Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 i Classic Rock

WELCOME Sometimes things catch you a little off guard. And one such instance happened this month. It was a random Tuesday evening a couple of weeks ago when, just before 9pm, I received a text from a friend stating simply: ‘EVH dead’. Although I knew that Eddie Van Halen had been suffering again with the cancer that finally claimed him, I didn’t see this one coming. It’s going to take a long time to process that he is no longer here in the world with us. What we do have, however, is the music he left behind; his songwriting and his incredible guitar pyrotechnics. He was the last great guitar hero that truly changed guitar playing and rock music forever. We pay tribute from page 10. On a much brighter…

Is Gig Drought End In Sight? Promoter suggests Easter return. CONCERT PROMOTER STUART Galbraith, the boss of Kilimanjaro Live, has earmarked a date as a possible target for the return of full-capacity live gigs. “The date that we should be pushing for is April 8,” he told Music Week, “because it’s immediately after Easter and I think the government should find that acceptable – it will fit in with political and society agendas. Being midweek, it’s not a date you’re going to see people go crazy on, like a Saturday. We could ease into it.” However, some less optimistic industry experts predict that while next year’s summer festivals could be viable, they view the following spring as more realistic. Since the last issue of Classic Rock, more than 1,300 theatres,…

NEWS The six-year-long plagiarism legal case over Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven is finally over. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, thus closing the matter for good. Luke Spiller of The Struts has put himself forward for the role of Joe Elliott in any future Def Leppard biopic. “I wanna see a Leppard film done properly,” he says (an MTV attempt from 2001 is widely derided). “Just to put it out there – I could dye my hair blond and put on the Union Jack sleeveless shirt.” Elliott and Leppard guitarist Phil Collen appear on The Struts’ new song I Hate How Much I Want You. Celebrating their 45th anniversary, the original line-up of The Damned – Dave Vanian (vocals), Brian James (guitar), Captain Sensible (reverting…

FLYING HIGH. WELL, NOT TOO HIGH As any iron Maiden fan will tell you, aviation is a great subject for heavy metal song. But Biff Byford cheerfully admits that he’s never had any serious plans to fly a plane himself. “I never liked flying. I was always a nervous flyer,” he says. “I still don’t like it, but I’ve got used to it now. It always used to affect my ears really badly, especially if I sang on the day we flew into somewhere. I’d find I was singing in the wrong key. But I’m okay with it. I’ve flown on a lot of 747s, put it that way. Ha!”…

“I’M BY NO MEANS NORMAL” As a teenager she was playing with Santana and Steve Vai. Since then Orianthi has toured with Alice Cooper, befriended rock’s A-list and become one of the industry’s most in-demand guitarists. Now she has a new record. Words: Polly Glass Orianthi doesn’t blend in. Even in her home city of LA, a veritable hotbed of glamorous freaks, the Adelaideborn virtuoso stands out; her assemblage of trilbys, luminous feather boas, leathers, babydoll lips and huge sunglasses give her the look of a Sunset Strip cowboy, with a pleasingly weird edge. The mononymous name helps. She’s no girl-nextdoor, and nor does she want to be. It all compounds the already commanding effect of her six-string chops, honed over years of A-list collaborations and solo hits that began…

BEST OF THE REST Other reissues out this month. David Bowie Metrobolist WARNER Tony Visconti’s 2020 remix of Bowie’s first Mick Ronson collaboration The Man Who Sold The World is neither sacrilege nor revelation. Technically superior, but really, why mess with magic? 8/10 Various Bubblerock Is Here To Stay! GRAPEFRUIT Glam-rock teens were weaned on the turn-of-the-70s pop-shlock collected on these three lovingly curated discs. Often wincingly terrible, but nostalgia knows no logic. An unedifying joy. 7/10 Style Council Long Hot Summers: The Story Of The Style Council POLYDOR/UMC Growing up mod, with dreams of cool jazz and Paris café culture, Paul Weller (blessed with a vast, Jam-earned budget) couldn’t resist the Style Council’s ambitious indulgence. Neatly anthologised, but hardly All Mod Cons. 7/10 Pretty Things Parachute (50th Anniversary) MADFISH…

This month’s contributors HANNAH MAY KILROY Having started her music journalism career as an intern at Classic Rock, Hannah May has since worked for a number of music magazines, and she was previously Deputy Ed at our sister magazine Prog. This issue she celebrated her love of southern rock by talking to Black Stone Cherry for us (p38). TOM MORELLO The perfect contributor – we gave him a commission, a word count and a deadline, and Tom delivered his copy on time. He wrote about his early years as a teenage metalhead (p46) and accompanied them with personal photos from his new book, Whatever It Takes. When not writing for CR, Tom spends most of his time playing guitar in bands including Rage Against The Machine and Prophets Of Rage.…

the DiRT ★HIGH HOPES When Rivers Meet Taking in Delta blues, classic rock giants and a Meat Loaf tribute band, these rivers run deep. ROB BLACKHAM/PRESS “I’d like to think the album is a bit Bad Company-ish.” LIKE MANY GOOD ideas, When Rivers Meet began in a pub. Guitarist Aaron Bond and singer/resonator mandolin player Grace Bond met when Aaron was a punter at his local watering hole in Norfolk and Grace was behind the bar pulling pints (when she wasn’t touring with a Meat Loaf tribute). They locked eyes on Grace’s first shift and never looked back. “It sounds really pukey,” Grace says, grimacing, “but… we knew each other straight away. But Aaron’s not the sort of person who’s gonna chat you up; I got a few texts saying:…

Q&A Perry Farrell The Jane’s Addiction main man on his new box set, becoming a quarter of an inch taller, and the power of PG Tips. Words: Dave Everley Perry Farrell isn’t naturally inclined to look backwards, but he’s making an exception today. A lavish, multi-disc new box set, The Glitz; The Glamour, charts the Jane’s Addiction frontman’s resolutely maverick career away from the alt.rock godfathers, from early-80s goth band Psi-Com to last year’s solo album-come-aural three-ring circus Kind Heaven. “I had music spread out everywhere,” he says of his decision to finally bring everything together. “It’s been a wild ride, man.” Today, speaking via Zoom from his home in LA, the 61-year-old sounds a little hoarse – the result of a recent operation on his vertebrae, it turns out.…

DIARY OF A TEENAGE METALHEAD Before Rage Against The Machine were rock veterans, before Prophets Of Rage even existed, there was a young Kiss fan building his star from the ground up. Now, as he prepares to publish a career-spanning new book, Whatever It Takes, Tom Morello takes us back to his early years. Words: Tom Morello Portrait: Joby Sessions My first ever gig – a euphoric moment. My first concert was seeing my favorite band in the world at the time, Kiss. The show was at the Chicago Stadium in a suspect part of Chicago. My mom, who was a high-school teacher, bought a ticket for a student of hers to drive my friend and I to the show. This was a time where the great bands really maintained…

GULT HEROES A brilliant line-up, lyrics from a science-fiction author, an homage to Spinal Tap… Welcome to the first new Blue Öyster Cult album in almost 20 years. Words: Dave Ling Portrait: Mark Weiss When Blue Öyster Cult last saw fit to release a studio album, the newly elected US president George W Bush was busy arranging furniture in the White House, Holland had become the first nation to green-light same-sex marriages, and New York was still several months away from the 9/11 terror attacks. Yes, it was that long ago. In stark contrast to the halcyon days of the 1970s and early 80s, when the Big Apple-resident band enjoyed a run of best-selling albums and even a global smash hit single, (Don’t Fear) The Reaper, the new millennium saw…

The HOT LIST So it’s been a busy month or so, wouldn’t you say? We lost the great Eddie Van Halen. AC/DC released their new single. Rammstein started posting videos from the studio. Covid-19… ah fuck, who knows where that’ll be by the time you read this, so we’ll refrain from commenting on it. But between all the big-hitting, news-feed-filling headlines there was new music being released. Good new music, and lots of it. In these strange times we’re living in it’s a reassuring constant to find ourselves continually picking up on first-rate new tracks from big names, unknowns and rising stars. Clearly the 12 tracks we’ve chosen here don’t represent them all (we’d need a lot more pages to do that), but as a snapshot of the crème de…

ROUND-UP: BLUES By Henry Yates ROB BLACKHAM/PRESS When Rivers Meet We Fly Free ONE ROAD Wheel-spinning out of dodge like Bonnie and Clyde on opener Did I Break The Law, Grace and Aaron Bond prove capable getaway drivers on a debut album that unfolds like a road movie. We Fly Free confirms what two EPs hinted at: the British husband-and-wife are heavy enough to get your attention and quirky enough to hold it, with songs that give you a kicking but leave a boot-print on your heart. Bound For Nowhere is the best of the album’s 11 cuts, the raging guitars spiced by Grace’s pleasingly creepy violin, and when they lock vocals on Walking On The Wire it transcends the route-one stomp. Elsewhere the duo show their depth: I’d Have Fallen…

Elton John In-depth catalogue sweep reveals young Elton’s insatiable appetite. Elton: Jewel Box UMC/EMI So the 148-track, eight-CD set is two minutes short of 10 hours (cherry-picking vinyl versions are available). What, you couldn’t stick one more song on, round it up? Mock greed aside, Elton: Jewel Box is every bit the treasure trove for fans that it aims to be, gathering a cornucopia of rarities, unreleased tracks and deep cuts that indicate Elton’s own favourite career moments. It’s an act of legacy curating, giving insight into his self-image and a reminder that his youth was one of scatter-gun energy. It’s as if he’s saying: “Okay, we’ve done the movie and the autobiography, and the latest greatest hits package has been in the charts for three years, but don’t forget…

The Wedding Present A lesson in livestreaming. Undisclosed venue, Brighton ★ Try to stop a speeding wheel dead in its tracks and something’s gonna break. In the case of full-throttle indie rock road warriors The Wedding Present, facing the postponement of 2020’s live schedule and their annual At The Edge Of The Sea festival in Brighton, it was the lockdown that had to bend. David Gedge, white-haired for the pandemic, has been performing regular online acoustic sets for the duration, and this full-band livestream from an undisclosed Brighton venue brings their brilliant, often ferocious heartache pop back from the bubble with a pure unleashed rock fervour. Even for a gig with no audience, they set out to crowd-please. The George Best strum frenzies of My Favourite Dress and Everyone Thinks…

Stone Temple Pilots Purple livestream lacks colour. Who knows where? ★ A flimsy ‘Purple livestream’ is all you get in terms of what to expect. But one of the great bands of the 90s playing one of their best albums in its entirety live, yours for just $10? Wrap it up, I’ll take it. I mean, the album is a classic. And they’ll probably be performing somewhere really interesting or unusual, and/or maybe playing all or some of the songs differently to how we’ve heard them before, right? But no, they play in what appears to be a dim, grey rehearsal space, so visually it’s not what you’d call eye-popping, and they stick as close to the album versions of the songs as you could get. There’s the slow, tank-like…

Thurston Moore A streamed show by the idiosyncratic guitarist from a London vinyl Mecca. London Rough Trade East ★ With his right hand becoming a blur, Thurston Moore closes his eyes, tilts his head back and puts his mind into a state of bliss as the epic Locomotives rolls ever on. The noise emanating from his uniquely tuned guitar steadily evolves from chimes into an ever-circling drone, and it soon becomes difficult not to share in his sense of ecstasy. While guitarist James Sedwards and electronics embellisher Jon Leidecker are absent due to the ongoing pandemic, modern technology enables tonight’s show to be streamed live from an empty venue. Beautifully shot in black and white, Moore is joined by bassist Debbie Googe and drummer Jem Doulton as the trio perform…

The Soundtrack Of My Life Actor (and muso) William Shatner on the records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance to him. Interview: Rob Hughes “BB King has such a guttural, heartfelt, soulful voice.” Enterprising screen legend William Shatner may be best known for TV roles in Star Trek, T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal, but he has also recorded a series of thoroughly unique albums under his own name. The latest is The Blues, which sees the 89-year-old tackle a bunch of standards with help from a starry cast that includes guitarists Ritchie Blackmore, James Burton, Steve Cropper and Albert Lee. Here’s the Captain’s Log of the music part of his life. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING My dad would come home from work every Saturday afternoon, lie…

Spencer Davis July 17, 1939 – October 19, 2020 GETTY x2 AS THIS ISSUE of Classic Rock went to press, Spencer Davis, best known as leader and guitarist of the Spencer Davis Group, died in hospital while being treated for pneumonia. He was 81 years old. The news was confirmed by Spencer Davis Group drummer Pete York, who said: “Spencer was a lovely man – always very courteous and a purist about music.” Steve Winwood, the keyboard player, vocalist and guitarist with whom Davis co-founded the Spencer Davis Group, called Spencer “a man with a vision”, adding: “He was among the pioneers of the British invasion of America in the 1960s. I never went to the US with Spencer, but he later embraced America, and America embraced him. “Spencer was…

NEWS Tony Iommi and Nick Mason have teamed up to record a song for an as-yet unspecified cancer charity. Iommi recently revealed: “I think Ronnie Wood is going to play a bit on this track as well. A lot of other celebrities are doing something for it.” Guitarist Steve Lukather and singer Joseph Williams have a new line-up of Toto. Joining them are bassist John Pierce, drummer Robert Searight, keyboard players Steve Maggiora and Dominique Taplin and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Warren Ham. Jaz Coleman is selling a brand of pies and hot sauce. The Killing Joke frontman aims “to reinvent pie and mash, dragging it kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century” with jerk chicken, red peppers and chilli in a gluten-free pastry called The Joker, and a vegetarian option named The…

TWENTY SIXTY SIX AND THEN Riches from the rock underground TWENTY SIXTY SIX AND THEN Reflections Of The Future, United Artists Records, Germany, 1972. £1,000+ Twenty Sixty Six And Then (a name concocted by adding 1,000 years to the famous 1066 Battle of Hastings) were a pretty shortlived band, lasting just over 16 months. However, during that time they recorded one of the jewels of underground German progressive rock. Reflections Of The Future features some great, often bizarre psychedelic Krautrock moments. The pinnacle of this glorious madness is the seven-minute mini-epic Butterking. Through voice-affected narration, singing and panning, Manchester born vocalist Geff Harrison recreates the moment he looked a butterfly in the eye before engaging in conversation and embarking on a mindbending journey to the land of butterflies. ‘One of…

WIN A SIGNED ANGUS YOUNG GIBSON SG GUITAR! To celebrate the release of AC/DC's new album Power Up, we've teamed up with Gibson and AC/DC's label Sony to offer you the chance to win a Gibson SG guitar, signed by Angus Young himself! Power Up is the long-awaited 17th studio album from AC/DC and the first following the death of founding member and guitarist Malcolm Young. “This record is pretty much a dedication to Malcolm, my brother,” Angus Young said recently. “It’s a tribute for him like Back In Black was a tribute to Bon Scott.” Power Up will be released on November 13 on Sony. All you have to do to enter is go to the web address below and correctly answer the following question. The Gibson SG was…

This Or That? Empyre frontman Henrik Steedholdt submits to the world’s toughest questionnaire. Beatles or Stones? Beatles. AC/DC or Zeppelin? AC/DC. Gibson or Fender? Definitely Gibson from my side. Robert Plant or Paul Rodgers? Er… Robert Plant. No, wait. In terms of tone, Paul Rodgers. Cigarettes or alcohol? Alcohol. Sixties or seventies music? Sixties. Not really a big fan of the seventies, I much prefer sixties stuff. Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses? Guns N’ Roses – by a good margin. Fine wine or cold beer? Cold beer. I tried to base it on if I could only have one for the rest of my life. Bourbon or tequila? Bourbon. Prog or punk? Prog. I like some of the more recent stuff, like [Swedish proggers] Soen. Designer stubble or lockdown…

THE HARD STUFF the ultimate ROCK REVIEWS section MICHAEL OCHS / GETTY Fleet Foxes Shore ANT Pecknold throws dreamily back to his debut Dusty mountain treks, snowedin winter cabins and rambles through tangled undergrowth. The sounds conjured by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold are so evocative of clear-skied Americana mythologies that they connect as firmly with The Band and Crosby, Stills & Nash as they did with the generation of sumptuous shoegazers inspired by their 2008 debut. After 2017’s experimental comeback album Crack-Up, this fourth record, with its cavernous atmospheres and chorale-like multi-vocal harmonies resembling the Beach Boys lost in limbo, harks back to that early material in an attempt to create a warm, safe sonic shoreline from which to gaze across turbulent times. It can, by nature, feel like drowning…

BEST OF THE REST Other new releases out this month. Heavy Salad Cult Casual DIPPED IN GOLD With a loose backwards-through-life concept, the Mancunian psychpopping acid-rock trio charm and challenge with a pan-generic melange of cheerfully nihilistic post-Flaming Lips wit and whimsy. 7/10 William Shatner The Blues CLEOPATRA The blues idiom demands impassioned performances of its vocal exponents. As if Shatner needed any encouragement to ham it up, but what a supporting cast. Not least a soaring Ritchie Blackmore. 6/10 The Medicine Dolls Filth And Wisdom JUST MUSIC Cape Town’s Medicine Dolls personify a record collection dominated by Cramps, Birthday Party and JAMC. Kitschy camp, surf-goth reverb predominates, along with The Cure’s vocal hiccups and hair. 6/10 Yes The Royal Affair Tour: Live From Las Vegas BMG Although missing Chris…

Pink Floyd David Gilmour refocuses Floyd on this mighty live double. Delicate Sound Of Thunder PINK FLOYD “Quite a clever forgery,” was Roger Waters’s judgement on 1987’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, the first post-Waters, David Gilmour-led Floyd record. Clever enough, in fact, that it didn’t merely echo the formulas and tones of 1975’s Wish You Were Here, it cut to the quick of Floyd’s entire modus operandi. Just as Meddle and The Dark Side Of The Moon had refined psychedelia into grander statements that hovered above – rather than at the centre of – prog rock, Momentary Lapse was a cultured take on the synthetic sheen of the 80s; sleek-shelled but containing meat. Its accompanying stadium tour was a similarly smart update, combining Floyd’s by-then traditional circular screen, a…

The Last Internationale Firebrand New York duo singe northwestern Spain with incendiary set. Rock In Río Tea, Ponteareas ★ As the sun sets, The Last Internationale skip out for an acoustic show on a concrete bandstand in a small park, and are greeted by an audience wearing blue surgical masks, sitting in pairs and threes on socially-distanced chairs. In her shades and a multi-coloured tassled bomber jacket, Delila Paz makes quite an entrance. But that’s nothing of an eyebrow-raiser compared to when she opens her mouth to sing. To her right, guitar slinger Edgey Pires, hunched over a 12-string as they begin with Killing Fields, somehow manages not to stare in amazement. After Mind Ain’t Free, We Will Reign and Wanted Man, Paz gets rid of her jacket and the…

REVIEWS Brothers Osborne Short ’n’ sweet showcase from countryfried rockers John, TJ and co. Skeletons album release party ★ Blue-collar plumber’s boys-turned-Nashville stars, the Brothers Osborne have grafted for years to get to this hi-spec release night for Skeletons, their third album, the rockiest thing they’ve ever done and their strongest set of tunes, all of them itching to be played live. “This is awesome, we miss y’all!” TJ Osborne says, looking at the walls of beaming faces either side of him – fan club members, projected from their homes as ‘virtual fans’. “That’s such a weird term,” he continues, “I hate that, ‘virtual fan’. Makes it sound like you’re not even real.” Still, needs must, in these times of social distancing and increased online living. Clocking in at just…

Lamb Of God Two albums played in their entirety and in sequence, with aplomb. BRYCE HALL Ashes Of The Wake and Lamb Of God livestreams ★ ‘Relentless’ is the only description that fits these two livestream performances from one of the finest metal bands of this era, in which the five-piece play the current self-titled album and 2004’s Ashes Of The Wake in their entirety on two separate nights at the Broadberry in the band’s home town of Richmond, Virginia. And they’re ferociously magnificent. The first stream has all of the Lamb Of God album in sequence, with scarcely any pause. They clearly understand that playing without an audience requires a different mind-set, and adapt supremely well. Just about the only times frontman Randy Blythe addresses the watching fans directly…