Innehållsförteckning för May 2025 från Classic Rock

Bad Company, The Black Crowes, Soundgarden, Joe Cocker and Billy Idol are among the names nominated for induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2025. In a surprisingly rock-friendly list, Oasis, The White Stripes and Joy Division/New Order are also in the running, alongside the veteran US jam band Phish. But Iron Maiden and Motörhead have again been snubbed. A long list of others overlooked by the HOF over the years includes Thin Lizzy, Scorpions, Blue Öyster Cult, Kansas, Mott The Hoople, Genesis, Sparks, Jethro Tull, Boston and King Crimson. As usual, artists are only eligible until 25 years after their first release. The final list will be announced in April, with an Induction Ceremony following in Cleveland in the autumn.…

The surviving members of Nirvana reunited for a second time in a fortnight, this time with Post Malone on vocals. Drummer Dave Grohl, bassist Krist Novoselic and touring guitarist Pat Smear regrouped at New York’s Radio City Music Hall as part of a concert to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the US TV show Saturday Night Live. The Nirvana trio were joined by vocalists including Joan Jett, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Grohl’s daughter Violet Grohl, with just one Nirvana song, Smells Like Teen Spirit, in their set. Grohl later praised rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer Malone’s performance, describing it as “super-cool”.…

Somewhere in the south of France is a ski chalet called Chez Glycerine. It’s owned by producer Clive Langer, whose starry CV includes successful albums by Madness and Elvis Costello. But it was an entirely different band who inspired the name. “He was losing it,” Bush singer and guitarist Gavin Rossdale says of the gaff in question. “Madness hadn’t put out a record for a minute and Elvis hadn’t written a hit since Shipbuilding.” Salvation was at hand in the shape of Bush’s 1994 debut album, Sixteen Stone, produced and engineered by Langer and his studio partner Alan Winstanley. That record went on to sell six million copies in the US, helped in part by the success of its stripped-down fourth single, Glycerine. Happily for Langer, the money he got…

My name is Alan Niven. I am going to tell you some stories. Random rock’n’roll stories. Populated by an interesting cavalcade of characters. Among them are Guns N’ Roses. I took them from the gutters of Sunset Boulevard to Wembley Stadium. I took Great White from the backwater clubs of Orange County to Wembley Arena. Along the way we all joined the parade of misfits and madmen that strut and fret their hour upon their stage. Every story paints a picture. Of personality. Of an event. I hope that at least they will amuse. At best they might contain the germ of wisdom’s insight. In the old Bradley building at LAX you used to be able to stand on a glass VIP mezzanine and watch all the international passengers below,…

With spring almost upon us and music releases, tours and festival announcements coming thick and fast, there was a growing whiff of optimism in the air as we went through our latest Hot List candidates. The promise of longer days; calendars peppered with gigs; a glut of new albums on the horizon; tentative sunshine; drinking outdoors… Good things, in other words. The tone of this month’s selection reflects all that, we think, from Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown’s raucous Chuck Berry boogie to Battlesnake’s committedly bonkers (yet brilliant) riff on NMOBHM-style headbanger material and much more. Bon appetit! Samantha Fish Sweet Southern Sounds Soulful yet elegant and restrained, with Samantha and her band letting rip only when the song needs it (and then boy does she let rip), Sweet Southern…

God Shaped Hole EARACHE They’re ready to take on the world. Four albums in, we’re beginning to understand what we’ll get from Bridgend’s Those Damn Crows. They’re not ready to surprise us with major tangents just yet, but God Shaped Hole sees them building on 2023’s top-three album Inhale/Exhale, honing their craft with the doughty doggedness of those in it for the long haul and already sufficiently sure of themselves to deploy their weapons with relish and gusto. The opening seconds of the opening Dancing With The Enemy sets the tone: big, almost krautrocky guitars, Ronnie Huxford’s clattering, Stranglers-style drums and a sprinkling of grunge squall before Shane Greenhall’s Eddie Vedder-eqsue vocals seal a very appealing deal. We’re barely half a minute in and the fists-in-the-air, made-for-arenas chorus has yet…

Close To The Edge Super Deluxe Edition RHINO A veritable prog rock behemoth in all its opulent splendour. If the original progressive rock era was typified by anything, it was fearlessness. It may be hard to imagine an album as adventurous and unprecedented as Close To The Edge having quite the same commercial impact in 2025, but back in 1972, this knotty, meandering and avowedly complex music was embraced with alacrity by an audience hungry for something bold and unexpected. There was, of course, no guarantee that prog rock would survive the critical pounding it received later in the 70s, but here we are, over 50 years on, with the genre experiencing a seemingly endless resurgence. One of prog’s undisputed crown jewels, Close To The Edge has been restored to…

Forged in the white heat of punk, The Pretenders transcended their origins by drawing from a broad range of classic pop, soul, 60s garage-rock and riffy rock’n’roll. The band’s focal point was inimitable singer/guitarist Chrissie Hynde, an Ohio native who’d moved to London in 1973, landed a job with the NME and spent the next few years switching between prototype versions of what eventually became The Clash, Sex Pistols and The Damned. Hynde’s eureka moment was meeting Herefordshire guitarist James Honeyman-Scott while putting The Pretenders together in 1978. “I was really into this punk thing and real angry, but Jimmy liked Rockpile, the Beach Boys, ABBA and melodic rock,” she told Classic Rock in 2014. “So I brought out the hooks in him and he brought out the melody in…

Formed in the Newcastle suburb of Whitley Bay in 1978, Tygers Of Pan Tang became frontrunners in the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Notwithstanding a couple of time-outs, 13 albums and numerous line-up changes later they’re still going. Guitarist and sole remaining original member Robb Weir previews their latest UK tour. In 2024 the Tygers played in Brazil, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Belgium, Sardinia and Denmark. Quite a list. We played in Sardinia, the home territory of Francesco [Marras, guitarist], and also in Florence, where Jack [Jacopo Meille, the band’s vocalist for more than 20 years] is from, so that was a bit special. It kept snowballing. We also played a heavy metal cruise out of Miami that sailed down to the Caribbean, and there…

David Johansen was the perfect frontman for the New York Dolls. A big-mouthed, loose-limbed, wise-assed, Staten Island talking machine with an immense personality, acres of attitude, a quick wit, a broad vocabulary and an unquenchable passion for rock’n’roll. “When I was a kid Little Richard blew my fucking mind,” Johansen once boomed at me over cocktails. “I first heard him when I was five years old and thought: ‘Okay, that’s what I’m gonna do.’” And that’s pretty much, what he did. David Roger Johansen was born in Staten Island, New York City on January 9, 1950 to an Irish-American librarian mother and a Norwegian-American insurance salesman father. Starting as he meant to go on, young Johansen was expelled from St. Peter’s Boys High School at the age of 14. A…

“The River’s cinematic music and intimate lyrics are woven into my writing style.” It was probably written that Sons Of Silver frontman Pete Argyropoulos and keyboard player/wife Brina Kabler would end up in a band together, because Pete’s parents did the same. Back in the late 60s, as the sun set on the Summer Of Love, they played up and down the California coast in The Mixture, named for their unusually cosmopolitan lineup (Greek, Irish-American, Native American). The band didn’t last, not least because Pete came along, but music stuck. “I got a taste of the musician’s life because my dad had a bunch of friends who were musicians,” says Pete. “The Average White Band would come around.” Pete’s in it for the long haul. In the late 90s he…

Picture the scene. It’s the early 1990s or thereabouts, and indie rockers Radiohead are gathered at their shared dwelling in East Oxford. One night, guitarist Jonny Greenwood steps over the usual detritus of communal living – unwashed crockery, cassette cases, dog-eared music papers – shoves a tape into the VHS player and demands his bandmates pay attention. “Jonny made us all watch Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii, and said: ‘Now this is how we should do videos,’” recalled his elder brother, Radiohead’s bassist Colin Greenwood. “I remember seeing Dave Gilmour sitting on his arse playing guitar, and Roger Waters with long greasy hair and dusty flares…” As Classic Rock recounts the tale of Radiohead’s viewing session to Pink Floyd co-founder drummer Nick Mason, he interjects. “Ah, I know what this…

“Gary wasn’t really in control of what was coming through him. He couldn’t stop it. He was a genius, really.”Don Airey In the summer of 1984, Gary Moore was 32 and living off his reputation as one of the greatest guitarists in Britain. But so what? He’d been hearing about how great he was on guitar since he was 10 years old and playing in Irish showbands. That wasn’t what kept him up at night scowling. With his disconcertingly scarred face (the result of a pub-fight glassing he was too wasted to remember the next morning) and over-eager-Spaniel hair (the result, common at the time, of long-haired 70s rockers updating their haircuts to accommodate the rock-is-dead 80s), Moore appeared a haunted figure, both on stage, where his playing was intensely…

The last time Classic Rock chatted with Andy Curran and Alex Lifeson about the future of their new musical venture, the bassist and guitarist were non-committal, almost shy in addressing the notion, and labelling it “a project”. That was in the spring of 2022, though, and the affirmation that they’d created something special was just around the corner. That year their dark, dreamy self-titled debut album hit some serious milestones, among them No.1 in Billboard’s New Artist and Alternative Artist lists, No.6 in the Canadian Alternative chart, and a trio of Top-10 places in the UK. Not that sales positions are everything, but, alongside positive feedback in the media, the four-piece had certainly found an appreciative audience. Leaping forward to 2025, Envy Of None are now releasing album number two,…

Amplifier Gargantuan ROCKOSMOS Big by name… Amplifier’s eighth full-length album was, like 2023’s Hologram, made as a two-piece by guitarist/singer Sel Balamir and drummer Matt Brobin. But Gargantuan, as its title suggests, is much bigger than its predecessor. It’s twice as long, for a start, and the songs sound connected, like those on the band’s 2011 epic The Octopus. Instrumental noise-fest Evolution, the first of the 12 tracks, segues into Gateway, on which Brobin’s drums are Peartesque, Balamir’s guitar a wall of sound. The pulsing intro to Invader heralds a leviathan riff topped by a folksy yet menacing vocal. Another colossal Brobin tattoo sets up the storming eight-minute Blackhole – one of many tracks here conjuring memories of the band’s muchloved self-titled 2004 debut. Shifting from metaphysical subject matter, King…

Stygian Waves KSCOPE Band’s second album full of invention and experimentation to dazzling effect By his own admission, completing work on this, Envy Of None’s second album, kept Alex Lifeson off the golf course and in the studio for the best part of last year. As he puts it: “Three months working in there and I’m a golf slut!” But less time working on his swing and more on writing and arranging songs has paid off handsomely. And while the band’s glittering firmament of stars – with members of Rush and Coney Hatch it’s like the nominees list for the Juno Lifetime Awards – impresses initially, it’s vocalist Maiah Wynne who has really blossomed since the band’s self-titled debut in 2022. Stronger melodies, more powerful performances, now an emphatic lead,…

Gotthard Stereo Crush REIGNING PHOENIX MUSIC Gotthard have trodden an uneven path in the 15 years since the shock death of lead singer Steve Lee. Lee’s talent shone like a 24-carat diamond, the consummate mode of articulation for the Swiss group’s mix of fiery hard rock anthemsandsilkenballads. Since2012’s underwhelming Firebirth, fans have dared to hope that Gotthard might rediscover their mojo. Regrettably, despite the occasional false dawn, it never really happened. By his own admission, current frontman Nic Maeder is more of an “AC/DC guy” than a devotee of Lee’s beloved David Coverdale. So it’s a genuine pleasure to shout from the rooftops that Gotthard have finally released something deserving of what was once an incredibly respected name. From crisp, full-bodied opening anthem AI & I to These Are The Days,…

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R50 UME/MERCURY/ANTHEM RECORDS Fifty reasons why three Canadian oddballs became a treasured part of rock history. Given that Rush began playing heavy blues rock that saw them pegged as Canada’s Led Zeppelin, it is worth reflecting how far they flew from that worthy starting point. R50 does exactly that. It is available in five configurations. Most lavish are the Super Deluxe Edition (a golden box containing newly packaged seven vinyl albums, four CDs, two hardcover books and 20 song-inspired prints) and the Rush Backstage Exclusive Super Deluxe Edition (adding “a bonus pack of four lithos”). The 7LP and 4CD versions also feature some new artwork etc. Finally, there’s a digital option. The visual extras (by the band’s long-time creative director Hugh Syme, naturally) are stunning, but it matters more that…

Vinyl collectors rejoice – Record Store Day is back! With more than 270 independent record shops across the UK coming together to celebrate their unique culture, RSD is now long-established as a notable event in the calendar of serious rock fans. Record Store Day began in the United States in 2007 when a gathering of record shop owners came together to celebrate and spread the word about the value of having music on physical media. Streaming? Pah! The first official event took place on April 19, 2008, and today it is celebrated by thousands of record shops all over the globe in what has become the biggest new music event of the past decade, with a delicious smorgasbord of vinyl releases – some previously unreleased, others delivered in rare form…

Rick Buckler, best known as the drummer with mod revivalists The Jam, has died at the age of 69. The news was confirmed in a statement by his agent, a month after Buckler had to cancel a run of spoken-word engagements due to “ongoing health issues”. Formed in 1972 in Woking, Surrey, The Jam – completed by singer, guitarist and songwriter-in-chief Paul Weller and, later, bassist Bruce Foxton – had 18 consecutive UK Top 40 singles from their debut in 1977 to their break-up in December 1982, four of which – Going Underground, Start!, Town Called Malice and Beat Surrender – were UK No.1s. While Weller was acknowledged as the driving force of The Jam, the individual contributions of Foxton and Buckler were significant; it’s difficult to imagine Weller’s songs…

Luke Morley releases his third solo album, Walking On Water, on August 1. The Thunder guitarist undertakes as even-date UK tour that begins in Manchester on September 11. Inglorious are back with a new line-up. Joining mainstays Nathan James on vocals and bassist Colin Parkinson are guitarist Richard Shaw and drummer Henry Rogers. The band play four UK dates in June, and details of a new studio album, the British group’s first since 2021’s We Will Ride, are expected to be announced soon. Following their cover version of Simon & Garfunkel’s 60s hit The Sound of Silence, Evan Stanley and Nick Simmons, the sons of Kiss mainstays Paul and Gene, have recorded 10 songs together. Details of how the material might be released are yet to be announced. Stanley Jr. fronts…

“Brian Johnson really liked what we were doing and said to our manager: ‘I’ve got some lyrics for them…’” “Man made disaster in all forms,” Himalayas frontman Joe Williams says of the theme that runs through his band’s second album, Bad Star. “It’s about the chaos. There’s so much happening and it’s hard to make sense of it all. It all seems interwoven. You can’t really untangle anything.” War, runaway climate change, you-know-who in the White House… If you’re finding it all a bit overwhelming, meet possibly your new favourite band. Himalayas might have started out last decade as Arctic Monkeys-influenced indie kids, but since then they’ve toughened up their sound. Now, with Bad Star and its apocalyptic themes, raw guitars and beefy production, they’ve parked alongside Queens Of The…

One minute you’re doing a session backing a pop-princess hopeful in the studio, the next you’ve got a kick-ass rock band. Well, that’s what kind of happened to Lee-La Baum (frontwoman/guitarist), her partner Tom Schemer (lead guitarist) and drummer Dave Traina. Rooted in Dylan, Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane, Montreal quartet The Damn Truth (now completed by bassist PY Letellier) have just released their fourth album, a self-titled banger, with production legend Bob Rock at the controls. Baum and Schemer tell Classic Rock some lesser-known things about the band. They started by playing together naked at a hippie festival. “That worked for us, man,” Baum says with a laugh, remembering the event where everyone was naked. Schemer heard someone playing CSN&Y’s Almost Cut My Hair on an acoustic guitar and was…

It’s July 1990 and hotter than hell in New York City. Jon Bon Jovi and I are perched on the first-floor veranda of his manager’s Manhattan offices, gazing out at the taxi cabs crisscrossing Central Park South. Jon explains this is the very spot he and the rest of Bon Jovi first met to plot the seeds of a success story none of them really believed possible. All except for Jon, of course. “Back then we didn’t have the price of a cup of coffee between us,” he says. “You ask me has the success changed me since then, I say sure, man. It changes everybody.” He looked downcast. He confessed that the mammoth, life-changing success of the band’s album Slippery When Wet four years earlier had affected him both…

A few years ago, an interviewer asked Dan and Justin Hawkins a question that cut close to the bone: “What was it like when you were making hit records? Did it feel better then than it does now?” “We still make hit albums,” Dan shot back, quick as a flash. “It’s just that no c**t fucking buys them.” A less sweary version of that line is the knockout punch at the heart of Walking Through Fire, an exuberant glam-tinged arena rocker from The Darkness’s eighth album, the excellently named Dreams On Toast. It’s an outrageously great record that includes anthemic songs about farting before sex, rivalries between electrical shops and even, on orchestral closing ballad Weekend In Rome, a spoken word part from a real-life Hollywood actor, namely Backbeat and…

Goo Goo Dolls were on a deserted island in the middle of a shark-infested ocean when they got the call that changed their lives. Granted, it wasn’t a real island, but a pile of sand with a chintzy fake palm tree on it, located in the middle of a studio. The sharks were guys in black suits with fins on their backs. This unlikely set up was the video shoot for Only One, the first single from the Buffalo, New York trio’s fifth album, A Boy Named Goo. This was 1995 and the Goo Goo Dolls had been around for nearly 10 years at this point, having evolved from a scrappy punk band into something more grown-up and anthemic. But they were still chasing the crossover song that would introduce…

Caylee Hammack Bed Of Roses CAPITOL NASHVILLE Hammack’s story is the stuff of Nashville biopics: blowing into town from backwoods Georgia aged 19, with only 1,000 dollars and a bag of clothes to her name, eking a living by singing covers in local bars. She caught her first break as a staff writer for Universal, eventually leading to a deal with Capitol and gigs supporting Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley. Her 2020 debut If It Wasn’t For You put her firmly in Music Row territory, but this overdue follow-up feels like a reinvention of sorts. Hammack’s classic country voice evokes Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, while also aligning her to more recent names like Margo Price or Caitlin Rose. The dirt-under-the-nails title track is a great showcase for her powerfully expressive…

Black Light/White Noise BMG Well-travelled guitar pair’s second delivers more classy hard rock with instrumental fizz. When this pair’s debut Smith/Kotzen was released in early 2021, the prospect of an Iron Maiden guitarist joining forces with a Winery Dog was intriguing to say the least, the matey jamming between Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen turning into a full-blown album of what turned out to be very classy hard rock indeed. It wasn’t a million miles from what Kotzen was already known for, but any Maiden fans hoping for a bit of galloping metallic bluster must have been more than a tad confused by it. Four years on and, obviously, the two ace six-stringers found the original experience rewarding enough to do it all over again. And, like before, this is…

Live At The Greek (25th Anniversary Edition) THE ORCHARD Third time’s a charm with the restoration of The Black Crowes’ material across six slabs of vinyl or three CDs. When Robert Plant quit his post-Zep partnership with Jimmy Page after three years of reunited touring and the so-so Walking Into Clarksdale album, the guitarist was left high and dry after a period of intense activity not seen since his Led Zeppelin heyday. And while Plant rejuvenated his mojo via his Priory Of Brion project, there’s every chance that Page would have retreated to his West London castle to ponder what might have been, were it not for his live guest appearance with The Black Crowes. This in turn led to a further 18 live performances across North America as both…

Dir: Kevin MacDonald DOGWOOF Essential documentation of a turbulent time. On August 30, 1972, at Madison Square Garden, John Lennon played his first and only full-length concert after leaving The Beatles – the One To One benefit for disabled children from Willowbrook State School. This documentary captures that concert and the events leading up to it. It’s easy to assume the world doesn’t need another Lennon or Beatles documentary, but over the course of 100 minutes (too brief!) this one proves otherwise. A furious montage of TV clips, prison riots, street scenes, Coca-Cola ads, President Nixon, protest marches, chat show interviews, Walter Cronkite and game shows is woven around electrifying footage of songs from the concert. The result is an explosive and inspirational portrait of a politically charged era –…