Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i Classic Rock

the DiRT Malcolm Dome April 21, 1955 – October 29, 2021 Tributes have been paid to Malcolm Dome, the pioneering rock and metal journalist, broadcaster and author, and regular contributor to Classic Rock, who has died suddenly of unknown causes at the age of 66. Dome was an ever-present, authoritative voice from the late 70s onwards, having worked at Record Mirror and Metal Fury, before joining Kerrang! at the start of the 80s. It has been speculated that Encyclopaedia Metallica, a book by Dome and Brian Harrigan published in 1981, influenced the name of a certain band that launched in California at around the same time. Some sources also credit Dome with inventing the term ‘thrash metal’, in relation to the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad. From Kerrang!, he moved…

NEWS Following Paul McCartney’s recent comments, Roger Daltrey is the latest star to take a potshot at the Rolling Stones. The Who frontman began by praising Mick Jagger as “the number one rock‘n’roll performer”, before dismissing his bandmates as “a mediocre pub band”. Led Zeppelin have joined the social media platform TikTok, attracting just over 5,000 followers in the first few days. Fans can watch videos of classic live performances and much more as well. Zeppelin’s entire discography is available to use on the app. Saxon release Carpe Diem, their twentythird studio album, on February 4 via Silver Lining Music. It was co-produced by Andy Sneap and Saxon singer Biff Byford. Ten music fans lost their lives following a crowd surge during a recent concert by the rap artist Travis Scott,…

GARBAGE Garbage’s No Gods No Masters saw the band fully maturing their sound against the divisive backdrop of 2021’s culture wars. Words: Alex Burrows With the global pandemic dominating the news over the past two years, it’s easy to forget prior events. But 2018 was a particularly nauseating year for the worst in international politics. In the USA, work began on the Trump’s border wall with Mexico. Refugee immigrant children were separated from their parents at a border detention centre. In the UK, former British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a Russian nerve agent. Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Kashoggi was assassinated… The conversations that Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson was having with friends and family around such news stories became so intense and regular that…

AYRON JONES A world-class, medal-winning Team USA frisbee competitor as well as a head-turning blues artist, with his latest album Child Of The State he’s just beginning to really fly. Interview: Dave Everley Ayron Jones’s life changed in a major way last year, when he became one of the first signings to Big Machine/John Varvatos, the label co-run by the fashion designer, who released the Seattle singer and guitarist’s electrifying third album, Child Of The State, in May 2021. “I used to do everything independently,” Jones says with a laugh. “Now I got a big new house, I’m able to pay some cats to come out on the road with me, do all this stuff.” How have the past twelve months been for you? Pretty good. The hardest part was…

BIG BIG TRAIN Since starting to play live they've been on a roll and haven't looked back. Mind you, losing three members nearly had them hitting the buffers. Interview: Dave Ling Although bassist Gregory Spawton put the band together in 1990, Big Big Train’s career didn’t begin in earnest until they became a bona fide live act in 2017. Since then they have enjoyed hit albums and sold-out tours, even reaching the Top 40 with Grand Tour in 2019 and this year’s Common Ground. Surprisingly, then, the four core members tell CR how lockdown and line-up changes almost finished them. Thirteen albums into Big Big Train’s career, the renaissance is quite an unlikely one. Were there times when you had to pinch yourself and wonder: “Is this real?”? Nick D’Virgilio…

MAMMOTH WVH While having a rock-star parent opens a few doors, it also means you've got a lot to live up to and a lot to prove. Wolfgang ‘Son Of Eddie’ Van Halen has proved himself with one of the very best albums of 2021. Words: Polly Glass The drums were his first love. At 15 he was Van Halen’s bassist, before going on to play bass in Tremonti. Then, in June this year, Wolfgang Van Halen released Mammoth WVH, the debut album he’d been brewing for many years. Recording began in 2015 and was compled in 2018. He delayed its release in order to be with his father, Eddie Van Halen, in the final years before the guitar icon succumbed to cancer in 2020. “My father had every opportunity…

ROBERT PLANT & ALISON KRAUSS Finally, the duo have released Raise The Roof, the follow-up to their hugely successful Raising Sand album. And it was more than worth the wait Words: Niall Doherty “This just very easily fell into place. It was the right time.”Alison Krauss Around the point in lockdown where he had taken up tidying as a new hobby, Robert Plant’s ex-wife turned up at his door with a great big trunk of all his stage-gear from 1971 onwards. This collection of what presumably contained many pairs of 22-inch bell-bottomed jeans and patterned shirts that had never been buttoned up sent the former Led Zeppelin frontman off on a journey through the windmills of his mind. “The madness of my times was, one way or another, laid at…

JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR Top of the list in our Blues Albums Of 2021 on burnout, her new covers album, working and relaxing with Joe Bonamassa, and being “a giant nerd”. Interview: Polly Glass CHRISTIE GOODWIN/PRESS On balance, Joanne Shaw Taylor needed a break. Having played professionally since she was 16, touring non-stop from the age of 21, the Black Country native found herself looking at a very different life after March 2020. “I’ve done one show since then, which was a private party for some BMW motorbike guys,” Taylor, 36, says over the phone from Detroit. “So quite a burly audience, which was great!” With much of her crew based in Europe, her tour plans were scuppered again this year by covid. Making the most of things, she embraced her…

THE ULTIMATE PLAYLIST OF 2021 Need a soundtrack for the holiday season that will satisfy all moods and musical cravings? Then try this smorgasbord of bangers, ballads and more from the past 12 months. Words: Rich Chamberlain, Polly Glass, Henry Yates ICONS & A-LISTERS Rock’s big names at their best. BILLY F GIBBONS West Coast Junkie Holed up in Joshua Tree and “mindful of the desert’s implicit mystery” as he wrote parent album Hardware, the Top man takes us for a spin across the dunes with this surf-styled lead single from the album. LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM On The Wrong Side Buckingham reminds us he can do without Fleetwood Mac on this chiming, driving, deceptively bitter solo gem, the chorus of which shares a little escapist DNA with Go Your Own Way.…

Volbeat Servant Of The Mind EMI Danes take their style to a fresh level. If you are acquainted with the previous seven studio albums from this band, then you’ll know the basic score: they mix metal, punk, psychobilly and melody with a heady yet disciplined abandon. However, after perhaps treading water on occasion during the previous two or three albums, with this latest one they’ve been a little more adventurous. You can hear this on the slinky yet sinister The Devil Rages On, as vocalist Michael Poulsen tells of how Satan came to Earth and took human form to wreak havoc. Hardly a ground-breaking subject, but Volbeat handle it all with their customary individuality. Shotgun Blues, which is a true story of Poulsen’s encounter with ghosts, allows guitarist Rob Caggiano…

ROUND-UP: MELODIC ROCK By Dave Ling Nestor Kids In A Ghost Town ELECTRIC LODGE MUSIC For those who believe rock music has become too serious, have we got a band for you. Sweden’s Nestor formed in 1989. Their initial rockstar dreams went unfulfilled, but after frontman Tobias Gustavsson found success in pop music, during lockdown he realised it was time for something big, loud, daring and colourful. Nestor’s full-length debut is inspired by Kiss, Van Halen, Giant and mullet-era Bon Jovi. To get the point across they’ve made a series of wonderful videos. On The Run celebrates life during the 80s with Chopper bikes and mobile phones the size of bricks, and the simmering power ballad dares to feature former Page Three model Samantha Fox as its visual co-star and…

THE HARD STUFF REISSUES Various Artists Scrap Metal: Excavated Heavy Metal From The Era Of Excess RIDINGEASY Recycle sluts. Cheesy rock’n’roll music – don’tcha just love it?! Whether it’s Edamn, Mosharella, Massacrepone, Riffotta, Rockfort, Swiss Cheese (i.e. Krokus) or just plain Emmetal, there’s nothing like the sound of a band putting the cheddar to the shredder. If you’re the kinda person who enjoys waking up to the sound of Munich mayhem merchants Railway’s signature shriek-athon Lick It, Stick It and then, later, going to bed to the howlings of Japanese insane-iacs Hellhound’s Tokyo Flying-V Massacre (the entire album, nothing else will do), then this Scrap Metal compilation will fill the void in between. So… here be Rox. Here be Silverwing. Here be Steeler. Here be Exciter. Here be a tasty truckle…

Rick Wakeman Captain Grumpy discusses receiving a CBE, Steve Howe, and what he would give the prime minister for Christmas. If an excuse for grumpiness was required, the past eighteen months have provided perfect subject matter. I had seven tours cancelled, and I earn my living on the road. The thing I found toughest of all was the uncertainty of it all – when would it end? You’ve just returned from a US tour. It was bloody great to be out there playing again. And the rules [to make it happen] were really strict. Everybody had to be covid-tested, and the audiences were extremely respectful of others around them, which I really liked. But in general the country made me scratch my head, because half of them were totally paranoid…

Foo Fighters join the Hall Of Fame Paul McCartney attends Class Of 2021 induction. Foo Fighters, Todd Rundgren, Tina Turner, Carole King, Randy Rhoads, The Go-Go’s and Kraftwerk were among those inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame at a lavish ceremony held in Cleveland on October 30. Foo Fighters were inducted by Paul McCartney, who joined the band on stage for a version of The Beatles’ Get Back after the Foos had barrelled through Best Of You, My Hero and Everlong. With the organisers presenting what they called “the most diverse list of inductees in the history of the organisation”, there was very little hard rock music in this year’s list, although that didn’t prevent McCartney from telling a sold-out audience: “Rock and roll is a magical…

WELCOME BACK Dawn After Dark British rockers release their debut album – 30 years after they got together. Is that a record? WEST/DAVE GROHL: GETTY; DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS Guns N’ Roses have nothing on Dawn After Dark – the 17-year gap that preceded Chinese Democracy pales next to the more than 30 years it has taken the British rockers to release their debut album, New Dawn Rising. The Birmingham-based band were part of the vibrant late-80s British rock scene, releasing a trio of singles and EPs that drew equally on the heads-down rock’n’roll of AC/DC and the goth-ish swirl of The Cult and Balaam And The Angel. Singer Howard ‘H’ Johnson lays out their reasons for reuniting. It’s thirty-two years between your last single and this debut album. What took so…

WELCOME BACK Gov’t Mule Twenty-seven years after Allman Brother Warren Haynes started his side project, it’s now his main band. NIKKI SIXX: PRESS GOV’T MULE: JAY SANSONE PRESS Are Gov’t Mule the greatest jam band of them all? Founded in 1994 as a “part-time” side project by singer/guitarist Warren Haynes and the (now late) bass player Allen Woody of the Allman Brothers Band, the Mule have evolved into a beast of astonishing versatility and enduring vigour. The band, which now features Haynes and original drummer Matt Abts alongside Jorgen Carlsson (bass) and Danny Lewis (keyboards/guitar/horns), returns from lockdown with Heavy Load Blues, a raw, rugged album that plugs deep into the heart of the original motherlode. “It’s all about bringing the blues out,” Haynes says. “It’s a cleansing and healing…

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2021 has given us more great music than we probably deserve from both big names and newcomers. Allow us to present the Classic Rock critics’ choice of the best 50. Words: Bill DeMain, Malcolm Dome, Paul Elliott, Dave Everley, Polly Glass, Rob Hughes, Rich Hobson, Ian Fortnam, Emma Johnston, Neil Jeffries, Siân Llewellyn, Henry Yates 50 MONSTER MAGNET A Better Dystopia NAPALM How good can a covers album be? Well, as it turns out, very good indeed, certainly in the case of this one. Clearly Dave Wyndorf’s enduring Magnet have invariably been driven by the power of the freakout, and here they further intensify the innate freak power of a selection of the (mostly obscure: Fuzztones, Poobah, Dust, Josefus, Hawkwind) songs that shaped their own lysergic…

BUCKCHERRY With cracking latest album Hellbound to promote, Josh Todd and co. will be playing UK dates in January, with more to follow in 2022. Words: Malcolm Dome Buckcherry came storming back this year with Hellbound, their ninth studio album – and one that marked them out as one of the finest trashy rock’n’roll bands around. This was the fifth time they’d worked with producer/songwriter Marti Frederiksen, and it elevated them to new heights, drawing from previous glories but also confirming that those belong in the past, as the band plot contemporary success. Frontman Josh Todd believes the future offers exciting opportunities. How important was Marty Frederiksen as producer and co-writer to the way Hellbound turned out? Vital. We work really well with him, and he brings out the best…

ALICE COOPER With his twenty-first studio album, Detroit Stories, an in-vintage-form Alice came up with a stone-cold classic. Now he’s looking forward to making up for lost time taking his latest show on the road. Words: Ian Fortnam A month into a US tour, we find a newly trim Alice Cooper just minutes away from his nightly beheading in Tupelo, Mississippi. The septuagenarian shock-rock legend spent the majority of the pandemic’s second year promoting Detroit Stories, his extraordinary return-to-form album, while enthusiastically limbering up for a return to the road that really couldn’t come soon enough. Might Detroit Stories have been a different record were it not for lockdown? I don’t think so. We were trying to get all of the aspects of Detroit music in there and still not…

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM Ousted from Fleetwood Mac, the guitarist/vocalist bounced back with one of our albums of 2021. While happy to continue as a solo artist, he’s still hopeful that he can make one more record with the Mac. Interview: Bill DeMain “We had this legacy that was all about rising above our difficulties,” Lindsey Buckingham tells Classic Rock. “That was always the subtext of Fleetwood Mac – that we stayed together through thick and thin.” Buckingham is reflecting on his lingering disappointment over being forced out of the band in 2018. It couldn’t have been fun seeing the Mac then tour without him, even if it did take two guitarists to fill his absence. “I didn’t see the show, but looking at the set list I thought: ‘Hmm, it’s like…

“Every now and again we come up with an album that seizes the day” Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson on the band’s all-conquering latest album, taking inspiration from Rammstein for the Writing On The Wall video, and looking forward to playing live “more than you can ever imagine”. Every now and again we come up with an album that really seizes the day, and Senjutsu is one of them. The last album where I think we had a similar sort of sensation was probably [Bruce’s return-to-Maiden 2000 album] Brave New World, because there were lots of cynics going: “It’s just going to be retreads and a load of old crap.” But of course it wasn’t, and people went: “Oh my god, it’s really good.” After that, people went: “Oh well,…

TOP REISSUES OF 2021 From notable anniversaries to desirable retrospectives and compilations, there was a ton of superb reissue activity this year. The following are definitely worth your time. THE BEATLES Let It Be APPLE/UME What we said: “Five discs (one of which is an EP) of live songs, rehearsals, significant between-songs chatter, and – at last – the Johns LP make it an essential purchase for fans… At no point does the listener throw up their arms and shout: “My God! Let It Be is the greatest Beatles album ever made!” but this larger, panoramic overview does wonders for it, giving us a bird’s-eye view of the sessions. Buy it and you’ll play it a lot.” THE WHO The Who Sell Out (Super-Deluxe Edition) UMC/POLYDOR What we said: “A…

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT It’s good to talk. Certainly Status Quo’s Francis Rossi thinks so, as in 2021 he continued his marathon spoken-word tour around the UK. Classic Rock’s Mick Wall was alongside him every step of the way. Francis Rossi’s I Talk Too Much UK tour, for which I joined him on stage as compere and second-banana interviewer, finally completed its second leg this summer. His first attempt – 56 dates between March and June 2020 – had been scheduled to coincide with the paperback publication of Rossi’s official autobiography, I Talk Too Much. Ghost-written by me, it was built on months of face-to-face interviews with Francis, and first published in hardback form in 2019 – when the first, 36-date Talk Tour, took place. We had only managed four…

DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN Mastodon’s monumental latest record is a double album inspired by, and dedicated to, their late, much-loved manager. Words: Paul Brannigan It was a phone call Mastodon had been dreading for months. “We’re cancelling your tour,” came the instruction from a friend working in the office of Rick Sales Entertainment Group, the Los Angeles-based management team responsible for overseeing the quartet’s business affairs, alongside those of Slayer, Gojira, Ghost and more. “And you guys need to come to LA right now.” As summer 2018 unfolded, Bill Kelliher, Brent Hinds, Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor were increasingly, painfully aware that this day was coming. But that knowledge did nothing to prepare the four members of Mastodon for the almost physical hurt each one of them experienced as they listened…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder Wine Lips Mushroom Death Sex Bummer Party SELF-RELEASED Third album from these gnarly DIY Toronto rockers. Wine Lips have a unique sound all their own. It’s garage rock, for sure, but with stadium-level production and hooks meant to stick stubbornly in your brain. Shooting for the stars while lying in the gutter, if you know what I mean. As this album’s title would imply, there’s a casual nihilism to the lyrics that borders on complete desperation. ‘Just trying to make it through the weekend so I can close my eyes,’ blurts singer Cam Hilborn on the blistering fuzz-punker Eyes. ‘So tired I can barely stand it.’ On the otherwise blazing garage rocker In the Clear, she grouses: ‘I know it sounds real lame/I’m no doctor, but…

Bernie Marsden Chess CONQUEST MUSIC Veteran guitarist revisits tracks released on Chicago’s famous Chess label. In July 2021, inspired by a conversation with Billy Gibbons, original Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden began his Inspirations series by releasing the well-received Kings, covers of songs by bluesmen Albert, BB and Freddie King. Now comes this similarly packaged second volume of songs once recorded for Chess, revisiting the musicians and records that helped shape Marsden’s life. The album was recorded in the old-school way: live in one room, minimum overdubs, simply wringing the best out of a lifetime’s experience on vintage instruments. The result is akin to the Rolling Stones’ 2016 album Blue & Lonesome – a mixture of reverential re-tread and contemporary revamp. It brings great credit not only to Marsden (who sings…

Six-String Stories Eric Clapton GENESIS PUBLICATIONS Tales of cherished guitars. What at first glance looks like a coffee-table catalogue of all the guitars – well over 100 of them – that Eric Clapton has auctioned off in aid of his Crossroads addiction treatment centre turns out to provide some revealing insights into Clapton’s relationship with his guitars. Clapton is not a loquacious man, so you won’t find torrents of florid prose about his favourite guitars. Instead there’s an intermittent running commentary – sometimes just a sentence, sometimes a few paragraphs–in between the glossy catalogue shots, the technical specifications and well-researched historical pictures showing Clapton playing or holding a particular guitar. Although the sales of these guitars have raised millions for his Crossroads centre, Clapton is aware that his collection is…

BACK TO LOVE The Dust Coda The rising rock foursome hit the road and fly the NWOCR flag. “We are extremely driven. We want to be the biggest rock band in the UK. Aim for the moon, right?” A dam Mackie, guitarist with the London-based hard rockers, talks about Brexit, NWOCR and aiming for the moon. A press release for The Dust Coda’s second album, Mojo Skyline, which came out in March, described those lockdown months as “a post-apocalyptic winter of discontent”. The live scene was decimated. For us, we had signed to a great label [Earache] and released an album we really believed in, which got rave reviews, but we couldn’t promote it. Do you think the music scene was treated badly by the powers-that-be? You can love or…

the DiRT HIGH HOPES The Hawkins From the jaws of personal despair come Sweden’s latest garage-rock heroes. “We found common taste in seventies rock.” If the question ‘Things people do after a break-up’ had appeared on 90s TV staple Family Fortunes, ‘Write a concept album’ might have brought the response: ‘If it’s up there I’ll give you the money myself’ from host Les Dennis. But The Hawkins do things a little differently from most. One of those bands that’s refreshingly difficult to pigeonhole, on new mini-album Aftermath they frantically flit from 00s garage rock (in manner of The Datsuns, Hives and Jet) to Coheed And Cambria-esque modern prog, with stop-offs at 90s punk, avant-garde indie and grandiose 70s rock. “It has never been a hard thing,” frontman Johannes Carlsson says…

THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS Smells Like Teen Spirit Nirvana In the 30th-anniversary year of the game-changing Nevermind album, we take a look at the incendiary single (and video) that catapulted Nirvana from virtual unknowns to superstardom. Words: Everett True Right from the opening stuttered refrain, Smells Like Teen Spirit sounds like pure adrenalin, a revolution waiting to happen. Kurt’s brief guitar solo is a masterpiece of restraint, remaining note-faithful to the melody, driving it deeper into your brain. “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song,” he admitted to Rolling Stone journalist David Fricke in 1994. “I was trying to rip off the Pixies. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard. Teen Spirit is such a clichéd riff. When I…

THERE IS LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE Having just released his highest charting solo album and toured it, Queen’s Roger Taylor is enjoying life away from his ‘day job’. Words: Stephen Dalton WILL IRELAND The past 18 months of pandemic panic and existential terror have been good for Roger Taylor. Forced into an extended break from touring the world with Queen, the veteran drummer, songwriter and vocalist began tinkering in his Surrey studio during the early days of lockdown. Before long an entire solo album began taking shape, Taylor having followed strict social-distancing rules by playing almost all the instruments himself. “I guess lockdown just seemed to spur a creative spurt,” Taylor explains. “I had a few songs that have crept out in the last three or four years, and then…

20 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT KISS’S DESTROYER In 2021 we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the release of Kiss’s most ambitious and celebrated album, the songs from which are still staples of their set-lists. Think you know all there is to know? Think again. Words: Ken Sharp 1 Before landing upon the album title Destroyer, there were numerous titles being bandied about, including Dynasty, which the band would eventually use for their 1979 album. Ultimately, the idea for the title of Destroyer came from an unlikely source. GENE SIMMONS: “Back in the seventies, Howard Marks was Kiss’s business manager. He was a financial suit-and-tie New York City guy who worked in advertising. When we were trying to think of a name for the new record and couldn’t come up…

BENJI WEBBE The Skindred frontman on early gig memories, orchestral ambitions, and his recipe for having a perfect Christmas. Interview: Polly Glass Skindred ruled British festivals in 2021. From the Download pilot to Bloodstock and beyond, the Welsh ragga-metallers were a resounding highlight (in a run of notably homegrown line-ups), building on a long-standing reputation for having more fun with mega crowds than anyone else. Epic mosh pits, wheeling shirts in the air (aka ‘the Newport helicopter’), ‘waving like the queen’ – it takes a firebrand frontman to get thousands of rock fans immersed in such good-natured silliness. Staying in shape over lockdown was paramount to staging a high-octane comeback. “I like to do a lot of cardio,” frontman Benji Webbe says, in chatty, very Welsh tones, as the band…

IN MEMORIAM Here’s to the rock’n’rollers, among them musicians, producers, writers and others who sadly left us in 2021. Thank you, and goodnight. TIM BOGERT August 27, 1944 – January 13, 2021 Bassist with Vanilla Fudge, Cactus and Beck, Bogert & Appice MICK BOLTON Died January 1, 2021 Keyboard player with Mott The Hoople STEVE BROWN Died January 2, 2021 Producer for The Cult, Manic Street Preachers and more GERRY MARSDEN September 24, 1942 – January 3, 2021 Singer and songwriter with Gerry And The Pacemakers MICHAEL FONFARA August 11, 1946 – January 8, 2021 Keyboard player with the Electric Flag and Lou Reed WILLIAM ‘JESUS’ JELLETT June 6, 1948 – January 8, 2021 Iconic gig-goer and loveable eccentric MARSHA ZAZULA April 21, 1952 – January 10, 2021 Co-founder of…

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Barn WARNERS Album number umpteen from the grizzled veteran singer-songwriter. A t the age of 75, an age when most bands and artists are concentrating on making sure they’re going to be remembered for their past achievements, Neil Young – like Paul McCartney and almost nobody else – continues to be more interested in his present. Still restless, Young may be taking care of his archive but he’s also making new music with a frequency that would shame most of the 21st-century stadium-pop dullards currently trading under the term ‘rock’. Now he’s back again, again, with yet another album, this time with his long-time collaborators in loud, Crazy Horse: Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot and Nils Lofgren. Recorded, as its title subtly hints, in a converted…

The Hellacopters Grande Rock NUCLEAR BLAST Swederockers’ hard-to-find third finally arrives on digital. There have always been bands that, despite persistently threatening to break it big, never quite follow through on their apparent promise. Take Stockholm’s The Hellacopters, whose moment in rock’s spotlight seemed to have arrived in the late 90s when they appeared at the vanguard of an ostensibly unstoppable Swederock movement (alongside The Hives and Backyard Babies) that entranced the rock media but never actually delivered in the marketplace. The Hellacopters started life in ’94 as a garage rock side-project for ex-Entombed drummer Nicke Andersson (vocals and guitar) and on-hiatus Backyard Babies guitarist Dregen. Following a pair of attention-grabbing albums that accentuated the amphetamine punk flash in Motörhead’s all-guns-blazin’ über-metal blueprint, Dregen returned to the Babies and Andersson…

BACK TO LOVE Bruce Dickinson The Iron Maiden frontman on audience questions, language barriers and making fun of cancer. NIDHAL MARZOUK “Sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants more than I should. But then again you’ve only got one life. Possibly.” As if being a champion fencer, a radio presenter, podcast host, published author, and singer with Iron Maiden wasn’t enough, Bruce Dickson has added ‘professional raconteur’ to his resumé. His spoken-word shows find him regaling audiences with tales from his life and career then taking questions from the audience in a Q&A session. You did your first spoken-word show in London in October 2017. Did you expect to still be doing it four years later? No. It’s actually morphed. They originally said: “Go and read a few…