Classic Rock Magazine

More than just a flashy sidekick?

Ian Dury: Equal parts music-hall scamp, art school troubadour, estuary poet and new-wave figurehead

Desperate for major label success, The Tubes turned to David Foster, who had just struck gold with Earth, Wind And Fire

Mahavishnu Orchestra's The Inner Mounting Flame was the first jazz-rock album that found favour among significant numbers of rock aficionados

What happened to Jeff Lynne in between the Idle Race and the Electric Light Orchestra

Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover's endearing all-star 1974 period piece revisited

Hated by their US record company, Twisted Sister's You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll was a mission statement and a launchpad

Extreme's third album, the three-part III Sides To Every Story, was the sound of a band over-reaching themselves

Stick a pin in Eric Clapton’s late-period work and you’re liable to hit a stinker, but for sheer lack of invention, Pilgrim is routinely held up as his lowest ebb

For their second album, The Band relocated from upstate New York to California and turned Sammy Davis Jr.’s poolhouse into a makeshift studio

The trousers were tight, the guitars were wielded like weapons, but The Datsuns' second album hasn't aged well

Two decades on and people still can't decide whether Permission To Land is parody, pastiche or perfection

The final entry into Black Sabbath's original golden run, Sabotage is often hailed as the band's heaviest and most fearless album. But is it really?

Made between the much-derided Burnin' Sky and the much-derided Rough Diamonds, Desolation Angels was heralded as a return to form - but was it?

Dixie Chicken solidified Little Feat's reputation before later albums saw them drifting towards a jazzier sound

After being let go by Whitesnake, John Sykes returned with supergroup Blue Murder and a debut album that failed at the box office

Arriving after a difficult gestation, Dust found Mark Lanegan tweaking the Screaming Trees blueprint

In which former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore attempts to forge a new career in the post-NWOBHM rock landscape and also writes some ballads

Released in between Pink Floyd's Animals and The Wall, David Gilmour's self-titled solo album laid the groundwork for future releases

Blonde On Blonde is the album that saw Bob Dylan complete the transition from folk to rock artist

In which Talking Heads seamlessly merged funk, afrobeat and early hip-hop rhythms with their more abrasive art-rock ideas

Featuring members of Yes, ELP and King Crimson, Asia were billed as a prog rock supergroup but kept it concise, to enormous success