Innehållsförteckning för September 2025 från Classic Rock

They lined the streets of Birmingham in their tens of thousands. Fans of all ages, in disbelief at the death of their hero, gathered to pay their respects among kindred spirits. They left flowers, cards, guitars, lighters, whiskies, and yes, toy bats. Some stood in silence. Some chanted his name and threw flowers as the late icon and proud Brummie’s cortege drove slowly past. Many were in tears. Leading the march down Broad Street, local group the Bostin Brass Band played Iron Man, War Pigs and Crazy Train. Inside the hearse, ‘Ozzy’ was spelled in purple flowers… Wednesday, July 30, a week after the former Black Sabbath frontman’s death – and less than a month after his monumental farewell show at Villa Park – Birmingham’s ‘Summer Of Sabbath’ felt cut…

According to Joe Perry, Aerosmith are considering one final show after their Peace Out farewell tour was abandoned in 2023. A barnstorming performance from singer Steven Tyler – who had sustained damage to his vocal cords, causing the tour’s cancellation – was among the highlights of Black Sabbath’s recent Back To The Beginning event, the singer’s renditions of Train Kept A-Rollin’, Aerosmith’s Walk This Way and Led Zep’s Whole Lotta Love bringing the house down. “We’re all alive and well, so we’ll just have to see, you know?” Aerosmith guitarist Perry told Trunk Nation. “There’s gotta be at least another Aerosmith gig.” Asked whether, after his voice problems, Tyler was still capable of performing a full-length Aerosmith show, he insisted: “You know, I think he would. I think it’s just…

I photographed Black Sabbath several times before I met Ozzy, including in 1979 when Van Halen opened for them. Everyone says that Van Halen blew Sabbath off stage, but that isn’t true. I thought Van Halen were hysterically funny. I saw them at Lewisham Odeon on the night that David Lee Roth said: “Lewisham, you’re the rock’n’roll capital of the world.” But as for blowing Sabbath off… that didn’t happen. It’s a bit like Iron Maiden; as good as a support act might be, people pay their money to see the headliners. It was on the first Blizzard Of Ozz tour in 1980 that I began to get to know Ozzy. I went with Geoff Barton to cover him for Sounds and we hung out for quite a while. He…

I first met Ozzy in 1981 when I was 21 years old, on assignment to photograph him for the cover of Circus. Sharon, Ozzy’s wife, welcomed me into their hotel room and introduced me – while Ozzy was in the middle of a bubble bath. Not exactly what I was expecting. I remember spotting an empty bottle of Dom Pérignon, and a cigar resting in the ashtray. That moment became my first photo of Ozzy. Right then, I knew he was something special. He listened to my suggestions, gave his all to the shoot, and made me feel like I belonged. That session kicked off decades of unforgettable moments behind the lens. He was warm, generous, and always up for anything. The way he trusted me gave me the confidence…

No Rain, No Flowers EASY EYE SOUND/PARLOPHONE Beleaguered retro rockers sprout fresh, soulful intent. For The Black Keys there’s always gold on the ceiling, even if it sometimes feels a little out of reach. In 2024, amid poor ticket sales and a split with management, the Ohio nu blues duo cancelled a US tour and instead made this thirteenth album of their near-quarter century together. And a surprisingly vibrant, bright-side kind of album it is too. The title, and resonant electro-rock title track, outline the philosophy: got to have dark times to appreciate the light. Or, as Dan Auerbach sings early on: ‘The damage is done, it won’t be long till we’re back in the sun.’ And throughout, this album surfs the ups and downs of life’s tides with the…

Brother Lee And The Leather Jackals End of Days SELF-RELEASED In the grand scheme of things, anobscure local band from somewhere you’ve never been to quietly breaking up is not the grimmest of tragedies. It’s not like, you know, a giant pile of plastic garbage floating in the ocean, or a nuclear meltdown. Still, what a bunch of dummies we are for discovering these sweat-soaked riff melters two days after they played their final show. Remember when we were hip and knew what was going on? Nineties us wouldn’t miss shit like this. Anyway, they leave us with an absolute slammer of a coda, a gaggle of steamy slabs mixing up Chuck Berry, hoary blues, snappy punk rock and woozy, dive-bar rock’n’roll. You gotta appreciate the specificity of their songs too.…

Jeff Wayne The War Of The Worlds (Collector’s Edition) MADFISH Breathtaking – and that’s just the box. This latest reissue of Jeff Wayne’s majestic musical reimagining of HG Wells’s epic tale of alien invasion comes as a 16-CD, two Blu-ray anthology, plus hardback book and various pamphlets, story maps and so forth if you buy the deluxe edition, and with another four LPs and a hand-signed manuscript sheet if you buy the Ultimate Collector’s Edition. The scale of this reissue is both pleasingly portentous and lavishly OTT, as befits the original project. At last count there are 225 tracks here! There’s the original double album from 1978: synths and guitars and drums howling red murder underneath Richard Burton’s stately narration, David Essex pathos embodied as The Artilleryman, Justin Hayward sounding…

Sound N’ Fury Alan Niven ECW PRESS Excess-all-areas memoir from one-time GN’R snakehandler. Alan Niven was the original manager of Guns N’ Roses and, concurrently, of Great White, for whom he also wrote songs. His memoir Sound N’ Fury succeeds where most music books fail: it moves from anecdote to anecdote, each chapter self-contained, in no apparent order, all killer, no filler. Niven writes like Mickey Spillane stubbing cigarettes out on the hard-boiled corpse of James Ellroy, with an almost Dickens-like view. He takes you inside GN’R drug squalor and into the boardroom; from jail cells to the courtroom for the Adler Vs GN’R battle. This is the music business from top to bottom: corrupt, crooked, and frequently funny and outrageous. His stories are told with skill, wisdom, and humour…

The multiple award-winning homegrown blues-roots musician and singer, who has gigged with The Who, Pearl Jam and Beth Hart, among others, prepares for 10 headline UK dates in September. The press describes you calls you as a “young British troubadour”. That last word isn’t heard too often these days. Well, I’m someone that travels around, singing my songs. I’m a storyteller, basically. My songs are very personal to me. You were voted Traditional Blues Artist Of The Year at the UK Blues Awards in 2020, 2022 and 2023. In 2025 you were nominated in three categories. Do such honours serve as motivation? Absolutely, yeah. It gives me a sense of validation, especially as it’s all decided on a public vote. Winning awards is a huge honour. But your own particular…

Since blazing a country trail through Nashville in the early 70s, firstly as member of Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band and then as a revered solo artist, Texan veteran Rodney Crowell has become roots-rock royalty. His fabulous new record Airline Highway, his twentieth studio album, was recorded in Louisiana with a host of young admirers, among them Lukas Nelson, Ashley McBryde, Larkin Poe, Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr and producer Tyler Bryant. Why did you record Airline Highway in Louisiana? I’ve always felt a real connection with the Western Louisiana swamps. When I was growing up on the east side of Houston, we used to drive across the border to hear the Boogie Kings, a bunch of crazy Cajun musicians who played Motown blue-eyed soul. It was funky and down dirty over…

It’s fair to say that Booker T. & The M.G.’s changed the course of Mick Ralphs’s life. The Herefordshire electrician was 18 when he first heard Green Onions on Radio Luxembourg in 1962. “I loved the nasty guitar of it and the groove,” he told Classic Rock in 2016. “I’d never heard anything like it before, and that inspired me to want to play guitar like that. It basically got me into blues and soul music and people like Howlin’ Wolf and Chuck Berry. That was the trigger.” Ralphs wasted little time, and passed through a number of local acts prior to making an album with the Doc Thomas Group in 1967. After a brief spell as lead guitarist in Jimmy Cliff’s backing band, he hooked up with Verden Allen,…

“Farewell Ozzy… what a journey… Sail on up there…. finally at peace… you truly changed the planet of rock!”Robert Plant “There are no amps loud enough to honour this rock legend.”Spinal Tap “Our hearts are broken like millions around the world. Words can’t express the love and loss we are all feeling. Ozzy, you will never leave us – your music is eternal.”Judas Priest “We toured with Ozzy in 1981 and he, the band and Sharon were SO supportive. He always had time for a chat, took us under his wing and showed us how and how not to party.”Joe Elliott, Def Leppard “Yes supported Sabbath on a tour and I spent many a happy time with those lads, drinking and laughing – well, mostly drinking – and I can…

“If you absolutely had to,” a tipsy Sharon Osbourne asks me sweetly, “who would you rather sleep with – my husband or her husband?” It’s late evening in early April 2001, and I’m in a hotel room in LA with Sharon Osbourne and Gloria Butler, the wives and managers, respectively, of Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler. Sabbath are in town to play the first ever ESPN Action Sports And Music Award at the Universal Amphitheater, and I’ve been flown over here to cover the event and interview Ozzy for Kerrang! magazine. I hadn’t been briefed that sleeping with one of the Godfathers of Metal would be part of the assignment. When around the Osbournes, however, you should expect the unexpected. I first met Ozzy, Sharon and their kids in May…

Ozzy Osbourne was in a state of what you might call ‘matrimonially enforced sobriety’ when at the start of 1987 the newly launched UK edition of Metal Hammer magazine flew photographer Tony Mottram and me to Los Angeles to do a cover story. Word had it that despite shaving his head once again to prevent Sharon from sending him on tour, Ozzy was behaving with unusual decorum. The hair had grown back a little, but now he resembled a Teddy boy. When photographed next to an old-fashioned jukebox, all he needed was a pair of brothel creepers and his hair slicked back with Brylcream. Our meet took place at the Osbournes’ house in Beverly Hills – not to be confused with the later abode which featured in The Osbournes reality…

Outside of the very top strata of melodic hard rock acts there are few more popular and enduring names than Harem Scarem. Formed in Toronto, Canada by singer and guitarist Harry Hess and lead guitarist Pete Lesperance way back in 1987, they have since sold more than a million records worldwide. For reasons for that we’ll get into, the band didn’t become as big or famous as the elite stadium-conquering American bands that preceded them – Foreigner, Journey, Toto, Boston, Survivor, Styx – but over the course of almost 40 years and 16 studio albums they have carved a career founded upon a different type of success. In late April this year, Harem Scarem played a packed-out show at The Underworld in London. From start to finish and in sweltering…

Roll With The Punches BAD Soft rock’s Mr Nice Guy returns to familiar ground on album number 16. There’s a secret strength to never having been cool. And, bless his heart, even at the absolute peak of his rock’n’roll powers in the 80s and early 90s, Bryan Adams was never cool. Even when he trapped the whole of the UK in a weird Stockholm syndrome situation at the top of the singles chart with (Everything I Do) I Do It For You for what felt like the length of a Game Of Thrones winter, it wasn’t because he was cool. There was always something too wholesome about him for that. He was very much the auntie’s favourite. None of this is really much of a criticism, because Bryan Adams knows…

The Hives Forever Forever The Hives PIAS The Hives are back to ruin your bad mood. The Hives are back with their seventh record. That’s not a lot for a band that’s been around since the beginning of the internet, but quality control is paramount with this outfit. Recorded with jackhammer intensity with a little help from ex-Beastie Boy Mike D and handsome scoundrel Josh Homme, The Hives Forever Forever The Hives is vibrant, loud and sure to destroy dance floors worldwide. For the pundits among us who might complain that all the songs sound the same, this one’s got surprising dips into everything from surf-punk to blissed-out reggae. Just kidding. They do all sound the same. Thank Christ. The Hives remain rooted in the Scandinavian action-rock/garage-punk wave of the…

Crowne Wonderland FRONTIERS By their very nature, record company-instigated ‘projects’ such as Crowne come and go, a small number attaining sticking power but the majority, quite rightly, quickly forgotten. It speaks volumes, then, that Wonderland is the third album in four years from this Sweden-based group of alumni from Europe (sturdy bassman John Levén), H.E.A.T (Jona Tee, keyboards), Art Nation, Lionville and Nitrate (helium-voiced Alexander Strandell), Dynazty (guitarist Love Magnusson) and The Poodles (former drummer Christian Lundqvist). Once again, Crowne don’t let us down. The mix of rousing, sing-song, Scandi-AOR choruses, top-drawer, symphonic-tipped musicianship and, soaring above it all, the vocal athleticism of Strandell is really something to behold. The music sometimes nudges into heavy metal territory – in fact Saxon vocalist Biff Byford contributes some words for the Viking themed,…

Jonathan Gould MARINER/HARPER COLLINS Acclaimed author’s labour of love comes to town. This ain’t no fooling around. Eighteen years on from Can’t Buy Me Love, his lauded Beatles biography which wowed with its lightly worn elements of musicology and sociology, Jonathan Gould marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of Talking Heads with this rigorously researched study of the band and the context in which they flourished. He is very strong on conveying time and place beyond the usual CGBG cliches, and once that’s settled he digs deep into the individuals who, never natural friends, constituted this itchy, influential art-funk oddity. David Byrne’s struggles to communicate with his colleagues are not blamed solely on his Aspergers, but it plays a part. Equally, the narrative often pitched by Chris Frantz and…

The founding member and longtime frontman of folk-meets-prog band Strawbs has died peacefully following a long illness. He was 85. Born David Joseph Hindson in Hounslow, Middlesex, Cousins formed Strawbs out of bluegrass band Strawberry Hill Boys. Strawbs were the first UK group signed to A&M Records, and they released their self-titled debut album in 1969. Rick Wakeman joined the band for 1970’s Just A Collection Of Antiques And Curios but left the following year to join Yes. Cousins made an unlikely cameo on Def Leppard’s 1980 debut album On Through The Night, introducing the track When The Walls Came Tumblin’ Down. In more recent years Strawbs toured with both acoustic and electric line-ups, which at various times included Adam and Oliver Wakeman, John Young and Dave Bainbridge, and recorded…

Jeff Lynne was “heartbroken” after Electric Light Orchestra were forced to cancel their final two concerts. With the group’s leader battling a systemic infection and also nursing a hand injury, ELO pulled an arena concert in Manchester just 12 minutes before showtime, with the audience already in their seats. It was hoped that their open-air swan song in London’s Hyde Park two days later would go ahead in one form another, possibly with special guests The Doobie Brothers as headliners, but with fans set to travel from across the country, reluctantly a decision was made to cancel that one too. “Jeff Lynne has been and is currently in the care of a team of doctors who have advised him that performing is simply not possible at this time nor will…

Dinosaur Pile-Up vocalist Matt Bigland has been through the wringer. After the Leeds-based alt. rockers released the killer album Celebrity Mansions in 2019, Bigland spent much of the pandemic in and out of hospitals after he broke out in painful ulcers across his body. Now, thankfully, he’s on the mend. With a diagnosis – ulcerative colitis – and treatment plan, Bigland got married in 2022 and the band’s new album, I’ve Been Better, is an absolute belter, exactly the kind of defiant comeback that rock’n’roll was made for, all big riffs and belligerent choruses in the face of hardship. Celebrity Mansions felt like the moment Dinosaur Pile-Up really hit their stride. Where did it all go wrong? The making of Celebrity Mansions was actually pretty bleak. We’d been touring 11:11…

‘Times have changed and times are strange Here I come, but I ain’t the same Mama, I’m coming home’ “I joined the band not to travel, not to become a rock’n’roll star. I didn’t even think about making a record. When we finished the first album I was just pleased to be able to say: ‘Look, mum! Look what I’ve made! My voice on a piece of plastic for ever!’” December 2004, Abbey Road Studios, London NW8. I’m interviewing Ozzy Osbourne in a bright white room. Fierce winter sunshine is searing through the skylights above us. The effect is so dazzling, you can feel the pain as the pupils in your eyes constrict. Ozzy, of course, is resplendent in his customary apparel: clothes as black as crows’ feathers. It’s akin…

February 9, 1970. Arriving late at our local rock club on a rainy Monday night, the 15-year-old me is hoping to catch American blues guitarist Freddie King, but, approaching the venue, Friars Aylesbury sounds to be under some kind of bombardment. A sheet of paper tacked on the door says King can’t make it, and Black Sabbath are playing instead for the half-price admission of 30 pence. The band have just gone on. Entering the small hall is more like stepping onto a Hammer horror film set as, bathed in blinding white light and flickering strobes, three black-clad musicians (two wearing large silver crosses) lay into the most evil-sounding three-chord riff I’ve ever heard, at a deathly slow tempo. Like conducting a malevolent ritual over this monolithic churn, the mad-eyed…

After Ozzy was sacked by Sabbath in 1979, his solo career got off to a convoluted start with Blizzard Of Ozz, released in September 1980 in the UK and six months later in the US. With the album an instant success in America, Ozzy’s epic arena tour started there in April ’81. Support for the first three months were Motörhead, making their US debut. Now major stars in the UK after their breakthrough with Ace Of Spades, Lemmy, Fast Eddie and Philthy felt like they’d stepped back to their scuffling days as they often faced hostile reactions or dumbfounded apathy from audiences. When the tour started, Ozzy was still reeling in the post-Sabbath aftershock. As Lemmy recalls in his memoir: “Ozzy really was having a rough time on the tour…

On December 4 and 5, 1997, Black Sabbath’s original line-up reunited for a pair of hometown shows at Birmingham’s NEC Arena. There had been a handful of fleeting reunions in the 18 years since Ozzy Osbourne had been booted out of the band, including a sluggish appearance at the US leg of Live Aid in which they had the air of a band who had drunk their hotel bar dry the night before (it turned out they had), and a four-song set in Costa Mesa, California in 1992 to mark Ozzy’s farewell show (we all know how that turned out). But those two nights in Birmingham were the first proper shows Aston’s own Four Horseman Of The Apocalypse had played together since 1979. To this day they’re hands-down the two…

When you’re doing a live syndicated radio show, if your guest is late, you’re fucked. Ozzy Osbourne cut it close for the 8:30pm start time of Rockline many times, but always made it… emblematic of his never-say-die attitude. At the Rockline 20th anniversary party, a gala bash in Beverly Hills, and yes, live broadcast, proved once again that ELO – Everyone Loves Ozzy. The guests included Tommy Shaw of Styx, superfreak Rick James and John Waite. Coming to the RL studios in the time prior to cellphones, Oz walked into the guest chair down to the wire. It was before he drove in LA and he’d arrived in the crappy little Honda with his assistant Tony at the wheel, and they were nearly tardy because they’d gone through a Carl’s…

Walter Trout is killing time in a modest hotel room in Solihull, ahead of tomorrow’s show in Warwick. He’s itching to play and ready to talk. He jokes about Zoom’s failings - “I feel like I’m in a bad acid trip” - cursing the technology, while offering up stories with the human warmth and passion of a man who has survived more than most, and come out fighting. Now 74, he is certainly not coasting on past glories. If anything, he’s more driven than ever – fuelled by a sense that time is both precious and urgent. “I never expected to make it this far,” he says, recalling the addictions that nearly killed him in his twenties, and the liver failure that nearly took him a decade ago. “I’m like…

Texas Headhunters Texas Headhunters BLU ELAN Impresario, label boss, record store owner, mentor (to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Clark Jr and more), Clifford Antone was the catalyst for everything that went down on the Lone Star State blues scene, and it seems even his death in 2006 hasn’t curtailed his influence. Texas Headhunters – comprising Ian Moore, Johnny Moeller and Jesse Dayton (best-known to British fans for his recent collaboration with Samantha Fish) –were the final generation of gunslingers nurtured by Antone, and their shared debut seeks to splice the fire and grit of the scene he cultivated with the amiable jockeying of 1985’s Showdown!. In truth – and who can blame them in these algorithm-driven times – there’s nothing else quite as good as opener Pocket, an instantly striking jackboot…

Giants & Monsters REIGNING PHOENIX Retooled German metal meisters show their class. Helloween’s maverick decision in 2016 to merge their current and classic line-ups turned out to be a masterstroke. What could have been an ungainly, Frankenstein’s Monster-style assemblage of musical body parts instead resulted in a kind of German metal Avengers, an unlikely supergroup where all the members happened to have been in the same band at different times. The first album this new iteration released, 2021’s Helloween, was good, but an obvious desire to not reignite past acrimonies lent it an air of cautiousness – the musical equivalent of an ex-wife tiptoeing around the party so as not to upset the current partner. There’s no such issues with this follow-up. Giants & Monsters is a top-tier Helloween album,…

Made In Japan – 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe UMR Who cares if this is three years late? Purple’s very best is now better than ever. Famously originally issued in the Far East only as Live In Japan – at the request of the band’s Japanese record label Warner Pioneer, in the hope of encouraging back catalogue sales – it subsequently grew into a historic release, widely ranked as one of the greatest live albums of all time. It was recorded at three shows on the band’s first visit to Japan, in August 1972 (two shows in Osaka then one in Tokyo). The dates had been postponed from May, meaning the band had played many more shows (mostly in the USA), honing performances of the songs from their June-released sixth album…

Chicago IX: Greatest Hits Expanded RHINO The bonkers and the ballads. Still such a going concern that they’re playing three nights at the Hollywood Bowl in September this year, Chicago claim to have sold 100 million records, including five million of 1975’s Chicago IX: Greatest Hits, their fifth successive US chart topper. Half a century on, the band’s biggest seller has been expanded from 11 to 21 tracks, which advances the story to 1980, although there are three Steven Wilson remixes from 2017. They were so much of their time that 1971’s Chicago IV: At Carnegie Hall was a three-hour, four-LP live set. Even so they swiftly evolved from their inchoate jazz, soul, psychedelic, brassy, hippy melange into accomplished balladeers. They had neither a frontman (most members seemed to have…