Humanity: Hour 1 (Sony, 2007)

The Scorpions found themselves out of step with prevailing trends in the 90s, and floundered as a result. But the low point of their career came in 2007, with this misguided attempt to contemporise their sound.

Bringing in Midas-like songwriter/producer Desmond Child is understandable, although why they thought it necessary to enlist the help of Smashing Pumpkins mainman Billy Corgan and ex-Marilyn Manson guitarist John5, only Rudolf Schenker knows. The upshot was a chaotic mess. If the plan was to prove their relevance, it backfired badly. The sole saving grace is that they never made Humanity: Hour 2.

Eye II Eye (East West, 1999)

A pop rock mess. While this band have always written huge anthems and intensely melodic songs, here they abandoned their well-honed approach, and the result was disastrous. This was a lightweight release, with scarcely any sign of riffs or guitar solos, and a strange reliance on keyboards, provided by producer Peter Wolf.

To Be No. 1 was decent enough, but the rest of the material had the sniff of being Def Leppard cast offs. This was a classic band desperately attempting to be relevant – and falling flat.

Pure Instinct (East West, 1996)

At least this was a little better than Eye II Eye, but that’s hardly praise. The problem here was that the production was too smooth. Keith Olsen, renowned for his commercial instincts, was brought in, and he neutered the Scorps’ tendency to open up and really go for the throat.

The songs themselves aren’t at all bad, and you get the feeling that with a more sympathetic production Wild Child, You And I and Does Anyone Know? could have been outstanding, But here, they slither and flop. A wasted opportunity.

Lonesome Crow (Brain, 1972)

The debut Scorpions album, and a bit of a curio. It’s the only one they made with Michael Schenker as a full-time member. And, despite his youth, he was just 16 at the time, some of his solos here are remarkable.

But overall, you can tell this was a very young band searching for a direction. This is very psychedelic, and it doesn’t really suit the band’s burgeoning talents. However, In Search Of The Peace Of Mind is impressive, and overall the album has a musical value.

Face The Heat (Mercury, 1993)

While the band here began their trawl through contemporary trends, in order to fit in with what was happening, unlike subsequent attempts, this is actually quite enthralling.

You’d never regard this as being close to the Scorps’ classic albums, but producer Bruce Fairbairn brought out the poppier side of the band without ditching the hammer blows they could wreak. And it also helped that the songs were more than reasonable. Alien Nation and Under The Same Sun had class and depth.

Sting In The Tail (Sony, 2010)

For once, the goal of updating the Scorpions’ sound to make it fit into the modern world actually almost worked. Unlike previous efforts, this time the band didn’t make the mistake of just scrapping everything they’d done previously and rushing headlong into a contemporary cul-de-sac.

A more thoughtful approach meant they kept the best elements from the 80s and finessed these. The Good Die Young featured a sparkling duet between Klaus Meine and Tarja Turunen, and the whole album hummed with purpose.

Fly To The Rainbow (Sony, 1974)

This is really where the Scorpions as we know them truly began. With Ulrich Roth coming in to replace Michael Schenker, the band opened up their horizons, combining Roth’s fascination (some might call it an obsession) with Hendrix and a sharper, harder sound.

You can hear how this worked on songs like Speedy’s Coming and the title track. The band had found their niche, and here they embraced it with feeling. This was British hard rock, but given an individual twist. Nobody else sounded quite like this.

Taken By Force (Sony, 1977)

The final album with Roth, and while it perhaps showed signs that the style which had helped them to break through internationally was becoming a little jaded, there are still some powerful moments. None more so than the mesmeric We’ll Burn The Sky.

And The Sails Of Charon, plus the suggestive He’s A Woman, She’s A Man were also right up there with the best of the band’s output in this era. Controversy raged over the album artwork, but that was almost the norm for this lot.

Unbreakable (BMG, 2004)

Released on the back of a series of mediocre albums and unwise dabblings with ‘modern’ trends, Unbreakable thankfully saw the Scorpions returning to what they did best. Their original plan was to reunite with producer Dieter Dierk. And while that never materialised, the band still managed to come up with a set of straightforward, melodic hard rock anthems in the classic Scorpions tradition.

What really made it work was that they weren’t trying to be anything other than themselves on songs like New Generation, Someday Is Now and Remember The Good Times. The result: their best record for more than a decade.

Savage Amusement (Harvest, 1988)

In many respects, Savage Amusement was the end of an era for the Scorpions, in that it was the last of their albums to be produced by Dieter Dierks and also their final album for the Harvest label. Released four years after Love At First Sting, it was a surprisingly low-key affair.

While it lacks any stone-cold Scorpions classics, Rhythm Of Love and Believe In Love both hold their own, even if the overly glossy production dates them inextricably to their time. But even if Savage Amusement did fall short of the band’s best material, it still managed to show that the Scorpions hadn’t completely lost their sting.

Return To Forever (Sony, 2015)

When the Scorpions announced they intended to revisit old ideas abandoned in the 80s and work them up into songs for a new album, it sounded very desperate. But against all expectations, the plan worked brilliantly.

Return To Forever was the Scorpions returning to what they do best, and coming up with a triumphant set of songs. The band sounded energised and excitable once more, and through We Built This House, House Of Cards and Going Out With A Bang, they roared again.

Crazy World (Mercury, 1990)

Aka ‘The One With Wind Of Change on it’. The band’s biggest hit was either risible or inspirational, depending on your tolerance for lighters-in-the-air anthems about world peace delivered by whistling Germans. Beyond that freakishly successful single, Crazy World is the best Scorpions album of the 90s.

Crucially, the songs retained a strong connection to their past: the likes of Tease Me Please Me, Don’t Believe Her and Lust Or Love wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Animal Magnetism, and the sweeping Send Me An Angel is up there among the band’s finest ballads. There are one or two dips, but it doesn’t disgrace the band’s heritage.

In Trance (Sony, 1975)

Their first album with Dieter Dierks producing, and the one with which the band moved away from their early psychedelic leanings. It’s squarely planted in the world of mid-70s hard rock, with Roth’s virtuoso guitar pyrotechnics a vital counterpoint to the more commercial leanings.

Top Of The Bill celebrates life on the road, and Night Lights allows Roth to show off his chops. But there are some evocative moments too: the title track is the sound of a band who haven’t fully shed their psychedelic skin, while Robot Man is eerily effective. In Trance was also the first album to feature what is now the unmistakable Scorpions logo

Virgin Killer (Sony, 1976)

It’s tough to get past the controversial and, frankly, ill advised sleeve, but musically Virgin Killer is probably the Scorpions’ greatest 70s album. The material was consistently stronger than at any other point during Roth’s tenure with the band, as proved by the number of songs that would become major live favourites in the ensuing years.

Catch Your Train and the dynamic Picture Life positively gallop along, while Polar Nights enable Roth to stretch his creative muscles and show that there was more to him than rehashed Hendrix licks. This album was a key step in the Scorpions’ musical development.

Rock Believer (Vertigo, 2022)

In 2022, the Scorpions' formula remained gleefully intact: galloping guitars and deft choruses – or, as Meine encapsulated ungrammatically in Gas In The Tank: "louder, play it hard". Meine’s vocals retained their emotional undertow, Jabs’s guitar playing still sizzled, and the engine room could still power a small town.

Titles such as the sirens-drenched Gas In The Tank (naturally, this particular engine is not running low, especially since "the king of riffs is back in town"), Unleash The Beast and Knock ’Em Dead re-enforced the message: age will not wither them.

Animal Magnetism (Harvest, 1980)

At the time, the controversy surrounding yet another provocative cover distracted from the music. Animal Magnetism also suffered from being sandwiched between their standout albums, Lovedrive and Blackout.

But there’s much to recommend: The Zoo, with its menacing rhythm, is an all-time Scorpions classic; Make It Real is an electrifying anthem; and Don’t Make No Promises (Your Body Can’t Keep) picks up where the equally lurid Another Piece Of Meat from Lovedrive left off. Throw in the Zeppelin-esque stylings of the title track, and you’re left with an unfairly underappreciated album.

Lovedrive (Harvest, 1979)

Exit Uli Jon Roth, enter Matthias Jabs for the album which found the Scorpions embracing the slick hard rock approach with which they made their name. With Jabs on board (and, on Coast To Coast, Michael Schenker guesting), the songs were sharper and shorter, as well as a little less reliant on extensive guitar solos than during the Roth era.

Dovetailing perfectly with what peers like AC/DC, Aerosmith and Ted Nugent were doing at the time, the Scorpions added arena sparkle to the title track, Another Piece Of Meat and Can’t Get Enough, and the soft-centred Holiday brought another vital element to the band’s armoury: the big, weepy ballad

Love at First Sting (Harvest, 1984)

It’s tempting to suggest that the success of breakthrough single Rock You Like A Hurricane was the sole reason this album became so huge, but that would be misleading. In reality it was down to the fact that the band were at the very top of their game on what remains the classic Scorpions album.

Love At First Sting is packed with high-quality songs that struck a chord with the US market but retained their European roots, and the party metal of Bad Boys Running Wild, fan tribute Coming Home and the heartfelt ballad Still Loving You proved to be winners not only on record but on stage as well.

Blackout (Harvest, 1982)

After half a decade on the cusp, this was the album that marked the band becoming major international players. As they eased into the 80s, the Scorpions became confident and comfortable with the demands of the era.

From the moment that instantly recognisable staccato riff ushers in the title track, there’s not a wasted moment: the pop rock sensibility of No One Like You, the Eastern-tinged inflections of China White, the epic balladry of When The Smoke Is Going Down, and thunderous set-closer Dynamite. Even more remarkable is that Meine was suffering potentially career ending throat problems when they recorded it.

REO Speedwagon - Hi Infidelity (Sony, 1980)

This fine band from Illinois had existed for 12 years before their shot at stardom finally arrived. Seven studio and a pair of live albums paved the way for what became one of 1981’s biggest arena rock records, which eventually sold nine million copies.

Sung by Kevin Cronin (one of the most unmistakable voices in melodic rock), Keep On Loving You established itself among the most famous power ballads of all time, and the harder but equally memorable Take It On The Run, Don’t Let Him Go and Follow My Heart reminding us of the band’s rock credentials.

Styx - Paradise Theater (A&M, 1981)

The last of the Chicago band’s four consecutive triple-platinum releases, Paradise Theater was a concept piece based on a fictional, once glorious but now rundown entertainment venue in their home town – and also a metaphor for the American dream.

For all its unlikely plot, and in stark contrast to the arguments that by now had enveloped the band, Paradise Theater is a cohesive collection of songs, from the strident Rockin’ The Paradise to the pop of Tommy Shaw’s Too Much Time On My Hands, and the Dennis DeYoung crooner The Best Of Times. Styx were living on borrowed time, but it didn’t show.

Foreigner - 4 (Atlantic, 1981)

Disappointed by just three million sales of their previous album, and bickering incessantly, Foreigner were down to a four-piece for their fourth album. Inspired by producer Mutt Lange’s work with City Boy, Foreigner invited him to help their revised band find their feet.

Although Lange could be notoriously difficult, “we were lucky to catch Mutt before he became completely maniacal,” guitarist Mick Jones once told Classic Rock. Juke Box Hero, Urgent and Woman In Black vindicated this decision, the sleek ballad Waiting For A Girl Like You whetting most of the group’s appetite for more of the same.

Journey – Escape (Columbia, 1981)

Journey’s seventh studio album and the group’s fourth with Steve Perry on vocals, Escape represented the perfect distillation of the AOR sound. It’s an exquisite, almost flawless collection of songs, produced to shiny perfection by Kevin Elson and Mike Stone.

Although the full seismic impact of a second single, Don’t Stop Believin’, would not manifest itself until the following millennium when exposed to a new generation of fans, back in the 1980s Escape yielded three further smash 45s, topping the American chart and transforming Journey into stadium-level headliners. Its many delights remain much copied yet never surpassed.

Toto - Toto IV (Columbia, 1982)

Despite having trouble holding on to vocalists, Toto made some fine albums in the 1980s, including Isolation (’84), Fahrenheit (’86) and The Seventh One (’88). But it’s Toto IV that most fans come back to.

Featuring one of rock music’s most emotive ballads, I Won’t Hold You Back, plus the hits that saved the band from certain extinction by transforming them into a household name – Rosanna and Africa – Toto IV is quite brilliantly constructed. In 1982 the music industry was stunned when the band took home six Grammys for Toto IV. But six was only fair – it meant they could keep one each.

Michael Bolton - Everybody’s Crazy (Columbia, 1985)

What’s not to love about former Blackjack singer Michael Bolton’s fourth solo album (the second to use the abbreviated form of real surname Bolotin)? Joined by ex-Blackjack and future Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick, plus AOR royalty in Mark Mangold, Peppy Castro and Terry Brock, Bolton wraps his lungs around some of the genre’s most accomplished compositions.

The title track set mature rock fans blubbing with joy, and Desperate Heart was later covered by Jefferson Starship. Alas, Bolton then turned his back on melodic rock, cultivated the worst mullet in history and became a granny pleaser of the most embarrassing kind.

Europe - The Final Countdown (Epic, 1986)

Few who saw it will forget the first time they saw poodle-permed Joey Tempest leading his equally fluffy bandmates through the video for The Final Countdown.

Although that title song would top the charts in 18 different countries, the Swedish band’s third album is far more than a one-trick pony. Rock The Night and Cherokee kicked like the proverbial mule, Danger On The Tracks was a fine slice of serrated-edged pomp, and Carrie was a top-notch ballad.

The album’s popularity was too much for guitarist John Norum, but after a period of inactivity the classic line-up reformed in 2003.

Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet (Vertigo, 1986)

It’s very difficult to overstate the effect that Slippery When Wet had on both a slowly stagnating melodic rock scene and the music world at large. Almost overnight it seemed Jon Bon Jovi went from virtual unknown to having his grin and vast hair on the covers of everything from Smash Hits and Metal Hammer to The Dental Gazette.

This album, Bon Jovi’s third, definitely merited all of that attention. From the passionate You Give Love A Bad Name and Livin’ On A Prayer to boisterous closer Wild In The Streets, it was the sound of a band igniting a genre and also their own self-confidence.

FM - Indiscreet (Portrait, 1986)

A slap in the face to all those who believed the UK would never produce a band to match the North American giants, Indiscreet was the debut from London-based five-piece FM. Modestly produced by their manager, it was the soulful vocals of guitarist Steve Overland and a batch of masterful songs that separated FM from the chasing Brit pack.

Lively, warm and infectious, songs like That Girl, American Girls, Hot Wired and I Belong To The Night all ably strode the pop-rock barrier, while Frozen Heart is a near timeless ballad.

Def Leppard - Hysteria (Bludgeon Riffola, 1987)

Indignant at he and his bandmates being mistaken for members of Europe or Bon Jovi at airports during the painstaking four years (during which drummer Rick lost an arm in a car accident) it took to complete this, Def Leppard’s fourth album, bassist Rick Savage once said that Def Leppard’s goal with Hysteria was “to show who sounds like who”.

With its tribal rhythms (Rocket), scintillating guitar harmonies (Animal, Love Bites, Pour Some Sugar On Me), and awash with the studio trickery of producer Mutt Lange, Hysteria went on to sell a staggering 16 million copies.

Small Faces - Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (Immediate, 1968)

Packaged in an engagingly surreal sleeve that parodied a well-known brand of tobacco, the Small Faces’ masterpiece is a gleeful toke of very English psychedelia. It’s also very much an album of two halves.

Side one comes stacked with buzzing rock-soul like Rene, Afterglow Of Your Love and the infectious Lazy Sunday, while side two is devoted to a concept about Happiness Stan, who meets talking flies and crazy hermits on his quest to discover the dark side of the moon. Comedian Stanley Unwin links the songs as the band play faerie-folk delights like Mad John and the pure anarchic revelry of Happydaystoytown.

Humble Pie - Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore (A&M, 1971)

They were impressive enough in the studio, but playing live was where Humble Pie really excelled. This sprawling double album, recorded in New York in May 1971, is a magnificent showcase for Marriott’s searing vocals and his fierce interplay with fellow guitarist Peter Frampton.

Apart from the rampaging might of Stone Cold Fever, the songs are spirited covers, from the slow jam of I’m Ready to extended versions of Rolling Stone and the R&B classic I Don’t Need No Doctor. Perhaps the pick of the bunch is a titanic reconfiguration of Dr. John’s I Walk On Gilded Splinters, stretched out dramatically over a wholly compelling 24 minutes.

Small Faces - Small Faces (Decca, 1966)

Nothing epitomised the youthful optimism of full-swing London like the Small Faces’ debut album. The quartet were East End mods at source, creating R&B grooves and tight rhythms for the pounding rush of purple hearts.

Original keyboardist Jimmy Winston was replaced halfway through the sessions by Ian McLagan. A jumped-up version of Sam Cooke’s Shake is great, though it’s the songwriting nexus of Marriott and Ronnie Lane that ultimately stands out. Whatcha Gonna Do About It, co-written with Ian Samwell, landed them a first Top 20 hit, while You Need Loving was later appropriated by Led Zep for Whole Lotta Love.

Small Faces - Small Faces (Immediate, 1967)

Evidently sick of manager Don Arden’s reported habit of withholding their pay cheques, the Small Faces threw in their lot with the Immediate label at the end of 1966. The upshot was this second album proper (sharing its name, confusingly, with their first) that shows them beginning to move away from hard-charging R&B, and instead lacing their songs with psychedelia and fizzy pop art.

There’s a taut economy at work here, not least on the music hall‑ish All Our Yesterdays and a fully stoked Get Yourself Together. The acid-flavoured Green Circles, meanwhile, would find its way into Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man.

Humble Pie - Rock On (A&M, 1971)

Peter Frampton’s studio swansong with Humble Pie (prior to undertaking a solo career that would include Frampton Comes Alive!) is a consummate distillation of their heaving blooze rock. The cocky bluster of Rock On was partly due to the fact that Marriott had been road-testing the songs for some time.

Co-produced with the Small Faces’ old engineer Glyn Johns, standouts include Stone Cold Fever and Marriott’s tender ode to his first wife, A Song For Jenny, on which the band are joined by soul sirens Doris Troy, PP Arnold and Claudia Lennear. And rarely has Marriott sounded as inflamed as on the bluesy Strange Days.

Humble Pie - In Concert: King Biscuit Flower Hour (King Biscuit Flower Hour, 1996)

With Frampton now gone, Humble Pie had essentially become Marriott’s vehicle by the time they pitched up for this show at San Francisco’s Winterland Theatre in May 1973. He’s on ebullient form throughout, as the band run through a set that leans heavily on post-Frampton LPs Smokin’ and Eat It.

Clem Clempson does a fine job as Marriott’s guitarist foil as they tear through Up Our Sleeve and a soulful take on Honky Tonk Women. Marriott is particularly fiery on a spectacular 30 Days In The Hole and the open-ended I Don’t Need No Doctor.

Humble Pie - As Safe As Yesterday Is (Immediate, 1969)

Humble Pie’s debut is, as you might expect from a new band drawing from disparate backgrounds in the Small Faces, The Herd and Spooky Tooth, fairly free-ranging in scope. Hence this grab-bag of wild electric blues, hard rock and psychedelic folk-pop, with harpsichords, tablas and the odd sitar.

There’s also a palpable sense of Marriott and Frampton jostling for space, although the former bags the lion’s share of the songwriting. Stirring hit single Natural Born Bugie is curiously absent, but Buttermilk Boy and Bang! are declarative examples of what Rolling Stone referred to, in an early use of the term, as ‘heavy metal’.

Humble Pie - Smokin’ (A&M, 1972)

The arrival of former Colosseum guitarist Clem Clempson, as Frampton’s replacement, ensured that Humble Pie’s fifth studio album carried enough firepower to maintain their status as boogie boys of the heaviest order.

Indeed, Smokin’ proved to be their biggest seller, making the UK Top 30 and the US Top 10. You’re So Good To Me and Hot ’N’ Nasty (one of two songs featuring guest Stephen Stills) both suggest that the Black Crowes would never have happened without Humble Pie, while 30 Days In The Hole, in which Marriott laments being busted for drugs, became a live favourite. The strain of the sessions led to Marriott collapsing from nervous exhaustion afterwards.

Steve Marriott - Marriott (A&M, 1976)

Humble Pie had spluttered to a sorry end by 1975, amid reports of financial mismanagement and debilitating substance abuse. Drummer Jerry Shirley was candid enough to admit that “the main reason was that we were making bad records”.

Marriott duly returned to the UK from the US and set about making a deliberately schizophrenic solo album. The ‘British’ side recaptures the derring-do of Humble Pie at their best, especially East Side Struttin’ and a rewired version of the old Small Faces tune Wam Bam Thank You Ma’am. Side two is altogether different, showing an intuitive grasp of American soul, gospel and R&B.

Humble Pie - Go For The Throat (Jet, 1981)

Having become increasingly devoid of ideas, both 1974’s Thunderbox and 1975’s Street Rats reinforced the notion that Humble Pie were right to call it a day in the mid-70s. Marriott was less judicious, however, when he opted to re-form the band with Jerry Shirley (plus Bobby Tench on guitar and ‘Sooty’ Jones on bass) for 1980’s On To Victory.

Although sparks were lacking, sales were enough to warrant a follow-up, Go For The Throat. Alas, Marriott’s gruff, unreconstructed R&B sounded passé in the new post-punk climate. It was also an album that smacked of quiet desperation, evinced by redundant covers of Elvis’s All Shook Up and the Small Faces staple Tin Soldier.

What About Now (Mercury, 2013)

“The record is sounding great,” Richie Sambora told Classic Rock ahead of the release of What About Now. He also promised: “We’ll be at a stadium near you very soon!” But as it turned out, the album was a long way off being great, and – more significantly – Sambora quit the band before the first stadium show of their 2013 world tour.

Jon Bon Jovi promptly installed Phil X as his new guitarist, and for Sambora, after the best part of 30 years’ service, What About Now proved a sadly underwhelming swan song. From lame self-help anthems Because We Can and Army Of One to the Springsteen-lite of The Fighter and What’s Left Of Me, it’s surely the worst album Bon Jovi have ever made.

Burning Bridges (Mercury, 2015)

Bon Jovi’s first album without Richie Sambora was also their last for Mercury Records. The best track, Saturday Night Gave Me Sunday Morning, is actually a Sambora co-write, possibly included as a warm send-off to the guitarist.

There is nothing warm, however, about the album’s title track, a parting shot at Mercury’s powers that be, in which JBJ spits. “Here’s a last song you can sell/Let’s call it Burning Bridges/It’s a singalong as well/Ciao, adieu, goodnight, guten abend/Play it for your friends in hell.” Such piss and vinegar would be more admirable were it not for the fact that this album reeks of contractual obligation. JBJ described its contents as “songs that weren’t finished, that were finished, a couple of new ones…” In short, a dumping ground, which he had the chutzpah to call a “fan record”.

2020 (Island/Universal, 2022)

The release of Bon Jovi’s 15th album was delayed for five months by the global pandemic. As a result, two late additions were made to the track listing, including a song named American Reckoning, a meditation on the death of George Floyd and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Musically and lyrically, American Reckoning is very much influenced by Springsteen. What the song lacks is vocal power – a weakness that runs through the whole of this album. There is no hiding that. However, even at his youthful peak, JBJ would have struggled to get anything out of songs as flimsy as the bland opening track Limitless and the hokey ballad Story Of Love.

Bounce (Mercury, 2002)

In the wake of 9/11, Bon Jovi’s response was an album with a life-affirming message. This much is set out in the lead single, Everyday, of which Richie Sambora said: “Time is the most precious thing that you have, so you should try to live every moment to the fullest.”

The album’s title track is built along similar lines, with a defiant positivity in the lyrics and a dense guitar sound. For all the good intentions, however, it’s an album lacking in both depth and finesse. Amid a bunch of formulaic songs co-written with Swedish pop producer Andreas Carlsson is a ballad, You Had Me From Hello, that Westlife might have considered too cheesy.

Forever (Island/Universal, 2024)

First there was Forever. Then, a year later, there was the Legendary Edition, featuring re-records with a host of guest stars. The original album marked the debut of a seven-piece line-up recognising guitarist/producer John Shanks and percussionist Everett Bradley as official band members. More importantly, it was the first new recording since Jon Bon Jovi had vocal cord surgery.

For all that, it’s another humdrum album from a band that has been sleepwalking for years now. The whoah-oh hook in Legendary, the lead single, is a faint echo of past glories. The Legendary Edition includes a new song, Red, White And Jersey, which is as corny as its title suggests, and among the various duets (with Robbie Williams, Avril Lavigne and others), there’s a dream come true for JBJ – singing with his hero Springsteen on the sombre Hollow Man, the best song on the album.

This House Is Not For Sale (Island/Universal, 2016)

In Richie Sambora’s absence, John Shanks handled the guitars as well as production on 2015’s Burning Bridges. A year later, the band’s 14th studio album saw both lead guitarist Phil X and long-serving bassist Hugh McDonald elevated to full band member status. This House Is Not For Sale was also the first album for new label Island Records, and it arrived with JBJ boldly proclaiming: “This record is about our integrity. Integrity matters and we’re at a stage of our career where we don’t have anything left to prove.”

Classic Rock reviewer Emma Johnston concurred: “At this stage in their career, these old dogs don’t need new tricks.” But she added, with unerring accuracy: “This House Is Not For Sale is no masterpiece, and while the punchy title track sonically nods to their heyday, most of it is made up of by-numbers pop.”

Destination Anywhere (Mercury, 1997)

Jon’s second solo album saw him venturing a long way from Blaze Of Glory territory. Destination Anywhere is a mature mainstream pop-rock album with none of the hard rock swagger of his band in its prime. The mood is generally low-key, and it’s the subtler songs that work best – Staring At Your Window With A Suitcase In My Hand, It’s Just Me and Every Word Was A Piece Of My Heart, the latter with shades of U2’s With Or Without You.

Oddly, it’s the songs picked as singles that have aged less well – Queen Of New Orleans, with a stagy drawled vocal, and Midnight In Chelsea, with a prominent bass riff and “sha-la-la” chorus like a parody of Walk On The Wild Side.

Have A Nice Day (Mercury, 2005)

In the three years between Bon Jovi’s eighth studio album, Bounce, and their ninth, Have A Nice Day, there were two major releases from the band: the hits remix collection This Left Feels Right and the rarities box set 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong.

Overall, Have A Nice Day wasn’t much different to Bounce, although the songwriting was marginally stronger – as illustrated by the title track, Who Says You Can’t Go Home and Bells Of Freedom. There’s also a little of the old rowdiness in Last Man Standing, a strangely bitter song about the music business from a man who’s made millions out of it. Also, in an alternative version of Who Says You Can’t Go Home, with Jon in a duet with country singer Jennifer Nettles, there’s a taste of what was to come on the 2007 album Lost Highway.

Lost Highway (Mercury, 2007)

JBJ described Lost Highway as “a Bon Jovi record influenced by Nashville” – in other words, not strictly a country record. But it’s not far off. Production is split 50/50 between John Shanks (promoted in 2024 to rhythm guitarist for the band) and Dann Huff, the former leader of cult AOR band Giant who has since become a leading figure in modern country music.

In addition, two tracks are duets with country artists – Till We Ain’t Strangers Anymore with LeAnn Rimes, We Got It Going On with the duo Big & Rich. The album’s title has echoes of late-‘80s John Cougar Mellencamp, but the standouts are Whole Lot Of Leavin’ and Any Other Day, expertly crafted songs with a perfect balance of country flavour and rock drive. 

The Circle (Mercury, 2009)

Richie Sambora got a little carried away when he said of The Circle: “It rocks hard!” In reality, Bon Jovi’s eleventh studio album and fourth US Number 1 didn’t punch with the same weight as the band’s 80s classics. But it was a marked improvement on 2007’s cheesy country-crossover Lost Highway.

Its first single, We Weren’t Born To Follow, is a vintage Bon Jovi anthem. Brokenpromiseland is U2 on steroids. And although Work For The Working Man didn’t ring as true as Livin’ On A Prayer now that Jon Bon Jovi is worth over $400m, the song was cited as an inspiration by Barack Obama’s chief advisor David Axelrod. At least it wasn’t Dick Cheney.

Blaze Of Glory (Mercury, 1990)

When Jon Bon Jovi’s debut solo single Blaze Of Glory hit Number 1 in the US, it appeared that the band might be finished. But in the end, all Jon needed was a break from a gruelling album/tour cycle. Blaze Of Glory – a mythic cowboy song like Wanted Dead Or Alive – was the theme to the Western Young Guns II.

Featuring heavyweight guests (Jeff Beck, Elton John, Little Richard) and several fine songs (notably Justice In The Barrel), the album was certainly more successful than Jon’s bit part in the film (gunned down in seconds). Better, too, than his other solo album, 1997’s pop-rock turkey Destination Anywhere.

Crush (Mercury, 2000)

Eight years after Keep The Faith updated Bon Jovi’s sound for the 90s, another monster hit, It’s My Life, repeated the trick in the next decade. In a controversial move, Jon and Richie wrote It’s My Life with Swedish hitmaker Max Martin, whose previous clients included Britney Spears.

But not only is this song one of the heaviest Bon Jovi have ever recorded, it’s also a throwback to their 80s pomp, with a classic fist-in-the-air chorus, talk-box guitar from Sambora echoing Livin’ On A Prayer, and lyrics referencing that song’s lead characters Tommy and Gina. The remainder of Crush is at best solid, but no matter: It’s My Life did all the hard work.

7800 ̊ Fahrenheit (Mercury, 1985)

Although the title of Bon Jovi’s second album recorded the temperature of volcanic lava, the reaction from press and public alike was at best lukewarm. 7800 ̊ Fahrenheit was only a minor hit (US 37, UK 28), and left Bon Jovi lagging far behind their rivals. But while it’s no Slippery When Wet, this album is due a reappraisal.

There are some great songs here. In And Out Of Love is prime mid-80s cock rock and best of all is Tokyo Road, a propulsive hard rocker with Jon’s most risqué lyric (“Snortin’ whiskey, drinkin’ coke...”). Fahrenheit is Bon Jovi’s most underrated record.

These Days (Mercury, 1995)

Four of the five band members who recorded the debut album stayed in Bon Jovi for 30 years. But the fifth, Alec John Such, was ‘let go’ before this, the sixth album, his exit attributed to that great rock‘n’roll misnomer, “substance abuse”. With old friend Hugh McDonald replacing Such (albeit not as an official member) the Bon Jovi machine kept rolling on. In the UK, These Days hit Number 1.

Hey God was a powerful modern rock anthem, and on the title track Jon came as close as he ever would to emulating his hero, Bruce Springsteen. For many, this was Bon Jovi’s last great record.

Bon Jovi (Mercury, 1984)

In the first UK review of Bon Jovi’s debut album, veteran critic Paul Suter stated: “Jon Bon Jovi has assembled a band of classic finesse... blessed with a commerciality that should ensure plentiful sales and success.” He wasn’t wrong.

Bon Jovi’s debut didn’t “do a Boston”, but it reached 43 on the US chart. Runaway was the standout track, a supercharged hard-rock anthem, recorded in ’82 before the band existed, with Jon using session musicians. But other brilliant songs, such as Roulette, proved that Jon’s new boys had something special. This album, for all its naivety, is the Jovi connoisseur’s choice.

Keep The Faith (Mercury, 1992)

In the year when Nirvana’s Nevermind topped the US chart, Bon Jovi survived the great hair metal bloodbath by playing it very smart. Jon made headlines by having a haircut, and the band released the symbolically titled Keep The Faith.

The album redefined Bon Jovi as a stadium rock act for a new era. Its title track and flagship single delivered the band’s trademark radio-friendly hooks in a more modern style. The nine-minute Dry County showcased a growing maturity. And the cheesy Bed Of Roses kept the soft rock fans happy. If Slippery... made Bon Jovi’s career, Keep The Faith saved it.

New Jersey (Mercury, 1988)

After the phenomenal success of Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi didn’t mess with a winning formula on the next record, retaining producer Bruce Fairbairn and Child, who co-wrote this album’s juggernaut of a hit single, Bad Medicine.

Having planned on using another innuendo – “68 And I Owe You One” – for the album’s title, they chose instead to honour their roots with New Jersey. And the influence of Jersey’s favourite son, Bruce Springsteen, was evident in Blood On Blood. New Jersey topped the charts in 10 countries and yielded five top 10 US hits, the biggest ever haul for a hard rock album at that point.

Slippery When Wet (Mercury, 1986)

Currently ranked as the 34th biggest-selling studio album of all time, with 28 million copies sold worldwide, Slippery When Wet is an 80s arena-rock classic. Moreover, it rescued Bon Jovi’s career after their second album, 7800 ̊ Fahrenheit, flopped.

Their saviour was songwriter Desmond Child, who, with Jon and Richie, wrote the two breakthrough hits You Give Love A Bad Name and Livin’ On A Prayer. However, the singer and guitarist also wrote some great stuff without Child: the rock-star-as-outlaw anthem Wanted Dead Or Alive, and crowd-pleaser Raise Your Hands. By some distance, Bon Jovi’s best album.

Sheet Music (1974)

“They’re the Beach Boys of Good Vibrations, the Beatles of Penny Lane… they’re sheer brilliance,” Melody Maker wrote of 10cc’s second album, and it was no overstatement. This was 60s pop given a 70s technological lustre by four men who knew their way equally well around a chord change and a studio console.

Sheet Music is a classic of smartness and concision, compressing an array of styles into its 10 tracks, from anti-capitalist rant The Wall Street Shuffle to a song about an aeroplane bomb (Clockwork Creep) and a Technicolor epic about Marilyn Monroe (Somewhere In Hollywood). Music for the eyes and ears.

The Original Soundtrack (1975)

From its Humphrey Ocean-pencilled cover image to its songs about Christ’s no-show, pornographers and drug dealers, 10cc’s third album was a darker affair than its predecessors.

That noir tone extended to the three-art tale of prostitutes and murder in the French capital, Une Nuit A Paris, an eight-minute mini-operetta that surely influenced Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Then there was production landmark I’m Not In Love, arguably the most twisted love song ever to reach No 1, and, with its revolutionary use of looped, layered voices, a signpost for 10cc fans such as Trevor Horn to follow. Eighties pop began here.

10cc (1973)

The balloons-and-bombs logo providing the central image on their debut album’s sleeve superbly captured 10cc’s cartoon logic. It’s a sensational showcase for their skills, including doo-wop pastiche Donna, rock’n’roll revisit Rubber Bullets, early-60s pop homage The Dean And I and revenge-of-the-nerds anthem Sand In My Face.

Elsewhere 10cc rail against the Fourth Estate (Headline Hustler) and driving too fast (Speed Kills), although the latter could easily be about amphetamines, such is 10cc’s ambiguous wit. The fact that they were charting – high – with this stuff was testament to their subversive ingenuity.

How Dare You! (1976)

The last album by the original four didn’t scale the giddy heights of its predecessors, and instead of madcap glee there is a fin-de-siecle feel to 10cc’s satirical pun-gency, from the weary sexual subtext of Head Room to the ‘dumb waiters waiting, sweating, straining/All mass-debating my woman‚’ on Don’t Hang Up.

Still, a lacklustre 10cc was worth most bands at full throttle, and their melodic invention and prog-pop penchant for switching styles and tempos were present on I’m Mandy Fly Me and Art For Art’s Sake, while I Wanna Rule The World crammed several albums’ worth of ideas into four minutes.

Deceptive Bends (1977)

10cc split in 1976, giving us the art-school axis (Godley & Creme) and the professional songwriter wing of Gouldman and Stewart. The latter, retaining custody of the 10cc name, emerged as the commercially viable partnership with Deceptive Bends, including The Things We Do For Love and Good Morning Judge, possessing the pizazz of yore.

The album even had its own G&C-style tripartite song suite in Feel The Benefit Pt 1-3. People In Love was a lachrymose ballad too far for Godley, prompting his and Creme’s departure long before the album was recorded, but Honeymoon With B Troop proved Stewart and Gouldman could do quirky too.

Godley & Creme: Consequences (1977)

Consequences found Godley & Creme at the furthest extreme from their former bandmates. A triple box-set concept album concerning ecological disaster, with narration by comedian Peter Cook and a cameo from jazz singer Sarah Vaughan? Hardly surprising that Godley had baulked at the banal limitations of People In Love.

Consequences was an audacious quasi-musical with avant-garde elements. Some of it was accessible, but G&C insisted on adding random noise bursts to it. Still, there were tracks that proved their pop sensibility was intact, albeit surrounded by acres of demented experimentation.

Bloody Tourists (1978)

For those who’d been following the band members’ story since the 60s, the Gouldman-Stewart iteration of 10cc will have been manna from heaven, with the focus now on traditional songwriting verities. Gone, largely, were the manic zips between tempos/styles, replaced by a more measured, mellow MOR approach.

Bloody Tourists did have its wry moments – Dreadlock Holiday being the obvious example – and there were bursts of pop absurdity such as Shock On The Tube (Don’t Want Love), but it was mainly adult easy listening, with signs that our heroes were becoming increasingly estranged on solo writing forays.

Godley & Creme: L (1978)

The job of maintaining 10cc’s reputation as the brothers of invention was left to Godley & Creme, who with their second album produced a pithy showcase for their wayward talents with a single, 30-minute LP.

There were no conceptual digressions, just pop songs. Or songs-within-songs: This Sporting Life featured a Zappa-esque collage of fragments. Hit Factory/Business Is Business suggested they’d been scarred by the hostile reaction to Consequences, but elsewhere fun was on the menu, such as the playful doo-wop of Art School Canteen. If L sounds like two art-school kids running amok in the studio, that’s because it is.

Godley & Creme: Freeze Frame (1979)

On their third album, Godley & Creme came across as peers of the new-wave art-punk brigade. The title track was mutoid funk that name-checked the early 10cc (when they were called Hotlegs) hit Neanderthal Man. With their referential, postmodern techniques, 10cc were more precursors of the sampling age than they were remnants of the Merseybeat era.

And G&C picked up that mantle admirably here. On I Pity Inanimate Objects, all voices and instruments are tweaked and treated. Marciano is pristine proto-electronica. Guest guitarist Phil Manzanera described G&C as the two smartest operators he’d ever worked with, Eno included.

Look Hear? (Mercury, 1980)

With its Hipgnosis artwork making capital (letters) of the phrase ‘Are You Normal?’, you could have been forgiven for assuming there might be a return to playful, peculiar 10cc on their seventh album.

Instead it’s awash with sensible songwriting, the corollary, perhaps, of a band, previously fearless, responding cautiously and conservatively to changing market conditions. Look Hear? was full of middling rock, cod-reggae, lifeless ballads, and pop without any of the irresistible choruses or prankster attitude of yore. The same, sadly, can be said of any of the remaining albums bearing 10cc’s name, from 1981’s Ten Out Of 10 to 1995’s Mirror Mirror.

Never Turn Your Back On A Friend (MCA, 1973)

Budgie’s third album is the perfect distillation of their style. Characterised by Tony Bourge’s inventive riffs, the high-pitched vocals of Burke Shelley and Ray Phillips’s industrious drumming, it is the work of a group full of self-confidence, who also benefitted from their first own production.

It contains the Metallica-popularised Breadfan, their most famous composition, plus the epic Parents, the latter debatably Budgie’s finest 10-and-a-half minutes. The bonus features of 2004’s expanded edition include footage of Breadfan from The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973.

Bandolier (MCA, 1975)

With its clever, Planet Of The Apes-esque cover image of budgies on horseback, Bandolier is Budgie’s most varied collection of songs. Introduced by Breaking All The House Rules, a boogie shuffle with a punchy guitar motif, this fifth album also has its fair share of drama. Slipaway is an achingly beautiful ballad, while the album’s single, a remake of Andy Fairweather Low’s I Ain’t No Mountain, displayed unappreciated chart potential.

But unquestionably its piece de resistance is the seven-minute Napoleon Bona-Parts One And Two; seductive and soft at the beginning, juxtaposed with a thunderous yet melodic climax.

Budgie (MCA, 1971)

Budgie’s self-titled debut was recorded in just three days with Black Sabbath producer Rodger Bain. The 2004 remaster narrowly failed to rectify its muffled sound. Sometimes used as a lead instrument, Shelley’s Geddy Lee-style screech and the band’s exploration of time signatures detract from Bain’s sludgy mix, resulting in a prime slab of beefy 1970s hard rock.

Looking back at this album, Shelley called the band’s instrumental skills “a bit dodgy”. But there’s no mistaking the spark of material like Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman and Guts, both of which remain in their current live set.

Squawk (MCA, 1972)

Once again produced by Rodger Bain (though this time in a week), Squawk saw Budgie attempting to occupy more progressive-inclined airspace. Although only a year after their debut, the band’s maturity was evident, from Tony Bourge’s extravagant guitar solo during the electrified pounding of Rocking Man, to the airiness of the acoustic Rolling Home Again and the Zeppelin-flavoured Make Me Happy.

The union of Shelley and Phillips’s rhythmic interplay and Bourge’s fretboard dexterity is best displayed on Hot As A Docker’s Armpit, a song indebted in part to Mars from Holst’s The Planets Suite.

In For The Kill (MCA, 1974)

With newcomer Pete Boot lacking Ray Phillips’s timekeeping discipline, Budgie’s fourth album was an absolute juggernaut. Although Boot turned out to be a temporary appointment his bulldozer technique was perfect for In For The Kill’s marauding title song (covered by Van Halen in their bar band days).

Crash Course In Brain Surgery was also made famous by mega-fans Metallica, and Zoom Club and the powerful blues of Hammer And Tongs bring strength in depth. And no Budgie album is complete without an interlude of lightweight whimsy, in this case Wondering What Everyone Knows.

The BBC Recordings (Noteworthy, 2006)

Condensing the best bits from a pair of two-discs archive sets (1997’s We Came, We Saw… and the following year’s Heavier Than Air – Rarest Eggs) into a more manageable size, The BBC Years documents five sessions for the Beeb.

There are four songs from London’s Paris Theatre in 1972, a John Peel session two years later, three tracks recorded for The Friday Rock Show in 1981 and, best of all, material from two highly popular appearances at the Reading Festival from the early 1980s. With 23 tracks on offer there’s some duplication, but this collection is worth buying for the Reading material alone.

Impeckable (A&M, 1978)

Frustrated by MCA Records’ lack of commitment, Budgie had moved to A&M for the previous album, but internal problems (including multiple divorces) failed to improve the situation.

Impeckable saw Tony Bourge add some funk-infused licks to his repertoire but it turned out to be the guitarist’s swansong. If, as Burke Shelley has claimed, the band were too preoccupied with lawyers to have fully developed its content, this self-produced album could have been frighteningly good.

There’s scarcely a second-rate song here, and All At Sea, Pyramids, Don’t Go Away, Don’t Dilute The Water and stage favourite Melt The Ice Away are all exceptional.

Power Supply (RCA, 1980)

Of the reunited Budgie’s three albums with guitarist John Thomas, Power Supply pips the following year’s Nightflight at the post. But it’s a very close call.

With the focus on shorter though equally dynamic and more tastefully produced material, aptly titled bruisers like Forearm Smash, Gunslinger and the pick of the bunch, Crime Against The World, the reborn Budgie were embraced by aficionados of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, despite the limp Time To Remember. A 2000 Repertoire Records revision adds the If Swallowed Do Not Induce Vomiting EP.

You’re All Living In Cuckooland (NotewoRthy, 2006)

Unlike many of their contemporaries that returned from 20-year recording breaks, Budgie offered not even the faintest whiff of tokenism with You’re All Living In Cuckooland. Burke Shelley and Steve Williams had gigged extensively with their new (now departed) guitarist Simon Lees, whose style integrated flashy lead runs and the heavy-duty riffing of his many predecessors, best exemplified by Dead Men Don’t Talk and Justice.

The hugely memorable title song was an engaging slice of balladry, I’m Compressing The Comb On A Cockrell’s Head was yet another trademark preposterous title.

Deliver Us From Evil (RCA, 1982)

With their last original album for 20 years, Budgie lost the plot. The tracks were so plastered with keyboards that the band ended up borrowing Ozzy’s Lindsay Bridgwater to join them on the road. And it says plenty that Shelley described Alison as “a really middle-of-the-road song for my girlfriend”.

Truth Drug, Bored With Russia and Hold On To Love are isolated face-saving moments, but Deliver Us From Evil sounded suspiciously like the work of a Budgie nailed to its perch. To borrow a line from Monty Python: “It would no longer ‘Voom’ if you put four million volts through it. He’s bleedin’ demised!”

Roots (Roadrunner, 1996)

Roots is the sound of Sepultura refusing to be contained by metal’s rule book, and opting to detonate it instead. The album synthesised down-tuned grooves, hip-hop cadences and alternative-metal heft, but its concussive force lay in its embrace of Brazilian identity. Indigenous rhythms, expanded percussion and field recordings powered tracks like Ratamahatta and Itsári, forging a confrontational strain of global metal that had no precedent.

Even the more direct bruisers pulse with a primal authority. Controversial, sprawling and punishing, Roots remains a generational statement that reshaped heavy music’s future.

Beneath The Remains (Roadrunner, 1989)

This is the moment Sepultura exploded from regional obscurity into the global extreme-metal conversation – and did so without compromise. Their identity crystallised – leaner, sharper, and impossible to ignore. From the title track’s opening assault to the closing devastation of Primitive Future, there is no filler, only escalation.

Inner Self and Stronger Than Hate provided the band’s first true anthems, while Mass Hypnosis and Slaves Of Pain showcased Kisser’s virtuosity and Igor Cavalera’s wind-whipping tempos. An album that doesn’t introduce Sepultura so much as impose them.

Arise (Roadrunner, 1991)

Building on Beneath The Remains, Arise refined the band’s death/ thrash assault into something sharper, more confident and brutally efficient. The title track and Dead Embryonic Cells remain definitive statements, their precision and venom amplified by famously confrontational videos.

Desperate Cry and Altered State stretch the formula without diluting it, and at the centre of it all, Max Cavalera’s gasolinesoaked vocals and bluntly political lyrics cement the album’s urgency and ferocity. While innovation took a back seat to consolidation, Arise is a genre benchmark whose authority has grown with time.

Chaos A.D. (Epic, 1993)

Chaos A.D. marks the point where Sepultura stopped chasing extremity for its own sake and instead weaponised simplicity. They tightened their attack, slowing tempos and foregrounding groove, texture and political intent.

Standouts like Refuse/Resist, Territory and Propaganda distilled death metal, hardcore and classic metal into instantly absorbing forms, while collaborations with Jello Biafra signalled widened horizons. By stripping excess and amplifying rhythm, Chaos A.D. redefined heaviness itself, laying the blueprint for groove metal, modern hardcore crossover and everything that followed.

Kairos (Nuclear Blast, 2011)

Kairos is the most credible reclamation of Sepultura’s post-Cavalera identity. After years of concept-heavy sprawl, the band stripped back to shorter, punchier tracks rooted in thrash and groove, reconnecting with the physical urgency of their middle years.

While critics noted an absence of instant classics, tracks like Born Strong and Mask succeed through focus and intent rather than reinvention. Derrick Green sounds fully embedded rather than provisional, and Kisser delivers some of his sharpest late-era work. It’s not a rebirth, but it’s enough to elevate it above transitional releases and justify its superiority.

Quadra (Nuclear Blast, 2020)

Quadra is the album that finally silenced the idea that Sepultura’s best days were irretrievably behind them. Structured around four stylistic ‘quadrants’, it functions as both synthesis and statement, uniting thrash ferocity, Roots-era groove, progressive experimentation and unexpected melody.

Isolation and Means To An End reconnect with the band’s early violence, powered by (future Slipknot) drummer Eloy Casagrande’s explosive attack, while Capital Enslavement and Guardians Of Earth lean into rhythmic and textural depth. Quadra stands shoulder to shoulder with Sepultura’s finest work.

Against (Roadrunner, 1998)

Against is a public act of defiance. Released in the immediate aftermath of Max Cavalera’s exit, it documents a band refusing to disappear quietly, even as the ground shifts beneath them. The confrontational opening run feels deliberately bruising, as if Sepultura are daring listeners to keep up.

Yet uncertainty seeps in as the record unfolds, torn between the discipline of Chaos A.D. and the lingering shadow of Roots. Derrick Green’s arrival is competent rather than transformative, and the band’s search for a new centre isn’t fully resolved. Still, Against earns its place as a necessary, transitional statement – survival music made while under fire.

Dante XXI (SPV, 2006)

Conceived at a moment when Sepultura were searching for intellectual and artistic legitimacy in the post–Cavalera era, Dante’s literary ambition was no small gamble. Drawing loosely on Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the album frames the band’s ongoing turmoil as a descent and reckoning, rather than a rebirth.

Sonically, it’s more cohesive than its reputation suggests, balancing speed-driven aggression with darker, slower passages that hint at post-metal and doom. Dante XXI succeeds as a serious, engaged attempt to redefine Sepultura’s identity on their own terms. It doesn’t resolve the crisis, but it confronts it head-on.

Nation (Roadrunner, 2001)

Nation captures Sepultura at their most ideologically earnest and artistically conflicted. Caught between moral urgency and creative uncertainty, it doubled down on political vision, framing itself as a utopian manifesto built on unity and resistance.

The intent is sincere, but the execution wavers. Tracks like Sepulnation and Border Wars gesture toward collective purpose, yet often feel like diluted echoes of Roots, while flirtations with nu metal date the record. Still, Nation matters as a document of a band refusing to coast; a probing search for relevance and cohesion while struggling to translate those convictions into consistently compelling songs.

A-Lex (SPV, 2009)

A-Lex found Sepultura stripped of founding drummer Igor Cavalera and under gathering existential pressure. Framed around Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, it doubles down on concept at the expense of character.

The songs hit hard, efficiently and often anonymously, leaning on hardcore-tinged churn rather than the rhythmic danger or cultural tension that once defined the band. Derrick Green’s vocals are fierce and committed, and Andreas Kisser’s riffs rarely misfire, but intensity alone can’t disguise the album’s emotional flatness. Lacking both immediacy and strong identity, A-Lex stands as a monument to overreaching.

Something/Anything? (Bearsville, 1972)

"Go ahead, ignore me." So teased the ad for this “twin pack”, showing the 23-year-old Rundgren holding a match to several sticks of dynamite. As career explosions go, it’s undeniable. Rundgren recorded all day at LA’s ID Sound and all night in his Nichols Canyon home, writing, producing and playing every instrument (only side four has other musicians).

The results – jangly pop (Couldn’t I Just Tell You), screaming blues (Black Maria), musical comedy (Song Of The Viking) and hit singles (Hello It’s Me, I Saw The Light) – unleashed a prolific imagination and pointed the way to boundless exploration.

A Wizard, A True Star (Bearsville, 1973)

While everyone else was swooning over Something/ Anything?, Rundgren dismissed it as “musically lazy” and “too formulaic”. And so, with the help of magic mushrooms and his newly built studio, Secret Sound, he dug deeper, striving to “map the chaotic musical element” in his head.

And he did it, with all the Technicolor vividness reflected on Wizard’s sleeve. Song fragments, laughing orgies, dog fights, synth burbles, soul covers and mood shifts all flow together. From International Feel to Never Never Land and Just One Victory, it remains an achievement on a par with Sgt. Pepper’s and Innervisions.

Initiation (Bearsville, 1975)

"I was born to synthesise, energise and catalyse," Rundgren sings on Born To Synthesize, a song that could double as a career mission statement. Although he would strike a balance between prog complexity and pop commercialism on several records with his band Utopia, his sixth solo album provides the most satisfying blend.

Side one’s concept, about the evolution of consciousness, is challenging and soulful, with gems Real Man and Fair Warning. Side two’s A Treatise On Cosmic Fire finds Rundgren and future Utopia member Roger Powell going down the synth rabbit hole with mind-expanding results.

Hermit Of Mink Hollow (Bearsville, 1978)

This is the most accessible and focused example of Rundgren the songwriter and auteur. After a break-up with his girlfriend Bebe Buell, Rundgren left NYC and holed up in Woodstock, letting his introspection lead the way to deeply affecting songs like Lucky Guy, Determination, You Cried Wolf and the hit Can We Still Be Friends.

In a career full of brilliant vocal arranging, album closer Fade Away stands as a high point, with its one-man choir counterpoint melodies. When you want to introduce friends to the wonders of Rundgren, this is the album you should suggest.

Utopia - Adventures In Utopia (Bearsville, 1979)

Utopia started in 1974 as the prog-rock offshoot of Rundgren’s imagination, then evolved, shedding stylistic skins and group members.

It reached its peak on this near-perfect pop album, featuring standouts Second Nature, The Very Last Time and the hit Set Me Free. It was also as democratic as Rundgren would ever be, sharing songwriting and vocals with multi-instrumentalist bandmates Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and Willie Wilcox.

The supporting tour showcased what a formidable and charismatic live band this was.

Nearly Human (Warner Bros, 1989)

After spending most of the 80s riding the crest of the technology wave, embracing – and often pioneering – video and digital recording techniques, Rundgren went back to basics, cutting tracks live in the studio.

For each song on this album, he and backing singer (and future wife) Michele Gray assembled super groups, with musicians from Utopia, The Tubes, the E Street Band and Bourgeois Tagg. The result, especially on Parallel Lines, Fidelity and Feel It, captures the same kind of living, breathing soul orchestration of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On, which was a key inspiration throughout.

Liars (Sanctuary, 2004)

A late-period major work. The concept of lies – from the small fibs we tell ourselves, to endless political and media spin, to handed-down spiritual myths – provides Rundgren with a canvas on which to bring 40 years of compositional experience to bear.

Although the subject matter on the album is serious, the music is some of his catchiest in years, from the soul swoon of Sweet to the electronica-in-space of Afterlife to the arena rock of Mammon. Released some 12 years before Trump and his culture of mendacity, this record still sounds completely prophetic and, unfortunately, topical.View Deal

Utopia - Utopia (Network, 1982)

In 2006, when Rundgren took an unexpected detour fronting the New Cars with original members Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes, he was candid enough to call it “an opportunity to play to a larger audience with musicians I like, have some fun and pay the bills”. But it seemed a long-overdue acknowledgement that early-80s Utopia were the forgotten band of the new wave.

As melodic, smart and angularly stylish as Squeeze, Elvis Costello or The Cars at their best, this overlooked album gave birth to shoulda-been-huge hits such as Hammer In My Heart, I’m Looking At You, Bad Little Actress and Feet Don’t Fail Me Now.

A Cappella (Warner Brothers, 1985)

Multitudes of Rundgrens had been a trademark of his albums since Something/Anything?, but here he put down all instruments and let his layered voice carry the whole show. Starting aptly with Blue Orpheus, inspired by the myth of a young man who could charm the birds from the trees with his voice, it’s an inventively arranged and performed tour de force, gathering in doo-wop, Philly soul, gospel and Gregorian chants.

This was three years before Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry, Be Happy made ‘a cappella’ a household term. As usual, Rundgren was miles ahead of the curve, and the record remains a forgotten gem.

(Re)Production (Gigatone, 2011)

Avoiding isn’t really an option for lifelong completist Rundgren fans. Even difficult-to-love albums like No World Order and One Long Year (from his early90s dance club/rap era) have worthwhile moments. But this strange exercise in recycling songs from bands he had produced flatters no one.

Rundgren has proved he can do innovative covers (With A Twist, Faithful), but here, everyone from Cheap Trick to Psychedelic Furs gets run through a Cher-goes-techno filter, rendering their material slick and homogenised. Somewhere beneath the gloop and gloss, you can hear flickers of Todd still singing like a champ.

Gong - Flying Teapot (Virgin, 1973)

Regarded by many as the most whimsical of Gong’s eclectic catalogue, this was Hillage’s studio debut with the band. And he had an immediate impact. Despite the eccentric nature of the music, Hillage gave it a psychedelic toughness that brought a cohesive structure to its six tracks.

Partly based on a philosophical treatise by Bertrand Russell, it was also the first part of the celebrated Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy; there are so many brilliant ideas coursing through Zero The Hero And The Witch’s Spell, plus the title track that it takes on a life of its own. Among the great albums of the early 1970s.

Steve Hillage - Green (Virgin, 1978)

Hillage’s fourth solo album remains his best. It was produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, who helped to bring out some quite astonishing guitar performances. At a time when punk was raging hard, with Green Hillage calmly proved that not only was he a virtuoso master of the guitar, but also that he could bring out the distinctive colour of any composition, by knowing when not to play.

Tracks like Sea Nature, Musik Of The Trees and The Glorious Om Riff are spellbinding by the way Hillage envisages music in three dimensions. Overall the album was a magnificent fruition of his dramatic purpose.

Gong - Angel's Egg (Virgin, 1973)

The second part of the acclaimed Radio Gnome trilogy, on the original vinyl version this was split into the Yin and Yang sides. Aside from some utterly bonkers musical ideas, the band show off their peculiar sense of humour, as on Sold To The Highest Buddha and Flute Salad. But these are more than cunning plays on words; Gong show off a breathtaking array of dexterity, with Hillage right at the fore.

Just to show their quirkiness, each member of the band is credited under a rather ludicrous pseudonym; Hillage, for example, is Sub. Capt. Hillage. One of the best Gong albums.

Steve Hillage - L (Virgin, 1976)

The second solo album from Hillage, and the first on which he really found his range and style. It helped having Todd Rundgren on board as the producer, and many of the musicians involved were from his band Utopia.

Half the songs here are covers. But the unshakeably original Hillage takes the likes of Hurdy Gurdy Man and It’s All Too Much and invests them with his own exposition. Hillage’s original songs fit neatly alongside, and overall there’s a joyous sense of freedom which comes from Hillage being allowed to indulge every aspect of his talent and musical spectrum.

Steve Hillage - Motivation Radio (Virgin, 1977)

Hillage’s third solo album sees him extensively employing the synthesiser for the first time, as well as a guitar technique that gives much of the music here a mystical atmosphere.

In some respects the experimental nature of Motivation Radio presaged what Hillage would do more than a decade later with System 7, and the way in which he used synth sounds on Light In The Sky and Radio opened up his horizons to take in new influences. Although not a concept album, this one did have a trademark sound that was carried throughout its nine tracks.

System 7 with Rovo - Phoenix Rising (G-Wave, 2013)

When System 7’s ambient dance style careered into Japanese band Rovo’s more psychedelically jam-based approach, the result could have been catastrophic. As it turned out, it was inspired. Hillage’s restive guitar work not only fits sublimely into the overall sound, it’s arguably also the guiding force. And he revels in the freedom he’s afforded throughout.

This is Hillage reconnecting to the progressive nature that has always lurked in his best recordings, and the album sounds like nothing else in his catalogue. Fiercely undefinable.

Khan - Space Shanty (Eclectic Disc, 1972)

Along with Hillage, also featured in this short-lived Canterbury band was keyboard player Dave Stewart, who would go on to make his name with Hatfield And The North and Bruford. Hillage and Stewart combine unerringly. The former’s enigmatic, melodic playing already had maturity, while Stewart’s fuzzed tone imbued everything with a sense of British psychedelia.

While there’s no doubting the high quality of the music, this is very much a work in progress. The inventiveness of the young band showcased musicians who were gradually finding their own niche in the psychedelic genre. A pity they lasted just one album.

Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick (Virgin, 1979)

Just two tracks here, each taking up a whole side on the original vinyl release. There are those who see this as a start of ‘new age’ music, and it’s easy to see why; the gentility and texture of the music has the feel which would become associated with this genre. In other words, it has a peaceful fluency.

The music was commissioned for the Festival Of Mind, Body And Spirit in London. What Hillage and Miquette Giraudy set out to do was create a musical experience that went against the commercial grain of that event. The result is equally comfortable upfront or as soothing background music.

Gong - 2032 (G-Wave, 2009)

After 35 years, Gong returned to the Radio Gnome mythos for a record that drew heavily on the original trio of albums linked by the concept in the early 70s, yet it also proved that Gong were far from living in the past. Hillage produced and played on it, and gave everything a contemporary sheen, as well as ensuring the psychedelic nuances which had come to define Gong remained intact.

Set in 2032, the story is about the pot-head pixies and octave doctors from the Invisible Planet Gong contacting Earth. There’s enough weirdness to satisfy old Gong devotees, while never alienating newcomers.

System 7 - Seventh Wave (A Wave, 2001)

The trouble with being experimental is that sometimes it can go hideously wrong. And that’s what happened here. Some System 7 albums triumph because Hillage and Giraudy, the main protagonists, were unstoppable. This one just sinks into a morass of half-baked and ill-conceived notions, which ran through house, techno, dance and progressive ideas, but never pulled them together into anything even resembling a coherent structure.

The result is blunderingly loose and rather pointless. If those involved believed they could bluster their way through the absence of ideas, they were wrong.

11. Twelve (2007)

Smith’s heroes have always been benevolent ghosts haunting her musical output, so her decision to make a covers album shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. As an oddity it’s worth a listen, as she tackles everything from Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Doors to Nirvana via Stevie Wonder and Tears For Fears, twisting familiar songs into weird new shapes.

Sometimes it works brilliantly, as on her rendering of Hey Joe, sometimes it burns to the ground as a noble failure, as on her bizarre banjo-toting bluegrass version of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

If an artist sticks around for long enough, a covers album is almost inevitable eventually, so it’s another one to tick off the Hall Of Fame checklist. Whether most people will listen to it more than once, however, is much more doubtful.

10. Dream Of Life (1988)

Opening tracks stand as a statement of intent, and few are as clear as People Have The Power on Dream Of Life, a simplistic AOR rallying cry to stand up against injustice that remains a potent anthem for generations, right up to the current wave of school kids fighting climate change today.

The record was made in collaboration with her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, who replaces Lenny Kaye’s more experimental tendencies with straight-ahead rock, decidedly adult and surprisingly lacking in surprises.

After nine years of domesticity, far from the limelight, Smith’s return to the rock coalface finds her embracing a new vocal maturity, her previous meandering flights of poetic fancy and explosive sonic exploration replaced with muscular, solid rock anthems that leave the fight to the lyrics rather than the music.

9. Gung Ho (2000)

If 1996’s Gone Again and 1997’s Peace And Noise were Smith’s manifestation of personal grief, Gung Ho takes a much more worldly look at existence, opener One Voice calling for togetherness in the fight for the health and happiness of the planet and trumpeting the emergence of Patti Smith as earth mother.

There’s no mincing words or hiding behind metaphor, her cry of 'awake, people arise!' In Upright Come as direct and clear-eyed as it needs to be. Both songs take their cue from her own generation, from the protests against the war in Vietnam in the 60s, regenerating the hippie ideal for the 21st century.

Politics aside, Gung Ho sees Smith playing with language, turning over phrases and throwing in the odd wickedly coarse expression that clearly delighted her the moment it wormed its way into her brain, as on New Party: 'Why don’t you fertilise the lawn with what’s running from your mouth?' After a period of reflection and mourning, this is Patti Smith putting herself back out into the world.

8. Trampin’ (2004)

It’s a family affair, with son Jackson on guitar and daughter Jesse on piano, but that doesn’t mean Trampin’ retreats to domesticity.

Pointedly timely, the album finds Smith providing an outpouring of American shame in Radio Baghdad, a dark and furious examination of Bush-era foreign policy, Smith whipping herself into a rage, Lenny Kaye’s guitar mimicking bombs, a sense of panic interspersed with recordings of Iraqi children playing.

It’s a necessarily tough listen, but it’s counterbalanced by moments of tenderness in the soulful and beautiful Mother Rose and the delicate Peaceable Kingdom, a cautiously optimistic plea to rebuild with hope and kindness in the wake of the horrors of 9/11.

7. Peace And Noise (1997)

Charged by the creative high point of Gone Again, Smith returns a year later with Peace And Noise. Grief in the wake of her husband’s death is still raw, but there’s a sense of looking to the future, of keeping on going and making the most of precious time left on earth, not least in the meandering 10 minutes of improvised, stream-of-consciousness poetry and noise that make up Memento Mori. In fact, her love of poetry is the clearest it’s been in years, Spell taking its cue – and some of its words – from Allen Ginsberg’s Footnote To Howl.

There’s a dignified rage at play, a despairing look at the Heaven’s Gate suicides on Last Call (featuring her long-time friend Michael Stipe of R.E.M.), while elsewhere she rails against corporate greed, wasted young lives, all presented with a sense of furious hope that people can rise up and bring about change. The sadness of its predecessor has been refined and channelled, adding up to a statement of intent from Smith that she still has much to achieve.

6. Wave (1979)

By 1979, Smith was in a relationship with Fred “Sonic” Smith of Detroit garage rock legends The MC5, and opener Frederick is one of the most beautifully pure love songs of its era; a sense of euphoric joy leaping from the speakers set to a classic rock melody that clings to the memory magnetically. It’s so vivid, the fact that Smith turned her back on music for a decade afterwards, choosing blissful domesticity and motherhood over life on the road, should have come as no surprise.

Dancing Barefoot, meanwhile, is a beautiful, spellbinding incantation, Todd Rundgren’s clear-eyed production affording a classic rock accessibility to a song glorying in an almost pagan invitation to love and romantic obsession.

Just five years after her searing debut, Wave is a defiantly polished affair, a goodbye to the scene that spawned her, the bands that imitated her, and the music industry as a whole. But it’s also Smith at her least filtered and most emotionally open, and remains something of an underrated treasure.

5. Gone Again (1996)

Fred “Sonic” Smith passed away in November 1994, and Gone Again stands as a beautiful memorial to a man who was clearly very deeply loved.

In fact, this album pays tribute to the many loved-ones Smith lost in the years following Dream Of Life – her brother Todd, close friend Robert Mapplethorpe and keyboardist of The Patti Smith Group Richard Sohl all died in the time preceding its creation. There are also songs for lost souls she didn’t know well, but identified with: the mournfully pretty About A Boy is clearly written for Kurt Cobain.

The sense of loss is palpable, Smith letting down her barriers to display her fragility and grief, exploring the theme of mortality in a way that feels therapeutic and cathartic. And yet she refuses to sink into self-pity, her defiance in the face of tragedy manifesting itself as empathy and positivity, a celebration of the cosmic privilege of living and loving at all, despite the natural order of things.

That Beneath The Southern Cross features Jeff Buckley in his last studio recording before his death a year later adds further poignance to a deeply moving record.

4. Banga (2012)

Taking its title from the name of Pontius Pilate’s faithful dog in Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel The Master And Margarita, Banga saw Smith on a new creative high after the misstep of Twelve. Its literary inspiration is a wise choice, as the album found Smith on fine storytelling form, from a song imagining the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci to the new world in 1497, to a vivid tribute to the people of Japan after the country was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2011.

Vocally, at the age of 65, Smith sounded the best she had in years, clear and youthful and, in her eulogy for Amy Winehouse, This Is The Girl, invoking the spirit of classic girl-groups. It’s mature without the loss of edge, intellectual but eminently listenable, and suggests there may be more inspiration to mine in the years to come.

3. Radio Ethiopia (1976)

Both more experimental and much heavier than her debut Horses, and not entirely positively received on its release, Smith’s second album feels like more of a band effort than its predecessor, guitarist Lenny Kaye in particular stretching his wings to bring a harder rock edge to the table.

The title track, especially, is scatter-gunned with 70s New York grit. A primal 10-minute noise rock epic, well ahead of its time and threatening to fall apart at any minute, the piece deliberately goes out to provoke and challenge those who came on board with the debut album, and was loved and loathed by fans in equal measure on its release. In fact, it sounds like nothing less than an instruction manual for the art-rock kids waiting in the wings, a not-so-coded message for Sonic Youth and their ilk to rise up, punish their guitars and embrace the noise.

There are elegant moments of beauty to balance it out though, not least in the gorgeous but rough-edged pean to outsiderdom Pissing In A River, a hint of the melodicism Smith was to embrace in its follow-up, Easter.

2. Easter (1978)

Ever the contrarian, with her third album Smith contrived to combine her most mainstream song to date (and still unsurpassed in this sense), and her most shocking.

Steered by the record label, Arista, who were hungry for commercial success, the former, Because The Night, was cowritten with Bruce Springsteen (with his producer, Jimmy Iovine, at the helm) and remains the one Patti Smith song most non-fans know. A fist-pumping power ballad dedicated to rebellious romance, it provided the blueprint for the sound of rock radio throughout the entire decade that followed it.

On the opposite side of the coin is the more artistically and lyrically challenging Rock ’N’ Roll Ni**er, which was clearly not written with the airwaves in mind. Musically, it’s brilliant, a spectacularly heated slab of garage rock. And while even in 1978 the word at its core was offensive, Smith has stated that the song refers to anyone “on the fringe of society”. It’s a jolting shockwave that still ripples outwards today.

The rest of the album lands somewhere between the two extremes and adds up to an endlessly fascinating whole, visceral garage rock rubbing up against tender moments of pure love that hinted at what she was planning for its follow-up, Wave.

1. Horses (1975)

In her memoir, Just Kids, Smith evocatively talks about her youthful escape to New York, her time as photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s muse, life on the gritty, dangerous and thrilling city streets and dingy nights in the Chelsea Hotel, not to mention her equally heated obsessions with both Jim Morrison and Arthur Rimbaud.

Those days are perfectly, vividly captured in her astonishing debut album, an edgy explosion of dirty-fingernailed poetry set to stark garage rock that paved the way for punk to come.

From the opening line of a dismantled and reassembled take on Van Morrison’s Gloria – 'Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine' – it’s clear that this is a singular, uncompromising and shamanic voice, perfect in its imperfection.

Birdland, meanwhile, showcases Smith’s poetry at its most accessible, set to improvised, barely-there guitars and piano, beautifully produced by John Cale, and entirely mesmerising. Unflinchingly exploring religion, death, childhood and the human condition, taking the groundwork of the beat poets and transforming it for a new, even bolder generation, this masterpiece remains essential.

One Vice At A Time (Arista, 1982)

The best album Krokus ever made is also the best AC/DC album that AC/DC never made. No matter how derivative, One Vice At A Time is a prime example of what was known, in the parlance of the times, as cranium-crunchin’ chaos.

The album’s gonzoid, singleentendre opening track Long Stick Goes Boom has the bludgeon riffola of AC/DC circa Powerage, with Marc Storace in a priapic frenzy. That energy and intensity is relentless across heavy-hitting numbers such as Playin’ The Outlaw, To The Top and a cover of The Guess Who’s American Woman (far superior to Lenny Kravitz’s later version).

Headhunter (Arista, 1983)

The band’s biggest hit, Headhunter went gold in the US. It was also, by design, different to One Vice At A Time, which was produced by Tony Platt; the engineer on AC/DC’s Highway To Hell and Back In Black.

For Headhunter, Krokus had Judas Priest producer Tom Allom. They also had Priest singer Rob Halford backing up Storace on the wonderfully OTT heavy metal anthem Ready To Burn. There were shades of Priest in the album’s head-banging title track; a subtler mood in the power ballad Screaming In The Night; and another great cover, of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Stayed Awake All Night. From metal’s golden age, Headhunter is a minor classic.

Metal Rendez-vous (Ariola, 1980)

The fourth Krokus album was the game changer. Storace, a powerhouse singer, lifted the band to a whole new level on the electrifying Metal Rendez-vous. At times they sounded like the new Scorpions – on the blazing Heatstrokes and the non-PC Tokyo Nights. The other influence was AC/DC.

And while this inspired the album’s standout track, Bedside Radio, a rollicking boogie, Krokus pushed their luck a little too far with Shy Kid, its opening lines stolen almost verbatim from Bon Scott’s lyrics to Ride On. Certainly Metal Rendez-vous had its flaws. but Krokus had arrived with a bang.

Hardware (Ariola, 1981)

Hardware has always been overshadowed by what came before and after – the pivotal Metal Rendez-vous and the titanic One Vice At A Time. Hardware delivered the regulation route-one heavy-duty numbers in Mad Racket and Mr. 69. In contrast, there was real depth, an atmospheric quality and emotional power, in Celebration and Winning Man.

The surprise turn – for better and for worse – was Smelly Nelly, the band’s weirdest song. In purely musical terms, it was brilliant; a killer riff offset by spoken verses and bizarre vocal harmonies. But the lyrics were grimly sexist. Whole Lotta Rosie this was not.

Hoodoo (Columbia/Sony, 2010)

28 years after One Vice At A Time, the line-up from that monolithic album was reunited for Hoodoo. Most important of all, this was Chris Von Rohr’s first recording with Krokus since Heart Attack back in 1988.

With Von Rohr as producer, the band sounded revitalised on songs that recalled the crazy days of the early 80s: Drive It In was a thunderous opening salvo, Hoodoo Woman a smoking boogie with a flavour of ZZ Top, and Keep Me Rolling another homage to AC/DC. A version of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild was unnecessary. But with Storace still operating at full power, this was an emphatic, loud and proud return to form.

Dirty Dynamite (The End, 2013)

The band’s most recent release, 2017’s Big Rocks, was just a lazy covers album, but this, their last album of original material, was another late-career triumph, even if the originality of said material was questionable at best.

In the three years since Hoodoo, Krokus had added a third guitarist, Mandy Meyer, who had served the band in the 80s and 2000s. On drums was Kosta Zafiriou, ex-Pink Cream 69. But there was no deviation in style, as Krokus brazenly channelled AC/DC to brilliant effect on Hallelujah Rock N’ Roll, Go Baby Go and the title track. The only bum note was in the obligatory cover – a mauling of The Beatles’ Help!

Painkiller (Mercury, 1978)

The band’s third album was the best they made before they hired a singer of real authority in Marc Storace. Recorded in just six days, Painkiller was impressively rowdy in a rough-and-ready fashion. But it was evident that Krokus needed a proper frontman. Chris Von Rohr, while game, couldn’t sing for toffee.

The album was a curious mix, with opening track Killer evoking Steppenwolf, Get Out Of My Mind a Quo-style boogie, and Rock Me, Rock You an early sign of their AC/DC fixation, while two softer numbers, Susie and Bad Love, exposed Von Rohr’s limitations. The subsequent addition of Storace, formerly of heavy prog act TEA, was the making of them.

The Blitz (Arista, 1984)

Never the most cerebral of men to begin with, Krokus really dumbed it down on The Blitz. In 1984, with hair-metal at the height of fashion, they tarted up their image and covered a 70s glam-rock classic, a trick that had worked for LA rockers Quiet Riot with a hit version of Slade’s Cum On Feel The Noize.

For all their gusto, however, Krokus made a mess of Sweet’s hit Ballroom Blitz, but the album still made the US Top 40. And there was much to enjoy for fans of no-brainer rock – in heroically daft, irony-free songs such as Midnite Maniac, Ready To Rock and Boys Nite Out, the latter a leftover from Bryan Adams’s Reckless.

Hellraiser (AFM, 2006)

In the 90s, as Marc Storace did a Krokus hokey cokey – in, out, in, out – the band made weak albums with singers Peter Tanner (formerly of aptly named Swiss act Headhunter) and Carl Sentance, a Welshman who fronted Persian Risk, the 80s group led by future Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell.

But in the 2000s, Storace was back for good. And while the lineup on Hellraiser was mostly unfamiliar except for guitarist Mandy Meyer, who first played with the band in 1981, there was enough in it to make it a legitimate Krokus album: the brawn in the title track, Midnite Fantasy and Too Wired To Sleep, and the glory of Storace in full cry.

Change Of Address (Arista, 1986)

If ever a rock band handed their balls on a plate to their record company, it was Krokus with Change Of Address. Under orders from Arista to deliver radio-friendly hits, they ended up with the lamest record of their career.

Producer Tom Werman had cut great albums for Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick and Mötley Crüe, but the AOR gloss he applied to Change Of Address failed to mask the mediocrity of songs such as Hot Rock City, a gutless wannabe anthem, Let The Love Begin, a ghastly power ballad, and a cynical remake of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. It was an act of desperation, and it bombed. A nadir for Krokus and for 80s rock.

Shake Your Money Maker (Def American , 1990)

Produced by Rick Rubin’s right- hand man, George Drakoulias, the Black Crowes’ debut kicked off with the 70s-style rock of Twice As Hard and never looked forward. The key hit single, Hard To Handle, was originally recorded by soul legend Otis Redding back in 1968.

But the Crowes were no hackneyed bar band. Their youthful energy, and great songs such as Jealous Again and the acoustic ballad She Talks To Angels, connected with a 90s audience. With eight million units shifted worldwide, Shake Your Money Maker is still the Black Crowes’ biggest-selling album.

The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion (Def American, 1992)

The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion topped the US chart (still the only Crowes album to do so) and remains the Black Crowes’ finest work. With a brilliant new guitarist, Marc Ford, replacing the errant Jeff Cease, the band were on a roll, cutting the whole album in just eight days.

Its heavy, funky, soulful rock‘n’roll – best illustrated by the snaking Remedy and the stoned jam Thorn In My Pride – carried echoes of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sly & The Family Stone. In essence this album is the Crowes’ Sticky Fingers.

Amorica (American, 1994)

For serious Crowes aficionados this third album represents the band’s artistic peak. Amorica was markedly different to the first two albums. Opener Gone kicked ass, but the overall vibe was more mellow, trippy and introspective. The Crowes were extending their reach.

The album’s peak is Wiser Time, an uplifting, spiritual psychedelic jam. The single High Head Blues evoked the swamp-rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival. At the end, there’s Descending, a beautiful, world-weary ballad finished with a wonderful piano coda. The Crowes would never quite reach such heights again.

Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes Live At The Greek (TVT, 2000)

It started, of course, with a jam. At a Crowes gig in London in June 1999 Jimmy Page joined the band for an encore. They played Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, and it felt so good that they decided to tour together. The resulting double live album features landmark Zeppelin songs and blues standards, but, due to contractual obligations, none of the Crowes material they played. This was corrected when a deluxe edition was released in 2024.

The master guitarist gels nicely with Rich Robinson, and Chris Robinson proves that if Zeppelin were ever going to tour without Robert Plant he’s the only man for the job.

Happiness Bastards (Broken Arrow, 2024)

The dynamite reunion shows promised much, and single Wanting And Waiting delivered: the big Rich Robinson riff, the Hammond swell, the hand claps, the backing singers’ ‘ooh’, and Chris Robinson with his ‘blood on fire’ almost audibly twirling the mic and throwing shapes. It shares DNA with 1991’s Jealous Again, but so what? It’s their thing, it’s what we want anyway, and it's not even the best track on the album.

You get the idea, there’s no reinventing the wheel going on, but who needs that class of tiresome messing when they can have a rock’n’roll record that’s funkier than a tramp’s kacks, more soulful than a gospel convention, warmer than a mother’s love and groovier than the Grand Canyon?

A Pound Of Feathers (Broken Arrow, 2024)

Hot on the heels of Happiness Bastards, A Pound Of Feathers flies out of the traps with Profane Prophecy, while Cruel Streak, Do The Parasite, It’s Like That andYou Call This A Good Time all offer varieties on the opener's ironclad formula.

Meanwhile, Pharmacy Chronicles and Queen Of The B-Sides are the pleasing country-tinged Stonesy ballads, High And Lonesome is violin-driven AOR soul that might have heard a Hall & Oates record, and Blood Red Regrets is minor-key Fleetwood Mac with orchestral overtones and a hippie-leaning acoustic breakdown. The Crowes’ blessed resurrection keeps rolling.

The Lost Crowes (American, 2006)

Not just a bunch of B-sides and out-takes, but two complete and previously unreleased albums. On disc one of The Lost Crowes is Band, an album recorded in 1997 but abandoned when the Crowes switched labels and cut the more mainstream By Your Side. Far superior to the preceding Three Snakes And One Charm, it’s a genuine lost classic.

On disc two is Tall, an album recorded in 1993 and then shelved until six of its 16 songs were reworked on Amorica. The standout track (inexplicably left off Amorica) is Feathers, a meditative psychedelic blues. An essential purchase for the Crowes connoisseur.

By Your Side (Columbia, 1998)

Chris Robinson described the making of this album as “the worst period of my life”. Following the departures of guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Johnny Colt, the band had signed to a new label, Columbia, who demanded a radio-friendly album in the vein of Shake Your Money Maker.

“It was the only time we put down out instinctual defences and listened to other people,” Robinson complained. But it worked. By Your Side is a fine album. The Crowes blasted out high-octane rock on Kickin’ My Heart Around, and hit a soulful groove on Only A Fool. Even at his lowest ebb, Chris was still the best singer in rock’n’roll.

Warpaint (Silver Arrow, 2008)

The Crowes’ ‘comeback’ album is all about vibe. Recorded near Woodstock – in a sense, the band’s spiritual home – Warpaint was completed in a week.

“That organic trip is really where it’s at for us,” said Chris Robinson, describing the album’s earthy blend of rock, blues, country, funk and soul.

With Marc Ford out of the band again, and Eddie Harsch gone too, the Crowes found ideal replacements in keyboard player Adam MacDougall and North Mississippi All Stars guitarist Luther Dickinson.

Warpaint might be the Black Crowes’ lowest-selling studio album, but it shares the timeless quality of their best work.

Lions (V2, 2001)

In 2001 The Black Crowes ended up doing what most rock bands eventually do after a decade or more on the album/tour treadmill: they got tired, got pissed-off with each other, made a crap album and split up. Lions is by far the worst Crowes album. It has one great song, the joyous, gospel-inspired Soul Singing, but the rest is so laboured that one critic likened it to the sound of “a tractor trying to get out of a ditch”.

In the summer of 2001 the Crowes embarked on a US tour with Oasis, knowingly dubbed the Tour Of Brotherly Love. But after Chris quit the band on Halloween, he and Rich didn’t speak for three years.

12. Sonic Highways (Roswell/RCA, 2014)

Sonic Highways is much easier to admire than adore. A companion piece to the HBO TV series of the same name, Grohl’s ‘love letter to the history of American music’, the album was compromised due to the concept attached to its creation, namely that each of its eight tracks would be written and recorded in a different US city, inspired by the history and musical heritage of its birthplace.

A brilliant idea for a documentary, one beautifully executed, on record the reverential, respectful nature of the songs is undeniably heartfelt, but – whisper it – all a bit earnest and dull.

11. Medicine At Midnight (Roswell/Columbia, 2021)

Ever keen to offer a snappy soundbite, Dave Grohl has sought to draw comparisons between MAM and David Bowie’s 1983 set Let’s Dance, but the title track’s smooth funk-rock grooves owe more to The Power Station, and Cloudspotter is more Foghat than China Girl.

Pre-release singles Shame Shame (moody), No Son Of Mine (snarly) and Waiting On A War (reflective) make a solid case for the album’s range, but it’s the hazy, largely unheralded Chasing Birds, one of the loveliest songs Grohl has ever penned, which leaves the heaviest footprint. A consolidation rather than a revolution.

10. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (Roswell/RCA, 2007)

As the Foo Fighters entered the second decade of their career, there was, from an outsider perspective at least, little left for the Californian-based band to conquer.

To their credit, the Foos attempted to push beyond their comfort zone with ESP&G, to the extent of re-hiring The Colour And The Shape producer Gil Norton to bust their balls once more as they attempted to integrate all the dynamics of In Your Honor on a single disc. But following the adrenaline jolt of The Pretender, the most thrilling Foo‘s album opener since This Is A Call on their self-titled debut, the album never really catches fire as one might hope.

That said, with their sixth studio set, they walked away with the Grammy for Best Rock Album, which indicates just how high they’d previously set the bar.

9. In Your Honor (Roswell/RCA, 2005)

The grand statement. Given Dave Grohl’s knowledge of, and respect for, rock history, it was, perhaps, inevitable that, at some point in the Foo’s lifetime, they would seek to lay down their magnum opus, an epic, panoramic double album. A decade into the band’s career, it was time, Grohl felt, for “something special.”

Recorded at his own Studio 606 complex, and featuring cameos from Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Queens Of The Stone Age head honcho Josh Homme and, more surprisingly, Norah Jones, IYH was split evenly between thunderous hard rock and intimate, acoustic tracks, 20 songs in total.

Inevitably, this grand design sagged somewhat, but with Best Of You, The Last Song and the title track as stadium slayers, and the tender Cold Day In The Sun and Friend Of A Friend – written about the time Grohl shared an Olympia, Washington apartment with Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain – showing the group’s more vulnerable side, IYH is a triumph. It ended up being the second best-selling album of the year, trumped only by Coldplay’s X&Y.

8. Concrete And Gold (Roswell/Columbia, 2017)

Ahead of convening with Adele/Sia producer Greg Kurstin at Hollywood’s EastWest studio, Dave Grohl set out a mission statement for how he wanted the songs on his band’s ninth studio album to take shape: “Let’s make them long, let’s make them noisy, let’s make them weird,” he told his loyal lieutenants. The results, Grohl later likened, variously, to “Motörhead’s version of Sgt. Pepper” and “Slayer making Pet Sounds.”

Concrete And Gold is no such thing, obviously, but it’s undeniably a collection ambitious in scale and rich in invention, from the stacked choral vocals adding echoes of Queen to the Sabbath/Floyd melding title track, to the sweet psychedelia of Sunday Rain, via widescreen anthems Run and The Sky Is A Neighborhood.

It’s a set which was never likely to imperil the Foo’s stadium rock status, but one which detonated nagging criticisms that Grohl’s unit are risk-averse and complacent.

7. Your Favorite Toy (Roswell/Columbia, 2026)

When it was announced that Foo Fighters were dispensing with the services of drummer Josh Freese to "go in a different direction", few would have imagined that this would result in the group returning to the garage, spiritually speaking. Your Favorite Toy is a deliberate, but only partially successful, retreat to monochromatic rock, and something of a disappointment following on from the colourful creative palette employed on But Here We Are.

Recorded, as was Wasting Light, at Dave Grohl's Encino home, the high points of Your Favorite Toy are the excellent snarling title track, the impressively spiteful Of All People (sparked by an encounter with an infamous '90s rock scene drug dealer), the sweetly understated Window, and soaring album closer Asking For A Friend, while Spit Shine is a passable attempt to recreate the scuzzy spirit of Wattershed. But the likes of If You Only Knew, Unconditional and Amen, Caveman are mediocre filler, while Child Actor - which intriguingly proposes to dissect Grohl's thirst for validation, but ultimately cops out - sounds like an unfinished demo, not least in its run-out where the lyric "Turn the cameras off" is repeated an exhausting 23 times.

6. One By One (Roswell/RCA, 2002)

So dysfunctional were the original sessions for the Foo Fighters’ fourth long-player, that Dave Grohl threatened to break up the band in the middle of conducting a UK magazine interview to promote the then-still-unfinished album.

Famously, One By One was only salvaged after Grohl binned the ‘Million Dollar Demos’ his band recorded at LA’s plush Conway Studios, and started over with Taylor Hawkins back home in Virginia. Grohl has since stated that the album has just four good songs – presumably singles All My Life, Times Like These, Low and Have It All – but time has been kind to this set, and the understated Tired Of You (featuring tasteful guitar shading from Queen’s Brian May) and gnarly closer Come Back are much better than you (or indeed Grohl himself) might remember.

It may be unloved by its creators, but One By One remains the band’s biggest-selling studio album in the UK.

5. But Here We Are (Roswell/RCA, 2022)

As with the first Foo Fighters album, But Here We Are was born out of tragedy, heartache and pain, specifically the passing, in 2022, of drummer Taylor Hawkins and Dave Grohl's mother, Virginia. But where Foo Fighters explicitly, and understandably, steered clear of referencing the death of Kurt Cobain, But Here We Are is dotted with tender, heartbreaking lyrics, making Dave Grohl's raw emotional state and the on-going processing of his grief all too obvious.

So while it's a loving celebration of lives lived well, even the most upbeat, effervescent tracks - Rescued, Nothing At All, Under You - are undercut with almost unbearable poignancy, and listening to the beautiful Show Me How, on which Grohl harmonises with his daughter Violet, almost feels like an intrusion. Regardless of its ranking in this list, after Grohl's cathartic solo debut, this will surely be remembered as the most important album Foo Fighters have ever made.

4. There Is Nothing Left To Lose (Roswell/RCA, 1999)

Having ascended to rock’s top table with The Colour And The Shape, Dave Grohl was in bullish mood as Foo Fighters prepped their third studio album: “It’s time for our version of The Beatles’ White Album,” he boldly declared. Firing his old pal Franz Stahl, the guitarist who’d taken him under his wing in Scream, was very much not part of the masterplan, and when bassist Nate Mendel (briefly) handed in his resignation, Grohl might well have wished he’d taken up that offer from Tom Petty after all.

But back in Virginia, working as a trio in the basement of his new home, the album sessions began to coalesce. While not wholly devoid of raucous riff-rock (the roaring Stacked Actors), the set largely drew influence from mid ’70s soft rock - Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Wings, Supertramp – with songs such the country-tinged Ain’t It The Life and the wistful Aurora conjuring visions of fireside summer camp bonding sessions.

“It was the most relaxed and simple and perfect recording session I’ve ever been in in my life,” Grohl later claimed. “I honestly think it’s my favourite Foo Fighters record… it’s such a relaxed, honest, organic and real album.”

3. Wasting Light (Roswell/RCA, 2011)

The fact that FF album seven was recorded to analogue tape in the garage of Dave Grohl's California home by Butch Vig, and featured a guest spot from Krist Novoselic (on the mournful I Should Have Known), meant that it reunited three of the four men responsible for Nirvana’s phenomenal breakthrough album Nevermind.

Wasting Light is no Nevermind, nor was it ever intended to be, but it shares with Nirvana’s major label debut an unselfconscious love of volume, noise and melody, and can be considered Grohl's 'thank you' letter to the artists who scored his adolescence, from Motörhead to Hüsker Dü, with Bob Mould guesting on the passionate Dear Rosemary.

“What we're doing here is in some ways making sense of everything the Foo Fighters have done for the last 15 years,” Grohl stated, but lyrics such as “I’m dancing on my grave, I’m running through the fire” (from Walk) served as proof that, rather than being preoccupied with ghosts of the past, he was looking with no little excitement to the road ahead.

2. Foo Fighters (Roswell/Capitol, 1995)

There were times, in the wake of his friend Kurt Cobain’s suicide, when Dave Grohl thought he might never play music again. Music had always offered the livewire Virginian escapism, now it seemed pregnant with tar-black memories. “And then I realised that music was the one thing that was gonna help me out of that place,” Grohl admitted.

Between October 17 and 22, 1994, in the company of his longtime friend and former room-mate Barrett Jones, Grohl laid down 15 songs at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle, playing every note himself, save for some guitar fuzz supplied by Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli. The result was the most electrifying and uplifting album of 1995, with I’ll Stick Around, Big Me, Alone + Easy Target and This Is A Call bursting with energy and positivity. A new dawn rising.

1. The Colour And The Shape (Roswell, 1997)

Chronicling what Dave Grohl only half-jokingly called his “winter of discontent”, The Colour And The Shape was not an easy album to make. By the time it was completed, both guitarist Pat Smear and drummer William Goldsmith had tendered their resignations, and Grohl had been served divorce papers by his first wife.

A survivor’s manual penned by a young man watching his world crumble beneath his feet, it’s the story of a soul in limbo, and it’s not hard to understand why Grohl briefly considered using a photo of a therapist’s couch on the album cover.

“My life was fucking going down the toilet,” he recalled, but, as ever, music would be his guide out of the darkness. Everlong, Monkey Wrench and My Hero are the big hitters here, but this is the Foo Fighters’ most complete and cohesive artistic statement, and unquestionably their finest hour.

Van Halen (Warner Brothers, 1978)

As one of the classic debut albums, this 10-million seller is up there with Zeppelin’s and Sabbath’s and Appetite For Destruction. Van Halen was like a bomb going off. With its short, punchy songs, technical flash, testosterone-charged swagger and sense of daring, it kick-started the 80s two years early. “We were not afraid of defying convention,” said David Lee Roth. “Everybody was ascending.”

Eruption was Eddie’s volcanic showpiece. And the orthodox songs were equally explosive, from Runnin’ With The Devil through to frenetic closer On Fire. Classic Rock’s Geoff Barton, then reviewing for Sounds, called the album “senses-shattering”. Van Halen had arrived – with an almighty bang.

1984 (Warner Brothers, 1984)

The last of the definitive Roth-era albums was also the one that made Van Halen a household name on this side of the Atlantic when its lead single, Jump, hit No.7 on the UK chart. In playing this simple rock song on a keyboard, guitar hero Eddie beat all those airy-fairy synth-pop acts at their own game.

I’ll Wait, the album’s other big pop crossover hit, was also powered by a keyboard riff, but the hard rock crunch of Panama and Hot For Teacher ensured that the band’s hairy fan base wasn’t alienated.

On 1984, Van Halen could do no wrong… But by 1985 Roth was gone, and the band, in whatever guise, would never be as great again.

Van Halen II (Warner Brothers, 1979)

How do you follow a belter of a debut album? Many have dropped the ball, from Montrose to The Darkness. But Van Halen walked it, banging out their brilliant second album in just six days. It sounds like it, too: fresh, a little loose, fizzing with energy, its air of beer-fuelled spontaneity encapsulated in Roth’s fumbled lyric and giggles on Bottoms Up!

Shrewdly, Van Halen didn’t try to top the fire-power of Van Halen, opting instead for a lighter, more playful vibe, running from the jammed intro to You’re No Good (such chutzpah!) to Roth’s farewell kiss on the closing Beautiful Girls. And in Dance The Night Away they delivered the perfect pop-metal song.

Diver Down (Warner Brothers, 1982)

Possibly the laziest album ever made. There are just 18 minutes of original material on Diver Down. But no matter: despite the whiff of contractual obligation, the album is a blast.

Back in the mid-70s, when they were still a bar band named Mammoth, the boys had a repertoire of 300 cover tunes. Diver Down recalls that era with a stinging rendition of The Kinks’ Where Have All The Good Times Gone!, plus covers of Roy Orbison’s (Oh) Pretty Woman, the Tamla Motown classic Dancing In The Street and a jazz number featuring dad Jan Van Halen on clarinet.

The original songs on the album are all great too, especially Secrets, the sweetest thing Van Halen ever recorded.

Fair Warning (Warner Brothers, 1981)

The cover illustration – details from Canadian artist William Kurelek’s The Maze, portraying scenes of urban madness and violence – was befitting of the most left-field VH album.

Fair Warning is tough, edgy, dark, and in places plain weird. ZZ Top aside, no other mainstream, multi-platinum hard rock band would have dared to record such bizarre tracks as Dirty Movies (a funky porno satire), Sunday Afternoon In The Park (a sinister, new wave-inspired instrumental), and One Foot Out The Door (a punky, half-finished throwaway).

However, the meat of the album lies in two straight-up rock songs: the bruising Mean Street, and Unchained, featuring Eddie’s chunkiest riff.

Women And Children First (Warner Brothers, 1980)

Van Halen’s third album included a poster of Roth in classic beefcake pose, photographed by the legendary Helmut Newton. Roth was rock’s leading pin-up boy, but VH hadn’t gone soft. The album is a hard rock tour de force, typified by Tora! Tora!

And The Cradle Will Rock…, is Roth’s homage to teenage drop-outs. Fools and Everybody Wants Some!! are fluid jams built around crushing riffs. Romeo Delight threatens to run right off the rails. The only light relief comes with the drunken sea shanty Could This Be Magic?

Women And Children First is Van Halen’s true cult classic album. In Roth parlance: “Pure fuckin’ rock.”

5150 (Warner Brothers, 1986)

For many people, Van Halen just wasn’t Van Halen without Diamond Dave. Eddie saw it differently. “We lost a frontman,” he said, “but we gained a singer.” And with Sammy Hagar on board, the band’s career arc continued upwards.

5150, the first ‘Van Hagar’ album, was also the band’s first US No.1. With trusted producer Ted Templeman having defected to the now solo Roth camp, VH enlisted Foreigner’s Mick Jones to put a fine gloss on what became the album’s three keyboard-driven hit singles: Why Can’t This Be Love, Dreams and Love Walks In.

And yes, Sammy was a better singer than Dave. But 5150 didn’t have the spark of classic VH. And we all knew why.

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (Warner Brothers, 1991)

All four studio albums that Van Halen recorded with Sammy Hagar topped the US chart, although the third of them might not have sold so well if it had been titled according to the singer’s wishes. “I wanted to name the album just Fuck,” Hagar said. Instead, they chose something more oblique.

The album – co-produced by an exonerated Ted Templeman – is patchy, but it has three songs as good as any from the Hagar era: Poundcake – heavy, grungy, with Eddie applying an electric drill to his fretboard; Top Of The World – vintage feel-good VH; and the piano-led Right Now – arguably the best song the band have ever written.

OU812 (Warner Brothers, 1988)

Having proved with 5150 that there was life after Dave, Van Halen couldn’t resist a little dig at their former singer with the title of their eighth album, a cheeky reference to Roth’s Eat ‘Em And Smile.

OU812 did good business (current US sales: four million), but it’s a hit-and-miss affair. Lacking Dave’s levity, the heavier tracks are all bluster, but a lighter touch on the three hit singles works beautifully. Black And Blue is a funky boogie lit up by Michael Anthony’s doo-wop-influenced vocal harmonies, When It’s Love is a deluxe rock ballad, Finish What Ya Started is a genuine surprise, with Eddie twanging country-funk guitar licks and Hagar croaking soulfully.

Van Halen III (Warner Brothers, 1998)

Even the most partisan of Roth loyalists had to admit that Hagar could sing. What’s more, Hagar had starred on one of the greatest rock records of all time: Montrose’s legendary self-titled debut. But the same could not be said of Sammy’s replacement. Gary Cherone was the wuss who sang in Extreme – wearing a leotard.

Van Halen and Cherone was a disastrous mismatch, and produced just one album – that sold only 500,000 copies, when every other VH album had shifted at least two million. The reason is that Van Halen III stinks like a wet dog. Every song sucks, and Cherone sings them like a drowning man. It’s an album so bad, in fact, that it took Van Halen 14 years to make another.

The Grand Illusion (A&M, 1977)

It was with their seventh album (released on 7/7/77, and their first to go platinum in the US) that Styx graduated to the superstar league. DeYoung’s title track is an appropriately pompous prog-rock overture, Shaw’s Fooling Yourself is a Yes-inspired anthem, and James Young’s Miss America a stinging rocker with a pro-feminist agenda.

But most famous of all is Come Sail Away, a fantastical power ballad/prog hybrid that finds spiritual salvation aboard an alien spaceship. Even after South Park’s Cartman murdered the song in the 90s, it remains DeYoung’s masterpiece.

Paradise Theatre (A&M, 1981)

For a band schooled in progressive rock, it was the sweetest of victories: in the era of new wave, this old-fashioned concept album topped the US chart, the only Styx album to do so. According to DeYoung, the album’s tale of a fictional Chicago music hall served as a metaphor for a rapidly changing America.

Filled with great tunes, its biggest hit was another DeYoung ballad, The Best Of Times. Shaw’s futuristic Too Much Time On My Hands also hit the Top 10. And in the stagey Rockin’ The Paradise, DeYoung revealed his love of camp musical theatre.

Pieces Of Eight (A&M, 1978)

A second consecutive triple-platinum seller, Pieces Of Eight is also the heaviest album that Styx ever made. With enigmatic cover art by Hipgnosis, the album has an existentialist theme, an anti-materialist message powerfully expressed in DeYoung’s title track.

Allied to this lofty art-rock sensibility is a gritty rock edge, evident in JY’s Great White Hope, and two Shaw songs that became top 30 hits: Renegade and Blue Collar Man (Long Nights). Shaw claims that the latter’s staccato riff was inspired by his motorboat’s engine spluttering – as if he’d never heard of Deep Purple!

Crystal Ball (A&M, 1976)

When Tommy Shaw joined the band, Styx raised their game. gaining not only a fine guitar player, but also a third major songwriter. Shaw co-wrote four songs on Crystal Ball, and the title track was his alone, reminiscent of Harvest-era Neil Young before climaxing in classic Styx style with power chords and zesty high vocal harmonies.

But there are great songs throughout, from Put Me On, with its Queen-alike histrionics, to the epic Clair De Lune/Ballerina. Crystal Ball only made No.66 on the Billboard chart, but it set the template for Styx’s future success.

Cornerstone (A&M, 1979)

The song that gave Styx their only US No.1 single was Babe, written by Dennis DeYoung for wife Suzanne, which drove sales of Cornerstone to over two million. Adopting a more contemporary mainstream sound, they still rocked out – most notably on Eddie, JY’s warning to Presidential hopeful Ted Kennedy.

There was also a prog influence in Shaw’s Love In The Midnight, and a folk flavour to his brilliant Boat On The River. But DeYoung’s material – Babe, disco crossover Why Me, and gloopy love song First Time – was steering Styx into the middle of the road.

Kilroy Was Here (A&M, 1983)

Another concept album, this time a full-blown rock opera. With a plot lifted from the Rush album 2112, Kilroy… is a sci-fi fantasy in which the titular hero battles a fascist regime for the right to rock. In parts, it’s brilliant. Gonzoid top three hit Mr Roboto is a work of genius bordering on insanity, DeYoung hamming it up over a disco-rock beat.

The equally gonzoid Heavy Metal Poisoning is an excellent anti-censorship satire. But half of Kilroy... is weak, plot-driven filler. While the album sold over two million, the stage show proved financially disastrous, and a squabbling Styx imploded.

Equinox (A&M, 1975)

In late ’74, Styx got lucky. After four underperforming albums, they signed with A&M, while the ballad Lady, originally from 1973’s Styx II, belatedly powered into the Top 10.

Equinox, didn’t break the Top 40, but it did produce a hit in Lorelei, a joyous pop-rock tune, and was the strongest Styx album to date. Outgoing guitarist John Curulewski co-wrote the rowdy Born For Adventure and the trippy Mother Dear, both themed on hedonism and excess. But the album’s best and most overblown song is Suite Madame Blue, DeYoung’s hymn to America.

Crash Of The Crown (UME, 2021)

The last thing we need is a bunch of successful AOR veterans telling us they’re determined to look on the bright side of life. And yet Styx’s 17th album succeeds admirably in its upbeat message.

Fight Of Our Lives is a gung-ho anthem in which Asia-style vocal harmonies are punctuated by pugnacious riffs and proggy synth flourishes. Reveries is a stirring rocker redolent of ELO, and the title track could be a lost Queen track, Lawrence Gowan sounding like Freddie Mercury arisen from the grave. As positivity goes, then, way more tonic than toxic. (JS)

Circling From Above (UME, 2025)

It’s not a bona fide concept LP à la 2017's The Mission, but Styx’s 18th album Circling From Above continues Styx's recent prog-orientated renaissance, and old-hands JY, Shaw and Panozzo all sound galvanised and vital.

If there’s initially a Supertramp-circa-The Logical Song-vibe to The Things That You Said, it soon opens out into ELO-ish territory. Elsewhere, Blue-Eyed Raven’s Greek folk elements and The Devil Went Down To Georgia-style fiddle – courtesy of guest musician Aubrey Haynie – suggest the band’s touchstone is Boat On The River, from 1979's Cornerstone album. (JM)

Big Bang Theory (New Door, 2005)

In 1999, Styx returned, with Tommy Shaw back on board. Brave New World was billed as the band’s big comeback, but it was hopeless, featuring Dennis DeYoung’s appallingly titled High Crimes And Misdemeanors (Hip Hop-cracy).

Equally bad was Styx’s album of rock standards, Big Bang Theory, which came out in 2005. It would be their highest-charting album for 14 years, but plodding through The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus, Hendrix’s Manic Depression and other old favourites, Styx simply sound like a bar band, and not a particularly good one.

Buckcherry (Dreamworks, 1999)

A band out of time? Perhaps. But having cleaned up from the narcotic car crash of his early band Slamhound, Todd was finally ready to get down to business on Buckcherry’s undeniably good debut. From the naked painted woman on the sleeve art, it was snake-hipped hedonism all the way, with melodic bangers like Lit Up, Get Back and Drink The Water lobbing bottles through the windows of the staid turn-of-the-millennium music scene.

Against the odds and the cultural headwinds, Buckcherry showed us an alternative vision of what post-millennium rock‘n’roll could be. It didn’t quite work out that way, but this opener still thrills.

15 (Universal Japan/Eleven Seven, 2005)

Buckcherry had gone gold, but four long years after 2001’s Time Bomb stiffed, no US label would sit down with the band. 15 only got made thanks to an advance from Universal Japan (“Thank god for the Japanese”) and the faith of the band’s manager, Allen Kovac, who started Eleven Seven Music just to give his charges a shop window.

Perhaps hearing the time bell toll at the last-chance saloon, Todd rose to the occasion with anthems both hard (Crazy Bitch) and soft (Sorry, Everything) and – for once – caught the zeitgeist as MySpace spread the word. “Everybody wanted to be our friends,” he recalled of the unlikely rebirth.

Confessions (Century Media/Eleven Seven, 2013)

The closest Buckcherry ever came to a concept album, Confessions pairs its loose narrative – the bulk of the songs are named after the Seven Deadly Sins, with a few elements like Air and Water thrown in for good measure – with Todd’s most starkly personal lyrics.

There’s no doubting the authentic pain behind ballads like Sloth (written about the day when a 10-year-old Todd came home to learn of his father’s suicide). But casual fans should stick to the heavy fuel, with Gluttony, Wrath and Lust perfect for soundtracking the kind of activities you’ll need to declare in the confession box.

Hellbound (Earache, 2021)

“Have Buckcherry just released the party album of 2021?” mused the late, great Malcolm Dome in one of his final reviews, and the notion didn’t seem so outlandish once you’d spent the night carousing with Todd’s crew.

While other bands tiptoed their way out of lockdown, Hellbound tore from the blocks with Minor Threat tribute number 54321, and So Hott, producer Marti Frederiksen honing their sound to emphasise the teeth and sinew. Stick around for the Train Kept A Rollin’ vibes of Gun and the laid-back Wasting No More Time, late-period guitarist Billy Rowe tapping the band’s latent blues DNA.

Vol. 10 (Earache, 2023)

Older and wiser – but still nursing “a lot of turbulence inside my head” – Todd’s band of brothers ran the gamut on this milestone album, straying from Feels Like Love’s haunted balladry to the Queen-style harmony fanfare that opens With You.

Full marks for variety, but ultimately Buckcherry were still most potent when they came out swinging, as on the breakneck Keep On Fighting (a clap-back to Todd’s school bullies) and Good Time (check out the accompanying video, in which a house party devolves into a boozy zombie apocalypse). If only other tenth albums had this much lead in their pencils.

Roar Like Thunder (Earache, 2025)

It was hard to fault Todd’s mission statement as the now veteran band approached their latest album in Nashville (“The only stipulation was: ‘Let’s fucking rock. No fucking ballads, no fucking covers.’”).

The greats were duly saluted – Steven Tyler’s louche lip on I Go Boom, the right hand of Malcolm Young on Come On, even a Wonderwall-esque jangle-sneer on Hello Goodbye – while the lyrics were heavy on the petting (with Talkin’ Bout Sex only the foreplay). We’d heard it all before, of course we had, but Buckcherry can still do it with laser conviction and zinging earworms by the handful.

All Night Long (Eleven Seven/Atlantic, 2010)

The fact that All Night Long’s title track – which was perhaps Buckcherry’s most naked tribute yet to the Young brothers– soundtracked WrestleMania XXVII suggested that we should not come to this fifth album expecting subtlety.

The band had read the room astutely: after 2008’s downbeat Black Butterfly, the hard-core fans demanded party anthems, and on All Night Long they got them in spades, with Todd pulling out his best sneer ‘n’ strut on Never Say Never, Our World and the on-the-nose It’s A Party. Cynics would inevitably say it’s all just a circling of the wagons, but who cared when the ride was this much fun?

Warpaint (Century Media, 2019)

Two decades on from their Buckcherry debut, Todd found himself in the trenches (original guitarist and co-writer Keith Nelson had tapped out in 2017, and was replaced by Kevin Roentgen, with Sean Winchester on the drum stool).

This untested outfit proved louder than war (The Vacuum was a close cousin of Rage Against The Machine’s Bombtrack), and surprisingly groovy too (try the rootsy chug of Right Now). Elsewhere, a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like A Hole suggested that Buckcherry wanted to hang with the cool kids, but even then they couldn’t resist making this angst anthem sound like a keg party

Time Bomb (Dreamworks, 2001)

‘Bomb’ was the word: Buckcherry’s second album killed the momentum of their gold-selling debut and dropped them into a black hole for three years. Listen without context, though, and it’s difficult to see why. True, the songs on this album are sufficiently lairy, leery and nihilistic to smoke off certain listeners (‘Life ain’t nuthin’ but bitches and money’ Todd sings on the title track).

Time Bomb is a damn decent record, kicking our teeth in with ‘g’-droppin’ burners like Ridin’ and Slammin’, while countering the almost-toosleazy moments (Porno Star) with the pure piano chime of hidden track Open My Eyes. Give it another try.

Rock 'N' Roll (F-Bomb/Century Media, 2015)

Rock 'N' Roll isn’t actually a bad album, it’s just boring. To their credit, Buckcherry never made a real dud, but a decade or so down the line, everything about Rock ‘N’ Roll just feels a little forgettable, from the none-more-generic title onward.

Clocking in at just 36 minutes, it’s the shortest record in the band’s catalogue, but even so, many of the tracks – little more than route-one placeholders that come and go with no aftertaste – smack of filler. There are bright spots, though: openers Bring It On Back and Tight Pants get the blood pumping, at least. But life is too short to waste on third-tier Buckcherry when there’s far better out there.

Jaguar – Power Games (1983)

Released via the legendary Neat Records label at the end of the NWOBHM, Power Games might just be the most underrated album of the entire genre. If you’ve ever heard Metallica’s No Life ’Til Leather demo – and if you haven’t, why the hell not?! – you’ll know where this Bristolian outfit are coming from.

Raw like a weeping wound and blistering like a Bunsen burner to the bicep, this is speed/thrash metal in its glorious infancy. We advise you to avoid the basic version of Power Games; there are must-hear extended versions available. Seek out the ones that include the fierce’n’furious Back Street Woman and the deliriously demented Axe Crazy (neither on the original LP) to relish the full-fat rubber-burnin’ E-Type experience. Geoff BartonView Deal

Arc Angel – Arc Angel (1983)

Just when you thought pomp rock peaked in the 70s, a record arrived to blow that theory right out of the water. Arc Angel’s self-titled 1983 debut should have gone multi-platinum – and beyond.

It was the work of two men, Jeff Cannata and Michael Soldan, who had played in various cult-level bands since the late 60s. The pair surrounded themselves with crack East Coast session men – including future Bon Jovi bassist Hugh MacDonald – and entered the studio with producer Tony Bongiovi (aka Jon Bon Jovi’s unvle).

The results boasted keyboards and guitars dive-bombing in unison, hooks’n’choruses exploding in brilliant formation. Check Stars, Tragedy and Wanted Dead Or Alive for superlative examples of glorious melodic AOR, topped off with the kind of magical vocal that made Aldo Nova’s debut album so instantly appealing.

If you rediscover just one pomp rock album then please let it be Arc Angel, a work of sublime brilliance. Derek OliverView Deal

Watchtower – Energetic Disassembly (1985)

Jazz and progressive rock are not two genres one might normally associate with thrash metal. Yet both are present within the story of Austin, Texas quartet Watchtower who combined an over-the-top love of prog rock with metallic power at a time when it was largely unheard of. But the sound of their 1985 debut Energetic Disassembly proved to be very popular in Europe, mixing an Iron Maiden-like metallic charge with the technical prowess of Rush. Singer Jason McMaster decamped to hair metal posers Dangerous Toys for reasons best known to himself, just prior to the follow-up Control And Resistance. Malcolm DomeView Deal

David + David – Boomtown (1986)

Studio musicians and sometime producers David Baerwald and David Ricketts would find real, if fleeting, fame in 1993 as part of Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club band. But that was a world away from the pair’s collaboration Boomtown, released seven years earlier.

A bleak reading of America’s underclass in the depths of the Reagan era, this was a collection of vignettes of lives full of wrong turnings, of dead-end jobs, of drink and drugs. First single Welcome To The Boomtown began with the desperate howl of Ricketts’ guitar, before Baerwald dispatched his bitterly ironic lyric about a high-living drug addict and her lowlife dealer: ‘Pick a habit, we got plenty to go around,’ he sang over a thrumming pop-rock hook that date-stamped it to the mid-80s. Both unnerving and eminently hummable, it gave the duo a US Top 40 hit. The album followed it to No.39.

The success was short-lived. Ricketts was apparently put off by the hard rock fans they were attracting, and they disbanded before the album caught its second wind. Sheryl Crow beckoned, ensuring neither David would get this bloody again. Phillip WildingView Deal

Sea Hags – Sea Hags (1989)

If ever there was a band that had it all and then blew it, it was the Sea Hags. After getting Metallica’s Kirk Hammett to produce their demo, the San Francisco quartet roped in the hottest producer around for their debut album: Mike Clink, fresh from working on Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction.

Sea Hags came out at the height of hair metal, but it was closer the kind of dirty, funky rock that Aerosmith made in the 70s, loaded with great songs, from the charged Half The Way Valley to the menacing finale Under The Night Stars.

Sea Hags shared Aerosmith’s fondness for booze and drugs too, which ultimately proved their undoing, and after the album stalled at No.150 on the US chart the band split up. Singer Ron Yocom planned to re-form the Sea Hags, but bassist Chris Schlosshardt died in February 1991. This one great album became his, and the band’s, epitaph. Paul ElliottView Deal

Hapdash And The Coloured Coat - Featuring The Human Host And The Heavy Metal Kids (Minit/Liberty, 1967)

Headed up by psychedelic poster designers Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, Hapshash’s musical endeavours were a suitably cosmic extension of their artwork.

This debut album, featuring future members of Spooky Tooth, was as out-there as 60s rock ever got. Stuffed with avant-garde textures, weird experiments and freeform guitar riffs, it proved a big influence on emerging German collective Amon Düül and, so the story goes, inspired parts of the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Moby Grape - Moby Grape (CBS, 1967)

The San Francisco quartet’s first album flew directly in the face of the Summer of Love, eschewing hippie bullshit for fizzy songs that bucked and roared like the Rolling Stones or Buffalo Springfield. It was a record that should have set them off on a long career.

Alas, bad luck, record-company ineptitude and self-sabotage (drummer Don Stevenson is giving the finger on the original LP sleeve) served to undermine them from the get-go.

Karen Dalton - It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best (Capitol, 1969)

Some albums are like secret handshakes. If spotted in your collection or tucked under your arm, they can instantly mark you as a person of impeccable taste, and even kindle friendships.

Beyond the Dylans and Baezes of the late 60s Greenwich Village folk scene, there was Dalton and this album, one of most sublime secret handshakes ever.

Emitt Rhodes - Emitt Rhodes (Probe, 1970)

Rhodes’ previous multi-instrumental efforts with West Coast psych-pop band The Merry-Go-Round barely hinted at his potential as a solo artist.

This debut was a near-perfect conflation of Paul McCartney, Harry Nilsson and The Association, full of finely chiselled songs – Fresh As A Daisy; Live Till You Die; With My Face On The Floor – that were all the more impressive for the fact that he recorded everything himself in a homemade studio opposite his parents’ house.

Bill Fay - Time Of The Last Persecution (Deram, 1971)

Was there ever a truer cult figure than Bill Fay? After the release of this second album in 1971, the Londoner was dropped by Deram and consigned to a life of artistic obscurity until the likes of Wilco and The War On Drugs began singing his praises decades later.

The spare nature of Time…, driven by piano and dark-voiced songs about the oncoming apocalypse, occupies its own peculiar, jazz-folk realm.

Vinegar Joe - Rock’n Roll Gypsies (Island, 1972)

In 1972, the looming OPEC oil crisis and Yom Kippur War caused the price of plastic to skyrocket. Only 5,000 copies of Vinegar Joe’s Rock’n Roll Gypsies were produced, instead of a planned 20,000. Shops sold out quickly, but the band’s label, Island Records, put a re-press on hold owing to the vinyl shortage. Thus, VJ’s crucial second platter failed to dent the charts.

A pity, because this spirited dose of good-time boogie – fuelled by the forceful lead vocals of Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks – deserved to be heard by a wider audience.

Gene Clark - No Other (Asylum, 1974)

Gene Clark’s fourth studio album failed to excite either the record-buying public or his label bosses at Asylum. Initially viewed as an expensive folly, and probably not helped by a curious Art Deco sleeve with Clark in full drag, in reality it’s a monumental vision of West Coast country-rock with baroque flourishes of folk, psychedelia and jazz.

A prime example of an album whose influence and appeal has only grown with time.

Radio Birdman - Radios Appear (Trafalgar, 1977)

Originally released with a run of 3000 vinyl copies in their native Australia, the ramshackle punks’ first full-length studio album, crammed full of MC5 and Stooge-esque garage clatter, was a game-changer.

The version you’re more likely to find today is the white sleeve overseas release (the original Aussie cover was black), which surfaced the following year with a slightly amended and bolstered tracklist.

Big Star - Third (PVC, 1978)

Big Star’s first two records mined a fertile pop-rock vein and established their cult, but sold next to nothing.

Recorded in their Memphis hometown, their third found them mastering the art of making a joined-up record that carried a singular mood – in this case fractured, haunted melancholy. It made them heroes to a generation of alt.rockers, but still sold nothing.

Raging Slab - Raging Slab (RCA, 1989)

Mixing New York rock’n’roll and a quirky Southern blast, Raging Slab were tipped for big things back at the end of the 80s. This album is all the explanation that you need of their Talent.

It was intimately accessible, yet had a broad sweep, from the anthemic Get Off My Jollies to the thumping San Loco. With a propulsive sound that was halfway between ZZ Top and the Allman Brothers, it was built for vinyl – and is ripe for rediscovery on the same medium.

Robert Plant - Shaken ‘N’ Stirred (Es Paranza, 1985)

Plant’s third solo album was his most experimental, a radical departure from his signature sound. One critic likened Shaken ‘N’ Stirred to the new wave music of Talking Heads, and described Plant as “a chameleon with a sharp ear for new sound”. But in his eagerness to sound relevant, something more important was lost.

Shaken ‘N’ Stirred was smart, but soulless. Even the better songs – Little By Little, Pink And Black – were paper-thin. And Plant, normally such an emotive singer, seemed detached on nonsensically titled songs such as Hip To Hoo and Doo Doo A Do Do. But then Plant has always been his own man.

Robert Plant – Manic Nirvana (Es Paranza, 1990)

The album’s title promised all manner of excitement and exotica. The cover image repackaged Plant – by then in his early forties – as the golden god of his youth. In the end, disappointment ensued. Manic Nirvana was good. Just not that good.

On the first two tracks, Hurting Kind (I’ve Got My Eyes On You) and the Zep pastiche Big Love, Pant sounded as if he was trying a little too hard. But a doozy of a riff in Tie Dye On The Highway brought out the best in him, as did the moody acoustic number Liars Dance, with its smoky echoes of Led Zeppelin III.

The Honeydrippers - Volume One (Es Paranza, 1984)

It started out as a bit of fun – an occasional band with an ever-changing line-up, playing vintage rock‘n’roll and R&B songs that Plant loved as a kid. But the only recording by The Honeydrippers – the five-track covers EP Volume One – was a surprise hit.

For Plant, this was simply a way of letting off steam between solo albums. But his version of 50s ballad Sea Of Love, featuring a secret cameo from Jimmy Page, reached the US top three, and the EP became a million-seller. The other standout track was a rollicking take on the jumpblues classic Rockin’ At Midnight, which also featured an uncredited guitar hero – Jeff Beck.

Robert Plant And The Band Of Joy - Band Of Joy (Rounder, 2010)

While millions of fans hung on in the vain hope that Plant would rejoin Led Zeppelin, the contrary old bugger opted instead to relaunch his pre-Zep outfit Band Of Joy, albeit without any other original members.

The new Band Of Joy included American singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, Plant’s current partner. And this album was, in essence, Raising Sand Part 2. Once again, this was a covers album, with a blend of old and new songs. But where Raising Sand was low-key, Band Of Joy has more rock‘n’roll swagger, notably in a rollicking version of Los Lobos’ Angel Dance.

Robert Plant - Now And Zen (Es Paranza, 1988)

With his last album of the 80s, Plant took one step back and two forward. In reaction to the abstract art-rock of 1985’s Shaken ‘N’ Stirred, this follow-up had Plant re-embracing hard rock – and Jimmy Page.

Page featured on two tracks: Heaven Knows and Tall Cool One, which included samples from four classic Zeppelin songs – a riposte to the unauthorised sampling of Zep riffs on the Beastie Boys’ Licensed To Ill. Now And Zen wasn’t all oldschool riffola. The album had a contemporary sound, and Ship Of Fools is a beautiful ballad. But it was thrilling to hear Plant and Page rocking out once more.

Robert Plant – Dreamland (Mercury, 2002)

A sustained and successful reunion with Jimmy Page meant that Plant’s seventh solo album arrived nine years after the sixth. What’s more, Dreamland was short on original material, with more than half the album given over to covers of old favourites of Plant’s, including Tim Buckley’s Song To The Siren, Bob Dylan’s One More Cup Of Coffee and the deathless Hey Joe.

Among the new songs – written by Plant and a five-strong backing band – is the darkly dramatic Last Time I Saw Her. But the highlight is a version of Morning Dew, the ’60s folk song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Bonnie Dobson and famously covered by The Grateful Dead. Plant’s interpretation is magical – and a glimpse of what was to follow with Raising Sand.

Robert Plant - Carry Fire (Nonesuch, 2017)

There was an element of mischief in the title of this album’s opening track, The May Queen – an echo of a song lyric from the early ’70s that Plant has since dismissed as naive. There’s also an echo of Led Zeppelin III in The May Queen’s propulsive acoustic guitar riff. But taken as a whole, Carry Fire has the strongest connection to Plant’s recent past.

Backed by the Sensational Space Shifters for a second time, he picks up where he left off with Lullaby And The Ceaseless Roar. The big surprise is a croaky duet with Chrissie Hynde on Bluebirds Over The Mountain, an old song from the ’50s by rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey. The best song is Dance With You Tonight, as beautiful as anything he’s recorded with Alison Krauss.

Jimmy Page & Robert Plant - Walking Into Clarksdale (Atlantic/Mercury, 1998)

Buoyed by the success of 1994’s No Quarter, Page and Plant delivered the first album of new and original material they’d collaborated on since Zeppelin.

The album was engineered by alternative rock ascetic Steve Albini. But with Page and Plant having final say as co-producers, Walking Into Clarksdale was very much a classic rock record, on which the Zeppelin sound of old was subtly updated. In places it worked brilliantly – especially on Most High, an hypnotic heavy groover, but as a whole the album was merely good, not great. Zeppelin fans had expected more.

Robert Plant with Suzi Dian - Saving Grace (Nonesuch, 2025)

Plant found a perfect foil in Alison Krauss and did so again with Suzi Dian on Saving Grace, an album named after – and featuring – the band that had backed him on various tours since 2019.

As befits a project that began with Plant meeting banjo player Matt Worley in a Midlands boozer, there is a relaxed, informal feel to the Saving Grace album, which features 10 covers of songs ranging from archaic blues to folk to modern indie rock. Most charming of all is a heartfelt version of It’s A Beautiful Day Today, originally recorded by San Francisco hippies Moby Grape. It’s like Going To California all over again.

Robert Plant – Fate Of Nations (Es Paranza, 1993)

When this sixth solo album was released, Plant stated: “From the very beginning of this project, I knew what I was going to do: go back into my past.” For reference points, he name-checked The Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, Tim Hardin and others. What he neglected to mention was Led Zeppelin. Calling To You, the opening track on Fate Of Nations, was pitched halfway between Kashmir and In The Evening.

Elsewhere, Plant delivered on his mission statement for this album with a sweetly romantic cover of Hardin’s If I Were A Carpenter. And the simple beauty in 29 Palms made it arguably his greatest solo song since Big Log.

Robert Plant - Lullaby And The Ceaseless Roar (Nonesuch, 2014)

Lullaby And The Ceaseless Roar was Plant’s first studio album with the Sensational Space Shifters as his backing band. It begins with a version of the ancient American folk song Little Maggie, previously recorded by Bob Dylan among others – Plant singing it as if lost in the music. Another track, Poor Howard, is derived from an old Lead Belly blues number – in that sense, a throwback to the early days of Led Zeppelin.

The remainder of this album is all original material, in which contemporary rock sounds merge seamlessly with folk traditions – to brilliant effect in songs such as Rainbow and Pocketful Of Golden. As with much of Plant’s latter-day output, it’s an album with one foot in the past and one in the present.

Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation - Mighty ReArranger (Es Paranza/Sanctuary 2005)

Plant’s first recording with the Strange Sensation was 2002’s Dreamland, on which they covered blues and folk songs. Although Dreamland was credited as a Plant solo album, its strength lay in a powerful group dynamic.

And, three years later, on Mighty ReArranger they took it up a notch or two. With all-original material drawn from a deep well of influences – rhythm and blues, English folk, exotic world music – it’s an album on which anything goes. When Plant talks about surprising himself, this is what he means.

Robert Plant/Alison Krauss – Raise The Roof (Rounder, 2021)

14 years on from their surprise hit Raising Sand, Plant and Krauss reunited for a similarly titled second act. For all its quality, Raise The Roof fell a long way short of its predecessor on a commercial level. Perhaps the novelty value had worn off.

With T Bone Burnett again in the producer’s chair, the sound had a familiar, warm ambience around the two voices. And as with Raising Sand, the choice of songs drew mainly from folk and country music. The album’s best moments include richly atmospheric versions of Bert Jansch’s It Don't Bother Me and The Everly Brothers’ The Price Of Love.

Robert Plant - Pictures At Eleven (Swan Song, 1982)

It was never going to be easy for Robert Plant to rebuild his life and career after the demise of Led Zeppelin. But with Pictures At Eleven – a top five hit in the US and UK – he achieved one of rock’s great comebacks.

His key ally was ex-Silverhead/ Chicken Shack guitarist Robbie Blunt, who co-wrote the album. Phil Collins played drums on six tracks, Cozy Powell on two, the latter clattering away like Bonzo on Slow Dancer. Several songs echoed the modern Zeppelin of 1979’s In Through The Out Door. In a sense, Plant was going where Led Zeppelin no longer could.

Robert Plant/Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (Rounder, 2007)

They made an odd couple: Plant, the grizzled rock warhorse, and Krauss, the glamorous, fiddle-playing bluegrass star 23 years his junior. But their voices were perfectly matched on an album that gave Plant the biggest hit of his post-Zep career – No.2 on both sides of the Atlantic.

Their duets ranged from blues to folk and country to rock‘n’roll. Some songs dated from the 50s and 60s. Others merely sounded old, such as Please Read The Letter, originally written and recorded for Page and Plant’s album Walking Into Clarksdale. Plant, in harmony with Krauss, has rarely sung better.

Jimmy Page & Robert Plant - No Quarter (Atlantic/Fontana, 1994)

It was the next best thing to a Led Zeppelin reunion: Page and Plant performing live together for the first time in 14 years. No Quarter was recorded as part of MTV’s Unplugged series, but in a break from the standard format, Page and Plant utilised a full orchestra and Arabic musicians, and recorded in London, Marrakesh and at BronYr-Aur, the Welsh cottage where various Zeppelin songs were written and recorded in 1970.

The result: wonderfully inventive reinterpretations of Zeppelin classics, and echoes of Kashmir in outstanding new song Yallah.

Robert Plant - The Principle Of Moments (Es Paranza, 1983)

With his second solo album, Plant defined a modern rock sound that put clear distance between himself and Zeppelin. Recorded with the same core group of musicians that featured on his solo debut Pictures At Eleven, including guitarist Robbie Blunt and Phil Collins on drums, The Principle Of Moments was a more polished, assured album, with a lighter touch and better songs, such as the elegant hit ballad Big Log.

Traces of Zeppelin remained in the staccato riffing of Messin’ With The Mekon, but, as Rolling Stone said, this represented a “declaration of independence from the past – not a denial of it”.

God’s Own Medicine (Mercury, 1986)

With exuberant momentum and positive creative arrogance, the debut was recorded in just five weeks. Hussey’s unashamedly pretentious spoken-word intro (a studio microphone level test ad-lib) leads into the signature Wasteland that recalls his previous work on the Sisters’ Marian.

Garden Of Delight’s lush string arrangement and the piratical Stay With Me both became Mission classics too. Backing vocals from All About Eve frontwoman Julianne Regan on Severina plus Hussey’s Page-influenced 12-string mastery also helped lighten the post-Sisters sonic palette to create a new strain of flower power goth.

Children (Mercury, 1988)

Their grandiose second album was The Mission’s commercial peak. To all intents and purposes, it was Hussey’s Led Zep IV. In contrast to God's Own Medicine, Children was recorded in three months at Richard Branson’s luxe residential Manor Studios.

John Paul Jones produced and played keyboards. He even lent fanboy Hussey his vintage Martin acoustic that Jimmy Page used on Stairway to play the very Zep-like Black Mountain Mist. A paen to the band’s fans, the gradual ascent of the eight-minute epic Tower Of Strength, along with a rare political number, Beyond The Pale, saw the band on top form. Less nobly, Kingdom Come is about Hussey’s sexual appetite. Ew.

Carved In Sand (Mercury, 1990)

Following the indulgence of the Children sessions, the band returned to a leaner recording strategy for their third, re-hiring God’s Own Medicine producer Tim Palmer. Carved In Sand demonstrated a confident mainstream rock sensibility.

U2-style opener of Amelia, Revolver-era alike Sea Of Love and fan fave Deliverance helped shift The Mission beyond goth’s cul-de-sac, building on the success of Children. Reeves Gabrels (of Tin Machine and later The Cure) adds guitar on two tracks, and Guy Chambers plays piano on Hussey’s affectionate ode to Julianne Regan, the warm embrace of Butterfly On A Wheel.

God Is A Bullet (Cooking Vinyl, 2007)

A return to form, the eighth Mission album featured something of a supergroup in its Mission all-star line-up, offering a 15-tracker epic ambitious in scope. And it delivered.

Guitarist Mark Thwaite and new bassist Rich Vernon both contributed to songwriting. Hinkler reappeared on the riff-heavy darkness of Grotesque, ex-All About Eve/ Sisters guitarist Tim Bricheno played on three, and Julianne Regan lent her ethereal angelic vocals. Hussey sounds like he’s having fun again on the joyous Keep It In The Family, the poignant pop of Blush and the classic Mission of Running With Scissors. Their most underrated album.

Another Fall From Grace (Eyes Wide Shut, 2016)

Reunited with producer Tim Palmer, the latest Mission album to date deliberately harked back to the mid-80s post-Sisters/ embryonic Mission era.

Hussey uses an approximation of the guitar line he originally laid down on what eventually became the Sisters’ Dominion on the needling throb of Met-Amor-Phosis (with Ville Valo providing guest vocals). He even returns to the 12-string he largely abandoned after God's Own Medicine to reanimate the classic goth template. Adams’ bass was re-fuzzed (the title track is akin to the Sisters’ cover of Emma). Hussey sings of regret and time’s cruelty while offering homilies.

Aura (Playground, 2001)

Following his remix and solo projects after the band’s first hiatus, Hussey eventually re-formed The Mission at the end of the 90s with Adams back on bass and Mark Thwaite on guitar. Scott Garrett from The Cult replaced Brown.

Live shows fed into sessions that made up Aura, a style reminiscent of Carved In Sand. The Cult-like riffs and lyrics of opener Evangeline, yearning emo power ballad Shine Like The Stars and the heartfelt Dragonfly are as respectable as anything from The Mission’s commercial heyday. Hussey’s work on keyboards provided Aura with multi-layered vibrancy despite its muted production.

The Brightest Light (Oblivion, 2013)

On which Hussey finally reunited with fellow founding members Adams and Hinkler. Brown was conspicuous by his absence, but new drummer Mike Kelly was made a permanent member.

Sisters’ First And Last And Always producer David M Allen was hired to authenticate the album’s 21st-century gothic and indie rock revivalism. The Brightest Light is influenced by both The Cult (Everything But The Squeal is reminiscent of Big Neon Glitter) and The Wonder Stuff (The Girl In A Furskin Rug). With Hussey’s mean and moody vocals, it’s not classic Mish, but the band would find their feet again with follow-up Another Fall From Grace.

Neverland (Dragnet, 1995)

Bringing in ex-The Children/ Spear Of Destiny/Theatre Of Hate guitarist Mark Thwaite and new keyboard player Rik Carter helped return The Mission to a more rock-based heartland following the bravado of Masque.

Staggered recording sessions and a revolving door of bassists meant Neverland lacked an overall cohesion and focus despite the Deftones-meets-Nine Inch Nails drama displayed by the mighty crunching riffs of Raising Cain, Swoon and Afterglow (Reprise). Neverland should have fared better in the prevailing post-grunge, alt.rock and trip-hop era of the mid-90s. All of which suggests that it could be overdue for a reappraisal.

Masque (Vertigo, 1992)

With band members all pulling in different directions, it was inevitable that the fourth album (originally intended as a Hussey solo project) would be a curate’s egg. Hinkler had already left. Brown had embraced dance music. Hussey had adopted folk rock. Adams left after its release, unhappy with the band’s new direction.

Its diverse electronica ‘n’ fiddles ‘n’ sax indie pop was a valiant stab at expanding their style, but ultimately it was one that began a commercial decline – it’d be 24 years before another Mission album made it into the Top 40. Still, the Cure-like psyche dream pop of You Make Me Breathe is Hussey’s mum’s all-time fave Mission track.

Blue (Equator, 1996)

Even Hussey himself has said he hates Blue. A contractual obligation, it marks the original demise of The Mission, with Hussey and Brown disbanding after an atypically brief Mission tour in support of the album.

Coming across like a questionable grebo biker-rock album a decade too late, the Zodiac Windwarp/Gaye Bykers On Acid-adjacent sound of Coming Home, the horrible lyrics of Get Back To You… let’s not go on. Album closer Evermore And Again is a reworking of Forevermore, originally a B-side of third single Stay With Me. Enough evidence that Hussey needed to take stock after The Mission’s frantic first decade.

Back Street Symphony (EMI, 1990)

The youthful ebullience of Thunder’s debut still rings loud, clear and true more than 30 years after it was released. It plays like an English response to Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, released three years earlier. Even though it didn’t sell anything like as well as that album, it too was a manifesto that Thunder have been able to return to at all points in their career since.

Produced by Andy Taylor and engineered/mixed by Mike Fraser (AC/DC, Poison, The Cult, Aerosmith), it sounds big, powerful and timeless. Ahard rock classic from lead-off single She’s So Fine to the blazing closer Distant Thunder.

Laughing On Judgement Day (EMI, 1992)

Two and a half years after Back Street Symphony, the lead-in time had broadened both Thunder’s songwriting and their sonic palette, reflected in a career-longest 14-song running order.

The highlights are included in the Spotify playlist (below), but other songs impress too: the brass-fuelled Everybody Wants Her; the Zeppelin-esque Empty City; the no-nonsense stomp of Flawed To Perfection; and the Matthews/ James/Bowes credited The Moment Of Truth. In 1992 Judgement Day divided opinions, with many seemingly confused by its leap forward. Today, though, this and its predecessor stand as a brilliant pair.

All The Right Noises (BMG, 2021)

In 2021 Luke Morley insisted to Classic Rock: “If you work as hard as you can and apply the same commitment, there’s no reason why you can’t get better as you get older.” All The Right Noises is living proof of that.

It is, simply, the best of the purple patch begun by Wonder Days and – in terms of maturity and craft, at least – superior to the two albums above, filled woth top-drawer tunes and no-nonsense, full-throttle delivery, with chief writer Morley clearly fuelled by anger and frustration, but still finding inspiration to lighten the mood with some cheery, upbeat rockers. 

Dopamine (BMG, 2022)

Barely a year after All The Right Noises, a double Thunder album arrived, and the rich vein of form continued. Its long tail was curtailed by Danny Bowes' health issues a few months on from release, an irony given how much Luke Morley’s lyrics optimistically looked forward to a post-covid return to normality.

The upbeat vibe is most apparent on One Day We’ll Be Free Again, the wide-eyed Across The Nation, the who-dares-wins sentiment of All The Way and the joyful Dancing In The Sunshine, while the pleasingly riffy Disconnected goes Beatlesy and psychedelic in the middle.

Wonder Days (EarMusic, 2015)

Few expected album number 10 to sound as strong as it does, but Bowes, in particular, insisted it would need to in order to justify the band’s second reunion. Thus he put firm but friendly pressure on Morley to polish good songs into great ones and reject anything so-so.

That ‘go big or go home’ attitude is all-pervasive on the title-track (chronicling the schoolboy dreams of Bowes and Morley), and drenches everything else – from the Stones-y The Thing I Want, to the heavy shuffle of Serpentine and the triumphant Resurrection Day, which hints at the relief of witnessing Matthews’s recovery

Rip It Up (EarMusic, 2017)

Given the almost universal acclaim for Wonder Days, it was to the band’s credit that they followed that rebirth in the same way they’d written the follow-up to their 1990 debut: by refusing to make a soundalike.

So Rip It Up was the Thunder sound, but refined and reimagined, collectively unmistakable but with individual songs – such as She Likes The Cocaine, featuring Lynne Jackaman on lead vocals, or the plaintive Right From The Start – sailing into rarely chartered waters. Others take surprisingly heavy turns, not least the cocksure title track, opener No One Gets Out Alive and the fiery Shakedown.

Bang! (STC, 2008)

Bang! improved on Robert Johnson’s Tombstone, released two years earlier, at almost every turn, not least with openers On The Radio and the Zeppelin-esque Stormwater. Furthermore, acoustically driven rocker Carol Ann and the almost jazzy grooves of Retribution show the band expanding their horizons.

Big singalong rockers are represented by Love Sucks, Candy Man and Miracle Man counterpointing the blues twists of Have Mercy, Turn Left At California and One Bullet. Elsewhere, Watching Over You (co-written by Andy Taylor) and Honey cast the sort of hooks that really should have been heard on the radio.

Behind Closed Doors (EMI, 1995)

Although Thunder’s third album reached the top five in the UK, it failed to deliver on the promise of the first two, despite (or perhaps because of) a recording budget that saw the band lay down tracks in five studios on both sides of the Atlantic, and bring in both brass and string sections for some tracks.

Engineer-cum-mix master Mike Fraser returned to produce alongside Morley, but gems such as River Of Pain, Future Train, Castles In The Sand, Stand Up and the epic ballad ’Til The River Runs Dry mysteriously suffered in comparison to similar numbers with which the band had previously scored big.

Shooting At The Sun (STC, 2002)

Thunder’s sixth album, Shooting At The Sun is their only one not to chart, but it’s far from being their weakest. It is essentially the band returning from hiatus, selling online via their own label (STC, for ‘Straight Talking Chap’ – or something – according to Bowes).

Opening track Loser is the standout, but on Everybody’s Laughing, the title-track and The Pimp And The Whore (in which Bowes channels vintage David Coverdale) the band are close to their best. Morley is on fine lyrical form on Somebody Get Me A Spin Doctor, and with The Man Inside delivers a first co-write with his future The Union partner Pete Shoulder.

The Thrill Of It (All B Lucky, 1997)

After their deal with EMI Records ended, Thunder effectively started again on their fourth album. It had a difficult birth: the band were temporarily a four-piece, with Morley playing bass, and it was released on Japanese label Victor five months before it came out in the UK.

Recording at Rockfield Studios the band appeared to have relaxed, rather than knuckled down. Even the singles – A Love Worth Dying For and Don’t Wait Up – sound mournful and pedestrian compared with all that had come before. It’s only marginally weaker than 1999’s Giving The Game Away, but both were flat.

Traffic - The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys (Island, 1971)

If there’s one song that best illustrates the genius of Steve Winwood, it’s the 11-minute title track of Traffic’s fifth album, a hypnotic jazz-rock masterpiece and a searing indictment of the music industry.

Already a veteran at 23, Winwood felt exploited. Two sub-par Traffic albums – the odds ‘n’ sods collection Last Exit and the live Welcome To The Canteen – had resulted from contractual obligations. Winwood’s anger was softly voiced but no less powerful for it. There are many other great songs on this album, but on the track The Low Spark… Winwood truly bared his soul.

Steve Winwood - Arc Of A Diver (Island, 1980)

Winwood’s eponymous solo debut, released in 1977, was a flop. Coming just two years after Traffic split, it was mostly co-written with former Traffic bandmate Jim Capaldi. Winwood seemed unwilling, or unable, to move on. Three years later everything changed.

Arc Of A Diver established Winwood as a successful solo star with a new vision. Updating his sound with state-of-the-art synthesisers, he embraced the new decade with a modern, sophisticated blend of soft rock and what critics rather patronisingly dubbed ‘blue-eyed soul’. Arc Of A Diver was the album that defined Steve Winwood as a solo artist.

Spencer Davis Group - The Best Of The Spencer Davis Group (Island, 2007)

The songs that first made Steve Winwood famous are still thrilling more than 40 years on. Foremost of these is Gimme Some Lovin’, a jubilant rhythm & blues stomp powered by Winwood’s electrifying Hammond organ riff and sung with the soul power of a Motown superstar.

The song has been covered many times but nothing comes close to matching the original. Also included on this collection is another classic hit co-written and sung by Winwood, the blistering I’m A Man, which went Top 10 in both the UK and US.

Traffic - Mr. Fantasy (Island, 1967)

Released in the year of Sgt. Pepper and the Stones’ similarly acid-tweaked Their Satanic Majesties Request, Traffic’s first album was very much a product of the psychedelic age, even though it was originally issued without the quaintly trippy hits Paper Sun and Hole In My Shoe.

Some of the songs are truly bizarre, such as Berkshire Poppies, but Winwood had a more serious agenda, as illustrated by the soulful Dear Mr. Fantasy and the melancholy No Face, No Name, No Number. Moreover, the jazz-influenced jam Dealer and the sitar-led Utterly Simple posited Traffic as a rock group without limitations.

Blind Faith - Blind Faith (Polydor, 1969)

Forming Blind Faith, Winwood teamed up with former Cream members Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker, plus bassist Rick Grech, in ‘the original supergroup’. The band made their live debut in front of an audience of 100,000 at London’s Hyde Park in 1969.

Two months later this album was at No.1 in the UK and the US. In places it was brilliant, Clapton’s Presence Of The Lord a deep, spiritual blues, Winwood’s Can’t Find My Way Home a beautiful acoustic number. But when Clapton bailed, Blind Faith was over, their sole album forever marred by that infamous cover photograph.

Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die (Island, 1970)

After Blind Faith and an even briefer tenure in another ‘supergroup’, Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Winwood began work on a solo album. But, having enlisted Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi and sax/flute player Chris Wood, Winwood soon bowed to the inevitable and re-formed the band.

His decision was quickly vindicated; John Barleycorn Must Die was Traffic’s first gold-certified album in the US. As a trio, the group mixed fluid, experimental jazz rock with English folk themes, reworking a traditional song dating back to 1465 for this album’s title track.

Steve Winwood - Back In The High Life (Island, 1986)

Winwood’s fourth solo album marked the end of his 20-year association with Island Records, and he left them on a high. Propelled by the chart-topping single Higher Love, it sold more than five million copies. The album is a model of elegant, soul-influenced mainstream rock, all very 80s but so finely crafted that it has aged surprisingly well.

Having performed his previous two albums alone, this time Winwood called on some big names, including James Taylor, Chaka Khan, Joe Walsh and Chic’s Nile Rodgers. And, once again, there was a co-writing credit for friend Vivian Stanshall.

Traffic - Traffic (Island, 1968)

Creative tension was always an issue for Traffic. Even when creating their first album in a rustic idyll there was a clear disparity between Winwood and guitarist Dave Mason, who wrote Hole In My Shoe, a song Winwood recorded “under duress”.

Mason left the group soon after Mr. Fantasy, but, in a surprise volte-face, he returned for this second album. His Feelin’ Alright? was in keeping with the album’s laid-back vibe but, tellingly, he played no part on its key track, (Roamin’ Thro’ The Gloamin’ With) 40,000 Headmen. In short order, Mason was fired, Traffic was put on ice and Winwood was hanging out with Eric Clapton.

Steve Winwood - Talking Back To The Night (Island, 1982)

Winwood’s third solo album has been largely forgotten. Released two years after the classic Arc Of A Diver, and again recorded by Winwood alone, it failed to match its predecessor, stalling at No.28 in the US.

It is, though, a strong album, and its most famous song, the AOR anthem Valerie, has enjoyed a long and unusual afterlife. When first released as a single in 1982, Valerie stiffed. But a remixed version hit the US Top 10 in 1987, and in 2004 the song was reworked by Eric Prydz for his UK No.1 bangin’ choon Call On Me. Winwood was so impressed by Prydz’s version that he re-recorded vocals for it.

Steve Winwood - Roll With It (Virgin, 1988)

Winwood’s first album for Virgin Records was a US No.1, as was its lead single and title track. But on a creative level Winwood was sleepwalking.

For an album featuring The Memphis Horns, veterans of classic soul records by Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, Roll With It sounds strangely soulless. Even Hearts On Fire, co-written with Jim Capaldi, is forgettable. Only the title track and the finale, Shining Song, are worthy of Winwood’s name. In short, Roll With It is the kind of bland, yuppie rock enjoyed by Patrick Bateman, homicidal lead character of Bret Easton Ellis’s 80s satire American Psycho: a most dubious recommendation.

At Newport 1960 (Chess, 1960)

He’d always been the king of Chicago, but July 3, 1960, marked the moment when Muddy ram-raided the mainstream, bursting off the sweatbox circuit to play aSunday afternoon festival set for a pack of white hipsters.

Released the same year, this live album caught the lightning in the bottle. Backed by an all-star band (James Cotton, Otis Spann et al), Muddy embraces the frontman role, ditching his guitar and setting to work on the crowd with that industrial-strength croon and charisma. Chess-era belters like I Got My Brand On You, Hoochie Coochie Man and Got My Mojo Workin’ (played twice, for good measure) had never sounded so neck-tingling.

Anthology (Not Now, 2011)

Prescribing a compilation might seem like a cop-out, but assuming you don’t want to spend the next decade hunting down vintage 45s, this three-hour, 75-song set is the best way to own the Mud’s vital Chess sides.

Back in the 50s, these songs were literally electrifying, dragging the country porch blues of yore in an edgy, amplified, big-city direction, and while Willie Dixon’s pen was behind many of the best (Hoochie Coochie Man, I Just Wanna Make Love To You, etc), it was Waters’ musical charisma that sold them. Today, in an era of fluff and bubblegum, there’s a musical substance and emotional heft here that still has the power to pull you up short.

The Complete Plantation Recordings (Chess, 1993)

If you only know Mud as the megawatt electric warrior, these raw acoustic field recordings – taken by blues folklorist Alan Lomax in 1941 – reveal another fascinating side to the coin. The best moments find Muddy on his lonesome, stripped to the bones of his talent, positively oozing future greatness in the rattled attack of his slide work, the emerging voicebox and the proto versions of future Chess hits like I Can’t Be Satisfied.

That Lomax’s recordings ended up in the Library Of Congress says it all: they’re a perfect snapshot of American music.

Muddy Waters Sings Big Bill/Folk Singer (Chess, 1960/1964)

The reissues market is flooded with ‘twofers’, but this is the set you need, splicing two classic albums from 1960 and 1964. Big Bill finds the Mud on reverential but raucous form, covering the catalogue of Big Bill Broonzy and knocking cuts like Mopper’s Blues out of the park.

On the surface, the all-acoustic Folk Singer is less exciting, until you hear the mournful scuttle of My Home Is In The Delta (with a guesting Buddy Guy) and the belief-beggering solo spot Feel Like Going Home – all captured with a crystalline production that prioritises the big man’s mahogany voicebox.

Fathers And Sons (Chess, 1969)

Mike Bloomfield set the ball rolling – telling Marshall Chess he “wanted to do a thing with Muddy” – and this all-star project took flight from there.

In April 1969, heavy-hitters including Paul Butterfield, his drummer Sam Lay and Booker T bassist Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn convened in Chicago for a three-night recording session, at which Muddy quaffed champagne and sang himself “stone hoarse” on a selection of lesser-known gems.

The studio cuts are matched by the live material – recorded in the same period – which finds a crack band taking Muddy’s catalogue to the masses.

Hard Again (Blue Sky, 1977)

By the mid-70s, Muddy was a relic on the ropes, watching the once-proud Chess Records absorbed into a reissues label, then leaving the roster to kick his heels. Redemption came in the form of producer Johnny Winter, who marshalled the troops (James Cotton, pianist Pinetop Perkins and drummer Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith were all onboard) and coaxed out the kind of performances the bluesman hadn’t given in years.

Both the pace and standard were set by the opening ‘whoa yeah!’ of Mannish Boy, and Hard Again kept it up, giving us languid gems like Bus Driver and the rollicking I Can’t Be Satisfied.

Muddy ‘Mississippi’ Waters Live (Blue Sky, 1979)

Deep into his 60s, Muddy could still hit a stage like a wrecking ball. This live collection isn’t quite up to the lofty standards of Newport, but the old warhorse hollers up a storm on She’s Nineteen Years Old and Nine Below Zero, while his slide work has rarely been caught on fierier form.

Suffice to say that though Johnny Winter pops up on guitar, he never wrestles the spotlight from a vintage performer patently relishing his late-bloom. The rubber-stamp on his comeback came the following year, when the album scored a Grammy for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording.

The London Muddy Waters Sessions (Chess, 1972)

Decamping to the British capital to record with his acolytes had done good business for Howlin’ Wolf in 1970, so why shouldn’t it work for another Chicago star? Mysteriously, Muddy doesn’t seem to have the Wolf’s pulling-power: instead of the Stones and Clapton, he gets Steve Winwood, Rick Grech and Mitch Mitchell.

And yet, for blues-rock connoisseurs, the London Sessions has to be heard, if only for the blow-the-doors-off guitar work of Rory Gallagher: the one band member who seems to grasp the brief, lock horns with the Delta don and blow these sessions skywards.

King Bee (Blue Sky, 1981)

With Johnny Winter updating his sound, Muddy’s hot streak continued with 1978’s I’m Ready, but it was pipped by this 1981 swansong. By now, the bandleader was in physical decline, probably explaining why the sessions were fast and fractious (recording would be derailed by a salary dispute).

Though Winter reportedly wasn’t happy with the results, the album has aged well, especially on cuts like Champagne & Reefer and the joyful bounce of (My Eyes) Keep Me In Trouble. Peaking at No.192 in the US charts, King Bee wasn’t the commercial send-off that Muddy deserved for changing the face of popular music, but it’s far from a last gasp.

Electric Mud (Cadet, 1968)

Muddy called this album “dogshit”. While Marshall Chess must take some responsibility for Electric Mud – it was his idea to flank Muddy with avant-garde psych-rockers Rotary Connection – the bluesman himself had his eye on the counter-cultural dollar (“I played for so many of these so-called hippies that I thought probably I could reach them”).

Waters is all at sea among the fuzzboxes and parping saxes, misplacing his mojo on Hoochie Coochie Man and reduced to copycat on a cover of Let’s Spend The Night Together. It sold well, but Muddy couldn’t have sounded more uncomfortable if they’d stuck him in beads and a kaftan.

Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell (Cleveland International/Epic, 1977)

The voice belonged to Meat Loaf, the technical sorcery was producer Todd Rundgren’s, but the songs and the mad vision were very much Steinman’s. Bat Out Of Hell’s seven songs are gloriously overwrought and overblown – this is Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run reimagined by Richard Wagner, sung by a sweat-drenched quarterback in a frilly shirt while Dr Frankenstein hammers a grand piano to dust.

From the immortal title track to For Crying Out Loud’s cry to the heavens, Steinman’s opera of sex and death remains the ultimate benchmark by which rock’n’roll’s grand, ridiculous ambition should forever be judged.

Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell (Virgin, 1993)

It’s one of rock’s great redemption stories: two old friends repair their fractured relationship and return with an album that returns both to their rightful place in the rock’n’roll firmament.

At 75 minutes, Bat II is half as long again as its forebear, but its brilliance lies in the supernatural magnitude of its sound and the sheer conviction of its delivery – who else could serve up a nine-minute song titled I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) and ensure everyone involved kept a straight face?

Bat II landed in the midst of grunge and still sold millions. That’s how great it is.

Jim Steinman - Bad For Good (Epic, 1981)

Tired of waiting for a burnt-out Meat Loaf to recover from the considerable excesses of Bat Out Of Hell, Steinman decided to record the songs he’d written for the proposed follow-up himself.

At its best, his lone solo album is even more outrageous than its predecessor – the title track palpitates, Stark Raving Love exhorts, and Love And Death And An American Guitar almost implodes under the weight of its own spoken-word insanity. The vocals are the weak spot, as Steinman and studio ringer Rory Dodd try and fail to out-Meat Loaf Meat Loaf.

The definition of a flawed masterpiece.

Meat Loaf - Dead Ringer (Epic, 1981)

Following up the insane success of Bat Out Of Hell was tough, especially after four long years away. By then Todd Rundgren had picked up his ball and gone to play elsewhere, Meat Loaf’s full force roar was drained, and the world had moved on to other things. But Steinman still magics up moments of roaring, convulsive rock’n’roll brilliance – Peel Out sounds like a choir of Harley-Davidsons singing in harmony, and Meat/Cher duet Dead Ringer For Love is the soundtrack to the world’s most OTT Tinder date.

No, it’s not as good as its celestial predecessor. But then what is?

Bonnie Tyler - Secret Dreams And Forbidden Fire (Columbia, 1986)

Steinman’s second collaboration as producer with Welsh belter Bonnie Tyler, following 1983’s Faster Than The Speed Of Night, is bigger, glossier and way more Steinmanesque, framing the singer’s gale-force rasp against crashing pianos, towering choirs and none-more-80s electronic drums.

Bryan Adams and Desmond Child contribute songs, and Frida Payne’s soul classic Band Of Gold is transformed here into a titanic disco-rock anthem. But it’s Steinman’s own numbers that shine like diamonds in the night sky, not least the exhilarating Holding Out For A Hero.

Pandora’s Box - Original Sin (Virgin, 1989)

Steinman’s gothic fever-dream vision of the 60s girl bands he worshipped in his youth finds him in full Svengali mode, assembling a crack team of female singers, including Bat Of Out Hell alumna Ellen Foley, and turning all the dials firmly up to ‘outrageous’.

Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere) and The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be are pocket rock operas that pile on the drama, although it’s the magnificent It’s All Coming Back To Me Now that really stands out as the album’s monumental highlight. The most Jim Steinman album Jim Steinman ever made.

Billy Squier - Signs Of Life (Capitol, 1984)

Big-in-the-80s rocker Billy Squier originally wanted Midas man Mutt Lange to produce his fourth album, but settled on Steinman when Lange was unavailable.

It was, in hindsight, a shonky fit – the headstrong musician wrote all the songs on the record himself, with Steinman effectively relegated to the role of hired gun. His fingerprints are barely detectable on the processed pop-rock of Take A Look Behind Ya and the infamous Rock Me Tonite, and only the oddball (Another) 1984 comes even close to really capturing that Steinmanesque wizardry.

A decent Billy Squier album, perhaps, but an inconsequential Jim Steinman one.

Bonnie Tyler - Faster Than The Speed Of Night (Columbia, 1983)

Tyler was stuck in bouffanted country-pop purgatory before Steinman parachuted in to produce her fifth album. Out went the acoustic guitars and songs about being lost in France, and in came the customary blood, thunder and pianos.

Six of its nine tracks are Steinmanized covers, including versions of CCR’s Have You Ever Seen The Rain and Frankie Miller’s Tears (featuring Miller himself). But it’s the two songs Steinman brought to the table that are the keepers – the revved-up title track, and the monumental power ballad Total Eclipse Of The Heart, a song originally earmarked for Meat Loaf.

Sisters Of Mercy - Floodland (Merciful Release/WEA, 1987)

A bit of a cheat, really, given that Steinman produced just two songs on the Sisters’ noted second album. But what songs they were – Dominion/Mother Russia and This Corrosion were towering edifices of camp, gothic excess.

A student of the mythology of rock’n’roll, Sisters mastermind Andrew Eldritch knew exactly what he was getting – he pitched This Corrosion to Steinman as “the high-point of a Borgia’s disco evening”, a reference to the decadent Renaissance-era family, and that is exactly what he got. Why Eldritch didn’t get Steinman to produce the whole album is one of life’s mysteries.

Meat Loaf - Braver Than We Are (Caroline International, 2016)

It was touted as Meat Loaf and Steinman’s first album together since Bat Out Of Hell II more than 20 years earlier. In truth, Steinman wasn’t a well man and Meat Loaf’s voice was shot.

Braver Than We Are pulls together a bunch of old Steinman songs in an attempt to recapture past glories, but the two main dudes are shadows of the men they once were, and producer Paul Crook is no Todd Rundgren. All the good will in the world can’t mask the fact it’s a stinker.

Poignantly, it would be the final album that either man was involved in – Steinman died in April 2020 and Meat Loaf just 10 months later.

Recall The Beginning… A Journey From Eden (Capitol, 1972)

Even in a golden year this is magnificent. The blasting horn intro on Welcome ushers in the doo-wop Enter Maurice, chased down by the groove soul of High On You Mama and the ambition of Somebody Somewhere Help Me.

But it’s Side Two’s four-song suite where this journey locates the cosmic motherlode. Love’s Riddle and Fandango emerge from relationship turbulence before Miller hits the stratosphere on Nothing Lasts and the title track, his greatest song on his greatest album. The album was completed on a total eclipse of the Moon. Far out.

Sailor (Capitol, 1968)

The Steve Miller Band’s second album features the classic line-up of Lonnie Turner (bass), Jim Peterman (keyboards), Tim Davis (drums) and Boz Scaggs, whose guitar and vocals thrash out Overdrive and Dime-A-Dance Romance.

The sarcastic Living In The USA and slinky groupie ballad Quicksilver Girl, written about Julia Dreyer (the Girl With No Name on The Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday) stand out, as does Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson’s Gangster Of Love with its shuffled breakdown beats. Opener Song For Our Ancestors is topped and tailed by booming San Francisco Bay foghorns, and driving-rain effects resonated in the UK long before Pink Floyd’s Echoes trip.

Children Of The Future (Capitol, 1968)

Glyn Johns was hired as engineer, but after six weeks of “dicking around doing nothing” at Olympic Studios in London he persuaded Miller to give him control.

The result was a spectacular Chicago-meets-Swinging London blues epic encapsulated by the The Beauty Of Time Is That It’s Snowing (Psychedelic B.B.), a crazy trip with street-chattering dolly birds, seagulls, glorious vocal harmonies and Mellotron. The zonked mood is hammered home by underground poster artist Victor Moscoso’s lysergic cover art completing the complete DayGlo experience.

Brave New World (Capitol, 1969)

Out go Scaggs and Peterman, enter polymath jazzer Ben Sidran, co-writer of the elegant blues Space Cowboy that lifts the riff from Lady Madonna to underpin a typically sardonic lyric.

Mainlining his Anglophile leaning Miller inspired pianist Nicky Hopkins to provide his best playing this side of the Stones’ Sway on the crescendo build up of Kow Kow, while Paul McCartney (credited as Paul Ramon) plays bass and drums and adds his best Little Richard rasp to My Dark Hour. Macca had just had an almighty fall-out with John Lennon during the sessions for Oh! Darling and vented his frustration here, much to Miller’s delight.

Number 5 (Capitol, 1970)

Miller’s country album relocated him to Barefoot Jerry’s Cinderella Sound in Nashville with locals Wayne Moss, Charlie McCoy, Buddy Spicher and Bobby Thompson. From this safe haven Miller delivered his most political messages via Industrial Military Complex Hex, Jackson-Kent Blues and Never Kill Another Man, written in the aftermath of the USA’s invasion of Cambodia. They rival MC5 for righteous anger.

His big kiss-off to the hippie era coincided with closure on the original SMB sound, although he dusts off old Scaggs collaboration Going To Mexico, arguably his toughest blues.

Fly Like An Eagle (Capitol, 1976)

In which Miller becomes an arena-filling space-rock guitar god on the Native American title track, the Dallas outlaw ditty Take The Money And Run and deliberate crowd pleaser Rock’n Me, designed around Free’s All Right Now and premiered for a British audience when the Steve Miller band supported Pink Floyd at Knebworth in July ’75.

Operating as a trio, SMB entered the phase where newfound fame caused old fans to believe Miller sold out, and anti-FM types to disparage him utterly. Haters gonna hate, but Miller took platinum sales to the bank. Joe Satriani loves this album. He’s right to do so.

The Joker (Capitol, 1973)

Psych-blues may be long since gone, but good-time whimsy prevails on the ear-worm title track (which didn’t chart in the UK on its ’73 release, but reached No.1 in 1990 on the back of a Levi’s 501 ad), although Miller retained credibility with an acoustic live take on Robert Johnson’s perennial blues classic Come On In My Kitchen, and Evil, captured in Philadelphia and Boston.

This album is probably where you hear Miller deciding that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em as he pursues the big bucks and succeeds. Maybe he would never be as vital as he had been before, but he was calling the shots at Capitol Records – who doubled his royalty.

Living In The 20th Century (Capitol, 1986)

Having paid his dues, Miller returned some to Jimmy Reed on this underrated album, notably covering Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby, and delivering his strongest original in ages in the shape of I Want To Make The World Turn Around. Hardly revolutionary, this was prime Miller-lite but eminently quaffable.

Better still, the old gang were back in town, with bass player Gerald Johnson and drummer Gary Mallaber keeping the guitar man on his toes. Other top sidemen are saxophonist Kenny G, Norton Buffalo on harmonica and Les Dudek, whose Dobro playing keeps the lazy Behind The Barn choogling along.

Bingo! (Roadrunner/Loud And Proud, 2010)

Seventeen years after the Wide River album, Miller returned for a pure blues set, covering heroes Chester Burnett, BB King, Otis Rush and New Orleans man Jessie Hill. Coincidentally, the producer is Andy Johns, Glyn’s younger brother.

A modern influence comes from vocalist Sonny Charles, guitarist Jimmy Vaughan and Joe Satriani, former Santana percussionists Michael Carabello and Adrian Areas provide the Latin feel, and Miller’s long-time harmonica player Norton Buffalo is the most featured soloist. While Miller didn’t write anything here, the results are better than expected since his own singing is still mellow and spacey.

Circle Of Love (Capitol, 1981)

Side one of Circle Of Love passes muster – only just – but the inclusion on this record of the futuristic, vaguely political disco dub Macho City doesn’t work. Stretching to more than 18 minutes long on the original album, it wanders into realms of tedium, even if the helicopter and storm noises are engaging.

Oddly, the track has achieved some kind of cult status among hipster house samplers such as Joey Negro, who dug Gerald Johnson’s funky bass line and drummer Gary Mallaber’s slinky rhythms. Even so, this isn’t the first album to turn to; even the cool rock’n’roll Heart Like A Wheel sounds too pat. Steve Miller in sleep mode.

The Sonics – Here Are The Sonics!!! (1965)

Just as R’n’B was being smoothed off to an ever-shinier finish, Tacoma, Washington mob The Sonics brought the noise back big style.

Recorded on just a two-track studio set-up, Here Are The Sonics!!! (and boy did they merit the triple exclamation mark) presented a raw-throated, sandpaper-guitared assault on a collection of rhythm’n’blues classics, which were, somehow, outshone by a clutch of positively demonic sounding original compositions such as Strychnine, Psycho and The Witch.

The Monks – Black Monk Time (1966)

If you were under the impression that all garage rock stuck to a similar, no-nonsense template, this bunch of ex-GIs based in Germany disproved that from the get-go.

Driven by geographical isolation from pop trends and good old-fashioned boredom, they shaved monks’ tonsure bald patches into their heads, in a fashion statement roughly 700 times as anarchic as your last tattoo, and made raucous, ragingly tinny R’n’B that made the Rolling Stones sound like Pat Boone.

Their one and only album probably sold the least records of anyone on this list, but The Monks were arguably as original and innovative as any of them. Oh, and songs such as I Hate You, Drunken Maria and Oh, How To Do Now rock like Satan’s own suspension bridge.

The Seeds – The Seeds (1966)

As beat pop’s milky white take on R’n’B began to curdle under the influence of strange mind-altering substances, The Seeds threatened to corrupt the template further with all manner of delinquent, misanthropic malevolence.

Sky Saxon’s reedy voice lent an extra, well, seediness to their attitude-addled brand of blunt-instrument rock’n’roll, but the swirling keyboards that increasingly enveloped their sound suggested things were always on the verge of getting really quite scary, man.

13th Floor Elevators – Psychedelic Sounds Of… (1966)

Go to your local vinyl emporium and you’ll invariably find these releases in a section marked ‘Garage/Psych’.

But If many of the early garage bands were dipping their toes in lysergic waters by 1966, Roky Erickson and his bandmate Tommy Hall were already up to their third eyes in it, to the extent that the latter’s sleeve notes for this debut album openly advocated chemical experimentation as a pathway to a higher consciousness.

The title can also lay claim to establishing the ‘P’ word as the defining adjective for a whole era of musical experimentation. And their songs, addled by Erickson’s bluesy vocal honk and Hall’s wonderfully wobbly-sounding electric jug, were like R’n’B thrown headlong into a hall of mirrors.

The Stooges – Funhouse (1970)

Given the sheer scale of their influence, it’s easy to forget that at heart, The Stooges' minimalist chug and nihilistic howl was essentially garage rock rebooted with even fewer chords, a harder edge and a meaner, more anarchic approach to kicking over the statues of rock’n’roll.

This is generally considered to be the pick of their two albums, but either this or their self-titled 1969 debut represent indispensable inclusions in any rock fan’s collectionView Deal

Various Artists – Nuggets (1972)

While there weren’t many Garage Rock acts that got their act together sufficiently to make a whole album strong enough to justify a purchase alongside one or two outstanding singles, it’s fair to say that this compilation did more for those bands’ rehabilitation than any other release.

Subtitled Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, it introduced a pre-punk generation not just to the phrase ‘punk rock’ (coined by liner notes writer and future Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye), but to a whole sub-culture of rough and ready proto-psych ne’er-do-wells that had nonetheless left their grubby fingerprints on the latter stages of beat pop era they sprang from.

It rescued neglected classic cuts such as The Standells’ Dirty Water, The Count Five’s Psychotic Reaction and The Castaways’ Liar Liar from the bargain bucket of history, and the expanded box sets and sequels released since have unearthed many more glorious rough gems from the same era.

The Cramps – Songs The Lord Taught Us (1980)

There may have been sizeable chunks of glam glitter and rockabilly swagger dotted around these New Yorkers’ sound, but at heart they had the toxic fumes of the original garage bands running through their scabby veins, and even covered The Sonics on this debut long-player, alongside supremely stomping, sleazy romps such as Garbage Man and TV Set.

The Cramps may have emerged from the latter days of the CBGBs scene, but they sounded like they’d strutted straight out of a bonkers B-movie.

The Hives – Veni, Vidi, Vicious (2000)

Formed by five Swedish disciples of the original garage sound, The Hives beefed up the original brutal blueprint of the genre with irresistibly infectious hard rock riffs to create pop songs with sharp suits and big boots on (which they claimed were written for them by a fictional svengali, Randy Fitzsimmons).

Their Poptones compilation Your New Favourite Band launched them to Next-Big-Thing status in the early 2000s, but it curates the pick of their first two albums, of which this is the best. Purists might scoff at their cartoonish image, but put Hate To Say I Told You So on loud and resistance is futile.

White Stripes – White Blood Cells (2001)

Just as the testosterone-fuelled, big-shorted plod of nu-metal was using the most cretinous aspects of hip-hop to dumb down hard rock to within an inch of its life, Jack White and his alleged sister (actually ex-wife) Meg succeeded by dumbing it up instead.

Stripping their sound down to just guitar, vocals and drums, the White Stripes took skinny-assed blues riffs and crunching rhythm and along with a fair modicum of lyrical wit, made a sound that somehow sounded totally original.

This third album remains their finest hour, and showed that going back to basics could sound anything but reductive or simplistic.View Deal

Thee Oh Sees – Help (2009)

Proof that Garage Rock need not just be about the purist primitivism of influential garage revivalists such as Billy Childish, John Dwyer’s musical vision took a similarly brutal but effective rock’n’roll songwriting framework and coated it in lo-fi sound effects and claustrophobic cave-fulls of reverb and feedback, while retaining the adrenaline-wired buzz that always characterised the best garage rock.

There are plenty of other examples to choose from Thee Oh Sees’ prolific output, but they’ve arguably never bettered this album.

The Fabulous Johnny Cash (Columbia, 1959)

The deep-chested voice. The spare accompaniment that rolls like a train. The haunted man torn between light and dark. All the Cash trademarks are here on his debut for Columbia. It’s only 29 minutes long, but there’s no filler.

The themes of hard living and heartache provide blueprints for generations of country, folk and rock. And in the self-written Frankie’s Man Johnny and the classic Don’t Take Your Guns To Town, Cash is already displaying the full strength of his storytelling gifts. Nearly 60 years on, it’s a record that still crackles with emotional power.

At Folsom Prison (Columbia, 1971)

The real jailhouse rock. Cash had been performing in prisons for 10 years, but this 1968 show captured him at his rawest, singing of crime, troubled conscience and life behind bars. His connection with the inmates is electric, especially on rap-sheet rockers Cocaine Blues, 25 Minutes To Go (Cash’s unhinged vocal foreshadows punk) and Dark As A Dungeon.

It’s a total communion, artist and audience living the songs together. To break the intensity, Cash interjects funny asides such as: “This is being recorded for an album, so I can’t say ‘hell’ or ‘shit’ or anything like that.”

With His Hot And Blue Guitar (Sun, 1957)

This was the first LP that Sun Records released. As a forecast for a long career, look no further than the four hits that put Cash on the radio and in jukeboxes: I Walk The Line, Cry, Cry, Cry, So Doggone Lonesome and Folsom Prison Blues.

But even though it’s a jewel in Sun’s crown, this album stands apart from the rockabilly rave-ups of labelmates Elvis and Jerry Lee. It’s more hillbilly, more rural, but still bristling with fierce conviction and energy. And Elvis or Jerry Lee would never have sung: ‘I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.’

Orange Blossom Special (Columbia, 1965)

1965 was the year that Cash and Dylan became collaborators, and this album plays like a tribute to Bob. Covering Dylan, Cash makes It Ain’t Me, Babe and Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right his own, while embracing the acoustic guitar/harmonica (the latter provided by Charlie McCoy) folk-singer stance.

He turns the title song into a country standard with a landmark vocal performance (dig the moment he sings: ‘I don’t care if I do die’). It also marks his first duet with June Carter. A riveting, cohesive album from start to finish.

Everybody Loves A Nut (Columbia, 1966)

Johnny Cash doing novelty songs? Yes, behind the sombre facade was a wacky sense of humour.

The still timely The One On The Right Is On The Left jabs at musicians who air political views in their songs; The Singing Star’s Queen tweaks the ladykiller reputation of Cash’s pal Waylon Jennings; Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog follows a thieving hound; and Boa Constrictor makes being ’swallered’ by a snake into a series of one-liners (‘Oh fiddle, he’s up to my middle’). The album artwork is by the great Mad magazine illustrator Jack Davis.

American Recordings (American, 1994)

Sun Records founder Sam Phillips had it right early on: Cash’s voice sounds best when complemented by stripped-down arrangements. So when Def Jam’s Rick Rubin signed the Nashville cast-off in the early 90s, he put two mics in front of him, stood back and hit ‘Record’.

The resulting guitar-vocal collection of Cash’s own songs and eclectic covers (Leonard Cohen’s Bird On A Wire, Nick Lowe’s The Beast In Me and Glenn Danzig’s Thirteen) is a compelling audio-vérité portrait, the first in a series of five releases over 10 years.

Ring Of Fire: The Best Of Johnny Cash (Columbia, 1963)

Normally, a Best Of might be considered a shortcut, but this one collects several key singles and EP tracks that hadn’t appeared on an album proper. Among them is the mariachi-flavoured Ring Of Fire, co-written by Johnny’s future wife June Carter in the middle of their illicit affair.

The twangy What Do I Care and I Still Miss Someone are both standards, and Forty Shades Of Green, his ode to Ireland, should be. The forgotten gem here is the Cash-written Tennessee Flat Top Box, a perfect song that unfolds like an alternative Johnny B. Goode.

Ragged Old Flag (Columbia, 1974)

There’s a fine line between patriotism and jingoism. Modern country music is full of the latter. But this concept album of Cash originals, released during the Watergate trials, strikes a balance.

After the opening recitation, which honours a flag that’s ‘been through the fire before’, Cash sings odes to American values such as hard work (King Of The Hill), religion (Pie In The Sky) and family (I’m A Worried Man), while questioning topical issues including pollution (Don’t Go Near The Water) and criminal justice (Please Don’t Let Me Out). The backing (with Carl Perkins on lead guitar) recalls Cash’s best sides at Sun.

Highwaymen (Columbia, 1986)

You have to sidestep the 80s-era production touches, but it’s worth it to hear Cash singing with fellow titans Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Jim Webb’s title song is a masterpiece about reincarnation, and listen for the Captain Kirk moment when Cash enters on: ‘I fly a starship across the universe divide.’

Other album highlights are the rockabilly bop of Big River and affecting covers of Guy Clark’s Desperados Waiting For A Train and Bob Seger’s Against The Wind. The idea of legends hanging out and having fun became the template for supergroups such as the Traveling Wilburys.

Rainbow (Columbia, 1985)

The title alone tells you something’s amiss. The early 1980s in Nashville was a time of goopy syrup being poured over country music. Cash tries gamely to fit in, but surrounding that voice with cheesy synths, chorus-y guitars and drum machines (unbelievably, the producer was Memphis soul man Chips Moman) is akin to colourising Citizen Kane.

Two decent tracks – I’m Leaving Now and Casey’s Last Ride – can’t counterbalance the cruise-ship balladry elsewhere. This album marked a rocky end to Cash’s time at Columbia and was the spur to his eventual acoustic resurrection.

The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (Sympathy for the Record Industry, 2001)

Jack White and drummer/ex-wife Meg White might still have been small-timers when they entered Memphis’ Easley-McCain Recording Studio in February 2001, but the bandleader had a master plan for White Blood Cells.

The straight-blues direction and slavish covers of the band’s earliest work were ditched for 16 White-penned compositions. More significant, while all around him adopted the sexless sheen of Pro Tools, the bandleader insisted on analogue grit and impulse tracking, rattling through the songs at whip-cracking pace (they didn’t even bother with a bass track).

“There were probably only three days of recording,” White told Detroit Metro Times, “We really rushed the whole album, to get that feel, a real tense thing coming out of it.”

“We just set up and they started going,” remembered engineer Stuart Sikes in the Detroit Free Press. “Jack knew what he wanted. He told me more than once not to make it sound too good. Basically, he wanted it as raw as possible, but better than if it was recorded in somebody’s living room. He steered me that way and I ran with it.”

The plan worked. Upon release in July 2001, nothing sounded quite like White Blood Cells. From scabrous smash-and-grabs like Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground or Fell In Love With A Girl to campfire jangles like Hotel Yorba, these songs felt like sunbeams punching through storm clouds after years of malodorous nu metal. For once, the music press and the man in the pit were agreed: The White Stripes were it.

There are indie tastemakers who’ll string us up for overlooking Elephant, but this third album deserves the podium finish, announcing a world-beating talent and sweeping away the dross like a biblical flood. The band’s star would rise higher, but they never made a more exciting statement.

The White Stripes - Elephant (V2/XL, 2003)

The mighty Elephant trampled all-comers in 2003, giving The White Stripes their first UK No.1 album and the rock scene a new poster-boy. Recorded at London’s Toe Rag studio on equipment predating 1963, the record ram-raided the mainstream without compromising White’s vision one iota.

In 2003, its offcuts were everywhere, from the football casuals bellowing the riff of Seven Nation Army, to the rock clubs pumping out Ball And Biscuit, to the video that saw Kate Moss gyrating through I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. The planet was theirs for the taking.

Jack White - Lazaretto (Third Man/XL/Columbia, 2014)

White’s solo return had an eccentric genesis, the guitarist alternating his all-male/female touring bands at sessions in Nashville, and rifling through lyrics he’d written as a 19-year-old for inspiration. If there was a whiff of pseudery, it evaporated when Lazaretto arrived in June 2014, delivering White’s most solid collection of songs since the Stripes.

Referencing the masters on the opening retread of Blind Willie McTell’s Three Women, White went on to spread his wings, evoking Exile-era Stones on Just One Drink and pulling the listener up short with the shiveringly personal Alone In My Home.

The White Stripes - De Stijl (Sympathy For The Record Industry, 2000)

De Stijl deserves its cult status, catching the duo at the tipping point before everything went batshit crazy. Dedicated to Blind Willie McTell, this second album was recorded to eight-track in White’s living room, but that rudimentary production belied a tracklisting that runs the gamut.

White was already the master of chippy, slide-driven blues, but patently had countless strings to his bow, as evidenced by the sugar-rush pop singalong of You’re Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl) or the plinky-plonk, Macca-worthy Apple Blossom. Impending greatness was writ large.

Jack White - Blunderbuss (Third Man/XL/Columbia, 2012)

A decade after White Blood Cells, there was a growing consensus that White had misplaced his mojo. In 2012, we ate our words and hats, with solo debut Blunderbuss darting between surf, country and honky-tonk, and remembering to throw a fistful of hooks at standouts like Sixteen Saltines and Missing Pieces.

Hitting No.1 in both the US and UK, Blunderbuss represented another adrenalin shot for the genre that White had helped to resurrect. “It’s all blues music to me,” he told us of the album’s light-footed approach. “It’s just different ways of projecting that. But the essence of all music to me is the blues.”

Jack White - Fear Of The Dawn (Third Man, 2022)

Silent as a solo artist for four years, White caught up with two albums in 2022 – and for our purposes, the fuzz-faced Fear Of The Dawn beats the dialled-down folk of Entering Heaven Alive.

Lead single and opener Taking Me Back is the bellwether and best track, its shredded octave-pedal stomp and synth squiggles nixing the lingering notion that White was a blues scholar preserved in aspic. From there, the highlights of this long, dark night of the soul keep landing, from the Who-style power chord smashes on Eosophobia to Shedding My Velvet’s stalking, small-hours confessional (‘This is the real me’).

The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers (V2/XL/Third Man, 2006)

The White Stripes were still a going concern when White ducked out for the first time, joining Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler for the alt-rock semi-supergroup’s best album.

Lead single Steady, As She Goes you already know, but should revisit, its funky lope, barb-wire guitar chop and breakneck chorus is still one of White’s best moments. That opener sets up a front-loaded album (the windmilling blue-denim rock of Hands and the itchy, weird Led Zeppelin III-ish title track are poles apart but both brilliant). After the Kinks-y Intimate Secretary and Together’s sundown strum, things sag.       

The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan (V2/XL/Third Man, 2005)

White’s lo-fi leanings came back to bite him on the Stripes’ fifth album, which was recorded to eight-track tape at his Detroit home with microphones shorting out as water dripped through the ceiling (“It was torture,” he told The LA Times. “It got to the point where I was almost feeling, ‘Let’s forget it. I can’t take it anymore’”).

Satan’s release wasn’t smooth sailing, either, some fans feeling White could ease up on the piano, marimba and lyrical nods to Rita Hayworth. But at its best – the alleycat yowl of Blue Orchid, Instinct Blues’s scream-to-a-snarl and the undeniable My Doorbell – this was potent stuff.       

The White Stripes - Icky Thump (Warner Bros./Third Man, 2007)

Jack ‘n’ Meg bowed out with a glittering swansong that ensured their legacy was bulletproof. Icky Thump fused White’s restless experimentation to some of his most rock-solid tunes.

The pianos were gone, and we didn’t miss them: Conquest was a crazed spaghetti-western scorcher, and Catch Hell Blues a showcase for White’s stunning electric slide work, while You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told) was a scream-it-back anthem. Always leave them hungry, runs the adage. After Icky Thump, we were ravenous

The Dead Weather - Dodge And Burn (Third Man, 2015)

In the history of pointless and perverse ideas, taking one of the scene’s most visceral frontman-guitar players and planting him on the drumstool is right up there.

The songs on this third Dead Weather release aren’t awful, and White gets a sniff of the microphone on three of the best: the spooky, synthy hip-rock of Three Dollar Hat, Rough Detective’s chippy nose-to-nose with Alison Mosshart and the punch-out-your-lights punk-rocker Open Up (That’s Enough). But those highlights aside, it could be anyone thumping away back there – and it’s hard to imagine many White fans willing the collective back from hiatus. 

Joe Bonamassa - Sloe Gin (J&R Adventures/Mascot, 2007)

Kevin Shirley’s arrival as producer/taskmaster brought chest-hair to the previous year’s You & Me, but it was his goading on Sloe Gin that pushed Bonamassa beyond bar-room cliché to genuine brilliance.

Conceptually, the album recalled Led Zeppelin III, with heavy-hitters like Dirt In My Pocket sitting alongside campfire-with-attitude cuts such as Ball Peen Hammer. And while the cover of Bad Company’s Seagull brought the house down, it was originals such as Around The Bend that announced the guitarist as a real contender. And the album gave him a No.1 placing on the Billboard Blues Chart.

Joe Bonamassa - Different Shades Of Blue (J&R Adventures/Mascot, 2014)

Tracking in Las Vegas in January 2014, after a two-year creative dry spell during which gunslingers like Gary Clark Jr. had jostled his podium, Bonamassa found himself in the unusual position of having to prove himself. On this evidence, shit-or-bust agrees with him.

Bar the reboot of Hendrix’s Hey Baby (New Rising Sun), Different Shades was an all-original classic, co-written alongside the cream of Nashville and knocked out of the park by a line-up on fire. With highlights such as the brass-bolstered Love Ain’t A Love Song and the wee-small-hours So, What Would I Do, the album established Bonamassa as a songwriter with every colour in his palette.

Joe Bonamassa - Dust Bowl (J&R Adventures/Mascot, 2011)

Burnt out by the Black Country Communion tour and busted for new material, the guitar hero “couldn’t make his fingers work at all” when sessions began, says Kevin Shirley. Dust Bowl was rescued only after the producer held Bonamassa under virtual house arrest. The tactic turned the ignition key and galvanised what is arguably the JB’s most atmospheric album.

On the piston-pumps of Slow Train and the bobbing rockabilly of Tennessee Plates you can almost feel Bonamassa shaking off the torpor, and by the outro of Prisoner he’d snatched a classic from the jaws of a car crash.

Joe Bonamassa - The Ballad Of John Henry (J&R Adventures/Mascot, 2009)

Every Bonamassa album is guided by a keyword, and for this seventh it was ‘swampy’. Fittingly for a record named after a hammer-toting US folk hero, John Henry was heavier than anything Bonamassa had released before.

Yet the greater departure was the emotional heft, with the wistful Happier Times and The Great Flood’s bereft solo laying bare a man who had previously lurked behind sunglasses. “Making the first half of the album,” he reflected, “I was in the happiest place I’d ever been in my life. The second half found me in completely the opposite state.”

Joe Bonamassa - Driving Towards The Daylight (J&R Adventures/Mascot, 2012)

The press shots of Bonamassa, slumped against a brick wall, thumbing a vintage comic, hinted at the fan-boy themes of this tenth release (“Basically, the Beano record was the template and the universal language”).

Originals such as the haunted title track and the jagged travelogue Dislocated Boy were songs to conjure with, but just as captivating were the raucous Stones In My Passway and a retool of Who’s Been Talking? that sampled Howlin’ Wolf. The guitarist was rewarded with his highest chart placings so far: UK No.2 and No.23 in the US.

Black Country Communion - Black Country Communion 2 (J&R Adventures/Mascot, 2011)

With three songs cranked out each day, 2 represents both the supergroup’s peak and modern rock’s greatest rush job. While Glenn Hughes was also 2’s principal writer, Bonamassa revelled in what he called “an excuse to rock unapologetically”, channelling Page on monolith harmony riffs like I Can See Your Spirit, and restaging The Battle Of Evermore with his mandolin work on The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall.

At the close of 2011, Classic Rock named Black Country Communion Breakthrough Act Of The Year. Sadly, the cracks were already perceptible.

Joe Bonamassa - Royal Tea (Provogue, 2020)

Bonamassa co-wrote the songs with his new best friend, former Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden, with additional contributions from Pete Brown (Cream’s lyricist), Jools Holland and Dave Stewart.

The ever-present Shirley opted for a big sound that characterised the album from the outset, from the grandiose, sweeping orchestral arrangement on When One Door Opens to the spontaneous-sounding hard stomp of the title track, where JoBo's guitar veers almost subconsciously between Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. It's meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.

Joe Bonamassa - Time Clocks (Mascot/Provogue, 2021)

Bonamassa envisaged Time Clocks a “subway record”: he’d ride the rail to the studio with one guitar, let the rhythms of New York City dictate the music. In the event, like everything else in the Covid era, this 15th album came out quite different, not just because of Shirley’s orchestration, but with the weight of the world seeping into songs that are proggier, weightier and more ruminative than what came before.

With its chiming, country-touched verse and the most overt chorus of his career, the title track is the standout, but Time Clocks has plenty of moments: make time for the Eastern-tinged riffing of Notches and The Loyal Kind’s sweet/sour pastoral folk.

Black Country Communion - Black Country Communion V (JR Adventures, 2004)

It’s troubling that BCC’s fifth album was the band’s lowest-charting to date (UK#58 with not much of a bullet; not even a blip on the US Billboard). And it’s a shame these songs didn’t reach more ears, because they’re front-to-back excellent: try You’re Not Alone’s roistering reboot of Zep’s The Ocean (complete with lusty Bonham count-in) and tarmac-burning finale The Open Road (whose outro instrumental could scorch off eyebrows), then tell us they aren’t the ultimate modern/classic rock band.

Bonamassa is a busy man, though, and after V’s relatively quiet reception, you wonder if they’ll commune again.

Rock Candy Funk Party - We Want Groove (J&R Records/Mascot, 2013)

While you have to salute Bonamassa’s flair for skinshedding, the funk improv of Tal Bergman and Ron DeJesus’s LA group proved a hook-up too far. We Want Groove has some thrilling moments, with frantic wah-wah-soaked tracks like Spastastic and Octopus-E evoking Shaft chasing a Harlem pimp through a porn-movie set.

Frustratingly, the album tanked when the pace dropped, and by the time sludge-tempo ambient soundscapes like New York Song and the optimistically titled The Best Ten Minutes Of Your Life had finished, there was drool running down your chin. Undeterred, two more albums followed in 2015 and 2019.

Parallel Lines (Chrysalis, 1978)

In the USA, Blondie were still a cult underground band prior to Parallel Lines, and at first the band were criticised for adopting a more polished sound. “Everyone asks ifwe’re selling out by going commercial,” Chris Stein told the NME at the time. “But I view it as a challenge to try to produce something that has mass appeal.”

That power to attract was evidenced by the musical diversity on offer on the record: the shimmering disco-infused Heart Of Glass; the doo-wop-inflected new-wave perfection of Sunday Girl; the swaggering cover of The Nerves’ unruly Hanging On The Telephone; the riff-heavy garage menace of One Way Or Another. An instant classic.