Innehållsförteckning för December 2023 från Classic Rock

The Queen Of Country? On the cover of Classic Rock?! Hell yeah! Full disclosure: I’m a long-time Dolly Parton fan, but never in a million years did I think that we’d ever have the opportunity to legitimately put her on the cover of Classic Rock. But sometimes the world really does manage to surprise you. Those who are partial to Ms Parton’s charms know all too well that she’s been a rock star all along, but this year she has gone one louder and firmly cemented her high-voltage rock’n’roll credentials. A nomination for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (an accolade she initially wanted to decline, as she didn’t feel she deserved it) began a series of events that resulted in her new album Rockstar. And her collaborators on…

John Marshall August 28, 1941 – September 16, 2023 Middlesex-born John Marshall was the drummer with jazz-meets-proggers Soft Machine from 1972 to ’78, and also played drums with many other artists including Jack Bruce, Arthur Brown and John McLaughlin. Marshall was 82 years old. A tribute by Prog magazine’s Sid Smith said: “Marshall brought swing, subtlety, groove and fireworks whenever the occasion demanded.” Ron Howden January 5, 1945 – September 29, 2023 The drummer with veteran progressive rock band Nektar, Ron Howden, has died at the age of 78 following years of health issues, including cancer. Although their members were English, Nektar formed in Hamburg in 1969. “I cannot imagine a world without Ron in it,” said the band’s rhythm section partner, bassist Derek ‘Mo’ Moore. Kent Stax Died September…

Tony Iommi made a surprise guest appearance on stage at the Hippodrome in Birmingham on the opening night of Black Sabbath – The Ballet. Iommi contributed guitar to the evening’s final number, which features Sabbath’s evergreen Paranoid, and at the end took a bow with the cast and crew. “I’m honoured to be involved with these talented dancers,” Iommi said, “[but] I’m afraid I won’t be joining every performance.” The show was also attended by Geezer Butler, Sharon Osbourne, Robert Plant and Bev Bevan. Sharon Osbourne later commented: “Who would have ever thought the combination? This is just so out-there that it’s wonderful.” Sharon is working on a museum of Ozzy Osbourne memorabilia in Birmingham that will include “all of Ozzy’s awards, his stage clothes, posters, old posters from Earth…

“Stories can change people’s lives, and that’s what I hope Green Lung does.” After two albums of folk-tinged, riff-driven doom, London-based Green Lung have stumbled on a formula for infernal success – and they didn’t even need to hang about a crossroads at midnight to get there. “Maybe one,” vocalist Tom Templar muses. “Scott [Black, guitars] and I went up to Dartmoor recently, and there was a crossroads where a woman had been murdered, so we figured we should write a song about it. We haven’t had to take the devil’s bargain just yet.” Faustian bargains or not, Green Lung have become a cult sensation over the past couple of years, drawing massive audiences everywhere from Bloodstock to Download, Roadburn to Desertfest. For their set at the latter in 2022…

“To be honest, I’m not good at downtime,” says Chris Shiflett. “I have to be playing, learning something new all the time.” That explains why the long-time Foo Fighter wears so many professional hats, hosting a musicians’ interview podcast (Walking The Floor) and a guitar-centric vodcast (Shred With Shifty), while pushing further into a burgeoning solo career with the release of his third album, Lost At Sea. Shiflett’s easy-going demeanour and enthusiasm make him an engaging companion, whether he’s singing about seizing the moment, or breaking down a Rush guitar solo with Alex Lifeson. Which posters did you have on your wall as a kid? When I was in elementary school I had pictures of Kiss all over my walls. Later a Randy Rhodes poster, a Sex Pistols poster. A…

One night in Miami, through a blur of tequila and bad decisions, Luke Spiller realised he had gone too far. Arguably it was always going to happen. An aspiring dancer who studied Michael Jackson videos, taught himself piano and wore women’s clothes as a teenager, Spiller had long burned harder and faster than his peers. After relocating to Los Angeles, his maximalist personality was teamed with heavyweight glitz, bolstered pre-covid by a split with his long-term girlfriend, model Laura Cartier Millon. It was like striking a match over petrol. As pandemic restrictions eased, things escalated in good ways and bad ones. There were days of fervoured creativity. People-watching and songwriting. Wild parties. Multiple girls. Nights in Hollywood that turned into days, waking up in “some stranger’s weird-ass apartment” and wondering…

It’s our last Hot List of 2023, and what a year it’s been for new music. Across the board we’ve seen quality stuff, with rising stars and up-and-coming groups often giving music’s veteran big cheeses a serious run for their money – as they should do. Seldom has the rock landscape been so fruitful, for those inclined to listen. As we start to reflect on the sounds that have lingered on our playlists since January, we come bearing one last selection of box-fresh tunes from rock’n’roll’s rich spectrum. There’s AC/DC-esque riffage, hooky 90s energy, British southern rock, gorgeous pop-rock balladry, glam synths with a dystopian bent, and (in one case) sexy nuns with guitars. That’s right, folks, nuns with guitars – and they’re good! Don’t say we don’t give you…

George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle Philip Norman SIMON & SCHUSTER It’s been so long, my Lord. The venerable Philip Norman has already written three Fab books – Shout!: The Beatles In Their Generation (Paul McCartney described it as “shite”), John Lennon: A Life, and Paul McCartney The Biography – so he has every right to use his own source of material as the basis for the first few hundred pages of his new George Harrison tome, even if the recycling often leads the reader to think: “I know that” or “I’ve read all this before”. It’s not difficult to accept the titular premise (makes a change from ‘The Quiet One’), although by the time we reach The Beatles’ unsavoury demise you could argue that all four of them felt the…

Their bleakest end-of-days sci-fi satire yet. ★Like Squid Game gone Mad Max, a postapocalyptic battle rages on the O2’s screens between a rebel uprising of hooded, mirror-faced androids and a crumbling empire led by a horned mecha-demon called Baph. The skirmish spills onto the stage, where three of the rebels (plus an additional keyboard sidekick) rampage beneath a flaming symbol made up of the initials of their slogan – Will Of The People – making demands in military-glam style. “Welcome to the desecration, baby,” the ringleader howls in shrill falsetto. This, then, is Muse’s sci-fi satire on the current geopolitical shit-show, and their typically end-of-days outlook on the encroaching cataclysm is as bleak as they’ve ventured. Yet they send us out with smiles on faces. Modern space-rock behemoths such as…

Kourtney Kardashian’s hubby re-rattles his traps. ★ Tom DeLonge seeks to rouse tonight’s audience early on with an impassioned: “Come on, Manchester.” The problem is that the Mark, Tom and Travis show doesn’t roll into Manchester until the following night. Tonight it’s Birmingham. In truth, DeLonge – who jokingly addresses the 15,000-strong audience as Manchester for the rest of the night – could say whatever he wants. Blink fans are just pleased to have him back after his seven-year hiatus from the band. Not only is he back, but on tonight’s showing he’s also far happier to be there, and more polished in his performance compared to any time in the past 20 years or so. He revels in the puerile potty-mouthery of Family Reunion and the fan favourites Feeling…

‘The set is a master class in tightly wound 21st-century rock’n’roll.’ Back in the city “where it all started for us”, the sharp-dressed Californians’ rock’n’roll fire still burns bright. ’Rival Sons, Long Beach, CA’, read the writing on the front of T-shirts for sale on the merch stand, but it may as well have read ‘Rival Sons, London, England’. It’s here in the capital that these modern electric warriors played their first ever gig outside of the US. Specifically at the tiny Barfly, a coin’s toss across the road from tonight’s venue. A hundred people at most watched them back then. Tonight there are 10 times that. London caught them early and hasn’t let go. “London’s where it all started for us,” says singer Jay Buchanan midway through the show,…

Born in West Bromwich in 1951, KK Downing was a member of Judas Priest from 1969 to 2011, and his guitar partnership with Glenn Tipton was a defining element of the band’s ever-anthemic brand of heavy metal. Last year Downing was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with the group. Currently he leads his own band, KK’s Priest. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING You Really Got Me by The Kinks, back in 1964. I remember thinking: “Why do I like this? Aren’t The Kinks supposed to be a pop band?” Later on I realised that I loved You Really Got Me because it was a riff song. That riff got you up and out of your chair, didn’t it? THE FIRST SONG I PERFORMED LIVE Before…

JAMES ISAACS Former Classic Rock and Metal Hammer art wizard James now heads up his own design agency, Black Finch Design, boasting such clients as Iggy Pop, the Manics, Iron Maiden and Motörhead. When he’s not pushing around bits of paper and contemplating font trends, he can be found worshipping at the altar of Clutch. His musings on the band’s back catalogue can be found in this month’s Buyer’s Guide (p88). PAUL ELLIOTT Paul interviewed Geddy Lee for this month’s issue, 40 years after he first saw Rush play live on the Signals tour. He has interviewed the members of Rush many times over the years, including a rare audience with Neil Peart in 2012. This latest conversation with Geddy, revolving around his autobiography My Effin’ Life (p30), proved to…

Bob Geldof has given his approval to a stage musical of 1985’s Live Aid all-star fundraiser. Just For One Day will run from January 26 to March 30 at London’s Old Vic Theatre. The Band Aid Charitable Trust is set to receive 10 per cent of proceeds from ticket sales. David Coverdale says Whitesnake still exist as a band and they continue to receive “offers” to perform live, although he won’t “entertain anything until I get my physical aspect together”. In addition to the challenges that forced the cancellation of a tour in 2022, Coverdale recently damaged both shoulders in a fall and also suffers from arthritis. The open-top 1953 Bristol KSW doubledecker bus used by Paul McCartney and Wings on the band’s 1972 tour is to be auctioned in…

“The plan when I started this with Soren was to go back to that Van Halen I album.” If Steven Tyler and David Coverdale co-fathered a child, it might have been Michael Catton. Armed with a microphone, the softly spoken 32-year-old transforms into the sort of rock singer you didn’t think existed any more – a flamboyant, joyously larynx-shredding force built by years on the grass-roots scene of his native Denmark. Observers of that scene may recall his old band Tainted Lady, but it’s Catton’s solo debut, Point Of No Return, that really shows what he’s made of. Co-masterminded with Glenn Hughes guitarist Soren Andersen, it’s stuffed with ear-worms that call to mind the 80s at their brightest and riffiest – music that Catton has adored since his teens. “I…

The voice is unmistakable. As is the playful peal of laughter that follows. “Hey there, is that Rob ‘Halford’ Hughes? Good mornin’!” It’s 10am in Nashville, and the incontestable legend that is Dolly Parton is on the phone to Classic Rock. She’s evidently in good spirits. And so she should be. At 77, country music’s resident superstar is on the verge of a somewhat unlikely crossover: a fullybooted, leather-suited, guitar-squealing rock album. And while there’s a persuasive argument that Dolly Parton has, in essence, always been a rock star, now we have tangible proof. Nor is the aforementioned Rob Halford reference just a random piece of alliteration. The Judas Priest frontman is one of a number of guests – an entire shedload, in fact – who appear on Parton’s Rockstar.…

Thirty years after it was released, The Spaghetti Incident? remains the strangest and most misunderstood album Guns N’ Roses released. Coming on the heels of the blockbusting Use Your Illusion pair, this collection of (mostly) punk covers recorded during the UYI sessions and between dates on the subsequent tour was a curve ball from one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. “These were all songs we played in soundcheck or live over the years,” GN’R bassist Duff McKagan explains to Classic Rock. “There was no plan to start with. We recorded a few songs, and then it was like, let’s just make a record.” Guns N’ Roses were a hard rock band with punk rock in their hearts. Duff had played in punk bands The Fartz and The…

The Struts Pretty Vicious BIG MACHINE Derby’s ambitious classic rock crew aim for the stars with album number four. If the company you keep was a measure of success, then The Struts would be on an unstoppable trajectory to the stars. Dave Grohl is an admirer and very vocal supporter. They’ve collaborated with everyone from Kesha to Tom Morello, Def Leppard to Paris Jackson – a cross generational, cross-genre crew of disparate characters if ever there was one. They’ve supported the Rolling Stones and Guns N’ Roses, and frontman Luke Spiller sang with Queen at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts in LA and London. Yet despite all this and also a reputation for spectacular live shows, their profile outside the rock-scene bubble has never quite matched their promise. Pretty Vicious…

Deep Purple revisited. Third time’s the charm. ★ Later, Glenn Hughes praised openers The Damn Truth, so he would doubtless have been mortified to hear they had been hamstrung by a mix that muffled Tom Shemer’s guitar. On the plus side, that emphasised the extraordinary power and tone of Lee-La Baum’s vocals. But weighed against that, the frontwoman’s band (already robbed of subtleties brought to their studio recordings by Bob Rock’s production) were left throwing clichéd shapes while delivering sluggish, stop-start arrangements. Only towards the end of the set, when they hit a groove and stuck to it with Only Love, Look Innocent and superb closer Tomorrow, did The Damn Truth look like turning ‘okay’ to ‘good’. Not so Glenn Hughes, who started at ‘great’ and stayed there. For his…

There’s disappointment in the air when the space-rockers change the flight plan. ★ Four years after a 50th-anniversary knees-up at this venue, Hawkwind are back, with their old friend Arthur Brown as support. Despite multiple costume changes, tonight there is no ritualistic donning of a flaming headdress during Brown’s totemic 1968 hit Fire. Why rely on gimmickry? Astonishingly, even at 81 years of age his voice is still present and correct, including that deeply scary falsetto. It’s all rather alarming… in the nicest way possible. While it seems entirely reasonable that ticket buyers for a show billed as “an evening of Sonic Destruction, celebrating the Rituals and Odysseys of Space on the 50th anniversary of their acclaimed Space Ritual album” should expect to hear Hawkwind’s newly reissued live double album…

On September 29, U2 made headlines around the world with the opening night of a 25-show residency at the Sphere, a new, state-of-the-art venue in Las Vegas. Not for the first time, the band were bringing cuttingedge audio and visual technology to the art of live performance. And to call the results eye-catching would be an understatement. Built at a cost of $2.3 billion by the owners of New York’s Madison Square Garden, the Sphere boasts something called ‘spacial sound’, using 168,000 speakers to make the audience feel as though they are ‘inside’ the music. Its stunning visuals employ a wraparound 160,000-square-foot LED display made up of more than 268 million video pixels. U2 and their team had spent two years planning the shows, based on an in-its-entirety celebration of…

When Geddy Lee was writing his autobiography, he thought of giving it the title My Life In Comedy. His publisher, however, felt that was a little too self-deprecating for the memoir of a man famed for his virtuoso skills as multitasking bassist, singer and keyboard player with legendary rock group Rush. So Lee proposed an alternative title, again with tongue in cheek, and this one stuck: My Effin’ Life. “I do have a tendency to drop ‘F’ bombs during any conversation,” he explains, “so effin’ is a word I use a lot.” Lee is talking to Classic Rock on a beautiful end-of-summer day in London, where he is on holiday with his wife Nancy. Dressed all in black, his long hair pulled back, and peering from behind tinted glasses, he’s…

When The Gaslight Anthem’s Brian Fallon started out, he never expected to be rubbing shoulders with the great and the good of rock’n’roll. “I’m just a punk-rock kid from New Jersey,” says the singer, whose band recently reunited and are due to release their first album in nine years, History Books. “I just thought we’d put out some music and hit the clubs.” Except it didn’t quite pan out like that. Fallon never met Lemmy, but he has sung on stage with Bruce Springsteen at Glastonbury, got life tips from Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, and been scared to death by Mark Lanegan. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN I grew up listening to him. I remember being a really young kid and hearing Born In The USA on MTV at my friend’s house, and…

Nirvana In Utero (30th Anniversary) GEFFEN/UME Band’s third and last studio album, now with bonus material, depending on which format. Nirvana’s first album (Bleach, ’89) was warped, made strange by the band’s then-current influences (Soundgarden and the grunge scene in Seattle, mostly). The second (Nevermind, ’91) was odder still, a zeitgeist-grabbing moment wherein pop thrill met metal overspill. The third (In Utero, ’93) should have been weaker, weighed down by the burden of expectation. That it wasn’t is some testament to the triumph of will on the part of the three core members, and Kurt Cobain’s punk-rock upbringing. In Utero is where Nirvana became themselves in the studio. Live, they had been themselves since at least 1990. The drums are thunderous, the guitar never less than scouring and abrasive. Steve…