on the streets and decades of pent-up frustration at social injustice ready to ignite at any minute? With his eleventh album, Manson isn’t here to conjure evil, darkness and mayhem, he’s here to reflect the terrors that are already out there. ‘I can stick a needle in the horror and fix your blindness,’ he growls in Red Black And Blue, the satisfyingly portentous opener of We Are Chaos. ‘My eyes are mirrors/All I can…

THE HARD STUFF REISSUES The Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup UNIVERSAL Remastered, multi-format edition of the band’s 1973 classic, with previously unheard tracks. The Stones’ eleventh studio album has long been seen as an acquired taste, plain fare compared to its immaculate predecessors: 1972’s Exile On Main St. and 1971’s Sticky Fingers. However, while it’s easy to see Goats Head Soup (its title inspired by a Jamaican aphrodisiac, apparently) as a missed opportunity – the band had decamped to Dynamic Sounds Studios in Kingston in late 1972, enthused by the possibilities of fusing rock with reggae – it retains a gritty charm of its own. With Keith Richards mired in drug addiction and Mick Jagger revelling in his public image as a jet-setting Lothario, it’s the sound of a band…

RIP Thank you and good night. Thank you and good night. Steve Holland February 2, 1954 – August 2, 2020 The last surviving original member of southern rockers Molly Hatchet has died at the age of 66. Lead and rhythm guitarist Steve Holland played with the band from 1971 to ’84, appearing on their first five albums. “You will always be one of the greatest, Steve,” said a post from his most recent band, Gator Country. “Rest well and sing out with Danny Joe [Brown], Dave [Hlubeck], Duane [Roland], Banner [Thomas], Bruce [Crump], Jimmy [Farrar] and Riff [West] in Heaven.” Sir Alan Parker February 14, 1944 – July 31, 2020 The acclaimed British director of films including Evita, Midnight Express and Bugsy Malone, and of course Pink Floyd’s celluloid version…

Martin Birch December 27, 1948 – August 9, 2020 The veteran producer responsible for working on vitally important albums for bands including Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Wishbone Ash, Fleetwood Mac and Blue Öyster Cult has died at the age of 71 of undisclosed causes. The news was confirmed on Twitter by Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale, who said: “It is with a very heavy heart I’ve just had verified my very dear friend and producer Martin Birch has passed away. Martin was a huge part of my life, helping me from the first time we met [around the time of Deep Purple’s album Burn in 1973] through until Slide It In [1984]. My thoughts and prayers go to his family, friends and fans.” Born in Woking, Surrey, Birch first…

NEWS Pink Floyd’s 1988 concert film Delicate Sound Of Thunder is being screened at cinemas around the world for one night only on October 15. It was filmed at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island during the band’s tour for A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. Angelo Tristan, the singer with UK hard rockers Collateral, has landed the role of Steven Tyler in a new Aerosmith biopic. Collateral released their self-titled debut album in February. UK-based space-rock prog duo Sontaag release two brand-new tracks – Beyond Forever and Back To My Soul – on September 18 via Cleopatra Records. Both feature Adam And The Ants/Bow Wow Wow drummer Dave Barbarossa and former Swervedriver bassist Steve George. Long-running UK black metal band Cradle Of Filth are selling their own brand of ‘satanic’ teas.…

WELCOME BACK Dokken Mainman Don Dokken on a new album from old tapes, his injury, and why the classic line-up won’t play again. DOKKEN: KEVIN NIXON DOKKEN ARE ONE of the most respected bands from the 80s American hard rock scene, and albums such as Tooth And Nail, Under Lock And Key and Back For The Attack feature some of the era’s most abiding anthems. With a revolving line-up centering on mainman Don Dokken, the band continues to this day. Now, Don has delved into the archives for The Lost Songs: 1978 – 1981, a collection of raw demos, and an opportunity to hear the young Don Dokken as he began to develop his inimitable style. Why release this material now? I only just found out I had these tapes.…

CUM ON FEEL THE NOIZE! For a time in 1970s, with fun-tastic hit after mis-spelled hit they were the most popular band in Britain. But then a car crash put the brakes on, America didn’t ‘get’ them, and as glam-rock faded so too did the band’s fortunes. This is the story of Slade, in their own words. Words: Dave Ling “There were several reasons for Slade’s success,” the band’s guitarist and fabled ‘Superyob’ Dave Hill informs Classic Rock, in a Black Country accent thick as treacle. “Most importantly, we had great songs. But the whole country recognised us as four working-class guys who’d got glammed-up, stuck their fists in the air and were telling everyone to have a good time. We were no-nonsense. We didn’t take ourselves seriously, and we…

THE HARD STUFF The Ultimate ROCK REVIEWS Section EDITED BY IAN FORTNAM ian.fortnam@futurenet.com CLASSIC ROCK RATINGS En Minor When The Cold Truth Has Worn Its Miserable Welcome Out SEASONS OF MIST Former Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo goes Leonard Cohen. Remember that miserablist, druggy and weirdly alternative streak that crept into Pantera’s 90s output – songs like Good Friends And A Bottle Of Pills or Suicide Note Part II? Well here’s a whole album of ex-Pantera frontman Phil Anselmo tapping that vein, and doing it better. Backed by cello, slide guitar and keyboards on intensely melancholy soundscapes like Mausoleums, On The Floor and Dead Can’t Dance, Anselmo sounds like a southern, loaded Leonard Cohen. Thanks to having several decades under his belt, Anselmo now has the vocal authority to deliver this…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets Live At The Roundhouse SONY LEGACY Resetting the controls. There’s something delightfully old-fashioned about the concept behind Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, like an adventure story from the pages of Boy’s Own Paper or Ripping Yarns with black-and-white illustrations of men in pith helmets and khaki shorts hacking their way through the jungle in search of the Lost Legend Of Pink Floyd. With that perverse English trait that values failure above success, their quest is not to find Pink Floyd’s greatest hits, but their greatest misses. You can almost hear the shouts of “Yarroo!” as they unearth The Nile Song from the soundtrack of the film More that represents the band’s brief foray into heavy metal. The expedition is led by…

THE HARD STUFF STUFF BOOKS & DVDs Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life Of Jimi Hendrix Philip Norman WIEDENFELD & NICOLSON Late-to-the-party retread fails to ignite heavyweight 50th-anniversary tome. Precision-timed to mark 50 years since Jimi Hendrix left the planet comes another book claiming to be the definitive last word on rock’s greatest guitarist, its PR blurb promising “the first biography to bring together the splendour and sadness of his brief life”, “revelation-packed narrative” and “a surprise on almost every page”. Such a build-up can only bring a letdown, especially after recent Hendrix books by Ben Valkhoff and Corey Artrail Washington. Norman is the Sunday Times writer who rose to biography-writing prominence after his 1981 Beatles account Shout!. He starts promisingly with his richly detailed account of Jimi’s awful childhood…

LIVE! Biffy Clyro A Celebration Of Endings: Unique Live Performance The Scots perform their ace new album in iconic Glasgow venue. Not live, not at all, but that doesn’t matter one bit when a band like Biffy Clyro take what passes for a night out in ‘the new normal’ and turn it completely on its head. Mostly performance, some theatre, but all of it brimming with energy, if we can’t have live then at least we have this. Recorded in multiple spaces in the Barrowland Ballroom (and outside at one point), the show includes black and white footage of the soundcheck and a heartfelt Bubbles, and wonderful dressing room renderings of Machines and Rearrange. Singer Simon Neil peers out of the darkness, struggling to make sense of the tacky strands…

INSIDE THE WORLD OF ROCK the DIRT FOR MORE NEWS: WWW.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM PETE WAY Classic Rock’s Dave Ling takes a personal look back at the music, life and times of the late UFO cornerstone. He was the “prototype badass early-metal bassist” who influenced so many who came after him, many of whom remember him here. Photographs: Ross Halfin August 7, 1951 – August 14, 2020 The bass-wielding, shape-throwing co-founder of UFO, Waysted, Fastway and latterly his own group the Pete Way Band has died at the age of 69. Way’s Facebook page posted that he had “sustained life-threatening injuries in an accident two months ago but fought hard until finally succumbing to those injuries”. His wife Jenny later revealed that Way fell down the stairs at their house in Bournemouth, and…

Guitar Show 2020 Goes Online GN’R and King Crimson alumni to take part. Guns N’ Roses guitarist Richard Fortus, former GN’R shredder Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal and King Crimson guitarist/vocalist Jakko Jakszyk are among those confirmed to take part in this year’s Guitar Show, with more to be announced. Due to lockdown restrictions, this year’s event takes place online on September 25/26. Hosted by MusicRadar, in association with Classic Rock’s sister titles Guitar World, Guitarist, Guitar Player and Total Guitar, it’s going to be a packed couple of days. The Virtual Guitar Show will have exhibits from the world’s biggest guitar brands, and workshops for everyone, no matter what level of playing you’re at. You’ll also have access to tips and advice to improve your playing, musicians will give special performances,…

WELCOME BACK Champlin-Williams-Friestedt The name might resemble a law firm, but thankfully the sound of the former Chicago and Toto frontmen doesn’t. Champlin-Williams-Friestedt combine experience and youth. Bill Champlin spent almost three decades with Chicago, singing many of their softrock hits, while Joseph Williams fronted Toto for two mid-1980s albums. Completed by Peter Friestedt, the trio have a sound that’s heady with AOR nostalgia yet coloured by a modern palette, and have just released CWF2. Is the five-year gap between CWF and CWF2 purely because Joseph Williams has been so busy with Toto? Bill Champlin: I didn’t realise that it was so long. But our schedules with other projects, including Toto, have added to the length of time between albums. Peter Friestedt: We wanted other session musicians to add specific…

WELCOME BACK Levellers Mark Chadwick on peace, principles, turning down headlining Reading, and being “the last punk band”. LEVELLERS: STEVE GULLICK THE LEVELLERS WERE made for these times. From despotic world leaders to environmental meltdown, Brighton’s folk-punk politicos have juicier targets right now than at any point since they debuted with 1990’s A Weapon Called The Word. On eleventh album Peace, their signature sound – with Jon Sevink’s mournful fiddle atop charging punky guitars – remains rousing, and singer Mark Chadwick tells us their teeth are sharper than ever. The last Levellers album was in 2012. How difficult has it been to watch developments over the past eight years? It’s insane. It’s fascinating. It’s depressing. There’s a lot of subjects coming out on this record. It’s about the disquiet, this…

Selling The Drama Fuelled by personal disappointment, betrayal and “coming to terms with shit like Brexit”, Biffy Clyro’s latest album is a masterful triumph in the face of adversity. Words: Emma Johnston Stillness does not come easily to Biffy Clyro. The Ayrshire trio have a famously intense work ethic, and a catalogue of eight wildly inventive albums nurtured in between a tour schedule that would strike fear into the less motivated. But when lockdown hit, just as they were preparing to take their magnificent new album A Celebration Of Endings on the road, they were forced into the longest period of domesticity of their career. “Some days I feel quite fortunate that we still get to put the record out, and some days I feel heartbroken that we can’t do…

A way worlds Nomadic living, religious music, Taoist literature and a stint in Abbey Road are among the building blocks of All Them Witches’ kaleidoscopic, firebrand new album. Words: Polly Glass It’s mating season for snakes in the woods in Arkansas, where All Them Witches’ singer/bassist Charles Michael Parks Jr lives in a rundown cabin. Four or five venomous breeds lurk in the undergrowth and creeks of this untamed pocket of the American south. Mosquitoes are large and merciless, especially in the heat of August. There is no TV, cell-phone service or internet. Parks lives out here alone, except for a cat, which hunts the rats and brown recluse spiders that creep inside from time to time. He hunts and fishes when he needs to, and when we talk he’s…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Fish Weltschmerz CHOCOLATE FROG Fish signs off with imposing swansong before retiring to become a writer. Fish’s final album – he’s in his 60s and a realist, and the music business “is a very different beast now” – has been much delayed by acts of God. Various injuries and operations have frustrated his process, as have family tragedies. All that before the lockdown. At last it’s here, and his intention to make his farewell statement his masterpiece (“like I did with Clutching, with Marillion”) has largely born fruit. Weltschmerz is a near-90-minute epic that dives into big, heavy themes like Tarkovsky on downers. Invited to the party are suicide, cancer, refugees, dementia and ageing. Fish hopes a beautiful melancholy brings light amid the darkness, that flowers…

THE HARD STUFF REISSUES Various Jobcentre Rejects Vol 3 & 4 ON THE DOLE More rare gems discovered down the back of the denim ’n’ leather sofa of metal. Still mining the apparently endless seam of metal that time forgot, volumes three and four in the excellent Jobcentre Rejects series prove that there are plenty of worthwhile rarities still begging to be heard and savoured by connoisseurs of the obscure and sometimes criminally overlooked. For those who care about such things, there’s some genuine gold dust to be found in the marginalia of metal; bands and artists who made a valiant self-financed stab at recognition, only to vanish before making the most of their potential. True, the production on some of the records is rougher than a badger’s arse, but…

THE HARD STUFF BUYER'S GUIDE Folk rock Rock pillaged folk right through the 60s. But when that decade ended, the folkies grabbed it right back. Rock musicians spent half the 1960s nicking ideas off the folkies. You only have to take a brief listen to Jimmy Page’s Black Mountain Side instrumental on Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut alongside folk guitarist Bert Jansch’s Black Water Side (see what he done there?) to realise that they are even closer than the (not so) subtle title change suggests. Fast forward to Led Zeppelin III, and that’s folk rock you’re listening to on Gallows Pole, a traditional folk song given the rock’n’roll treatment. And who’s this bloke Roy Harper they’re taking their hats off to on the last track? Some renegade folkie Zep have adopted,…