Peter Gabriel’s compelling and eccentric performances with Genesis quickly became a powerful ticket-mover from their early days. In 2023 he told Prog about the motivations behind his characters and costumes – which, on occasion, caused conflict with his colleagues until his departure in 1975.

These days Peter Gabriel is a slaphead out of necessity. Or, as he puts it, due to “the absence of follicles”. But back in 1978, when having a shaven head at best marked you out as part of the boot-boy skinhead culture and at worst identified you as a Nazi sympathiser, Gabriel took a razor to his mop out of choice.

The fact that he would stand on stage clutching a pink teddy bear while singing Me And My Teddy Bear added to the whole incongruous image. “That was actually the first song I ever performed in front of an audience,” Gabriel told Classic Rock in 2014. “The contrast was deliberate. You want to believe that packaging isn’t the main priority for making initial decisions about people, but sadly it is. So by changing the packaging I was hoping to change the perception.”

And did you? “To an extent. I think it worked in America but in England I don’t think I’ve ever outgrown that middle-class, ex-progressive rock persona.”

Strange but true. Most people’s first acquaintance with Peter Gabriel dates back to the mid-80s and the Sledgehammer video that brought a touch of class to the rapidly expanding MTV channel and dropped him right into the laps of a new generation. And yet 29 years after he walked away from his original prog-rock persona in Genesis, the ghost still lingers.

It’s not too hard to establish some kind of link between the middle-aged chap walking around upside down on stage singing Downside Up on his latest tour and the same bloke stuck inside a fox’s head wearing a long red dress back in 1972 singing Watcher Of The Skies.

The connection is Peter Gabriel’s sense of the dramatic. It’s what got him hooked on rock music back in the mid-60s when he was a pupil at the stuffy, class-ridden Charterhouse public school where rock’n’roll was considered subversive. (If you want to sample the flavour, try Lindsay Anderson’s 1969 movie, If – Gabriel auditioned for a part, although he didn’t get it.)

Gabriel isn’t normally one to get reflective about his career. Not when there are Bonobo apes to interact with. Not when the internet is transforming the music industry, giving artists the opportunity to take more control of their work. (When he suggested a couple of decades ago that people would soon be accessing music via the telephone he was laughed at.) Not when there’s an award-winning stage designer finding a way of enabling you to walk upside down on stage and an award-winning director to film you doing it.

But sitting in a cosy corner of the Covent Garden Hotel restaurant, Gabriel is allowing himself to wallow in a little nostalgia.

Gabriel’s formative rock’n’roll experiences outside the gates of Charterhouse – frequently illicit, which only added to the thrill – were Otis Redding and The Nice. “I got to see Otis Redding in 1967 at the Ram Jam Club in Brixton. It was a bit of a moment for me,” he recalls proudly.

“I’ve never really been a technical singer as such, or a musician. I’m someone who goes for the feel of something and tries to build pictures. And hearing the voice and the emotion of Otis Redding was just beyond words.

“I saw The Nice several times as well. I always thought The Nice got branded by ELP in some ways. There was a time when Jimi Hendrix wanted to join The Nice, and nowadays people might look back and wonder why, but if you saw The Nice they were exciting both musically and in terms of showmanship, which I think was part of the appeal to Hendrix.

“When we [Genesis] wrote The Knife, that was very much inspired by [Genesis keyboardist] Tony Banks’s and my enthusiasm for The Nice. Terrible name, though. But then words were never Keith Emerson’s strong point,” he adds.

But that was a couple of years down the line. Back inside the Charterhouse gates, simply forming a band was regarded as an act of rebellion against the establishment, regardless of how whimsical the early efforts of Gabriel, Banks and their school mates Michael Rutherford and Anthony Phillips actually were.

Their early band names – The Anon, the Garden Wall – are testament to their diffidence, although musically they were well-organised from the start. Gabriel had suggested they call themselves Gabriel’s Angels, which could have laid him open to Keith Emerson-style criticism, but the others were not impressed.

In fact they were given the name Genesis by Charterhouse old boy Jonathan King, who was the first to spot their potential. He’d had a hit in 1965 with Everyone’s Gone To The Moon and it wasn’t as if they had many other contacts in the music business, so they sent him a tape. King recorded their first album in ’68, From Genesis To Revelation on the Decca label, which almost nobody bought.

But they knew they could do better, and once they’d wriggled out of King’s clutches they took themselves off to a country cottage just outside Dorking where they spent six months eating, sleeping and rehearsing. Apart from taking afternoon walks they never left the place. As Mike Rutherford later observed: “We were far too intense to enjoy ourselves.”

It meant that by the time they started to play gigs they had a carefully prepared show. But at this point Gabriel became aware that he was the only one standing up on stage. “And the others had absolutely no understanding of the stress that it put on me,” he recalls. “Because I was the one who was actually having to sell it at gigs.

“And it was a lot of pressure,” he continues, “because there were audiences that weren’t the least bit interested in what we had to offer. What’s more, we had all these 12-string guitars that had to be retuned between each number. They’d be sitting there in silence, tuning up, and I’d be trying to speed it up because I could feel the energy from the audience just dissipating. That’s when I started, out of desperation, telling stories.”

Gabriel’s monologues soon became a feature of Genesis gigs as the band built up pockets of support in places like Aylesbury, Godalming and Bath. But progress was painfully slow. Despite package tours with Lindisfarne and Van der Graaf Generator – Genesis’s labelmates at their new home on Charisma – the band’s Trespass (1970) and Nursery Cryme (1971) albums sold pitifully few copies.

“We were plodders,” Gabriel admits. “I remember, after we’d been going for two or three years, talking with this guy who said he was forming a band called Curved Air. And within about three months they’d shot past us into the charts. We were quite depressed that they could do far more in a shorter space of time than we could.”

But then Genesis had very little in common with their rock’n’roll peers. While other bands would head down to the fish and chip shop or the pub after setting up their gear at a venue, the Genesis chaps would get out their lunch boxes and chow down on their egg-and-cress sandwiches.

Sex and drugs were not a prime motivation for their rock’n’roll, either. “We had read about those things,” Gabriel observes. And as for the drugs: “I had the odd experience with hash cigarettes and walked around with the giggles or threw up. It wasn’t doing it for me. Part of it was that I had a very vivid imagination and I didn’t really want to lose control.”

Genesis were even different from other prog-rock bands. They took a democratic, collective approach to their music, and there were no wanton displays of instrumental flamboyance. “It was much more a composer’s approach rather than a player’s approach,” Gabriel agrees. “Some of the other bands were better players than us but didn’t have the same approach that we did. Tony and Steven [Hackett] would have their moments but they were all within the group context.”

Another problem for Gabriel was that while his vocals provided much of the songs’ foreplay, the climaxes were often instrumentally driven, leaving him standing around, useless and frustrated. “The most I could do was to bang a tambourine. Actually, I should have been utilised on a keyboard or some other instrument, but that was all down to politics within the band.”

For all the musical drama Genesis could conjure up, it wasn’t until they developed a visual element that they started getting recognition. Gabriel had tinkered with eyeliner and shaving a wedge out of the hair above his forehead. Then he donned his wife’s (he got married in 1971) Ossie Clark designer dress (“It was a struggle getting into it”) and a fox’s head for a show in Dublin in October 1972.

“Back then Ireland was not the hippest country in Europe,” Gabriel says, with understatement, “and there was a palpable sense of shock as I walked out on stage. I thought the dressing up was fun, but the rest of the band were pretty uncomfortable about it. There was a lot of heavy discussion about whether I should be doing this sort of stuff. But I’m an obstinate bugger, particularly when people don’t want me to do something.”

Just as the others jealously guarded their instrumental domains, Gabriel protected his wardrobe. “When we started the Supper’s Ready tour I didn’t show the band any of the visual things I’d planned. I thought: ‘If these masks come up for band discussion they won’t go with it.’ I knew it would work, but I was going to have to do it furtively.

“I brought them along to the rehearsals on the day of the show. And I think the others realised at that point that they couldn’t stop me because it was too close to the show and it would really rock the boat. Fortunately the audience reacted well and I got away with it, although it was a close-run thing.”

The masks included a geometrically enhanced cardboard box, and a faintly ridiculous flower ensemble with Gabriel’s head framed by petals. With the addition of a white muslin curtain behind the band, lit by ultra-violet lights, the audience now had something to focus on apart from their own shoes.

Through 1973 and 1974 Genesis developed a cult following. They had already become big in Belgium and Italy, and their new musical tales of mystery and imagination on the Foxtrot and Selling England By The Pound albums proved particularly popular in the industrial towns and cities of northern England. They even almost had a Top 20 hit with I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe), but it stalled at No.21. And when they started touring America, their strongest areas were the blue-collar cities of the US Midwest and Canada.

“I think some of them were trying to escape from their backgrounds, and we had a romanticism that cut through to people,” Gabriel explains. “We were much more Harry Potter than The Terminator. The critical thing for me was how much feeling we were able to put out, and I think there was a real emotion getting through at our gigs.”

Emboldened by the band’s success, Gabriel’s stage outfits became more elaborate. On a couple of occasions he was even hoisted into the air on a wire to sing The Musical Box.

He also started getting more possessive over the lyrics, which caused ructions with the others who felt that words were part of the ‘group thing’. Gabriel didn’t help himself by being late with the lyrics. So it was with some reluctance that the rest of the band allowed Gabriel to write the lyrics for their conceptual tour de force The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, even though it was his concept.

“I insisted, although there were two songs in which the others got involved because they didn’t want it to be a hundred per cent. And I think that really was the reason, although they would probably give you other reasons. But I did put a copyright on the little story I wrote on the sleeve, jumbled as it is, because while I was an equal contributor on the musical ideas I knew that I was doing a lot of this work in addition. It was pure ego.”

Ego – or the flattering of it – also had a part to play in the episode that nearly wrecked Genesis during the recording of The Lamb… The Exorcist director William Friedkin had read an earlier surreal story by Gabriel on the sleeve of their Live album, and got in touch about writing a script. Already behind with The Lamb… lyrics, Gabriel asked the group for time off. When they refused, he quit. Matters were resolved only when their management warned Friedkin that he was breaking up the group. Friedkin backed off, and Peter sheepishly returned.

More traumatic was the birth of Gabriel’s first daughter, who after a complicated birth was in intensive care. “We were recording in deep Wales,” he recalls, “and my daughter was between life and death in Paddington. So there was this five-hour drive to visit my wife and daughter. It was absolutely exhausting.

“The rest of the band were sympathetic but they couldn’t understand. The Band had always been The Boss and our duty. Our life was our work, and any kind of life outside this all-consuming entity, whether private or professional, was something the others found pretty threatening.”

His daughter survived (and in the mid-noughties made a movie of her dad on tour), The Lamb… was completed after round-the-clock mixing sessions, tours were booked, and a new show conceived and prepared. But Gabriel’s perspective had changed irrevocably. Four dates into their US tour in late 1974 he told the band he was leaving, although it was another six months before he could extricate himself.

“Our manager was booking tours 18 months ahead, which is normal business practice, but I was just feeling the whole weight of commitment and thinking, when is life going to happen? Is it all just tours and records? I wanted to stop every now and again and have time with my family. But you couldn’t because it was fucking up the band.

“And the irony was that I had all that really strongly when I said I wanted to leave, because we hadn’t paid off our debt and things were really beginning to take off and now I was fucking it up for them. So the reason I stayed with the band for a European tour was guilt.

“And the thing that was hardest for me was that I had agreed that in order to give the band a chance to build a new identity I wouldn’t say anything for another six months. And I felt like a fraud. I was performing in front of all these people and I couldn’t say anything. But strangely enough I was more confident that they would do all right without me than they were.”

But the press and public didn’t see it that way. When news finally leaked out and Gabriel wrote a “convoluted letter” to the press, Genesis found themselves reading their own obituaries while everyone speculated on Gabriel’s next move.

Except that there was no next move. “It was time out rather than time off,” he explains. “After I left Genesis I wanted to be outside the music business. At first I was just growing vegetables and looking after the baby. I also looked at this commune that I was actually quite serious about joining. They’d put together different elements of spiritual traditions, and they auditioned prospective members with psychological testing and stuff like that. It was quite a weird experiment. Even weirder, it was called Genesis!

“But the more I was without music, the more I realised I still loved it and I wanted to get back. And they said: ‘If you do go back, we can all decide when you should go.’ And I thought, hang on a minute.”

Having rejected Genesis for a second time, Gabriel got back into the swing of writing songs. But who to play with? Apart from his old band, he hadn’t really hung around many musicians, although he had got to know Robert Fripp, the leader of King Crimson, and a London-based American keyboard player called Larry Fast. For Gabriel the prospect of forming a band was daunting.

He ended up going to Canada to work with Bob Ezrin, on the face of it a strange choice. Ezrin had made his name producing Alice Cooper and had recently worked with Lou Reed and Kiss.

“One of the attractions of Bob was that he seemed really good at organising people, and it was nice to feel that some of that pressure was not going to be on my shoulders,” Gabriel explains.

“I was very nervous doing the first sessions with him so I took my little English contingent with me, and he introduced me to these other musicians, one of whom was Tony Levin, who has been my bass player ever since.

“Bob helped enormously. He’s very talented. We still work together on projects. But at that time he was also a bit of a coke-inspired control freak. And that would manifest itself in various ways. There was one particular occasion when a beautiful guitar solo from Robert [Fripp] was erased and we didn’t quite know why. And that created tension.

“Then there were the sessions for Here Comes The Flood, when I wasn’t sure about the drum part so I wanted it isolated so I could erase it if necessary. But when I listened back the drums had been mixed in with the orchestra, and there was no way I could get rid of it. There were several moments like that. But we found a way through, and I think there are bits of that album [the first Peter Gabriel] that are really good and focused. There’s just a few bits where it goes off the rails.”

By now it was 1977 and, as Gabriel had predicted, Genesis had already risen, phoenix-like, and were more commercially successful than ever. Suddenly it was ‘Peter who?’ Thank goodness, then, for Solsbury Hill which gave Gabriel a Top 20 hit and the exposure he needed to launch his solo career. “That was something Bob Ezrin kept pushing me to finish. He’s very good at motivating people to get on with writing.”

His first tour that year put further distance between him and his former band – no dramatics, no costumes, just a simple but effective light show. “I was definitely trying not to play Genesis songs, although I did do Back In New York City [from The Lamb…]. And there were a couple of covers – Marvin Gaye’s Ain’t That Peculiar and The Kinks’ All Day & All Of The Night – which were outside the prog-rock background I was associated with.”

He had also been thinking about the barrier between the performer and the audience, and “how much more interesting it could be if you tried to break through that”. The newly developed radio microphone gave him the first chance: he’d disappear off stage during the introduction to Waiting For The Big One and reappear at the back of the stalls or the balcony before making his way back to the stage through the audience.

“You couldn’t pre-programme the show if there was a physical interaction with the audience,” he explains. “They could determine how long you were out there. It certainly added a sense of alive-ness to the show. Because I was putting myself in a place that was potentially vulnerable. And things like trust start to come into play.” Later on he would take that a big step – or fall – further.

Having put clear daylight between himself and Genesis – and had a hit single as well – Gabriel now had to decide which way to go on the next album.

“I was worried about getting drawn back into the pop thing. So the second album was a deliberate attempt to go somewhere else, and I asked Robert Fripp to produce it. He said: ‘That’s a wonderful idea. We’ll do the whole thing in six weeks. No pussyfooting around.’ I thought that sounded exciting and I decided to go for it.

“But what I learnt was that I don’t do good work in a hurry. I may get moments of things, but not a proper body of work. The songs weren’t as good as they could have been, the lyrics weren’t as good as they could have been, the arrangements certainly weren’t as good as they could have been, and the sounds weren’t as good as they could have been.

“It took until the next record to find out what I was as a solo artist, or could be. That was in the framework of feeling more settled with the band, and having the great team of [producer] Steve Lillywhite and [engineer] Hugh Padgham.”

The framework for that third album also included an odd rule: no cymbals. “I’d been thinking about the things I didn’t like on rock records,” Gabriel explains, “and one of the things was cymbals splashing around all over the place. They take up an incredible amount of space in the higher sound frequencies. And if you take them out you give yourself a whole country to explore.

“So I said no cymbals. And that meant that the drummers – mainly Jerry Marotta but also Phil Collins and Morris Pert – couldn’t do what they normally do. Suddenly they had to think differently. And that affected the spine of the piece, the rhythm. And everything else.”

Out of that quest for new and different drum sounds came the gated reverb, an effect that engineer Padgham had tried out on an XTC album shortly before. “He was playing with it in the studio, and I got quite excited and asked him to turn it right up. I remember saying: ‘This is going to revolutionise drum sounds.’ I wanted to do a track that was entirely based around that sound. And that track was Intruder. Phil was playing on that track and he got excited by it too.

“It’s a minor thing, but when people listen to that song and say: ‘You took that Phil Collins [In The Air Tonight] drum sound,’ that niggles me.”

That sound gave Gabriel’s third album a potent, if ominous, sound that ran from the opening Intruder through to the closing anthem Biko. Even the poppy Games Without Frontiers had menacing undertones. It was all too much for Atlantic Records in America, who decided to pass on the record. “Apparently after they heard Lead A Normal Life they asked my manager whether I’d been in a mental institution,” Gabriel says. “The head of A&R, John Kalodner, kept wanting me to sound more like the Doobie Brothers, who were very popular at the time.”

The album – his third to, confusingly, be titled simply Peter Gabriel – turned out to be his most successful so far in both the US and the UK, justifying his barbed comment about Atlantic’s “short-sighted and bigoted attitude”.

But it worked. Sledgehammer was a worldwide hit – No.1 in America – and the So album topped the UK charts and spent three weeks at No.2 in the US. Finally, Gabriel was a star and, having kept the music business at arm’s length for 20 years, suddenly he went high-profile, turning up at awards shows.

“I’d avoided all of that stuff and had a very pure, Stalinist line against the business, but I did embrace the selling of my music at this point, and I didn’t really feel much the worse for it. I didn’t feel that the angle of bending over had exceeded my natural comfort zone,” he adds with a smile.

The This Way Up date schedule included all but one of the So songs, and expanded the light and space concepts from the previous tour. This time Gabriel used mobile lighting cranes, which were at their most effective when they crowded round him while he sang Mercy Street. And the rousing duet with Youssou N’Dour on In Your Eyes was an inspired piece of world music alchemy.

Gabriel was reaching a new audience, drawn in by the videos and his media profile. “It was a pop audience that I hadn’t had before. And I’m afraid some of the cult followers were not very happy to share with the casual viewers,” he recalls.

“And then, just as everything was beginning to wind down, the album got another boost from the Say Anything movie, with John Cusack holding up a radio playing In Your Eyes as a Valentine’s Day offering for his girlfriend. You never quite know when these external events are going to help or hinder you.”

Typically, Gabriel managed to dissipate much of his new-found rock-star status by taking six years for the follow-up, Us. Admittedly there was another soundtrack (Passion) and a compilation (Shaking The Tree) in between, but he acknowledges an almost wilful intent: “I have tended to follow a successful album with a less successful album. I think I’ve protected myself with obscurity whenever I was threatened with success.”

On stage Gabriel, who had now gone skinhead, continued his walkabouts, sometimes ‘surfing’ the audience on a piece of plywood which was carried along by four strong roadies acting as pall-bearers. When he occasionally fell off, the audience, far from ripping him to shreds in a frenzy, helped him back on to the board. From that developed the idea of deliberately falling backwards into the audience from the lip of the stage.

“I’d done those hippy psychological games, falling backwards and trusting people to catch you, so I thought I’d do that on stage and hope that they caught me. When you go forwards that’s one thing, but when you go backwards it’s another completely. For the most part I got caught. But early on, in San Francisco, they thought: ‘This must be part of the act. We’d better move away.’ And that hurt!”

Even when they caught him the audience were not always reverential. “I was debagged on a regular basis. And in Chicago I barely held on to my underpants. I clambered back on stage holding my belly in as best I could. Later on I saw an REM video where Michael Stipe dives into the audience and I thought: ‘Damn, I should have done the video while I was ahead.’”

Gabriel’s stage-diving antics began on the mysteriously named Tour Of China 1984 – it was only 1980 at the time. “Well, there was this big thing about who would be the first rock act to play China. I knew I wasn’t going to be the first, but I thought I might as well do the merchandise. And 1984 always struck me as a scary year ever since I read the book.”

The closest Gabriel actually got to China was when the Tianjin Song & Dance Ensemble performed at the first WOMAD Festival in 1981, which he was heavily involved in. That event is now seen as the catalyst for the burgeoning world music scene, but at the time it bankrupted Gabriel and exposed him to a few unpleasant realities. Genesis bailed him out with a benefit show the following year.

“People were saying: ‘Who is this fat cat watching us suffer?’ when in fact the debt was far more money than I had to my name. It was extraordinary to see what happened when it all went bankrupt. I got death threats, and the liquidators actually forged a signature of one of the WOMAD directors so they could get their cut of the Genesis benefit concert.”

The Genesis reunion concert at Milton Keynes the following year paid off the debts, but Gabriel emphasised the one-off nature of the reunion by entering and leaving the stage in a coffin.

His own enthusiasm for world music was evident from the opening track of his fourth Peter Gabriel album (titled Security in America), The Rhythm Of The Heat. “I’d been working with this Ghanaian drum band, Ekome, in Bristol, and that’s where the final section of that song came from. Getting that change of rhythm down was incredibly exciting – one of those moments when you think: ‘Nailed it!’ A great feeling.”

The unrelenting intensity of Gabriel’s fourth album – musically even the hook-laden single Shock The Monkey was like a coiled spring – scuppered its chances of being his breakthrough album. “It wasn’t a big seller,” Gabriel confirms. “Some of the hardcore fans think it’s the best record but others thought it was too wacky. Maybe that’s because I was taking a bigger role in the production.”

The complex and sometimes impenetrable videos didn’t help, either. But live the musicians had developed into a cohesive, energetic unit that attacked the songs’ dynamics with a cavalcade of synthesised rhythms and loops. The stage was sparse, the lights white and bright, and ‘the dive’ took on an almost religious significance. David Bowie was so impressed that he took Gabriel along with him on the North American leg of his Serious Moonlight ‘comeback’ tour in 1983.

Gabriel began work on the next album the following year, but got waylaid by soundtrack projects for Birdy, Against All Odds and Gremlins, not to mention domestic strife and temporary separation from his family. But when So finally emerged in May 1986 it was emphatically a case of right record, right time.

“It exceeded all our expectations, in terms of making music as well as commercially,” Gabriel admits. “I had hooked up with Daniel Lanois, who co-produced the album with me, and all the elements were fitting together. But then it’s always easier to look back in hindsight. I mean, even though Sledgehammer felt strong and the groove was great it didn’t feel like a big hit record. People go: ‘You must have known it was the commercial track,’ but it wasn’t until we started doing the video that we got a feeling about it.”

The Sledgehammer video was when Gabriel’s complicated ideas were made accessible. “I think it was looking forwards and backwards at the same time,” he muses. “People think it was done with a lot of computer effects, but it fact it was old-fashioned animation techniques. It was a slow, tortuous process. And the day I spent surrounded by stale fish that had been under the bright lights the day before was not a sensual experience I want to repeat.”

Us may have sold only around half of what So did, but it probably wouldn’t have sold much more even if it had come out four years earlier. Where So was direct and accessible, Us was pristine but introspective. The cult following had their man back again. “I didn’t feel the production caught the energy sometimes, but I felt good about the songs,” Gabriel reflects.

The accompanying Secret World tour was an ambitious leap into the unknown. It was the brainchild of acclaimed designer Robert Lepage, who, Gabriel says, “creates theatre for people who go to the cinema. It was not just about words and performance, it had what I call a high moisture content – a mysterious environment, if you like – and I wanted to see if we could incorporate that into our show.”

Set in the round, the set had two stages with a walkway between. “There was the male square stage and the female round stage, and obviously some random stereotyping in that sense,” Gabriel explains. “But having two places to go, the feeling of playing two stages, was quite different from the usual show where everybody’s pointing the same way and the energy is going in the same direction.”

But despite the show’s complexity there were no dazzling affects to wow the audience. “A lot of acts were in the ‘weapons race’ back then: how many lights you can have, that sort of thing,” Gabriel says. “We went out with about a tenth of the weapons of some of these bands, but we were trying to use them in a more interesting way. I think it’s an important distinction; it’s not all about quantity.”

Some of it was about choreography, though, given Lepage’s theatrical background, and some of the band had to learn to skip in unison. But skip they did as the Secret World tour traversed the globe for most of 1993 and 1994, visiting countries off rock’n’roll’s beaten track like India, Egypt, Chile and Venezuela.

The six-year gap between So and Us paled in comparison to the 10-year wait for Up, which eventually arrived in September 2002. “It’s a bookends record,” according to a 50-something Gabriel in 2004, “looking more at the beginning and end of life than the middle.”

Songs about death (I Grieve) and childhood fears (Darkness) may not be obvious rock’n’roll subject matter, although they are broken up by some thunderous metallic beats and rhythms, as well as the life-affirming More Than This and a caustic satire on reality TV (The Barry Williams Show).

“To begin with, Up got some really bad reviews,” he admits. “Rolling Stone gave me a stinker, which was quite disappointing because I felt I’d worked bloody hard at it and it has some of my best work. It’s taken a while, but recently I’ve had musicians come up to me and say it’s my best record. Which is some consolation.”

And if they didn’t like the record, the critics have been effusive about the latest Still Growing Up tour. Last time, Lepage and Gabriel spread out horizontally, this time they’ve gone upwards. “We decided to try and create levels and variations vertically, so that you end up effectively with a heaven stage and an earth stage and a means of moving things – and people – up and down.”

Which is how Gabriel and his daughter Melanie come to be walking upside down on the underside of heaven, singing Downside Up (from Gabriel’s OVO Millennium Dome show).

“Actually I was dreading that,” Gabriel confesses. “While Robert and I were working on the idea someone had actually fallen. And my daughter was going to be asked to do this, so I wanted to make doubly sure it was safe. The first time she did it live I was very emotional. I was wanting to be protective and supportive but at the same time I just wanted to sit back and enjoy it.”

The Still Growing Up tour does have some gadgets to impress the audience: the Zorg ball, a huge, transparent hamster wheel inside which Gabriel walks while singing Growing Up. His original intention was to walk out over the heads of the audience in a novel departure from his earlier stage diving. “But it was pointed out to me that the combined weight of the ball and my not inconsiderable weight might flatten some smaller members of the audience.” There’s also the jacket of lights that he wears for Sledgehammer, and the bike he rides around the stage while singing Solsbury Hill.

“One of the things I enjoy most is brainstorming with interesting people,” Gabriel says, “and doing a very visual tour gives me the chance to do that. The big production stuff is something I‘ve always enjoyed, right from the early days of Genesis.”

In a wardrobe of his there probably still lurks a red dress and a fox’s head.

July 22, 2026 marked a year since Ozzy Osbourne’s death, but his presence remains as strong as ever. The next 12 months will see a raft of high-profile events keeping the singer’s memory alive, including the return of Ozzfest, a film of the Back To The Beginning show, and the controversial Ozzy AI avatar.

“Ozzy’s legacy isn’t fading,” says the singer’s wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, in an interview in the brand new issue of Metal Hammer. “I cannot tell you how blown away we’ve all been with the love that has been shown for him.”

Sharon confirms that 2027 will see the return of Ozzfest, the travelling festival that helped change the course of metal in the late 1990s and early 2000s – and she also added that it would be held at Villa Park in Birmingham, the venue for Ozzy’s swansong, the star-packed Back To The Beginning gig, which took place on July 5, 2025.

“It’s going to be at Villa Park again,” says Sharon. “Whether it’ll be two nights [in Birmingham], that’s up for the fans to tell me.”

At the time of going to press, no date or festival headliners had been announced. “Of course we’re speaking to people,” she says. “I can’t let that out yet, but it’ll be soon.”

Speaking to her son Jack on The Osbournes Podcast in March, Sharon said that she hoped to bring Ozzfest to the US for two dates.

“We want to hear from everyone where we should go in America,” she told Jack. “We’ve got to find a lot of young, new talent, because that’s what your dad would want.”

There are also plans to revisit Back To The Beginning itself. A much-rumoured film of the show will finally be released, featuring appearances from all the bands who played, from Metallica and Guns N’ Roses to Black Sabbath and Ozzy himself.

“It’s coming. It will be out this year,” Sharon promises. “The most precious thing that people can give you is their time, and they all took time out of their summer to come and do this show. Everybody deserves to be seen and heard.”

More contentious is the upcoming AI avatar of Ozzy. The Osbournes have teamed up with tech companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram to create a digital version of the singer that fans can talk to and interact with.

“You can ask [the digital] Ozzy anything, and he will answer you in his own voice – and the answers will be what Ozzy would have said,” Sharon said at the Licensing Expo 2026 in Las Vegas in May. “People can talk to him and he will talk back.”

While specific details and locations are still under wraps, the avatar will reportedly appear via interactive touchscreens. The news has prompted pushback from some fans.

“I’ve seen such shit online about it being a ‘money grab’,” Sharon tells Hammer. “Why would I need to do that? It’s not as if I’m using Ozzy to sell fucking weedkiller or beer. Ozzy loved the idea. We’ve been talking about it for 10 years. Ozzy has this great body of work that took a lifetime to do – why shouldn’t he still be seen? Why should we have to watch the same videos over and over again, when there’s technology available that means we don’t have to? If you don’t like it, don’t go see it. I’m not at people’s houses with a fucking gun, going, ‘Give me your money!’”

Less controversial is the long-gestating Ozzy biopic, which Sharon says is moving forwards after years in development hell.

“We’re now on our second writer because we had somebody else write three different drafts, and we felt that it wasn’t Ozzy’s voice,” says Sharon. “We feel that this new guy has got Ozzy’s voice, and we’re ready to send [the script] out to directors. When I used to see people get up at the Oscars and say, ‘I’ve been working on this movie for 20 years, and we finally got it made!’ I’d think, ‘Bullshit.’ But it’s true. It’s not like making a record, believe you me. Working with the writers and the directors is a whole fucking lifetime commitment to get a movie done.”

Elsewhere, the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has recently extended Working Class Hero, its exhibition dedicated to Ozzy, until September 27. The gothic black throne used by Ozzy at Back To The Beginning was added to the exhibition at the start of July to mark the anniversary of the show. Sadly, a campaign to rename Birmingham Airport after Ozzy has so far been unsuccessful, despite almost 78,000 people signing a petition.

“Birmingham has always been embarrassed about its heavy metal heritage - and that’s unacceptable,” the campaign’s organiser, Dan Hudson, told Hammer in January.

Still, Sharon says her plans to honour her husband’s legacy will be a fitting tribute to the Prince Of Darkness.

“He’s the guy that came from nothing, had nothing, and made it – and he never, ever forgot who he was or where he came from,” she says. “He never tried to be anything other than what he was – a genuine guy, fucking out of his mind, beautifully insane. He was just one in a million.”

The new issue of Metal Hammer is onsale now. Order it here and have it delivered straight to your door.

"Orgies used to get hosted regularly on this boat,” Annouli Papadimitriou explains, dishing out mugs of herbal tea.

As the Hawxx frontwoman wanders through her London narrowboat, squeezing past her two bandmates who are setting up our picnic of sandwiches and vegan Victoria sponge cake, it wobbles back and forth. The delicate movement ironically emphasises what she’s just said – one can only imagine how precarious those nights of debauchery must have been. As she pauses to regain her footing, she adds an important detail: “It was the previous couple that lived here that had the orgies… not me.”

For eight years, Hawxx have exorcised blistering rage through punk-infused protest anthems. Driven by a chunky, dual-axe sound, Greek harmonies and urgent screams, second album The World Splits Open is a galvanising howl of political, ecological and cultural outrage.

Today, however, as we nurse our teas, the vibe is disarmingly relaxed. The sun sparkles off hanging trinkets, and a warm breeze wafts a Palestinian flag hanging in the doorway.

Despite coming from different corners of the globe – Annouli is Greek, guitarist Hannah Staphnill is Welsh and drummer Jess Dann is English – Hawxx come across like sisters. They formed over a mutual sense that every other member was “fucking cool”. Their first connection came when Hannah worked at London’s Alaska Studios, and would always book Annouli in to practise in the room next door to her.

“She just looked so interesting, I wanted to listen in,” Hannah laughs.

Later, Annouli met Jess when they were both enlisted to perform in a drastically underpaid late-night covers band. While blood does not unify them, their shared values do.

“This isn’t some ‘rebel without a cause’ scenario,” Annouli explains. “Our music is heavy because we’re directing all our power into breaking down walls. Then we can rebuild a new world. We want people who feel marginalised to bring their rage and have a safe space to get it all out.”

People might look at Hawxx and see a group of hellbent, angry ladies – but that would be a fundamental misunderstanding of who they are. While the wrath is there, it stems from a place of love – both of humanity and the natural world. Annouli overflows with affection when she discusses her Greek heritage, keen to grab and show off her bouzouki – a long-necked lute – and talk about the sea-worshipping chants on the track Sacred Water.

“I would say I’m spiritual when it comes to nature and how connected we all are to one another,” Annouli explains.

She feels a particular affinity with birds – a love shown through her ever-expanding collection of feathers, as well as her side-hustle of saving injured pigeons. Jess dreamily echoes the sentiment, reflecting on how the natural world is “our teacher” – just because the soil or an animal can’t speak, that doesn’t mean it isn’t experiencing the world as much as any other living thing.

Their song We Are Nature “mourns how the natural world is being poisoned” by pollution and how corporations mow down natural habitats to build infrastructure, while Feral Mother sees Annouli reflecting on how sleeping rough for weeks in the local marshlands in a bid to find her lost cat, Moses, forced her to connect with nature on a visceral level. Elsewhere, Arm The Animals campaigns against mass industrial farming.

“I feel like consuming those products is just absorbing that suffering,” Annouli says. “I read an essay that pointed out how veganism is essentially a feminist cause, because of how much the dairy industry mirrors female suffering – it’s essentially the animal equivalent of abuse and taking children away from their mothers.”

Meanwhile, the song Bind is about feeling controlled by religion, while Me Her And The Birds is a queer tale of women having sex in the woods, revelling in their liberation from Christian disapproval. Annouli and Jess used to attend church, with Annouli noting she wound up in an abusive Christian cult as her form of “teenage rebellion”.

“My mum was laughing about it the other day, because I used to lie to her and say I was going out clubbing when I was actually at all-night prayer meetings,” the singer explains. “She’d joke that I could have been a punk, but I became a Christian. When I got out of the cult, I exposed them. They called me the woman that was sent by Satan to destroy them.”

Hawxx also get overtly political. Opener Resistance Is Justified is about the ongoing Palestinian conflict, and centres on Annouli’s friend, Jordan Devlin. In August 2024, Jordan and five others from protest group Palestine Action raided an arms factory in Filton, Bristol, alleging the company who operate it – a UK subsidiary of Israeli company Elbit Systems – was manufacturing weapons for the Israeli army (something it has strongly denied).

Twenty-four people were arrested in relation to the break-in, and some were jailed for up to 18 months while they awaited trial. At trials in February and May of this year, Jordan was acquitted of aggravated burglary and criminal damage, and found not guilty of violent disorder. Four of the activists were convicted of criminal damage, and will be sentenced in June.

“I ended up singing Resistance Is Justified outside the courthouse during the Filton 24 trial,” Annouli says. “Protest is what our music is made for, you know?”

In an unprecedented move for a criminal damage case, the judge ruled that the offences had a “terrorist connection” for sentencing purposes. Independently, the government also proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group in July 2025. This means that the UK government and the judge are effectively treating the act of protest as an act of terrorism.

‘How dare you call me a terrorist, when you provide war criminals with weapons of mass destruction?’ Jordan’s sister proclaims on the track.

Ultimately, The World Splits Open aims to radicalise you – or, at the very least, make you give a fuck about something.

“Our music is about building resilience and resistance in ourselves, on our streets, in our communities,” Annouli explains. “We need to work together to get through what is happening in the world right now.”

As we polish off the last of the cake, we chat about the album’s triumphant closer, Be The Whore. It represents the band’s core motivation – encouraging people to stand up for what they believe in, even if someone tries to silence them.

“Religious texts are afraid of a whore, because she’s uncontrollable – and that’s pure power,” Annouli insists. “While the whore is condemned, she is also totally liberated. We want our community to be the whore in life. Tear down the walls of corporations, resist the rules. Be the whore that says ‘fuck you’ to your leaders. Because the whore is untouchable, and she always has been.”

The World Splits Open is out now. Hawxx UK tour starts on October 8.

Imagine this: it’s 1983 and you’re Brian Johnson. We've all done it. You’re standing under the lights at Florence’s Stadio Comunale in front of 25,000 screaming fans. The only thing is, you’re not singing for AC/DC. You’ve somehow been selected for the United States of America versus Italy charity football match, and you’ve just watched your teammate Chuck Norris get a red card for being “too dangerous”.

It sounds like something you’d dream of following a night on the Brown Ale, but for Johnson, this was just another day off on tour.

By this point, Brian Johnson had been the vocalist for AC/DC for a few years. In that time, he’d appeared on Back In Black and For Those About to Rock (We Salute You), and was about to head to Nassau's Compass Point studio to work on its follow-up Flick of the Switch. In 1983, the Dunston-born singer’s heart was firmly anchored to the North East of England and he recently purchased a property in Jesmond Dene, a part of Newcastle-upon-Tyne regarded by Geordies as being ‘geet posh and that’.

Johnson invited local station Tyne Tees Television inside for a chat in what he calls his "recreation room", complete with a dartboard, pool table, and well-stocked bar.

"You get wrecked when you walk out of it," he laughs. The setup and punchline – flawless.

During the interview, the singer explains why life in Hawaii doesn’t compare to Newcastle and, talk turns quickly, as it might, to football, when two Geordies are nursing a drink in relaxing surroundings. The interviewer notices his Newcastle United t-shirt and asks whether he’d ever harboured ambitions to play for the North East’s best team.

"I just wasn't good enough," he admits with the weary resignation felt by most men brought up in the area, and then brightens. "I played for the United States of America against Italy."

"Get away," the interviewer says. This is what polite Geordies say when they think they’re on the business end of a wind-up.

VAR check on leg-pulling: no foul committed. Following a phone call from “Los Angeles or something”, Johnson was invited to join a USA all-celebrity team and play a match against an Italian show business XI at Stadio Comunale, the Florence-based home of ACF Fiorentina.

“There was about 25,000 there,” says Johnson. “It was floodlit and yer knees turned to jelly. It was against the Italian showbiz XI and they were unbeaten; they thought we were gonna be a walk-over, but they didn't know we had Chuck Norris. He was centre-half and you didn't go near the man – he was dangerous!”

Despite apparently losing Norris to a red card, Team USA won 1-0 and, to top off a surreal day, the legendary Italian goalkeeper Dino Zoff presented Johnson with the Man of the Match award.

“It was a fantastic night,” he remembers. “Music's me love and football's me passion, you know what I mean? They're two different things.”

Johnson goes on to say that he had plans to invest £100,000 into Newcastle United, who’d recently signed the late, great Kevin Keegan.

“I don't want anything out of it,” he admits. “I want nothing, you know? Sometimes I think it may be a little unfair for me to be classed as anything to do with Newcastle if I'm not there. Who am I to say that I could make a big difference to the team? I like to think I could but maybe I'm too inexperienced.

"It's a frightening thought," he adds, "but I'd love to be able to do something."

Johnson’s plan to financially help the club never came to fruition, despite the support of Newcastle's iconic striker Jackie Milburn. But the singer, who eventually swapped his “geet posh” neighbourhood for the much warmer climate of Sarasota in Florida, confirmed his status as a celebrity Toon fan by making a cameo appearance in the 2005 football drama Goal! The Dream Begins (as himself). He later lent his voice to a Newcastle United hype video posted just hours before their EFL Cup victory in 2025.

Some fans believe his stirring speech spurred them on to their historic victory. Chuck Norris may have been able to slam a revolving door or count to infinity (twice), but he never inspired Newcastle United to win a final.

Phil Collins has revealed that he nearly died in 2024 due to the effects of alcohol abuse.

Speaking in a new interview in The Sunday Times, the former Genesis drummer and solo superstar says that he was hospitalised and put on life support after his organs began to fail.

“[There] were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing,” Collins says. “My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up. People were coming to say goodbye. But I don’t remember them coming, I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong.”

Collins gave up alcohol after being hospitalised with acute pancreatitis in 2012, writing in his 2016 autobiography, Not Dead Yet, that his drinking “nearly killed me”. But by 2023, he had fallen off the wagon. “I’d have wine when I woke up,” he tells The Sunday Times. “That was what I’d want for breakfast, a glass of wine.”

The drummer was hospitalised once again at the end of 2023, eventually ending up in intensive care, where doctors feared that he wouldn’t survive. He stayed in hospital for seven months. “I was very lucky to have come out of that. Needless to say, I haven’t had a drink since,” says Collins, who suffers from nerve damage that has left him unable to drum, as well as Type 2 diabetes and kidney issues.

In the same interview, Collins reveals that he and Paul McCartney have recently healed a rift that dates back to 2016.

According to Collins, McCartney took issue with an interview in which he said the ex-Beatle was always condescending towards him. Collins says McCartney emailed him at the time, “saying, ‘I’m a bit disappointed, blah blah’… it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and obviously left a bad taste in his.”

Collins says that the two men made up after McCartney called him to say he would donate memorabilia to a charity auction that Collins was working on. McCartney bought up the decade-old interview and, according to the former Genesis man, the pair talked it through.

“And I wish I hadn’t said it, although it did happen. But we’ve made up, he’s happy about the fact that we discussed it, and I’m happy we discussed it, so it was just really lovely that it’s gone full circle now.”

Collins joined Genesis as drummer in 1970 before taking over singing duties after original frontman Peter Gabriel left in 1975. He launched a parallel solo career with 1981’s Face Value, soon to be reissued as an expanded, four-LP vinyl box set.

He retired from music in 2011 after suffering various health problems, but returned to touring as a solo artist in 2017 and, four years later, with the reunited Genesis. He retired for the second and final time in 2022, at the end of the latter’s farewell tour.

Collins is due to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame as solo artist in November 2026.

Looking back at her career, the words Tarja Turunen chooses to describe her climb to the top are “a turmoil” and “beautiful”. It’s the perfect way to sum up two decades of blissful highs and crushing lows. The singer was thrust into the limelight as the operatic vocalist of symphonic metallers Nightwish.

Their 2004 album, Once, turned them into superstars, but just a year later she was publicly sacked by the band in an open letter – a drama that rocked the metal scene. Since then, she’s built a successful solo career exploring metal and classical music, survived a stroke, and has just released the heaviest album of her career, Frisson Noir. Now she looks back on what life’s taught her.

KNOW WHAT YOU WANT

“When I left school, I got into the Sibelius Academy, the only university academy that we had in Finland. I was focused on becoming a professional opera singer at the time. I knew that, no matter what, I would fight my way to work in music; it was my only serious passion. I left my little village of 500 inhabitants for music, against the odds. Music was the only real thing that made me happy and confident in myself.”

LISTEN TO YOUR MUM

“A long time ago, my mother said to me that there is no way fame can change you. Keep your feet on the ground, reach for the clouds, but do not go there in your head. My mother was a very clever woman. When it started to go really fast with Nightwish, I told my brothers, ‘If you see me changing, punch me.’”

SOMETIMES YOU’VE JUST GOT TO TAKE THE LEAP

“We supported Iron Maiden [at Mystic Festival in Poland] in 2005. My strategy has always been to focus on the performance. I didn’t want to think about who I was performing for, I needed to get the best out of the situation. I didn’t remember hearing that the show sucked. I didn’t remember hearing, ‘Who is that bitch? What is she doing?’ So it must have gone pretty well.”

THERE’S NO RULEBOOK IN METAL

“It’s been seven years since my last metal album. My new one, Frisson Noir, is absolutely heavy. When it comes to my live performances, I have a really heavy band and they create this wall of sound, which I love very much. But on the records, I’ve been missing that.

On the new album, Blaze Forever was a song that, when I wrote it, I told my guitar player, ‘OK, this riff needs to be really heavy.’ The Eternal Return is also a really heavy track, then I broke down the heaviness with the middle eight, which is completely from the other world, with a classical cello. This is who I am. I’m not afraid of breaking the rules when it comes to music.”

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS

“It’s very sad how everything ended up [with Nightwish], but the thing that I would have done differently is, I probably should have put them through hell. I had all my rights, there were contracts, and they would have been in deep shit for a long time if I had done that, according to my rights, but I didn’t. I just decided to move on and leave.”

YOU’RE NOT PARANOID IF THEY ARE OUT TO GET YOU

“What followed was their really great planning, how they wanted to destroy me publicly. That was something I never expected. It was nasty.”

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE JUST GOTTA GET AWAY

“It was an insane period [after the split], and in a small country like Finland, my face was covering the tabloids for three weeks or so. I left my home country. I had to. I went down to Buenos Aires.

It was tough, because it affected so many more people than just me. It affected my family, my friends. Everybody was destroyed. It took me a long time to gain trust in people again. But luckily, I have amazing relationships and a long-lasting marriage with my husband. My family, my friends were there for me in that very hard period.”

SOME BRIDGES CAN STILL BE MENDED… BUT NOT ALL

“I was one of the invited singers in [Finnish Christmas] production Raskasta Joulua. Marko [Hietala, former Nightwish bandmate] was also one of the singers. We hadn’t met each other, seen each other, or heard anything about each other in 12 years. He called in all the production – a huge production – and apologised to me in front of everybody. He apologised to me, he apologised to my husband. It was a ‘wow’ moment for me; he’s absolutely not the same person. We talk a lot about the past, and we call each other. He calls me when he needs advice; it’s a completely different scenario. He is the only person from my time in Nightwish I could work with again.”

SPEAK UP

“I’m still struggling with the fact that when it comes to something I don’t like, [I need to,] you know, say it out loud. I might say, ‘You better do this differently’ or, ‘Could you please do this differently?’ But it’s still a struggle for me to speak up.”

…AND DON’T LET ANYBODY BULLY YOU

“In my solo career, nobody has bullied me. My latest single, I Don’t Care, talks about it – that I don’t let anybody direct me anymore. Since I started to build my own career, people have tried to make me do things differently, but I’ve always fought my way through. I’ve collaborated, but never let anybody say, ‘OK, you should do it like this.’”

HITTING 40 GAVE ME A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE

“When I started, I was very innocent, not aware of anything. I’ve changed. When you hit the number 40, you start forgiving yourself. You live more in the moment by understanding the environment and the people you are with. You know there is a different depth in the world, which is beautiful. You live and learn.”

CORPORATE GIGS ARE WEIRD

“This one private event happened in Russia, in Sochi, many years ago. They wanted me to perform a half-hour set at a big corporate gig. They built a really small stage that we barely fit on with our gear, and there was a huge catwalk in front.

They have these gorgeous women there, these supermodels, two metres tall. These ladies came around on the edges of the catwalk where I’m performing, and they start throwing me rose petals. I am playing heavy metal music, and the ladies are throwing me rose petals. I felt so shit. It was humiliating. Nevertheless, we played for 30 minutes. People loved it, and we left."

HAVING A STROKE CHANGED ME

“It’s unbelievable that we continue to do things that are hurting us, and we wait until something bad happens. They didn’t find any reason for the stroke. It was just stress. I made some changes. I learned [Japanese healing technique] reiki, and I went to therapy sessions. I have also shortened my touring periods. I need to. I don’t want to tour that much, it’s too stressful. It’s hard being a mother and an artist. The travelling part is hard, but physically being a singer is too. It’s healthy for everybody, though. My crew loves to go back home after 2.5 weeks of being on the road.”

MUSIC HAS SAVED ME IN MY DARKEST MOMENTS

“A few months after my stroke, I needed to start writing the lyrics for my new album. The songs were written, and the music was down. I had the blank paper and didn’t know how to start, and the music saved me. In that moment, I found my courage and my confidence. When I finished the lyrics, I was a wreck. But it gave me the satisfaction, the knowledge, the awareness – I’m alive. I mean, alive, and it was a beautiful feeling.”

YOU NEVER RUN OUT OF THINGS TO ACHIEVE

“I would love to find out if I’m capable of writing a score for a movie, or sing in an opera. I was asked [the latter] in the past, but I never had time. Time has been my biggest enemy, seriously. I have huge respect for the professionals in the field, I’m far away from being good at singing opera these days. I should take serious time off and only focus on that.”

IT’S WHAT I’M KNOWN FOR, BUT I DON’T CONSIDER MYSELF AN OPERA SINGER

“My singing teacher would probably kill me straight away. I never worked professionally in classical music. My whole education was geared towards chamber music – it’s different from opera. I still maintain that I did a classical album, and I hope to work on another one, but I’m a lead singer. ”

Frisson Noir is out now via Earmusic.

Things are pretty dramatic in the Slipknot camp right now with the surprise, if unconfirmed, news that Sid Wilson may be out of the band. But then things have always been pretty dramatic when it comes to the most explosive metal band of the last 30 years.

That was certainly the case around the time of their second album, Iowa, if producer Ross Robinson is to be believed. Speaking to Metal Hammer in a brand new interview just ahead of the album’s 25th anniversary, Robinson looks back on the internal and external pressures surrounding the band as they worked on the follow-up to their game-changing 1999 debut – and how they were even talking about splitting at one point.

“I did get a complaint from Paul [Gray, bassist] or maybe Joey [Jordison, drummer] at one point before we recorded, where they were like, ‘We’re just not getting along. We’re gonna break up,’” says Ross. “So I flew out to them. Corey [Taylor, frontman] took me out and was showing me Stone Sour stuff. It was like, ‘Erm, this is cool… but it’s not Slipknot.’”

Robinson puts the tensions down to the intensity of being the most talked-about new band in metal. “That transition from having this vision from nothing, to it becoming so extreme as far as success and everything goes… Nobody goes to school for it, there’s no education for how to deal with everybody suddenly kissing your butt no matter what you do or say,” he says. “Girls that would never have looked at you, suddenly paying you all this attention… it’s very confusing. It was tough on these innocent Beavises!”

Robinson also recalled singer Taylor rolling around naked on the floor and cutting himself with glass during sessions. “He had to strip his soul all the way. I do remember seeing him naked a lot. We’d get all woo-woo around the lyrics, go deep into the meaning and the tone of everything, so I’d have chills by the time I hit record.”

Read the full interview with Ross Robinson about the making of Iowa in the brand new issue of Metal Hammer, onsale now. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.

The Clash were one of the defining British punk bands, but by 1983 they were in disarray, with guitarist Mick Jones and drummer Topper Headon gone, replaced by a trio of unknown musicians. Three years and one ill-advised busking tour later it was all over, and this legendary band went out with a whimper, not a bang. In 2005, key members revealed what the hell really happened.

The official statement, released September 10, 1983, was brief and blunt: ‘Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon have decided that Mick Jones should leave [The Clash]. It is felt that Jones drifted away from the original idea of the group...’

If you had asked anyone in the know, they would have told you that The Clash were dead long before that axe fell. The band had divided into two camps – Mick Jones on one side and everyone else on the other. Strummer, Simonon and manager/svengali Bernie Rhodes constantly rowed with Jones over contentious issues like tour schedules, album lengths and The Clash’s musical direction.

Jones had also become obsessed with the New York hip-hop scene and was growing tired of his second banana role in the band. On-stage, Jones had reinvented himself as the Clash’s co-lead singer. Off-stage, he spent his time messing around with beatboxes and synthesisers while his Les Paul collection gathered dust in the corner.

On Jones’ insistence, a brief holiday break in 1982 had stretched into a nine-month indolence. Not only was nothing being worked on, but the boys were not on speaking terms. The Clash’s only activity in 1983 was a mini-tour leading up to an appearance at the mammoth, three-day Us Festival in California.

The Clash were a man short at the time. Drummer Topper Headon had been sacked the year before and his predecessor/replacement Terry Chimes signed up for the Combat Rock tour but chose not to stay on.

Following a series of auditions, an astonishingly powerful and prodigious 23 year-old from Bath named Pete Howard came onboard to slam the cans. But Pete was soon to discover that this dream gig was more like a nightmare. The Clash’s ongoing, behind-the-scenes dysfunction was not going to make his job an easy one.

Pete: “After the auditions, they basically just said, ‘Go away and learn everything.’ Not ‘these songs’ – everything. We had some rehearsals in Notting Hill, and basically Mick wouldn’t turn up. If he turned up at all, he would turn up three hours after everyone else had. The tension between Mick and Joe was palpable.”

After the Us Festival, the band did very little. “I didn’t get a phone call for four months,” says Pete Howard. “And then all of a sudden I got this incredibly fucking vitriolic phone call from Joe, saying ‘I fuckin’ sacked the stoned cunt! Whose side are you on, mine or his?’ And I was like, ‘Uh-uh-uh… yours, Joe, yours!’”

The band wasted little time in replacing Mick. A series of auditions were held at The Clash’s rehearsal space, Lucky 8. The lucky applicant was 24 year-old Nick Sheppard, former guitarist for 70s punk act The Cortinas. Marathon rehearsals were held and over a dozen new Strummer songs were worked on. “It was more a back to basics approach, after the excesses of Mick’s last days,” says Sheppard, “[Joe’s new songs] were far more of an eclectic bunch of tunes than we ended up with. Lots of world music influences - Latin, African grooves – that kind of thing.”

However, ‘that kind of thing’ wasn’t what Rhodes had in mind for the new Clash. ‘Back to Basics’ was soon upgraded to ‘Back to Punk Rock,’ or ‘Rebel Rock’ as Joe rechristened it. After a couple weeks of rehearsals, another new guitarist, Gregory “Vince” White, was brought on board. The new Clash became a three-guitar band.

A middle-class boy from a wealthy family, ‘Vince’ was ‘punked’. “Vince’s real name is Greg,” says Sheppard, “but he was told that he had to change it because it wasn’t cool enough. Paul said, ‘Name me one cool guy called Greg.’ To which Vince instantly replied, ‘Gregory Isaacs’ [aka ‘the Cool Ruler’]. That shut everyone up!”

A rowdy new batch of face-punching rants was eventually chosen to be played on tour. Three Card Trick, Jericho, Are You Ready For War, The Dictator, Sex Mad War, Glue Zombie and This Is England displayed rockabilly, funk, reggae, surf and Brazilian influences, but were wrapped up in an iron-hard blanket of guitar aggro that strongly recalled second album Give ‘Em Enough Rope.

“I felt a similarity of intent between the new songs and that era, although it was never specifically mentioned,” says Nick. “I think the twin Les Paul sound lent itself very well to that style, and songs from that period translated very quickly to the new set-up. Bernie was adamant that we both play Les Pauls: he wanted the Pistols’ guitar sound.”

After rehearsals, Joe would subject his new band to marathon pub sermons. Strummer was a man on a mission – a mission to save the world from Ronald Reagan and Duran Duran. Combat Rock’s success had done nothing but bolster Strummer’s messianic complex. The mandate of the new Clash was nothing less than total revolution.

Seeking to secure The Clash name, a mini-tour was booked in Southern Calfornia in January ’84, a mere few weeks after the new line-up had been in existence. Despite touring without record company support, the dates received a substantial amount of press attention, adding to the pressure on Strummer to make it all work.

The credit or blame for the new Clash would fall solely on his shoulders, and he was touring with a band unaccustomed to large venues. Of the new members, only Howard had played to more than 200 people. And as if there wasn’t enough pressure to begin with, Mick’s zealous legal team harassed the new Clash at every turn, seemingly just out of spite.

“The pressure on Joe was big,” says Pete Howard. “I mean, fucking hell, Bob Dylan came back to see him after we played. And Joe – he was crying. There was a lot to take on. In that respect, I can understand why he had to see himself as being in fighting form. He believed in Bernie as his trainer very much like a boxer.”

Nick: “I always thought we should have done some commando-style secret club gigs before we played any halls or arenas. If you’ve never played those big stages, there’s a lot of adjusting to do.”

Without a record to promote and no corporate advertising, most gigs were not on the scale of the 1982 US tour. Except in San Francisco. There the new Clash played to a capacity crowd of over 10,000 gone-apeshit fans. San Francisco was chafing under Ronald Reagan’s rule and the new Clash were treated as conquering heroes. It should come as no surprise that a Clash-influenced punk scene emerged not long after in the Bay Area.

After California, the band flew to Europe and found that The Clash were superstars on the continent. They were front page news in the European music press and headlined larger venues than they were used to playing in the US and UK. Then, in late February, while preparing to play the first of two nights at Milan’s Palasport stadium, Joe received news that his father had died.

“I only saw my father once a year [after being sent to boarding school],” Joe had told the LA Times in December 1983. “He was a real disciplinarian, who was always giving me speeches about how he had pulled himself up by the sweat of his brow: a real guts and determination man. What he was really saying to me was, ‘If you play by the rules, you can end up like me.’ And I saw right away I didn’t want to end up like him.”

Strummer’s relationship with his family was strained. Joe once said that if he had seen his father more than once a year he “probably would have murdered him.” His only sibling, brother David, had succumbed to mental illness and committed suicide in 1971. In his increasingly volatile state of mind, this latest tragedy was the last thing Strummer needed.

“When we were in Milan, Joe was fucking mental,” remembers Howard. “He stayed up for about three days drinking bottle after bottle of brandy, and berating everyone around him for their weaknesses, and just really fucking losing it. We had a couple of days off or something, and we didn’t see him. And then he came back. We were all soundchecking and Vince was pissing and moaning saying, ‘I can’t hear my fucking guitar in the monitor.’ And it led to an argument. Bernie was going, ‘Look at you. You’re so fucking pathetic. You’re so middle-class, you’re so fucking weak.’ He said, ‘Look, this guy here’s just fucking buried his father, and you don’t hear him talking about it, do you?’ I remember that time very clearly as being among the worst.”

“I didn’t find out what had happened until the next day,” says Nick. “He didn’t know us that well, so I guess he didn’t feel comfortable sharing his hurt with us.”

In the UK, the pressure was even more intense. For the past four years, the press slagged The Clash for abandoning punk and now they were slagging them for returning to it. Though the NME admitted through gritted teeth that the tour was a ‘lightning sell-out’, long time Clash-basher Gavin Martin dismissed a Brixton date as ‘the heaviest and most orthodox rock show I’ve ever seen The Clash play.’

“After the first album, The Clash hardly ever got good press,” says Sheppard. “Have a look at the recent NME collection of Clash articles.”

The critics were also put off by the paramilitary ambience of the new Clash’s shows and what Lola Borg of Record Mirror described as their fans’ ‘total hero worship’. Strummer also had a beef with The Clash’s fans due to the revival of ‘gobbing’ ( the charming punk custom of honouring your favourite band by spitting on them). Strummer had contracted hepatitis in 1978 from a well-aimed gob, and following the death of his father he had no intention of humouring this repugnant ritual. After facing a nightly rain of phlegm, Strummer’s string snapped. Towards the tour’s end, he singled out a gobber and, well, threatened to kill him.

A bootleg of the Brixton Academy gig, March 16, 1984, captures his rage: “Are you a gobber? Have you spat on me? Well, get the hell of here then, you berk!” he shouts from the stage. “Listen! I’m prepared to murder someone tonight! I don’t give two fucks! I want some fucking human respect – when I clear my throat, I do it on the floor! I’m serious! I’m prepared to kill someone! I don’t give a fuck anymore! Blood – if you want it, let’s have it! Let’s get down to it! And fuck the lot of you!”

Following this drama, the band then returned to the US for a relentless two-month jaunt. Having experienced several difficult tours, Joe and management laid down the law to the new lads. Joe, obsessed with military metaphors, repeatedly referred to his band in interviews as his ‘new recruits’ and his ‘new platoon’. Bernie, for his part, saw himself as The Clash’s drill instructor.

Pete: “There was a lot of [the attitude that] when you’re on the road, that’s it. You don’t contact your fucking family. If you do, you’re a pussy. No girlfriends on tour, we don’t want women around. Bernie used to frequently talk about boxers not being allowed to fuck their wives before a fight. And I do understand where that comes from, because if you’re going to look at yourself in the world arena, then you have to be up for the competition.”

But Bernie was also more abrasive and abusive. “He’d ask questions like ‘What would you do with a million dollars?’ to which every answer proved you were an idiot,” says Nick. “I stared at his ‘new’ nose and said I’d have my ears pinned back. It was like being hauled into the headmaster’s office, and served as much purpose.”

Pete: “It was constantly, every day, ‘Right, tonight you’re going to wear sunglasses.’ And then after that show, it was like, ‘You look like a wanker in sunglasses. Never wear them again.’ I remember having an argument with [Clash road manger] Kosmo Vinyl once. I was saying, ‘This is like being in the fucking Moonies. You’ve got this fucking dwarf Buddha standing up there handing out dictums, and you have to follow them. I don’t think like that, I don’t want to live that way.’ And he just said, ‘That is how it is. You take it with Bernie or you don’t take it at all.’ And then he went on to tell the story about Bernie turning Joe from a nothing to a something. And he said, ‘If you don’t believe that Joe is an iconic figure, then that’s your issue. But most of the world who know of him do believe that, and Joe believes that Bernie made him that.’”

For all of his middle class pedigree, Vince White was the wildest card in the deck. Though picked primarily for his Townshend-like antics during his audition, Vince had the chops to back up his pose. But there was something feral about him, a hint of barely suppressed violence in his perpetual smirk. Bernie would soon discover he got more than he bargained for when he brought Vince aboard.

“Bernie was going out with this kind of crazy wild-child girl from Detroit who was probably a third his age,” says Sheppard. “We were all in a restaurant, everyone was there around the table. And this girl had been flirting around a bit for days. Anyway, she got up and went out. Then Vince, about two minutes later, got up and went out. And when they both came back in, [we knew] they’d been fucking in the car park. I don’t know if Bernie sussed it or not, but he didn’t give it away.

“My bedroom in the hotel was next to Bernie’s, and me and Nick could hear this argument beginning, so we basically brought everyone in, and we were all in my bedroom leaning against the wall, pissing ourselves laughing at Bernie, with that ‘ridiculouth lithp’ of his, going ‘You slag, you fucked my fucking bird? You slag!’ To be honest, my respect for Vince went up quite considerably after he’d done that. It was one in the eye from all of us, really.”

Nick: “Bernie brought Vince in as ‘The Punk’ and got what he asked for.”

As the tour progressed, Joe introduced subtler tracks from Sandinista! and Combat Rock into the set. Under the heavy duty discipline, the once-ragged band had matured into a raging, razor-sharp, rock’n’roll leviathan. “We were definitely a heavier, more hard rock proposition than the previous incarnation,” says Nick. “Our versions of Broadway, Magnificent 7 and Rock The Casbah didn’t mess about.”

The reviews praised the power of the band, but questioned the relevance of punk in 1984. Which is not to say punk wasn’t still in favour with the punters. The band’s entrance into the mainstream had brought a younger and more athletic audience whose approval was often displayed through acts of mayhem. Near-riots broke out at venues in Philadelphia, Chicago and Providence. But as the tour progressed, nerves began to fray. Like the original Clash, the new band soon discovered that Rhodes’ Spartan ideals didn’t apply to himself: he flew between gigs, while the band spent “three months in a fucking Greyhound bus because we were so fucking middle class that we were used to luxury”.

“[That sort of suffering] doesn’t make you into an elite, mean killing machine. It just makes you angry,” says Pete. “We were at a soundcheck at a gig and Bernie just said something that was just one thing too fucking far, and I just left and packed my bag. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t leave at that point because I would have liked to have fucked Bernie over, for him to have to cancel gigs. But he actually curled around my legs like a fucking cat: ‘You know, you’ve got to understand the pressures, we really value you being in it, blah blah blah.’ Two days later, he was being exactly the same all over again.

The band had some good times, too. “We saw Black Flag in Atlanta. We had other great days off in Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit,” says Sheppard. “Shopping, eating soul food, watching protest marches, being taken out by great looking girls – I’ve had worse jobs, believe me.

“In Philadelphia, we stayed at the same hotel as The Grateful Dead. When I got on the bus in the morning neither Joe nor Kosmo had been to sleep, and Joe had this pillow of ‘hippy hair’: Kosmo had set up a Mohawk barber service in the Dead’s entertainment suite and cut mohawks all night!”

Paul Simonon, who had chafed under Mick’s excesses, enjoyed his time with the new Clash and acted as a mentor to them. Pete:

“Everybody was sort of muttering, ‘If Joe could get away from Bernie, then this thing could be really good.’ And Paul was very much of that party. He’d never really stick his neck out about it, but he was one of us mutterers who were going on about Bernie the whole time.”

The band returned from their US marathon, ready to go into the studio and do the album. But then came the news that Joe’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Right on the heels of his father’s death, the news sent Joe into an emotional tailspin and The Clash’s back was broken for good. Joe left the band to fend for themselves. A mini-tour of Italy in September was undertaken without Joe rehearsing with the band.

Joe’s sole preoccupation in the second half of 1984 was tending to his dying mother. The Clash withered without his involvement. Rhodes took advantage of Joe’s plight and finally seized his long-sought “complete control” of the Clash. He booked a studio in Munich to record a new Clash album, the notorious Cut The Crap.

Most of the backing tracks were assembled by anonymous studio musicians, using the very synthesisers and drum machines that led to Mick Jones’ dismissal. Pete Howard was replaced by some dolt with a drum machine, which was like replacing a Maserati with a Matchbox. When White and Sheppard were finally summoned to provide guitar overdubs, they were stunned to discover that the album was nearly complete.

Inevitably, Joe and Bernie soon fell out. Rhodes took the master tapes from the Munich sessions and disappeared. Boxed in by his new contract, Joe was powerless to stop him. He went so far as to track down Mick Jones in the Bahamas and beg him to rejoin The Clash, only to be rebuffed. The album was one of the most disastrous ever released by a major artist and a complete failure artisically and commercially.

To get out of a depression, the band went on a ‘busking tour’ of the north of England in May ’85. Paul Simonon later called it one of the band’s best times, but it couldn’t last. Strummer called a band meeting in October. “We sat down, and Joe said, ‘It’s over’,” says Pete Howard. “He gave us a thousand pounds each. I said, ‘You followed Bernie’s advice, and this is where it got you.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know.’”

In 1999, Joe tore himself out of his 10-year retirement, formed a new group and called them the Mescaleros with strong parallels with Clash II: the mix of new, Clash-like material and Clash favourites, along with the multi-guitar frontline, was taken right from Joe’s 1984 playbook. After an appearance in Australia in 2001, Joe hooked up Nick Sheppard and healed old wounds. “Joe apologised for what happened,” says Sheppard. “I told him I didn’t regret a moment. I know we were never the ‘classic’ Clash, but I’ve moved on, made some great music, and have a great life.”

Pete Howard never had the opportunity to square things with Joe. While recording a new album with the Mescaleros, Joe died in his home just before Christmas 2002. “Before he died, Joe said something in an interview. He said, ‘I felt really sorry for Pete, Vince and Nick, because you had a chemistry between four people that worked really well, and there was no way anyone could have replaced that. And I felt somewhat exonerated by that. Because I was limping, mentally, for a while.”

In 1999, bassist Paul Simonon – the only member of The Clash who was in the band from the beginning until the bitter end – spoke about the last days of The Clash.

“How did it feel after Topper left? A bit empty. I mean, we didn’t realise that you were supposed to go on holiday and have a break from each other. We just worked non-stop really, from day one onwards. Inevitably it’s gonna catch up on you. Me and Joe were just pretty much sick of waiting for Mick to turn up and problems with his reliability and we just said, ‘Well, sod it.’ And that was it – we just asked him to leave.

“But it was interesting in a way ’cos one time in rehearsal, Joe got a piece of chalk and drew a line on the floor and said, ‘On this side there’s the musicians, and on this side there’s the entertainers’. And it was Topper and Mick on one side and me and Joe on the other. It was like: so there’s a few wrong notes – who cares, really? We want to see some people jumping around, we wanna see some excitement, we wanna be entertained, not us all standing dead still getting it all right. You may as well listen to the record.

“I suppose the end really came when Mick was out of the group. ’Cos with drummers we always had this sort of: they were there, and then they weren’t. But when Mick was out that was a big change because the musician of the group had left.

“But then again, after Mick left, we had a pretty good time. We did loads of shows around America with these new guys, and we did the ‘Busking Tour’ which was really exciting [in May 1985, The Clash hitchhiked and busked around the north of England, at one point following Clash-copyists The Alarm from gig to gig]. Why did we choose the Alarm? Why not? Just to wind them up, really.

"It was just being playful. We didn’t ever speak to them – they were probably very pissed off. Their bouncers were trying to get rid of us, red paint was chucked at us – it just made it more exciting. It was the last thing we should have done, really, but we had a lot of fun – it was as exciting as the Anarchy tour. You didn’t know where you were going to go next or what was gonna happen and I really enjoyed that.

“I think the last show we played was probably in Greece at some festival and that was really great. We had three guitars by that point, so it gave me a bit more space in some ways. I’d been practising break-dancing for some reason and in the middle of The Magnificent 7, I took the bass off and started spinning around. We were just so comfortable on stage by that point, it didn’t matter – it just mattered that people got a good show.”

This article originally appeared in Classic Rock issue 80

Lacuna Coil singer Andrea Ferro says the challenges facing bands in today's world of short attention spans is making it harder for artists to make an impact – but he believes metal and rock bands are going a great job of maintaining high standards in their work.

The Italian vocalist discusses the differences facing musicians today compared to when Lacuna Coil were starting to make their name in the 1990s in a new interview with Rock Hard Greece.

He says that grabbing and holding people's attention gets harder all the time. But in his view, metal still sounds great compared to a lot of other genres where quality is sacrificed for quick wins,

Ferro says: "The system of how you find out about bands, how you sell the records or the music has changed completely.

"When we started, it was still the magazines and then the little bit from the TV, a little bit from the radio and the webzine. And nowadays these things don't exist. Nowadays it's all about the social media.

"Some magazine are still surviving, but it's also harder for them. People want to read the news the minute they come out. They don't have any patience anymore to go in the store and buy the mag.

"I love to go in the bookstore and buy the magazine and then read it at home. But now that doesn't exist anymore.

"Everything is way faster and shorter, and the attention span of the people is way less. So you can be a very famous band very quickly, but you can also disappear with the same quickness, because people have always want something new, something fast, and it's very hard to get their attention for more than a minute.

"I think rock and metal is one of the few genres that has kept a certain quality. Different maybe, but still quality all along, compared to other musical styles."

Ferro is grateful to have come onto the scene with Lacuna Coil when the process set them up for longevity rather than instant success.

He adds: "We're lucky that we grew up in a different time, and we made the most of our fanbase in times where you could still go door by door and tour every city and open for this band and that band and convince everybody through playing every show – so in the classic way.

"I think nowadays it's way easier and faster but also way more complicated to build something solid that is gonna last."

Lacuna Coil have a number of festival dates coming up in 2026 and a string of shows planned for 2027.

Is No Prayer For The Dying up there with your favourite Iron Maiden albums? If the answer is ‘yes’, you’re in a fairly select group. It would be a massive stretch to say the record, released in 1990, is as beloved as such nailed-on classics as The Number Of The Beast, Powerslave, Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son or A Matter Of Life And Death.

But if you are willing to go into bat for the metal legends’ eighth album then you’re in good company. One person who really loves it is Maiden bassist Steve Harris himself. Speaking to Metal Hammer as part of a feature on supposedly rubbish metal albums that are nowhere as bad as people say they are, ’Arry leaps to No Prayer For The Dying’s defence – and reveals the one thing he’d change about it that would have cast it in a completely different light.

“I think it’s a really strong album,” he says, pointing out that it came on the back of a run of increasingly ambitious albums and tours. “At the time, we had gotten so big, with all the grandiose shows, that we were trying to go back to basics a little bit.

“If I'm totally honest, I think it was slightly influenced by Bruce's solo album, Tattooed Millionaire [also released in 1990], where he was trying to get a bit more basic,” continues Steve. “There are a couple of songs on there where he sings a bit rougher. I was thinking I could write something where he could sing with that gruff delivery as well.”

This commitment to stripping things back extended to recording the album in a converted barn in the grounds of Steve’s house. And the one change he would make if he could do it again? Well, it’s a pretty major one.

“We were trying to make it sound like a live album, which is why we got the Rolling Stones Mobile studio in to record live in the barn. We probably should have put audience noise on it, because it would have sounded more like a proper live album – we did that with the Tailgunner video, and it made a big difference.”

Ironically, one of the more derided songs on the album is its most epic-sounding: Cossack-metal anthem Mother Russia. “Mother Russia got really slagged off, but I listened to it recently and I thought, ‘This is really good,’” says Steve. “I was going for a [20th century Russian composer] Sergei Prokofiev kind of vibe, which I felt I got, but it got slagged off anyway.”

Not that Steve Harris is bothered by whether you like No Prayer For The Dying or not. “I don't care about that kind of stuff,” he says. “I remember when Jethro Tull's album A Passion Play got slagged off, [Tull mainman] Ian Anderson didn’t want to play the UK anymore,” he says. “If it were me, I would have embraced it. I would have gotten all the journalists into one room, and piled into them – not physically, but verbally. If someone says they don’t like something, that makes me embrace it even more. You’ve got to believe in what do, don’t you?”

You can check out the list of albums that are nowhere as bad as people say they are – also featuring Judas Priest, Metallica, Machine Head and more – in the brand new issue of Metal Hammer, onsale now.

“Hey, don’t write yourself off yet…’

The lyrics to The Middle – Jimmy Eat World’s breakthrough hit and an absolute emo anthem – might have been intended as words of encouragement to a teenage punk struggling with ideas of self-worth and acceptance, but they could equally have applied to the band’s own career as they entered a new century.

Throughout the mid-to-late 90s, the quartet werea a cult act who had garnered a little airplay on US college radio before being unceremoniously ditched by their label. Their third album in particular, 1999’s Clarity, would eventually come to be viewed as an emo classic but at the time it was considered a commercial flop.

As the band took on day jobs to self-fund the follow up, they looked as likely to crew the next manned space flight to the Moon as break into the musical mainstream. But bolstered by the huge success of The Middle, 2001’s Bleed American changed all that. It wasn’t just a massive album for Jimmy Eat World, it blew the doors wide open for every other emotionally charged rock and punk band to follow.

When Jimmy Eat World formed in Mesa, Arizona in 1993, they had no such grand ambitions. “Our goals were really small when we first started,” guitarist and original lead vocalistTom Linton told Columbus Underground. “We just wanted to put out a little seven-inch and we were freaking out about that. And be able to go to California, you know – leave Phoenixto play a show outside of Arizona.”

They soon went beyond such modest aspirations with debut EP One, Two, Three, Four and a self-titled full-length album, both released in 1994 on local label Wooden Blue Records. Their early material was more in the vein of ramshackle skate-punk and it wasn’t until their second album, 1996’s Static Prevails, that they started to hone their sound into a more refined format.

Lead guitarist Jim Adkins started to take on more of the lead vocals, adding his crystalline highs to Linton’s Jawbox-style rasps, and they brought in more post-hardcore and emo elements. They were signed to Capitol Records on a development deal, which guaranteed one album and gave the label the option for several more, and things appeared to be looking rosy.

In the wake of Green Day’s Dookie though, major labels weren’t looking for bands who could slowly develop their own sound and fanbase. They wanted big returns quickly, and when Static Prevails failed to shift the units, the band already started to see the writing on the wall.

“We approached making [follow-up album Clarity] like we would never get a chance to make another record in an actual studio again,” Adkins told the Washed Up Emo podcast. “So we didgo kinda nuts…like: ‘Alright, today we’re renting timpani!”

The album certainly had its grandiose elements, with a strings, keys, piano, bells and a vibraphone, but there was also the more personal, relatable side that has always been such a key part of emo’s appeal.

Clarity’s lead single Lucky Denver Mint gained some traction and remains a fan favourite to this day, but the album again failed to match their record label paymasters’ expectations. When Capitol decided not to renew the contract, the band were philosophical.

“All big labels are extremely adept at pushing bands that are moving 20,000 or more records a week,” Jim Adkins told Spin. “Capitol knew exactly what to do with that. But they had no idea what to do with bands like us that sold 10,000 copies between all releases. [Clarity] grew over time into what it is now, but that wasn’t the case back then. It made complete business sense to not spend any more money on us.”

Jimmy Eat World were down but certainly not out. Regrouping for the next step, they channelled money from their day jobs and touring that had stepped up a level. Adkins recalled Tom Linton sitting in a bar nervously clutching a backpack with $35,000 in it because they didn’t want to leave it in the car and couldn’t deposit so much in the bank in one go.

Producer Mark Trombino agreed to work on the album that would become Bleed American, with the band paying him when they could, going back on tour to raise funds as needed.

“It turned out to be one of my favourite record-making experiences because it was literally me and four guys just making a record together without any label involvement,” Trombino told Entertainment Weekly. “That was the reason it turned out the way it did.”

As they worked on the album, new record labels sniffed around and the band eventually signed with DreamWorks Records. Bleed American was released in July 2001 (the title was temporarily changed to Jimmy Eat World in the wake of the September 11 attacks).

It featured a more streamlined, accessible sound and The Middle was its most anthemic moment. Written in direct response to a fan who contacted them on their AOL account, it featured a dream sequence video in which the protagonist shows up to a party fully clothed, while his peers all dance in their underwear.

“I think we just decided, ‘Let’s lean into this and do it and make sure it’s done right’, make sure it’s not overly gratuitous or inappropriate in a way that feels creepy,” drummer Zach Lind told Grammy.com.

The video was a hit and they toured relentlessly on the back of it, including stints on the Warped Tour and the Pop Disaster tour with Blink-182 and Green Day. By the time they came up for air, this most unassuming of bands were rock stars with a million-selling album behind them.

“The way that Bleed American just opened doors for us was maybe one of the most satisfying experiences of my life,” Lind told Grammy.com. “In the wake of all the frustration and banging our head against the wall at Capitol, it just felt like everything aligned perfectly, and I think we were lucky to be able to experience that in that way, because I don’t think a lot of people get that moment in their life.”

It didn’t only open doors for the band who made it but for the scene as a whole, ushering emo into the mainstream spotlight. It also set up Jimmy Eat World as global stars who would outlive the musical andcultural wave they helped to generate.

They would never match Bleed American sales-wise, but follow-up Futures went Gold and 2007’s Chase This Light would become their highest charting album, peaking at No.5 in the US Billboard 200. They would continue to release a string of consistent and highly regarded albums over subsequent years.

With no splits or lengthy hiatuses, they’re one of the few major players of the 2000s emo boom who haven’t had to affect a reunion to benefit from the recent resurgence of interest, supporting a revitalized My Chemical Romance in Australia and touring with Fall Out Boy in the US. They might dispute the term but Jimmy Eat World remain emo royalty and their legacy is assured.

Originally published in The Story Of Emo. Order it online here and have it delivered straight to your door

In 2016 Steve Hillage released 22-disc box set Searching For The Spark 1969-1991. It proved the ideal moment to look back on a career that’s included spells with Gong, Khan and System 7, moving from psychedelic prog to dance and ambient music, and producing albums for Tony Banks, It Bites, Simple Minds and others.

You were only in Gong for a relatively short time in your overall career.

It might have been a short time but it felt like an eternity!

How do you look back on that time and albums like 1973’s Angel’s Egg and 1974’s You?

It was a strange and amazing experience. It was completely exhilarating, sometimes exasperating. The band that made Angel’s Egg and You, I’d say, was the best band I’ve ever been in. Ever. It was seven strong individuals, all good at what they did, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

What stands out for you from Angel’s Egg?

There are many good bits. Other Side Of The Sky was all one take and us playing live. It was just, you know, wow! In terms of my own playing I’d say there were two pieces – the solo on I Never Glid Before and the solo track I did, Castle In The Clouds. In particular that one was a launch pad for my whole subsequent development in the world of ambient music. Hats off to Daevid Allen, because he put together the order of the tracks and wove the story around it all.

After Gong, were you surprised at the way your solo career took off with 1976’s L album?

I thought L was going to do alright – although I couldn’t quantify what “alright” meant. Then we got the Hyde Park show, another thing that fell out of the blue. Our first gig in front of thousands of people – fucking hell! That was a real baptism by fire.

It really seriously disturbed me, actually. I felt really weird singing my songs about peace and love and there’s fighting in front of me. I tried to berate them over the mic and in the end I just thought, “Fuck it, let’s just finish the set!”

We managed to get through the set and it seemed to go down pretty well. It was a mad experience, but it was very good in terms of timing for the release of the album and that helped enormously. It took off from there.

There’s always been an uplifting quality within your music. Was that something you consciously worked at?

It’s not something you can necessarily work at with a technique, but obviously the whole aim of the game was to create what we might call an “enhanced experience” for the listener. If that’s what you get then we’re happy. It means it’s working. It’s a bit like the modern equivalent of shamanism. When you attune yourself to a certain energy and channel it through what you do with your music – it’s that. Most artists do it, though not all do it consciously. It’s part of art, really.

If you’re making music and you appreciate that aspect of the musical experience, you try to maximise it if you can. We found certain ways we could achieve that. We’re still very much of that orientation in what we do now, although it’s more instrumental-based and more connected to ambient and dance music. We haven’t lost that hunger to go for that aspect.

Has there always been a connection between your music and heightened, euphoric states, such as what’s often encountered at dance gigs?

Yes. That’s very much what led us into the whole dance thing. To a certain extent the dance thing grew up around us. At the end of the 80s we found that to be our musical home. But we never rejected what we’d done before; it was just part of a chronological progression.

On the tour we did for Green in 1978, and the first year we played at Deeply Vale, we had a very interesting experience at a gig in Plymouth. Before we played there was a disco and the DJ had a pre-release copy of Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine. The audience loved it – they were dancing away. We were kind of gobsmacked.

We tend to associate German psychedelic music with sitting down cross-legged with a big, conical joint. Sancing to it hadn’t really occurred to us! We said, “My God, it’s the future! This stuff’s going to be massive.” We had a kind of ‘eureka!’ moment; we didn’t know what to do with it, but that’s when we had it.

Were you surprised at the way the dance and ambient chillout scene adopted and adapted Rainbow Dome Musick?

When we did it in 1979, for us it was a special project uniquely for that event. We thought it was good and we were very happy with it – we had no real prediction of how it would be viewed 10 or 20 years later.

Posterity isn’t something you’re thinking about when you’re making an album.

Not at all. One of my aphorisms is you’re only as good as your last gig or your last album or track or mix or whatever. You’ve got to focus on what you’re doing at the time.

What would you regard as the really pivotal album for you?

Motivation Radio [1977] because that’s where I did a left turn. All the pressure was on me to do another more obviously proggy album like L but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to move in more of a funk direction with more electronics. I found Malcolm Cecil the perfect producer for that. It didn’t do at all well in America, but it definitely changed things for me.

Are there any of your releases you feel are underrated or haven’t quite got the attention you think they deserve?

It’s very difficult to answer that. They’re all steps along the way. I met Steven Wilson recently and one of his favourite albums of mine is For To Next [1983]. Maybe the sound is a little harsh, but I’m really pleased with the songs and the lyrics on that one. Some of them are a little darkl but they say the same sort of thing as my earlier records in a much more subtle way.

I was writing this stuff at the time of the Falklands War and that had a bad effect on me – all that patriotism. I thought, “This is the pits!” So I was seeing things in a somewhat darker way, although my idealism was undimmed.

If you could go back and speak to your younger self, about to embark on a career as a professional musician, what would you say?

I’ll answer that with something Daevid Allen told me. Soft Machine had the same management as Jimi Hendrix; and one day, Daevid was in the toilet with him at the Speakeasy club. Jimi looked at Daevid and said, “Hey man, stay with your thing, stay with your thing.” So that’s what I’d say to myself: “Stay with your thing!”

With his exuberant personality and booming Brummie brogue, Blaze Bayley was always going to stand out. Frontman for rising stars Wolfsbane in the mid-80s to early 90s, in 1994 he got the call-up to join Iron Maiden, singing in the group during one of their most difficult periods.

When Bruce Dickinson rejoined Maiden in 1999, Blaze continued on alone, first with his solo venture Blaze, and then also with a resurrected Wolfsbane intermittently from 2007 onwards. We put him to the torch with your questions.

Do you plan to ever tour the US again?
Ok_imfc, Instagram

“It’s really challenging for smaller artists. I’m an independent artist; I’ve got lots of fans in the US, but they all live so far apart it’s impossible to get them all together for a gig. It’s actually so much easier to go to Canada, so I might end up there first.”

Which cut X Factor song do you wish had made it onto the album?
Unchained_Colours, Instagram

“Justice Of The Peace. We did the three B-sides from The X Factor when we did the anniversary tour, and once we got them polished up, Justice… was really cool. Those three songs, it would’ve been great to have more time to mix them and put them on the record. It went so well, we might bring it back on my October tour.”

How do you look after yourself with such a busy schedule?
Daniel Armstrong, Facebook

“I don’t – I had a heart attack! Touring is unhealthy, and that’s even without booze and drugs, because there is erratic sleep and long travels sitting in a van. But how I’ve got to where I am is that I’m straight-edge. I think about my health a lot. It’s been seven years since I stopped drinking completely.”

Hammer: What made you quit?

“Mental health – I’ve always had problems. When I was diagnosed with depression 25 years ago, I didn’t even know what it was. I’d heard of it, but I didn’t realise you could get medication for it. I’d already stopped drinking on show days or the day before a show, but when I was off tour I slipped back into the habit of drinking – doing things you shouldn’t, like drinking alone, so I decided to stay stopped. Anyone who thinks they might have a problem, I urge you to try quitting and give it six months. I've been seven years [sober] on June 19, and the people who I know who’ve been on this journey… we’d never go back.”

Which songs on [2000 solo Blaze album] Silicon Messiah did you originally write for Brave New World?
Kilian Alpert, Facebook

“Born As A Stranger and A Ghost In The Machine. I’d read the book Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and that was it. I was very interested in what was happening with artificial intelligence and was very interested in what [American computer scientist and author] Ray Kurzweil was saying about it. Those two ideas, especially Born As A Stranger, were the first things I tried with musicians when I was putting the band together. I might do one of those at Eddfest, actually.”

Would you ever write a daily column called Blaze Daily?
Mark Enschrøde, Facebook

“My problem is that I suffer from laziness. Doing something on a daily basis, that feels like actual work! I’ve got enough with my two radio shows, recording them every week. That’s plenty for me, man! Once a month, I might do something; I’d probably call it ‘Cooking With Blaze’ and it’d be stuff like my signature dish, fish finger curry. There are variations of that – my sausage and mushroom curry is also worthy of a mention.”

Wolfsbane’s [1990 track] Kathy Wilson is an under-appreciated masterpiece. Did you write any more sci-fi-themed tunes at the time?
Outshined1969, Instagram

“No, it was a one-off. We love science fiction, especially that 50s thing where it’s the paranoia for Communism and its all a metaphor for what was happening. We loved doing that album [All Hell’s Breaking Loose Down At Little Kathy Wilson’s Place], but we felt cheated in a way. We never had a Kathy Wilson tour. It sounds like sour grapes, but we did the Iron Maiden support tour and everything went really well, but because of how our deal was structured, the record company never gave us our own tour afterwards. That’s why we think the album didn’t get to where it should have."

What new metal bands are you digging these days? Bobthrash, Instagram

“I’m loving Green Lung and Wytch Hazel. There’s a few actually – Monster Truck aren’t new, but they’re new to me. Jayler and Tailgunner, too. Things are going to change over the next three years, and these bands are going to come into their own. If all of them can make a great studio album, I think it’ll push them to be the next wave.”

If the Maiden offer hadn’t existed, would you have stayed in Wolfsbane?
Horia Argintaru, Facebook

“I don’t know. That’s a challenging question. We were very loyal to each other, but the horrible reality was that we’d been dropped by the label and had no record deal. Our manager said, ‘Lads, you’ve got nothing.’ Grunge was coming up and we refused to become like that, because we were proud of the music we were making on The White Album [1994’s Wolfsbane], which we’re actually remastering. I don’t think we could’ve carried on much longer. I had no plans at that point to do anything solo – that only came after Maiden.”

Will Maiden ever release a DVD/live album of your era?
Anders Bogelöv, Facebook

“No, there’s very little footage of that era. I’ve moved something like six times since then, so most of what I’d kept has just disappeared or got lost. If you look at [2003 DVD set] Visions Of The Beast, I’ve got six songs on there. That’s probably as close as we’re going to get. Actually, what we do have is Chile. I’m famous for losing my temper there…”

Hammer: Tell us more…

“There were six people spitting at the band. Because of diseases, everybody was cautious and had to stand at the back. Maiden had never played there – they’d been banned by the church. But [in 1996], after Bon Jovi, Metallica, Black Sabbath… all the big bands had come, the greatest metal band of them all was going to Chile. So you can imagine the expectation, and these guys were ruining it for everyone.

But the Chilean equivalent of the BBC set up in the theatre and filmed that whole gig without permission. Because the police there were wearing guns and it was all a bit edgy, nobody felt like we could say, ‘You can’t film this.’ So I think there is one full gig. It went pretty well and I sounded good – meltdown aside!”

Are you still writing a book around the Infinite Entanglement Trilogy?
Saanichman, Instagram

“Yep! I hit a problem with my laptop and arthritis in one of my fingers, but I spoke to someone who writes books and they explained how to use dictation. So when I come back from the next big break – probably end of next year – I’ll finish it up. I’ve got about a third done.”

Would you record with Maiden again, given the chance?
Rated.R_metalhead, Instagram

“We’ve never had any animosity. One of the things that Bruce and Paul Di’Anno didn’t have was, they’d not seen Maiden as a fan. I saw them at Birmingham Odeon three times on three different tours. I’d got every studio album. Walking into it, I hoped it would last, but I knew if it ever ended I’d be tagged an ex-member of Iron Maiden. Which, as a fan… great! Iron Maiden are as important culturally as Star Wars.”

Hammer: And if they asked?

“If there was a project where they’d want the two voices, I’d be absolutely fine. Why would I be against that?! It’d be fun! My dream was to do a gig where Paul, Bruce and me could share a stage. For fans, it’d be absolute madness. At the same time, if I wrote something where I thought, ‘This could do with Bruce’, I’d ask him, same as anybody else!”

Do you still have something to prove?
Jordan R.A. Mills, Facebook

“As an artist, there are things I want to do. With [2024 solo album] Circle Of Stone, I felt I really managed to express a lot of the passion and darkness, using my voice in a way that I hadn’t before. But I’ve done it all: had a Top 10 single, played around the world, done gigs in stadiums and arenas. I’m living my dream of being a professional heavy metal singer: I don’t have to prove anything.”

Blaze's UK tour starts on October 1.

When I interviewed Lemmy in LA, it was over a Jack and Coke – at 10 o’clock in the morning. Nobody seemed to find that unusual, least of all Lemmy. Yet when the conversation turned to Bon Scott, he sounded less like a rock star remembering another rock star, more like a witness recalling what everyone else missed.

The first time Lemmy saw AC/DC, they were playing a London pub. He’d gone along with a girl to see what all the fuss was about. Bon was charging around the stage with Angus on his shoulders, creating the sort of chaos that would later become their trademark.

“It was obvious they were huge then, although they weren’t huge then,” he recalled.

Lemmy had spent his life watching bands come and go, and few people were better qualified to recognise the difference between a good band and a phenomenon. “Some bands you see and you just know. The Beatles were one. The Stones were one. AC/DC were one of those bands.”

What stayed with him, however, wasn’t the spectacle. It wasn’t the drinking, the lyrics or the mythology that would later surround Bon. It was the give-everything effort, that Bon put into every single show. “He always looked knackered, because he gave everything in the stage show,” Lemmy remembered.

Then came an image that seemed to summarise Bon Scott in a single scene: “I remember seeing him come on stage and, in between songs, fall down, then get up and get pushed back on.”

To Lemmy, this wasn’t recklessness. It was commitment. “He really gave it all. That’s how you should do it.”

Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded like praise. Coming from Lemmy, it sounded more like a code. Both men belonged to a generation that treated the stage as a place to empty the tank every night, and deal with the consequences later. “It’s a workout,” Lemmy said with a laugh. Perhaps that’s why Bon resonated with him so strongly. You showed up. You delivered. You left everything on that stage.

Tellingly, when asked to name his favourite AC/DC songs, every one of Lemmy’s choices came from the Bon Scott years.

“There are so many great songs, but I’ve always loved Can I Sit Next To You Girl, Whole Lotta Rosie and It’s A Long Way To The Top,” he said. The live version of Rosie was a particular favourite, he said, but it was It’s A Long Way To The Top that seemed to capture something essential.

Years later, Lemmy would record his own version of the song, with former AC/DC drummer Simon Wright helping bring the connection full circle. He wasn’t entirely happy with the mix that was eventually released, and insisted he had a better version at home. It felt less like a cover than a salute between fellow road warriors. Of all Bon’s songs, it might have been the one Lemmy understood best. Asked why, he offered the explanation: “It’s A Long Way To The Top is just a great song. It’s that simple.”

Near the end of our conversation, Lemmy’s tone softened ever so slightly when he talked about something he wished he had done. “I would have liked to get to know the guys better, and I would have liked to meet them earlier on.” It wasn’t regret. Not quite. More an acknowledgment that some connections arrive a little too late.

What Lemmy saw when looked at Bon Scott wasn’t a legend, a pirate, a poet or some larger-than-life character, he saw something he understood instinctively and respected deeply: a fellow road warrior. A man who every time he stepped on to a stage gave everything he had. And in Lemmy’s world there wasn’t a higher compliment than that.

Birds of a feather don’t always fly together.

This feature appears in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, which is dedicated to Bon Scott on what would have been his 80th birthday. But the issue online and have it delivered straight to your door

Sid Wilson has reportedly been fired from Slipknot.

According to a report on TMZ, a source close to the Iowa outfit reports that DJ and keyboard player Wilson was ejected from the band on Friday. No reason for his apparent departure was given.

However, the band’s guitarist, Jim Root, has alluded to the story in a post on Instagram Stories..

Root wrote: “Don’t believe every thing you read. Stop. Think. Take a breath. Sit with it for awhile. Maybe. Just maybe even wait until there’s more information.”

While the post doesn’t mention Wilson, the timing has prompted fans to speculate that Root’s is referring to his bandmate’s departure.

Neither Slipknot or Wilson have confirmed his departure.

Wilson joined Slipknot in 1998, just before they recorded their self-titled debut album with producer Ross Robinson.

He has appeared on every Slipknot album from the debut to 2022’s The End So Far, as well as the ‘lost’ album credited to Look Outside Your Window, which was finally released earlier this year.

As well as Slipknot, Wilson – who was engaged to Kelly Osbourne until their relationship ended earlier this year – has also performed under the name DJ Starscream and SID, as well as Miami Vice Crack.

Following Wilson’s apparent departure, only four members of the line-up that played on Slipknot’s debut alum remain – percussionist Shawn Crahan, singer Corey Taylor and guitarist Jim Root and Mick Thomson.

Over the course of three albums, White Zombie gradually left behind their noise rock leanings to become that metal band you could dance to at your local rock club. According to J. Yuenger – their fifth guitarist by 1989 – this evolution wasn't by accident, either.

"The change in sound and attitude began well before I joined," Yuenger told Revolver. "When I met them, they were adamant about becoming a ‘real’ metal band. They didn’t want to become more normal, but they did want to be more accessible, to play to a wider audience."

"I was never happy with just playing at CBGBs in front of 300 people for the rest of our lives," band co-founder and vocalist Rob Zombie told Metal Hammer. "I had bigger aspirations. I thought, 'This scene has limitations. We like heavy metal, we look like a metal band, we'll just beef up our sound and start playing metal shows.'"

That beefed-up sound was fully realised on 1992's La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One, their third album and first for Geffen. It was recorded in New York City's 321 Studios with producer Andy Wallace (Slayer, Nirvana) over the course of a month. But with three years between their God of Thunder EP and their major label debut, the band were fully prepared once they entered the Midtown Manhattan recording facility.

"Riffs and riffs and riffs," remembers bassist Sean Yseult in an interview with VWMusic. "A ton of hard work in Ivan’s [de Prume, drummer] basement non-stop. Suffice it to say, after many years, we had honed our sound and ideas. With Thunder Kiss ’65, J. was over at me and Rob’s apartment, playing the opening rhythm over and over, then after a while, adding those classic descending thirds… it was an 'aha!' moment."

"It was our most normal song. A song that a normal person might enjoy," Zombie would later tell Rolling Stone. But whether a normal person would appreciate a song featuring a sample of Russ Meyer's, sexploitation film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is anyone's guess. However, the deceptively simple groove of the four-minute song, coupled with Zombie's half-snarled, half-grunted B-movie, "motor-psycho nightmare" lyrics, would invoke chaos in whatever venue they played.

"Playing it for the first time, writing as we went along, made it one of the easiest songs we ever worked on together," Yseult told Gut Feeling's Gregory Adams. "Rob had the beat, J. wrote the main riff over it, and I wrote the breakdown in the middle. Seeing audiences react was just incredible. J. would start quietly with the single note, the rhythm, and people would yell, then wait with anticipation. When the drums and bass would kick in at the end of the opening riff, it would be total mayhem! Mosh pit insanity. It was really exciting to watch every night."

The single was released on March 23, 1992, one week before La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One. Even for a major label signing, it seems that the label had reservations about ploughing even a modest amount of money into a band of metal misfits obsessed with cheaply made horror and science fiction.

"Geffen didn’t even have a budget for us to make a video, while other bands that barely sold a record were getting outrageous sums of money to shoot videos," Yseult told Adams. "We finally talked them into giving us $15,000 to make the Thunderkiss ‘65 video, which was barely enough to cover the price of the film. Nobody got paid, not even the director."

This is not a story where a single catapults the band into fame overnight. White Zombie basically lived in their van, toured the club circuit and sold a very respectable amount of albums the hard way. But thanks to two teenage metal critics in Highland, Texas, the band blew up like that dude’s head on the film Scanners.

"Before Beavis and Butt-head ever put us on their show, we'd sold a quarter of a million records and were doing really well by ourselves," Yuenger told The Virginian-Pilot in 1995. "Beavis and Butt-head is what kicked it over into the psycho, million-selling thing."

"Thanks to MTV, thanks to Mike Judge and Beavis And Butt-Head and [Headbangers Ball presenter] Riki Rachtman, we got on heavy rotation," remembers Yseult. "A lot of people say, ‘Oh my god, you owe your fame to two cartoon characters!’ But they liked the Butthole Surfers, they liked Iggy Pop, they liked us… we were keeping good company, I didn’t mind!"

The single's success pushed La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One up to number 26 on the US Billboard 200, and remains the band's most popular song on Spotify with over 173 million plays.

In 1970 Robert Fripp was on the verge of quitting what was left of King Crimson. It looked like third album Lizard had been their last, until vocalist Boz Burrell was hired – and then, by a twist of fate, became their bassist too, as Prog explored in 2021.

Raymond ‘Boz’ Burrell had already made the front page of Melody Maker when he entered the world of King Crimson. The singer had been rumoured to be replacing Roger Daltrey in The Who while the band had been in temporary disarray in 1965.

When Burrell was invited to join Robert Fripp’s band, he found another organisation in disarray. The line-up who’d made 1970’s Lizard was disintegrating, and Fripp – who’d already had to rebuild the band once before – was close to giving up.

“It was so traumatic that at one point Robert couldn’t handle it any more,” saxophonist Mel Collins recalled in 2021. “He told me that if I wanted to carry on with Crimson, I should do the auditioning. All I can remember is Robert giving up completely, saying, ‘There’s no hope.’

“So there I am in this little rehearsal room, auditioning bass players and drummers on my own. As a green saxophone player who didn’t really know the tunes that well, it was unbelievable to be thrown into this situation – but I was hungry to do it. When I think about it now, I can’t imagine how I did it.”

Once Collins found drummer Ian Wallace, Fripp and lyricist Pete Sinfield saw light at the end of the tunnel. Future Roxy Music vocalist Brian Ferry was tried out but they passed on him, and instead selected Burrell, feeling an instant connection with his performance and character.

He’s come on board as vocalist; but, like his immediate predecessor Gordon Haskell, he’d wind up playing bass too – something he’d never done before. The plan had been for future Steeleye Span member Rick Kemp to be bassist, and early rehearsals went well. The spirit in their underground studio was said to be much more positive and fun than it had earlier been. But after three days Kemp dropped out, feeling the music wasn’t for him.

“That was the lowest point,” Wallace said. “When we got that message, we were all sitting in the basement, and it was pretty much that Crimson wasn’t going to happen. That was it, really; the band was all but finished.”

If one of the bassists who auditioned to replace Kemp hadn’t left his instrument behind, the next stage of development might never have taken place. Burrell picked it up, played a few notes, and that was enough for Fripp to decide they’d found their new low-end provider.

“We had had plenty of competent professional musicians audition, but they didn’t have the feel,” Fripp told NME at the time. “Boz felt the bass parts while he was singing, whereas the musicians could play it but couldn’t feel it. And if he could feel it, it could only be a matter of time before it crept down from his head through his hand and into his fingers.”

After a week of trying it out, King Crimson were go again. They performed a four-day residency in Germany in April 1971, replete with expansive improvisations, then a UK tour the following month where the material was tightened up. Then, as the members felt the need to express themselves with their own music, they began to write what would become fourth album Islands.

It was a key turning point for Crimson, steering the music and vision towards a future that even Fripp doubted they’d had. Yes, he found himself as last man standing when the grouping came to an end with just one album to their name, and there were more mountains to climb in the times ahead. But Burrell’s contribution to the band seemed to provide a lasting source of energy, even if it took Fripp a while to be able to face it.

21st-century Crimson lead vocalist Jakko Jakszyk saw Burrell’s line-up perform on that 1971 UK tour. “I love Boz’s voice,” he told Prog. “I know it’s maligned by some of the Crimson aficionados, but I don’t really get that. Both Mel and Ian were incredibly defensive about that; they really loved Boz. They loved his bass playing too, even though it wasn’t overly technical. They said he had an amazing groove and an amazing vibe – that he really made those things sing.”

Jakszyk was delighted when Fripp decided to include material from the Burrell era in the new reincarnation. “I think finally he could hear the music in those pieces. He’d avoided them not so much because he dismissed the value of the material or the content, but because of the hellish memories he has of trying to bring that particular music to life.

“I think he hated that period for so long because, in his head, it represented this torturous process that he didn’t want to revisit. Obviously remixing it has helped him come to terms with it all; and certainly playing this stuff again has made him re-evaluate it – which is why it was such a joy to do it.”

Burrell, Wallace and Collins joined Alexis Korner’s blues band Snape, before Burrell became a founding member of Bad Company in 1973. He later performed with Alvin Lee and Family’s Roger Chapman, then with Tam White. The Scottish singer was with Burrell in 2006 when he collapsed and died of a heart attack in his Marbella home at the age of 60.

“I had a creepy feeling things were going against us,” said Lynyrd Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant in the summer of 1977. Street Survivors, the album released just three days before the plane crash in October that year, always seems irreversibly bound up in that tragedy. But while there may have been strange vibes and bad juju brewing, the band had been rejuvenated.

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s newest recruit, 28-year-old Oklahoman guitarist and songwriter Steve Gaines, was an inspired choice, and ended up co-writing the lion’s share of the album. But making Street Survivors was anything but easy.

The band started work with producer Tom Dowd at Miami’s Criteria Studios in December ’76, only to be told by management that the recordings weren’t good enough. After the inevitable bust-up, Ronnie agreed. A second version was cut at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, the following summer, the final album pieced together from both sessions.

Van Zant’s “creepy feeling” stemmed from a run of dangerous mishaps prior to recording. Ronnie had just become a father, and was trying to curb his excessive lifestyle. In the meantime, Gary Rossington, drunkenly passed out at the wheel of his car, ploughed into an oak tree and a telegraph pole and wound up in hospital.

When fellow guitarist Allen Collins and keyboard player Billy Powell were involved in similar car accidents, Van Zant came up with That Smell: a warning message to his hell-raising bandmates – ‘Too much smoke and too much coke… The smell of death surrounds you’. It was an omen of worse to co

Joining That Smell were two more instantly defining Skynyrd tracks: What’s Your Name and You Got That Right were brawny Southern rockers in the grand tradition of Saturday Night Special. What’s Your Name was a risqué tale of a one-night stand and barroom punch-up, played out to blaring horns; You Got That Right included another prophetic lyric (‘You won’t find me in an old folks home’) and Steve Gaines serving up one of the album’s sweetest solos.

Despite its bad omens, Street Survivors is also an album full of upbeat moments that hint at what Skynyrd might have done next. There’s a cover of Van Zant’s favourite songwriter Merle Haggard’s Honky Tonk Night Time Man, which shows off Skynyrd’s country rock credentials. (Ronnie also cut an alternative version, titled Jacksonville Kid, featured on the album’s 2008 reissue.) Gaines’ I Know A Little was the kind of spicy jazz-blues you could imagine Stevie Ray Vaughan covering.

The original cover infamously showed the group enveloped in flames, quickly reissued with an alternative cover shot. But on both you can still relish Leon Wilkeson’s majestic top hat and ‘My Grass Is Blue’ T-shirt, and the band looking like the last gang in town. Inside, the music is prime Skynyrd: raw, sweet, angry and fun. Separated from the terrible circumstances that surrounded it, Street Survivors sounds like a band reborn.

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents Lynyrd Skynyrd

End of July already?! There's still a few major festivals to go - not least Louder Than Life and Aftershock in the US, while Bloodstock will take place in the UK next week - but it feels like the end of summer is fast approaching. But all that means is an even busier calendar as the Autumn touring cycles kick in, which of course also means a fresh heap of albums to listen to.

Before we get into new music though, the results of last week's vote! Rising metalcore stars Imminence took third place in the polls, narrowly beating out Kim Dracula and Hatebreed. In second place was Gjallarhorn, the new tune from Amon Amarth, but the overall crown was taken by newcomer Micah Martin, who swept the board with the wild Burn Them All.

It's all to play for this week as we have metalcore heavyweights like President, Electric Callboy and Miss May I, plus the return of Black Sabbath architect Tony Iommi. Check out our round-up for the best new metal songs below and don't forget to vote for your favourite in the poll. You can listen to all our previous winners in the playlist below.

Tony Iommi - World Alone

There's always a cause for celebration when one of heavy metal's original architects returns with new music. 21 years since his last solo release, Tony Iommi has revealed a new line-up and sound with new single World Alone, taken from the album From The Dark, due October 23. While there's no mistaking Iommi's thick guitar tones, the track is surprisingly closer to his Heaven And Hell era than the more traditional Sabbath fare, sharing more DNA with successors like Sabaton or Powerwolf (albeit without the gleeful cheese) than the doom overtones you might expect. Triumphant as you like.

Left To Suffer - Unwelcome Guest

Tight, claustrophobic and oh so satisfying, Left To Suffer's new single Unwelcome Guest comes with the news the deathcore mob will be releasing an album of the same title on October 9th. Starting out groovy before skittering across to something more feral, the Georgia band do a great job of balancing underground intensity with the genre's more crisp recent production.

Sigh - Unputenpu (ft. Mikael Akerfeldt)

Even as they close in on 40 years and 14 studio albums, Sigh don't sound like they're out of ideas yet. On Unputenpu they switch out wild eyed extreme metal for a decidedly Japanese folk sound. All that said, they're not exactly going gentle with it - the undulating rhythm is cut with quick flutes and rasped snarls that leave no mystery as to where their bread is buttered, while Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt adds a sublime lead guitar solo. New album Goh-Ka is due September 4.

Wargasm - Get Down

Of the nu metal revival's brightest stars, Wargasm have done best to drive the sound forward. While there's still a sense of retro love to new single Get Down - particularly in the EDM elements which get stronger towards the song's back end - the way Wargasm fuse scenes and sounds remains distinct and vibrant, and if Get Down is a taste of where they might be going next, we're very excited.

Iridium - Endgame

British metalcore has seriously stepped up over the past decade-and-a-half, the likes of Architects and Bring Me The Horizon breaking into arenas. There's a clear sense of similar ambition to newcomers Iridium, the London-based band capturing that same sense of cinematic scope on new single Endgame. Freshly signed to Napalm Records, we reckon it's well worth keeping an eye out for their debut.

Electric Callboy - The Way You Are

The UK has by no means held a monopoly on arena-sized metalcore heavyweights, though. There's a week to go until current Hammer cover stars Electric Callboy release their new album Tanzneid, and on The Way You Are they dig deep into their inner boy band... for about 70 seconds. Inevitably it's going to piss off scores of purists, but the switch-up to all-out extremity is an absolute delight, proof that even when they're not doing a song that's out-and-out "fun" they've got a killer sense of humour.

Sheri Moon Zombie - I Love My Robot

She's long been the star of her husband's movies and assorted music videos, but now Sheri Moon Zombie has announced plans to release her own musical project. Debut single I Love My Robot has some of the campy, carnival feel of Rob's output, but with more of a go-go beat and energy with the simplicity of a group like MC5. Well worth keeping eyes out for, we reckon.

Silvertomb - No Way To Live

Former Type O Negative men Kenny Silver and Johnny Kelly have clearly been busy. Although they launched new band Sun Don't Shine earlier this year - featuring Crowbar vocalist Kirk Windstein - the pair have also completed a second album for their doom metal project Silvertomb, seven years after the release of their debut. The Interpretation Of Nightmares is due November 13 and lead single No Way To Live evokes some of the anthemic doom of Silver and Kelly's former band with some added doses of 60s Beatlemania.

Miss May I - Hand Me A Halo

Bucking the trend for softer, more pop-oriented sounds, Miss May I come out gnashing on Hand Me A Halo. New album No Place For Me is out October 2 and the track shows you don't need to go full boyband to deliver a killer chorus, switching between the more ferocious verses and a big, belt-it-out-so-they-can-hear-you-at-the-back chorus.

Clegane - Sun Decay

Sunshine isn't always cause for celebration (as the UK's recent slide into drought conditions proves). French doom metallers Clegane are here to deliver some hard-hitting gloom on Sun Decay however, bounding and crashing with reckless delight. Taken from new album Ocean Of Black Thoughts, due October 2, we suspect this might be as sunny as they get.

President - Dark Heaven

It's hard to believe it's only a little over a year since President first played a show. The masked UK group have since gone on to sell out just about every headline gig they've put on, and debut album Blood Of Your Empire is out September 4. Dark Heaven sees the band return to the religion-in-crisis themes of In The Name of The Father, producing the kind of powerful, emotive anthem that betrays ambitions to play massive venues going forward. Arenas? We wouldn't be surprised.

Kid Bookie - H.A.T.E.

Trap metal remains largely underground so far as subgenres go... for the moment. Kid Bookie is stepping up as one of the style's stars, H.A.T.E. delivering oppressive, bassy tones and snarled, Slipknot-like vocals in a trippy, hackle-raising tune. Taken from new album Cheaper Than Therapy II, out October 9, there's something undeniably magnetic and charismatic about the vocalist.

Six years before Trevor Rabin was heard on Jason Becker’s 2018 album Triumphant Hearts, the former David Lee Roth guitarist and soundtrack composer – whose live career was cut short in 1989 by Lou Gehrig’s disease – told Prog about his passion for Rabin’s work, in and out of Yes.

My Cacophony bandmate Marty Friedman and I were driving to the studio to record our solo albums. I was 17 years old and had a little portable cassette player, and someone had made Marty a tape of Yes’ 90125 and Big Generator. We hit play, and the opening chords of Rhythm Of Love sounded exactly like the beginning of the first song on my album, Altitudes. I thought we’d stuck in the wrong tape!

We proceeded to go crazy over all Trevor Rabin’s tasteful, kick-ass, creative licks. We loved the songs and his beautiful tone, too. I was an instant fan. Marty and I loved doing weird and unpredictable shit, but we always wanted there to be some kind of melody in there too. So we really appreciated what Trevor did with Yes.

He’s definitely underrated. He has soul, and I love that he’s eclectic but still feels it all in his heart. On my song Electric Prayer For Peace, I borrowed one of his Yes licks for the end of a repeating horn section.

I have always loved it when players like Jeff Beck and Roy Buchanan played soft, sweet melodies with a beautiful, passionate energy and feel. Trevor can do that too – he can make me tear up! We have the soundtrack thing in common. So often, when I’m digging the music in a movie I’ll find out it is him.

I do love Steve Howe too, of course. I remember my friend in high school asked me to learn Roundabout. Damn, that was hard! Howe improved my chops and ears, but as for the tunes and what I prefer to listen to, it’s Trevor.

Unfortunately I haven’t seen him live, but I’d love to meet him! I think [2012 album] Jacaranda is brilliant. I’d have preferred a few more beautiful guitar melodies, but it’s still magnificent. His album Can’t Look Away is great too. I also think Yes’ Talk album is brilliant. Maybe that’s the one I’d recommend.

Greta Van Fleet have announced details of their forthcoming fourth album Palace For The People, and shared a new single Saw You Stand.

Earlier this year, the band alarmed fans by posting the message "Thanks for the wild ride" on their social media channels, leading many to speculate that the Michigan quartet were breaking up. These fears were allayed in May when the group released the single Play Your Games.

Recorded in Tennessee in the spring of 2026, Palace For The People was co-produced by the band and Mike Elizondo (Turnstile, Fiona Apple), and will be released on Republic Records on October 9.

"As much as it is a Greta Van Fleet record and a rock and roll record at its core, in its heart, it's a very modern record," says guitarist Jake Kiszka.

A press release for the record reveals that its title was inspired by iconic London venue Alexandra Palace, which the quartet headlined in 2022.

"A friend explained that the elaborate grandeur of this Victorian-era 'palace', originally named 'The Palace Of The People', was created as a gathering place for the public," the statement reads. "Unlike most lavish buildings of the time, this one wasn't created for the Monarchs nor the wealthy aristocrats of the day, but for everyone to 'escape and wonder', a truly modern concept for the time. Fast forward to 2026, Greta Van Fleet began to wonder: what would a palace for the people mean today? And how do we get there?

"I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said, 'This is my best friend. We met through your music or at your show,' explains bassist/keyboardist Sam Kiszka, "and we realized, the music is our palace!"

"We love each other just as much as ever, if not more, because we've got to spend quality time together off of the road," his brother Josh adds. "We've grown closer, and we have more to say and share than ever."

"The minute the four of us step into a room with the shared goal of creating, there is very little that can stop us," says drummer Danny Wagner.

Watch the video for Saw You Stand below.

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has revealed that his good friend Brian May is the only guest musician to feature on his forthcoming solo album From the Dark.

Queen guitarist May makes his appearance playing the guitar solo on a song called Death Wake, which Iommi describes as "doom".

In conversation with Rolling Stone, Iommi says that he didn't want any other guests on the record, which finds him joined by vocalist Jørn Lande (Masterplan, Avantasia, etc.), bassist Becky Baldwin (Mercyful Fate) and drummer Karl Brazil (Robbie Williams) because he "wanted to keep it basically like a band".

Asked by writer Kory Grow if May plays on any other songs on the record, Iommi replies, "No. I did say to him, Do you want to play on something else? He said, 'No, no. Your solos are good. I don’t need to play'."

"But it was great that he did," he adds. "I just played him a couple of things, and he’d done it here at the studio in my house. Then of course he’d play something and go, 'Oh, I don’t know about it'. I go, I like it."

Iommi and May have been close friends since the early '70s.

In 2022, the guitarist spoke to Classic Rock about rumours that the pair were set to collaborate on new material.

"We’ve talked about it for years, we really have, and the pandemic smacked everything up," Sabbath's guitarist revealed."Brian came here to my house just before all that happened, and it was a lovely day, we sat outside in the courtyard and played riffs. I played him some of the stuff I’d got, and he said: 'Oh, great, you’ve gotta do something with this.'

"And we’ve talked about it on and off. It would be nice one day to do that. He’s really busy now doing all sorts of things, and it’s great that he’s kept active. You can never say what’s gonna happen. It would be nice. I’m open for a lot of things now, really."

Last Christmas, May gifted iommi a bespoke replica of his iconic homemade Red Special guitar.

Iommi took to Instagram to express his delight and gratitude at receiving the present from his "best friend", posting "Christmas came early!"

Iommi attempted to launch a solo career in 1986 with the album Seventh Star, although record label obligations led to it being released under the banner of “Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi”. He went solo in earnest with 2000’s Iommi, which featured a large cast of guest musicians including Ozzy Osbourne, System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian, The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan and Type O Negative’s Peter Steele.

His second and thus-far latest solo outing, 2005’s Fused, featured the more concrete lineup of Iommi, Deep Purple and former Sabbath singer/bassist Glenn Hughes and drummer Kenny Aronoff.

The first taste of the guitarist's new record, single World Alone, was released earlier this week.

We're back with a brand new Tracks Of The Week! This week we've got six more new and diverse slices of progressively inclined music for you to enjoy.

Dutch proggers Lesoir came out on top in a very tight race last week with the thought-provoking Is It Nothing? with US proggers Pattern-Seeking Animals in second place and with Arthur Brown's effusive Bursting The Bubble in third.

The premise is simple - we've collated a batch of new releases by bands falling under the progressive umbrella, and collated them together in one post for you - it makes it so much easier than having to dip in and out of various individual posts, doesn't it?

The idea is to watch the videos (or listen if it's a stream), enjoy (or not) and also to vote for your favourite in the voting form at the bottom of this post. Couldn't be easier, could it? We'll be bringing you Tracks Of The Week, as the title implies, each week. Next week, we'll update you with this week's winner and present a host of new prog music for you to enjoy.

If you're a band and you want to be featured in Prog's Tracks Of The Week, send your video (as a YouTube link) or track embed, band photo (please, don't forget the photo!) and biog with quotes to us here.

GREEN CARNATION - THE MESSIAH COMPLEX

Norwegian prog rockers Green Carnation complete their epic A Dark Poem trilogy with the release of Part III: The Messiah Complex through Season Of Mist on September 4. It's been a colossal piece of work that has, by and large, made prog fans see the band in a new light. Ahead of the release of the third part of their triptych, they share new single and the album's title track.

"The Messiah Complex is a standout song in the trilogy," Nordhus says. "The vibe to this song is quite unique for us, but it doesn't take long to recognise that it is still very much a Green Carnation song. Bjørn's guitar work lifts the song up, together with Jonathan's drumming and, of course, Stein Roger's bass and vocals during the bridge."

"The title track from Part III of A Dark Poem is about our need to find external excuses for our behaviour," bassist and primary lyricist Stein Roger Sordal says. "This is nothing new, but with our uncritical way of working with our increasingly digital world, we seem unable to cope with the consequences of our actions."

TEMIC - CEASED TO BE

International prog metal quintet Temic have announced they will release their second studio album, Ceiba, through Season Of Mist on October 2. The band have also shared a video for their new single, Ceased To Be, and have announced some live shows across Europe in October with Kingcrow, although disappointingly there's no UK show as of yet!

"Ceased To Be is told from the perspective of someone who's dying, while surrounded by their loved ones," the band says. "Death is not feared nor resisted. Rather, it is observed as a sacred rite of passage. Ceiba is a concept album about loss in all its various forms. While more progressive than our first album, the songs are driven by honesty and emotions."

DIKAJEE - GUNPOWDER

Multi-instrumentalist Dikajee has announced her return with a brand new album, The Frame, which will be out on 6th November. She's also shared the first single, Gunpowder, which features guest appearances from Jethro Tull keyboardist Jonathan Noyce and Snarky Puppy's Varijashree Venugopal, while Within Temptation drummer Vikram Shankar, Guillaume Bernard from Klone and German Vergara from Aisles all appear on the album.

"The Gunpowder video is a story of overcoming the limits of the mind and body," says Olga Karpova. "The Blind will see, the Child will light the fires and the Ghost will have a face again. This is the life of a human"

KAVUS TORABI - WATER INTO WINE

Gong and Utopia Strong frontman Kavus Torabi will release his new solo album, October By Name, on October 2 through his Believer's Roast label. If the first single to be taken from the album is anything to go by, it's going to be a splendid listen. Water Into Wine is a delightfully summery slice of psychedelia that evokes memories of Syd Barrett and Julian Cope at their finest and leaves the listener with a huge grin plastered across their face.

"Perhaps there is no free will, and we’re all just playing out the consequences of our genes, insecurities and childhood damage," Torabi reflects on the fundamentals of the song. "But I have to believe change is possible because, honestly, what’s the point in anything if it isn’t?”

KING GIZZARD & THE WIZARD LIZARD - ALIEN METAL

Fans of Aussie psych pranksters King Gizzard will be well aware of the band's fondness for genre-hopping, although more staid proggers may be less enthralled. The news that their upcoming twenty-eighth album, Alien Metal, due to be released later in the summer on p(doom) records, has been inspired by the band's 'rave shows' from last year. If you're a fan of Pure Reason Revolution's Hammer And Anvil album or no-man's Love You To Bits, then chances are you'll love this too. If not, maybe it's not for you...

"It completely rewired my brain," says Gizzard's Stu Mackenzie, having discovered the possibilities of the Eurorack synthesiser format on the recommendation of fellow band member and self-confessed ‘techno head of the group’ Joey Walker. "I was like, 'I'm going to forget everything I know about music and relearn it all from scratch'."

CASTLE MOUNTAIN MOON - A LAYMAN'S GUIDE TO UNOBTAINIUM

German prog duo Castle Mountain Moon have announced that they will release their second album, A Layman's Guide To Unobtainium, on September 4. The album explores maps—those that guide us, those that mislead us, and those that ultimately point toward things that can never truly be possessed. The pair have been joined on the new album by drummer Garry Wassong, and have shared a lyric video for the title track.

"We wrote about something that, by definition, only exists when you don't have it," explains Dirk Krause, one half of the pairing of the software engineers turned musicians. "Still, we chase it—so somebody had to write a manual in layman's terms and hide it in the music, right before our eyes."

The Anchoress releases her brand new album, As We Once Were, through Last Night From Glasgow Records on August 7.

And Prog has teamed up with Catherine Anne Davies to offer readers an exclusive t-shirt bundle that you won't be able to purchase anywhere else! You'll get a fantastic Anchoress As We Once Were t-shirt, exclusive to Prog readers and one you won't find on merch stands or other webstores, a lyric sheet for Stop The World from the new album, signed by Catherine herself, and an issue of Prog 172, with a bespoke Anchoress front cover.

Get yours here before they sell out!

As We Once Were is The Anchoress's third studio release, following on from the acclaimed Confessions Of A Romance Novelist (2016), for which Catherine won the Limelight Award at the 2016 Progressive Music Awards, and The Art Of Losing (2021), which Prog writers voted their album of the year!

As We Once Were is a thought-provoking and intelligently crafted set of progressive-flavoured songs that saw her working on some of Pete Townshend's vintage synthesisers

“There was also this sort of dual congruence through my old recordings and these old analogue instruments from the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Catherine tells Prog in the new issue. “When you work with an old analogue synth, it can take two and a half hours to get to a specific sound. There's a really long, extended coda section of What You Did– with modern synthesisers, you can save your preset and go back to it, but with these older analogue synths there’s this sense of grabbing onto gold dust as it’s coming through your fingers.

“These instruments’ circuits are so unstable – nobody else could get exactly the same sound as you, and it feels like if you don’t record it in the moment it’s going to disappear. Which felt so conceptually resonant."

Get your Anchoress bundle here!

Arriving in the spring of 1998, as Girl Power shot dayglo beams across the cultural landscape, and the Union flag-draped dream of Britpop died a slow, ugly death, Massive Attack’s prescient third album stood out like the towering black monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Foreboding and bleak, yet alien and beautiful, Mezzanine looked, felt and sounded like nothing that had come before. It barely even resembled the work of Massive Attack – at least not as the world had come to know them. That, as Robert Del Naja (the real name of graffiti artist-turned sprechgesang-rapper 3D), the record’s chief creative force explains, was entirely intentional.

“It was a chrysalis moment,” he told Wallpaper* in 2018. “We were trying to emerge as something different. We had gone through that whole ‘90s thing of being the new kids on the block and becoming part of this movement called trip-hop, which was like a small satellite feeding off Britpop. And none of us felt a part of that. We just wanted to firmly establish our own identity.”

While artists like Sneaker Pimps and Morcheeba enjoyed success by riding trip-hop’s coattails, Del Naja felt the walls closing in. He bristled at the thought of his band being reductively pigeonholed as “coffee table music”. The febrile concoction of dub, soul, funk and hip-hop that characterised Massive Attack’s arrival on Blue Lines (1991) and Protection (1994), had been co-opted, he believed. Serving up more of the same would surely spell the end of the band. Little did he know that in ripping up the rulebook to reclaim a sense of creative agency, they’d come perilously close to imploding regardless. So much so, that by the end of the process the group’s core trio of Del Naja, Andrew Vowles (stage name: Mushroom) and Grant Marshall (aka Daddy G) couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as one another.

“I love D, he’s like a brother, but he’s an argumentative bastard, and he’ll run rings around people if they’re not switched on,” says co-producer and engineer Neil Davidge, the other driving force and one true constant throughout the process of making Mezzanine.

“There was a lot that went into making that album,” he told Headliner. “It took several years. There was a lot of band in-fighting, and a lot of working long hours trying to pull it together and to make it happen. There was also a lot of protecting people's integrity.”

To avoid potential clashes or conflict, the former Wild Bunch brothers wrote their parts separately. Tensions became so extreme that the band’s manager Marc Picken had to text Davidge, notifying him when one member wanted to use their Christchurch Studios base. Meaning someone else had to clear off. Somehow, the fragile peace of this arrangement worked.

“I think it actually helped give the album energy and momentum,” the de facto peacekeeper reasons. “I definitely used [the arguments] as fuel for getting things done. It's part of what makes music really connect with other people: the fact that it's inspired by life. We're creating music that connects to those emotions that we feel in life. That's the real magic.”

But before there was magic, there were mere ingredients. Several years’ worth of them. At first Del Naja had a vision of the songs forming a concept album, drawing influence from his teenage love of post-punk acts like Wire, Public Image Ltd, and fellow Bristolians, The Pop Group. “Are we a fucking punk band now?” an apparently less-than-enamoured Vowles protested. The band even recorded a cover of Gang Of Four’s Damaged Goods, using that as the record’s working title before eventually scrapping the idea.

One day, a box of Bibles arrived at the studio, without an origin address or sender. But inside the package was a note that ominously read, “Read these and you shall be enlightened.”

Acknowledging the fractious atmosphere in the camp, management wisely booked a secondary studio in a holiday cottage in Cornwall. Del Naja and guitarist Angelo Bruschini, however, almost died while exploring a cave during a break in recording, escaping just before the tide filled it and trapped them inside.

“I looked at Angelo and thought, ‘This will make the third page of the Bristol Evening Post: Men Die In Caving Tragedy,’” he jokingly recalled to Mojo in 1998.

Despite the near-death experiences, surrounding dramas and dysfunction, not to mention the endlessly protracted sessions, a record of iconic grandeur emerged. Unsurprisingly, its pioneering sense of invention was matched all the way by its darkness.

Opening track Angel (a loose reworking of vocalist Horace Andy’s own 1973 song You Are My Angel) virtually slithers through the stereo speakers, playing out like a panic attack coming on. An unerring menace reveals itself as the sounds roll in like clouds, building to a torrential force as it crescendos in a hail of heavy beats and guitars.

Listen closely and you’ll hear the ‘tick, tick, tick’ of The Cure’s 10:15 Saturday Night and the fills from Led Zep’s When The Levee Breaks on Man Next Door (itself a reinterpretation of John Holt’s I’ve Got To Get Away). Elsewhere, Inertia Creeps smothers with an uncomfortably claustrophobic intensity, which mercifully gives way to the loungy zen of Exchange.

Lead single Risingson samples The Velvet Underground’s I Found A Reason and perfectly captures the griminess of 3am, powder-fuelled paranoia. ‘I’ve seen you go down to a cold mirror/It’s the way you go down to the men’s room sink,’ Del Naja hisses, before Marshall icily intones, ‘Every time we grind, you know we severed lines’.

There’s an abundance of lyrical beauty on Mezzanine, too. That’s most poignant on the timeless Teardrop, opening with ‘Love, love is a verb/Love is a doing word’ and littered with the rich poetic imagery of ‘black flowers blossom’ and ‘teardrops on the fire’. The soprano delivery is made all the more affecting by the knowledge that Cocteau Twins vocalist Liz Fraser – famously described by one journalist as “the voice of God” – learned of her ex-partner Jeff Buckley’s tragic passing on May 29, 1997, the very day she was recording her contribution.

“That was so weird,” she later confided in The Guardian. "I’d got letters out and I was thinking about him. That song’s kind of about him – that’s how it feels to me anyway.”

The disquieting Walter Stern-directed video gave the track a whole new dimension and emotional gut-punch, depicting an animatronic foetus singing along inside the womb. Accepting an MTV Award for it later, Del Naja caused a stir by refusing to shake hands with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess Of York. “Someone’s having a fucking laugh, aren’t they?” he spat, exasperated by the apparent scheduling stitch-up.

Someone definitely not having a laugh, though, was Vowles. It was that song which put the mockers on their collective working relationship, in fact. Feeling particularly close to the early demo version (then named No Don’t) Vowles desperately wanted Madonna to sing on it, revisiting their 1995 crossover on the Marvin Gaye tribute I Want You. The first anyone else seemingly knew of this potential collaboration was when the pop star’s management got in touch, keen to do it, but checking if the group’s interest was legit. As history attests, everyone else won the battle and the resultant awkwardness was never really resolved.

“At the time,” Marshall told Q magazine, “it seemed like an act of treachery.”

“Teardrop really was that final nail in the coffin,” Davidge confirmed. “It was pretty controversial.”

Soon, the trio were doing interviews to promote the album separately, and not long after the release tour, Vowles called it quits. Marshall eventually followed, but returned to the fold again in 2005.

Despite the upheaval, Massive Attack have continued to make glorious sounds that push boundaries ever since, but have rarely reached the heights attained on their two million-selling third album. It hit the number one spot on the UK album chart, and broke the band in the US, yet those achievements almost feel like footnotes in retrospect. But even in live celebration of the record back then, Del Naja was determined not to make it a nostalgia exercise.

“You’re not trying to relive Mezzanine,” he insisted to The New York Times. “Mezzanine was about that space where things weren’t real. For me, it’s the limbo between the night and the day. And now it’s about the same thing in a way, the limbo between what is real and what isn’t real. You’re not trying to conjure up 1998 — it’s not like a séance.”

That statement holds true. And the enduring spirit of Mezzanine still speaks for itself.

Writer and director John Hamburg has shared his memories of working with Rush on his hit 2009 bromance I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Rashida Jones.

In the film, Rudd's character Peter Klaven is struggling to find an appropriate best man for his upcoming wedding to his fiancée Zoeey Rice (Jones) until he meets new best friend Sydney Fife (Segel), a fellow Rush fan. In pivotal scenes in the film, after bonding over their shared love of the Canadian prog rock trio, the two men jam on Rush songs, and attend a Rush gig together, much to the bemusement of Klaven's fiancée, who isn't entirely sure whether or not to accept her beloved's offer to have Neil Peart "all up" in her.

"It felt like the perfect band to have these two guys bond over," Hamburg tells Vulture in a new interview. "Rush is iconic and everybody knows them, but they’re not the Rolling Stones or the Beatles where everybody is a fan. A Rush fan is a certain type of person, and obviously there’s millions of them out there, but there’s a certain connection between Rush fans where even though they’re huge, you still feel like you’re part of a secret club. That’s what felt right for the movie."

To get Rush's blessing for the film, Hamburg wrote to the band, explaining that he was a big fan, and assuring the trio that referencing them in his film was based on respect and admiration.

"Once they understood that, they were onboard," he tells Vulture. "They’re funny Canadian dudes. They have goofy senses of humor."

"They couldn’t have been nicer and cooler," he adds. "What I learned was they got it. You know what I mean? They understood what the scene was about and where the comedy was. I knew from their short films that appear at their concerts that they do have great senses of humor. They go in makeup and as these crazy characters. It’s obviously different from I Love You, Man, but it’s all under the umbrella of embracing comedy and the absurd. I would say Neil was the surprise. He’s pretty intimidating. First of all, he’s Neil fucking Peart. He’s the GOAT. People think he’s super-serious, but he could be the goofiest one out of all of them."

The film-maker goes on to say that filming the band at the Avalon theater in Hollywood for the movie "was the most fun I’ve ever had on a set"

In addition to the film, Hamburg later shot an additional short forFunny Or Die in which Rudd and Segel actually meet Rush.

"The movie came out and did well," he recalls. "It certainly introduced Rush to new audiences. It was just a win-win for everybody - and we all got along. They were going on the Time Machine Tour and asked if we would do a film to end their concerts. Of course we were like, 'Hell yeah'.... It was funny to watch them interact with Paul and Jason, because in the movie, they never interact."

Following Neil Peart's death in 2020, Paul Rudd paid tribute to the drummer in a statement shared with Rolling Stone.

"When I first met Neil, I was intimidated as I certainly knew him to be a serious and private person," Rudd said. "Within two minutes, we were cracking up and quoting lines from Team America. I’m missing him as I write this. Being the greatest drummer on the planet was only a part of Neil. He was a thunderbolt of a human being, and he’ll live forever."

Watch the Funny Or Die sketch below.

The Alan Parsons Project are on the cover of the new issue of Prog, which is on sale now!

As the band celebrate their 50th anniversary we look at how the combination of studio guru Alan Parsons and songwriting business brain Eric Woolfson, who never played live during their commercial heyday, went to sell of 50 million. albums and counting! We also look at the making of their Tales Of Mystery & Imagination debut album, also 50 years old this year, and talk to Eric's daughter Sally, keeper of the APP flame!

Phil Collins popped by to discuss his career on a recent visit to London; Supertramp members John Helliwell and Bob Siebenberg discuss the new Crime Of The Century live release and more; surviving members of Popol Vuh talk about the band's unique sound; The Anchoress chats about album number three; and sadly we say goodbye to both Dave Greenslade and Dee Palmer.

Kristoffer Gildenlöw, Phideaux, Ian Neal, Sleeping Pulse, Plini, Jarboe, Blueneck and Alberto Rigoni tell us all about their latest releases, and we review the new Hackett & Rothery album and BEAT live in London! All this plus a great sampler from Melodic Revolution Records and an Alan Parsons Project art print too!

Also in Prog 172...

Dave Greenslade - remembering the Greenslade and Colosseum musician, who died in June.

Dee Palmer - we bid adieu to the former Jethro Tull arranger and keyboardist.

The Anchoress - it’s a family affair for Catherine Anne Davies’ new album, As We Once Were.

Supertramp - John Helliwell and Bob Siebenberg look back at Crime Of The Century and more.

Kristoffer Gildenlow - from Pain Of Salvation to solo artist, the story of his latest album, [Humanised].

Popol Vuh - an exploration of one of the most unique German bands of the 70s and 80s.

Prince Of Failure - TesseracT’s Dan Tompkins and Chimp Spanner’s Paul Ortiz on music as therapy.

Ian Neal - UK progger reveals the secrets of the Genesis-inspired This Gemlike Flame.

Phideaux - the TV director and prog musician is back with Automoto Animus.

Sleeping Pulse - Antimatter’s Mick Moss and Paint It Black’s Luís Fazendeiro tell us about their return with Dreams & Limitations.

Plini - Aussie guitarist takes a new direction on An Unnameable Desire.

Jarboe - the experimental musician on her love of Pink Floyd and how she fits in to prog’s musical spectrum.

Blueneck - the band's Duncan Attwood on how the band’s latest album, Moonlighting, is a triumph over adversity.

Phil Collins - a fit and healthy-looking Phil Collins discusses his career while he’s in London, on the eve of being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

Alberto Rigoni - prog bassist Alberto Rigoni on a world full of Dream Theater, Ark, Steve Vai and Mario Guarini.

Plus reviews of new releases and reissues by Lonely Robot, The Anchoress, King Crimson, ELP, Gentle Giant, Frank Zappa, Kevin Ayers, Steve Hogarth, Protest The Hero, Long Earth, Hawkwind, Muse, Shearwater, Popol Vuh and loads more!

And reviews of Ankea Festival and gigs by BEAT, Tim Bowness & Butterfly Mind, Lesoir, This Will Destroy You, Kraftwerk, The Aristocrats and more.

Buying Prog Magazine made easy...

* You can use our store finder to find your nearest stockist. Go to Prog on the alphabetical pull-down menu and enter your postcode.

* The easiest option for everyone would be to go digital. You can get single digital issues from the Apple Store, from Zinio and all manner of digital magazine retailers.

* Subscribe to Prog. We are now accepting subscriptions from the rest of the world. Subscriptions available here.

* In North America, Prog is available is branches of Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, although new issues do not go on sale until a couple of weeks after they're published in The UK.

* Single print issues of Prog can be purchased online from Magazines Direct and also Burning Shed.

Click on the corresponding cover on the single issue page at Magazines Direct for payment options.

After 2022’s head-turning Innate Passage, Nick DiSalvo was burnt out; he needed to fly from Elder’s nest to explore new worlds. Now, back in the driving seat of the psych rock heavyweights once more, he’s putting himself – and his place in the world – under the magnifying glass with stunning new album Through Zero.

When Elder’s chief songwriter Nick DiSalvo turned his life upside down by swapping Boston for Berlin, the band also went through monumental change. They’ve always immersed themselves in longform songs, where ideas develop at their own pace. But from 2015’s Lore onwards – the first record penned since DiSalvo’s move – they were reborn as 21st-century prog rock pioneers, flying the flag for 70s prog while also giving it a stoner rock spin.

Elder’s seventh album, Through Zero, is a vibrant continuation of that change. It’s their first record in four years, which, for the tirelessly working DiSalvo, represents an extended leave of absence from the studio with the band he formed 20 years ago. He needed a break.

“After the pandemic faded, we started touring again, and we hit it really hard,” he explains. “We were playing 100 shows a year for a couple years. But we’re not 20 any more and my physical and mental health was suffering.”

Through Zero digs deep into DiSalvo’s evocative union of Pink Floyd and Yes with Sleep and Electric Wizard. Yet it somehow feels far more colourful, far more at ease when it comes to striking its stylistic balance. For a while, though, he didn’t have it in him. His solo project Delving was the antidote – he homed in on his love of psych rock, Krautrock and early electronic music.

The first album, Hirschbrunnen (‘deer fountain’ in German), arrived in 2021. After the Innate Passage tour, the project became his obsession; and a follow-up, All Paths Diverge, came in 2024. “I needed some time to explore other musical avenues before my brain was ready to come back and work on another heavier rock record,” he explains.

“We always try to reset and refocus between records so that we’re doing something that feels fresh to us. Taking a break from heavy music made it feel – first and foremost – fun again to stand in front of an amp stack and wail.”

He bemoaned feeling that the world of riff-rock was stagnating – holding onto a belief that history’s greatest guitar riffs had already been written. If he was to return to that world, he had to feel like there was a purpose for another Elder album to exist. So he made the band a vehicle to channel his grievances and musings on a world that felt increasingly alienating.

“My lyrics examine philosophical and metaphysical topics from my own perspective,” he says. “There’s a lot of frustration with the state of the world, and frustration with my place within the creative ecosystem. It’s becoming harder to see why I’m doing this again. Is it because I still have the same spark of joy when I was a 16 playing in my room, or is it because I’m a working musician?

“Being in a band for 20 years comes with a lot of bullshit, and it adds up – I spend more time fucking writing emails than I do playing guitar these days, and that really bums me out.

“[Second track] Capture/Release is about my own struggles with feeling the pressure of the creative economy that we find ourselves in and the devaluation of everything that we do, because of the constant pressure to do things. It’s a psychological re-evaluation; it’s me trying to bring back the joy into creation.”

Most songs are iced with jubilant crescendos, awash with swaths of keyboards, and the sense that light is cutting through the storm clouds overhead. “I think there’s a push-and-pull between my frustrations, and what you’re seeing as joyous music,” DiSalvo says. “Every Elder song goes through several mood shifts; I don’t want our music to be one-dimensionally gloomy. There’s always an arc in the songs that follows the hero’s journey, where you have conflict and resolution.”

DiSalvo relocated to a new continent for many reasons – although the holy trinity of love, work and a desire to start a new life chapter were most prominent. He knew the band would feel the effects of the change.

“Before Lore we made our records as a three-piece, jamming and drinking beers. But I needed to experience something else. It fundamentally changed the way we were writing music. If we wanted to be creative, we had to do it on our own.”

He began writing by recording, falling in love with the way he could chop and change things at will. It opened new creative doors for Elder; as did his new life in Berlin.

“Sitting at the crossroads of Europe, so many bands come through here,” he says. “I see around three shows per week, and it’s been like that the entire time I’ve lived here. It’s an affordable city with a vibrant arts and culture scene. You can see, do and experience a lot – more than I could when I was washing dishes in Boston. When you’re feeding your brain with all sorts of stuff, it’s going to come out somewhere.”

The rest of the band have since followed him to Germany. But what if they’d never moved? “The States was a wildly unaffordable place; I couldn’t sustain myself,” DiSalvo says. “I couldn’t get a break because most of my income was spent on rent. I probably couldn’t have continued being a working musician. Creatively, you just never know; but life is about taking chances and exploring.”

Elder’s music is also about exploring, and Through Zero’s songs unravel in slow motion. “They get out of hand sometimes,” he says. “I feel like I’m just getting going when a song is three or four minutes. Some ideas are too precious to throw into a three-minute song and move on.

“When it comes to prog, I only really listen to the 70s bands. With long songs, you can take a kernel of an idea, let it really bloom and go places that you wouldn’t imagine. I find those early Yes records, in particular, to be shockingly creative.”

That’s not to say piecing together epic sonic journeys is easy. “The revision process is always the most time-consuming aspect. There are probably 10 to 15 versions before a song is finally finished and everything feels purposeful, rather than superfluous. I know they require a couple of listens, but I think it’s important that it’s not just pastiche.”

On Through Zero, the only doubt interwoven into its six tracks is there for narrative purposes. “I feel reaffirmed; making this record was a real joy,” DeSalvo says. “This was the first Elder record where we didn’t hold back. We’re getting more adventurous and I feel we’re at our most playful yet, having fun experimenting with sounds and textures.

“We explored everything we wanted, and it turned out exactly the way we wanted it to. So I’m left with a feeling of relief, but also satisfaction. That makes me excited to continue capitalising on that energy.”

Through Zero is on sale now.

Rising from the ashes of ’Nam-themed CBGB also-rans Shrapnel, New Jersey’s Monster Magnet arrived on the scene like low-budget psychedelic cartoon supervillains, spewing a thoroughly ancient form of acid rock but somehow sounding like something from seven hundred years in the future.

Led by David Wyndorf – a creepy-moustachioed culture vulture with an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything cool, from underground comics to Z-grade splatter flicks and dungeon-dwelling metal acts from the dawn of time – Monster Magnet presented an alternative world far away from anything else in the ether at the dawn of the 90s.

Most of the street-rock dirtbags who first heard Monster Magnet had no idea who Hawkwind, Bang, Sir Lord Baltimore or any of the other deep-space/ downer-rock cuts Wyndorf had rattling around in his head even were. And while an entire cottage industry of be-denimed retro-rockers sprang up in their wake, Monster Magnet were it; ground zero in the dope-rock-proto-metal revival wave.

They didn’t invent shit, but they reinvented practically everything. After a few head-spinning indie releases asserting their feral dominance in underground rock circles and a wild tour with rising grunge stars Soundgarden, Monster Magnet signed to major label A&M – desperate to get a jump on the 90s alt.rock train – and the band took full advantage, crafting big, beefy, arena-rattling monster albums like 1995’s Dopes To Infinity and, more significantly, 1998’s Powertrip, the band’s apex predator move, an authentic gold record with an equally authentic smash hit in the timeless earth-rocker Space Lord.

If nothing else, it provided the only time the word ‘motherfucker’ was on mainstream radio every fifteen minutes. The story from there is as old as time eternal. They toured relentlessly over the next few years, smoked whatever was around, made music videos with half-naked models and piles of somebody else’s money, and generally lived the rapidly fleeting dream.

And while the venues and budgets eventually got smaller as the decades wore on, Monster Magnet remained the preeminent stoner rock band on the planet, the wiggest-out dope smokers and space streakers to ever rip off Amon Düül, Jack Kirby and Dario Argento all at once, even if things have slowed down.

In the last decade they've released just two albums, and the most recent of those, 2021's A Better Dystopia, was one of those covers albums that bands release as the turbochargers begin to falter.

Monster Magnet’s discography is legendary, on purpose.

And one to avoid...

Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood has an address book that’s fatter and more well-thumbed than most. Over the years he’s partied with the great and the good of rock’n’roll and beyond – and he can even remember some of it. In 2010, he took a stroll down memory lane to look back on some of the more memorable encounters he’s had down the decades.

Jimi Hendrix

We shared a house in Holland Park – Pat [PP] Arnold’s house – and he gave me a basset hound called Snoopy that used to shit everywhere. Pat said: “Either the dog goes or you two go”. So Jimi said: “Why don’t I go and you keep my dog? I’ve got to move on anyway”. He was quite quiet as a flatmate: Quaaluded-up all the time. And spliffed. Very laid back. He’d just sit back and play right-handed or left-handed guitar – that ambidextrousness blew my mind.

If I try to play left-handed it’s like giving a child a guitar. We used to get out the acoustics and swap blues licks, sometimes for him to warm-up before a show. He always said: “I don’t like my voice”. And I’d say: “Don’t worry, your guitar playing takes care of that.” He was a very sweet man. I remember him walking out of Ronnie Scott’s on the night he died. He had his arm around a girl and I shouted after him: “Oi, Jimi, say goodnight!” I was in tears when I found out the next day. I couldn’t believe it.

Ronnie Lane

He was a lovely boy, until he took the gypsy route and moved to some remote farm in Wales with his best friend’s girl. It always used to be Ronnie and Sue Lane, always together with their dog Molly. Then one day he came round and said: “I’m leaving Sue. And I’m also leaving the group.” And I went: “What? Nice joke!”

We always used to say that we were leaving during group arguments, it would dispel any bad vibes in the room and we’d all have a laugh. But he said: “No, I really am leaving the group”. That was the last I saw of him, and then his health went down. The MS [Multiple Sclerosis] got progressively worse. We did our best for him, Rod and I investigated snake venom treatment, pressure tanks, but after a while there was very little we could do.

Rod Stewart

Last time I saw Rod he was so lovely to me. He gave me and my girlfriend a wonderful evening. We had dinner with his family at his Celtic House in Hollywood. It’s very Hollywood, with effigies in the garden, columns, water-spouting fountains.

It’s a really over-the-top mansion, just like you would imagine. Rod likes to show his wealth, with his collection of Pre-Raphaelite-type paintings. He often says to me: “Is that one alright? Did I buy the right painting?” And I go: “Rod, buy whatever you want, you know what you like.

Jeff Beck

He used to be incredibly shy when were in The Jeff Beck Group, as was Rod. If there was another guitar player like BB King or Albert King on the bill he’d go: “No, I can’t go on,” and he’d disappear because he’d think he wasn’t good enough. Rod would be like: “I’m gonna sing behind the amps, I’m too shy,” and I’d say: “Why don’t you just come out and enjoy yourselves?”

That’s how it developed with The Faces – we got rid of all the nerves. Everything was a risk, some risks came off and some didn’t and the audience picked up on that looseness and raggedness. There’s still a bit of that with The Faces. You can’t polish a turd – unless you wait for it to go hard.

Keith Richards

He’s not happy unless he’s working with the Stones, nor is Charlie [Watts, Stones drummer] really… nor is Mick and nor am I. But it’s a matter of getting all those energies directed at the same thing at the same time. The next thing will be a group meeting, probably before Christmas, and we’ll decide whether to record, or do live, or both. See how everybody’s doing.

When I first took Keith home he was high, and crashed out on my dad’s couch in the living room. So my dad come down at seven in the morning, opens the curtains and Keith went: [bellows] “Fuck off!” And my dad came straight back with “Nobody swears in my house!” and ordered him out. Keith had a tremendous amount of respect for my dad after that.

Bob Dylan

Working with Bob can be hard for most people, but not for me, because I know that he doesn’t know what’s coming next, so it’s easy to fit in with his meanderings. You have to follow him into various oxbow lakes. That’s the way he thinks – it ends up going in a straight line, but takes various deviations along the way.

Often a song that he’s thinking one way will come out in a totally different way, which is evident when you see him live. You’ll be saying: “Was that Blowing In The Wind or All Along The Watchtower?”

Axl Rose & Slash

Guns N’ Roses and the Stones did a few shows together on the Bridges To Babylon tour and that’s when I got to know them. They were really sweet guys, but they all knew they were too high to carry on at that rate. Axl used to call me aside at parties and he’d go out on the balcony and say: “Please help me with my relationship problems”.

So I told him: “First of all you’ve got to get some fucking coherency.” It was funny giving him advice ’cos at the time I was out of it as well. Slash was always a constant. I didn’t notice any difference between when he was high and when he was straight. He’s a lot more clear these days, but he was always a gentleman whether he was using or not.

John Belushi

He always used to try to get off with my ex-wife, Jo. He used to propose to her when I was asleep. I’d say: “John, I can hear you, you fat git. If you weren’t so fat and ugly you might stand a chance.” Like all comedians he was really pathetic, and he had a low tolerance to alcohol and drugs.

Dan Aykroyd used to always put him in my care when he came to Hollywood. He used to drop him off at my house and say: “I know he’s safe now, I can go off and leave him.” Then he’d go off and do his stuff. The only time he didn’t do that was when he died. John booked himself into the Chateau Marmont. He dearly wanted to be a rock star.

Keith Moon

Moony used to come up and jam with us when we were in The Birds. I always used to say to him: “Keith, you’re only supposed to take one Valium, not the whole jumbo bottle.” He used to do that with uppers and downers, take the whole lot. He gave me my first Mandrax when they first came out – when they were really powerful. He said: “Take two of these.”

We were in the Speakeasy. I had my Jaguar XK150 outside and I was with my first wife, Chrissie, and my manager, Billy Gaff. We’d already had a few whiskies, so although he gave me two I only took one. It kicked in before I got to the bottom of the stairs, so by the time I got to my car I was well gone. I ended up driving straight over Marble Arch and straight over Hyde Park without going round. I ended up in a mews with just enough room to get the car in and no one could get out.

We had to get out of the roof. After that I don’t remember anything. I was sick. I don’t know how I got home, so not a great recommendation from Moony. He used to lead me astray, but my mum used to think he was a gentleman. He used to put a smoking jacket and cravat on and serve her brandy and she would say: “What a polite gentleman that Keith Moon is.”

Pete Townshend

I first met Pete, who is still a neighbour of mine, back in the old Ealing Club days when The Who first had I Can’t Explain in the charts. I was in The Birds and they were going: “We’re number one!” And we were going: “Fuck off back to Acton!” We were so jealous.

The High Numbers were brilliant, and the early Who, especially at the Marquee, were incredible. They’re still great today, but there was nothing quite so electric as the original line-up.

Eric Clapton

He’s always very suspicious of me, but he takes me under his wing. He’s very pleased that I am clean and serene, but he just doubts that I can keep it up. I used to go every week to the Crawdaddy in Richmond to see Eric with the Yardbirds. The first time I was ever invited up on stage there was when [Yardbirds singer] Keith Relf was ill. They said: “Are there any harmonica players in the audience?” and all my friends pushed me up.

So I did I’m A Man and all their raving stuff, and they said: “Get that red Indian back… Cleopatra,” because my hair was always like this. “Get him back on stage.” That was my claim to fame. I’d played with the Yardbirds. I was always the youngster in them days, the newcomer. But it’s great, I’m still the youngest one.

Ronnie O’Sullivan

A very sweet, very mysterious person… and his own worst enemy – a bit like all those snooker players. One minute you see them all the time, then you can’t find them for love nor money. Ronnie’s like that at the moment. He’s got the constant fight with the alcohol and drugs – like we all seem to have – all of us, musicians, snooker players, artists, writers… Any of the creative sports.

Ronnie’s checked me into recovery a few times and he’s said: “Take my room, it’s the good room. I came out and won the world championship after I was in here.” He’s been really helpful in my recovery.

Mick Jagger

Mick has been so supportive, I can’t tell you. It really surprised me because I thought he would have given up the ghost on me by now, but he’s getting stronger with his commitment of support. He’s saying: “Well done, Ronnie… I need at least one and a half guitar players I can rely on.”

And now he’s got two full-blooded ones, so he’s very happy. What he wants to see is me showing the strength not to fall off the wagon and possibly messing up, because he needs me as a really concrete support, like Charlie, when he puts on his show. And he’s got it. I’m ready any time.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 151, October 2010

Years ago, at home in rural Arkansas, in the foothills of the Ozark mountains, Ashley McBryde decided to dig a hole. Big enough for her to get inside. Certain boundaries were set by her parents: it couldn’t be somewhere that livestock, stray dogs or neighbours could accidentally fall into, and it had to have safety parameters. Otherwise, they told her, “knock yourself out”.

Mission approved, Ashley took a shovel and a pickaxe, went outside and dug that hole. She was 12.

“It’s kind of a weird thing to do, but I’m glad I grew up that way,” the Grammy-winning country maverick tells us today, sitting in an upscale hotel suite overlooking London’s Hyde Park. “Or if I wanted to build a ladder, there was no ‘run to Home Depot and buy lumber’, because ‘with what job, with what money? Here’s a hatchet, go out in the woods, get what you need.’ It had elements that were very backwards, but the superpowers I got from that upbringing, you can’t get those in a book, you can’t get them in school. I wouldn’t trade that.”

Immaculate but rock’n’roll in jeans, T-shirt and boots – fresh make-up, arms toned by boxing, and brightly covered in tattoos – McBryde, 42, combines Southern friendliness with the sharp focus of a seasoned TV and radio interviewee. Over 45 minutes she relaxes, enthusing about her favourite old Nashville joints, cooing at dogs in the park below and showing us the pocket knife inked on her right forearm. She learned to whittle as a kid, and generally still carries one.

“Well, with flying it’s really difficult to remember to put them in checked baggage,” she concedes. “But otherwise yes, I carry. And in my band, anytime anybody goes: ‘Anybody got a knife on them?’ every single person reaches into their pocket and produces this tool that they carry at all times!”

More deeply than any of McBryde’s previous four albums, new one Wild evokes the sounds, sights and stories of her childhood. Produced by John Osborne (the elder, guitarist half of duo The Brothers Osborne), it finds McBryde planting her boots firmly in rock soil, stirring heavy guitars with shrieking bluegrass and emotive melodies. Think Loretta Lynn trading experiences and ideas with Black Stone Cherry and Bruce Springsteen. As a listener, it’s like being in a country dive, and at a rock show, and reading a great collection of short stories – capturing the grit and beefiness of her live show, in a way that her other releases haven’t.

For those who have only heard her American radio ballads (e.g. 2020 country hit One Night Standards, 2023’s Light On In The Kitchen), that live muscle often comes as a shock.

“We sound more like we do live on this record,” she says. “And that’s a luxury I didn’t know I needed so badly. I’ve watched some audiences be really confused, if all they’ve heard is what’s been on American radio. Because then we would go play a live show, and we would open with [2023 rocker] Blackout Betty, and they were so confused! I’m happy this one presents a better snapshot of what you’ll experience with us live.”

The album charts her life through to 2022, when she decided to stop drinking. That year she became a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Four years later and still sober, on Wild she takes a wide, autobiographical approach, going deeper into the people, places and things that really shaped her. Meticulously crafted songs, some of them written years ago and previously deemed (by label and other industry folks) too raw, too swampy, “just too much”.

Now, it’s all here. This, you sense, is who Ashley McBryde really is – as well as a bracing antidote to Nashville’s glossier country pop and bro-heavy hybrids. Collaborations with respected if lesser-known songwriters (e.g. Terri-Jo Box, Lori McKenna, Lisa Carver, Lauren Hungate…), championed by McBryde, are peppered across the track-list. McBryde’s late friend Randall Clay wrote feral, boot-stomping lead single Rattlesnake Preacher.

“There are those of us that really care about crafting a song, whether that’s to pull on your heart strings, or tell a story that provides a mirror for you, or that provides an antithesis. And then there are those that just go, I dunno, ‘Leg rhymes with keg’... and they make gajillions of dollars, and sing ‘leg rhymes with keg’ to billions of people.

“And you’re allowed to do that,” she adds, sincerely. “And I could do that. But then there would be one less of the thing that I am.”

To understand Ashley McBryde today, you have to go back to Mammoth Springs, Arkansas in the 80s and 90s. The family home was at the end of a long dirt road with a low-water bridge. The family kept cattle. They drove 45 minutes to school. Growing up, McBryde and her five elder siblings whittled with pocket knives, went fishing and rode horses and mules out in the woods for days.

“There’s six of us kids, lots and lots of trees,” she recalls. “I can feel the dirt between my teeth when I talk about it. And I know that red dirt is the name of a genre now, but the dirt is red, especially up in the foothills of the Ozarks.”

Her mother looked after the family. Her father was a preacher and a “tyrant”. The nearest building was the church – located at the end of their driveway.

“He made it so that any male anywhere is to be feared,” she says, a low note of anger creeping in, “and you are to be in complete submission to at all times. I was always in trouble, because I was always going: ‘What do you mean don’t raise your voice? He raised his voice, I have to raise mine or he won’t hear me’ [slaps one hand hard on the other], that’s not gonna fly.”

The presence of her parents comes out in the familial imagery of Hand Me Downs. Branching out into a sadly common situation, the devastating Lines In The Carpet tells of wives trapped in domestic isolation: ‘When you’re born that pretty, you get to be Miss Mississippi and nothing else.’ From an early age, McBryde knew that could never be her.

“I watched my mother raise all six of us and go unthanked, but the acknowledgement she deserved for the vast thing she was tackling at all times, and watching her feel small…”

She pauses, slightly disarmed.

“That feels gross just saying it. And my sister Aubri, who’s so strong, did the same thing, and was married, had two beautiful children, they’re married for thirty-four years... They married when she was eighteen. I don’t remember seeing her much, and now I know it’s because she was behind the vacuum.”

When McBryde was 17, her father left. There’s heat in her voice when she says this. Suddenly you wonder if that’s at the heart of Wild’s tougher rock highlights like the hard-punching Arkansas Mud. That tension between fear, anger and inspiration – things that might drive someone to get out, though not without leaving a few scars.

“Looking back at it, I get frustrated because I was such a scared child,” she says. “I was scared of everything. I had plenty of protection and a roof over my head, but I was constantly terrified that any minute Jesus was going to rip the sky open and that I’d be left here. That isn’t religion, that’s control, that’s terrifying a child into being too scared to do anything.”

At college in Arkansas she studied the French horn, and played her first bar gig (“and loved it”). By 19 she was working as a songwriter in Memphis, living in ‘stab ’n’ shoot’ complexes, medicating her anxieties with music and alcohol. Even so, it was a turning point, drawing her out of the fundamentalist fear that had governed her young life.

“It’s like, you’ve been fed the information that you’re inherently bad, and you will never do enough things to not be inherently bad…” her eyes widen, “what is there to lose? It doesn’t matter if I’m damned at home, or in Memphis, or in Nashville, or because I didn’t make it to church on time, or because I play in a bar on Friday night. So I can do anything I want, because nothing I do will ever be good enough.”

In 2005 she moved into a storage unit in Nashville. She now lives in a “less congested” spot outside the city.

Booze and bars were part of her world for years, feeding into sad, darkly funny moments in her records. Sometimes drinking was fun. In time, it got ugly. Wild ballad The Bottle Tells Me So reflects her blacked out nights and days. Finally, in 2022, she reached a precipice.

“It was definitely ‘change or die’. And I had done that many, many times, and waking up for the millionth time in not my house, in not my clothes, don’t know where my phone is, I have no idea how I got here. Where is my truck? Where are my keys? Does anyone know that I’m safe?”

That millionth time, she went to find water and found her team waiting in the living room. Just recently, she asked her manager who called him back then, to say where she was. He told her: “You did”.

She started treatment that day. Pieces of her life have since shifted into sharper focus, fuelling the rich vignettes and rootsy rock cocktails of Wild. Boxing sessions help. So does her close circle of band, crew, friends and family. Like almost any recovering alcoholic, she has days when the temptation to drink returns.

“When that happens, my question to myself is: ‘Okay, you can have it. Will you trade everything from then to now, being a member of the Grand Ol’ Opry, winning a Grammy, like, will you trade it for that?’ Get out of here! Course, I wouldn’t!”

Unclouded by hangovers, she relishes surviving staples of old Nashville. Bluegrass nights at The Station Inn. The local songwriting community, largely unsung but so crucial to the city’s musical ecosystem. She has a great relationship with her mum and stepdad. Siblings Aubri and Dan are close allies. Her father is in poor health and lives up a mountain. She sees him about every other year.

“I imagine that I’ve been watching a series for forty-two years,” she reasons, “and the actor that played my father has aged a bit, so they had to recast it. So when I see his face, I try not to associate the terrorist, the tyrant, with him, because the person playing him now is this old man who lives on a mountain, he moves kind of slow, none of his kids live within two hours of him, and they don’t visit very often…”

She shrugs. “And he’s got some cool stories. We agree on knives and guns and conserving wildlife. So we can keep it at that.”

Wild is out now via Warner Records Nashville.

It's likely that Threatin, the band fronted by Jered Threatin, will go down in history for all the wrong reasons. Back in 2018, a chaotic UK tour made headlines after no one showed up to his shows. It transpired that Threatin had faked a significant online presence to encourage promoters to book his band, and the venues, quite naturally, weren't happy.

His band members quit, there was legal activity and plenty of mud-slinging, but instead of apologising, Jered turned the situation on its head by insisting the whole thing had been an elaborate set-up – and that the 'joke' was actually on us.

“What is Fake News?" he tweeted. "I turned an empty room into an international headline. If you are reading this, you are part of the illusion."

A year after the cancellations, Threatin returned to London to play a poorly attended and somewhat shambolic show at the Underworld, then ceased activity until the release of Die Young in early 2025. The single and its rather grim video documented Threatin's experience undergoing emergency open-heart surgery following a series of heart attacks.

Now, it appears that Jered Threatin is on the mend, with a new single, The Shadow Box, out now. The instrumentation has something of the flavour of Ennio Morricone's The Ecstasy of Gold, so perhaps it's no surprise that the video appears to show Jered lying dead inside some kind of desert burial box before riding to safety atop a goods train.

The Shadow Box was mastered at Abbey Road in London, and comes from Threatin's upcoming second album, the appropriately titled The Meaning of It All. No release date has been confirmed.

Metal Hammer has teamed up with Merseyside avant-garde metalcore crew Loathe to put together an exclusive bundle.

Available exclusively via the Louder webstore, it features the new issue of Metal Hammer with a cover not available in the shops, as well as a t-shirt designed by the band’s bassist, Feisal El-Khazragi. Order yours now while stocks last!

Inside, the four-piece talk all about their brand-new album A Stranger To You: their first studio release in more than five years. They also open up about their story so far, from the British underground to the forefront of modern metal, touring with Korn, Gojira and plenty of other big names.

“When I was younger, I felt very angry at the world,” guitarist/vocalist Erik Bickerstaffe admits. “I had a ‘fuck everyone’ attitude, and a lot of music would be me putting all this resentment out there. I’ve definitely been more self-centred in the past. I was a bit selfish. As I’m getting older, I’m becoming more of a human in the world.”

The issue also features a huge review of A Stranger To You. “Throughout A Stranger To You, Loathe seem hellbent on wildly changing dynamics with daring regularity, such as when the quiet, industrialised, gothic soundscape of (Athena) leads immediately into the mathy rage of Revenant and the sun-kissed dream pop of the funky The Way It Breaks,” writes journalist Stephen Hill.

“It’s to their credit that these sharp left turns feel coherent and consistent with Loathe’s overall vision as a band.”

Elsewhere, we talk with German electro-metal unit Electric Callboy about their new album Tanzneid and how they built their reputation as one of metal’s greatest party-starters.

“At its peak, we had 80 people in this tiny flat. People that we didn’t know were ringing the doorbell,” co-singer Nico Sallach tells us. “They treated our flat like shit. I wanted to go to bed, and there were drinks and liquids that I couldn’t identify all over my bed! Very good memories, even if it doesn’t sound like it.”

We also talk to veteran Slipknot producer Ross Robinson about the 25th anniversary of the nine-piece’s landmark second album, Iowa. “We were looking to help Norway burn some more churches,” he says. “We wanted to join that extreme metal club!”

All that, plus we send a writer into an escape room with zombie-metal sensations Dominum, give I Prevail singer Eric Vanlerberghe your burning questions, discover Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner’s personal playlist, talk to Sharon Osbourne about her efforts to preserve Ozzy’s legacy, and much, much more.

Only in the new Hammer – now available with that Loathe cover and t-shirt! Gets your now while stocks last.

Los Angeles Satanic doo-wop' duo Twin Temple made their US late night TV debut on The Daily Show last night (July 29) and called for "a little more Satanic Panic" in the modern world.

The husband-and-wife duo, Zachary and Alexandra James, were booked on the show to perform Haunt Me from their forthcoming third album, Doomed Lovers, and to talk about their controversial removal, earlier this month, from two shows with country musician Charley Crockett, who objected to their Satanic presentation.

"We were pretty shocked,” Zachary James admits to host Jordan Klepper.

"I feel like it’s time for maybe a little more Satanic Panic," adds Alexandra James. "Like, let’s get it going again.”

When Klepper asks the duo what it means to be Satanists in the modern world, Alexandra James replies, "I think a lot of people think that Satanism is going to orgies and you're nude under the full moon, drinking chalices of blood and hanging out with goats. And, I mean, we're here to say that's absolutely true. That's what Satanism is."

"I think, on the daily, it's like living wilfully," adds Zachary James. "Every day is the day we wake up and we get to live our true will. We get to make art. We get to do what we love. So to us, that is Satanism, being the individuals we are, like, know thyself, and being able to carry that out every day."

Twin Temple will release Doomed Lovers, produced by Shooter Jennings at LA's legendary Sunset Sound studio, on October 9 on their own label, Pentagrammaton Records.

"We poured everything into this new record," the duo said in a press statement when announcing the record. "We wanted to push ourselves creatively and expand the production further than we have before, drawing inspiration from the lush orchestral productions of Roy Orbison, The Ronettes and The Shangri-Las and added in some Countrypolitan flair. We brought in some incredible musicians like Matt Chamberlain and Jay Bellerose and a 37-piece orchestra. We wanted to make something as beautiful as we possibly could - of course with our dark spin on things.

"The truth is, this album was made during one of the darkest periods of our lives," the pair added. "We had been struggling with grief, health issues, addiction, and depression. But day by day, going into Sunset Sound, making music with incredible people who believed in us, and being surrounded by that creativity slowly brought us back to life."\

Watch their performance of Haunt Me below.

And watch their interview with Jordan Klepper below.

In 2011, when Kate Bush released ninth studio album, Director’s Cut, Prog looked back on the maverick creative’s background and motivations that made her both a pop star and a prog star by the age of 21.

The custodians of cultural history will tell you that the summer of 1977 was notable for many reasons: the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations and the subsequent banning of Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen, the undignified death of Elvis Presley, and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love – the first song to be made almost entirely on synthesisers – hitting the top spot. But as the hot summer drew to a close, another new sound was taking shape.

For six months a new outfit had been popping up in pubs around London. The four-piece KT Bush Band were quite at odds with the other groups on a scene that had recently seen a seismic shift away from rudimentary pub rock to the freshly-shorn new wave of louder, more agitated and fashion-conscious punk bands. The KT Bush Band were notable for featuring a relatively delicate looking, dark-haired teenager whose vocals soared and swooped like no other’s.

What curious punters didn’t realise was that the odd songs were entirely penned by the singer, and were just a selection from the 200 she‘d written and demoed – and in fact she’d long since been signed by EMI.

That hot August, Kate Bush entered a studio to work on her debut album. She was backed by some prog heavyweights including David Paton (Pilot, Alan Parsons Project, Camel), Ian Bairnson (Alan Parsons Project), producer/arranger Andrew Powell (Henry Cow, Cockney Rebel) and executive producer David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.

In Bush’s collaborators there was a weight of British musical history, and in her music a beguiling sense of English mythology. The album was entitled The Kick Inside, and when it was released six months later in February 1978 – two weeks after the Sex Pistols’ final show – it would reach No. 3 in the charts, spawn a No. 1 hit, and change the face of modern music.

Her success can at least partly be ascribed to Floyd, who’d opened major labels’ minds to the commercial potential of experimental music. Gilmour had earned EMI millions, so when he enthusiastically passed on a tape given to him by Ricky Hopper, a friend of the Bush family, the boardroom suits paid attention.

The Bush kids were creative. Their mother was a Catholic from Ireland, who won medals for dancing and whose family had strong folk roots. Their father was the son of a Methodist lay minister from Essex who’d narrowly escaped execution as a conscientious objector during World War I. He’d become a songwriter in his teens; but, recognising the instability of such a profession, turned to medicine in order to support his young family.

Born Catherine Bush in Erith, Kent in 1958, Kate had a musical upbringing – there was a lot of classical music in the house and her older brothers John and Paddy were keen folk players (Paddy would become the world’s foremost expert on Madagascan music).

“At six years old Kate was sitting in on our rehearsals, singing along,” says eldest brother John Carder Bush. He managed her business affairs, acted as visual director/photographer and, as a keen martial artist, was also her bodyguard. “At about the age of 10 she learned violin – which she didn’t like – but she also wrote poetry, which became songs.

“The songs were very precocious – the subject matter was pretty obscure and they weren’t miserable love songs, which of course are the spine of popular music. Things really started to happen when she was 15 or 16. She had to think about her A-levels – and though she never actually saw herself as a singer, she considered herself a songwriter. At the same time she saw Lindsay Kemp and became very interested in dance.”

Kemp, who played the shifty landlord MacGregor in The Wicker Man, was an interpretative dancer who had previously schooled David Bowie in mime. Even in her mid-teens Kate’s influences were broad, wide and distinctly non-pop: classical, world music, piano ballads and avant-garde literature and cinema.

Carder Bush’s friend Julie Covington – a star of comedy musical drama Rock Follies who had recently scored a hit with Don’t Cry For Me Argentina – financed Kate’s first demo, the one that found its way to Gilmour.

“Artists are just pleased to be offered a deal, however unfair,” says Carder Bush. “Their egos are appeased. But I had trained as a lawyer and our father was a mathematician, so we were able to really understand Kate’s contracts. As a family we were extremely careful and protective from day one. We never used managers. And it all paid off.”

Those literary and dance influences were soon evident in her 1978 debut single Wuthering Heights, which charted the tumultuous love affair of Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw from Emily Brontë’s windswept moorland novel.

It nearly all backfired though, when a handful copies of the single were accidentally mailed to radio stations six months before release. “The song was so unique it didn’t fit into any category – and it was either going to work or it wasn’t,” says Carder Bush. “But then they started playing it.”

Fortunately Bush’s otherworldly (and occasionally shrill) delivery and the romantic narrative captured imaginations; Wuthering Heights went to No. 1 for a month – and it was the first self-written chart-topper by a female. The progressive had gatecrashed the nation’s living rooms in style.

“I remember when my mum, God rest her soul, first heard Kate Bush, she said ‘Oh, Johnny, it sounds like bag of cats!’” fan John Lydon told the BBC. “And at first it does seem absurd – ‘Heathcliff!’ way up there – but it isn’t at all; it fits. Those shrieks and warbles are beauty beyond belief to me.”

The whirling, balletic, mime-influenced videos – there were two versions – were as memorable as the song itself, and set a pattern for things to come. Eschewing the tried-and-tested cycle of promotion and touring favoured by rock bands, Bush would increasingly experiment with the emerging form of the music promo. The video for orchestral follow-up single The Man With The Child In His Eyes featured Bush in soft focus in a provocative, flesh-coloured body suit.

While the marketing men and mainstream media were far from subtle in their slavering celebration of Bush’s obvious sexual appeal, she was already proving to be more enigmatic and far smarter than the mindless pop star hoped to make her. When The Man With... won her an Ivor Novello Award and she swiftly followed The Kick Inside with second album Lionheart, the critical acclaim grew.

“EMI really had no idea,” says Carder Bush. “It was run by salesmen who saw her as part of an assembly line – they had obviously never studied her lyrics! So once Kate became a success, they barged in with sexy photo shoots, offers of Las Vegas residencies and Bond themes. She said ‘no’ to all of them because it was the brain and not the body that was Kate’s real quality.”

Rush-released in November 1978, Lionheart was accompanied by a rigorous six-week tour of heavily-choreographed shows involved multiple set and costume changes, along with an onstage magician. They represented the most ambitious live extravaganzas since Bowie’s earlier in the decade.

“The tour was utterly exhausting and utterly successful,” says Carder Bush. “That success changed all of us – we were wary and we kept everything close. Kate has never dealt with bullshit; and promotion is 99 per cent bullshit. She hated it. So after that it didn’t matter what the record company said – she paid no attention to them.”

Spent, she vowed never to tour again. Instead she and her family took control of all her affairs, and relations with the media were similarly pared back. And so a dichotomy emerged: at the age of 21, she was a bona fide pop star about to embark upon a hugely successful creative run of albums; yet one who would become less publicly visible the more famous she became.

As she retreated to the studio, rumours abounded and she did little to dispel them – like the apocryphal anecdote about EMI executives arriving at her house, demanding to know what she’d been working on, to which she’d produced some cakes from the oven. Ultimately though, her reclusive tendencies would be the making of her. As chart music went through a period dominated by glossy pop that was all veneer and little content, Bush’s outsider status worked to her advantage.

A string of albums throughout the 80s went to Nos. 1, 3 and 1 respectively – Never For Ever (1980), The Dreaming (1982) and Hounds Of Love (1985). No one song was easy to pin down as she drew on murder ballads, the childhood wonder of nursery rhymes, her part-Celtic genealogy, the mythology of a lost Albion favoured by some prog and pastoral folk singers, the ethereal end of goth, the organic tones of early music, digital synth pop and emerging sequencing technologies.

Hounds Of Love alone spawned three classic singles – Running Up That Hill, Cloudbusting and the tumultuous, dramatically-heightened title track – and further reiterated her prog tendencies by devoting the entire second side of the album to a an experimental opera, The Ninth Wave, the name taken from a Tennyson poem. She also helped define the 1980s whilst being unlike anything else in that era: her skill was not to experiment in the live arena but by embracing emerging technologies in the studio.

“For three or four years it was a rollercoaster,” says Carder Bush. “She was being sent all over the world, and fortunately she had stockpiled a lot of songs. But when that stockpile ran out she was expected to come up with an album, then promote it, go on TV, all within a year. The type of artist Kate is meant that just couldn’t work. That’s why each album has taken longer and longer to come to maturity.”

It mattered little: many agree that anything she does is always of interest. In an age of over-exposure, her relative seclusion offers a continued sense of intrigue and mystery.

Twelve years of Garbo-like silence fell between between 1993’s The Red Shoes and 2005’s Aerial. Bush has managed to maintain her position for over three decades without ever once being sucked into the creative vacuum of celebrity culture. The less we see of Kate Bush, the more we want to know.

Writer and academic Deborah M Withers recently published an analysis of Bush entitled Adventures In Kate Bush And Theory that considered “the polymorphously perverse Kate, the witchy Kate, the queer Kate; the Kate who moves beyond the mime” and in essence suggested that Kate Bush is many things to many people.

“She supplies me with all the clues and it’s up to me to put the answer together – well, that’s like the Quran of music,” says John Lydon. “Surely that’s what we’re all looking for? No easy answers to anything. It’s not about rolling in the money, it’s about the joy of knowing that what you’ve done really touches people’s hearts.”

There’s not enough room to list those who Bush has influenced – but she can certainly be heard in prog singers such as The Reasoning’s Rachel Cohen and Mostly Autumn’s sometime triumvirate of Anne-Marie Helder (who says “Kate’s legacy is one of total creative freedom, taking risks and keeping her integrity”), Olivia Sparnenn and Heather Findlay and beyond the genre to Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Bat For Lashes and thousands of others.

Then there are the bands: Coldplay, Suede and Muse cite her as a key influence; hip-hop artists want to collaborate; while Alan Partridge continues to harbour a long-term obsession and The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding likes to dance like her on the telly.

Bush’s latest album, Director’s Cut, is suitably contrary too, in that it is wholly comprised of reworkings of previously released material (from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes). What’s more, one song utilises text by modernist writer James Joyce while another features computerised vocals by her son Albert.

Today Bush may not be so obviously viewed as a practitioner of prog rock – not at first glance anyway. Yet her career history and collaborations are inextricably tied in with prog and her ever-evolving output has much more common with the genre than the pop world in which she first found herself operating.

In fact she’s prog’s first pop star, and pop’s first prog star, always capable of delivering nothing less than the unexpected.

One day in 1993, George Michael's former manager Rob Kahane received a tip from a producer friend at London radio station GLR about a band called Bush who were receiving unusually enthusiastic support from listeners for a demo track, titled Honky Manchild, that had been aired on alternative/indie DJ Gary Crowley's show. None of Kahane's many contacts in the British music industry seemed to care about the London quartet, or even be aware of the band's existence, so the Los Angeles-based music industry veteran, and former talent scout, flew to the UK to see Bush for himself. When he walked into the band's rehearsal space in Harlesden, the quartet were playing a Pixies-esque song called Everything Zen: before he exited the studio later that day Kahane had offered the band a record deal with his newly-created label Trauma.

“It was my one shot,” Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale told Classic Rock in 2025. "People told me not to sign to them. But I just took that chance. Mostly because I didn’t have any other options.”

The title of Everything Zen was deeply sarcastic, for at the time, Rossdale was far from happy with his lot in life, and very far from chilled. As a teenager, Rossdale had already taken a shot at fame with his previous band, Midnight (also featuring his best friend Sacha Puttnam, son of Oscar-winning film producer David Puttnam), but interest in that band quickly dissipated, and no-one wanted to know his new band. One day, Rossdale was flicking through the pages of English music magazine NME when he saw an interview with Brett Anderson, frontman of Suede,. and David Bowie, with Bowie praising Anderson for his songwriting.

"Around that time, Suede were massive," Rossdale later recalled to Rock Sound. "They’re a brilliant band, and I was jealous... At the time I was writing Everything Zen and feeling like Suede were winning because they were more successful than us."

Reading the interview prompted a seething Rossdale to write the lyrics "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow / Dave’s on sale again", the first line a direct steal from Bowie's Life On Mars, the second a twist on Bowie's lyric "Lennon's on sale again" from the same song, rewritten to express his frustration that Bowie was cosying up to British guitar music's new stars.

"It’s stupidly bitter," Rossdale admitted, revealing that at the time he was "floundering... working on building sites and doing jobs to earn 50 pounds a day just so that I could live."

Rossdale's lyrics for Everything Zen didn't just borrow from Bowie: Bushy's frontman also referenced Tom Waits' Rain Dogs, Allen Ginsberg's controversial 1956 poem Howl, and Jane's Addiction's album track Ted, Just Admit It..., with the line "There's no sex in your violence."

"I was thinking about where I was living and where I had grown up, and some of the more violent aspects of that life and of those kids," Rossdale told SongFacts in 2017. "I really hated that violence growing up. I was a little bit lost and didn't know where I was going, what I was doing, and I was committed to music, with no chance of having any success. I had been struggling for years. And that line, 'sex and violence'. that is a common thread through art. I just decided to put it in the context of, 'There's no sex in your violence.' It's sort of a personal belief, a personal mantra."

Elsehere, with the lines "As you search for your demigod /And you fake with a saint" Rossdale was having a pop at who "espouse spiritual values and lean certain ways and then they behave like douchebags in another area of their lives".

This was not a feel-good anthem, but for many, the sense of disillusionment and despair in Rossdale's complaints was relatable.

"It's a complete mental health song," Rossdale said in 2024. "I've always been attuned to that because I care. I care about my friends, I care about my family, and I care about myself."

Bush's debut album should have been released in the summer of 1994, but the label's distributor, Disney-bankrolled Hollywood Records, rejected it. Interscope then stepped in. Ahead of Christmas, 1994, Rob Kahane sent slipped a cassette of the album to LA radio station KROQ,and a DJ named Jed The Fish selected Everything Zen as his 'Catch Of The Day' pick. Soon Everything Zen was on rotation, playlisted for 12-spins-a-day: Other stations across America picked up on the buzz, and began to follow suit. And in January '95, Sixteen Stone sold 50,000 copies. By April 1997, it had sold six million copies in the US.

Bush's success put noses out of joint at every level of the English music industry - "We were shunned by a lot of people," Rossdale recalled to Classic Rock. "The stench of success was horrible for a lot of people” - but soon enough, they could no longer be ignored.

"We’ve been the victims of a lot of backbiting in Britain," guitarist Nigel Pulsford told Q magazine. "What I’d like to see instead is a community of encouragement like the scene at the Speakeasy in the ’60s where The Beatles, The Stones and The Who would all meet up on a friendly basis. Networks like that help music to move on...But there again, hey, who cares? This is all I could ever have hoped for and more. I’m completely fulfilled."

Inspired by her parents’ divorce, Halestorm singer/guitarist Lzzy Hale penned a confessional anthem that tested her vocal talents and broke sexual taboos. In 2022, she told Hammer about the story of the song – and how it impacted the rockers’ relationship with their fans.

In 2011, Halestorm were still young guns on the scene. Two years prior, the Pennsylvanian rockers had emerged from playing local malls, marking themselves out as an exciting new noise with their self-titled debut. But it was their second album, 2012’s snarling The Strange Case Of… that would prove to be their turning point.

The record that introduced the masses to their bombastic hard rock, it contained their most career-defining songs, the sound of a band running wild and free, coming into their own and testing their own limits. The quartet would start the album’s cycle as hungry upstarts and emerge as Grammy-winning, festival field-filling ass-kickers.

“With that whole record, I feel like we crossed over into not proving that we deserve to be here, but proving that we deserve to stay here,” remembers vocalist and guitarist Lzzy Hale. “As time goes on, you know more about the inner workings of everything, and it becomes a little less magical. Whereas that was our purgatory: it was the second record, everything was still super-new.”

She describes the album’s recording sessions that took place at multiple studios in Los Angeles and during which the band moved into a house in the coastal community of Marina del Rey as a sort of summer camp.

“I never went to college, and my replacement for that was this second record,” she continues. “We would meet complete strangers, become best friends and go over and stay at their house until 4am. The four of us are close anyway, but this was like a household. The parents aren’t around so it’s the four of us like, ‘OK, who’s going out to get groceries today? Do we have enough beer?’ Priorities!”

Initially, the album’s breakout song was thunderous first single Love Bites (So Do I), which, to the band’s amazement, beat out Iron Maiden, Lamb Of God and Megadeth to bag the Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance in 2013 – their shock evident as they stumbled down to the podium, reading an acceptance speech hurriedly typed out on drummer Arejay Hale’s phone. Over time though, another track has firmly supplanted it as the record’s defining moment.

The larynx-shattering I Miss The Misery had been one of the tracks they’d started testing live before the album was released, and on seeing how the crowd reacted to its incendiary chorus, they decided to release it as its second single.

Ten years on, it’s become their most enduring song, a fan favourite that currently stands at 86 million views on YouTube, dwarfing the 28 million views of its award-winning predecessor. Belting out of the blocks with a banshee scream from Lzzy: ‘OOOOOOH! I miss the misery!’ the track immediately put the band’s greatest asset – her gale-force vocals – upfront.

“It was such a whim to start it that way. Originally we were going to start it with the riff and then we said, ‘Let’s do it in a different way, let’s start with the voice,’” she recalls. “And now 10 years later, that’s kind of become my thing.”

The song is the kind of balls-to-the-wall sonic assault we now expect from Halestorm: mountainous riffs, a huge chorus and raspy, life-affirming vocals all reflecting an escalating confidence that ripples throughout the album at large, but it’s Lzzy’s growing assurance as a vocalist that shines through. Certainly, it impressed bands like Black Stone Cherry and Shinedown, who asked her to lend her pipes on the duets Peace Is Free and Breaking Inside around that time.

“I was definitely pushing vocally, versus the first album,” says Lzzy, who says she “came into her own as a vocalist” during The Strange Case Of… recording sessions. “We’d been touring a lot, we were doing 11 days in a row at one point, so I really got to know where my limitations were and where they weren’t.”

It was producer Howard Benson (Motörhead, Sepultura, My Chemical Romance) who challenged her to go one step further with each vocal take.

“He’d say, ‘Nope, I think you can sing higher than that,’” she laughs. “That was a huge confidence builder for me with my vocals because I started to not only expand my range, but find that control and that attitude that goes with it. It really laid the ground for literally everything I do vocally now.”

I Miss The Misery was also the moment Lzzy established herself as a true force of a nature, a figurehead whose confessional, resilient lyrics would be adopted by fans as emotional armour. It was written during a period of turmoil for the Hales – while the band partied and recorded in LA, back home in Pennsylvania, Lzzy and Arejay’s parents were in the midst of a divorce.

“I remember having a conversation with my mom about my dad,” says Lzzy. “They had been together for so long, the basis for [the] relationship is the arguments and the fights and the disagreements. That turned into, I don’t miss you, I actually miss the misery. I thought that was hilarious. I think it was my way of turning something that was negative into something positive.”

For Lzzy, the song also had a deeper, personal meaning, chronicling her break from a past toxic relationship.

“A guy cheated on me a couple of times and I swore I’d never go back,” she recalls. “There was that pull to go back and I never did, but I remember that feeling. It’s almost like you’re being a masochist in some way, it’s comfortable to live in those feelings.”

She considers I Miss The Misery to be her first anthem of empowerment, something that has since become her calling card. “I discovered I have this ability to write a song about how something sucks and try to maintain that hope or that attitude and control.”

One particular lyric, which was intended to force people outside their comfort zone, really ruffled feathers at the time: ‘I miss the rough sex / Leaves me a mess.’

“2012 wasn’t that long ago but it was in terms of women and evolution,” she says, noting that just 10 years ago a woman owning her desire and sexuality was considered “taboo”. “That almost made me want to double down on that kind of stuff too. By the time we made our fourth album, I’m talking about Do Not Disturb and threesomes and really getting people red in the face but to me, it’s fun.”

Building an open and frank relationship with the fans has been incredibly rewarding for Lzzy.

“I’ve had parents tell me that they hope their girls are as sexually confident as I am when they grow up,” she reveals. “That wasn’t something I expected. I expected to get angry parent letters – it’s been the opposite.”

Ten years after the song’s initial release, following #metoo and in light of increasingly transparent conversations around abuse in the music industry, she recognises that the meaning of the song has evolved for some fans.

“It’s really beautiful how people can take this song with me being a little tongue in cheek, and actually find that deeper meaning in it. Somewhere where I wasn’t even looking,” she says. “I know that song has helped so many people get over so many of those types of relationships, move on and find some type of superpower within themselves to walk away.

“In a lot of abusive relationships, the hardest thing is to break away from it. That song has helped break that stigma a little bit, or at least helped someone say, ‘This is the final straw and it’s OK if I miss it, but I’m not going back.’”

The Strange Case Of… was released on April 10, 2012 and changed the band’s lives. Armed with an arsenal of new anthems that were resonating with the fans, Halestorm headed into the 2012 summer festival season and found themselves being bumped higher and higher up the bills.

But more importantly, the album would secure the band an identity and longevity they’ve built on ever since. And while Love Bites (So Do I) won the Grammy, and the album’s third single, Freak Like Me, released in January 2013, was the band’s first single to reach No.1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Chart, I Miss The Misery has proven to be the track with the most staying power.

“I feel like the people have spoken and so it’s almost more rewarding for us than Love Bites and the Grammy,” considers Lzzy. “If you had told me, even in 2012, that I’d be standing onstage today encouraging young people to own their weird, to empower young women… that song was the groundwork for us being able to say that is what we do, and that is what people see when they look at me. It’s such a beautiful thing.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 369, December 2022. Halestorm support Babymetal across North America in September and October.

It's been seven years since No-Man, the art rock duo made up of Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness, released any material, but, according to Bowness, that's about to change!

The pair last released an album in 2019, the prog-disco-tastic Love You To Bits, itself the pair's first album in 11 years, following 2008's Schoolyard Ghosts.

Writing on social media, Bowness revealed that "the belated follow-up to Love You To Bits is now well underway. There’s a lot of recording and writing still to be done, but we've already created interesting templates for a couple of album projects.

"SW has been experimenting with solo material of mine; I’ve written melodies and lyrics to music Steven presented me with, and we’ve also been re-recording some of the band’s older works. While we’re covering many a No-Man approach (from poignant ballads to twisted pop to electronic excursions to art rock heart of darkness), the completed album is going to have a structure and sound all of its own. It’s a fantastic and somewhat surreal sensation being able to hear the band’s DNA coursing through new songs in the late 2020s.

"The upshot is that No-Man studio album #8 is coming and with any luck it'll arrive in time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of my first meeting and recording session with Steven (June or July, 1987, in case you’re wondering)."

At the same time, Bowness offered an update on his next solo album, which will be titled 30 Year List and is a continuation of the story started on 2017's Lost In The Ghost Light.

"The album is the polar opposite of Powder Dry," he says. "Co-written and co-produced with Bobian Hulse, it’s mostly rich in arrangement, coherent in approach, consistently melancholy in nature, and awash with gifted guest players. It also features a 20-minute track."

30 Year List is expected to be released in early 2027.

Hot on the heels of last month’s Global Beatles Day comes news that a previously unreleased John Lennon track titled Little Girl will be included on the reissue of The Beatles' Rubber Soul, which is due to arrive on October 2 via UMG and Apple Corps Ltd.

The demo appears to have been hidden away in the vaults for decades before being unearthed when plans for the re-issue were being drawn up.

Producer Giles Martin tells Rolling Stone: “It was surprising. It was one of those things that came from the Lennon Estate – I think it was Sean. It was one of those things where they say, ‘Oh, and then there’s this.’”

The record has been newly mixed by Martin and engineer Sam Okell and, alongside the original mono mix, you’ll also find a new stereo mix sourced from the original four-track masters. There’s also a Dolby Atmos mix and the original Capitol US version is also included. The expanded album will also include previously unreleased home demos and studio recordings.

For Beatles’ enthusiasts, the main draw will likely be the Super Deluxe editions of Rubber Soul which will be released as 4CD and 5LP box sets. These contain a total of 68 tracks, with the vinyl box set featuring a 7-inch single with Day Tripper and We Can Work It Out.

There’s also an 88-page hardback book with an introduction written by Paul McCartney and a foreward complied from John Lennon’s own words. The book also includes track notes, photographs and an in-depth look at the background of the album.

Rubber Soul will also be released in limited-edition orange vinyl and zoetrope vinyl, 1CD and 1LP standard editions, and 2CD and 2LP deluxe editions.

To mark the announcement, you can watch a visualiser featuring Michelle (Take 1) below.

Rubber Soul: Special Edition Super Deluxe: 5LP + 7” single box set

LP1: New stereo mix

Side A
1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. Think For Yourself
6. The Word
7. Michelle

Side B
1. What Goes On
2. Girl
3. I'm Looking Through You
4. In My Life
5. Wait
6. If I Needed Someone
7. Run For Your Life

LP2: Sessions, demos and the single (Disc 1)

Side A
1. Wait (Take 3 – instrumental backing track)
2. Run For Your Life (Takes 1-5 – instrumental backing track)
3. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (First version –Take 1)
4. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Second version –Take 2)
5. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Third version – Take 3)
6. Drive My Car (Takes 1 and 2 – instrumental backing track)
7. Day Tripper (Songwriting work tape)

Side B
1. Day Tripper (Take 1 – instrumental backing track)
2. Day Tripper (Takes 2 and 3 – instrumental backing track)
3. If I Needed Someone (Take 1 – instrumental backing track)
4. In My Life (Take 1)
5. In My Life (Extract with unused organ solo)
6. We Can Work It Out (Paul’s demo)
7. We Can Work It Out (Take 1 – instrumental backing track)

LP3: Sessions, demos and the single (Disc 2)

Side A
1. Nowhere Man (First version – Take 2)
2. Nowhere Man (Second version – Take 5 – instrumental backing track)
3. I’m Looking Through You (First version – Take 1)
4. I’m Looking Through You (Second version – Take 2)
5. I’m Looking Through You (Second version – Take 3)
6. Michelle (Guitar rehearsal)
7. Michelle (Take 1)

Side B
1. What Goes On (Take 1 – instrumental backing track)
2. The Word (Takes 1 and 2 – instrumental backing track)
3. Girl (Take 2 – instrumental backing track)
4. Beatle Talk (Think For Yourself vocal overdubs)
5. Little Girl (John’s demo)

LP4: Mono

Side A
1. Drive My Car
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Nowhere Man
5. Think For Yourself
6. The Word
7. Michelle

Side B
1. What Goes On
2. Girl
3. I'm Looking Through You
4. In My Life
5. Wait
6. If I Needed Someone
7. Run For Your Life

LP5: US Album

Side A
1. I’ve Just Seen A Face
2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
3. You Won't See Me
4. Think For Yourself
5. The Word
6. Michelle

Side B
1. It’s Only Love
2. Girl
3. I’m Looking Through You
4. In My Life
5. Wait
6. Run For Your Life

7” single
1. Day Tripper
2. We Can Work It Out

Halloween Horror Nights is the world’s premier Halloween event, taking place over multiple nights during spooky season at several Universal theme parks, with a selection of haunted houses, scare zones and gothic entertainment.

This year at both Universal Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood, Ozzy Osbourne will have his own special haunted house attraction as a tribute to the Prince Of Darkness.

Lora Sauls – assistant director of creative development and show direction for art, design and entertainment at Universal Orlando – talks us through what to expect.

Tell us about the new Ozzy Osbourne house at Halloween Horror Nights.

Ozzy Osbourne: Prince Of Darkness. That’s been a very special project. Our senior show director, Charles Gray, is a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan. He was in a rock band in the 80s. Charles had long hair, sang very similarly to Ozzy Osbourne. So he’s a huge fan. So when we were brought the opportunity to honour Ozzy and celebrate his most famous albums and all those album covers… and that’s what the house is based on, the ideas of all those album covers.

So you’re going into a very Gothic church or temple-like [structure], you’re going to see above you the Ozzy Osbourne symbol, Ozzy is there with all of his cloaked minions or followers. There’s vision pools that you’re seeing some of his concerts and you're seeing him on stage in, and then you go into the dungeons and you’re seeing him in the dungeon – Patient Number 9, if you will.

Then what I love is you're going to see an oversized bat eat the head off of a human. Role reversal in such a good way. You're going into the cemetery and seeing Ozzy as the werewolf. You’re gonna see the Crazy Train and get on the Crazy Train with Ozzy as the conductor of the Crazy Train.

And you end with Ozzy on his throne from his very last concert. We got the assets of that throne, so you're going to see the Prince Of Darkness on his throne with his dragon beside him. I love the dancing demons – female dancing demons that are very 80s-inspired, they’re amazing – that are kind of leading up to that throne. Then there’s a very special final scare in that scene. So we think there’s going to be a lot of people that have an emotional connection to this house. It is an absolutely gorgeous house. It checks all the gothic, horror box off for us. It is beautiful.

Did the process for the house begin after he passed?

It was. Last year's Halloween Horror Nights, one of the final weeks in Hollywood [October 2025]. Jack Osbourne went to the Hollywood event, and he talked to John Murdy [Creative Director of Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood] about wanting to do something with HHN again. Because John did an Ozzy house many, many, many years ago [Black Sabbath: 13-3D in 2013]. So he had that relationship with them. We meet with John three or four times a week – so we're constantly in communication with John Murdy on the West Coast – and he brought that to us and we're like, ‘Yes, definitely, we'd love to do that.’

So both coasts got on a teams meeting with Jack, and we were like, ‘We definitely want to do it. We want to do it on both coasts.’ Jack was very jazzed about that. He was so jazzed that he’s like, ‘Can we do different houses on both coasts?’ So honestly, the Ozzy Osbourne: Prince Of Darkness house on both coasts are the most different of all of our IP houses.

Now, there are some similarities. You’re gonna get on the Crazy Train in both houses and you’re going to see some similarities. But he was the one that really was like, ‘I would love to see two different takes.’ He even had a joke for the Orlando team. He's like, ‘Why don't you use the [Hogwarts] train and just turn that into the Crazy Train?’ And we're like, ‘We can't do that. But hey, you know, good idea…’ But no, he was very jazzed.

Honestly, it's been an honour – every week we are on a teams meeting with Sharon Osborne and she is approving everything herself. Which is so cool. It is so cool. And she’s so jazzed about it.

Have the Osbourne’s walked through the set builds yet?

Not yet. I don’t think they're coming to Orlando yet, but we’re taking some of their team through it in a couple weeks. But we’re really hopeful that we get either Jack or Sharon or both at both openings because Orlando opens a week before Hollywood. So you can feasibly do both. So we’re very hopeful that they'll come our way to Universal Orlando for our opening.

We did hear that they were going to put the billboard in Hollywood near their Hollywood home. They were so jazzed by that. I don’t know where their Hollywood home is, but they said two streets and Sharon’s like, “Oh, that's perfect. That's so close to home.” She was so delighted about where they were placing that billboard.

The Ozzy Osbourne: Prince Of Darkness haunted houses open on August 28 at Universal Orlando Resort and September 3 at Universal Studios Hollywood

AFI were encouraged to collaborate with rap megastar 50 Cent in the mid-2000s.

Talking in the new issue of Metal Hammer, the Platinum-selling goth/punk band’s singer Davey Havok says that their A&R suggested the idea as a way to get the attention of Jimmy Iovine, the head of their then-label.

“We had signed to Dreamworks, but they sold it to Interscope. Bummer,” Havok recalls.

“Our A&R guy was hellbent on trying to get Jimmy Iovine – who had expressly claimed in the press that rock is dead – to pay attention to AFI, and so it was suggested that we collab with Jimmy’s great love at the time, which was 50 Cent.”

He adds: “I have nothing against 50 Cent, but what does that even mean?!”

Havok claims that this wasn’t the only desperate idea around that time, despite the band having just made their commercial breakthrough with their 2003 Dreamworks debut Sing The Sorrow.

“Even worse was this was the era when ringtones were the new technology craze,” he continues. “I love this man [their then-A&R] and I still see him once a month at the least, but this motherfucker says to me, ‘What if you were to be the first band to write a ringtone album?’”

AFI, formed by Havok and drummer Adam Carson in 1991, signed to Dreamworks in 2002. Sing The Sorrow lifted them from the punk underground to the American mainstream, reaching number five on the Billboard 200 charts before going Platinum in the US and Canada and Gold in Australia.

Their 2006 album, Decemberunderground, consolidated their success, topping the Billboard chart and going Platinum in the US, Canada and Australia. The album’s lead single, Miss Murder, was a radio hit that reached number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, in the Hammer interview, Havok says, “It breaks my heart that Miss Murder will always represent us.”

“I don’t dislike Miss Murder, it’s a pretty good song!” he explains. “But never, even when we wrote it, did I think that it was the greatest song. I even voted to not put it on the record, but that experience really proved to me that it was all about marketing, because everything after Decemberunderground is better than Decemberunderground. I have campaigned to keep it off the setlist and recently succeeded.”

AFI are now signed to Boston independent label Run For Cover and released their 12th album, Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…, in October. It received positive reviews, including four-and-a-half stars from Metal Hammer’s Stephen Hill, who called it “their best album in over a decade”.

AFI will tour Europe next month and play their first UK shows since 2017. From September to November, they’ll play across North America. See dates and get tickets via their website.

Read the full Havok interview in the new issue of Hammer. It features electro-metal party-starters Electric Callboy on the cover, as well as an interview with super-producer Ross Robinson about 25 years of Slipknot’s Iowa and our report back from an escape room with zombie-metal sensations Dominum. Order your copy now and get it delivered directly to your door.

After spending time in local groups such as The Reasons Why, White Clover and Proto-Kaw, Kerry Livgren (guitar), Steve Walsh (vocals/keyboards), Robby Steinhardt (vocals/violin), Phil Ehart (drums), Dave Hope (bass) and Rich Williams (guitar) came together as the established Kansas line-up in 1973.

It was pretty evident that this Midwestern US rock band were different from the rest. No other US band throughout the 70s flirted with prog rock like Kansas did. Early Journey were more fusion; Styx, despite initial prog flourishes, had succumbed to balladry and Lady by 1973; Starcastle were always a bit more pomp rock. 

In 1974, debut album Kansas hinted at where the band were headed. Then, with Song For America and Masque, they spread their prog wings with lengthy musical suites that combined melodic rock, orchestral arrangements and odd time signatures. 1976’s extraordinary Leftoverture really made its mark, via the US hit Carry On Wayward Son. 

The momentum continued with Point Of Know Return and its hit single Dust In The Wind, and by 1978 the band were one of America’s major concert draws. But it didn’t last. As the likes of Journey, Styx and Foreigner embraced AOR, Kansas seemed to be falling behind. Audio-Visions, in 1980, was more AOR in direction and, with Livgren and Hope having converted to Christianity, more religious lyrically. 

It was too much for Walsh, who quit. He was replaced by Christian singer John Elefante for Vinyl Confessions and the aptly titled Drastic Measures. Kansas disbanded on New Year’s Eve 1983 at the end of a tour. Walsh, Williams and Ehart regrouped in 1985 with guitarist Steve Morse and bassist Billy Greer for the impressive Power, but the subsequent In The Spirit Of Things was a flop. 

By the early 90s Kansas were a low-key outfit as alternative music held sway. An unstable line-up and lacklustre live albums did little to improve things. Then when the original members reunited for 2000’s excellent Somewhere To Elsewhere it was the closest they’d come to recapturing their signature sound of the 70s. More line-up changes followed, and two more albums appeared: 2016's well-received The Prelude Implicit, and 2020's expansive The Absence of Presence.

Still a major touring draw in the US – albeit accompanied by a bewildering number of further lineup adjustments – Kansas remain 70s America’s finest progressive exponents.

And one to avoid...

Picture this: it’s Saturday night in a field in Cropredy, Oxfordshire. An impressively large multimedia stage is framed by bars, food stalls, and little markets selling acoustic instruments, arty trinkets, pointy felt pixie hats. Under stars, or come clouds, rain or wind, 15,000 music lovers gather with real ale or frothy hot chocolate for the customary headline set by Fairport Convention, which closes the band’s annual three-day festival, Cropredy Convention.

The finale is a mass singalong to a song that has become a signature for Fairport Convention in the 40-odd years of this event, and is widely adopted as a hymn to the hereafter: Meet On The Ledge. When it appeared on the group’s second album, What We Did On Our Holidays, in 1968 it was played down by its young songwriter, lead guitarist Richard Thompson.

For him it was another stepping stone on the swift ascent of the London folk-rock group that he, at 17, had co-founded with 21-year-old bandleader and bassist Ashley Hutchings and 16-year-old guitarist Simon Nicol in 1967. Drummer Martin Lamble (also 16) and co-vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews would complete the group.

They were quickly signed to Island Records by producer and UFO club co-founder Joe Boyd, and their self-titled debut, recorded in late ’67, captured their raw youthfulness through West Coast folk and blues covers and original co-writes.

“We hadn’t long been professional as a group at this point,” Richard Thompson tells CR. “In terms of style, Fairport Convention was all over the place. We were young and experimenting, seeing if we could keep time, trying to figure out if we could write songs. We could, but most were collaborations because we didn’t have the nerve to say: ‘I wrote that.’”

After the album was released in May ’68, musical differences led to Dyble leaving and rising singer-songwriter Sandy Denny joining. Denny had gone from solo folk sets around the capital to search for a band where she could challenge herself vocally. Initially that was Strawbs, but Fairport were a better fit. Denny had kudos and excellent compositional skills.

Under her influence “[Fairport’s] songwriting definitely got better,” Thompson affirms. “You’ve got Sandy, me and Iain writing. Other collaborations [in the group] are going on, and we’re starting to play some traditional British music as well. Our playing was improving because we played live all the time, and we now had a really forceful vocal department with Iain and Sandy together.”

When Fairport weren’t out gigging, they were encouraged to build up a song pile. “I was getting a lot of instrumental ideas, but in terms of lyrics I was still quite shy,” Thompson says. “In the great spirit of sixties songwriting obfuscation, like Bob Dylan I buried the meaning of my songs under a superficial layer, and Sandy did the same.”

When Thompson was a kid, he and his school friends would climb the Pothole Tree on Hampstead Heath. Its lowest hanging branch was called The Ledge. According to childhood pal Brian Wyvill – who’d introduced Thompson to Hutchings and Nicol – Thompson had thought of reuniting his school friends there in adulthood.

“I shared a flat with Simon and Iain, and I remember sitting on my little single bed, strumming something in the key of A, and a kind of melodic idea came first,” Thompson recalls of the genesis of Meet On The Ledge. “Then I wrote the lyrics almost without thinking what they mean except: What’s this? A song about the future? What we owe to each other, how we need each other, how we love each other? I don’t know.”

Thompson then took the tune to Ashley Hutchings. “Meet On The Ledge immediately stood out as a very special song, and quite moving,” Hutchings tells Classic Rock. “However, Richard wouldn’t divulge the meaning. But that was fine.”

“To my knowledge, this was Richard’s very first song he’d written on his own,” says Simon Nicol. “It was a door to a whole new world for him, and he must have had a lot of confidence to bring it forward.”

Meet On The Ledge was recorded at Fairport’s regular studio hangout, Sound Techniques in Chelsea. The lyrics suggest missed opportunities, solitude and struggle, but eventually have an optimistic upswing, implied as the afterlife.

“I remember hearing it come together in the studio,” Nicol says, “and it really took its full shape as a big-chorus song. Up to that point we’d not attempted anything like that.”

Denny and Matthews sang alternate parts, tender and tremulous at first, then rousing and powerful as the chorus repeats: ‘Meet on the ledge, we’re gonna meet on the ledge/When my time is up, I’m gonna see all my friends.’ For those who hadn’t caught Fairport live, Denny’s vocal light and shade would be showcased on the track, which became their second single release, in December ’68.

Critics were supportive, and Matthews thought that this could be their first hit record. It wasn’t. However, its inclusion on the popular Island Records sampler You Can All Join In helped get the song beyond the Christmas charts and into hippie-kid homes from ’69 onwards.

Thompson left Fairport in ’71 to go solo. He was living with grief and trauma following the dreadful van accident in ’69 that killed his girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn and the band’s drummer Martin Lamble. In 1978, Denny died after a fall at home. At some point, Meet On The Ledge became imbued with the poignancy of these events, and a point of reflection and emotion for anyone experiencing loss. By the time of the first Cropredy Convention proper, in 1980, the song was a traditional curtain closer.

“I don’t know how this happened,” Nicol says. “It was incremental. One day you realise you’ve got this big song.”

“It’s such a privilege to perform Meet On The Ledge and see people respond to it. Every year it gets better for me, and it’s the tip of Cropredy’s pyramid,” he continues. “Fairport has somehow reached into people’s lives, and for a weekend we’re this community that really comes into focus when we’re singing this song.”

Thompson has often expressed embarrassment about the song. “I used to think it was immature, juvenile,” he explains. “As a songwriter you have to revisit your past work all the time. I’m glad I wrote it when I was eighteen, I respect that person. The music evokes the past in an extraordinary way. The public own it now, and it has a kind of magic to it. I’m not ashamed of it.”

“When the rest of us heard it, we didn’t think it was juvenile at all,” Hutchings says. “It was lovely to play, easy to sing, but a heavyweight composition. It deserves its stature.”

Pablo Picasso once said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Keith Emerson’s extraordinary career offers a case study in the elegant expression of Picasso’s credo.

Across six decades, Emerson tore down barriers between genres, redefined the image of the keyboard player through his wild onstage performances, and played a pivotal role in the meteoric rise of progressive rock from small British clubs like The Marquee to massive American arena tours.

In 20203 Prog presented 15 tracks from across his catalogue along with commentary from artists who were influenced by them.

1. The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon

From The Nice’s The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack, 1968 (Bonus Track)

Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull: “I first heard ...Apples Of The Moon at the Marquee Club in the early months of 1968 when The Nice and Tull were regular resident bands. With the benefit of that original repertoire, The Nice stood out from the usual blues band peers with more complex songs and music arrangements that ushered in the beginnings of progressive rock.

“...Apples Of The Moon is typical of early Nice, and even the later ELP, in drawing upon classical fanfare-like elements. The rhythmic drumming of Blinky Davison in this song inspired the drum part to the early Tull tune A Song For Jeffrey.

“The adventurous and energetic organ playing of Keith Emerson was a sight to behold and given credibility by his obvious pianistic musical skills and academic training. The vocals of Lee Jackson, Blinky Davison’s drumming and Davy O’List’s unusual non-blues guitar style were a great encouragement to me in the months to come to gradually replace the blues-based early Tull with a more original and eclectic mix of musical inspiration.”

2. Rondo

From The Nice’s The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack, 1968

Derek Shulman, Gentle Giant: “I had always loved Keith’s playing in The Nice. It was a complete surprise that they could reinterpret this unusual Dave Brubeck Quartet 9/8 signature classic into a 4/4 rock track and still retain its appeal. This was always something Keith was able to do superbly throughout his musical career with both ELP and his solo works.

“The Dave Brubeck Quartet were, in a sense, a jazz precursor to artists like Frank Zappa, ELP, Crimson and, of course, Gentle Giant. Unusual time signatures and improvisation while still retaining musical accessibility. The Nice were able to pare down Blue Rondo À La Turk to Rondo and still be The Nice.

“Performance-wise, Keith was one of the first keyboard players to actually stand and play brilliantly. He understood that just sitting behind a Hammond organ could be a hindrance to being an entertainer as well as a musician. He was able to use his skills to make the keyboards his foil in the same way that Jimi Hendrix used his guitar. A very rare achievement for a keyboardist.”

3. America

The Nice single, 1968

This explosive arrangement of a showpiece tune from West Side Story was controversial from the start, intended as a critique of violence in the United States following the murders of JFK and Martin Luther King. Then when the band burned a painting of the American flag onstage at the Royal Albert Hall, with the US ambassador in the audience no less, their notoriety was assured.

Tree Stewart, The Emerald Dawn: “I had organ lessons from age 8 to 18 and I thought the organ was a deeply uncool instrument to play. If only I had been shown Keith Emerson when I was young!

“America is a special track for me for many reasons. I was involved in youth theatre when I was a teenager, and I was in the play West Side Story. I was one of the singers and dancers in America so to hear a band take the track and turn it into a political statement with insane theatrics on the organ was a total revelation.

“The theatrics of the live versions of this track also stand out to me. I am a circus and physical theatre performer and teacher by profession, so to see someone jump over their keyboard and swing it about while still managing to play really well is truly incredible.”

4. Intermezzo From The Karelia Suite

From The Nice’s Ars Longa Vita Brevis, 1968

By their second album, The Nice had shrunk from a quartet to a trio, following the departure of guitarist Davy O’List. Emerson was fearlessly exploring the possibilities of melding rock with classical and jazz – the dawn of progressive rock was at hand.

Geoff Downes, Asia, Yes, DBA: “Keith’s treatment of classical music was totally unique. In particular, his early work from The Nice laid the foundations for his incredible career. My favourite album from that period was Ars Longa Vita Brevis, and his interpretation of the Intermezzo from Sibelius’ Karelia Suite really stood out for me.

“It became his signature style in many ways – laying down the main classical theme, and then heading off into his wonderful world of intricate blues and jazzy extemporisation. A true genius.”

5. For Example

The Nice’s Nice, 1969

Mike Keneally: “I’d read about The Nice in Hit Parader magazine, but somehow hadn’t found any of the records, until I was around 11 and I saw a Columbia Special Products repackaging of their third album, simply entitled Nice, with a strange-looking orange cover.

“I found it really thrilling that the song just kept going and going and going – it felt like a gift, a really generous one, and Keith’s organ and piano playing is so on point throughout. For a song essentially based on a blues structure, I was amazed at how many styles were visited during the course of the piece – it’s really adventurous! And there’s horns playing all of a sudden!

“This music also sported a sense of humour that seemed more whimsical than ELP’s usual state of grandeur, and somehow kinder than ELP’s occasional comedy pieces. Keith’s composing and playing imprinted on me hard at that time, and the influence remains – every time I play a sequence of fourths on a keyboard, I can feel him hovering nearby.”

6. Hang On To A Dream

From The Nice’s Nice, 1969

Stephen W Tayler: “The piano immediately caught my attention – the playing and the sound – the strange aspect of the voice, and then the choir! What was I listening to? And then it developed into the whole middle jazz section with that truly spontaneous piano performance.

“It felt like one of the first times for me that such a track became a real journey through changes of style and mood, arriving at a wonderful enigmatic conclusion. It’s a cover of a Tim Hardin song, but a totally unique interpretation with a strange arrangement, great playing, and some very unusual and creative sound treatments.

“Keith and this track encouraged me to be much looser with my approach to music in general, and taught me that elements of bravery, improvisation and experimentation are crucial for great record making. The live version on the Enigma album is much longer and even more crazy!”

7. The Three Fates: Clotho/Lachesis/Atropos

From ELP’s Emerson, Lake & Palmer, 1970

Jo Quail: “I was blessed with an inspiring piano teacher who introduced us to The Three Fates, but at that time I wasn’t familiar with the term ‘prog’; I classed this as ‘contemporary classical,’ and difficult listening at that. It’s only with the grace of years that I have come to truly appreciate Clotho, and my awe of this particular work deepens as my own creativity broadens.

“There are many aspects of Clotho that I return to and that inspire me; to put them broadly, it’s the creative wildness of the composition, the recurring powerful motif of the bass and stacked parallel chords, the surprising change of texture/organ stop and the respite therein, and the cadence points that give weight to the storms that precede them. In the frame of (insane!) chromatic harmony and complex technical virtuosity, Clotho stands alone as the paragon of this realm.”

8. Knife-Edge

From ELP’s Emerson, Lake & Palmer, 1970

Kit Watkins, Happy The Man: “Knife-Edge had a particularly dark and edgy quality that got to me. The organ was the main attraction though, since I was always salivating over distorted Hammond sounds through Leslie speakers, especially the way Emerson voiced his parts. No tremolo!

“Emerson was one of my early influences, especially because of how he merged rock and classical music. Pictures At An Exhibition was a favourite in that regard, but his technique was just so stunning and the music so evocative that I found the mix to be irresistible.”

9. The Barbarian

From ELP‘s Emerson, Lake & Palmer, 1970

Roine Stolt, The Flower Kings: “I remember hearing ELP’s debut album in 1970. A friend of mine had the LP and we listened to it frequently, trying to understand the sounds ELP could make. I liked all of it, the skilful and powerful keyboards and the great fuzz bass sound and voice of Greg Lake on that album and Palmer’s drum frenzy – somewhere in between jazz, classical and Black Sabbath.

“I was aware of Keith already from The Nice but I think the combo of this trio floored me and their more avant-garde meets classical and jazz was just so fresh. Keith’s organ sounds set the standard for many others that came later, including Eddie Jobson, and surely Wakeman and Banks had their ears open.

“Keith was also a phenomenal pianist and pioneering Moog player – and a great showman. One of a kind.”

10. Third Movement, Pathetique

From The Nice’s Elegy, 1971

Rick Pilkington, The Blackheart Orchestra: “When I bought a second-hand copy of Elegy as a 13-year-old guitarist, I had no idea what effect it would have on me. What would I want with an album of organ music?

“Elegy is full of musical energy and ideas. It’s a loaded gun that would pay homage to the past while firing rockets of possibilities into the future. Every note bursting with the 25-year-old Emerson’s overflowing musical virtuosity but all the time walking a tightrope between conformity and outright musical anarchy.

“His recreation of Tchaikovsky’s Third Movement, Pathetique may not be everyone’s favourite Emerson moment but to me it illustrates the crazy, beautiful genius that could hardly contain the music in his young head and hands. It’s a magnificent multicoloured musical explosion...

“In my opinion, The Nice were a starter course – maybe even more tasty than the main course that was soon to follow.”

11. Bitches Crystal

From ELP’s Tarkus, 1971

Nick Beggs: “At about the age of 13 I first heard this track. I thought the whole Tarkus album was great and it was on heavy rotation at my Thursday evening record club where my mates used to bring their vinyl for a spin.

“Looking at it now, it seems strange because it’s just under four minutes, but packs so much into that time. It could have been a single, but Radio 1 would never have played it; the irregular metre makes it spiky. I love the dynamism of the track and the power of the trio churning up the road like a juggernaut.

“Keith’s virtuosity always amazed me. Like so many others who were beguiled by his prowess, I’m sure he’s influenced me on countless levels both conscious and unconsciously.

“’Never a dull moment’ is a cliché, but it’s true. He took every opportunity to expand the harmonic possibilities of a performance but there’s also a very economical use of tasteful single-note signature sounds thrown in as affective motifs on this track.”

12. Promenade / The Gnome

From ELP’s Pictures At An Exhibition, 1971

Theo Travis, Soft Machine: “I think the composition and melody are very strong and memorable. But Keith Emerson is majestic, the way he plays the organ so well – plus he uses other interesting synthesiser sounds that sound like early music and then science fiction, like music of the future. He really was ahead of his time and had not just skill but such authority about his playing.

“Mussorgsky is a great composer and this is a fine work, so that aspect of the composition is already taken care of; but I love the way ELP totally own it. They add their own thing and reinvent the piece with flair, style and confidence. The arrangement is really clever, showcasing each individual performer – and when they play together they use the instrumentation imaginatively and to the max.

“They were such great performers too. It’s thrilling watching an old Keith Emerson performance, playing the organ upside down while having it lie over him and using knives to wedge down specific keys. He took the Hendrix thing and translated it to keyboards. Very exciting!

“This performance on Pictures At An Exhibition – the playing, the atmosphere and the fact that it was so in tune with the times – contribute hugely to its magic.”

13. Nut Rocker

From ELP’s Pictures At An Exhibition, 1971

Nut Rocker was an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s march from The Nutcracker that topped the UK singles chart in 1962 for B Bumble And The Stingers, before ELP adopted it into their live repertoire.

Rick Wakeman: “It was the summer of 1962 and I heard it in Woolworths in Exmouth, Devon, and I used up all my holiday money to buy the single – thus forgoing an ice cream for a day. The piece was well arranged and well played by B Bumble And The Stingers, although they were session musicians. As soon as I got home from holidaying in Exmouth with my parents, I learnt it – it was just great fun to play. In later years I wanted very much to record it, but Keith beat me to it.

“Although Keith was far more jazz-orientated than I was, and I think the best at the way he fused jazz into the various genres of music he played, we both had a lot of the same influences, such as Jimmy Smith, and we both liked fun pieces. Hence, Hoedown and Nut Rocker, both tremendous stage pieces and so well-suited to Keith’s flamboyance.”

14. Trilogy

From ELP’s Trilogy, 1972

Mike Stobbie, ex Pallas: “Keith was trailblazing and giving all the guitar soloists a run for their money. Trilogy is a keyboardist’s dream; it shows off Keith’s phenomenally beautiful virtuosity and his playing is second to none. Simply irresistible to listen to and I love playing it – it’s stuck with me for decades.

“The song part itself has a very rich and powerful melody with Greg’s wonderful voice and the beautiful classical piano playing at the beginning draws you in until it erupts into total excitement. To shoot off into that Moog synthesiser section over complicated rhythms followed by jazz-influenced distorted Hammond organ... well, it has everything I could ever want.”

15. The Endless Enigma

From ELP’s Trilogy, 1972

Jonathan Edwards, Panic Room, Luna Rossa, Three Colours Dark: “The Endless Enigma has all of the elements that make ELP’s music so compelling: Keith’s lyrical and virtuoso piano playing, particularly in the Bach-influenced Fugue that breaks up the two sections of the piece; the Hammond work that goes from delicate to muscular as the music demands driving the song forward; and the innovative Moog playing that features both in solo lines and as layered textures to produce synthesised fanfares in the end section.

“But what’s striking here too is that, contrary to common opinion, it’s never showy or complex for the sake of it. Every keyboard phrase, bass line or drum fill is there to support the music. For all his showmanship, Keith was first and foremost a composer and a musician, making music for the head and the heart.”

The music world has taken to social media to pay tribute to Irish singer-songwriter and actor Glen Hansard, who was killed in a motorcycle accident on the outskirts of Dublin in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Hansard, whose latest solo album Don+t Settle - Transmissions West was released last month, was the frontman of The Frames, one half of folk rock duo The Swell Season, and a member of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder's solo band The Earthlings.

A book of condolence has been opened by Dublin Mayor Daryl Barron.

Bono: "He really was who you thought he was. He could never walk by a person living rough without checking they were OK, and more than that, he worked very hard so that fewer people had to live on the streets in the first place. Of all the grand and gigantic venues he and The Frames played, you sensed the street was his most favoured place to perform. And street people, his favourite audience. For me, he will always be everywhere I see a coin spinning into an open guitar case."

Bob Geldof: "Glen was wonderful. The universe lacks mercy or justice that such a sweet, thoughtful, burstingly talented man should be so wantonly and violently killed on an early Irish morning backroad.

"Tragedy does not do justice to this terrible calamity for his family, the world of music and Ireland itself. For we have lost one of the great ones. A person and a songwriter and singer and musician and performer of great depth, understanding, compassion, daring and bravado."

Catherine Connolly (President of Ireland): "Glen was one of the vital driving influences of the Irish music world, bringing people together in the sharing of live music. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him or experienced his work."

Andrew Watt: "You will never be forgotten. How lucky was I to spend as much time both on and off the stage with you? Studios, dressing rooms, bathroom floors, long car rides, guitar stores... your ability to move people with that bellowing Irish tenor of yours is unparalleled."

Amanda Palmer: "Glen was a fellow busker, a soul-scraper of a songwriter, a breath-exploding powerhouse on any stage. He strummed the guitar like he was killing something; he played and sang with this whole body, he shook the audience awake. His songs were screams into the heart of the matter. He emanated uber-human presence. He blasted feelings; like Nick Cave, like Ani. He was one of my favourite live performers. He never phoned it in."

Nels Cline (Wilco): "I only met Glen Hansard a few months ago, working on what will at some point be a new record by him. It was a marvellous experience, and I had the feeling that we would be collaborating or at least running into each other in the years ahead. I’m pretty sure everyone who came into contact with this man felt his warmth, passion, and massive talent. I sure did."

Lukas Nelson: "I’m so grateful to say that the understanding between us left nothing unsaid. It was just a few months ago we were talking about meeting up in Ireland and playing in his favourite little pub out there. My heart is broken. I hope to chat soon in dreams, Glen."

Elvis Costello: "We only sang together a couple of times but I was always glad to see his face and hear his voice. I'll never forget an incredible evening at the Royal Albert Hall on the occasion of the first State Visit by an Irish President with Glen and the great Donal Lunny leading the assembled chorus."

Thomas Walsh (Pugwash): "I'm truly shocked and deeply saddened by the tragic death of Glen Hansard. I was the first to give him a good slag when he'd overdo the Irishness, but boy he was such a lovely guy. Always with a smile, always with a kind word, always proud to be Irish (don't overdo it though, Glen!). I'm terribly upset. He was my age, 56. What a sad, sad loss."

David Gray: "Deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic news of Glen Hansard’s untimely passing. I first met Glen back in the Century Ends days, when we shared a stage together on one of my first tours of Ireland. A deeply passionate singer and songwriter and a gifted storyteller, he was always full of intensity and a restless energy. It just seems crazy that he’s gone. His talent and his generosity touched many, many lives, he will be hugely missed."

Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights are launching a pair of Ozzy Osbourne-themed haunted houses at its Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood facilities.

According to a press statement bearing the news, the two immersive attractions will transport fans through "iconic moments spanning more than four decades of music, imagery and storytelling" and create "a powerful new touchpoint for fans around the world."

In a promo video featuring a gothic test-your-strength machine topped by a giant bat, Ozzy's voice bellows, "Let the madness begin!" However, it's unclear whether this is the late Black Sabbath frontman's real voice or the controversial AI version of Ozzy discussed by Jack and Sharon Osbourne earlier this year.

"Ozzy never stopped pushing boundaries, and he loved anything that gave fans a new way to experience his music and the worlds he created," say Sharon and Jack in a statement. "Halloween Horror Nights has done an incredible job bringing that spirit to life. Walking through these haunted houses, you'll recognise so many moments inspired by his music and imagination.

"It's a wonderful tribute to Ozzy, and we hope fans have as much fun experiencing it as he would have had seeing it come together."

“Ozzy Osbourne didn't just help define heavy metal – he created a cultural phenomenon that has influenced generations of music, art and horror,” says John Murdy, Executive Producer of Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. “We previously had the privilege of collaborating with Ozzy, and this new haunted house is an opportunity to honour his extraordinary solo career.

"Inspired by all 13 of his albums, guests will journey through the dark, surreal worlds that fueled his music and cemented his legacy as the one and only Prince of Darkness.”

"I've had the privilege of working with Ozzy for over a decade, and one thing that never changed was the incredible connection he had with his fans," says Barry Drinkwater, Chairman and Founder of Global Merchandising Services. "That connection continues today, and our job is to keep creating authentic ways for fans to celebrate his legacy.

"This partnership with Halloween Horror Nights is a perfect example of that. It's a fantastic tribute to Ozzy and another exciting step as we continue to grow his licensing program around the world."

The Ozzy Osbourne: Prince Of Darkness haunted houses open for business on August 28 at Universal Orlando Resort and September 3 at Universal Studios Hollywood. Both attractions will be open until November 1.

Kneecap will release their first mixtape on vinyl for the first time next month.

Featuring live favourites C.E.A.R.T.A. and Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite, the right-song 3CAG originally emerged online in 2018. The West Belfast/Derry trio describe it as "rudimentary as fuck but still bangers."

"Our label boss Jeff [Barrett] has been hounding us to put it on vinyl and we gave in," the band say.

The trio - Naoise Ó Cairealláin (Móglaí Bap), Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh (Mo Chara) and JJ Ó Dochartaigh (DJ Próvaí) - outline the tape's origin story in a post on their website:

"From inside a hazey attic on Hawthorn Street, 3CAG was born in 2018," they write. "Two young fellas in West Béal Feirste on a quest to stay one step ahead of the RUC, using their connections with the Conamara Cartel to Smuggle Narcotics and sneak them past shite Sniffer Dogs.

"A madman from Free Derry was on the run, so the trio united.

"A new identity was born, with linguistic summersaults never heard before in the Irish Language.

"As fictionalised in the movie, the 3CAG mixtape was mastered by Ciarán Byrne in Dublin, only after we dug a big hole in his garden as payment."

In additional news, it has been revealed that the band will guest on Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello's new solo album, Everyone Gets Everything They Want.

The Irish band will appear on a song called Unconquered.

Everyone Gets Everything They Want, which also features cameos from System of Down frontman Serj Tankian and Beartooth vocalist Caleb Shomo, will be released on September 25 via Mom + Pop Music.

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi says that the band's earliest recordings, dating back to when they were known as Earth, will be released "at some point".

Last year it was announced that an album's worth of material from Earth has been unearthed and would be released as The Legendary Lost Tapes.
At the time, the group's former manager Jim Simpson stated, "These recordings clearly demonstrate what fine music they produced right from the very beginning. We recorded these tracks at Zella Studio in Birmingham in 1969, but held back from releasing them as their style was evolving so quickly.

"Now, some 57 years later, the recordings assume a greater importance, illustrating how these four young men from Birmingham, barely out of their teens, were excellent musicians and a fine band, fully deserving of all the success that was to come their way."

However, the album release was blocked after Sharon Osbourne wrote to Simpson insisting that the four members of Black Sabbath were against the release.

“The Band do not want these tapes released, not least as they haven’t heard them despite you saying you would provide copies long ago,” Osbourne wrote. "You know that, as a band, Black Sabbath don’t take things lying down and you can be assured that if you go ahead with this against the Band’s wishes we will take any action we can where their rights are infringed, both here and in America.”

In April this year, Osbourne announced that the 1969 recordings had been returned to the group, saying, "All of that stuff should be theirs. So it all ended well."

In a new exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, Tony Iommi says that the demos "will come out at some point".

"It’s weird when you hear stuff from so long ago, and all these things crop up that you forgot about," the guitarist admits. "But it was fun to hear them, actually. I sat listening to them all, and it was good because there’s some jazzy stuff and bluesy stuff we done on them where we just used to jam. On a lot of the jams, it was all guitar, and I forgot about half of that. I can’t play that now."

Iommi will release From The Dark, his first solo album since 2005, on October 23 via BMG.

Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello has announced his first solo rock album, Everyone Gets Everything They Want.

The album will be released on September 25 via Mom + Pop Music. Accompanying the announcement, Morello has released a new single, Date Night, which he describes as a "which side are you on?" song.

Date Night, co-written with the guitarist's 15-year-old son Roman, tells the true story of three young Dutch girls who served as spies, saboteurs, and assassins against the Nazis during World War II. Sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, and their close friend Hannie Schaft, used their youth and innocent appearances to slip through checkpoints, to smuggle weapons, to sabotage rail lines, and to help hunted Jewish children escape persecution.

Most famously, they acted as underground assassins, seducing Nazi officers, luring them into the woods and killing them. Hannie was eventually captured, tortured, and killed by the Nazis, but refused to pass on any information on her comrades.

Tom Morello says, “I make anti-racist songs for anti-racists. I make anti-fascist songs for anti-fascists. And I make anti-Nazi songs for anti-Nazis. ‘Date Night’ is really a ‘Which side are you on?’ song. If any of that offends you, do the math."

System of Down frontman Serj Tankian, Irish rap trio Kneecap and Beartooth vocalist Caleb Shomo make guest appearances on the record, alongside Roman Morello, who shares writing credits on five songs.

A press statement for the album reveals that it confronts issues of fascism, immigrant rights, and global political turmoil."

The album tracklist is:

1. Beth From Electronics
2. Everyone Gets Everything They Want
3. Adjourn It (feat. Serj Tankian & Roman Morello)
4. I Am Not Yours to Command
5. Soldier In The Army Of Love (feat. Roman Morello)
6. Unconquered (feat. Kneecap)
7. Date Night
8. The Last Rung On The Ladder
9. Everything Burns (feat. Caleb Shomo of Beartooth)
10. Pretend You Remember Me
11. Untethered
12. They Can’t Kill Us All

The album can be pre-ordered here.

Morello also has a series of live dates lined up.

Tom Morello live 2026

Sep 18: Nashville Cannery Hall TN
Sep 19: Louder Than Life festival, KY
Sep 20: Milwaukee The Rave/Eagles Club, WI

Oct 03: Power to the People festival, DC

Wes Borland may have found success with Limp Bizkit, but the guitarist has long been known for a desire to roam across musical genres. In 2016 he released Crystal Machete, a solo work described as the soundtrack to a movie that was never made – and it was most definitely a prog record. He explained his complex motivations later that year.

Best known for his work as the guitarist with Limp Bizkit (“It allows me to play this science fiction stuntman character”), Wes Borland is on a new musical journey.

Previously he’s fronted and recorded with the industrial band Black Light Burns. He also writes and plays with Queen Kwong. But he says his latest venture, his Crystal Machete album, is the first project in which he’s truly found his own voice. Not that you’ll hear him singing on the record: “I just don’t like my voice very much!”

Crystal Machete is an experimental electronica album written as a soundtrack for an 80s sci-fi movie which was never made. By Borland’s own admission, it’s a calling card to Hollywood – but also a snapshot of where he is now musically.

Ambitiously made almost entirely in isolation in his Detroit home studio, and eschewing any hint of electric guitar or conventional vocals, fans of John Zorn, Hawkind and even Radiohead will find something to like here; Limp Bizkit fans, less so. Though as Borland says: “That’s fine with me. I usually like people who don’t like Bizkit.”

Crystal Machete sounds like the name of a heavy metal band you might form when you’re 15.

There were elements of it that were kind of inspired by the 80s, with synthesiser soundtracks, and I was looking at different 80s movies and how they had the chrome logos – Predator, Blade Runner, Legend – and I was thinking of some kind of object like in Krull, the weapon in that, and it had to be silly but serious. I was thinking something Crystal, it couldn’t be the Crystal Sword, so it became the Crystal Machete. That’s what the album was sounding like to me.

You’ve said that this album is a calling card to where you’d like to be in the future. Does that mean film soundtrack work?

Absolutely. I’ve done some indie movies in the past, a few really terrible horror movies – Saw movies and a few Resident Evil films. I’m 41 and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less and less interested in the concept of the band. I don’t really enjoy working with other people. I don’t find other people’s ideas inspiring. I’ve gone into my own bubble.

It’s not that I don’t play well with others – I’ve been let down by people so many times and my schedule has been completely muddled and destroyed by other people’s inability to have a work ethic. I just can’t do it any more.

Is it different writing and working in Detroit as opposed to Los Angeles?

In LA the space is compressed. My studio there was claustrophobic. In Detroit I have a fully functioning studio – it’s in what was the ballroom. All the houses in my neighbourhood were built in the 20s and they have ballrooms and billiard rooms in the basement, so the billiard room is the control room, the ballroom is the live room.

Why move to Detroit?

I was just disgustedly sick of LA. Every single person is always going to be doing something next and it never happens. In Detroit, the people there really want the city to come back to life and there’s a lot of pride, some great people coming in, lots of development, great history.

At one point you were up for the role of live guitarist in Nine Inch Nails.

I decided to do Black Light Burns instead of being a hired gun, which was the wrong thing to do in hindsight. I’m happy I did BLB, but it’s a little more testosterone-driven than I would like to be in the future.

But you’re in Limp Bizkit! That’s the most testosterone-driven band in the world.

Yeah, but I just play that character on TV!

You’ve said you finally found your voice on this record.

I think it’s where I’ve wanted to be musically for years and I’ve just never been able to really execute it. I don’t want to make angry records any more. I want to make records that are fun, relaxing and a delight to listen to. I’ve also run out of artists that I want to listen to. I find very few things that move me.

So are there any artists who informed this album?

Air, Daft Punk, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher. John Zorn in all of his mightiness in all the records he’s made, from Naked City to Music For Children, all the amazing things he’s done. I’m a disciple of his. That first Mr Bungle album, he produced that – that’s how I found him. That album became the mark to meet for the rest of my life.

What do you think Wes Borland fans are going to make of Crystal Machete?

This is who I am… I’ve felt very misunderstood for years and I’ve also felt like I’ve been putting the wrong foot forward for a long time. It’s the little things, like it’ll take a while for Spotify to modify search results to where, when my name comes up, you don’t also end up seeing a band like Drowning Pool. I’m waiting for that day!