Innehållsförteckning för October 2025 från Classic Rock

Motörhead. I’d wager there’s not a single person who’s likely to read a magazine called Classic Rock who doesn’t rate the mighty Motörhead. The band led by Lemmy that easily managed to unite all the disparate factions and tribes of rock by being, frankly, full-on and brilliant. 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Lemmy forming that band – originally called Bastard, until cooler heads prevailed – after having been unceremoniously ousted from Hawkwind. And, shockingly, this year also marks 10 years of his passing. Where on earth does the time go? This month we take a look at back at Lemmy and 50 years of his band in the company of his friends and associates. We also hear from the great man himself in a forthright and hilarious interview from…

“Terry Reid’s enthusiasm and encouragement were incredible back then. Still teenagers, we crashed each other’s gigs and crucified Season Of The Witch time and time again. So much fun. So on it. He was all of everything, such charisma. His voice, his range, his songs capturing that carefree era. Superlungs indeed. He catapulted me into an intense new world he chose to decline. I listen now to his album The River and shed a tear for my brother in arms.”Robert Plant “Finding it hard to put into words how sad I am. How was it just a few short months ago we were smiling on my bus together? He was such a force. A talent beyond what I can express right now. It is still one of my proudest moments…

The co-founder and guitarist of Dutch veterans Golden Earring has T died at the age of 77. The band called it quits in 2021 after Kooymans was diagnosed with the degenerative muscle disease ALS late the previous year. “It’s a very bad prognosis,” the guitarist said at the time. “I am being treated at the university hospital in Leuven. That’s it. It’s a progressive disease. Unfortunately, performing is no longer possible.” Kooymans was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1948, and formed The Golden Earrings, initially known as The Tornados, in 1961. They then became Golden Earring, whose 1973 hit Radar Love was covered by artists as diverse as James Brown, King Diamond, Ministry, Def Leppard, James Last and White Lion. “There are about four hundred versions of that…

The cause of Ozzy Osbourne’s death, at the age of 76, was a heart attack, according to a report in The New York Times. Endearingly, his death certificate had Ozzy’s occupation as “Songwriter, performer and rock legend’. On July 23, the day after Ozzy passed away, Tony Iommi gave an interview to ITV. “When I heard yesterday, [the news] couldn’t sink in,” commented the Black Sabbath guitarist. “I thought: ‘It can’t be.’ I only had a text from him the day before.” Iommi admitted that Ozzy didn’t “look well through the rehearsals” for Sabbath’s farewell concert, Back To The Beginning, adding: “I think he held out to do that show. Me and Geezer [Butler, bassist] were talking about it last night – that he held out to do it, and…

“I was introduced to Lemmy by Motorcycle Irene, my good friend, soul buddy and occasional fuck buddy, at the Speakeasy in August 1974. Lemmy was still in Hawkwind, and I was relieved that he didn’t want to talk about space-rock. Instead we chatted about a shared love of The Pretty Things, The Easybeats, The Byrds and The Beatles. We got on like a house on fire from the word go. I had a similar obsession as he did with the Second World War. Both of us loved Monty Python and The Goon Show. I bred horses, and he really liked those too. “I was useful to Lemmy because I had a car. Although he was gregarious, he was a loner, and we were quite happy sitting in silence together while I…

“I first said he knew somebody, so we met Lemmy at the back of Hawkwind’s bus. They had a gig, and Thomas Crimble had left. Simon King collected him from Dik Mik’s place in Earls Court. When Dave Brock asked: ‘Where’s your fucking bass?’, Lemmy replied: ‘I don’t play bass’. Luckily Del Dettmar had one. Lemmy played that same old Hopf for years because he couldn’t be bothered to replace it. He saved the money for more speed. “Lemmy fitted right in with Hawkwind because the rest of them were pretty mad. As the band’s manager, I was the one who insisted Lemmy should get a stab at singing Silver Machine, because they’d gone around the room and nobody managed it. From then on he was a real member of…

“I was From 2005 I spent 24 hours a day with Lemmy’s personal assistant and Motörhead road manager for six years… and I lived to tell the tale! Lem and the band for 11 months of each year. I loved every moment, the ups and the downs. No two days were alike. Lemmy was so funny and intelligent. He became a father figure to me – albeit a pretty maniacal father figure! – at a time when I might have ended up in the morgue. He took me under his wing. “I got lucky. I had been working with Nick Oliveri from Queens Of The Stone Age when they supported Motörhead, and we kind of clicked. When the job was offered to me I had a flashback to seeing Motörhead…

“The programme for the Overkill tour was the first thing I designed for Motörhead. When I got to the Ace Of Spades tour program, I was given the copy and some pictures. Eddie loved fishing, and there was this great picture of him in full Motörhead gear, holding up this big bunch of fish by a riverbank. I just thought: ‘Fuck me, what a great picture. Nobody really knows that side of him; that’s going in the program!’ So I did the program and they had five thousand printed. “When I went to the office to pick up my cheque, Eddie walked in, and it’s the first time he’s seen the program. Suddenly he goes ballistic. “No fucking way is that going in the fucking program! I don’t care if…

“Back in 1982, as a schoolkid in Surbiton, I wrote to Motörhead’s management, asking to interview Lemmy for the school magazine. I now recognise that with a readership of maybe 40 people it was a ludicrous request, but somehow I got a letter back saying – and I’ll never forget the wording – Lemmy “requested my presence” at Olympic Studios where Motörhead were working on Another Perfect Day. “I was 15 years old. Before previewing six or seven work-in-progress tracks at deafening volume, Lemmy thrust a pint of vodka and orange into my hand, the orange juice purely for colour, before spending a couple of hours answering my inane questions. This extraordinarily kind gesture on his part set me on my life path. Words like ‘chivalrous’ and ‘welcoming’ sound stiff,…

“I first met Lemmy around 1974, when we both shared similar nocturnal activities, so I was there from the beginning of Motörhead. The first time I met Eddie was at the Furniture Cave rehearsal studio, a dirty, smelly old place in Chelsea where Motörhead rehearsed. There was an immediate bond, probably because we both came from growing up in the 50s with similar middle-class backgrounds – him from Twickenham, me Chalfont. We were also both interested in guitars and electronics. Eddie had an electronics workshop in another part of the Furniture Cave where he fixed things. The rehearsal room was about 20 by 20 foot. You couldn’t stand up when Motörhead were playing because the volume was so great. You simply couldn’t! “Lemmy was never into fighting. After a gig at…

Youth Sector Pop Couture DANCE TO THE RADIO Sharp sartorials, timeless dawn-of-the-80s, fin-de-punk-siecle quirks and ear-wormingly huge hook-heavy tunes mark this genre-oblivious, Brighton-based indie-leaning quintet out for greatness. A touch of Devo, a dab of disco and a pinch of vintage Byrne. Deee-licious. 8/10 The Mean Times Feel More Dumb GOLDEN ROBOT So this is how it sounds when a garage-popping, kebab-weaned Melbourne quartet of no fixed hairstyle run headlong into a melontwisting midlife crisis. There’s mellowing afoot, lyrical contemplation, but Thomas Morgan only ever sings like you’ve spilt his pint. 7/10 Ghostwoman Welcome To The Civilised World FULL TIME HOBBY This fourth from the Canuck/Belgian sun-gazing hypno-psych duo – Ille Van Dessel (drums) Evan Uschenko (everything else) – melds chiming Byrdsian jangle with cinematic Americana, laced Shields-ian stringscapes…

New edition includes early mixes of the tracks, plus 1975 and 1979 live recordings. Released 50 years ago, Physical Graffiti isn’t part of the rock continuum. It didn’t especially pave the way for anything, but it isn’t a mere marker of its era. It hasn’t dated. It’s outside of the rock timeline, a gigantic, impermeable, orbital black achievement, which has intensified with age. Certainly that’s the verdict on the first disc of the original double album. The second disc is less mountainous, ranging from the wistful acoustic fragment of Bron-Y-Aur to the saloonbar knees up Boogie With Stu featuring Rolling Stones piano player Ian Stewart. Its momentousness is very much frontloaded. In My Time Of Dying is the blackest of blues, conveyed in the jet-slide scrawls of Jimmy Page’s guitar…

The former Rainbow and Michael Schenker Group singer heads out to play British dates to celebrate the latter band’s 1982 album Assault Attack. Your Facebook page recently reminded us that “despite the circumstances” – you took his place in Rainbow – there was a friendship between you and Ronnie James Dio. I wouldn’t describe it was a close friendship, but I did get to know Ronnie pretty well. I went to his house a few times. A few days ago you were on stage with Joe Lynn Turner and Dino Jelusick of Whitesnake fame singing Man On The Silver Mountain for 25,000 fans in Belarus. At 77 years young you still travel the world, sing those songs and, presumably have a bit of fun in the process. That’s absolutely true.…

Vernon Reid first made his mark in the 1980s with his genre-mashing, socially conscious band Living Colour, who broke the mould with their mix of punk, rock, metal, jazz, funk, and hip-hop. That eclecticism remains today on his new album Hoodoo Telemetry, which is testament to the vast musical spectrum he grew up embracing. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING My parents are from the West Indies, from Montserrat. They’re part of the Windrush generation. So the first thing was calypso. But one of my most enduring memories was seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. One of the things that is important about them, aside from their tunes, is that The Beatles gave artists the permission to change radically. The Beatles made it possible for Pink Floyd to…

KRIS NEEDS Long-time Classic Rock contributor Kris was one of the first people to champion Lemmy and Motörhead in the British press, as Editor of Zigzag, the UK’s first serious music monthly. This issue Kris helps us celebrate 50 years of Motörhead by recalling times spent with Lemmy and by speaking to many of his close friends, crew and more. It all starts on page 24. DAMIAN FANELLI Whereas most casual fans stop listening to The Beatles post-Let It Be, Damian – a moptop devotee sincehewasknee-high to a blackbird, bulldogand/or raccoon – gives the Fabs’ solo albums equal-ish space on his personal Beatles timeline. So obviously he was happy to shed light on some of George Harrison’s less-celebrated solo works (p62). Also – almost forgot! – Damian is the editor-in-chief…

The keyboard player and guitarist who performed with Derek And The T Dominos, Eric Clapton and George Harrison has died after a short illness. He was 77 years old. In 1967, Memphis-born Whitlock became the first white artist to be signed to the Stax label. He joined husband and wife duo Delaney & Bonnie, playing on their albums Home and Accept No Substitute, both released in ’69. The following year he played on Clapton’s self-titled solo debut and Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. But it was with Derek And The Dominos, alongside Clapton, guitarist Duane Allman, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon that Whitlock scored his biggest success. The band’s 1970 debut album, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, was home to Layla, which was a hit single when…

To celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary this year, Motörhead are getting a punk rock makeover. A brand new tribute album Killed By Deaf: A Punk Tribute To Motörhead will be released by BMG on October 31. Motörhead have long been credited as the band that united both punks and metalheads. “If you hadn’t seen what we looked like, you would have thought we were a punk band,” Lemmy said in 2009. Killed By Deaf features 14 fast and filthy covers of Motörhead classics by the likes of Rancid, Pennywise, The Bronx and many more. It also features Lemmy guesting on a track with The Damned. The full track listing is: Ace Of Spades (Pennywise), Sex & Death (Rancid), Over The Top (The Bronx), Rock ’N’ Roll (Lagwagon), The Chase Is…

It’s 9am on a Tuesday, and a corporate-looking Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist is I conducting interviews from an office in Stockholm. “It’s not my office,” he tells Classic Rock. “Mine is better.” That’s the kind of self-belief we’ve come to expect from the frontman of Swedish garage punkers The Hives, who on the cover of new album The Hives Forever Forever The Hives are looking royal, wearing crowns and ermine robes. What was the creative spur for the new album? We put out another album, The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons, fairly recently [2023], and this was a sibling of it. They were partly made at the same time. That was supposed to be our punk comeback [after 11 years away], and this was supposed to be the arena record, our Back…

“My partner Greg Olliver and I began preparation of the official Lemmy movie, Lemmy: 49% Motherfucker, 51% Son Of A Bitch, five years before it was released in 2010, and we worked on it for around three years. We shot him in various countries across the world. There were moments when Lemmy lost patience with the process, but that’s okay – sometimes I lost mine, too. “One of the first questions I asked him was: ‘When are you Lemmy and when are you Ian Fraser Kilmister?’ To which he fired back: ‘I am Lemmy 24-7.’ He took great pride in the image that he had cultivated, though I hope the movie showed a different, sometimes softer side to the Lemmy that people think they know. “He was always reading. In…

More than 45 years ago, after a hard day editing Zigzag magazine at its offices off Portobello Road it became something of a routine to visit Lemmy at his home around the corner. Essentially a low-lit basement, his lair boasted a double bed, comfy chairs, floor cushions, stereo system, and a patchwork-mirrored coffee table that had obviously seen action. Walls were hung with Motörhead-related flags and posters, shelves and cupboards stuffed with books, records and identical white boots. Lemmy stayed here all the way through Motörhead’s rise to No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith. “I like it here!” he explained. “It’s a nice, shabby pit for me to crawl into. I’ve always lived like this.” Lemmy at home was somewhat different from the Lemmy in public; the perfect host playing his beloved…

“During Motörhead House, on the nineties, I lived with the band at their shared property, the legendary Chamberlayne Road in Ladbroke Grove. Looking for work after a lengthy tour with Uriah Heep, I bumped into my friend Ian Dobbie, known as Eagle, who worked for Motörhead. Eagle told me to be at Nomis Studios the following day. “I was invited to stay at the house after we returned home from a gig at the TT Races on the Isle of Man. Lem asked where the bus should drop me off but I had no place to go. He shouted: ‘We’ve got a lodger for a little bit’, though it ended up more than a bit. “The Motörhead House was quite a place. Living there could be a little National Lampoon’s…

“I had When I joined Work Hard PR, my met Lemmy at various places in London, and although he didn’t know my name we were on nodding terms. partner Roland Hyams had had a miserable time getting him to do press. I was the third guy to try. At the hotel, I went through the list of interviews and Lemmy said: ‘Not doing that one, or that one…’ To which I replied: ‘You fucking well are.’ Grinning, he said: ‘You’re the first person to answer back to me.’ We became firm friends. “I was Motörhead’s publicist for twenty three years. It was hectic, it was fun and it was never dull. Lemmy would fly in for three days and grumble about being asked the same old questions, and also having…

Life moves fast in Mirador. They wrote their first 10 songs in a week. Their first gig took place in front of 12,000 people, opening for co-frontman Jake Kiszka’s ‘other’ band. At their first headline show, in Nashville, fans queued outside for two days straight. By night two, in New York City, they were singing the words to all the songs. Rapidly forming a Deadhead-style community, fans travelled together between cities, sharing intel, trading lyrics, making their own merch. Promising omens, certainly, for one of the hottest prospects in high-spec, nostalgic rock’n’roll since Jack White and Rival Sons began blazing that trail. All that, and at that point Mirador had yet to release a single piece of music. “Those gigs were wild,” recalls Chris Turpin, nursing the remains of an…

Plant, Suzi Dian and band breathe new life into a classic and contemporary catalogue. Rod Stewart, for one, might have gone through the Great American Songbook like a family dog digging up a favourite bone, but Robert Plant and the Saving Grace band have been building a classic songbook all their own. Plant, who has drifted happily and assuredly since his heady days as a golden god of rock, has spent a lifetime playing musical hopscotch, seemingly content wherever he lands. Whether it was the sublime rock’n’roll of his early solo career, or the surprise platinum-selling smash that came from his joyous union with Alison Krauss, or simply going back to play pub gigs with his old outfit Band Of Joy, Plant, you feel, was at peace. Although it’s a…

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Richard Hawley Coles Corner (20th Anniversary) PARLOPHONE While about as ballsy as Neil Hannon at a wake, Coles Corner (now doubled in size with B-sides, acoustics and gatefold) positively oozes nostalgic chamber-pop, bluesabilly quality. From ’05, before deploying Morrissey phrasing was designated a hate crime. 7/10 Brian Protheroe Pinball CHRYSALIS You’ve probably caught him in Doctors or Midsomer Murders, which suggests that as an actor Brian Protheroe’s a great singer-songwriter. This newly pressed ’74 debut reveals a dulcet-toned, word-playing tunesmith with Pinball’s title track his defining magnum opus. 7/10 Descendents Milo Goes To College ORG MUSIC SoCal popcore pioneers The Descendents’ ’82 debut saw them boldly experimenting with the addition of melody to short, sharp, brutally nerdy landfill hardcore, and marked US punk’s eureka moment. Yes, it’s snotty and generic,…

He’s won a Grammy, been inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, written books, made films, presented documentaries and composed music for ballet, opera and classical concerts. Now the former drummer with The Police heads out on the next part of his spoken-word tour. This is the second leg of your Have I Said Too Much? tour, its first run having taken place last Autumn. How will this one differ? Every night is different. I could talk for five hours instead of just a couple, so it’s inevitable that no two shows will be alike. Regarding The Police alone there are twenty anecdotes that I could tell, so we have a lady MC, Lisa Thomson, to keep me on track because one question from the audience is all…

Woah oh oh, listen to the music… “We’ve been forced to remove the Jumbotron,” Patrick Simmons jokes, much to the relief of any shady CEOs and their HR mistresses tucked away at the back of the Arena. In fact, all in the O2 is virtuous, wholesome harmony tonight as the Doobie Brothers take to a stage bedecked with a backdrop ofpastoral American scenery for a slightly delayed return to London – their appearance at this year’s Hyde Park British Summer Time shows earlier in the week were sadly scuppered due to ELO’s cancellation. As their 55th year rocks down the highway smoothly – with singer/keyboard player Michael McDonald back after six years away – they kick into their jumping cover of Kim Weston’s 60s Motown hit Take Me in Your…

Making their sole UK appearance in 2025, AC/DC prove that despite the changes and the passing years, they’re still better than anyone else. AC/DC have been in my life since I can remember. They featured heavily in the soundtrack of my childhood. Since then they’ve been my go- to happy place, rock’n’roll comfort food and a powerful confidence boost whenever I need it. It’s still the name I always mention, instinctively, when asked what my favourite bands are. And yet, due to a combination of age, life events and unfortunate timing, I’ve never actually seen them live. Until today. Murrayfield is a sea of ‘DC. Tour T-shirts from all generations. Flashing red devil horns, worn by fans old, young, middle-aged, male, female. Kids in their first tour T-shirts. Your average…

Family have announced the passing of their multi-instrumentalist John F ‘Poli’ Palmer at the age of 82. Palmer joined Family in late 1969. The first of the band’s albums he played on was 1970’s A Song For Me, and he left before the recording of It’s Only A Movie in 1973. Born in Worcester, Palmer played the vibraphone, flute, piano, synthesisers and occasional drums. Prior to joining Family, he had been in The Hellions alongside Jim Capaldi and Dave Mason, both of whom became members of Traffic, and was also involved with psych band Blossom Toes, heavy blues rockers Bakerloo and Matthews Southern Comfort. He worked with Peter Frampton and Elkie Brooks, among others, played on Pete Townshend’s 1982 solo album All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes and Kevin…

Iron Maiden have paid tribute to their original singer, Paul Mario Day, after I he lost a battle with cancer at his home in Australia. The 69-year-old East Londoner fronted Maiden for around 10 months before being replaced by Dennis Wilcock in October of 1976. The band commented: “Paul was a lovely person and good mate. Rest in peace.” The news was also shared in a social media post by Day’s bandmates in More, the group he started following his exit from Iron Maiden. The statement hailed Day as “a huge part of the New Wave Of British heavy metal”. Following a stint with the band Wildfire, Day hooked up with glam rockers Sweet during the mid-80s. On social media, Sweet guitarist Andy Scott described the loss as “a sad…

Missing presumed lost as far as this side of the Atlantic is M concerned, Florida-formed rockers 38 Special nevertheless remain stalwarts of the North American touring circuit. Now they’re back with their first album in more than two decades, and there’s even the possibility of them playing a show in Britain. Frontman and co-founder Don Barnes tells us about the aptly-titled Milestone, and more. How do you keep a band going for more than half a century? You must try to be diplomatic, and lift one another when necessary. People joke about bands being like marriages, but it’s true. We were by no means an overnight success. It took years of struggle and suffering, which probably creates a stronger bond. Why is there more than 20 years between Milestone and…

A conversation with Lemmy is in one sense like a Motörhead gig – there’s no bullshit. When Lemmy talks about the rock’n’roll life, it’s with the hard-earned wisdom of a man who has seen it all, done it all, and got a whole collection of T-shirts. When he talks about humanity – in particular, religion and war – it’s as a student of history. When he talks about women – and it always comes back to women – he admits that he still can’t quite figure them out after all these years. A lifetime of excess hasn’t dulled his intelligence, his self-deprecating wit, or his rather old-fashioned sense of chivalry. A gentleman, a scholar and a rock’n’roll legend, Sir Lemmy of Kilmister is truly a one-off. Do you think people…

“I’d been nagging Eddie for years that I wanted a dog, because I’d been brought up with them in Japan. He loved animals but couldn’t bear seeing them go. Then suddenly in 2010 he said: ‘Okay, I’ll get you a dog for Christmas.’ So I started checking online, and found the Maltese/shih tzu cross we called Cookie. “Before we got her, Eddie said: ‘You’ll have to take her out for walks. Fast Eddie with a small dog? No fuckin’ way! I’ve got my image to think of!’ Then as soon as he saw her, he fell in love with her and took her everywhere. She loved him. They had a special bond. Whoever he saw, he would say: ‘Isn’t my dog lovely?’ We started taking her to the park close…

“When I was managing Thin Lizzy, in August 1971 I got a tiny stall in the back of this flea market on London’s Golborne Road that became the first Rock On record stall every Friday and Saturday. People would hear these rock’n’roll records emanating from the back. We got all sorts of people, cos nearby Portobello Road on a Saturday was the place to hang out, including Lemmy. If it was rock’n’roll, Lemmy was attracted to it. “He never had much money to buy records, but after Hawkwind got a deal with Atlantic Records in America he suddenly came in with a cheque book in his hand and started buying really cool 45s. Not a huge amount, but a fair few. He had really good taste in music. He would…

“Lemmy you’re doing, but you can’t call was the first person to suggest that we change the name of our band. “I like what yourselves The Queerboys,” he said. And he was absolutely right. So we became The Quireboys. “As a young rock fan, I’d seen Lemmy everywhere. He was at every London venue, stood by the fruit machine. One night I descended the stairs of the St Moritz Club and there he was again, but on this occasion he looked up, said: ‘Alright, Nige’ and returned to his game. And that was it. Somehow Lemmy knew my name. My band was in his wheelhouse and we were off to the races. “Gradually I got to know him. I soon realised that Lemmy was super-smart. He knew a bit about…

“It was Gene Vincent that introduced me to Lemmy, beginning a friendship that lasted for 35 years. In the summer of 1980, the Stray Cats played six or seven shows around London that are now considered legendary, at venues like Dingwalls, the Golden Lion and the Fulham Greyhound. They were attended by the hipster gang that included Joe Strummer, Glen Matlock and Chrissie Hynde. As a huge rockabilly boy, Lem was at a few of those. I didn’t know who he was – I wouldn’t see Motörhead until a few months later – but we struck up a conversation about Gene Vincent. There was a specific rare song that he adored, I can’t remember which one, but upon hearing that I didn’t know it Lemmy was absolutely appalled. We hung…

“I considered Lemmy my best friend for a long time, but I was aware that a lot of people considered him their best friend. Everyone knew he was a gentleman, but I don’t think people knew how much he cared about his friends. “The first time I met Lemmy was in 1981. I was walking past a place called The Venue in South London, I’m like: ‘Oh, it’s Lemmy in the foyer!’, and I happened to be wearing an Ace Of Spades shirt. I was drunk out of my skull, and I walked in there and went: ‘Can you sign my shirt?’ And he went: ‘You got a pen?’ I’m like: ‘No.’ And he gave me his drink and a cigarette and went: ‘Wait there.’ Fifteen minutes later he came back…

Many moons ago, at the height of Led Zeppelin’s success, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had an idea. They would buy an old bus and convert it into a kind of travelling stage on wheels. “We were going to have a hydraulic side on it, which would open up, and a small generator underneath it, so we could do acoustic shows anywhere,”says Plant. “We could drive through the world and just set up and play. The exchange of energy when you don’t pump the thing up is priceless.” What exactly the ‘thing’ was is one of the great intangibles that come more than once in a 45-minute conversation with Robert Plant, but in this case he probably means playing music – specifically, playing music purely for the joy of it.…

Deftones Private Music REPRISE/WARNER Shoegaze/metal genreblenders regain their balance on album number 10. It’s five years since Deftones released their last album, and the California alt.metal mavericks’ popularity has skyrocketed in that time. Private Music was first teased atone of their largest ever concerts, held at Crystal Palace Park for 25,000 people in June, and producer Nick Raskulinecz – who worked on fan-favourites Diamond Eyes (2010) and Koi No Yokan (2012) – returns. While 2020’s Ohms had a harder, grittier sound, Private Music re-emphasises the mixture of shoegaze dreaminess and knucklehead riffing that made the band unique in the first place. Single My Mind Is A Mountain may open the record in brash fashion, but by lush centre points Souvenir and CXZ, Deftones feel both comfortably themselves and completely unpredictable.…

Walter Trout Sign Of The Times PROVOGUE/MASCOT Rewind a decade and Walter Trout’s rogue liver gifted him a rich seam of inspiration; his life-threatening cirrhosis and recovery was a guiding theme of standout albums like The Blues Came Callin’ and Battle Scars. Now, with the dust settled from that first-hand trauma, Sign Of The Times finds a veteran who’s always been socio-politically engaged staring the wider world in the eye harder than ever. Naturally, as a writer and performer who’s all about the human connection, Trout despises AI, and while a machine could conceivably spit out the route-one arrangement of Artificial it could never match his seething solo or mordantly witty lyric. The title track pairs Trout’s filthiest guitar tone with a hornet’s-nest chant that nails the brief to recreate…

Slow-burning success. The omens were not good for Fleetwood Mac at the beginning of 1975. Drummer and leader Mick Fleetwood was grappling with the band’s tenth line-up change in eight years, the latest the result of guitarist Bob Welch’s affair with Fleetwood’s wife. Meanwhile, bassist John McVie and his wife, pianist Christine, were splitting up. The band had relocated to Los Angeles, having given up on England, although it would be fairer to say that England had given up on them. The first thing Fleetwood heard of Lindsay Buckingham was a guitar solo on the Buckingham Nicks album. Like the rest of America he didn’t notice the rest of the album. When he contacted Buckingham, he was told that Buckingham came as a pair with his girlfriend Stevie Nicks. Fleetwood…

Filmed interviews and more tell the story of the making of one of Petty’s finest records. There are lots of great records with the words ‘Tom’ and ‘Petty’ on the cover, and 1994’s solo album Wildflowers is up there with the best of them. Somewhere You Feel Free documents beautifully its genesis, thanks to a cachet of 16mm film discovered in Petty’s archive in 2020. This revealing and intimate portrait, previously available on YouTube but now released on enveloping Blu-ray with extra footage and videos, is rounded out with later interviews with Heartbreakers bandmates Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, who obviously still miss their pal, producer Rick Rubin and, thankfully, Petty himself. Petty’s intentions were to avoid band politics by doing a record on his own and “be free of…

So who won the day on this three-band bill? No, you’re wrong. It’s always a lot harder to sell a show as a co-headliner when there’s just the one date. There’s no possibility of revolving the bill in the name of equality and someone’s always got to – for want of a better word – support. Yet while it’s Judas Priest who come on last and get to do a conventionally hitpacked encore, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re attending an Alice Cooper show from the look of the audience. Fans of The Coop are way more obvious than most. Never knowingly under-dressed, they wear the make-up, accessorise top hats with fetish-wear and, as I live and breathe, fluffy snakes (available from the merch desk, of course). Yet as that…

Rock royalty indeed. Perhaps it’s because the end was near for their End Is Nero tour, but there’s a wild abandonment to Queens Of The Stone Age’s performance in this salubrious Dublin park. It’s evident from Josh Homme’s wicked grin as the band sprint like dogs after a hare into opener Regular John. Michael Shuman is already digging trenches with his bass lines while, Jon Theodore hits the drums like someone trying to put a rabid animal out of its misery. Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen and Dean Fertita trade riffs as tricky as advanced mathematics. And that’s just the first song. The two hours that follow reference plenty of career highlights, from the car-over-a-cliff-paced Little Sister to the glam crunch of Made To Parade. The band show what Sabbath could…

It might be a country-house festival for the well-heeled, but thankfully there’s plenty of plebby rock’n’roll racket. Walking into the grounds of Audley End House for part of the Heritage Live series of gigs is like walking into the past. And not just the grand manor house sitting at the end of the elongated drive, or the landscaped lawns, and the Canadian Geese stretching their wings at the river’s edge. You’d only be halfsurprised to see the cast of Downton Abbey ambling by slowly, their lilting conversation drifting into the air. While the walk to the main arena and stage might drag you back towards the future, it happily pauses somewhere around the mid-90s and deposits you there. It’s not just this afternoon and evening. Over the coming days and…