It’s a familiar phenomenon these days: venerable titan whose creative career has gone off the boil, stuck in a relatively comfortable dead-end, past achievements venerated but now taken for granted. Then along comes new management, a new producer, a new record deal, a sprinkle of hot-ticket guest stars… and a whole new body of work emerges, bringing with it a surge of vitality and a new phase of an artistic life that had been considered almost at an end. It happened with John Lee Hooker, with Johnny Cash… hell, it happened with Tom Jones..

But the precedent for this now well‑worn career path was set by Muddy Waters back in 1977. After almost three decades as the defining artist of Chicago’s Chess Records label, the 62-year-old Big Mud had terminated his association with the company – a move as startling as if the Eiffel Tower had declared itself bored with Paris and relocated to Rome. However, Chess was now barely recognisable as its former self: founder Phil Chess was dead, his son Marshall had quit to run the Rolling Stones’ label, the Chicago operation was closed down and the Chess catalogue and logo had been sold to a New York-based conglomerate.

Enter Johnny Winter. Recovered from most of the various bad habits acquired during his years of rock superstardom and recommitted to the blues, he offered to produce Muddy and signed him to Blue Sky, the custom label he ran with his manager Steve Paul. His mission: to cut what he considered to be a real Muddy Waters album, firmly in the tradition of the definitive South Side blues of Muddy’s first two Chess decades.

To this end, he and Muddy assembled an all-star studio crew. From Muddy’s road band came pianist Pinetop Perkins, drummer Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith and guitarist ‘Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin. The harmonica chair went to James Cotton, a Delta/Chicago veteran who’d logged several years in Muddy’s band, as well as leading his own successful groups. Cotton, in turn, brought in his regular bassist: a sparky youngster (comparatively speaking) named Charles Calmese. And, of course, Winter himself would play lead guitar. (As it turned out, he and Margolin played all the guitars on the album; Muddy’s iconic Fender rig – red Telecaster and Super Reverb amp – was always at his elbow in the studio but remained untouched.)

In October 1976 they assembled in The Schoolhouse, Dan ‘Instant Replay’ Hartman’s Connecticut home studio, and started tossing song ideas around. “I had cassette tapes of Muddy’s Chess songs made from my albums,” says Bob Margolin. “I’d bring them to the studio and play them for everyone, and Muddy would decide if he wanted to record a song again.”

A day of setting up, sound-checking and listening to Margolin’s cassettes was followed by two days of live-in-the-studio recording, and the album eventually known as Hard Again – because, Muddy said, the music they’d cut “made my little pee-pee hard again” – was in the can.

And what an album it was! If you ever want to hear the phrase ‘a giant refreshed’ illustrated definitively, you need go no further. And it began with the most devastating possible way to introduce Muddy to a new audience (or to reintroduce him to a slightly jaded old one): Muddy’s preacherly holler of ‘O-hhhhhh yeah!’ and fervent testifying, enthusiastically egged on by Winter and the congregation, before Willie Smith’s gut-punch bump-and-grind drumming kicks the ensemble into the defiant recasting of Mannish Boy.

Muddy’s rumbustious version of Brownie McGhee’s The Blues Had A Baby And They Named It Rock And Roll similarly entered the canon, and an exquisite version of Muddy’s first-ever Chess hit, 1948’s I Can’t Be Satisfied, found Winter reverently recreating Muddy’s original slide guitar part while the great man vocally revisited his youthful triumph.

The reviews were ecstatic. “Waters sings as though his life depended on it,” wrote Robert Christgau. “Johnny Winter proves with every note how right he was to want to do this, and James Cotton – well, James Cotton doesn’t open his mouth except to make room for the harmonica, which sounds just great.”

Another Grammy went onto Muddy’s well-stocked mantelpiece, and in 1977 they went out on tour, Winter fronting the band for the opening set and then stepping back for Muddy to take centre-stage. The shows were absolute stormers – check out the live recordings on Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live – and Winter was so pumped by the end of the tour that he took the band back into The Schoolhouse to cut his own album, Nothin’ But The Blues, climaxing with a guest lead vocal from Muddy on Walking Through The Park.

Two more studio sequels followed before Muddy’s death in 1983: I’m Ready was a worthy successor following the same format, with the core band augmented by old Chicago colleagues Jimmy Rogers (guitar) and Big Walter Horton (harp), but I’m A King Bee found Muddy’s energies flagging and the sessions padded by out-takes from the earlier records – though it did include one final classic Muddy original, Champagne And Reefer, as performed by Buddy Guy in Martin Scorsese’s recent Stones concert-doc Shine A Light.

Nevertheless, it was Hard Again that proved the Chess sound could outlive the Chess label, that Johnny Winter was the best friend an aged Chicago blues titan could have, and that Muddy himself was… hard again.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 175

Led by the Christmas-adjacent close-to-title track single, five-track EP Love Conquers All from 81-year-old Moody Blues bassist/singer John Lodge is a relaxing analogue act of limbering up as he recovers from a stroke and prepares for his onstage return.

With guests including Yes singer Jon Davison (Lodge’s son-in-law), Geoff Downes and guitarist Dave Colquhoun, it’s not trying to do anything remotely modern, but is comfortable in its mastery of a classic style of light, ultimately hopeful, melancholy.

The gentle instrumental Sunset Over Cocohatchee Bay invites the listener in before the shuffling, soft- touch reggae of Love Will Conquer All celebrates Lodge’s recuperation.

The Sun Will Shine, a tranquil ballad, again praises the power of positive thinking; and phrases like ‘lost in your own illusion’ will pleasantly trigger Moodies fans.

In These Crazy Times – seemingly written during Covid – urges combatting isolation, and the closing Whispering Angels builds from a stately pace to a killer bend-those-strings guitar solo blowout.

Lodge is in good voice throughout, and while this isn’t going to conquer any new worlds, its innate mellow glow warms the cockles.

Love Conquers All is on sale now via Keeping The Faith.

"It’s going to be weird how that’s perceived, having a Hollywood star on the album," Noel Gallagher mused in 1997, discussing Johnny Depp's appearance on Fade In-Out, the bluesy seventh track on Oasis' soon-to-be-released third album, Be Here Now.

Not that Gallagher really cared what anyone thought: having sold over 20 million copies of his band's second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, he considered Oasis "bigger than fucking God" and was sufficiently confident about the success of its follow up that, during interviews promoting the record, he would admit that some of the songs were "fucking shit".

Besides, by 1997, Depp's credentials as a genuine music fan - and as a proficient guitarist - already were well established. In fact, he and Noel Gallagher had already recorded together two years earlier, appearing on a cover of The Beatles' Come Together, credited to The Smokin' Mojo Filters, a one-off supergroup also featuring Paul McCartney, Paul Weller and more. laid down for the charity record The Help Album. Not everyone might have known that the actor had been signed to Geffen Records a decade earlier, as a member of Rock City Angels, or indeed that he'd recorded a terrible album alongside Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes as a member of the 'supergroup' P, but he'd been on Top Of The Pops with Shane MacGowan, and if the ex-Pogues singer had his back, then Depp's rock 'n' roll credentials needed no further authentication.

Depp recorded his slide guitar part for Fade In-Out during the spring of 1996, when Gallagher and his wife Meg Matthews joined the actor and his supermodel girlfriend Kate Moss on holiday on the Caribbean island of Mustique. Actually, for clarity, Gallagher wasn't there for a holiday, as such: he wanted a change of scenery to work after experiencing a new and unwelcome feeling for the first time in his professional career: writer's block.

"In London the phone was going all the time or there was someone knocking at the door or our kid comes round, 'Are we going out on the piss or what?'" he told Q magazine's Phil Sutcliffe in 1997. "Nailing a song together, finding the missing chord that gets it all flowing into one, that takes a lot of peace and quiet."

"The first part of [Fade In-Out] is from the Mustique demo with Johnny Depp playing slide guitar," Gallagher revealed. "I like it because it’s the first blues song I’ve ever done and Liam does the best singing I’ve ever heard from him.

"The scream near the end was the last bit we did. Me and Meg went back to Mustique over Christmas and I took the rough mix with me. It needed something and it was bugging me. Meg woke up one morning and there was I in bed beside her with the Walkman on, screaming. She thought I’d gone into my drug psychotic phase. Oh, sorry, I’m just filling in a bit of the record.

"So I don’t think 14-year-old girls will be skipping about to this one. [Cockney] ‘’Ere ’Shelle, wind that one on will yer!’ Until they find out Johnny Depp’s on it... If he hadn’t been around, we’d have had to get some fat old geezer who’d be telling us about how he played with Clapton in ’76 and took a slide solo that lasted for fucking months."

Be Here Now sold an astonishing 424,000 copies in a single day in the UK upon its release in August 1997, and went on to sell 1.47 million copies in the UK alone in 1997, making it the biggest selling album of the year in Britain. The album also topped the charts in 14 other countries, but missed out on topping the US Billboard 200 chart by a mere 771 copies.

Moody Blues guitarist and vocalist Justin Hayward has announced UK tour dates for October this year.

Billed as 'The Voice Of The Moody Blues', Hayward will play ten dates around the country, kicking off at Cardiff's New Theatre on October 19 and running through to London's Cadogan Hall on October 31.

"I always enjoy touring the UK," says Hayward, who spent much of 2023 and 2024 on the road, with several solo tours, along with two On The Blue cruises, and a sell-out tour co-headlining in the USA with Christopher Cross. "When I was in a local group in Swindon, we were offered a tour of the North of England and Scotland and I thought, ‘This is it - this is living'. British music - and British music fans - have a special place in the world of music, and I’m privileged that my songs are a part of that.

"The same goes for Forever Autumn. Wherever I go in the world people seem to know the song and associate it with my voice. It feels right to acknowledge Forever Autumn this Autumn.

"Mike, Julie, Karmen and myself are always trying to do something original and fresh, and thanks to guitar tech Josh, who has learnt exactly how to play my own acoustic parts on many songs, it means my beloved Gibson 335 electric guitar will be playing a bigger part in the show this year. Sharing songs that I have written, new and old, and playing many of them live for the first time on our 'Forever Autumn' 2025 tour will be a joy.”

The shows will go on general sale at 9am on Friday January 31, except the Truro show, where tickets go on general sale March 31. The dates and ticket details are below.

Justin Hayward - The ‘Forever Autumn’ Tour dates

Oct 19: Cardiff New Theatre
Oct 20: Truro Hall for Cornwall
Oct 21: Weston-Super-Mare Playhouse Theatre
Oct 23: Folkestone Leas Cliff Hall
Oct 24: Bournemouth Pavilion
Oct 25: Basingstoke Anvil
Oct 27: Llandudno Venue Cymru
Oct 28: New Brighton Floral Pavilion
Oct 29: Birmingham Town Hall
Oct 31: London Cadogan Hall

Get tickets.

Ever since donning the iconic black hat, suit and shades of Elwood Blues in John Landis’ 1980 blockbuster The Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd has been irrevocably associated with blues music. It’s a situation which could be painfully frustrating if the actor in question were not such a dyed-in-the-wool and well-informed hardcore fan of the genre. Catching up with Dan on a visit to the UK back in 2013, we asked him to choose his top 10 blues records. But he refused… and chose 11…

Howlin’ Wolf – Evil

“You can’t get any deeper into the blues than Chester Burnett. I got to see him a dozen times when I was growing up in Ottawa, Canada, and Evil showcases his voice beautifully. It’s a haunting, mysterious track, and my favourite blues record.

“Although he was a very physically imposing man, he was always nice to us kids when we got the chance to go backstage to talk to him. I guess because he knew that we were the up-and-coming fanbase reviving his career.”

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Red House

“Hendrix really is a blues man, and touching that vein the way he did, he was able to cut a classically structured blues track but spin it out in a way only Hendrix, with his guitar skills, could. Red House is a great example of his work and a tribute to blues music, filtered through Hendrix. While retaining a terrific respect for the blues form, his guitar was always innovative and didn’t sound like anybody else.”

John Lee Hooker – The Healer

“A beautiful, wonderful guitar and a great collaboration with Carlos Santana, a great use of John’s voice on a soothing, romantic song, just terrific.This was recorded near the end of his career and he played until he was into his 80s. I remember seeing him at The House of Blues in Anaheim and he just tore the roof off the place.

“It was great to get him into The Blues Brothers. I wish he’d been in it more, it was a little fight I had with [director John] Landis, but he was in the Maxwell Street scene before we go into the restaurant, that’s John Lee Hooker and Big Walter Horton playing there.”

Junior Wells with Buddy Guy – Messin’ With The Kid

“Great collaboration, great artists, wonderful harp work, Junior at his best and a wonderful, staccato blues song, not exactly in a traditional structure of 12-bar, a more progressive structure, it breaks up musically a little more and it’s just fantastic.”

Wynonie Harris – Sittin’ On It All The Time

“It’s a great song about a woman who held onto her charms and didn’t share them with anybody, then in the end was too old to share them with anybody because no one wanted them anymore. I love Wynonie Harris, a great jump swing artist, a great blues player. What he realised was, it wasn’t only the music that could connect with audiences, it was humour.”

Paul Butterfield Blues Band – Born In Chicago

“A really painful Chicago song about how hard it is to lose friends. When I sing it, I think of Johnny [Belushi]. I perform it with The Blues Brothers All Stars Show Band, with Zee [James Belushi] the blood brother of Jake Blues, and we sing that song a lot. There’s a verse in there, ‘my second friend went down when he was 33 years of age’ so it’s meaningful for me when I do it. The one thing you can say about Johnny is that he made the front page.”

The Rolling Stones – Little Red Rooster

“It’s just them at their slow, easy, sexy best, with Mick really nailing it as a vocalist and Keith giving it that great spin that only the Stones can do. There was that seminal recording session, when they went to Chess Records to see where all the great records were made, and Muddy Waters walked out to help them in with their equipment.

“When I was 16, I went to see Muddy Waters at Le Hibou [club in Ottawa]. SP Leary didn’t come back to the stage [for the encore] and so Muddy goes ‘Is there a drummer in the house?’ and I said ‘Yeah’ and I hopped up there. I actually got to drum behind Muddy Waters.”

Albert King  – Born Under A Bad Sign

“The best of the Stax-Volt era, you could say that he was a blues and blues/R&B crossover artist, but that’s just got to be one of the greatest blues songs ever written, and big old Albert King, left-handed guitar player, pipe smoking, gun carrying Albert King, was well equipped to deliver that music.

Freddie King  – Going Down

“A great, haunting, evocative, mysterious, sad, tragic song with great guitar and great lyrics. There’s a lot of tragedy in the blues, but a lot of humour too. you know, like ‘All She Wants To Do Is Rock: ‘My baby don’t like aeroplanes, she don’t like high-class clothes or fancy trains/All she wants to do is stay at home and hucklebuck with daddy all night long.’ ”

Eric Clapton  – Reconsider Baby

“I believe Lowell Fulson originally recorded that one, but I loved Clapton’s version of it. That record of his From The Cradle, that’s just beautiful. Anything Clapton’s done, all his early work, he’s a great artist and a true bluesman.”

Solomon Burke – Everybody Needs Somebody To Love

“Again, this is probably more R&B than blues, but it’s certainly in the blues tradition, and what a great blues artist he was. We covered that [in The Blues Brothers], and The Stones covered it but, Solomon Burke’s version is slow with a rolling feel to it and the richness in his voice.”

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 186, June 2013

Rock’n’roll is built on nicking ideas from here and there and fashioning it into something of your own. Some of the greatest rock songs ever are pretty much a pilfered patchwork of riffs, melodies and ideas, but it is a fine line until you’re basically just stealing someone else’s song, as Led Zeppelin discovered on this day 40 years ago concerning their one-for-the-ages classic Whole Lotta Love.

That was when veteran US bluesman Willie Dixon decided that enough was enough (or more precisely, his daughter, who heard Whole Lotta Love on the radio and noticed the strong similarities to her father’s song). Some 16 years after Whole Lotta Love’s release, Dixon filed a lawsuit against the band for the melodic and lyrical similarities to his composition You Need Love, released as a single by Muddy Waters.

Given You Need Love had regularly been performed by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page’s pals in Small Faces, who also recorded a version of it on their self-titled debut album, and the future Led Zep pair had often spoken to them about their love for it, they didn’t much have much in the way of a defending case. The matter ended up being settled out of court in Dixon’s favour and the way Page and Plant have subsequently described it, they might as well have held their hands up and gone “It’s a fair cop!” when the lawsuit arrived.

“Robert was supposed to change the lyrics,” Page said later, firmly putting the blame on his ex-bandmate. “He didn’t always do that, which is what brought on most of the grief.”

“Page’s riff was Page’s riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, ‘Well, what am I going to sing’,” Plant stated in an interview with Musician. “That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time and influence… Well, you only get caught when you’re successful. That’s the game.”

Of course, it wasn’t that far away – You Need Love came out in 1962 and Whole Lotta Love in 1969. But they’re all square now. Willie Dixon got his due in the end.

Slash has fashioned some of the most memorable guitar riffs and solos in modern rock. But few people would have had him down as a born-again bluesman. For his latest project, the Guns N’ Roses star dived deep into a world of music that had its first flowering 60, 70 and even 80 years ago.

“I’m a hard-rock guy at heart,” he explains. “But this kind of blues guitar playing for me has always been the basis for everything.”

It turns out that old songs such as Hoochie Coochie Man, Stormy Monday, Key To The Highway and Born Under A Bad Sign were foundational in Slash’s initial mastery of his instrument.

“When I first picked up the guitar, the guys that I was inspired by at that time were all heavily influenced by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson, and I just went full circle,” Slash says. “So that is really the root of where my guitar playing came from.”

Not only that, but the blues remains the common musical language of the jamming scene – and Slash has always liked to jam. He even got to play with BB King a couple of times (“He was really generous to me”).

“The initial idea for Orgy Of The Damned, the origins of it really go back to the late 1990s when I used to jam with a couple of the guys on this record [bassist Johnny Griparic and singer/keyboard player Teddy Andreadis] in an impromptu blues covers band called Slash’s Blues Ball. It was just us getting together, very drunken, and we would just play in all these LA dives.”

With the help of A-list friends including Brian Johnson, Billy Gibbons, Beth Hart, Paul Rodgers and Iggy Pop, Slash once again found his way back to the original motherlode.

But it wasn’t just the new album that kept Slash busy in 2024, although it was the jumping-off point. He spent the summer on tour, not just on tour, but leading his very own branded music extravaganza – the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.

An acronym for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance, the tour saw Slash and his band – former Blues Ball members Griparic and Andreadis, along with drummer Michael Jerome and singer and guitarist Tash Neal – headlined a nightly celebration of the blues that featured, depending on the date, a lineup of performers that included the Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ Mo’, Larkin Poe, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, Samantha Fish, ZZ Ward, Robert Randolph, Eric Gales and Jackie Venson.

The result was, well, an actual blues ball, with each show presenting a range of acts that reflect the breadth and scope of the form.

“It’s going to be a whole day of really cool music,” Slash said ahead of the dates. “And maybe reminiscent of a period gone by that used to happen a lot more often, where people would go out in the summertime and have these outdoor amphitheatre gigs with a bunch of different bands and players would just jam. And you know, I’ve sat in with guys doing blues songs here and there, but I haven’t done full sets like this, and in a festival-like setting, since the 90s. So I’m really excited.”

The idea of the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival came to fruition shortly after the guitarist had finished Orgy of the Damned. “The next thing is always figuring out a tour. And my manager told me that a promoter that he was talking to was interested in doing a blues festival and putting something together like that with me. And I just thought it was a great idea. So I jumped at it and started putting together some suggestions for blues artists I thought would be great to have on the bill. The artists involved represent so many different expressions of the blues.

“All the players are really, really cool. And they’re all people that, with the exception of maybe Eric Gales and Warren Haynes, are relatively new to me. I mean, some people have been around – like, Kingfish has been around a lot longer than I realised, but because of social media, all of a sudden I became very aware of him, more than I had through regular word of mouth. And some of them are fairly young, new artists, which I think is very cool to have. But overall it’s a really nice mix.”

“I’d been hearing whispers about Slash doing a blues-oriented record,” adds Samantha Fish. “And then I think I first heard about the tour from my management. And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get to go do stuff with Slash, sure…’ You know, very sceptical. [Laughs] But then it actually came through and I thought, it’s a cool concept and such a cool lineup. All the acts are really incredible performers and it’s a really great thing to get to be a part of. I was stoked.”

Another cool aspect of the tour was that Slash partnered with various charities – the Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, the Greenlining Institute, War Child – to support them with proceeds from ticket sales.

“I thought it’d be great if we could help make this into something a bit more communal,” he says, “and make the gigs more inclusive and more about bringing people together as opposed to driving everybody apart, which has been sort of really what this country has been doing for the last five years, you know?

"Like, we’ve been seriously focusing on division. So we started looking into some different charities that would be in line with important causes, like racial injustice and mental health, organisations that help people on the fringes, who are kept on the fringes because of certain discriminations and things like that. All around, it just seemed like another really good way to bring people together, in addition to the music.

“The blues has always functioned as a release for people that are having hard times – both the people playing it and the people listening to it. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people are having a hard time these days.”

The 2013 Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony was a special night. Held on April 18 at the Nokia Theater is Los Angeles, the evening saw Rush, Heart, Public Enemy, Randy Newman and the late Donna Summer and Albert King welcomed into the Hall Of Fame.

“Rock and roll has forever been ensconced in mystery,” said Dave Grohl as he and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins introduced Rush ahead of their induction. “Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil that early morning that Satan knocked upon his door; the death of Paul McCartney in 1966 and the conspiracy to replace him by an exact double; Elvis sightings... Jim Morrison sightings... Axl Rose sightings... But there is one mystery that surely eclipses them all: when the fuck did Rush become cool?”

The Foo Fighters would later perform a tribute to Rush wearing wigs, kimonos and fake moustaches, before Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart brought the house down with a performance of Tom Sawyer.

But the highlight of the night had yet to come. Following Public Enemy's induction, Chuck D noted “All this music goes back to the blues”, and his words were borne out by the night's closing all-star jam, which saw the him and fellow New York rapper Daryl McDaniels (aka DMC from Run-DMC) fronting a one-off supergroup featuring all three members of Rush, Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, John Fogerty, Tom Morello,. Gary Clark Jr. and Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins, for a seven-minute jam on Robert Johnson's immortal blues classic Crossroads.

Jam sessions don't get much more impressive, as you can see in the footage below:

Though he didn't speak about them on the night, Dave Grohl is also a huge Public Enemy fan, who once described the New York band's debut album Yo! Bum Rush The Show as “a total revolution in hip-hop.”

“The duality of Flavor Flav and Chuck D is just amazing, man,” he told Melody Maker. “It’s necessary, almost, that someone as heavy and right on as Chuck D should have some sort of relief. The sounds on this record, and their lyrics about their 98 Oldsmobile’s… they just seemed like this gang with their own scene.”

While the blues had been the essential touchstone of 60s rock, inspiring the major players from the Rolling Stones and Cream to Jimi Hendrix and early Led Zeppelin, it had steadily fallen from grace during the following decade. Prog, punk, disco and heavy metal successively took centre stage, and the rise of the synth signalled the demotion of the guitar.

But deep in the American heartland there was a revolution brewing, which would produce a barrage of new six-string heroes. Leading the charge in 1983 was a 29-year-old Texan who rewrote the blues rules with the power of Jimi Hendrix, the soul of Albert King and a sackful of further influences from Lonnie Mack to Kenny Burrell.

‘Discovered’ by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a Dallas club, Stevie Ray Vaughan transformed the genre, becoming a superstar following his 1983 album Texas Flood, the most impressive blues debut since Eric Clapton on John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers back in 1966.

The 80s also saw the blues mutate like never before. While Stevie Ray Vaughan drew in hard rockers and purists alike, Robert Cray took the blues to the masses, with 1986’s Strong Persuader becoming a million-selling success. And let’s not forget ZZ Top’s make-over from rednecks to cheeky, chart-friendly blues rockers.

Meanwhile, having dabbled in jazz fusion with The Yellowjackets, session ace Robben Ford brought a sophistication to the blues when he went back to his roots for his debut solo album. At the other extreme, George Thorogood supercharged a supply of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker standards with his searing slide-guitar style.

As the dust was settling, a blind Canadian upped the ante with an extraordinary two-handed style. Playing with his guitar on his lap, Jeff Healey saw out the decade with renditions of his heroes, while scoring mainstream success with his songwriting.

The new blues scene prompted John Lee Hooker to reinvent himself as the elder statesman of the blues. With Carlos Santana, Keith Richards and Bonnie Raitt among the stars guesting his album The Healer, the record became a blueprint for a string of celebrity blues collaborations in the following decade.

All that was missing was another British Blues Boom. Apart from the highlights on 1985’s Behind The Sun, Eric Clapton was largely overshadowed by the action on the other side of the Atlantic. At least until his performance at Live Aid sparked his revival and a welcome return to recording form with Journeyman.

Waiting in the wings was the next British Blues God, Gary Moore, preparing to ditch his heavy metal halo as the 90s dawned. But that’ll have to wait.

Even the biggest bands in the world have to start something – and for the Rolling Stones it was in the smoky blues clubs of London in the early 1960s. In 2007, Classic Rock rolled back the years to look at the birth of the legend – and the people who fell by the wayside

It was somewhere towards the end of 1961, sitting together in a railway carriage, that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards made a deal. It was unspoken but undeniable and almost spiritual. Richards later likened it to “Robert Johnson at the crossroads”. Jagger and Richards, complete opposites in every other way, had bonded at once and forever over music.

They weren’t exactly strangers on a train. Both were born in Livingstone Hospital in Dartford, Kent, in 1943: Jagger on July 26 and Richards on December 18. As children, they were neighbours and playmates, together attending Wentworth Junior County Primary School, with Mick in the year above. They remained friends until Jagger passed his 11-plus exam and moved up to grammar school. Richards entered the local tech a year later, and they lost touch. By now, their families had moved, the Jaggers to Wilmington and the Richards to another part of Dartford.

Through their teens, their interests diverged. Mick was confident, organised, keen on basketball, cricket and football, and bright at school, where he was a prefect. Keith was shy, sensitive, unconventional, alienated by sport and bored by his education.

Jagger won a scholarship to the London School of Economics in 1961. Richards, a bit of a scruff, had already been kicked out of tech after too many days bunking off to play snooker, and had enrolled at Sidcup Art School.

That’s where he was going when he bumped into Mick Jagger at Dartford station. And what he noticed – and coveted – was the bunch of American albums Jagger was carrying under his arm: blues by Muddy Waters, R&B by Chuck Berry. Keith couldn’t afford the price of these expensive imports, although he had a few singles. This was the music he loved; it was a cult interest in the UK.

He said to Mick: “I can play that shit. I didn’t know you were into that.”

Jagger responded: “I’ve even got a little band.”

Both had started playing guitar. They talked excitedly about the great American gods of blues and R&B, and by the time the train stopped at Sidcup, they had already forged one of the world’s greatest musical alliances, one that would survive huge differences and hostilities as together they fronted more than 40 years of The Rolling Stones.

But it wasn’t their band to begin with: it was Brian Jones’s. Brian was a blues fanatic. Born in the Park Nursing Home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on February 28, 1942, he was a natural musician who had easily mastered the piano, recorder, clarinet and washboard by the age of 15. He then progressed to playing sax and guitar with various local jazz outfits.

Jones was a clever but lazy and rebellious scholar at Cheltenham Grammar. He left with a raft of qualifications and no intention of using them. Determined to make music his life, he drifted in and out of various unskilled jobs and travelled to London for weekends. There, he became besotted by the sound of the blues, but his moment of epiphany happened closer to home – at Cheltenham Town Hall – when he first heard Alexis Korner play an electric blues set.

Bursting with excitement, he introduced himself to Korner, who gave Brian his address in London and became his mentor. Now Jones bought an electric guitar and practised feverishly, working for untold hours on his slide technique and soaking up records by Elmore James, Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf.

In March 1962, Alexis Korner opened a weekly R&B night at the Ealing Jazz Club in west London for his own band, Blues Incorporated. Brian Jones was among the sardines squashed into the room that first night. And when he returned the next week, he was invited onstage to play with Korner, whose line-up included harmonica legend Cyril Davies, saxophonist Dick Heckstall Smith – and drummer Charlie Watts.

On April 7, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were in the audience at Ealing to see Brian Jones once again sitting in with the band. Both were astonished by his performance of Elmore James’s Dust My Broom: it was the first time Keith had heard anyone playing electric slide guitar. Chatting later to Mick and Keith, Jones mentioned that he was putting a band together.

Jagger and Richards had already formed a group called Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys, inspired by Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. After their fateful meeting on the train, they’d started rehearsing upstairs at Jagger’s family home with a mutual friend, Dick Taylor. Taylor (who would come to prominence as lead guitarist with the Pretty Things) played drums. Jagger gave up the guitar to sing and play harmonica, leaving Keith to the fretboard. Other friends dropped in and out, and Dick Taylor eventually moved to bass.

Mick and Keith had each, separately, been in bands with Taylor. Jagger had met him at Dartford Grammar, and they’d formed an R&B group that rehearsed for two years but never played a gig. Jagger’s only public performance was at a church hall in 1960, singing a Buddy Holly song. Reportedly, it was completely dreadful.

Taylor next befriended Keith at the Sidcup Art School where they and another friend, Mike Ross, formed a country and western combo. They managed one gig. Richards and Ross missed the last train home and spent the night in a bus shelter.

Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys never made it on to a stage at all, although they did make some recordings, which Jagger sent to Alexis Korner. As a result, he was invited to join Blues Incorporated in May, sharing vocals with guests including Long John Baldry and Paul Pond, later known as Paul Jones in Manfred Mann.

Brian Jones’s band, meanwhile, was coming together slowly. He recruited Ian “Stu” Stewart, a pianist from Cheam, Surrey, through an ad in Jazz News, and the pair began hiring rooms in pubs around the West End for rehearsals and auditions. They recruited a widely respected guitarist, Geoff Bradford, and singer/harmonica player Brian Knight.

Knight lasted only a few weeks before leaving to form his own band, Blues By Six. Bradford followed him into that group shortly afterwards.

Back to square one, Brian and Stu immediately needed a rhythm section and a singer. And it was Stu who invited Mick Jagger to try out. Jones not only hired Jagger – he also took on his friends Keith Richards and Dick Taylor. Now all they needed was a drummer. They were still relying on temporary help by the time they played their first gig. Mick Avory, soon to join The Kinks, sat in on drums at the London Marquee club on July 12, 1962, where the band appeared under a name hastily coined by Brian: the Rollin’ Stones.

The drummer they all really wanted was Charlie Watts, although he was in a different league. Certainly, he expected to be paid for his services, or to be guaranteed regular work. The fledgling Stones decided to struggle on until they could afford to make him a realistic offer, and so they advertised for a drummer in Melody Maker. The winning candidate was Tony Chapman. He’d been playing in a London rock’n’roll band called The Cliftons alongside bassist Bill Perks, the future Bill Wyman.

The Rollin’ Stones – Brian, Mick, Keith, Stu, Dick and Tony – played once a week at the Ealing Jazz Club in a residency that stretched through to December, taking over from Alexis Korner who’d switched his operation to the Marquee. Other gigs were few and far between. They ventured out to north Cheam for a booking at the Woodstock Hotel on October 5 where, legend has it, they played to two paying punters. In November, they travelled to Sutton, Surrey, for a one-off at the Red Lion pub.

In the early 60s, the live music scene was run sternly by the jazz establishment, which disapproved of the untidy-looking blues and R&B upstarts banging at the doors. Things would change, but for now, it was impossible to find enough gigs to make a living. Come the autumn, Brian Jones made a concerted effort to drum up a decent itinerary.

Brian, Mick and Keith had moved into a £16-a-week first floor flat at 102 Edith Grove, Chelsea. They and various friends occupied two rooms that soon became almost uninhabitable. They were so poor they rarely had any shillings to feed the meter that powered the hot water and the single-bar electric heater. Keith’s mother sent emergency cash and food parcels. It was an icy winter. Sometimes Brian and Keith – both unemployed – stayed in bed all day to beat the freeze, playing guitars under the blankets or listening over and over again to albums by Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and Chuck Berry, at Brian’s insistence.

Jones took his responsibilities as band leader very seriously. He wrote endless letters, promoting the Stones to anyone he thought might be able to help their career. He took charge of the money, such as it was. He was their spokesman and their negotiator. He organised regular rehearsals at the Wetherby Arms, a nearby pub in the King’s Road. And, against the odds, he succeeded in setting up an unprecedented gigging schedule for November and December, booking the band back into the Marquee and into London jazz clubs such as The Flamingo and the Piccadilly as well as out-of-town venues in Hertfordshire, Windsor and Richmond.

October wasn’t the perfect time, then, for Dick Taylor to decide that he wanted to quit music to sit his art exams.

The Rollin’ Stones carried on with a succession of temporary bass players, at the same time auditioning for a new member. Tony Chapman recommended his old Cliftons buddy, Bill Perks, who met Stu first, early in December, and was then invited to audition at the Wetherby Arms.

Bill recalled: “I met Stu again and Mick, who was quite friendly. I was then introduced to Brian and Keith, who were at the bar… they were very cool and distant, showing little interest in knowing me. We brought my equipment in and set it up. Suddenly everyone was interested.”

Perks had a huge bass cabinet and a Vox AC 30 amp. He also had the price of a round, and he had cigarettes to share. After a rehearsal consisting of blues songs by Jimmy Reed and others, Bill played his debut gig with the Stones at the Ricky Tick Club at Windsor’s Star And Garter Hotel on December 14, changing his name to Wyman in January 1963.

This was the month that they again invited Charlie Watts to join the band, and finally got the answer they wanted. By now Watts had left Blues Incorporated to join Blues By Six with Brian Knight and Geoff Bradford – the musicians who’d abandoned Brian Jones’s first line-up of the Stones.

Watts was an accomplished jazz drummer who knew that his musical earnings would plummet by joining this band who were fighting for every gig they could get. But: “I liked their spirit and I was getting very involved with R&B. So I said okay.”

Brian Jones immediately fired Tony Chapman, and Charlie debuted with the Rollin’ Stones on January 12 at the Ealing Jazz Club. At around the same time, Stu bought a van for the band. Now they no longer had to drag their gear around town on buses.

Things were beginning to change on the live circuit. Cyril Davies had taken over Alexis Korner’s Marquee residency, with Korner moving to the Flamingo, and the Stones had started supporting Davies. At the end of January, he sacked them, explaining that, “they are not very authentic and not very good”.

Jazzman Chris Barber told Bill Wyman years later: “We were all a bit highbrow at that time, and the Stones’ attitude to R&B was to us rather poppy. We were a bit snooty about it.”

Wyman later reflected that the “jazz mafia” had it in for the band. But although they lost their Marquee and Flamingo residencies, they hustled extra gigs at the Ealing Jazz Club, they continued at the Ricky Tick and the Red Lion, and they found new venues at the Haringay Jazz Club and the Wooden Bridge Hotel in Guildford, Surrey. But even more exciting opportunities were just around the corner, largely thanks to Brian’s incessant networking.

One night at the Marquee, he was introduced to promoter Giorgio Gomelsky, who ran his own club in the Station Hotel, Richmond. He arranged gigs for the Stones – now spelling Rolling with a “g” – at the hotel (February 24), Studio 51, Ken Colyer’s Soho jazz club (March 3) and Twickenham Eel Pie Island (April 24). These were the places where the Stones began to build both their audiences and their legend.

“You could boil an egg in the atmosphere,” said The Daily Mirror, reporting on one Stones gig at the Richmond club, now named the Crawdaddy, in June, where 500 people were packed into the 100-capacity room to hear the band play Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Elmore James.

“The combination of music and sex was something I had never encountered in any other group,” said Andrew Loog Oldham upon seeing the Stones for the first time, at the Crawdaddy. In those days, Brian Jones was the band’s sex symbol, the showman with the shiny blond hair and mysterious glamour.

At the beginning of May 1963, Jones signed the Stones to management and recording deals with Oldham and his partner Eric Easton. Within days, the pair’s Impact Sound had contracted the band to Decca.

Oldham made his presence felt immediately. He announced that Stu didn’t look like a Rolling Stone and must therefore stand down from live performance. Brian proposed an arrangement by which Stewart would continue as the Stones’ roadie and also play on studio recordings, a deal the keyboardist accepted.

Image was very important to Oldham, who also set about switching the focus from Jones to Mick Jagger and building a media profile in which the Stones were pitched as the “bad boy” alternative to The Beatles. Much was made of their rebelliousness, their “ugliness” and long hair.

Their debut single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s Come On, was released in June 1963. It eventually reached Number 21. But the Stones didn’t like it. Mick Jagger called it “shit” and “a hype”. Bill Wyman explained that compared to earlier material they’d recorded, Come On was “pure pop. In truth we would not have got a recording deal if we had carried on with the blues material. We still wanted to play the blues: they were our roots, so we played them live.”

Record Mirror said of the single: “It’s good, catchy, punchy and commercial but it’s not the fanatical R&B sound that their audiences wait hours to hear.”

The Stones had reached the point where they could no longer have it all their own way. Their hearts were in their live shows, and for some time they refused to play Come On. They were, however, thrilled with their next single, the Lennon/McCartney composition I Wanna Be Your Man, a No. 12 hit.

Come On had hurled the band into a whole new world overnight. Their Crawdaddy days were over. In the second half of 1963, they toured theatres and ballrooms the length and breadth of Britain, both headlining and supporting, in Stu’s van. Accordingly, the nature of their material changed. Ditching the deep blues which had been their trademark in the clubs, they developed a vigorous R&B sound that better filled the halls.

In the autumn, the Stones participated in a quaint old 60s institution: the package tour. This couldn’t have been more exciting, because their co-stars were Bo Diddley, Little Richard and the Everly Brothers, whom they regularly upstaged.

Keith later enthused: “What an education – like going to rock’n’roll university.”

And then they were back on the road in their own right until the end of the year and beyond, trying to come to terms with the hysteria of their fans. There were those who simply screamed, fainted and jostled for autographs. There were others who would steal instruments, number plates, anything they could lay their hands on. The Stones got mobbed. Girls ripped at their hair, their clothes, their buttons. Keith Richards soon learned not to wear anything round his neck.

The mania was fanned not only by the band’s primitively exciting and sexual live shows but by their TV appearances. They’d already become regulars on Thank Your Lucky Stars and the endlessly cool Ready Steady Go! The Stones had not set out to be pop stars. They were a rhythm and blues band, whose only mission had been to bring that music to a wider audience and get paid for doing it.

The balance of power was changing. Brian Jones was being sidelined by his own group – and, gallingly, by the managers he’d himself appointed. Andrew Loog Oldham had removed his authority as a decision-maker, and Eric Easton had taken over the finances and the bookings. Jones was now rarely consulted about anything. At the same time, Oldham, Jagger and Richards were forming an increasingly tight alliance, having all moved together into a flat at 33 Mapesbury Road, West Hampstead. They were taking charge.

Oldham saw obvious limitations in the Stones’ policy of playing only covers, and he ordered Mick and Keith to start writing their own songs. Jones, isolated in Windsor with a girlfriend, could only sneer from the sidelines at their earliest efforts.

Throughout 1964, however, The Rolling Stones clung on to their roots. They toured briefly with The Ronettes and extensively with leading lights from the British pop scene, also appearing many times on Top Of The Pops.

Not Fade Away – a Top 3 single in the UK and a breaker in the States at No. 48 in February that year – was an urgently exciting recording, with Jagger’s arrogant vocal riding a sparse but insistent Bo Diddley rhythm, nodding to Buddy Holly along the way. An album followed in April: with breathtaking audacity, The Rolling Stones was released with no name or title on the front sleeve, and it rushed to UK No.1.

Produced by Oldham, it includes a Jagger/Richards song, Tell Me (You’re Coming Back) and two group compositions, Now I’ve Got A Witness (Like Uncle Phil And Uncle Gene) and Little By Little, as well as a selection of songs by Willie Dixon, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, Chuck Berry, Rufus Thomas and, of course, Diddley. Route 66, with which they usually opened their live show, and Carol later became set staples for any self-respecting R&B band.

The Stones were satisfied they’d captured their essential sound on the album. Rolling Stone magazine drooled: “This is the hardest rhythm and blues the Stones (or anyone) ever recorded.”

They were met by 500 rabid fans at Kennedy Airport in June 1964, arriving in America for the first time. There they enjoyed the luxury of limos and posh hotels, but other than in New York and San Antonio, Texas, they faced endless rows of empty seats. The highlight of the trip was the chance to record in Chicago’s legendary Chess Studios where they were visited by their own heroes: Willie Dixon, guitarist Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, who said of Brian: “That guitar player ain’t bad.”

It’s All Over Now, a track from the Chess sessions, was released as a single that same month. A UK No.1, it reached No. 26 in the US, and found the Stones exhibiting country qualities in the 12-string guitar and harmonies. All of the band loved it, except for Brian, a strict hardliner.

Back home, touring Britain and Europe, the Stones were playing to crowds of up to 3,000, and there were full-scale riots at tour dates in Blackpool and Le Hague in Holland, with the audiences wrecking the venues. The Daily Mirror fumed: “These performers are a menace to law and order.” From now on, squads of cops were on hand at every gig to protect the band from marauding fans.

After another, better-organised American tour in the autumn, during which they appeared on the renowned Ed Sullivan Show, also recording at LA’s RCA Studios and again at Chess, The Rolling Stones released a cover of Willie Dixon’s Little Red Rooster. It was their purest blues single to date, with Jagger’s sensual drawl and Jones’s exquisite slide guitar creating a lazy, lascivious atmosphere that propelled it to No.1 in November.

They followed that with a chart-topping album, The Rolling Stones No 2, in January 1965. Including tracks recorded in Hollywood and Chicago, it captures an authenticity rare in white bands of the time. Mersey Beat magazine said the Stones were “well into their rootsy, true R&B style, with no concessions made to commercialism or the hit parade”.

In this, it was something of a “last hurrah”. As they toured Australia, New Zealand and Singapore in January and February 1965, Mick and Keith were about to give the band a No.1 single with one of their own compositions. The Last Time was poppier, rockier than anything the Stones had done before. With Satisfaction and Get Off Of My Cloud bringing up the rear, and the Stones investing their R&B blueprint with influences from soul and pop, they were well on the way to rock’n’roll world domination.

Jagger & Richards were making good their silent pledge on the train to Sidcup. For blues angel Brian Jones, disappearing into a drink and drugs-induced oblivion, the dream was over, bar the shouting.

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents Cream And The Story Of British Blues Rock, April 2007

In 2013, Classic Rock's much-missed sister magazine The Blues took a deep dive into the making of John Landis's classic movie The Blues Brothers. Writer Darren Weale spoke with actor and screenwriter Dan Aykroyd and to some of the musicians involved with the late John Belushi and the Blues Brothers: Curtis Salgado, Steve Cropper, Tom ‘Bones’ Malone and Lou Marini. It's quite a story.

The Dixie Square Mall that stood at the junction of 151st Street and the Dixie Highway in Harvey, Illinois had its grand opening in November 1966. By November 1978 it was abandoned. That’s not to say the old girl had outlived her usefulness.

The following summer, director John Landis rented the site to shoot a demolition derby of auto destruction for his latest project, a musical comedy starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood, The Blues Brothers. Landis had new shop windows and merchandise put in; he signed up dealerships to stock the car park and mocked-up showrooms with the latest in shiny and fat-rubbered Detroit steel.

The mall was eventually razed to the asphalt in May 2012 but Landis and his team of stunt drivers gave the demolition crew one helluva head start on that summer night back in ’79. The new cars and the mall would be wrecked in one spectacular money shot that was over in a matter of minutes.

By all accounts, that evening’s filming was bang on schedule but then some of the cast and crew began to notice that one of their number was missing. “Nobody could find John,” Dan Aykroyd tells The Blues. “I couldn’t find him on set or in my trailer, his trailer, anyone’s trailer. The radios were going crazy. It was 2am and we had to leave by dawn. Time and money were ticking away. I could just see $150,000 disappearing.

“I went to have a cigarette and stood under the stars, under the street lamps,” he continues. “I could see broken street lamps and a path of tufts of grass and broken glass, with the lights fading into the distance, like when Frank Sinatra is in his raincoat as he walks away. It was a logical walk to follow and I went down it. Lights in the homes around were extinguished. It was a dark suburban neighbourhood.”

As he sauntered along the quiet street, Aykroyd spotted something glowing in the distance.

“One light was on,” he recalls. “I knocked and a man came to the door. I said, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, I’m looking for a missing member of our film crew.’ The man said, ‘You mean Belushi? He’s been here two hours, raided my fridge. He’s asleep on the couch.’”

That evening is Dan Aykroyd’s favourite memory of his late friend: “He was the guest who wouldn’t leave.”

Debuting in 1980, The Blues Brothers movie is a light-hearted musical comedy that became a culturally significant event. It introduced a generation ignorant of the cultural significance of African-American music like jazz, blues and soul to legends like Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, James Brown and Cab Calloway.

Picking up his brother ‘Joliet’ Jake Blues from prison where he’s served a three-year stretch for armed robbery, Elwood Blues has the audacity to turn up in The Bluesmobile (Illinois licence plate BDR529), a decommissioned ’74 Mount Prospect, Illinois Dodge Monaco patrol car.

He swapped their Cadillac for a microphone. The new motor’s attributes will come in handy when the brothers try to stay one step ahead of State Troopers, Illinois nazis and a pissed-off country band called The Good Ol’ Boys… and Jake’s homicidal ex-girlfriend, played by Carrie Fisher. Says Elwood: “It’s got a cop motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas.”

The movie’s plot is simple. The boys return to the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud orphanage in Calumet City, Illinois, where they were raised by Sister Stigmata – aka The Penguin – to find that she’s fighting closure. They need $5,000 to pay property taxes and stay in business. ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood visit the evangelical church service of Cleophus James (played brilliantly by James Brown), where Jake suddenly sees the light.

It’s a mission from God. Put their old band The Blues Brothers back together, put on a show and collect enough dough to save the orphanage.

All they have to do is find their old bandmates.

But hey, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. As Steve Cropper told us, “The Blues Brothers was a band way before it was a movie…”

In 1975, Belushi joined the cast of comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live. His trademark skit involved dressing up as a bumble bee and singing Slim Harpo’s 1957 Excello Records B-side I’m A King Bee (‘Well, I’m a king bee, buzzin’ around yo’ hive’). It was Dan Aykroyd that sparked Belushi’s initial interest in blues music (he was bored of rock and hated disco) but singer and harpist Curtis Salgado gets the credit for fanning the embers.

“He sure turned John on to blues music,” acknowledges Aykroyd. “He steeped him in blues culture. I listened to him for my own harmonica practice.”

Salgado first met John Belushi in October 1977, when the comedian was in Eugene, Oregon, filming another John Landis-directed picture, National Lampoon’s Animal House. Although he was a familiar face on TV, Belushi’s portrayal of John ‘Bluto’ Blutarsky – a cross between “Groucho Marx and the Cookie Monster” – in the movie would prove to be the role that made him a king bee for real; a Hollywood A-lister. Salgado however, had no idea who this guy was.

“When he saw me play, he asked a local cocaine dealer and hanger-on, ‘Who’s that guy on stage?’” recalls Salgado. “I was with The Nighthawks with Robert Cray in the King Cole Room of the Eugene Hotel in Portland. I was in mid-set when a guy comes up and says, ‘John Belushi wants to talk to you.’ I say, ‘I’m singing. Fuck off.’”

Despite Salgado’s charming riposte, Belushi was determined to make his acquaintance.

“I jump off stage and head to a group of girls,” he recalls. “This guy grabs me and spins me around, says, ‘Meet John Belushi.’ This other guy reaches out his hand. I’m looking around over my left shoulder at the girls when Belushi says, ‘I love your music. It reminds me of a friend of mine. His name is Dan Aykroyd. He looks like you, he plays harp too.’ I think, ‘Great, that’s just what I need, another harp player.’”

Belushi explained that in addition to filming Animal House, he was still fulfilling his Saturday Night Live commitments by flying back to New York at the end of each week.

“I never saw it,” says Salgado of the show. “I’m a working musician. No time for TV. We have radio in our house.”

As he tried in vain to brush Belushi off, Salgado finally heard something that really snagged his full attention.

“I’m packing up my harps, trying to break free, when he says, ‘I’m going to have Ray Charles on the show.’ I turn and say, ‘You got to ask him about Guitar Slim and The Things That I Used To Do. You can hear Ray shout at the end of the record that it’s a take.’”

Ray Charles was in his early 20s when he arranged, produced and played piano on Eddie ‘Guitar Slim’ Jones’ million-selling 1953 rhythm and blues smash. By now warming to Belushi, Salgado dropped another nugget about The Genius into the conversation. “I said, ‘Do you know Ray plays alto sax? He did on Live At Newport [released on Atlantic Records in 1958] on a song called Hot Rod.’”

“After the show finished we partied a bit and he flew out,” says Salgado. “Saturday Night Live plays the following weekend. On the Sunday morning, rumours are spreading that Ray Charles played sax for the first time in 17 years on Saturday Night Live with the Saturday Night Live Band, as a guest. I think, ‘I did this.’”

Belushi was paying attention. He was getting hooked on the blues and Curtis Salgado was to become his dealer.

“John calls me up, says, ‘Let’s get together,’” he remembers. “I start bringing him my records: Fats Waller, Magic Sam, Sonny Boy Williamson. 30 records… a big pile. Howlin’ Wolf, Bobby Bland, Blues Consolidated. He dug Magic Sam. He absorbed it. He was serious – a very nice guy – and intense.”

Pretty soon, of course, Belushi wants to perform this music…

“We played the Eugene Hotel every Monday, called ourselves The Cray Hawks,” Salgado says. “A good crowd, a couple hundred. Then John Belushi began coming in. The word gets out and it was tenfold. He wants to sit in, asking me can he do Johnny B. Goode or Jailhouse Rock. I tell him they’re corny. I turned him on to Floyd Dixon’s Hey Bartender [released in 1954 on Cat Records]. Sure enough, he’s there next Monday. I said, ‘I’ll call you at the end of the second set.’ The place was now packed. The audience goes apeshit when I announce we’re doing a song with John Belushi. He gets up on stage.”

Belushi made the mistake of performing Hey Bartender in character to get laughs from the crowd. Salgado was not amused.

“I felt a little bitter,” he admits. “He’s doing the song with a gravelly voice and his hands clenched. I’m on harp and looking to my left, thinking, ‘Is that Joe Cocker?’ The audience are peeing their pants. I’m a bit disgruntled. That’s not a serious way to do the song.”

During the post-show analysis, Salgado gave Belushi a dressing down.

“He asks me, ‘What did you think?’”

“I say, ‘John, it’s Joe Cocker.’”

‘Yes, I do Joe on Saturday Night Live.’

“I punch his chest and say, ‘You need to do this from here [pointing at his heart] and be yourself.’ After that he didn’t mimic any more. He was himself.”

“John came back from Oregon with a lust for the blues,” remembers his widow, Judith Belushi. “He had tapes in his pockets and went to clubs.”

The Blues Brothers concept was conceived when Belushi and Aykroyd met in a bar a few years earlier. John would sing; Dan would play the harp. Also present at this time was Saturday Night Live musical director Howard Shore, who dubbed the union The Blues Brothers. The name hit the spot and stayed there.

The concept gathered momentum at the recording of Saturday Night Live.

“I made an arrangement for The Blues Brothers of the song Rocket 88 and we rehearsed it with the Saturday Night Live Band,” says trombonist Tom ‘Bones’ Malone. “We developed the characters and their steps, but we didn’t get on the show. Instead, we were asked to warm up the studio audience. Their reaction was reasonably good.

“The next week we thought, let’s do Hey Bartender,” he continues. “Again, we didn’t get on the show. Lorne Michaels, the show’s producer, said he didn’t see anything funny in The Blues Brothers. The next week we did nothing. The week after, he said, ‘The show is three minutes short, what can we do?’ John suggested The Blues Brothers. Lorne said, ‘You may as well make fools of yourselves, but if the show goes over time I’ll cut your part.’ We did it and had an amazing reaction, with cards and calls from the TV audience.”

Things started to move quickly. Record executive Michael Klenfner took John and Dan to see Ahmet Ertegün at Atlantic Records. He signed The Blues Brothers up. The boys now needed a band.

“John was the leader of The Blues Brothers Band,” says Bones. “He chose me, [pianist and future David Letterman Show band leader] Paul Shaffer and [saxophonist] Blue Lou Marini. He told me to choose another horn player. I chose Alan Rubin [aka Mr Fabulous] from the Saturday Night Live Band. [Legendary songwriter of Viva Las Vegas, A Mess Of Blues and others] Doc Pomus was John’s blues guru in New York and he chose Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy to join the band. I recommended Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn and Steve Cropper.”

Dan Aykroyd remains grateful to Malone, Marini and Shaffer. “There would be no Blues Brothers without those gentlemen,” he says. “It was Tom Malone and Paul Shaffer who suggested we approach Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper, who were playing with Otis Redding. Then we became more than a comedy tribute. We became true blues with the full band and had the real essence of the music. Duck and Shaffer were both archivists and turned us on to so much. They were our musicologists, introducing us to songs like [James Brown’s ’69 hit] Mother Popcorn (You Got To Have A Mother For Me). They and Lou Marini helped us treat the music with knowledge, humour and with confidence that we were venerating it. They gave John confidence as a singer and me as an instrumentalist.”

Stax Records and Booker T & The MG’s alumni bassist ‘Duck’ Dunn and guitarist Steve ‘The Colonel’ Cropper initially thought the calls they received from John Belushi to recruit them for The Blues Brothers were bogus.

“I was mixing, and I tell the girls not to disturb me unless it is a friend calling me to go to lunch,” Cropper remembers. “When Belushi called, they figured it was important enough to put through, but I didn’t believe it was him. He’d be saying, ‘I want you in the band,’ and I’d say, ‘You’re not him!’ I pretty much hung up on him.

“The mix I was doing was for guitarist Robben Ford. He says, ‘What did he want?’ I say, ‘For me to go to New York and join The Blues Brothers Band.’ He says, ‘I’ll do it.’ I said, ‘No you won’t, I’m doing it.’ I finished the mix and arrived a day later than John wanted.”

Session saxophonist Tom ‘Triple Scale’ Scott and Saturday Night Live Band drummer Steve ‘Getdwa’ Jordan completed the line-up and The Blues Brothers began rehearsing for a run of shows at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, opening on September 9, 1978 for comedian Steve Martin.

While choosing the set-list should have been easy – especially with a couple of Stax legends onboard – Aykroyd admits he made a few odd suggestions.

“We thought of doing a blues version of Stairway To Heaven,” he says. “Duck said no.”

“The Blues Brothers had been rehearsing with Duck a day before I arrived,” adds Steve Cropper. “I get there and Duck says to me, ‘These guys are rehearsing songs no one has ever heard of.’”

Stairway denied, the band replaced it with the 1967 Sam & Dave Stax classic, Soul Man.

“I say to Shaffer, ‘You know Soul Man?’” remembers Cropper. John says, ‘I can’t sing it that high!’ but we played it in the key of E instead of the key of G and we have done ever since. A better key!”

The live cut of Soul Man eventually peaked at 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. Cropper also had some thoughts on ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood’s stage presentation. “I saw them singing standing still and said, ‘You’ve got to move around more, like Sam and Dave.’”

The first Amphitheatre show was released as the 1978 Atlantic Records album, A Briefcase Full Of Blues. It was dedicated to Curtis Salgado.

“Nobody in the crowd expected to see Dunn and Cropper,” says Steve Jordan of the band’s live debut.

“We hit the stage on fire and played [Otis Redding’s ’65 B-side] Can’t Turn You Loose. The crowd was shocked and stunned. We just ripped it up. People were freaking out.”

“Afterwards, John pulled me into his trailer with Dan and opened a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne,” Jordan adds. “There was a knock on the door and Mick Jagger and Linda Ronstadt walked in. I’d seen that in my dreams. Jagger was all smiles – it was like a whirlwind, a congratulatory visit.”

“On the third night, I was the outside horn, nearest the audience,” remembers Marini. “I saw Jack Nicholson in the audience. He looked at me, lifted his sunglasses and went, ‘Wow!’”

When the decision was made to make a movie based around the band and its two leading characters, some line-up changes had to be made. Other commitments meant that Paul Shaffer, Steve Jordan and Tom Scott were unavailable. Willie ‘Too Big’ Hall stepped in on drums. Hall played with the Bar-Kays band at Stax and Isaac Hayes’s band The Movement; he played percussion on Hayes’ album Hot Buttered Soul and his Theme From Shaft.

Murphy ‘Murph’ Dunne took over on keyboards (the boys rescue him from lounge-band hell and his band Murph And The MagicTones). Tom Scott was not replaced, taking the band back down to a three-man horn section.

Dan Aykroyd spent six months writing the screenplay for what would eventually become The Blues Brothers movie. The result was a 324-page slab (bound in the covers of an LA Yellow Pages as a joke) that was too unwieldy to reproduce onscreen.

The movie’s director John Landis spent a fortnight whittling Aykroyd’s efforts into a workable script. The finished result contained some of the greatest movie dialogue ever. The Blues Brothers is second only to This Is Spinal Tap for killer quotes.

There’s the classic moment when ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood have the necessary scratch to save the orphanage and need to get it into the right hands. What ensues is an orgy of car crashes as they’re pursued by State Troopers – including John Candy as Burton Mercer – and Illinois Nazis, whose leader was brilliantly portrayed by Henry Gibson. And what dialogue kicks off the mayhem!

Elwood: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses.”

Jake: “Hit it.”

Then there’s the scene where the brothers seek out Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy and Blue Lou Marini at Mrs Murphy’s (aka Aretha Franklin) Soul Food Cafe.

Nate’s Deli at 807 W. Maxwell Street in Chicago served as the backdrop for the exterior shots of the cafe. The interior was created on a studio lot. As Jake and Elwood approach the cafe, we’re treated to a performance of Boom Boom by Street Slim (played by John Lee Hooker); harpist Big Walter Horton (as Tampa Pete); Pinetop Perkins (as Luther Jackson) on electric piano; Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith on drums; guitarist Luther ‘Guitar Jr.’ Johnson; and Calvin ‘Fuzz’ Jones on bass. That’s Chicago blues royalty performing in an area that has been eradicated forever by modernisation.

The scene is a piece of blues history. The brothers head into the cafe and encounter Mrs Murphy. Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy is the short order cook in the kitchen; Blue Lou Marini is washing the dirty dishes.

Mrs. Murphy: “May I help you boys?”

Elwood: “You got any white bread?”

Mrs. Murphy: “Yes.”

Elwood: “I’ll have some toasted white bread please.”

Mrs. Murphy: “You want butter or jam on that toast, honey?”

Elwood: “No ma’am, dry. [“I love dry white toast,” Aykroyd tells us. “These days I like to take it with some American Michigan sturgeon caviar on it.”]

Mrs Murphy turns her attention to Jake.

Jake: “Got any fried chicken?”

Mrs. Murphy: “Best damn chicken in the state.”

Jake: “Bring me four fried chickens and a Coke.”

Mrs. Murphy: “You want chicken wings or chicken legs?”

Jake: “Four fried chickens and a Coke.”

Elwood: “And some dry white toast please.”

Mrs. Murphy: “Y’all want anything to drink with that?”

Elwood: “No ma’am.”

Jake: “A Coke.”

When she realises the brothers intend to lure her husband and dishwasher back on the road, the foot comes down.

“Now, you not going back on the road no more. And you ain’t playing any more two-bit, sleazy dives. You’re living with me now… and you’re not gonna go sliding around with your white hoodlum friends.”

After a smoking blast through her 1968 soul hit Think, Aretha’s character loses her man to the mission from God. Blue Lou follows seconds later. “I pretended to be scared – I was supposed to be,” says Matt Murphy on his confrontation with an angry, full-throttle Aretha Franklin. “But I was having a ball! I was almost cracking up when I looked at her.”

Lou Marini recalls the days filming for a couple of reasons. First there was a practical joke: “The scene where I was washing dishes in the Soul Food Café, there were four or five guys. Landis and me, a camera guy, lighting guy, sound guy. Landis said, ‘I want you to do the dishes, do what you like with them, get angry, throw them, break them. Whatever you do, don’t look up till I say cut.’ I was washing an eternally long time. I looked up and they’ve all split. I yelled and down the end at the coffee shop I heard them cracking up.”

He was less amused by his portrayal during the Think routine. Some critics made reference to the fact that Marini’s head was out of shot as he danced on the cafe’s counter, playing his sax. He’d put a lot of effort into practising the nerve-wracking stunt.

“It was a little daunting,” he says. “The counter was raised up to four and a half feet up and was just two feet wide… and there were pots and pans down below.”

The reason his head was chopped? The set didn’t have a false ceiling. “The cameraman couldn’t use the angle as the top was unsealed and the studio was in view,” says Marini. “Landis took me to see a screening of the scene, said it was ‘spectacular’. He said to me, ‘It was great, right?’ I said it sucked. ‘I learned to play and dance and you can’t see my head.’ I was told, ‘You signed up for a lot of money and a little head, and that’s what you got.’”

The scene at Bob’s Country Bunker (where the waitress cheerfully informs the band they have both kinds of music: “country and western”) sees the band incite a violent reaction from the patrons.

As bottles smash on the chicken wire that isolates the stage from the paying customers, the band change tack and play The Theme From Rawhide and Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man. The scene was based on real-life experiences and as Steve Cropper told Dan Aykroyd at the time, he had seen worse.

“I’ve seen guys shot, guys holding their guts and belly after being stabbed, people hit on the head with baseball bats – a lot of blood in the parking lot. By the time we did The Blues Brothers, Duck and I were both seasoned musicians. Dan went round interviewing the band and putting bits of useful information into the script.”

The tale of ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood Blues’ mission from God hit cinemas in 1980. The receipts for the ensemble talent and all those wrecked cars busted the movie’s budget by $10 million.

John Landis also encountered trouble getting The Blues Brothers into cinemas. For instance, Ted Mann, head of the Mann Theatres chain, was unconvinced that white movie-goers would be interested in a bunch of old black musicians. He also apparently didn’t want blacks congregating in predominantly white areas to see it.

Ultimately, The Blues Brothers only opened in half the theatres that a similar size movie would enjoy. Some critics hated the movie for its thin plot and reliance on car chases for entertainment, but they were in the minority. The finished product is a blast.

And despite Ted Mann and the critics’ best efforts, ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood Blues found their audience. The Blues Brothers made stars of Belushi and Aykroyd, allowing the latter to bankroll future box-office behemoths like Ghostbusters. It also reignited back-catalogue sales for James Brown, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker and the other legends that appeared in the movie. Even blues and soul musicians that didn’t feature in the film felt the benefit of the public’s renewed interest in their brand of music.

The discovery of John Belushi’s lifeless body on March 5, 1982 in Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood put paid to any notions of a sequel to the movie. Belushi was only 33 years old when he succumbed to the effects of a speedball, a combined hit of cocaine and heroin.

Aykroyd takes the opportunity to pay tribute to his late partner in crime by remembering one of his favourite scenes in the movie – the attempt to persuade Alan Rubin to quit his maitre’d post at Chez Paul, the high-end restaurant where “Even the fucking soup is ten dollars.”

“The scene with John catching the shrimps in his mouth, he missed a few. I didn’t throw them all. Landis threw some. John was like a seal! He could catch shrimps, sing, dance, he was a real negotiator, actor, manager. He managed himself and the band brilliantly. A woman put too much heroin into his injection and his lungs and stomach were already weak, and she did three years in jail for it. The world lost one of its greatest talents ever at the age of 33.

“Maybe he was trying to numb the past, dull the present and look for comfort in the future. He found it there and it killed him.

“If he was here now, he’d be a top director on Broadway, putting on plays with great actors, part of the theatre world. He was very literate in his theatrical pursuits.”

The temptation to make a sequel did eventually prove too strong and Landis and Aykroyd reconvened for the ill-fated Blues Brothers 2000 in 1997. Despite some great musical performances, the absence of John Belushi was too big a hole to fill – even by John Goodman – and the movie bombed. Aykroyd’s intentions, as ever, were honourable.

“Getting the blues more widely known was part of the message,” he says.

The manifesto is right there in Elwood’s monologue that kicks off the first track on Briefcase Full Of Blues…

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Universal Amphitheatre. Well, here it is, the late 1970s, going on 1985. You know, so much of the music we hear today is pre-programmed electronic disco, we never get a chance to hear master bluesmen practising their craft anymore. By the year 2006, the music known today as the blues will exist only in the classical records department of your local public library. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, while we still can, let us welcome, from Rock Island, Illinois, the blues band of ‘Joliet’ Jake and Elwood Blues, The Blues Brothers.”

Thanks to ‘Joliet’ Jake, Elwood and their mission from God, The Blues Brothers band, even their ’74 Dodge Monaco cop car, the blues is still going strong.

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock Presents The Blues issue 7, published in June 2013.

The Moody Blues’ first album of the 1980s was created in a storm of line-up changes, production alterations and legal battles. But despite all the chaos surrounding, somehow the band produced what they believe to be one of the most crucial records in Long Distance Voyager. In 2014 Prog looked back with John Lodge and Justin Hayward.

It was the album that firmly brought The Moody Blues into the 1980s. It was also the one that precipitated a potentially damaging court case between the band and a former member, while also seeing them finally recording in their own studio – nearly a decade after it was built. The album was Long Distance Voyager, and it gave the Moodies a massive commercial and artistic boost, proving their decision in 1977 to reunite after a three-year hiatus was a credible move.

“The Octave album [1978] was a difficult one to make,” recalls bassist and vocalist John Lodge. “We began it at the Record Plant in LA, but it burned down. So we moved to Indigo Ranch Studios, but we had a lot of trouble there.”

Adding to their problems, keyboard player Mike Pinder decided he didn’t want to tour any more, forcing them to bring in former Yes man Patrick Moraz for the road trip in support of Octave. And he was the obvious choice to replace Pinder for the next album.

“Patrick brought a greater awareness of modern technology into the band,” says guitarist and vocalist Justin Hayward. “He introduced us to programming, sampling and what computers could do in general for our music. Our personal relationship with him wasn’t great – but there’s no doubting he did a lot of brilliant things musically.”

The loss of founding member Pinder wasn’t the only radical change facing Lodge, Hayward, Ray Thomas (flute/harmonica/vocals) and Graeme Edge (drums). Long-time producer Tony Clarke, who had worked on every Moody Blues album since 1967’s Days Of Future Passed, also decided to bow out.

“We were all having personal problems at the time of Octave,” says Lodge. “Tony decided to walk away. The guy I immediately thought of to produce us was Pip Williams. I’d worked with him on the song Threw It All Away, which was the B-side of my 1980 solo single Street Café. Pip had worked with Status Quo, and he brought that edge into what we were doing.”

Hayward also feels that engineer Greg Jackman played a crucial role in the studio. “I met Greg when I was doing some recording at RAK Studios in London. He’d been closely associated with Mickie Most, and we felt he would be a great partner for Pip on the production side.

“Greg had a very modern approach to recording. This was, for instance, the first time we’d ever used timecode. That meant we didn’t have to get things spot on all the way through. If I made a mistake it could be easily corrected without having to do the entire sequence all over again.”

For the first time, they used their own Threshold Studios in Cobham, Surrey, for a Moody Blues record. “Justin and I had done the Blue Jays album there in 1975,” says Lodge. “And I’d done my Natural Avenue solo record there two years later. But we’d just not done a Moodies album at the place.”

“There’s a simple reason,” says Hayward. “It might have been built in 1972, but it hadn’t been ready for us to go in and do a Moody Blues record. By then it was, so it seemed daft to spend money elsewhere when we had this facility available.”

The band were originally to start recording in October 1980. But in the end the work was delayed by four months, due to changes they’d been going through.“We just had to rethink what we were doing,” admits Lodge. “We just weren’t ready to go into the studio by the time we were supposed to. But it worked in our favour – when we did get things finalised, the songs and our attitude couldn’t have been better.”

The album was recorded in a two-month period. Both Hayward and Lodge giving enormous credit to Williams for the way it came across. “Pip worked so well with us,” says Lodge. “He made the entire process painless, and also gave the music a real lift.”

“What Pip did was update The Moody Blues without changing us,” adds Hayward. “We’re difficult to produce, yet strangely easy to engineer. But Pip got beyond the problems and revitalised us. It was such a breath of fresh air after Octave.”

It’s often been debated whether Long Distance Voyager is a concept album at all. It turns out that the definitive answer to this question from the band themselves is… well, there’s no definitive answer.

“As far as I’m concerned, there’s a loose concept linking some of the songs,” says Lodge. “I suppose you could say it’s about, ‘The further things are taken on a personal level, the more they remain the same.’ But not all the tracks are linked in that way, which is why there was no preconceived plan to make it a concept album as such.”

“There’s no concept at all,” states Hayward. “No subject matter links the songs. We actually had the title Long Distance Voyager in mind before we finished recording, but it was just a jumble of words that appealed to us. There was no grand design behind the choice at all.”

The cover also happened by accident, as Lodge explains. “We did a photo session in London, at a museum, and on the wall was a sepia print that caught my attention. It seemed to tell the story of the Long Distance Voyager, so I suggested we should use it for the album sleeve, just adding in the Voyager spacecraft – and it worked really well. Some time later, I came across the original painting in a South London antiques store and bought it.”

“It’s amazing how many people look at the cover and don’t spot the spacecraft,” laughs Hayward. “I think it was so much better than the Octave cover, which has the band on it. There’s a lot more detail to hold people’s attention.”

In May 1981, when Long Distance Voyager was scheduled for release, it was turn of the band’s label, London/Decca, to undergo major upheaval. That would have been of considerable concern to most big acts signed to the company – but as Hayward explains, it worked to The Moody Blues’ advantage.

“A lot of people working for the label saw us as being well past our commercial peak. Octave had done OK (No.6 in the UK and No.13 in America), but there hadn’t been a big hit single on it (although Steppin’ In A Slide Zone got to No.39 in the US), and the feeling we got was they didn’t care about the band any more.

“Then, suddenly, all these people were gone, and the new lot who came in were incredibly enthusiastic about us! They thought Long Distance Voyager fitted perfectly into what FM radio was doing in the States, which was becoming more pop-oriented. Our approach was exactly right for the new format.

“We’d been lucky once before with US radio, because Days Of Future Passed came out when FM first happened, and it had had the right sound to come across brilliantly on air.”

However, the band faced a court battle before they could finally relax and get the album out. It was a lawsuit brought against them by a combination of Pinder and Clarke. “Mike had brought the original case against us,” explains Hayward. “And his lawyers decided to add weight to their side by including Tony Clarke.”

What was the crux of the lawsuit? “Mike and Tony felt that without their involvement, we shouldn’t be using the name The Moody Blues,” shrugs Lodge. “We knew it was coming – the label had inside information on what they were planning, and warned us what to expect. But we kept on the sidelines and let our legal people deal with it all. The case did end up in court, but the final judgement was in our favour so it didn’t derail us at all.”

Pinder appeared to feel that the band had sidelined him, and while he wasn’t prepared to tour, he’d been ready to contribute in the studio. But the claim is hotly disputed by Lodge. “As far as we were all concerned, Mike had fully left us. He never said he wanted to remain a recording member. He gave us the impression he was quitting The Moody Blues permanently. We never froze him out.”

Long Distance Voyager got to No.7 in the UK charts, a place lower than Octave, but in America it was their second chart-topper following Seventh Sojourn in 1972. Its success was propelled by two Top 20 hits in the States: Gemini Dream, which peaked at No.12, and The Voice, which got to No.15.

“Gemini Dream was originally called Touring The USA,” says Lodge. “It was the first song we recorded for the album, and it was written after we’d spent 18 months on the road in America. It was about the way you become two different people when you’re in a high-profile band – there’s the person onstage, and then there’s the private version of you.”

“We never thought Gemini Dream would be a big single for us,” admits Hayward. “Come to think of it, The Voice never stood out for us either. Those choices were left to the label. They understood that sort of thing better than us.”

Both Hayward and Lodge now believe Long Distance Voyager should be considered one of the Moodies’ most crucial releases. “I regard it as being the natural successor to Seventh Sojourn,” says Hayward. “It was a case of the right album at the right time. It was very introspective yet also accessible.”

“It was the start of a new chapter in our career,” says Lodge. “Every song on the album was approached differently; we were firing on all cylinders, the atmosphere in the studio was great, and it gave us a new lease of life.

“But it did spoil things a little for us,” he adds. “We tried to recreate the vibe on our next album, The Present, working again with Pip and Greg. But it didn’t work. That made us appreciate how special Long Distance Voyager was.”

Former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth has released a new blues song, Forgiveness. In what's become standard practice for Diamond Dave, the song was released via his social media channels without fanfare or explanation, leaving fans to ponder its origins and meaning.

Forgiveness originally surfaced back in February, when Roth released Lavender Forgiveness, singing Forgiveness's lyrics over the original audio from Taylor Swift's Lavender Haze, the opening track from her 2023 album Midnights. The new version loses the Swift audio, which has been replaced by acoustic guitar. It's unclear whether the song is asking for forgiveness or offering it, or is autobiographical or not, but the lyrics aren't exactly Ice Cream Man.

I took a long trip South on that whiskey train
I took Jesus Christ's name in vain
I blew a fortune on cocaine
And I caused my whole family heartbreak and shame
And when I was on the verge of going insane I found forgiveness

Forgiveness fall down like rain on a sun-scorched land
Forgiveness forced in like air to a drowning man
Forgiveness like home from a journey of a thousand miles
Forgiveness like milk and honey to a starving child

This isn't the first time Roth has blessed fans with a new song at Christmas. Last year he released Talking Christmas Blues, which found him reading lines over an acoustic guitar and harmonica.

In other Roth-related news, more than four hours of live footage has appeared on YouTube this month, all remastered from bootleg VHS tape. The footage comes from three performances: a Van Halen show at Estadio Obras Sanitarias in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the Hide Your Sheep tour in February 1983 (a date filmed for local TV) and two Canadian Roth shows - one filmed at the Montreal Forum on the Eat 'Em & Smile tour in 1986, and one shot two years later at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on the Skyscraper tour.

Hawaiian-born ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro’s radical version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps was an early YouTube viral video back in 2006, leading to a varied career that has eventually alighted on a blues album for which he's got together with his friend Mick Fleetwood.

Shimabukuro has taken a broad definition of the blues that includes A Whiter Shade Of Pale, ’Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers and Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World as well as more traditional material like Rolling And Tumbling and Still Got The Blues, and he’s adept at bringing out the melodic aspects of the songs with his distinctive strum and twang.

Drummer Fleetwood also enjoys going back to his roots, not least on Need Your Love So Bad which harks back to his very early Mac days with Peter Green, and Songbird, over which he delivers a spoken tribute to its writer Christine McVie. They are the only vocals on an otherwise instrumental album.

Finnish prog rock trio Von Hertzen Brothers have hilariously spoofed Bob Dylan's famous clip for his 1965 song Subterranean Homesick Blues, in their new video for Ascension Day.

The well-known Dylan clip, which featured in D. A. Pennebaker's legendary 1967 documentary Don't Look Back saw Dylan standing in an alleyway holding signs with the lyrics on them. In Ascension Day, brothers Mikko, Kie and Jonne Von Hertzen are seated in a Helsinki square holding up lyrics as the song progresses.

Ascension Day features on the Von Hertzen Brothers' ninth studio album, In Murmuration, which will be released through their DoingBeingMusic label on October 25.

"This one was written on a small island in Eastern Finland, right next to the Russian border on a crisp April morning. On the islets around the island, there was a huge cormorant colony and you could see many sea eagles soaring above the island in search of prey.

"The work-in-progress title for the song was Bruce as the whole song is pretty much based on an uplifting riff, simple melody and a chord progression which somehow reminded me of ‘Born in the USA’.  The storyteller has finally come out of the darkest place and is fulfilled with unrestrained compassion, love and gratitude for everything around him. Just being able to walk down the street on an average Monday makes him feel on top of the world as that’s been something unthinkable up until the very moment described in the song.”

In Murmuration will be released on limited-edition crystal-clear vinyl gatefold LP, CD and digital. Merch bundles will be available from the band’s website.

Pre-order In Murmuration.

The band will play four launch shows in Finland and the UK at the end of 2024 before returning to the UK, Europe and the US, including Cruise to the Edge in spring 2025.  You can see the UK dates below.

Von Hertzen Brothers UK shows

Nov 28: Troon Winter Storm Festival 
Nov 29: Buckley The Tivoli 
Nov 30: Trecco Bay Planet Rockstock 
Dec 02: London The Garage 

‘The blues had a baby and they named it rock‘n’roll,’ sang Muddy Waters. And he was right, of course. Once he and Howlin’ Wolf started plugging into amps in the clubs of Chicago in the 1950s, the blues became supercharged; a tougher, urban sound that prioritised electric guitar and lascivious lyrics. 

Central to Chicago blues was the harmonica. Marion ‘Little Walter’ Jacobs pioneered a new amplified approach, radically transforming it into a powerful lead instrument. Subsequently, the blues became increasingly intertwined with rock’n’roll, with The Yardbirds backing then-unknown harp player Sonny Boy Williamson on a UK tour and releasing the 1963 album Sonny Boy Williamson And The Yardbirds. Not that the notoriously surly Williamson was impressed, observing: “These young English boys wanna play the blues so bad; and they play it – so bad.” 

As black music began to cross over and reach wider audiences of young, white rock fans, the harmonica was pushed further into the mainstream – nobody being more responsible for that than Paul Butterfield. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, released in 1965, showcased the singer’s virtuosic ability on the instrument. But while clearly influenced by the Chicago masters, this was resolutely rock music. 

Suddenly the blues harp, as it became known, was appearing on some of the biggest hits of the time, such as wailing over The Doors’ classic Roadhouse Blues, or its mystical presence on Canned Heat’s On the Road Again.

The harmonica’s prominence peaked during the 70s, with a number of the rock musicians keen to embrace its earthy authenticity. Robert Plant does his best Sonny Boy impression on Bring It On Home and blows a raucous solo on Nobody’s Fault But Mine, though the instrument is at its most effective on When The Levee Breaks. 

Keith Richards maintains that Mick Jagger is one of the best exponents of the blues harp, and his playing has enriched some of the Stones’ finest moments. Midnight Rambler wouldn’t sound so sweet without a little lubrication from Mick’s harp, and his solo on Gimme Shelter makes the track sound even more menacing. 

Of the many high-profile rock‘n’rollers who play the harmonica, Steven Tyler is arguably the most accomplished. From One Way Street on Aerosmith’s debut to huge hits such as Pink and Cryin’, Tyler has always pulled a tasteful bluesy line from the ‘Mississippi saxophone’. 

As the decades rolled on, the instrument seemed to fall out of favour, although Spike from The Quireboys or Mike Monroe might whip it out on occasion. It may have had its day in the sun as far as modern rock is concerned, but the sound of the humble harmonica is still blowing in the wind.

Blues Pills had just begun recording their fourth album when singer Elin Larsson discovered she was pregnant. “We’d just come back from tour with [Australian rockers] Airbourne,” Larsson recalls with a laugh, speaking to Classic Rock alongside Blues Pills’ guitarist Zach Anderson. “I thought that was hilarious: we come back from that tour, and I’m pregnant. Thankfully my son looks like my husband – he didn’t come out with an Australian accent!” 

It was a turning point for the Swedish rockers. Larsson, determined to finish the album, continued to record vocals for what would become Birthday right up until her ninth month of pregnancy. “It was harder to sing,” she says. “Your lungs are sort of pushed away from your stomach. But it turned out great. I think it added more flavour to it. I’m super proud that I could finish it.” 

The band also decided to put the pregnancy front and centre of the new release: the front photo cover of Birthday has the rest of the band (Anderson, drummer André Kvarnström and bassist Kristoffer Schander) all in black, while Larsson sits in the middle, heavily pregnant, wearing a beautiful 70s-style blue dress. 

“For me it symbolises strength,” Larsson says of that image. “I kept working when I was pregnant, like lots of women do. It feels like it’s a big part of this record.” 

“Rock music is so dominated by all-male bands,” Anderson adds, “so it feels like a cool thing to have a super-pregnant lead singer on the cover.”

This year marks a milestone for Blues Pills: 10 years since the release of their first album. That self-titled record was an instant hit when it was released on Nuclear Blast in 2014, breaking into charts across Europe and captivating listeners across the rock and metal scenes, with Larsson’s rich, soulful vocals setting the band apart. 

This writer first interviewed them back then and remembers fresh-faced, shy kids who seemed overwhelmed by their success. It’s clear talking to them today that they’ve grown in confidence – both as a band, now in their midthirties, and as songwriters. It no doubt helps that Larsson and Anderson have been the main songwriting duo since day one. 

“This album was the fastest we’ve ever made,” Anderson says of Birthday. “We spent maybe a month, a month and a half writing, and then we were in the studio for a few weeks. With our first album we were in and out of the studio for over a year.” 

“This time around, we knew we could scrap something if it wasn’t working,” adds Larsson. “Kill your darlings, that’s the saying.” 

Musically, Birthday feels as powerful as the cover art. Blowing open with a dynamic double whammy of the snappy title-track single and the grooving Don’t You Love It, all 11 tracks, from the heavy rock to the heartfelt soul, crackle with a confidence that might just make it the strongest Blues Pills album yet. These days the band aren’t afraid to cast their net wide for inspiration: Larsson says Piggyback Ride was inspired in part by the ‘virtual’ electronic rock band Gorillaz. 

“You wouldn’t expect that from us!” she says. “But we have influences from all over the place.” 

“This album is a bit schizophrenic,” adds Anderson. “I think earlier on in our career we would work on a song, and block ourselves by saying: ‘This doesn’t sound like Blues Pills.’ But then we realised: “How can it not sound like Blues Pills? We are Blues Pills, so anything we write is Blues Pills.

Lyrically the topics range from personal tales, like the title track, which isn’t related to the pregnancy as you might expect, but was inspired by a waiter in Mexico who ruined Larsson’s birthday (“I don’t want to go into the specifics,” she says carefully, “but I wanted to take a bad experience and to twist it, to own that story”), to the universal, such as Top Of The Sky, which is about the dangers of social media, referring specifically to the tragic death of a Chinese influencer, Wu Yongning, who died during a livestream while climbing a skyscraper. 

“Society is so superficial,” Larsson says. “We seek likes, and can’t feel we’re enough and just appreciate life for what it is.” 

For a new mother, this issue feels particularly pressing. “My son can have a phone when he’s eighteen!” Larsson says, laughing. “I mean, every parent can do what they want. But for me, I don’t want to start early with screens [for him].” 

“[Social media] feels like cigarettes,” adds Anderson. “When they were new, people said they weren’t unhealthy, and everyone smoked. It feels like we don’t really know the effect of being on smartphones and social media constantly yet.” 

Working on the album while pregnant also got Larsson thinking about which music she’d like to introduce to her child, and about the bands that got her into music in the first place. That led to the band including a cover on the album, I Don’t Wanna Get Back On That Horse Again, by the littleknown (internationally) Swedish rock band Grande Roses. 

“They’re a band from my home town that I went to see as a kid and a teen,” Larsson explains. “So for me, this song is very important and makes the album complete, because they inspired me as a kid to play in a band.”

If you thought Blues Pills might be slowing down following the birth of Larsson’s son, you’re wrong. Although the members are currently scattered across Sweden, they’re close enough to meet in Anderson’s home studio to practise. And when they go on their headlining tour in the autumn, Larsson will be taking her son on the road with them. 

“I think it’s gonna be fun to go on tour and bring him to see the world,” she says. “He probably won’t remember any of it though.” 

She adds that she’s even written new music while on maternity leave: “I’m not sure if it will be for Blues Pills or something else. But being at home has been feeding my creativity.” 

For Larsson, it’s important to keep up her passions while being a new mother, and the wider world could do more to enable this. 

“Society should be more open about helping female artists when they become mothers,” she says firmly. “Unless you’re a big established artist with tons of money, it’s difficult. The rock and metal scenes should be more inclusive for women overall, but definitely for mothers too. We have the right to become mothers, and to have a working life.” 

Birthday is out now via Throwdown Entertainment/BMG.

Things the West Midlands has given the world: Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, Steel Pulse and The Specials, Duran Duran, Napalm Death… And let’s not forget the Industrial Revolution. But does the place get the respect it deserves? 

“No way,” says Big Special frontman Joe Hicklin. “It’s the most important industrial powerhouse in the country, if not the world, but creatively and culturally we’re downtrodden. We’re taught to be ashamed of our accent and where we’re from. We’re not the north, we’re not the south, we’re the forgotten middle.” 

Hicklin and drummer Callum Moloney (Birmingham-born but based in Bristol for the last 10 years) are waging a two-man war on that perception. The duo’s electrifying debut album, Postindustrial Hometown Blues, fuses together the blues, hip-hop and rock, switching between foundry-like intensity and moments of graceful desolation. But it’s Hicklin’s lyrics – alternately vivid, bleak and funny, sometimes sung with knock-you-back-on-your-feet soul power, sometimes spoken in an undiluted Black Country accent – that give Big Special their emotional engine and their sense of place

It’s been a long journey to get here. The two were thrown together on a BTEC music course more than a decade ago. Hicklin, who went from listening to Queen, Free and Hendrix to original blues masters such as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton and Son House, was trying to forge a career on the local folk/blues/Americana circuit. “He was like this fucking Walsall Bob Dylan,” says a still-awed Moloney. They tried playing together, but it never took off so they went their separate ways. 

The onset of covid changed everything. Having gone through what he describes as “a bad depression”, Hicklin knew he needed to change things up. “I just put down the guitar and focused on the poetry,” he says, of the spoken-word part of the band’s sound. 

He called his old friend Moloney to play on the songs he was working on with producer/unofficial third member Michael Clarke. Moloney was initially unconvinced about stepping back into a band situation, with all the drudgery it entails, but an early demo of howl-of-pain-in-a-wind-tunnel single This Here Ain’t Water convinced him. That and the fact that Hicklin had finally stopped trying to disguise his native accent. 

“I just got a clear vision of where we were going,” says Moloney. “I could hear it was a real West Midlands thing. That was important to us both." 

"We’re from the West Midlands, and the place is in our bones, but you don’t have to be from here to relate to what we’re singing about,” says Hicklin. “Anger, frustration, humour. Those emotions are universal.” 

Postindustrial Hometown Blues is available now via So Recordings.

By 1966, something was happening in the British music scene, atlhough the record industry didn’t know exactly what it was. The Beatles had evolved from cheeky moptops to pop pioneers, proving with every release that the format was infinitely malleable, and groups all over the country took note and followed.

It was the beginning of what would become known as ‘underground’ and latterly ‘progressive’ music. Scrabbling to market these new sounds, record companies began creating ‘hip’ subsidiary labels, with Decca first off the blocks when Deram was launched in September 1966.

Despite its catch-all title, and the fact that many of the songs here were actually released on Deram’s parent label, Psych! is a fine overview of the label’s underground credentials right from the very start.

Deram may not be as revered as Harvest or Vertigo, but it put out many excellent records, united only by the urge to do something different with rock and pop’s base elements.

With its serrated fuzz guitar and thumping bass and drums, The Flies’ sinister take on (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone is the very embodiment of a band ‘going heavy’ post-Kinks / Who etc. Another direction of travel was the cinematic, orchestral pop sound exemplified here by Al Stewart’s Turn Into Earth and Paul & Barry Ryan’s Keep It Out Of Sight, with some Beatles-esque raga in the latter. 

Also navigating this new landscape were The Moody Blues, whose Love & Beauty – with its heavily reverbed piano and Mellotron low in the mix – hints at prog approaching on the horizon. Other signs of prog’s gestation appear in King Croesus by World Of Oz and Twenty Ten by Tinkerbells Fairydust, both featuring dramatic organ and seriously delivered lyrics.

More recognisable names start to crop up: Genesis with In The Beginning (Peter Gabriel soaring over a surprisingly gritty bass riff); Egg with Seven Is A Jolly Good Time (prog as a crazed action painting, poking fun at its peculiar time signature); Caravan with Hello Hello (a lightness of touch and very English vocal heralding the Canterbury sound).

Unclassifiable obscurities abound, the best being Glastonbury by People – a fantastic anthem to Avalon that sounds like ABBA gone pagan. Also notable in the early prog stakes are Aardvark’s Very Nice Of You To Call, Room’s Cemetery Junction Parts 1 & 2 and Khan’s Stargazers.

But the two real knock-out tracks are T2’s mind-manglingly heavy yet magnificently moody No More White Horses and the joyful, peerless folk rock of Mellow Candle’s Vile Excesses – why both groups weren’t huge remains a mystery.

Psych! British Prog, Rock, Folk & Blues 1966-1973 is on sale now via Decca.

For fans of rootsy, psychedelic rock, Blues Pills have long been a fascinating proposition, their self-titled 2014 debut setting out their stall as holders of the patchouli-scented cosmic rock flame – with powerhouse vocalist Elin Larsson an amalgam of singers from Janis Joplin and Maggie Bell to Shocking Blue’s Mariska Veres. 

However, despite a promising follow-up in 2016’s Lady In Gold, they’ve since seemed to lose the laser focus, and the departure of guitarist Dorian Sorriaux in 2018 was the precursor to 2020’s disappointing Holy Moly!. Recorded in a few weeks in Varberg, deep in the Swedish countryside, and produced by Grammy-nominated Freddy Alexander, their fourth studio album finds them recapturing at least some of that earlier purpose.

Larsson discovered she was pregnant during recording, and a carpe diem urgency rips through the barnstorming opening title track, the singer announcing: ‘I’m gonna ruin someone’s birthday!’ before declaring: ‘I just don’t give a damn no more, I got a new disease inside my bones!’ over the kind of molten riffing that made The Soundtrack Of Our Lives such a festival draw back in the early 00s.

While Motown-style stomp Bad Choices and mega-ballad Top Of The Sky have the feel of table-pleasing stabs at commercial success, there’s genuine emotion in the malevolent Holding Me Back, Larsson declaring: ‘You’re always holding me back, how fucking drives me mad’. Like A Drug is a pulverising examination of emotional addiction, while I Don’t Wanna Get Back On That Horse Again hints at disillusionment with the whole pop process, Larsson asking: ‘Do I have to get out of bed today?’

This simmering tension ensures that Birthday comes with a few genuinely jaw-dropping moments. Shadows is swamp blues of such white-knuckle intensity that you can imagine festival audiences quaking in its presence, while Somebody Better builds from a shimmering, bluesy intro into a stadium-sized anthem of eye-bulging intensity, Larsson’s bluesy exclamations a wonder to behold as she hollers: ‘You fuck with my brain, making me go insane!’ 

Blues Pills might not be to everyone’s taste, but at their best there’s still plenty to celebrate.

Fleetwood Mac legend Mick Fleetwood has joined forces with renowned ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro to record a blues album. Blues Experience will arrive on October 18 via Forty Below Records, and is preceded by the pair's version of the delta blues classic Rollin' N Tumblin', a song made famous via earlier versions by the likes of Muddy Waters, Cream and RL Burnside.

"Jake and I had a full let-it-all-go moment on this one!" says Fleetwood. "Jake let his hair down. A blues standard being given a wake-up call!"

"Mick's energy when he plays is so infectious," adds Shimabukuro. "He's such an intense musician. He pushes everyone around him, and it's inspiring to see his facial expressions and watch his movement and the way he hits the drums."

Shimabukuro, who, we're reliably informed, is known as "the Jimi Hendrix of the ukulele", first met Fleetwood at the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards (Hawaiian Music Awards) in the late 1990s. He has also worked with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, Jimmy Buffett, Jack Johnson, Bette Midler, Ziggy Marley, Sonny Landreth, Billy Strings, Lukas & Willie Nelson and Warren Haynes.

Other songs recorded for the album include covers of Procul Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale, Neil Young's Rockin’ in the Free World, and a version of Christine McVie's classic Songbird.

"I remember Mick took a moment of silence after the song ended and you could see that he felt Christine’s presence," says Shimabukuro. “I felt so fortunate to be able to experience that with Mick. It was very powerful to see the effect it had on him."

Blues Experience is available to pre-order now.

Mick Fleetwood and Jake Shimabukuro: Blues Experience tracklist

 1 Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers
 2 Rollin’ N Tumblin’
 3 Need Your Love So Bad
 4 Kula Blues
 5 Whiter Shade of Pale
 6 I Wanna Get Funky
 7 Still Got The Blues
 8 Rockin’ In The Free World
 9 Songbird
10 Songbird (Mick spoken word)

British Blues legend John Mayall has died at the age of 90. The news was confirmed in a statement released on social media by his family. 

The statement read: "It is with heavy hearts that we bear the news that John Mayall passed away peacefully in his California home yesterday, July 22, 2024, surrounded by his loving family. Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world’s greatest road warriors. John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain.

"In a 2014 interview with The Guardian, John reflected, “[blues] is about – and it’s always been about – that raw honesty with which [it expresses] our experiences in life, something which all comes together in this music, in the words as well. Something that is connected to us, common to our experiences.” That raw honesty, connection, community and playing of his will continue to affect the music and culture we experience today, and for generations to come.

"An appointed OBE (Officer of the British Empire), 2x Grammy-nominated artist and recent inductee to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, John is survived by his 6 children, Gaz, Jason, Red, Ben, Zak and Samson, 7 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren. He is also surrounded with love by his previous wives, Pamela and Maggie, his devoted secretary, Jane, and his close friends. We, the Mayall family, cannot thank his fans and long list of band members enough for the support and love we were blessed to experience secondhand over the last six decades.

"John closed that same Guardian interview by reflecting further on the blues, “To be honest, I don’t think anyone really knows exactly what it is. I just can’t stop playing it.” 

"Keep on playing the blues somewhere, John. We love you."

Born was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in November 1933, and was one of the mainstays of the British blues scene in the 1960s with his band the Bluesbreakers, whose members included – at one time or another – Cream's Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac, and the Rolling Stones' Mick Taylor. 

In a career that included more than 50 album releases, including such early highlights as A Hard Road (1967), Turning Point (1969), USA Union (1970) and Back To The Roots (1971), Mayall’s best-known is almost certainly the classic Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton, released in 1966. The album established Clapton as a blues guitarist of considerable talent and, largely as a result of Clapton’s following, also brought singer/keyboardist/harmonica player Mayall a much bigger and broader audience. 

"I wouldn’t change anything." he told Classic Rock in 2016. "I mean, if you look at all the stuff I’ve done over the years – I’ve explored every kind of variation on the blues – it’s all added up to a wonderful career. I haven’t had hit records, but I’ve always had the artistic freedom to create music the way I want."

No one know when the harmonica first got the blues, but WC Handy reported hearing train imitations being played on the instrument in the 1870s, and by the 1920s, after Mamie Smith hit with Crazy Blues, it had become an integral part of the soundtrack to the south of the US.

Come the late 40s and early 50s, with the advent of amplification and hand-held mics, the blues harp found its voice, with practitioners Little Walter Jacobs, Big Walter Horton, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Snooky Pryor taking it into new realms with wailing solos as expressive as any guitar riff or lick.

Prior to those 50s game-changers were George “Bullet” Williams, Alfred Lewis, Jaybird Coleman and Noah Lewis, principal players in the instrument’s evolution. Their work is anthologised on Blowing The Blues: A History Of Blues Harmonica 1926-2002 (Indigo), which provides a thrilling introduction to blues harp playing. Here we get vital building blocks such as Williams’ Touch Me Light Mama from 1928 on Paramount, Mississippi Swamp Moan by Alfred Lewis on Okeh from 1930 and Coleman’s Man Trouble Blues from 1930 on Columbia.

Bridging these pre-war recordings with the post-war harmonica blues sound we recognise today is the work of Madison County, Tennessee’s John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson, ‘the father of modern blues harp’. His evergreen songbook – including Good Morning Schoolgirl, Sugar Mama Blues, Shake The Boogie, Early In The Morning and Hoodoo Hoodoo aka Hoodoo Man Blues – blueprinted the future.

His impact was huge, influencing Billy Boy Arnold, Sonny Terry, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson II – the latter not only adapted his style of playing but also took on his name after he was murdered in a robbery in 1948. The Original Sonny Boy Williamson Volume 1 (JSP) is the best overview of his material.

But it was Little Walter who took up Williamson’s baton, placing the blues harp in a gritty R&B setting and ushering in the new era. Every player since, from Charlie Musselwhite to Paul Lamb, owes him a debt.

Little Walter - His Best (Chess 50th Anniversary Collection)

Born Marion Walter Jacobs in 1930, Little Walter started playing blues harp aged eight and at 12 left his Marksville, Louisiana home to busk in New Orleans, Memphis, Helena, Arkansas and St Louis before settling in Chicago, where he teamed with the Muddy Waters Band in 1948.

A true pioneer, he was one of the first to amplify his harmonica, and he was arguably the first to use the added volume for experimentation and distortion, which he utilised to full effect on both his recordings with Waters (his first amplified appearance is on Waters’ Country Boy from 1952) and his solo work.

His 1952 debut 45 for Chess imprint Checker, Juke – a gutsy R&B instrumental – was recorded in one take and hit the US R&B No.1 spot, remaining there for eight weeks – it’s still the only instrumental to place at the top of the US R&B chart – and it set Walter up to become one of the Chess label’s most commercial propositions.

His second 45, Sad Hours, hit No.2 while Juke was still at No.1 and he notched up a further 13 US R&B hits, including the excellent My Babe – his second and last No.1 – in 1955, the same year’s Roller Coaster which, written by and featuring Bo Diddley, made No.6 and Key To The Highway, his last Top 10 hit in 1958.

His Best (Chess 50th Anniversary Collection) is a real bargain, rounds up 12 of those hits, and the remaining nine tracks are equally thrilling A and B-sides that somehow flopped but are all perfect examples of his swinging style and are now rightly considered classics: Mellow Down Easy and Confessin’ The Blues are two of them.

Sonny Boy Williamson - Down And Out Blues

A volatile personality who was also an indelible songwriting talent, Aleck ‘Rice’ Miller punted his grizzly blues harp playing and growly vocal under the name of an already successful recording artist, Sonny Boy Williamson. He provided one of the most exciting blues harp-led sources. His debut, 1959’s Down And Out Blues, collects his 45s up to that date and with backing by Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Otis Spann, Willie Dixon and Fred Below, it’s a landmark work.

Junior Wells - Hoodoo Man Blues

The brief for Wells’ 1965 debut for Delmark was simple: capture his live Chicago club sound in the studio. With the Junior Wells’ Chicago Blues Band – featuring Buddy Guy, credited as Friendly Chap on the album sleeve – and produced by Delmark founder Bob Koester, Hoodoo Man Blues does just that, with the album shot through with an urgency that is utterly thrilling. A huge commercial success, it became Delmark’s biggest seller and remained so until 2003.

Big Walter Horton With Carey Bell - Big Walter Horton With Carey Bell

Horton and Bell had a telepathy, captured best on this 1972 album. Recorded in Sound Studios in Chicago, it finds the harmonica-playing pair in perfect harmony over 11 songs, seven penned by Horton, the remainder including compelling readings of Little Walter’s Can’t Hold Out Much Longer and Robert Lockwood Jr’s Little Boy Blue. It really is the coming together of generations.

Various - Harp Blues

Spanning 1947 to 1968, this introduction to post-war harmonica blues can’t be beat. The selection is unimpeachable, a snapshot of artists reading like a roll call of luminaries: Sonny Boy Williamson, Jerry McCain, Little Walter, Shakey Horton, The Junior Wells Chicago Blues Band et al. Also check out Deep Harmonica Blues from Ace Records, which catalogues the harp players who recorded for Excello – Sonny Boy Williamson and Jerry McCain, plus choice picks from Lazy Lester, Slim Harpo and Jimmy Anderson.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

The 1965 debut by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is the moment the blues harp enters the US blues-rock vernacular. Butterfield’s passionate blowing and bending solos adds an authenticity to their modern reading of Chicago blues as they deliver a series of well-crafted originals and stamp their imprint on covers of Little Walter, Junior Parker, Elmore James and Muddy Waters songs.

It’s May 1968 and a turbulent age, with the life-changing political events of half a century still unfolding. Riots and revolution circle this third stone from the sun as war, terrorism and civil rights angst boil over. In the US, black activist Martin Luther King has been assassinated; the nation’s democracy will take another blow when popular senator Robert F. Kennedy follows him.

In the Ter-Mar Studio at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, a hand-picked group of hip young musicians from the interracial, avant-garde rock collective Rotary Connection are midway through a three-week recording session, running through a contorted electric groove called Tom Cat. The sound is a prowling, prickly, funk-blues shuffle with wild tenor sax and mewling acid guitar licks laced throughout. Behind glass, at the mixing desk, is the young man driving the idea forward, 26-year-old Marshall Chess, with creative arranger Charles Stepney at his side. At the centre of the ululating jam is Chess records’ fading folk hero and master of the blues, Muddy Waters. A year later, and in light of the storm that will follow these sessions, Waters will rant to the press: “Every time I go into Chess they put some un-blues players with me… and if you change my sound, then you gonna change the whole man.” But for now, Waters seems more than content, raucously throwing his lot in with the rag-tag unit that is about to tip electric blues – and its native identity – on its head.

But the story starts in the 1930s, with Marshall’s forefathers, the Jewish Cycz family arriving in Chicago from a poverty-stricken Poland on the cusp of WWII. The Windy City is a town of industry and opportunity – pretty much the Cycz’s whole village has relocated here, alongside a vast black community travelling north to the prosperous hub, all the way from the destitution of Mississippi and Memphis via the Rock Island Line. 

Swiftly, the family surname is Americanised to Chess, and two young brothers Lejzor and Fizsel become Leonard and Philip. Their father sets about a scrap metal business; the integration into their new neighbourhood is complete. 

It’s a happy home, with Mom and sister Malka too, and the lively brothers are often distracted by the sights and sounds of their new environment and its darker-skinned denizens, particularly the local gospel church with its stomping, hand-clapping, tambourine-and-piano theatre. Consequently Leonard and Phil often get the strap from Pop for missing dinner. But soon the time comes for boys to become men, and for men to make some bucks. 

“My father was into making money,” Marshall Chess reflects today from his LA home. “He came from a poor peasant village without a toilet or electricity. He saw his first toilet when they got off the boat at Southampton, England! So the Cyczs, along with the millions of black people, came to Chicago for one reason only. To make a living, buy a house, buy a car.” 

Leonard’s early endeavours included “shoe salesman, milkman, and liquor store owner in a very bad black neighbourhood where the rent was cheapest,” also working in his father’s scrap yard, in the heart of another black community. By the mid-1940s, the music bug-bitten brothers were proud owners of the Macomba Lounge club, providing a rough-and-ready outlet for black performers when few venues would accept their custom or talent.

Leonard now had a family of his own, but the brothers’ conviction for their ever-burgeoning businesses left little time for anything else. To the young Marshall, all he wanted to do was hang out with his dad.

“At the beginning, Dad worked two jobs. Then the Macomba was open all night and he would come home at five, six in the morning. He’d bring the money home from the club, and I remember he’d always wear this big chrome gun, which he’d put on top of the cabinet. I used to ask him, ‘Why do you have a gun?’ He told me, ‘Because when I take the money out I want everyone to see it.’”

Expanding the exposure of black artists they were rubbing shoulders with in this fertile setting, the brothers formed Chess Records in the early 50s, at a time when major record companies were oblivious to – or fearful of – promoting the sounds of the Deep South and black American dance music.

Initially selling records from the back of a Cadillac, and building up to a self-contained multiplex of an office, studios, record pressing plant and distribution warehouse all on South Michigan Avenue, Chess Records – and spin-offs Checker, Argo and Cadet – would put the Chicago music scene on the map as the US pop charts soon filled with the grit and groove of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Ramsey Lewis and Etta James.

As the empire grew, Leonard would take Marshall fishing in the early mornings – “I think he felt so guilty about working all the time” – and then, aged ten, Marshall got his first big road trip, down to the Deep South to look for talent, just him and his dad. “He was a workaholic and I was the oldest, the only son. The only way to be around him was to go where he went.”

Before long, Marshall was using his free time to work at the Chess office. “My first job was getting coffee for everyone. Then I started packing boxes for shipping records, sweeping, I learned all the jobs from the ground up. They treated me like a slave, you know (laughs). I would go there in the summers, I just loved hanging around. I knew all the artists, but they treated me like the little kid I was. People often asked what were they talking to me about? Well, I was 12 or 13 and they were always just asking me about sex, they were curious, ’cos the blues singers coming from the Deep South, Mississippi, Kentucky and Arkansas, they were having sex at ten years old. I liked it, you know, it wasn’t a record company, it was the family business, and the artists were my friends.”

Turn the clock to 1967. Marshall has spent his life exploring every nuance of running America’s foremost jazz and blues black music label, and the times they are a-changing. A shift in focus is needed to satisfy the record-buying public, who are veering away from Chess and into Motown, flower-power pop and blue-eyed soul and rock. Marshall affirms, “I was definitely part of that whole psychedelic generation – I grew up at the end of beatniks and the beginning of hippie. Now I wanted Chess Records to get into that white market. In 1966 I convinced my family to let me start my own label, Cadet Concept.”

The family were right by his side, and they knew they could make money too.

“My father and Uncle Phil were behind me. By then I’d produced a lot of Chess’ output, I knew my way in the studio and my father always said to me, ‘Do anything you want, don’t let people tell you, just go with what you believe or you’ll never do anything special’. Also I had the keys to the office and the studio, and in that era we weren’t recording a lot at night.”

Cadet Concept was to be a fresh take on the Chess spec: a melting pot of new rock influences with the emotion and soul of their signature sound. Marshall’s first recruits were a young arranger he’d been recommended, Charles Stepney, plus Chess vocalist Minnie Ripperton, house producer and saxophonist Gene Barge and house songwriter Sidney Barnes. Three members of rock band The Proper Strangers were poached – guitarist Bobby Simms, bassist Mitch Aliotta and drummer Ken Venegas. The final additions to the dream line-up were guitarist Phil Upchurch and drummer Morris Jennings. Rotary Connection were ready to plug in.

The band quickly started reworking Marshall’s favourite songs by artists like Cream, Dylan, the Stones and Hendrix in a soulful, celestial and symphonic way, but still with an acid-fuzz edge for the freaks.

It translated brilliantly on their self-titled debut of 1967, and Cadet Concept’s direction seemed sure to tap into the new pop consciousness seamlessly.

Marshall had assembled the best modern musician’s collective around, with the talent to reinvent well-loved standards and deliver exciting new compositions. What if that band could breathe life into the old Chess catalogue, and bring a new generation of music lovers back to the blues?

Muddy Waters – Marshall’s friend, and Chess Records’ major staple for 20 years – would be the first experiment with Rotary’s backing, on an album titled Electric Mud. 

“The blues was a part of me, I’d heard it my whole life,” Marshall explains. “When I thought up Electric Mud, it wasn’t to change Muddy Waters’ sound. I approached it like it was a concept of making this kind of psychedelic blues album. It had never been done before, and that’s what my label was all about. Muddy trusted me, so I said, ‘I have this experiment, let’s do it’. It was a one-time thing, you know? Like an actor in a film.”

Muddy agreed to the idea. The studio was booked and some of the young bloods from Rotary Connection – augmented by session aces Pete Cosey and Roland Faulkener on guitar and Louis Satterfield on bass – blended with Waters and his boogie-woogie piano sideman Otis Spann. The track-listing was drawn from Muddy’s best-known back catalogue, with numbers such as Mannish Boy and I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man alongside two new songs and a cover of the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend The Night Together, suggested by Marshall, as Waters fans the Stones had covered I Can’t Be Satisfied a couple of years earlier.

Marshall: “The band all got along great and Muddy gave it his go. Some things were difficult for him, just because he wasn’t used to playing with a band that he wasn’t in control of. Having Otis Spann there helped a lot as they were so used to playing together. But we were all tremendously into it and that’s why it came out great.” Marshall laughs: “Whether people liked it or not, it’s a great-sounding record.”

And when it hit record shop shelves in October 1968, the results were instantaneous.

“The album took off like a rocket ship, because by then Rotary Connection had a name, and because of the label. It sold 100,000 right away, it was the biggest Muddy Waters album to date. He was happy, we were all happy.”

But it wasn’t to stay that way. “Unfortunately about six or eight weeks later, Rolling Stone magazine – the bible of that whole movement – wrote a horrible review and called it the worst blues album ever made. The radio play stopped virtually overnight, then all these blues purists got on the bandwagon. The criticism was that it wasn’t a pure blues record – but it was never meant to be. I was hurt,” Marshall continues. “I was young, I had a really big ego, and I had my label and I had my hit. Then someone calls it the worst blues album ever made. It didn’t feel good.”

Electric Mud was popular with new fans nevertheless, but there were mixed reports as to how the blues legend truly felt about it. Marshall is positive: “He seemed to be real happy around me. We never had that conversation were he said it’s a piece of shit, although I heard he may have said that somewhere. But a year later we recorded the second psychedelic album, After The Rain, so why would he do that if he hated it so much?”

Still, the wheels were already in motion to update the imposing catalogue of Howlin’ Wolf in the same way. In November 1968, the entire crew reconvened to sprinkle a gritty treasury of Wolf and Willie Dixon originals with some acid blues magic. Coaxed by the fact that Electric Mud had sold well, Wolf knuckled down but, according to Marshall: “He sang it but he didn’t like it… It was a rough time for Wolf and he needed the money.”

There were numerous problems during recording. Marshall elaborates: “Wolf wasn’t healthy. He did the whole album sitting down. He just wasn’t into it 100 per cent either, so there were a lot of takes and a lot of overdubs. Wolf would argue at times. He didn’t walk out on it, though. But you must remember that these guys were band leaders and they wanted to be in control of their whole sound, especially Wolf.”

Wolf’s reaction to his band mates had not been as positive as Muddy’s. Guitarist Pete Cosey – the jazz freak with enormous hair and a navel-length beard in a plait – remembers Wolf gesturing to his effects pedals and gadget boards in outrage. “He said to me, ‘Why don’t you take them wah-wahs and all that other shit and go throw it in the lake on your way to the barber shop?’ He wiped me out with one stroke!” And the mastered playback didn’t go well, either. Marshall recalls, bluntly: “He didn’t like it. He said it was dogshit.”

Wolf’s low opinion was further compounded by Marshall’s cover art concept which read: ‘This is Howlin’ Wolf’s new album. He doesn’t like it. He didn’t like his electric guitar at first either.’

Wolf had happily played electric guitar for years, so smarted at the reference. “It was marketing,” says Marshall, “and in that era I had to do all of that, and press, everything. I thought I was being clever. I thought he would eventually like it and he didn’t.”

Instead, the art seemed to put the general public off from purchasing it, too. “It was a bad idea for the cover,” Marshall admits, “but it was a good lesson. Don’t put something negative on something to try and sell it.”

The people that had turned away from Electric Mud stayed away from The Howlin’ Wolf Album in similar numbers. But Marshall was still able to gather some national press support. “I was good friends with Jann Wenner who founded Rolling Stone, with Billboard, with Creem magazine… It wasn’t like, ‘We hate it and we’re not gonna do it’, but in general the reviewers didn’t like it. The blues people didn’t like playing with these guys’ classic sounds. And I can understand that to a certain degree.”

It was a hard knock, but it made the praise that the artists and that Marshall Chess himself received later for these pioneering recordings all the sweeter, with these two unique benchmarks influencing rock and pop culture to come from Captain Beefheart, Cream, Led Zep and The Faces, to the Black Keys, Dangermouse and Jay-Z.

“Electric Mud and The Howlin’ Wolf Album are still out there, with covers bands in different countries, and they eventually became a big influence on the hip-hop and new R’n’B community.

“One of the best feelings I had was 30 years later,” Marshall gushes, “when Chuck D from Public Enemy emailed me and he said, ‘I want you to know that Electric Mud was an amazing thing and it turned me and a lot of hip-hop people on to these great artists like Muddy Waters. Those records really did do their job after all.”  

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 149

Previously unseen footage of Eddie Van Halen jamming with Leslie West and Corky Laing at a club in Los Angeles has emerged online. The clip comes from a Mountain show held at the House Of Blues in West Hollywood, CA, in August 2002, and shows Van Halen joining the band onstage for a version of Never In My Life, from Mountain's 1970 album Climbing.

The pro-shot footage also shows Van Halen and West chatting and rehearsing backstage, and includes an interview with West, where he explains how the pair's friendship began, and how Van Halen's playing inspired him to pick up the guitar after a break in 1976. 

"I was going to rehab in Milwaukee," says West. "I stopped playing for six months. So I met Ed and I introduced myself. After I saw him it got me playing again. He was kicking me up a notch. So I called Randy Bachman. I said, 'how'd you like a rhythm guitar player for nothing?' I just wanted to get on tour. He said great and I went out on the tour, and Eddie and I played every night in the room afterwards and we became friends."

In 2007, West told Andy Andort how Van Halen's guest spot had come about. "A couple years ago, right after Eddie announced he had tongue cancer, he hadn’t played in a while and I invited him to the House of Blues in L.A. to come down and play with me. At soundcheck, I invited people to come down and play, like American Idol, and I said if someone played well enough, they could come up and play on the show with us.

"So, on stage that night, I said, 'The winner is…' and I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and said, 'Edward… uh… Van Halen!' Eddie came out and played Never In My Life with us. When he plays it, he actually plays the part Felix [Pappalardi, Mountain bassist] played, and when he played the solo, I started laughing, because he is the best. There is nobody better than him. There are guys in that ballpark, but they’re not in Yankee Stadium, you know what I mean?"

Eddie Van Halen and Leslie West died within three months of each other in late 2020.

Troy Redfern is a blues rocker with a few twists. Recent success has planted him squarely in the blues world (he was nominated for Contemporary Artist Of The Year at the latest UK Blues Awards), but at heart he’s an eclectic soul, with roots that span Van Halen, W.A.S.P, Frank Zappa and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Not that he’s interested in mimicking anyone. 

“Since I was a kid I didn’t really learn other people’s music,” 50-year-old Redfern says. “I was always interested in writing stuff. I get that people are trying to keep the [blues] tradition alive, but to me it feels super-limiting.” 

Accordingly, his new record, Invocation, is a swaggering, sexy, non-purist marriage of early blues, stompy glam-rock and slide-guitar screams, all in tracks you can dance to.

Hill country blues (and unusual tunings) set him on a path. 

Redfern found the blues through hill country pioneers and slide players like Fred McDowell, Hound Dog Taylor and Son House. From there he discovered the works of Chris Whitley, in particular his use of the Celtic-derived Orkney tuning. 

“It’s just one of those that resonated with me,” he says. “So most of my guitars are set up in that tuning, and I write in it pretty much exclusively. It just works for me, it feels natural, it’s very organic.” 

But Frank Zappa is his hero. 

Raised on a turkey farm on the border of England and Wales, with three older half-brothers, Redfern found his escape in rock’n’roll. His eldest brother gave him Queen’s A Night At The Opera album, which he loved. Marty McFly in Back To The Future, along with the 80s likes of Mötley Crüe and Aerosmith, steered him on to the guitar. But it’s Frank Zappa who holds a special place in Redfern’s heart: 

“I live that music, still," he says. "It’s one of the things I listen to in the car a lot. There’s lots of rhythmic and harmonic tension. I’ve always been drawn to that.”

He makes music quickly, and often. 

Invocation was written and recorded (with Simon McBride producer Dave Marks) in under five weeks. It’s a good reflection of Redfern’s work rate: he gained traction with recent, bluesier records, but his full catalogue spans at least 15 albums. Check out his Bandcamp page and things get much weirder, veering into psychedelic space-rock territory that nods to his Zappa fandom. 

“I don’t consider myself to be a Nashville writer. They write in a more methodical way. I’m the opposite of that. For me it’s more like switching off the analytical part of your brain and letting ideas come through in the moment.” 

Books and butchery are both on his CV. 

Redfern has held down an interesting spread of jobs to pay the bills. Briefly he was an accountant. After that he worked as a butcher for six months, before veering off into electrical work, joinery and a tattoo/body-piercing parlour. His best job, though, was in a bookshop, where he read Shelley and Dostoevsky, and picked up ideas for song titles. 

“I’m really into the David Bowie, William Burroughs kind of thing, with the chopped-up lyrics and fragmented ideas,” he says. “Take Smokestack Lightning by Howlin Wolf, which says nothing really, but there’s a texture, a feeling from that lyric that makes sense.”

Religion in his blood, but not his heart. 

Like so many of his blues influences, Redfern grew up with God. His parents were evangelical Christians, but his brothers led him to question it quickly. As a teenager he brought home books on demonology and witchcraft. 

“They [parents] were pretty good about it,” concedes Redfern (now a father of two), “but there was a disconnect on lots of levels. I haven’t spoken to them in about four or five years, unfortunately. It’s a bit of a strange situation. But they were quite critical people.” 

In another life he’d have been a comic artist. 

Fired up by the post-apocalyptic imagery of Mad Max, and the (incidentally, Mad Max-inspired) visual palette of Mötley Crüe, 16-year-old Redfern dreamed of going to art college, but his plans were thwarted by family expectations. He keeps his hand in, though, by designing his album covers. 

“It’s super-satisfying, to feel like at least a little bit of me is able to get some of that out there. I don’t know if your eye gets better naturally, but I find it easier to make things instinctively. Maybe it’s just age, and the way you look at things.” 

Invocation is out now via RED7. Troy Redfern tours the UK this month.

In a week in which the UK government announced plans to "toughen up" teenagers by reintroducing National Service, we've got a better idea: get them to listen to our Tracks Of The Week competition, which, as any previous listener can attest, gives you all the knowledge and confidence you need to succeed in life. 

Last week, British rockers Collateral took home the big prize, followed by Canada's Bywater Call and Northern Ireland's Louise Patricia Crane. And anyone who listened and voted? They're all wealthier and sexier than they were a week ago. These are undeniable facts. 

Collateral's winning entry is below, followed by our latest batch of entries. Listen, and the future is yours.
 

And don't forget to vote!

Bad Nerves - Sorry

Just when you thought this Essex quintet were all about the under-two-minute, million-miles-an-hour power-pop/punk blasts, they come up with this dreamy headrush of longing and regret, laced with tentative hope. Happily it’s still catchy as hell. “Sorry was a song that popped into my mind fully formed early one morning,” frontman Bobby says. “The lead guitar riff and drum beat dropped out of the sky. I went to the studio that day and tracked it all… I was bored of writing Bad Nerves tracks so this was meant to be a break from that, but once I’d finished it, it felt like it might actually give the new record a bit of variation that the first record didn’t have.”

Blues Pills - Top Of The Sky

There’s a velvety Bond theme-style grandeur to Blues Pills’ mournful latest taste of Birthday (their follow-up to 2020’s Holy Moly) – interspersed here with behind-the-scenes studio glimpses. “I was inspired by this documentary about an influencer in China who climbs buildings,” guitarist Zack Anderson says, of the song’s surprisingly dark inspiration (Wu Yongning, who fell 62 storeys to his death in 2017). “He climbed a skyscraper and fell and died while streaming. It made me reflect on the age we live in where people are chasing attention and likes on social media, being willing to climb so high to try to find connection and approval online.”

Nestor - Teenage Rebel

“The song and the video is a tribute to the late 80s and to our hometown of Falköping where we grew up,” the Swedish melodic rockers say, off this jubilant, guilt-free AOR paean to their teenage years (a time of rollerskates, long hair, mixtapes and beer pong, if the video is anything to go by – not to mention riffs and chorus singalongs the size of dinosaurs). “This is a song about expressions like ‘Radical’ and ‘Totally Tubular’ and E.T. trying to call home, but also about the importance of living for today.”

Luna Marble - Sea Of Sorrow

Manchester-based rockers Luna Marble are all about the 70s (think Zeppelin, Floyd, Mac…y’know, the good stuff) on this bluesy, psychedelic new single, marrying riffy bite with tripped out sensibilities. Formed in 2020 at university, at the height of lockdown – having briefly been in a function band together – they quickly set about writing songs that would ultimately lead to their debut album (coming soon), from which Sea Of Sorrow is taken. Ones to watch out for.

Nate Bergman - Wish I Was

Former Lionize frontman-turned-21st century troubadour, D.C. singer/songwriter Nate Bergman mixes hefty soul pipes with countrified feeling and Springsteen-esque blue collar tones on Wish I Was – a standalone release produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Margo Price). One of contemporary Americana’s commanding new voices, channelling the heaviness of his roots into yearning, moody balladry. Catch him live in the UK opening for Amigo The Devil, and at 2000 Trees festival, in July.

Elles Bailey - If This Is Love

A dulcet, toe-tapping flurry of soulful harmonies, bluesy keys and a deliciously hooky chorus, If This Is Love has been billed as Elles’ “angry love song”. To our ears it’s more sassy than angry, but when it’s this more-ish who minds either way? “This song is written about someone who trampled all over my heart and I totally lost who I was in that relationship,” she says. “And if I am being honest, I never actually walked away, so I decided to re-write that story 14 years later, and this time I am the one who walks away!”

Kittie - One Foot In The Grave

One Foot In The Grave, taken from Kittie's first album in 13 years (Fire, out next month) finds the Canucks in typically fierce form, with a thumping opening riff that eventually segues into something more animated. There's melody, death growls, and a bit designed for crowd participation, and it all comes together very nicely indeed, thank you for asking. "It’s a feisty, high-energy song about coming back from the dead and rising from the ashes, so to speak, paralleling our real-life experiences as of late," say the band. "Letting go of the demons of the past to begin anew is something that resonates with us deeply!" 

Cactus - Parchman Farm

We suspect Carmine Appice has attached the Cactus name to his latest project as he knows it'll help attract big names, shift units and generate copy, and hey, we're happy to do our bit. This new version of the Mose Allison classic Parchman Farm (it originally opened their debut album), featuring Joe Bonamassa and Billy Sheehan, captures some of the ragged wildness of the 1970 version, and it sure sounds like they're having fun. The album, Temple of Blues - Influences & Friends, is out this week, and features contributions from Dee Snider, Bumblefoot, Pat Travers, Vernon Reid and about a million others.  

Though it’s not a subject he cared to dwell upon, in some ways the late Gary Moore was trapped by his past. By 2006, Belfast-born Moore had been a recording artist for more than a quarter of a century, his career exploring the blues (with Ireland’s Skid Row) and progressive-fusion music (as a member of Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum II). But it’s the tuneful hard rock he played during several spells with Thin Lizzy for which he was arguably best known. 

As a solo artist, Moore began a run of hits with the gorgeous Parisienne Walkways, made in collaboration with his good friend Phil Lynott. The short-lived band G-Force and a collaboration with Greg Lake were followed by several critically acclaimed hard rock albums, but having toured 1989’s After The War, Gary ditched his leather jackets for suits and began embracing the music of his childhood, the blues. 

Still Got The Blues was Moore’s biggest-selling solo release, though some fans still hankered to hear him plug in and blast once again. Moore fulfilled a lifelong dream by playing Clapton to ex-Cream men Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in BBM in 1994, later experimenting with samples and tape loops on 1999’s A Different Beat. After joining up with ex-Skunk Anansie bassist Cass Lewis and Primal Scream drummer Darrin Mooney for the harder-edged Scars in 2002, the title Power Of The Blues (released two years later) was self-explanatory. 

In agreeing to play 2003’s Monsters Of Rock tour, it seemed that Moore would turn back the clock, though not far enough for diehard tastes. Indeed, Gary Moore remained determined to stick to his guns. Rarely featured outside of the specialist guitar magazines, he was nevertheless fêted by fellow musicians and was still a popular live attraction. 

Shortly before he opened for BB King on his farewell tour, Classic Rock visited the guitarist at his Sussex home to discuss his latest album Old, New, Ballads, Blues. We came clutching vinyl copies of 80s hard rock albums Victims Of The Future, Run For Cover and Wild Frontier to begin the debate. 

"My favourite of those is Wild Frontier because it was made just after Phil [Lynott] died,” Moore revealed. “I was thinking about him a lot at the time, hence its Celtic influences. It’s a reflective record, whereas this [picks up Victims Of The Future] is just one of my feeble attempts at heavy rock.”

Do you honestly think that?

Well, I don’t like to go around saying those records were a load of crap because some people still like them. But they’re not what I’d want to do now.

You’ve said that you were “a misfit” playing that style of music, even that you weren’t very good at it.

I never really felt like I belonged in that world, and I’m totally convinced of it now. At least with Wild Frontier I injected a bit of the Irish thing, but by the end of the 80s I’d had enough of it.

But it wasn’t just the music. Before each tour you’d spend more time with the fucking set designer than playing with the band, it got really stupid. It was a model of Stonehenge or Andy Pandy’s fucking playset. We were playing these huge venues and it seemed like things were going really well but I’d be in the dressing room playing blues licks to myself.

Those albums are still pretty revered.

Not around here they’re not, mate!

Did you hear Nightwish’s version of Over The Hills And Far Away?

Yeah. To me, it had a bit of a karaoke vibe because the backing track was so similar. I don’t mean that insultingly, but it was almost identical. I believe they’re a pretty big band now, so it’s cool that they did it.

The wheel sometimes turns full circle and Neil Carter, who co-wrote 1985’s Top 30 hit Empty Rooms with you, now apparently teaches your kids music.

He does come into contact with my son, but I don’t think he teaches him directly. I do see Neil now and again. He’s still got a big nose – less hair now. But he’s great. Neil gave us so much flexibility because he could double the guitar parts and add keyboards. He was also a great singer. And he had a big nose. What more could you want?

Last August, on what would’ve been his 56th birthday, you fronted a Phil Lynott memorial show in Dublin that’s now been issued on DVD.

It was nice playing those songs again and doing Black Rose with Scott [Gorham, guitarist] gave me a real shiver. I realised how good those songs were. And of course singing them myself I also learned what a great singer Phil was; he made it look so spectacularly easy. I had to really concentrate, which was a shame in a way as I didn’t get swept away with the emotion of the gig. Eric [Bell, guitarist] did Whiskey In The Jar, which was brilliant. It’s nice that he and I have become really good friends again.

Did everyone hang out together afterwards?

We all went back to the Westbury Hotel, and Robbo [Brian Robertson, guitarist] sat with his lot. I had a couple of drinks with Scott.

I ask because you’ve been pretty vocal about Lizzy not continuing without Phil.

That’s just my opinion, but I’ve also said that people have to make a living. I still maintain that without Phil there isn’t really a Thin Lizzy. It’s a bit of a strange situation. I imagine that Brian Downey [ex-Lizzy drummer], who’s not there anymore, feels the same.

Do you think that Phil would approve?

I can give you two answers to that, and one wouldn’t be as nice as the other. He would probably approve of the fact that his songs are being kept alive. [Giggling] And he’d also probably think it was pretty funny that there’s a statue of him [in Dublin].

A thread on the Thin Lizzy discussion forums suggested that you were guilty of hogging the limelight a little.

[Sighs deeply] Well, Brian Downey suggested opening with Walking By Myself [a Jimmy Rogers song from Still Got The Blues], and I thought it would be really arrogant to go out and play Jailbreak first.

I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to be Phil, it was just to break the ice. It was a Gary Moore gig but was my idea to share it with the Lizzy guys. I really take offence at that. I bet that shit all came from Dublin.

If I hadn’t put the gig together it wouldn’t have happened. So those cunts can all fuck off.

In Cardiff on the first night of your Still Got The Blues tour there were boos. That must’ve been terrifying.

Yeah, people were shouting, “Where’s the real Gary Moore?” A few people wrote in saying they were ashamed of those that did that. I was like, “Fuck, is this what it’s gonna be like?”

You later admitted that your audience didn’t get it when you “painted yourself into a corner” with drum loops and samples on the A Different Beat album.

[Shrugs] I’d wondered why there wasn’t any guitar on that sort of dance music, and I probably found out the hard way [laughs]. It’s funny, I took a drum loop from a record and I had to go to this flat in Docklands and play what I’d done to Rob Playford, Goldie’s producer, for approval. It was heavy-duty stuff. He was in this flat full of guys with their arms folded and they went, “Yeah, it’s better than we thought.” I was really out of my depth, man.

Peter Green famously sold you the 1959 Gibson Les Paul that he used on many of his classic Fleetwood Mac recordings, and so the story goes even gave you change from the £160 you paid for it. But now you’ve sold it.

I don’t really want to talk about that because it was supposed to be a very discreet sale, and now it’s all over the fuckin’ web. I’m really unhappy because I didn’t want to part with it in the first place. Then that fucking twat shot his mouth off; it’s like having your trousers pulled down in public.

Have you heard from or spoken to Peter recently?

Not for years; somebody told me he’s in Sweden. That whole Splinter Group thing wasn’t the greatest showcase for his talents. For some of the people close to him, it was just a meal ticket. From what I hear, that’s all finished now.

You’d hinted that you were willing to re-visit your hits from the 80s at Monsters Of Rock, but we got largely the same set as usual.

[Slightly annoyed] No you didn’t. I did [Lizzy’s] Don’t Believe A Word and Wishing Well [by Free], I hadn’t done those since the 80s. I did Shapes Of Things [by The Yardbirds] because it was very reflective of that era.

But they’re all cover versions…

[Interrupts] There’s always been covers in my set. Half of Still Got The Blues is covers. I just played the stuff I felt comfortable with – I wasn’t gonna resurrect stuff like Rocking Every Night. I got slagged off so much for that set, especially in Classic Rock. They said, “Why didn’t he play more blues?” and I thought, well the tour’s called fucking Monsters Of Rock, you know.

If anything, we moaned that you didn’t play Empty Rooms, while your version of Out In The Fields seemed tokenistic.

Well, I didn’t have a keyboard player for a start, so Empty Rooms was impossible. You just can’t win in those situations, and I would only compromise so far.

You definitely looked uncomfortable up there.

Well, it was like The X-Factor of rock or something. I didn’t actually want to do it in the first place.

So why did you?

We were writing songs and when the offer came in I said to the guys, “It’s a bit fucking dinosaur, but do you wanna do it?” Darrin [Mooney] and Cass [Lewis] are from a totally different era, but I sold it to them on the basis that we could play to lots of people, have some laughs and also do some of our stuff. The money was good as well, don’t get me wrong. But I wouldn’t do it again, it was like being dragged backwards and I quickly remembered why I left that world in the first place.

Are you saying you’ll never play Murder In The Skies or Empty Rooms again?

Empty Rooms is a song that I still like very much, and I’ve thought about resurrecting it. We could do a nice new version of that. But [wrinkles his nose] Murder In The Skies?

As implied by its title, Old, New, Ballads, Blues is a combination of existing and original material.

One of my favourites is Done Somebody Wrong by Elmore James, which I first heard the Allman Brothers do when I was 17. Skid Row opened for the Allmans and I modelled my slide upon the way Duane Allman used to play. There’s some new songs, a couple of ballads and some blues on there. It does what it says on the tin.

What about the tug-of-war between what the fans from the 80s want to hear from you and the music you feel more at home playing?

With Still Got The Blues, I lost a lot of fans – but I gained lots more. I honestly didn’t know that would happen. I was in my late thirties and I didn’t want to end up in my forties and fifties playing that kind of music because it can be quite undignified. The blues is much more elegant.

In an April 2001 interview, Classic Rock accused you of lacking career focus, even of chasing trends.

Oh, some cunt will always slag you off. I’ve always just done what I liked. If I don’t like it then I can’t expect anyone else to. Lots of careers have been made from regurgitating the same record. If I’d made millions of quid, I’d be making jazz records.

Def Leppard’s Vivian Campbell once said that you were a better player than Edward Van Halen. Has the fact that you now play the blues – as opposed to a flashier style of music – caused your contribution to be undervalued?

I don’t think I’m undervalued. I’ve had all the accolades I could wish for. I’ve felt overrated sometimes, not underrated. Being called a legend makes me cringe.

The scar on your cheek came from a bar fight over a girl. So how did you feel when Ozzy Osbourne famously remarked that you have “a face like a welder’s bench”?

[Hoots with laughter] Three words came to mind: ‘pot’, ‘kettle’ and ‘black’. He’s admitted having more chins than a Chinese phone book.

Truthfully, Ozzy was just pissed off that I wouldn’t join his band. When I lived in Los Angles, G-Force helped him to audition musicians. If drummers were trying out then I played guitar, and if a bassist came along my drummer [Mark Nauseef] would help out. We felt sorry for him, basically. He was always hovering around trying to get me to join, and I wasn’t having any of it.

Has that fact that even your hero BB King has drawn a line in the sand made you realise that some day everyone has to stop?

I believe that you can do this for as long as you want to. And if you don’t want to keep on, then you shouldn’t do it anymore. If your playing turns to shit then it’s time to stop. Of course [laughing again], not everyone pays attention to that last part.

The original version of this interview appeared in Classic Rock 92, published in May 2006.

Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash will release his all-star blues album. Orgy Of The Damned, on May 16 via Gibson Records, with AC/DC's Brian Johnson, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, ZZ Top's Billy F. Gibbons, The Black Crowes' Chris Robinson, country superstar Chris Stapleton, Iggy Pop, Beth Hart, Paul Rodgers and Gary Clark Jr,  among the special guests. 

One name on the album credits that sticks out is that of pop star Demi Lovato, who sings Motown classic Papa Was A Rollin' Stone. Lovato's 2022 album Holy Fvck saw her embracing her long-standing love of hard rock, punk and metal to much acclaim - Def Leppard's Joe Elliott nominated it as the best rock album of that year - but in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Slash admits that the singer's presence on his record initally raised an eyebrow or two. 

"That was so left-field for everybody involved, because she’s from the pop world," he acknowledges. "But I had this very distinct idea in my mind of her voice delivering that lyric and the emotional content of that story. I know her background. She’s had her share of missteps in life, and we’ve known each other for a little while, so I called her up and I asked her about it. It turns out that that song really meant a lot to her. So she came in and delivered a powerhouse fucking vocal that I think will be a huge surprise to people that are familiar with her other stuff."

To be fair, Slash has never been snobbish about collaborating with pop stars, having previously shared stages and/or studio booths with the likes of Michael Jackson, Black Eyed Peas vocalist Fergie, Rihanna and more. Last year the guitarist guested on Lovato's Revamped album, which found her re-recording some of her biggest hits in a rock format, playing on single Sorry Not Sorry. 

Slash talks about Orgy Of The Damned in much greater detail in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine. 

After two post-Woodstock years spent conquering America with their frenetic brand of boogie, Ten Years After finally got the space and time to add another dimension on their 1971 album.

They took full advantage. The opening slow-burning One Of These Days has a deeper, richer sound, thanks to new engineer on the block Chris Kimsey. Over half the songs start with an acoustic riff rather than an electric bludgeon. Let The Sky Fall may be a variation of the Good Morning Little School Girl riff they’d been hammering out night after night, but now it’s a languid, post-coital spliff instead of a lecherous arouser.

And then there’s I’d Love To Change The World, arguably frontman Alvin Lee’s finest song, a more succinct version of Stairway To Heaven and a product of its time, with lyrics like ‘Tax the rich, feed the poor, till there are no rich no more’ taking the countercultural position on social issues. Viewed by many as a condemnation of the Vietnam War, it was the band’s only American hit, making A Space In Time their biggest-selling album and a crucial opportunity the band didn't take advantage of. 

“But by then I was too confused to take it,” Alvin told Classic Rock in 2003. “I’d Love To Change The World was a hit, and I hated it because it was a hit. By then I was rebelling. I never played it live. To me it was a pop song.”

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Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute. 

Join the group now.

Other albums released in August 1971 

• Tago Mago - Can
• In Hearing of Atomic Rooster – Atomic Rooster
• Fillmore East – June 1971 - The Mothers of Invention
• Who's Next - The Who
• Surf's Up - The Beach Boys
• The Sun, Moon & Herbs - Dr. John
• If 3 - If
• A Space in Time - Ten Years After
• Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin' - Butterfield Blues Band
• White Light - Gene Clark
• Master Of Reality - Black Sabbath
• New Riders Of The Purple Sage - New Riders Of The Purple Sage

What they said...

"In which the rock heavy comes of age with his toughest, fullest, and most coherent album. I like it in a way, but it does lack a certain winning abandon, and I'm not crazy about the heavy's economic theories-fellow seems to believe that if you "tax the rich to feed the poor" you soon run out of rich, with dire consequences." (Robert Christgau) 

"The leadoff track, One of These Days, is a particularly scorching workout, featuring extended harmonica and guitar solos. After the opener, however, the album settles back into a more relaxed mood than one would have expected from Ten Years After. Many of the cuts make effective use of dynamic shifts, and the guitar solos are generally more understated than on previous outings." (AllMusic)

"Lee’s vocals feel sympathetic and almost reticent for the lovely I’ve Been There Too.  Only the rote rocker Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock N’ Roll You, a straight Chuck Berry rip, displays the trite lyrics appearing occasionally here. Guitarist Lee reels in his more notes per minute frantic intensity to deliver a subtler, more nuanced approach, dovetailing well with the similarly oriented songs." (American Songwriter)

What you said...

Greg Schwepe: Doing an album review is a little like receiving a “How’d We Do?” e-mail survey after you visit a store. The business is trying to determine the NPS (Net Promoter Score) to get a quick read on how they’re doing. If I got one of those requests for this week’s Ten Years After selection, it’d be something like this:

“Would you recommend Ten Years After A Space In Time to your friends and family? Please respond using ratings found in e-mail.”

And after listening and giving careful thought, I think I’d be all Switzerland and be decidedly…”Neutral.” Not a good album, not a bad album, just one that is kinda…there.

I have known I’d Love To Change The World for what seems like, forever. Great song. And after seeing the Woodstock movie again a few years and Alvin Lee tear it up (he can rip with the best of them!) with I’m Coming Home, I had bought a compilation CD. And after a few listens, it got sold at the local bookstore. Not like I hated anything on it, just that I wasn’t going to be missing anything if I didn’t have it.

In listening to A Space In Time I still was trying to figure who/what Ten Years After really was. Slow bluesy, jazzy stuff band? Fast “boogie rock” band? I’d Love To Change The World was already in the plus category, due to my years of hearing it. And I really liked Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock n’ Roll You. At that point in the album, they finally get out of second gear into third. Or was it third into fourth?

I’ve Been There Too and Uncle Jam both grabbed me too. The former with its slow build up and the latter with its jazzy and great guitar playing.

Overall, not a bad album, an enjoyable listen but not enough to make me really explore more of their catalogue. 7 out 10 on this one for me.

Evan Sanders: Nice pick for giving me the chance to listen to an entire Ten Years After album, as I’ve known them pretty much just for their big hit I’d Love To Change The World and their inclusion on Woodstock. I found A Space In Time to be enjoyable, mostly for the blues rock numbers, including One of These Days and the three closing songs. There are some uneven songs, Here They Come and Over the Hill. Overall, this would have been a frequent play at house parties in the early 70’s, especially to convince friends that Ten Years After is more than just their big hit. 7/10.

John Davidson: I'm familiar with Ten Years After from I'd Love To Change The World and had heard the rest of the album without really remembering any of it. Nothing much has changed since the first listen. Ten Years After are still partying like it's 1967 even though it's 1971 (which may not look like much on paper but meant everything at the time).

Dale Munday: The seventh album from this classic, not quite (but nearly) forgotten band. This album finds them in a slightly more reflective and commercial mood, or maybe moods would be better. An eclectic mix of sounds with extensive use of acoustic guitars and even orchestration. A move that paid off nicely for them as this became their best-selling album.

Mark Herrington: A Space in Time offers quite a diverse range of mainly blues rock songs, from an underrated band. Some delightful pacing and a laid-back approach make this a great album for hazy, sunny days and a couple of beers in the garden, without annoying the neighbours too much.

I like the space given and the instrumental build prevalent here that lets you enjoy their obvious talent fully. A good score from me.

Brett Deighton: This was a first listen for me and I was super impressed. I love the diversity on this album. I’m not sure how this compares to their other albums, but I will be checking those out once I post this. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get after the opening of One of These Days but it sets the scene for the album overall by building into something different. Clearly I need to hear more from Alvin Lee. His guitar playing on here is sumptuous, with I’d Love to Change the World an obvious standout for me. Let The Sky Fall was another highlight, although to be honest there isn’t a weak track on here. Excellent nomination, a worthy classic album.

Peter Thomas Webb: I bought A Space in Time as a teenager, after seeing Alvin Lee and Ten Years After's incendiary performance in the feature film of Woodstock. At first I was surprised by the more subdued nature of the album, but it soon grew on me. Lee still adds plenty of impressive guitar licks to the songs, but overall the album focuses more on songs than guitar pyrotechnics.

Certain lyrical moments, such as the "dykes and fairies" line in I'd Love to Change the World feels awkward (although it's safe to assume Lee's "conservative" voice in the song is meant to be ironic). Other songs, such as the anti-drug lament Hard Monkeys, signal the death of sixties idealism.

My favourite track remains One of These Days (not to be confused with Pink Floyd's identically titled track the same year). The slow-burning blues riff and dynamics expressed by Ten Years After on that song show why they were once contenders for the top tier of the seventies rock pantheon.

Hai Kixmiller: Do you know who Mike Campbell, Christopher Hayes, or Alvin Lee are? Most people couldn't tell you that these are a few of the most talented and underrated guitarist from some of rock's most successful and well-known bands. Aside from his I'm Going Home guitar solo at Woodstock, Alvin Lee, guitarist and vocals for Ten Years After, gets little mention for much of his playing. Pay attention to the last part of Here They Come where Alvin does this harmonic tapping technique on his acoustic guitar. When someone mentions tapping techniques, on the guitar, most guitar enthusiasts usually think of Eddie Van Halen. Not bad company to be mentioned with.

A Space In Time is a stellar, acoustic guitar-driven rock album, with slices and grooves of boogie-woogie and blues shuffles. Most of the songs carry an amalgamation of beatnik soul searching, hippie counter-culture, and proto-stoner rock vibes with that rhythmic, percussive bass or guitar drone with that cool echo effect, reminiscent of Donovan's Season Of The Witch or The George Baker Selection's Little Green Bag.

The most notable stand-out track is I'd Love to Change the World. With its timeless, geopolitical and social themes it's as much a reflection of the present as it is an echo of the past.

Get your headphones for this one. Like Timothy Leary said, "Turn on, tune in, and drop out". A Space in Time is definitely worth the "trip".

Mike Canoe: On the whole, Ten Years After is a band that's still a little too "British Blues Explosion" for me but I'm delighted they made this week's pick, especially A Space in Time.

The only song I knew going in, of course, was the mesmerising and melancholy, I'd Love To Change The World. The lyrics always made me wonder if Alvin Lee was singing from his perspective or the point of view of his parents' generation. Either way, the hopelessness of the state of the world was in the early 70s and the malaise it caused still rings true.

While that track is still the showpiece for me, I also like the enigmatic Here They Come, which sounds like a welcome to visitors from the stars via chariots of the gods.

On the bluesier side, there's the apocalyptic Let the Sky Fall which predicts impending catastrophe - should the couple ever break up. Wait, what? Now that's a heavy trip to lay on someone.

Hard Monkeys is also an interesting tune - a fervent anti-drug song in a heyday of hedonism. Of course, the album was released the year after the drug deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and a month after the death of Jim Morrison. The Summer of Love was racking up a body count.

As I alluded to up top, Ten Years After is one of those classic rock bands that might not immediately jump to mind but are certainly worthy of discussion. A Space in Time feels like the right place to start.

Final score: 7.98 (50 votes cast, total score 399)

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A band whose brief seven-year existence has enabled them to remain enigmatic and shrouded in hazy folklore, Kyuss were a classic example of musicians who assimilated the ambience and vibe of their surroundings and spewed it back out as something genuinely but unintentionally original and groundbreaking.

Formed in Palm Desert, California, in 1988, first as Katzenjammer and then Sons Of Kyuss, they were inspired by everything from punk to Black Sabbath, eventually settling on a sound that could hardly have better suited their sun-ravaged, sand-blasted environment. Their evolution has been repeatedly mythologised since their split in 1995, but Kyuss really did develop their chops by taking a petrol-powered generator out into the desert and throwing rock’n’roll keg parties for their slacker buddies and anyone else who showed the slightest interest in their thunderous, freewheeling take on heavy music. 

However, despite releasing their debut Sons Of Kyuss EP in 1990 and the full- length Wretch one year later, Kyuss had still not refined or defined the sound that would eventually make them legends. 

“When we were practising up in Brant Bjork’s bedroom, I don’t think we set out to change the face of rock’n’roll or change or start some new genre at all,” states vocalist John Garcia. “I personally don’t think that we did! But when you hear Blues For The Red Sun, there’s something special going on. It’s crazy. You have Brant Bjork on drums, Nick Oliveri on bass, Josh Homme on guitar and myself, all in the same room. Somebody asked me recently ‘What’s your idea of a supergroup?’ and I’ll tell you, I’ve been in that supergroup! I remember Brant sitting me down on his bed saying, ‘Hey, I’ve written this song called Green Machine!’ and then playing it for me. He goes, ‘You’re gonna sing it like this!’ and that was how it came about. I’m extremely lucky to have worked with Brant and Josh. I put those two guys on a very high pedestal. I love them dearly.” 

Arguably the key relationship in the evolution of Kyuss from suburban hopefuls to one of the most revered rock bands on the planet was their working partnership with producer Chris Goss. Best known for his own band, Masters Of Reality, who had already successfully blended the heaviness of Sabbath with a strong and idiosyncratic strain of psychedelia, Chris was a man with an intuitive grasp of what great rock’n’roll should sound like, and when he stumbled across the band performing in a dingy LA dive one night, he immediately recognised that he wanted to be part of the Kyuss story and to facilitate the birth of an album worthy of their prodigious talents.

“I think Chris believed in us,” says John. “He saw something that he may not have seen in bands before. It was this untapped, unfucked-with thing that Hollywood hadn’t tainted yet. LA hadn’t ruined it yet. We were in our own little bubble, out here in the desert, and he saw that we had some potential. We were very familiar with Masters Of Reality (the self-titled debut album by Chris’s band) and listening to The Blue Garden, it blew us away. He was a super guy and there was automatic trust. He was willing to use his talents to help us to bloom into our own. Chris Goss is extremely talented and he’s a great producer and I love him dearly.”

Recorded at Sound City in Van Nuys, California, Blues For The Red Sun comprised the bulk of the material that Kyuss had been honing during rehearsals and at those notorious generator parties. With Chris handling production duties and a young Joe Barresi acting as engineer, the recording sessions were swift and productive, resulting in an album that sounds like an untamed and mercurial jam session captured on tape. Tracks like the rambling but powerful 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) and Freedom Run represented a sizzling collision between punk rock energy and the drug-addled, limit-free explorations of space rock. Combined with the throbbing bottom end of Chris’s production, which was greatly enhanced by Josh’s widely reported insistence on playing his guitar through a bass amplifier, the album sounded utterly unique.

“That was part of Kyuss. We did jam. You might even hear a couple of fuck-ups in there!” laughs John. “That’s what we did! We ran through the takes live, and the majority of it was live, and I came back in and cut the vocals. To my best recollection there were some jams. Obviously, songs like Apothecaries’ Weight, Caterpillar March and Molten Universe, those instrumental pieces were definitely recorded that way and that’s just the way we wanted to do it, to capture that live sound as much as possible. That’s when bands really shine, so we wanted to capture that really well and I think Chris did a great job, an amazing job, and it is what it is!”

In stark contrast to the somewhat stilted sonic range and naïve songwriting of Wretch, Blues For The Red Sun sounds like the work of a band who knew exactly what they were doing. Their demeanour might have suggested that Kyuss were spending more time squinting down a bong pipe than focusing on their creative skills, but the reality was entirely different. For all its fuzziness, Blues For The Red Sun was ferocious and intense.

“We were four very young guys with a lot of angst and that angst came out in that record,” explains John. “I think we just continued to grow. It was always a growing process and I’m proud to have been part of it. I was becoming a better vocalist just as Josh was becoming a better guitar player. We were kids, getting older and maturing and finding out what was going on in our lives and in our stories. Pure angst on vinyl! When you talk about those songs, you need to talk about Brant and Josh. They really were the masterminds behind Blues for The Red Sun. Being a fly on the wall and seeing Brant and Josh in the same room together and seeing that magic and then me, coming in and putting my stamp on things, it was an incredible thing to be involved with. I’m a modest person but I’m also a straight shooter and I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, and a lot of that, the majority of that credit, goes to Brant and Josh.”

Released in 1992 on underground label Dali Records, Blues For The Red Sun was never likely to be a huge seller, but it received reviews that most bands would donate an internal organ to pick up. In some ways it arrived at a perfect time, providing a heavier and palpably less morose alternative to Nirvana’s ragged but glossy Nevermind while simultaneously delighting fans of bands like Black Flag, Saint Vitus and Monster Magnet with an invigorating dose of trippy but crushing hard rock. True to their somewhat lackadaisical, suck-it-and-see approach to their career, Kyuss themselves were largely unaware that they were becoming a cool name to drop in rock circles.

“We had no idea!” chuckles John. “We knew that the band didn’t want to suck. I don’t think Blues… is a record that sucks. Either you like it or you don’t and a review is just one opinion, one perspective on it. I’ve collected just about everything that was written on it and I’d say about 75 per cent of the reviews were positive and that was really good for us, but we didn’t think about it too much at the time.”

An impressive critical hit, Blues For The Red Sun didn’t sell in vast amounts and was a slow-burning success, building momentum as praise for the album was spread by word of mouth, but within time it became clear that a new subgenre was evolving, primarily inspired by Kyuss’s sound. Just as Cathedral had revitalised interest in the slow riffs and post-Sabbath grooves of doom in the UK, so Kyuss were involuntarily instrumental in the birth of what would become widely known as stoner rock. Typically, John refuses to take any credit for what was happening.

“I didn’t know about any of that until after the band had broken up!” he says. “That is par for the course with bands like us, man. Once the band breaks up, suddenly everyone runs out and buys all their stuff because it’s over. We’re getting all this hoopla now, like, ‘Kyuss were awesome!’ and ‘Kyuss did this first!’ and I’m like, ‘Where the fuck were all these people when we were around?’”

Kyuss released two more albums, 1994’s Welcome To Sky Valley (featuring new bassist Scott Reeder) and 1995’s …And The Circus Leaves Town (with drummer Alfredo Hernandez taking the departed Brant Bjork’s place).

Sadly, the band split within a year of the latter’s release. Josh Homme joined grunge band Screaming Trees as a touring guitarist before founding Queens Of The Stone Age (initially featuring former Kyuss bassist Nick Oliveri), Brant went on to form Brant Bjork & The Bros and play with Fu Manchu, while John Garcia has fronted a number of bands, including Slo Burn, Unida and Hermano, as well as releasing a string of solo albums in recent years. A full-blown Kyuss reunion has never happened, though John, Brant and Nick Oliveri reunited in 2010 as Kyuss Lives!, before changing their name to Vista Chino and releasing an album, Peace, in 2013.

Today, Blues For The Red Sun is is considered a stoner rock cornerstone, though the band have all been eager to distance themselves from any responsibility for the spawning of that genre. It may not have sold massive amounts, but it’s influence remains huge.

“The success was not the main goal for us when we made Blues…,” says John. “It was about character and integrity and making ourselves happy. There was some- thing missing in our lives musically and we had to fill that void. Blues… filled that void and it filled it very well. The little bit of success that we tasted during that time, it was frowned on. We didn’t embrace it; we were afraid of it. We didn’t want to be superstars. We wanted to be an underground punk rock’n’roll band with our own sound; we wanted to be originators. I don’t think we thought it was cool to become super-huge. We’d have thought we were selling ourselves out! We wanted to stay grounded and level-headed, to make music for the people.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 209

“Things that are real, they tend to last," says Derek Trucks. "My dad would take me to see BB King, long before I was playing guitar, and he’d get chill-bumps on his arm and be like: ‘Look at this!’ That was how he would gauge a show. So from a very early age, that’s what was important. When you listened to music, you had to feel it.

“I remember, early on, hearing a few things and getting that feeling. The first music I really enjoyed was At Fillmore East and the Layla record, but also The Best Of Elmore James. There’s just a brutal honesty to it. Mainstream taste is never good. You’re pandering to an audience and in a lot of ways you’re dumbing it down. 

"If everybody likes something, you’re probably not trying very hard. But there’s something about speaking the truth and playing with humanity. Blues crowds might dwindle, then get bigger, it comes and goes, but it’s always there. And those records are still great.”

Susan Tedeschi: “When I was little, my dad would play me Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt, a lot of that country folk-blues kinda vibe. And I liked it, but it wasn’t my main thing. But then when I graduated college, I had some friends running a blues jam and they asked me to come sing. 

"So I started diving into the record stores and bought all these records by T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, Koko Taylor, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson. That’s when I started diving into the blues on a massive level. They just really got me hooked.

“And they also got me playing electric guitar: I didn’t really play anything other than acoustic until I started getting into the blues. It was an exciting time. That music was soulful and inspiring, and I was really angry that growing up, we didn’t have that kind of music on the radio. 

"But I’ve realised since that what we’re spoon-fed on radio is kinda all the baloney, the weakest of the lot. So you have to search out the really great stuff, the really soulful stuff. People can relate to the blues. It moves them. It can help to heal you. I think the blues can be very beneficial on a medicinal level.”

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks were speaking with Henry Yates. The next leg of Tedeschi Trucks Band's Dueces Wild tour kicks off on May 22. 

Had I compiled a bingo card of things that might happen in 2024 at the beginning of the year, I really don’t think I’d have included Slash releasing a new album. I mean, the fella’s got a lot on his plate – a seemingly endless Guns N’ Roses tour (and possibly a much-rumoured new album from them), and another extensive ‘rest of the world’ tour with his other day job with Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators. 

I mean, when would he have had the time for anything else? What I certainly wouldn’t have put on the list would have been a brand new album of (mostly) blues covers, packed with rock A-listers at the mic. Nostrodamus I am not… Slash tells us all about it, and how he coerced some of his famous pals into helping him.

I did mention this last month, but I’m going to do so again, as it’s a pretty cool thing. Don’t forget that if you’re a subscriber you not only get the mag in your hand, but also now have access to our digital edition – and more than 100 back issues! Until next month…

Get the new issue of Classic Rock

Features

Slash
The Guns  guitarist is back with a brand new blues album, and this time he’s brought the likes of Steven Tyler, Brian Johnson, Billy Gibbons and more A-list rock friends to help him. 

Kerry King
The Slayer guitarist on his old band, his new band, his new solo album, humanity’s failure, and the pressure of going solo.

Steve Harley
We look back at the life and music of the Cockney Rebel. 

The Black Keys
The pack leaders of the post-millennial alt.blues scene  have reignited their mojo on their twelfth album, Ohio Players. 

Lenny Kravitz
The multi-faceted superstar has worked with some of rock’s greatest. On his new album, he’s revisiting his youth. 

Pink Floyd
Ten years on, how David Gilmour and co. pulled The Endless River album out of the hat.

Nazareth
With the band’s glory days behind them, last surviving original member Pete Agnew is keeping the veteran band’s flag flying.

Regulars

The Dirt
Scott Gorham reveals he’s handy with a paintbrush and a pencil. Erik Grönwall quits Skid Row, Lzzy Hale steps in to help out. Lars Ulrich and Chad Smith sign up for This Is Spinal Tap II. Welcome back Robin Trower and The Dandy Warhols. Say hello to Silveroller and The Warning. Say goodbye to John Sinclair, Eric Carmen, Karl Wallinger.

The Stories Behind The Songs: Eagles
Life In The Fast Lane was a song built on a riff that guitarist Joe Walsh came up with,
its title was what it was like being in the Eagles at that time.

Six Things You Need To Know About… Troy Redfern
He was raised on a farm; he finds the blues “super-limiting”; he’s a big Frank Zappa fan; you can dance to his new album.

The Classic Rock Interview: Sebastian Bach
He played clubs and guzzled beer at 14, fronted Skid Row and got hit records, toured with musical theatre, has a solo career. “I’ve had a pretty fucking extraordinary life,” he says.

The Hot List
We look at some of the essential new tracks you need to hear and the artists to have on your radar. This month they include Wytch Hazel, Marisa & The Moths, Collatoral and more. 

Reviews
New albums from Slash, Ian Hunter, Kings Of Leon, Sebastian Bach, Chris Shiflett, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, Lee Aaron, TSOL, My Dying Bride, FM. Reissues from AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Bruce Springsteen, Thunder, Sparks, Alice Cooper, Linkin Park, Rain Parade. DVDs, films and books on The Beach Boys, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, The Clash, Shane MacGowan. Live reviews of Judas Priest, The Who, Saxon, Simple Minds, Uriah Heep, Pixies.

Lives
We preview tours by Anthrax, Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse and Toby Jepson. Plus gig listings – who’s playing where and when.

The Soundtrack Of My Life: Walter Trout 
Bluesman Walter Trout picks his records, artists and gigs of lasting significance.

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Mike Pinder, keyboard player and founding member of UK prog legends the Moody Blues, has died, aged 82, it has been confirmed by his family and fellow Moody Blues colleague John Lodge.

Pinder had been the last surviving founding member of the band. Drummer Graeme Edge passed in 2021, vocalist and flautist Ray Thomas died in 2018, with original guitarist Denny Laine passing last year. Clint Warwick, the original bassist, died in 2004.

His family said in a statement, "Michael Thomas Pinder died on Wednesday, April 24th, 2024 at his home in Northern California, surrounded by his devoted family. Michael's family would like to share with his trusted friends and caring fans that he passed peacefully. His final days were filled with music, encircled by the love of his family. Michael lived his life with a childlike wonder, walking a deeply introspective path which fused the mind and the heart.

"He created his music and the message he shared with the world from this spiritually grounded place; as he always said, 'Keep your head above the clouds, but keep your feet on the ground.' His authentic essence lifted up everyone who came into contact with him. His lyrics, philosophy, and vision of humanity and our place in the cosmos will touch generations to come."

His former Moody Blues colleague John Lodge said "All the love possible goes out from the Lodge family to Mike's family today... RIP." while Justin Hayward commented, "Mike was a natural born musician who could play any style of music with warmth and love. His re-imagining and rebuilding (literally) of the Mellotron gave us our identifiable early sound. He was a huge part of my own musical journey. My sincere condolences to his loving and devoted family."

As well as the music he created with the Moody Blues, Pinder will best be remembered as an advocate of technology, notably his pioneering work with the Mellotron.

Pinder helped form the Moody Blues back in 1964 and they had an initial hit with Go Now, but it wasn't until 1967, by which time Justin Hayward and John Lodge had replaced Laine and Warwick respectively, that the band began to rise in popularity, shifting their sound from the early R'n'B roots to a more progressive and symphonic sound with their second album Days Of Future Passed.

Pinder had moved to Malibu, California during the band's mid-70s hiatus and when they reconvened in 1977 to begin work on Octave he declined full participation, being replaced by former Yes keyboardist Patrick Moraz.

Pinder released his debut solo album, The Promise, through the Moodies' record label Threshold in 1976. A second solo album, Among The Stars, followed in 1994 and A Planet With One Mind a year later. Away from music Pinder worked as a consultant to the Atari Corporation.

Happy to stay out of the limelight, Pinder was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Moody Blues in 2018, but was the only member of the band who did not give an acceptance speech, saying "Many MB fans have asked why I did not speak at the induction but by the time the Moodies took the stage we were five hours into the ceremony. The oldest of the inductees were up the latest. 

"The speeches were a bit anti-climatic at that point and it was only fitting that the current touring members (Edge, Hayward and Lodge) spoke first. I am happy that we finally got inducted for our fans' sake. As I have said for the last 30 years 'the fans are my hall of fame'."

London rockers The Karma Effect describe themselves as "Black Crowes vs Aerosmith, with a step-sibling called Greta Van Fleet," and with credentials like that it's no wonder they won our most recent Tracks Of The Week skirmish. So congratulations to them. 

And congratulations to Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown, and to Joanne Shaw Taylor, who finished on the podium but tantalisingly short of overall victory. Perhaps next time. 

Below you'll find this week's runners and riders. Let's hope n one falls at Becher's Brook.

Bad Nerves - You Should Know By Now

Bad Nerves are best known for power-pop blasts in punk clothing, typically lasting under two minutes. With that in mind You Should Know By Now is practically prog by their standards, in that it clocks in at three and a half minutes, finds them on dreamier, moodier sonic ground with some tasty tempo shifts, and doesn’t break quite such a sweat, pace-wise. Happily, these extra trappings don’t come at the expense of immediacy – infectious pop melodies with a side of heartache, which they do so well. Another reason to earmark their next album, Still Nervous, which comes out on 31 May.

Blues Pills - Don’t You Love It

By their own admission, Blues Pills have their share of “depressed sounding songs”. So it’s a delight to find them audibly having an absolute blast on this old-timey, good-timey swirl of 60s hippie sunshine and riffed up rock’n’roll. Think Rolling Stones meets Janis Joplin, with a disco-soul kiss. “It’s something that came with age,” says guitarist Zack “We’ve been a band for a long time and with this album, and at this point, it’s firstly about having fun making music. In the earlier days there was a lot of pressure, now we’ve let all that go.”

Bill Fisher - Yell Of The Ringman

Church Of The Cosmic Skull leader by day, doom rocker by night, Bill Fisher leans into the latter gig with Yell Of The Ringman. It’s loud, it’s gnarly, it’s super-melodic but still dripping with beardy mystique… “Imagine Kate Bush and Michael McDonald wrote a yacht doom album,” Bill says (‘yacht doom’? Is that a thing?? Let’s say it’s a thing), “satirising edgelord-tech-billionaire-worship, recorded by Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos in the early 80s using an industry pre-release unit of the late 90s Yamaha PSR8000 synthesiser, several heavily distorted guitars, and a baby grand.” Cue Wayne’s World-style cry of: ‘does this dude know how to party or what?!’

Gyasi - All Messed Up (Medley)

Raised in the woods of West Virginia but destined for the stage, the leopard-printed, platform-booted Gyasi channels a hot mix of blues and glam rock in this live track – taking in slices of Lou Reed and Doors hits in the process. Part of his new live album Rock n' Roll Sword Fight (billed as his answer to The Stones' Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! or The Who's Live at Leeds), its sass comes with rich, chunky guitars and the swagger of a Keith Richards-David Bowie collaboration. 

Shannon & The Clams - Big Wheel

For all its garage-y psych/doo-wop bounce and Northern Soul edges – plus a stylishly screwy video that’s a bit Metropolis with a side of Beetlejuice – the Californian retro mavericks’ new single is rooted in tragedy. Like its Dan Auerbach-produced parent album, The Moon Is In The Wrong Place (out on May 10), it was heavily informed by the sudden death of frontwoman Shannon Shaw’s fiancee in 2022 – just a few weeks before their wedding. The resulting music is sharp and super catchy, but a proper listen reveals meditations on how “time and reality become distorted in the face of sudden loss”. 

Scarlet Rebels - Secret Drug

AC/DC’s Thunderstruck meets The Cult in the main hook of the Welsh rockers’ new single. Beefy, moreish and more expansive than their previous work, it grabs the listener by the gut with driving guitars and a soaring chorus that’s sure to go down well with festival crowds and a few beers. Admittedly the opening couplet is a bit of a clunker (‘I ain’t got a chemical dependency/It lets me live my life so normally’... come on fellas, really?!) but that aside Secret Drug is a happy marriage of classic and contemporary rock that’s whetted our appetite for their next album, Where The Colours Meet.

Demon - Face The Master

Demon might be in the running for this year's "Band who basically invented Ghost decades ago but Tobias Forge hasn't admitted to it yet" award, but such comparisons don't appear to have altered their own course much, and Face The Master is more of what they do best, which is to bake a cake of slickly produced, hard-edged AOR and layer it with demonic, somewhat ghostly frosting. New album Invincible (their 14th, not that we're counting) is due on May 17. 

Froglord - Frogman

With a plot that seems to be part Blair Witch Project and part Swamp Thing, the video for Frogland, the new single by Bristolian doom lords Froglord, was allegedly put together by struggling filmmaker Dallas Kyle, who travelled to woodland deep in Loveland, Ohio, to capture footage of the fabled frogman, a creature he'd first encountered (and filmed) as a 12-year-old. At least we think that's what the story is – it's hard to concentrate with such disturbing imagery being secreted directly into our eyes. The music's good too. A bit like The Stooges' TV Eye, but with added bufotoxins.   

Beneath the rock-star locks and the cape of prog rock, keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman has a heart beating for R&B and blues. Growing up in northwest London as trad jazz, skiffle and blues were setting minds on fire, young Rick found himself in a number of aspirational bands. He’s known best for his time in The Strawbs and Yes, but it was R&B that got him a foot on the music industry ladder.

“When I was a teenager, everyone was in an R&B band," says Wakeman. "Twelve-bar blues was the easiest thing to learn, and once you had three chords you had a band. Moving on a couple of years, I was skiving off school to work in a music shop in South Ealing. One day Chas Cronk [future Strawb] came in and was talking to the owner, Dave Simms, saying he was in a spot, trying to find players for a session with Ike Turner’s singer Jimmy Thomas. His own band had been ‘detained’ at Customs. Dave looked at me and said: ‘Rick will sort that for you.’ Chas went: ‘Brilliant. I’ve got a demo on quarter-inch. I’ll bring it in. If I find and score the brass section, you do the organ bit, my problems will be solved.’ 

“My brain was saying: ‘Excuse me, I’m still at school.’ But my mouth said: ‘Yeah, no problem.’ I got the tape and played it. It was a fun track called Running Time. But I needed the players. Because I was already working at Watford Top Rank, I got some numbers from them for session guys. I called one of the trumpet players, who said: ‘We’ll do trumpet, trombone and tenor sax doubling on alto.’ All I had to do was score the brass parts – which I’d never done. Brass instruments are in a different key to concert pitch – I didn’t know that yet. It was the night before the session and I’ve got school during the day, so I’m up at midnight copying out these parts, getting to bed at four a.m., up at six, dog-tired. 

“That evening I get to Olympic Studios for eight p.m., with my parts under my arm, and meet the engineer, Vic Smith, who takes me in. Apart from me, Chas and Vic, the rest of the band are Afro-American, and I’m so nervous I can’t understand a word they’re saying. I’m trying to be cool – I’m still a teenager and I’m trying to act older. 

“We start playing, and they’re funking away and I end up doing almost a classical organ thing. I’m thinking: ‘This ain’t good. They want Booker T.’ But what was really daft is producer Denny Cordell says: ‘Love the organ sound!’ He tells me they’re looking for new organ players, so I should go into his office and see him. 

“Then the brass players arrive. The track is running, and they start to play my score. It’s a cacophony of complete and utter rubbish. I’m going: ‘Oh shit.’ The trumpet player walks away from the mic and calls me over with the parts, saying: ‘You’ve copied them all down in concert pitch.’ I panic. He says: ‘Alright son, don’t worry,’ sits down with the other two, says: ‘Concert’, and they nod and transpose all the parts while playing. Now it sounds great. Then Denny Cordell says: ‘What was that all about?’ And I say: ‘I just wanted to try something different out, but it didn’t work.’ So I bullshitted through that! 

“At the end, Jimmy says to me: ‘I want you in my band. I want you everywhere I go.’ And Denny Cordell calls down to me: ‘I want you to come up and see me tomorrow – Regal Zonophone, Oxford Street, about eleven, twelve o’clock.’ 

“This is the ridiculous bit. I say: ‘I’ve got a maths exam in the morning.’ And he goes: ‘What?!’ I knew I’d blown it. ‘Are you at school?’ he says. ‘Erm, yeah.’ And he said: ‘Well skive off tomorrow and come and see me.’ “So I met him, Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti. They played the track back, and asked me why I did the organ in this style. I said: ‘That’s the only way I know how to play. But I suppose you want Booker T-type stuff.’ 

"Denny Cordell said: ‘That was what we were expecting, and it’s always interesting when you don’t get what you expect. Don’t change. Don’t try and copy what everyone else does. You do what you’re doing now, almost like bringing classical stuff into rock. Give it a few years and everybody will be copying you.’”

Kenny Ball - I Still Love You All (Pye, 1961)

This inspired me to form a trad jazz band when I was thirteen – Brother Wakeman And The Clergymen. I didn’t get to meet Kenny Ball until Lonnie Donegan’s memorial concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 2004. He introduced himself: “Hello, I’m Kenny.” I said: “I know exactly who you are!” He just looked stunned. I said to him: “You originally had a clarinet player called Dave Jones.” 

He said: “Yeah, I did. How the hell did you know that?” I said: “Dave Jones worked for my dad – he was a rep in a building firm.” I remember my dad coming home one day saying Kenny Ball and his jazz band were turning pro from being amateurs – his friend Dave had told him. They remained great friends up until my dad died.

Lonnie Donegan - Seven Daffodils (B-side to Have A Drink On Me) (Decca, 1961)

As a kid, pop music was nice, but there’s a bit more to skiffle. On Rock Island Line, what comes across is his great sense of humour, the excitement of a live recording and how very well put together it is. But what’s even better, but rarely played because it’s a B-side, is Seven Daffodils, one of the great blues tracks of the time. I love it. I was asked to play at Lonnie’s memorial service, and I chose Seven Daffodils with Chrissie Hammond, who didn’t know the song but loved it when she heard it.

Inez & Charlie Foxx - Mockingbird (Symbol, 1963)

That really was an influence, taking a classic song, ripping it apart and putting it back together. I thought that was sensational. Ashley Holt [from The Atlantic Blues, then Warhorse, and still Rick’s vocalist today] played me that first, at the Top Rank club. Anyone can copy something note for note, but if you can do what Inez & Charlie Foxx did you’re special. Mockingbird is the blues stuff that’s very danceable too. The problem is I can’t dance. Except in the time signature of 13/8.

Various - Pye Golden Guinea Rhythm & Blues Volume 2 (Pye, 1965)

I remember going to the little record shop down by my house in Perivale, and LPs weren’t really an ‘in’ thing yet, but there was the Pye Golden Guinea series of long-playing compilations costing one guinea, or twenty-one shillings. I bought a blues one because it had Dave ‘Baby’ Cortez, a blues organ player, on it, and his track Rinky Dink, which was just a three-chord trick. It was a great sampler, and on the first volume [from 1964] there were old original black blues singers from the past included. Sadly I don’t have it any more. With so many divorces gone by it’s probably been melted down and turned into a bendy toy.

Tom Jones - Chills And Fever (Decca, 1965)

I can’t get this record again for love nor money. Tom Jones was a blues singer originally, and his band were called The Squires. This was his first single, and I heard it just once on the radio. I went straight to the record shop. Very soon The Squires were kicked into touch and Tom became a pop star. But that wasn’t the Tom Jones I liked. The interesting thing is, he’s very much gone back to those days. If he was in concert now and he did Chills And Fever, that would do it for me.

Otis Redding - Shake (from the album Otis Blue) (Volt/Atco, 1965)

Back in the old days, you got your record and you read who was on it, why and what, where and when. Shake is when I noticed Steve Cropper. I loved his great, chunky guitar playing, so accurate and such a good sound. English productions at the time were shrouded in echo, while everything was crystal clear on all that Stax and Atlantic stuff. I never understood the ‘this is black music, this is white music’ idea – if you don’t see who the person is, you don’t know. However, I was taken aback when I met Steve Cropper for the first time, because it never occurred to me that he’d be white.

Etta James - You Got It/Fire (Cadet, 1968)

I heard You Got It on a jukebox, bought it, loved it to bits. What a great voice! Many years later I was living in Montreux and she came to play the jazz festival. [Festival organiser] Claude Nobs said to me: “I’ve got a problem.” Like a repeat of the Jimmy Thomas story, Etta’s band had been detained at Geneva airport and Claude needed help. “There’s a great band called Stuff,” he said. “They’re gonna fill in. They’re just short of a clavinet player. Can you do that?” 

I said: “Yeah!” Etta came down to rehearsal, walked over to me and said: “So what do you know about my stuff?” I mentioned a few tracks, then she said: “Name me an obscure one.” I said: “Fire.” She went: “Okay, let’s see if you can play.” We went through a few things and she then said: “Well, you’ll do for me.” It was lovely, and a big thrill for me. Afterwards Claude asked how much money I wanted for the job, and I said: “Nothing. It was a joy.”

This feature was originally published in issue 16 of The Blues, published in September 2014.

Mere days after confirming the release of his upcoming blues album Orgy Of The Damned, Guns N' Roses legend Slash has announced that he's taking the show on the road.

Slash's S.E.R.P.E.N.T. festival (we're reliably informed that it stands for Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance) will take an all-star lineup across North America this summer, kicking off on July 5 at the KettleHouse Amphitheater in Bonner, MT, and wrapping up at the Texas Trust CU Theatre in Grand Prairie, TX, on August 17. 

Joining Slash aboard the blues train will be a supporting cast that includes Warren Haynes Band, Keb’ ‘Mo, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Robert Randolph, Samantha Fish, Eric Gales, ZZ Ward, Jackie Venson, and Larkin Poe. Full dates below.

“The S.E.R.P.E.N.T. tour is a celebration of blues and rock‘n’roll music, and a celebration of unity and togetherness in these uncertain and divisive times,” says Slash. “S.E.R.P.E.N.T is a vehicle to help support and uplift people and communities suffering from the injustices of racism and equal rights violations, as well as to support children adversely affected by war and poverty across the world. 

"So, we are contributing a portion of every ticket and VIP package sold from the tour to those ends. S.E.R.P.E.N.T. will also provide an environment where folks can get together for a day of great music and hang out and have a good time."

Charities to benefit from ticket sales include The Equal Justice Initiative, Know Your Rights Camp, The Greenlining Institute, and War Child.

Tickets go on sale on Friday, March 15 at 10am local time. For pre-sale information, sign up at www.serpentfestival.com.

Slash's Orgy Of The Damned album, which is released on May 16, features contributions from Brian Johnson, Steven Tyler, Chris Stapleton, Beth Hart, Iggy Pop, Paul Rodgers, Gary Clark Jr, Billy F. Gibbons, Chris Robinson, Demi Lovato and Dorothy. The band is completed by bassist Johnny Griparic, keyboardist Teddy Andreadis, drummer Michael Jerome and singer/guitarist Tash Neal. 

Slash: S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Blues Festival Tour 2024

Jul 05: Bonner KettleHouse Amphitheater, MT*
Jul 06: Airway Heights Northern Quest Amphitheater, WA*
Jul 08: Redmond Marymoor Park, WA*
Jul 10: Bend Hayden Homes Amphitheater, OR*
Jul 12: Lincoln Thunder Valley Casino, CA*
Jul 13: Los Angeles Greek Theatre, CA*
Jul 14: Tucson Anselmo Valencia Amphitheater, AZ*
Jul 17: Denver The Mission Ballroom, CO**
Jul 19: La Vista The Astro Amphitheater, NE#
Jul 21: Terre Haute The Mill, IN#
Jul 22: Cincinnati PNC Pavilion at Riverbend, OH#
Jul 24: Interlochen Interlochen Center for the Arts, MI#
Jul 25: Huber Heights Rose Music Center, OH$
Jul 27: Windsor The Colosseum at Caesars, ON, Canada$
Jul 28: Toronto Budweiser Stage , ON, Canada$
Jul 30: Lewiston Artpark Outdoor Amphitheater, NY$
Aug 01: Boston Leader Bank Pavilion, MA$
Aug 04: New York Pier 17, NY$
Aug 05: Bethlehem Musikfest, PA+
Aug 07: Cary Koka Booth Amphitheatre, NC+
Aug 08: Atlanta Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park, GA^
Aug 10: Clearwater The Sound at Coachman Park, FL^
Aug 11: St. Augustine Amphitheatre, FL+
Aug 13: Huntsville The Orion Amphitheater, AL+
Aug 14: Franklin FirstBank Amphitheater, TN+
Aug 16: Bentonville The Momentary, AR^^
Aug 17: Grand Prairie Texas Trust CU Theatre, TX^

* with Warren Haynes, Samantha Fish and Eric Gales
** with Keb' Mo', Samantha Fish and Jackie Venson
# with Keb' Mo', ZZ Ward and Jackie Venson
$ with Keb' Mo', ZZ Ward and Robert Randolph
% with ZZ Ward and Robert Randolph
^ with ZZ Ward and Robert Randolph
+ with Larkin Poe, ZZ Ward and Robert Randolph
^^ with Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, ZZ Ward and Robert Randolph

London-based rockers The Karma Effect describe their music as "dirty, sweet, rock'n'roll", and they can now add "prize-winning" to that list of attributes, as news breaks that the recent single Wild Honey has triumphed in our most recent Tracks Of The Week competition. They'll be dancing in the streets of East Finchley, or Hounslow West, or Clapham North, or wherever it is they hail from.  

So congratulations to them, and to The Georgia Thunderbolts, whose Rise Above It All trailed home in second place, and to the combined might of Joe Lynn Turner, Marty Friedman, Jah Wobble & Chester Thompson, whose cover of King Crimson's Moonchild cantered home in third.

This week we've got eight new songs to listen to and love. We hope you enjoy them. But first, here's an encore from last week's winners.  

And now it's on with this week's rumble. 

Blues Pills - Birthday

‘I’m gonna ruin someone’s birthday,’ singer Elin Larsson drawls – sounding deeper and sassier, following the birth of her son last year – striking a powerful opening note for the first new song from the Swedish rockers in almost four years. Sounding brighter and punchier than they ever have, without losing the analogue richness of their roots, Birthday bounces with an urgent rock n’ soul energy that lands somewhere between Fleetwood Mac and The Black Keys with a Stax-y twist. It’s good to have them back. More to come.

Tuk Smith & The Restless Hearts - Glorybound

Glam rock’n’roll’s 21st century renaissance man is on a winning streak, song-wise, of which the Glorybound is the latest evidence. All bittersweet, sepia-tinged nostalgia, the accompanying video finds him revisiting the Biters days, and his father’s old gym in Griffin, Georgia – evocative snapshots of smalltown America and big dreams. “I got into rock 'n roll and punk rock because it felt like a place for outsiders,” Tuk explains. “I've never felt at home and music was a way for me to cope. This song is a reflection of the last decade, trying to stake my claim as an artist… You win some and you lose some, but you just keep going. You don’t really know why… But you just keep going."

Marisa & The Moths - Get It Off My Chest

Slick, heavy minor-key strains of Evanescence and Alter Bridge power through this fired-up new single from Marisa & The Moths. “Get It Off My Chest explores giving in to temptation as a form of escape,” Marisa says, ahead of the song’s parent album, What Doesn’t Kill You, due out in May. “Inspired by a personal experience, I sought refuge from drama and grief, but somehow trouble still found me (maybe even seeking it out subconsciously?)."

Blacktop Mojo - As The Light Fades

Texan hard/southern rockers Blacktop Mojo have moved into bigger, sweeter 80s heartland territory – like Bob Seger sharing beers with Blackberry Smoke – on this new taste of their upcoming album Pollen (out in April). A strutting, barrel-chested song with a heartwarming chorus, full of light that’ll have you daydreaming of high times passed, it’s the sort of thing you can imagine soundtracking hot summer nights with big crowds and good vibes. A reassuring antidote to winter in Blighty, then.

The Native Howl - Mercy ft Lzzy Hale

Unhinged preacher vibes, beefcake distortion and a banjo, in one song? Oh go on then. ‘Thrash grass metal’ might sound like one of those ill-advised novelty mash-ups whose appeal fades after a few seconds, but in the hands of Michigan's The Native Howl – with Halestorm’s excellent mouthpiece-in-chief on guest vocals – it feels kind of ingenious, marrying the respective darknesses of bluegrass and metal in one primal, raw-throated rocker. 

Nate Bergman - Back To Nashville

Since the dissolution of his old band (reggae-rockers Lionize), frontman Nate Bergman has carved his own niche as a purveyor of raw, soulful confessionals. Big songs drawing from the world and from his own life – from pandemic experiences to the break-up of a ten-year relationship – the latest of which is the warm, stirring Back To Nashville. Unlike his former gig, this solo setting allows Bergman's voice to really shine through. And what a voice. Imagine a millennial, heartbroken but hopeful hybrid of Bruce Springsteen and Sam Cooke, and you’re in the right spot.

Pain - Go With The Flow

Peter Tägtgren is a busy boy, whether it's producing or playing or guesting or propping up Till Lindemann on the duo's now-defunct Lindemann project. And now his industrial metal one-band-band Pain are back with their first album since 2016 (I Am is released on May 19), and a new single, Go With The Flow. Excitingly, the video pairs Tägtgren with another Peter, actor Peter Stormare, who also appeared in Lindemann's videos for Steh Auf and Frau & Mann. As for the music, it's a predictably pumping chunk of post-apocalyptic death disco, with a chorus that's bigger than a bulldozer. Yowsa. 

Creeper - Lovers Led Astray

As any fule kno, Creeper's Sanguivore was one of the finest albums of 2023. But for those who haven't yet clambered aboard their epic bandwagon of equally epic bombast, Lovers Led Astray isn't a bad place to start, combining the gothic spookiness of Phantasmagoria-era Damned with a riff that crunches and a soaring chorus, plus a video that is, in the band's words, "an unholy communion of light and dark." And if there are any singalong in 2024 that's as weird yet gleefully catchy as the bit that goes, "For every blood-stain on your clothes, I picked another rose / And damned our souls to hell (hell, hell, hell, hell)" then we'll eat our own teeth.   

Carlos Santana has collaborated with some of music’s biggest names, from Eric Clapton and Aretha Franklin to Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Lauryn Hill. But there’s one intriguing project that got away – the delta blues band he planned to start with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale.

Speaking in the brand new issue of Classic Rock magazine, Rossdale reveals that the legendary guitarist talked about putting together a new band.

“Me and Carlos were meant to do a band together, and he’s let me down!” says Rossdale “His idea was to do a band called Mud, with me, him and his wife, and it was a Delta blues band. I was like: ‘I am up for it!’”

The singer reveals that the idea came up following the pair’s appearance together onstage at the 2010 American Music Awards, where they covered T.Rex’s glam rock classic Get It On.

“He told me I was like a shaman on stage and that I reminded him of Jim Morrison, and he wanted to do a band with me,” says Rossdale. “He’s amazing. He’s super-sixties, he really is the real deal, going: ‘Uhhhh, your aura is beautiful, man.’ He really is that guy.

“We did a show together and me and him did Get It On, and he was like: ‘Hey, man, us cats like to jam.” And I said: “Cool. What do you like your singers to do?’ He said: ‘Just feel it, man.’ I went for it, leaning on him,  falling over him. That’s why he enjoys being on stage with me.”

In the same interview Rossdale details his friendship with Hollywood A-listers Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr, revealing that he’s hung out with the Iron Man star on his private island.

“I did a song for John Wick: Chapter 3, so I was reunited with Keanu [Rossdale appeared with Reeves in the 2005 film Constantine]. They’re doing a new Constantine, so I’m hoping to be in that. He’s lovely.

“Some people you meet and they stay contained within their island, or they invite you in and say let’s hang out.  I’m friends with Robert Downey Jr. – I’ve been on to his island!

“I get on great with Keanu and know him, and I’ve worked with him and sat with him at lunches and in trailers, but never extended the friendship beyond working together and being super-friendly when we see each other. But Keanu is great, I have a lot of respect for him.”

Read the full interview with Gavin Rossdale in the band new issue of Classic Rock, on sale now. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.

It’s curious that Robin Trower is reluctant to reminisce about his time in Procol Harum. His guitar solos and flurries on their second album Shine On Brightly, released in 1968, are frequently the elements that raise these sometimes overly earnest pieces of keyboard-led chamber rock to more exciting levels.

A key track and significant offering in the development of prog was side two’s 18-minute suite In Held ’Twas In I, which was as boldly baroque as anything The Moody Blues or The Nice had at that point constructed.

Despite its presence, however, Shine On Brightly perhaps hasn’t aged as gracefully as, say, Procol’s more varied, vibrant debut or its follow-up, 1969’s A Salty Dog.

It’s fascinating, still, because it documents a band deducing who they are as they wrap their heads around the way their blues core has been usurped by the popular success of monumental, stately yet trippy hits such as A Whiter Shade Of Pale and Homburg.

It feels here as if they’re keen to avoid being typecast as a generation’s alternative balladeers and want to prove they’re a ‘serious’ rock band, but don’t have the tools or physique to be a conventional one.

Which is why Trower’s dazzling licks and tricks seem to burst in from another room, almost bolted on to a sound which – with Gary Brooker and Keith Reid working as a more stoned Elton and Bernie – is at heart meditative and song-based.

Generally, Brooker croons Reid’s poetry-on-acid lyrics convincingly, but now and again he sounds as uncomfortable as any right-thinking person would be with ‘My eunuch friend has been and gone/He said that I must soldier on’ or, ‘At a time like this, which exists maybe only for me, but is nonetheless real...’ 

Soon after that 18-minute suite settles in, the Dalai Lama tells the narrator, ‘“Well, my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn’t it?”’ Such floridness is enough to bring on cravings for the light fandango, or argue that Jon Anderson’s away-with- the-faeries lyrics on Close To The Edge made common sense by comparison.

Bar some ill-advised spurts of fairground music, most of the first side’s songs are solid if unspectacular, so the record’s reputation stands or falls on the courage or madness of its second half’s bold yet elegant curveball, In Held ’Twas I.

The album was officially produced by Denny Cordell, but the band have said it was actually Glyn Johns and young Tony Visconti who helped them assemble this work, chopping and editing as they went along.

For all that Reid’s lyrics are distracting – has anyone ever deployed ‘’twas’ so much? – the musicianship and maverick energy keep it afloat. Shine On Brightly still flickers valiantly.

The new vinyl edition of Shine On Brightly is on sale now via Cherry Red.

In 2022 rock and blues singer Deborah Bonham told Prog how a schooldays encounter with two Genesis albums changed the direction of her life – and her brother, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, couldn’t overcome the impression Peter Gabriel’s band had left on her.

“When I was 15, I was at the convent school in Kidderminster and my friend Neville Farmer was at the boys’ school around the corner. We’d meet up at lunchtime, go for coffee, talk about music and swap albums.

I was listening to a lot of Gong – I thought I was Shakti Yoni for years – and I had Camembert Electrique and Flying Teapot in my bag. Neville gave me Selling England By The Pound and Foxtrot. I went home, put on Selling England, and from the first track I was blown away.

I loved all of Genesis as writers but particularly Peter Gabriel. On albums like The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway he created this fantasy world, but there was always some sort of message or reality about it too, and it could get quite political.

I loved his voice and years later, when a documentary came out about the making of So, he talked about how much he loved Otis Redding. I knew it! I loved Otis too.

As a teenager I’d been thinking about going into performance but John said that rock and blues wasn’t a good place for girls. He wanted me to be a vet or a lawyer! For a while I went down the opera route. I think Genesis influenced that.

It’s not just the lyrics that drew me in – Carpet Crawlers always gets me, following the character as he’s trying to get down this corridor, and what’s behind that door – the music itself was so adventurous.

They had beautiful melodies that they stretched out, and their chord sequences went all over the shop. Sometimes our band, Bonham-Bullick, will go off on a tangent. That’s us channelling Genesis; exploring, going somewhere different.

I never got to see them play, nor Peter solo, yet. But I hoped he’d be at Real World when we mixed our album there. I was like, ‘I might meet him!’ as I’ve been such a fan, right up to now. He wasn’t, but our paths might yet cross.

Selling England By The Pound is one of my desert island discs. It still gets played on a Friday night, with a glass of wine in hand and the band sat around.”

In 1990, during the death throes of hair metal and the birth of grunge, late former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore released an album that took everyone by surprise and took the charts by storm. The album was Still Got The Blues – a glossy set of originals and covers and an unapologetically blues-based piece of work. In 2007 he told Classic Rock its story. 

“I did Still Got The Blues when I was 37-years-old. And I went back to the music that I always loved,” Gary Moore tells Classic Rock. “It wasn’t commercial, it wasn’t cool. Nobody in a million years could have predicted how successful it became.”

Especially when you considered it wasn’t what anyone had expected from Moore. He was the guy from Belfast who had had a couple of stints in Thin Lizzy, but whose blues influences playing underpinned his playing rather than directly informed it. 

Yes, he’d first come to attention in Skid Row, a blues-rock band, but it certainly wasn’t what was expected from him at the turn of the 90s. It may have lost him some fans – there was even booing when he took the record out on the road from those expecting his high-octane rock, but at the same time, it also gained him many new ones.

Growing up in Belfast, it was unsurprising that Gary Moore became fascinated with blues-based music. “There was a great blues scene in Belfast,” Moore says simply. “All these guitar players used to come up from Cork, like Rory Gallagher. And then we heard about British blues.”

Ah, and that’s where it really all began for the young guitar hero. “John Mayall’s ‘Beano’ album [1966’s John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton] was a real turning point for me – that was the stuff I really knew about.”

But it wasn’t the post-war Mississippi Delta musicians who were influencing Moore’s guitar playing. “I mean, I’d heard the name Robert Johnson,” shrugs Gary. “But the acoustic blues didn’t mean anything to me at all. It wasn’t even so much the song and lyrics at first, it was all about the emotion of the electric guitar. 

"My friend had the ‘Beano’ album and I spent all my time round his house. I was very passionate about this new sound. I took the guy’s album and I ruined it by playing it over and over. I came home from school and learned all the sounds, and learned all the songs note for note. I could just relate to it somehow.”

And, of course, the man creating this blistering new sound? None other than Eric Clapton. “The first time I heard Clapton play guitar, it changed my life,” says Moore candidly. “I was already learning to play that guitar, but something very profound happened when I heard that record. Within two seconds of the opening track, I was blown away. 

"The guitar sound itself was so different. You could hear the blues in it, but prior to that all the guitar you heard in rock, well pop, music had been very staid, very polite. Just listen to the early Beatles and The Shadows to see what I mean. They were great, but Eric Clapton transcended it completely.

“He was the first person to plug a Gibson Les Paul into a Marshall amp – so you could say he invented the rock guitar. His sound was distorted, in your face. It was big, fat and passionate. No-one else was doing anything like him at the time.”

After a self-imposed apprenticeship with Clapton (including the fact that Moore adopted a Gibson Les Paul as his weapon of choice – a decision influenced as much my Clapton as his other blues hero, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green), Moore went on discover the old-school blues players for himself.

But by using Clapton and Green as a key influence, Moore took their blues essence and injected it with a high-octane fieriness that would go on to characterise his work with Thin Lizzy – where melody is fused with traditional blues lines. Live, Moore was impressive too – there was just something about the passion he brought to his playing. “That’s the thing with the blues – even if you’re playing the rock stuff – it instills a sense of emotion into you, and into your playing.”

And, then, when time came to work on Still Got The Blues, Gary had the clout to ask some of them to guest with him. Notably BB King, Albert Collins and Albert King all make an appearance. 

“Albert King and Albert Collins taught me so many things,” the guitarist admits. “I was scared to be around them at first. I wasn’t sure I wanted to play with them! We went into the studio though, I picked up the guitar and we started to play Oh, Pretty Woman and he gave me a bollocking. He shouted, ‘stop the tape’ and all this. He was establishing his authority, which I totally respected. But he liked what I was doing, and told me I had great sound. 

"The blues guys are elegant, they’re not like rock people. They have an integrity and they’re very proud. The old guys have dealt with so much crap and come through the other side. Even though Albert King was a little bitter about it.

“Those guys taught me about phrasing and space. Albert King gave me the greatest piece of advice – he told me to play every other lick, and don’t be so fucking loud! He called me and Stevie Ray Vaughan his godsons! I was so cocky and confident and realised that I came from this big rock thing, not a pure blues place.”

The idea of coming from a pure blues place is something Moore has tried to redress in recent years. Part of which is due to the fact that the guitarist has finally come to a realisation that the blues is where it is for him. Throughout his career, Moore has played everything from pop, jazz, rock, heavy metal, blues and even ventured into dance music. He has been accused of chasing trends, but it doesn’t seem to matter. 

“I got accused of that with Still Got The Blues, which was a joke,” Moore told Classic Rock last year. “Nobody was doing that at the time. I was the fucking bandwagon! For Gary Moore to make a blues album in 1990 was not a trendy thing to do.”

It may not have been the trendy thing to do, but it was the album that brought Moore to a wider audience, and one that surely countless guitarists will play along to and be inspired by. It also set the template for Moore’s future career. The guitarist is now comfortable in his blues skin, happy to forsake the rock that made his name.

“I’m a blues musician now,” he says simply. “I consider myself a blues musician. I didn’t have a fear of trying new things, and I really admire Jeff Beck as a guitar player in the way he’s tried so many different styles. But at the end of the day, I’ve realised that I want to do a blues album.”

And that’s exactly what he’s done. Close As You Get [released in May 2007] is another heady mixture of standards and originals. “I’m rediscovering so much music at the moment and I’ve been listening to records and CDs that I haven’t heard in so long. It’s been a real godsend in terms of re-listening to artists I’ve not heard in years – and rediscovering songs that may not have meant so much to me the first time I heard them, but now, have more of a resonance. I don’t know if it’s an age thing, or whether my tastes have changed.”

Gary is also a recent convert to internet phenomenon YouTube. “It’s truly amazing the stuff you can find on there,” he says with the excitement of a child. “If you just spend some time searching about, there’s some wonderful footage. I found some of Jimi Hendrix playing this most powerful, incendiary blues at the Fillmore, and there are just a load of hippies at the side of the stage looking on bemused. They just didn’t get it. At all. I just wish I could figure out a way to download it!”

For the first time, the new album features Gary Moore hanging up his trademark Les Paul for just a moment and taking on the acoustic blues. “I found this amazing Son House song called Sundown on this old vinyl record, Father Of The Delta Blues and it just completely blew me away. You just believe every word of it, and it just demanded that I have a go at it. So I did. I recorded it in my kitchen, and that’s the version that’s on the record.

Moore has often embraced spontaneity in his records – after all, much of his defining Still Got The Blues were single takes on the guitar front; Midnight Blues, Oh, Pretty Woman for example. “I don’t like to rerecord if I don’t have to. Oftentimes, your first take will be the one that captures the essence of what you were trying to say with the song.”

And so, with blues at the heart of everything that Thin Lizzy’s most popular guitarist does now, it’s unlikely we’ll see a new Gary Moore rock album. “I went to see Muse recently, and that’s what rock music is and should be all about today,” he explains. “And I think that unless you can do better than that then you shouldn’t bother. I mean, rock – it’s a young man’s game. When you’re over 35, there’s just something so… well, I look in your magazine and see some of these guys and there’s just no dignity there. And that’s where the blues guys succeed.”

And it’s how Gary Moore will too.

This article originally appeared in Classic Rock Presents Blues Rock, published in 2007.

Jon Davison has been the lead vocalist of Yes since 2012, and has gone on to sing on the band's three most recent releases, 2014's Heaven & Earth, 2021's The Quest, and Mirror To The Sky, which came out in 2023. Below, he give us a glimpse into his prog world. 

Where’s home?

Blighty! I met my now wife, Emily, daughter of John Lodge, on the 2019 Cruise To The Edge, and not long after I moved to England to be with her.

Earliest memory of prog?

One of the counsellors at a church youth weekend retreat had a copy of Rush’s Exit Stage Left, and he invited a few of us to stay up late and listen. There was false talk in these circles of Rush being an acronym for ‘Running Upon Satan’s Hand’!

First prog album you bought?

It was 2112, but my truly classic prog album purchase was a two-on-one Yes cassette, with Fragile on one side and Close To The Edge on the other. Can you think of anything better?

And the last?

I’ve recently gotten into King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard. They really do weave an interesting blend of styles in such a fresh and unexpected way.

Your first prog gig?

Rush on their Power Windows tour at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa [in California, May 25, 1986], near where I grew up.

And the latest?

Father John Misty in Austin. He has a dulcet-toned voice enveloped by a moody melodic sort-of indie sound, and he’s quite the clever wordsmith. He’s not really prog, but his music is quite imaginative and elaborate just the same.

The best prog gig you ever saw?

My first Yes concert, again at the Pacific Amphitheatre, during the Big Generator tour [March 1988]. I have this vivid memory of listening to And You And I from the grassy hilltop on a perfectly warm, breezy evening. I was absolutely transfixed.

Your latest prog discovery?

I was never really exposed to Moody Blues’ music until I met Emily and John. I’ve since dived deep into their extensive catalogue and have genuinely fallen deeply in love with their dreamy, romantic music. Isn’t it the best when you get into a band and they happen to have so much material to discover?

Your guilty musical pleasure?

I have a definite soft spot for Tom Waits ballads, particularly those from his first album, Closing Time. My melancholy side just loves that album.

Your favourite venue?

The Royal Albert Hall. I’ve performed there with Yes four or five times now and it’s always as surreal as it was the very first time. What an atmosphere!

Your prog hero?

Steve Howe. I’m so blessed to be in his close company quite often and I therefore absorb so much of his musical insight and inspiration. He truly is a master: one who has an innate musical gift and who’s achieved so much.

Outside of music, what do you enjoy doing?

Exercising in nature, and wild swimming whenever I get the chance. I’m a tree hugger at heart. I try and make more effort to meditate, which definitely puts things in proper focus for me. I also thrive on attempting to satisfy Emily’s almost insatiable thirst for travel. Living so close to Europe means we have quite an interesting playground within convenient reach.

Ever had a prog-related date?

No. Where I grew up – Laguna Beach, CA – you had a fighting chance at getting a girl if you most definitely did not mention prog in any way, shape or form! Emily just patiently smiles in remote appreciation whenever prog music comes up...

What’s the most important piece of prog music?

Either Close To The Edge or Firth Of Fifth.

Recommend a good book to us.

Autobiography Of A Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda offers deep insight into a whole new world of being. George Harrison once said he had a stack of copies and would pass them out to friends whenever one of them felt they needed ‘regrooving’. Its footnotes also inspired much of the Tales From Topographic Oceans’ lyrical outline, and it was apparently the only book Steve Jobs had on his iPad.

The prog musician you would most like to work with?

Steve Hackett. Although I’ve spent a little time with him and his lovely wife, Jo, I’ve never had the proper chance to fully express to him my immense appreciation of his guitar playing, and for his monumental contribution toward what is best in Genesis music.

Which proggy album gets you in a good mood?

Jethro Tull’s Songs From The Wood. Great album.

Your favourite prog album cover?

Most likely the one Roger Dean will design for Yes’ next new studio album! But I’ve always thought Rush’s cover for Permanent Waves was quite clever. There are too many to list.

What are you up to at the moment?

Yes are on the verge of heading out across the US on our Classic Tales Of Yes Tour, which will promote our enthusiastically received new album, Mirror To The Sky, plus highlight much of the diverse canon of Yes music. We will definitely be bringing this show to the UK in 2024, which I can now proudly say is in my own back yard!

Almost by the time the flames had gone out on his mangled Stratocaster and the wreckage had stopped smouldering, Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Monterey festival in California in June 1967 had transformed his profile in the US from little more than an underground figure with a still-to-be proved reputation filtering over from Britain, into a full-blown supernova superstar. 

With that one ‘homecoming’ performance in which he pulled out all the stops (and a can of lighter fuel with which he anointed his sacrificial Strat), Hendrix had arrived. So too had the popular music festival – and its ability to give artists unprecedented exposure for one show, and in some cases, give them their big break.

In the late 60s, music had not yet become the all-pervasive global entertainment that it is today, and had yet to be swallowed up by the dollar-driven industry behemoth. Apart from the music in the charts, the way music fans heard about bands/artists (and listened to music) was very different. Even Radio One was still in the flush of youth. Only John Peel’s show, Mike Raven’s Saturday evening R&B show and a handful of other radio shows provided an outlet for anything that wasn’t strictly mass appeal. 

There were three or four weekly music papers; monthly music-dedicated magazines were still years away, other magazines’ coverage of even mainstream music was perfunctory, and daily papers’ coverage would be either high-brow (the broadsheets) or hung on a scandal or a genuine hard-news angle. Unless you lived in London (and often even if you did), it wasn’t unusual to have to order an album from your local record shop (usually the only one in town) and then wait weeks for it to arrive. Compared to today, non-commercial rock was an underground phenomenon.

The majority of these relatively unknown, ‘underground’ bands in the UK who spent most of their lives on the road were blues/blues rock/R&B bands. Many of them routinely gigged for years before they even got a sniff of a record deal or saw inside a studio, traversing the country in van and regularly playing 200, 300 or more gigs a year, often to audiences of a few dozen.

No wonder, then, that the music festivals that sprang up in the 60s played such an important role in giving up-and-coming – or even completely new – bands the kind of exposure and resulting word-of-mouth seal of approval from playing one short set that they would otherwise have to gig around the country for months to get. To the extent that a single festival appearance could tip the balance and lift a band out of cult following half-light into the glare of commercial and critical success. Of course, it helped that back then virtual unknowns were regularly invited on to festival bills (and without the big-bucks buy-on).

In Britain, the National Jazz & Blues Festival – which ran throughout the 60s at a number of sites, then from 1970 became better known as the Reading festival when it took up residence in the town – was particularly important to British blues rock bands. 

Over the years it hosted names artists like The Yardbirds, The Who, Cream, Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Small Faces, Jethro Tull, The Nice, Family, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall, Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Arthur Brown, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Joe Cocker, along with a whole host of smaller bands, many of which got their big breaks at these festivals. Audience acclaim often lead to a hugely important residency at the prestigious Marquee club in London; some even got a record deal as a direct result of their appearance.

One band that certainly felt the ‘festival effect’ was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac (as they were originally called). Having got a full line-up together only a month before, the band’s first ever gig was in front of 30,000 people at the National Jazz & Blues Festival in 1967, held in Windsor. From that brief, 20-minute set, word of mouth would certainly have boosted sales of their debut album, released less than six months later. It reached No.4 in the UK – a remarkable achievement for a blues album, and a debut at that. Fleetwood Mac quickly established themselves as arguably the best British blues band of the era.

Also playing at the 1967 Windsor Festival (the final day headlined by Cream) – and making their debut with a new line-up were Chicken Shack led by guitarist Stan Webb. From an acclaimed and profile-raising set, they were able to gig intensively and extensively for months afterwards, and became one of the bigger names on the UK blues circuit. They were soon signed to pioneering and hugely important British blues label Blue Horizon (also the home of Fleetwood Mac), and the following July released their first album (it reached No.12).

Ten Years After, already in the ascendancy due mainly to guitarist Alvin Lee’s lightning-fast licks, perhaps didn’t establish themselves at that landmark festival in Windsor in 1967, but it was there that they consolidated their reputation as one of Britain’s premier blues rock bands. Cocked and loaded following a residency at the Marquee, they “fairly stole the show”, according to music weekly Record Mirror. Which would have been no mean feat for a band still without a record deal, and on a day that also had Pink Floyd on the bill. 

Within months Ten Years After released their debut album. Two years later, following a string of US festival shows, the band floored half a million people with an incendiary display, crowned by a spun-out Goin’ Home, that was one of the highlights of the legendary Woodstock festival in 1969. With their Woodstock performance, Ten Years After effectively cracked America.

Woodstock was also the launch pad for the then virtually unknown Santana, whose intoxicating show-stopping performance went into orbit and certainly helped propel their Latin-rock fusion debut album to the dizzy heights of No.4 in the US five months later.

By the end of the 60s, in just three or four years – and, poignantly, post- Woodstock – the nature of festivals had changed dramatically. The 1969 Bath festival, with Led Zeppelin on the bill along with the likes of Deep Blues Band, Roy Harper, Chicken Shack, John Mayall and Fleetwood Mac (a very bluesy, very British affair), drew 12,000 people. The 1970 Bath festival’s big-name, American-loaded bill included The Byrds, Johnny Winter, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa, Country Joe, Santana, Canned Heat, Pink Floyd and The Moody Blues. As the sun set behind the stage on the Sunday, show-stealers Led Zeppelin played to a crowd of 150,000. No one on this bill was looking for a big break – or even a record deal.

Similarly, where the 1969 Isle Of Wight festival bill was still packed with British blues-based bands for whom it could be their springboard to greater heights (Edgar Broughton Band, Free, Aynsley Dunbar, Blodwyn Pig, Mighty Baby) alongside stars The Who and Bob Dylan, the following year’s huge blockbuster (with Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian) was a very different beast both musically and in terms of scale.

On the Monday morning of September 1, 1970, Ron Foulk, promoter of the Isle Of Wight festival, announced: “This is the last festival. Enough is enough. It began as a beautiful dream but it has got out of control and become a monster.” He was actually talking about the serious crowd trouble that plagued the island that year. But he could just as easily have been talking about the dreams of so many small- time, unknown bands who were once able to look to the summer and think: “This year maybe it will be our turn...”

This feature was originally published in Classic Rock Presents Blues Rock, in 2007. 

It’s March 9, 1978. The ritzy stage of the Scarborough Penthouse lookslike something out of The Price Is Right: curtains made out of multi-coloured strips of aluminium foil drape over a modest backline of amplifiers, there’s a mirrorball hanging from the ceiling, there’s glitter on the walls. But there’s no sense of pomp and ceremony, just a taste of stale beer and a whiff of pie and chips. There are maybe 100 people here for only the fourth ever gig by Whitesnake, fronted by the dynamic and thrusting David Coverdale. Cum on down…

To those more familiar with the modern-day, turbo-charged Whitesnake, this band from the late 70s would be unrecognisable. Coverdale takes to the boards wearing cheap T-shirt and jeans, more Millets than Moschino. He’s pale-faced and chubby-cheeked; his mane of dark brown hair is untamed, unteased, unbleached.

Micky Moody sports a Zapata moustache and his trademark trilby; he’s an old-school guitarist from Middlesbrough, Coverdale’s neck of the woods, who’s earned his chops in Juicy Lucy and Snafu. Moody went to school with Free’s Paul Rodgers – and formed a band with him, before Rodgers’s voice had even broken.

Then there’s fellow guitarist Bernie Marsden, small, smiling and stocky, ex- of UFO, Wild Turkey, Cozy Powell’s Hammer and Paice Ashton Lord. (Or ‘Plaice Haddock Cod’ as Coverdale calls them; this being a good-natured jibe at the singer’s former band-mates in Deep Purple, drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Jon Lord, who created PAL with Tony Ashton.) And who’s this on bass? Neil Murray, who this writer last saw playing complicated jazz-rock-fusion in Colosseum II with Gary Moore and Jon Hiseman. On keyboards there’s Brian Johnston, and on drums there’s David ‘Duck’ Dowle, both ex-Roger Chapman’s Streetwalkers.

A stellar cast? Perhaps not. But boy, can they play – and sing, especially sing – the blues.

The highlight of Whitesnake’s set is Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City, a song made famous by Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland. Played at a restrained pace, it’s moving, deliberate, pure, intense. As Coverdale’s deep, sonorous voice echoes around the room, it raises the hackles on your neck. And then caresses them. Welcome to pre-1987 Whitesnake. One of the best blues-rock bands you’re ever likely to hear.

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t really my intention for the early Whitesnake to follow that kind of musical direction,” Coverdale says, speaking to Classic Rock in 2005. “The guys in the band, other than Micky, had no time to put any musical stamp on what was taking shape initially. It just began to develop as we played more and more together. Remember also at the beginning we had to do some Purple tunes to fill out the set.

“Micky and I enjoyed working together and got on well enough as friends at that time. He was a local musical hero of mine. I thought he had great potential. He was aware and supportive of my desire for a hard rock, blues-based, melodic rock band… with soul! He was also the antithesis of Ritchie Blackmore.”

Five years earlier, in 1973, Coverdale had quit his job as a salesman in a menswear boutique in Redcar to become the singer in Deep Purple, replacing Ian Gillan. It was a baptism of fire for this untried talent from Saltburn-by-the-sea, so it was appropriate that his first album with the band would be titled Burn.

Coverdale made one more record with the Purps – 1974’s Stormbringer – before guitarist Blackmore quit, to be replaced by American Tommy Bolin. Despite Bolin’s undoubted talent it was an ill-fated move. Come Taste The Band, released in 1975, turned out to be Coverdale’s final DP LP offering, notwithstanding the live album (Made In Europe) that followed. The singer resigned his position after a disastrous Purple gig at Liverpool Empire in March 1976, where a spaced-out Bolin froze in mid-solo and the Mk IV line-up of the group imploded.

Coverdale retreated to pick up the pieces of his career. Bolin tried to do likewise but in December 1976 died from a heroin overdose in a Miami hotel room. That’s a whole other story.

Coverdale recorded some great, gritty stuff with Purple – the highlight being probably the super-sized Mistreated, with its heart-flailing opening line of: ‘I bin mis-treeeaaated!’ But with Blackmore tweaking the strings of the band as well as his Strat, Coverdale was directed to write lyrics with a more mystical bent. The type of style that would truly manifest itself in Blackmore’s Rainbow.

When this writer first met Coverdale in February 1976, on tour with the Mk IV band in Texas, the frustration was beginning to show. Blackmore was no longer in the Purple picture, but Coverdale still found cause for complaint: “I’m very keen to find out what I’m able to do in the studio, on my own. I want to sing rather than scream my balls off. I’ve been fucking screaming for years now, you know…”

He got the chance to prove himself sooner than he might’ve anticipated. “I’ve always had a decent enough scream,” Coverdale reflects, “but, believe it or not, I tried to avoid screaming so much at the beginning of Purple. After Ian Gillan’s trademark style, I thought it inappropriate. But so many of Purple’s songs contained that element, there was no choice, to be honest. Also, having to compete with their insane, but perfect, hard rock volume on stage… I had no choice, I tell you!”

After a pair of low-key Coverdale solo albums – Whitesnake (1977) and Northwinds (1978), both of which featured Micky Moody on guitar – a fully fledged band emerged, and a modest EP called Snakebite was recorded and released in summer 1978. But David Coverdale’s Whitesnake, as they were then billed, looked like a band out of time. Gob-spattered Great Britain was still in the grip of punk rock frenzy. The grizzled, denim-clad dudes in Whitesnake looked passé. And then some.

“Whitesnake were actually formed to promote Northwinds on a one-off promotional tour,” Coverdale clarifies. “I didn’t know whether it would survive. There weren’t many people backing this unfashionable horse.”

“We were the original bearded pirates,” says Bernie Marsden. “Nobody gave us a chance. We were so ignorant of what was going on – well, I certainly was. I remember being in Munich with Paice Ashton Lord, and people were talking about punks. But punks to me were the guys in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies.”

“Whitesnake’s music had such a great feeling to it,” says Micky Moody. “The band were all highly rated musicians and it showed in the performances. Of course, we were into the blues – people like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band of the 60s; we listened to that kind of stuff. We were all heavily influenced by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and their ‘Beano’ album [so called because it featured Eric Clapton reading a copy of The Beano on the cover]. I did like The Yardbirds with Jimmy Page; that almost psychedelic tinge they had. It was exciting.”

“What people don’t necessarily realise,” says Neil Murray, “is that myself, David, Micky and Bernie all came out the formative period of 1966 to 1967, when the blues was really the booming thing in Britain. When I started playing professionally in 1974 I took it more into the jazz-fusion area. But when the opportunity came to join Whitesnake, it just brought out what was latent in my past.”

“As much as I love the blues,” says Coverdale, “it was never a driving ambition for me to start a pure blues band. I’m a big fan of progressive blues by bands like The Allman Brothers. They were quite an influence on how I wanted to structure a group, given the opportunity. Cream, Mountain and, of course, Hendrix were immense in my sphere of influence. The original Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac were huge to me. And then, of course, there are my touchstone inspirational albums, Jeff Beck’s Truth and Beck-Ola. My God, did they connect with me.”

Back to Whitesnake’s Snakebite EP of mid-’78. It contained four perfectly formed songs, kicking off with the straightforward strut of Come On.

“Micky and I were both avid Allman Brothers fans. Still are,” says Marsden, echoing Coverdale’s sentiments. “Lynyrd Skynyrd as well. Anything with that kind of bluesy guitar. There weren’t many people in Britain doing it. But David loved that kind of feeling. I’d throw in some Albert King and Micky would do his bit, and suddenly it all started coming together. We went up to David’s house in Archway [north London] and wrote Come On more or less straight away. I thought how great it was to be writing for a guy with such a great blues voice.”

The Snakebite EP was completed by the honky-tonk barroom boogie of Bloody Mary; Steal Away, with Moody outstanding on slide guitar and Coverdale growling like a hot-blooded houndog; and the aforementioned Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City, which quickly established itself as the highlight of Whitesnake’s live set.

“I had no idea that Ain’t No Love… would be such a popular song. It was a total shocker,” Coverdale reveals. “I had been enjoying Bobby Bland’s work for years. While I was with Purple he released two very contemporary albums in the early 70s, His California Album and Dreamer, which is where the song comes from. Bobby actually does it in a more uptempo, rather dancy fashion. With beautiful singing, of course. Micky and I slowed it down and put a loping riff on it to audition bass players, to be honest. There was never a plan to record it. We just didn’t have enough material to fill the EP.”

But soon enough the famous Whitesnake choir adopted Ain’t No Love… as their own, singing along to the song at every show and rendering Coverdale’s role practically redundant in the process. When Whitesnake headlined the Castle Donington Monsters Of Rock in 1983, the festival’s chorus line was in particularly fine voice.

Mel Galley, who was playing guitar in Whitesnake at the time, recalls: “I’m as blind as a bat, only David would never let me wear glasses on stage. But even I could see how everyone in the crowd was singing when they switched on the floodlights and shone them out front. David and me, we were actually sobbing on stage. It was that emotional. It’s a classic song. David can do such beautiful, bluesy things if he wants to. I’d have given anything to have done a lovely bluesy album with him. But then he made his mark in America with all that glam rock.”

We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. The classic – some might say definitive – Whitesnake line-up began to take shape around the Trouble album, which was released in autumn 1978. Jon Lord was a late arrival during the recording sessions, replacing Pete Solley (who had briefly succeeded Brian Johnston). Upon the release of second album Lovehunter (1979) Ian Paice came on board instead of drummer David Dowle. But was Coverdale actually trying to reassemble Deep Purple? It seemed that way to many observers, who accused him of having a secret gameplan.

“I thought it most amusing that anybody would think me so Machiavellian,” laughs Coverdale. “As if I had such a masterplan to re-form Deep Purple under my own flag. No, that’s just how it happened. There was no big plan at all, and they [Lord and Paice] were most welcome. Only I would have loved for us to have been more commercially successful at that time, as I’m sure they would too.”

Speaking to Modern Keyboard magazine in 1989, Jon Lord reflected: “David talked me into joining. He was calling me for six months and then, in August of ’78, I finally said yes. One reason I agreed was that, by joining Whitesnake, it gave me something to do. I went from playing huge auditoriums with Purple to small clubs with Whitesnake. It was a real shock to the rock’n’roll system, but a very salutary thing for the ego.”

“Paicey and Lordy coming in was the icing on the cake,” adds Coverdale. “They nailed the foundations and we took it from there. But the pressure of coming up with two albums’ worth of original material every year proved too much for me as a singer and as a writer. For all of us, it just got too much. But we certainly jammed a lot of good stuff in those initial three or four years.”

Reminiscing about Whitesnake’s early days, Bernie Marsden says: “It was great. We went on the road with a Mercedes van, with the gear in the back and seats for all of us, in the front and in the middle. Me, David and Micky would usually sit together in the middle row. It was a little family on the road with this huge star of Deep Purple. But David was just an ordinary bloke to me.”

Micky Moody agrees: “Yes, we were just blokes. David wanted to be back with the lads and he was very happy about it.”

Once Lord and Paice had established themselves in Whitesnake, Marsden decided to start wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend: ‘No, I wasn’t in Deep fucking Purple.’ Were the cracks beginning to show already?

“No, not at all,” Marsden says. “It was just that when we used to do interviews together, all the journalists wanted to talk about was Purple. So when they asked a question I’d just point to my T-shirt and say: ‘Look a little closer.’ Because Deep Purple was in big letters and the remaining words were in small letters that you could hardly see.”

They might’ve been swimming against the punk rock tide – with Coverdale inevitably doing the breast stroke – but Whitesnake grew in stature steadily. Trouble reached No.50 in the chart and Lovehunter cracked the Top 30. One of the outstanding tracks on the latter is the dramatic and progressive Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues, one of Coverdale and Marsden’s greatest compositions.

“That song really summed up my musical approach of the time,” Coverdale says. “It was very much my feeling, my perspective and probably my life’s philosophy back then. The lyric more or less wrote itself. It was very free-flowing, very autobiographical. It was just waiting to be written. Bernie and I put the music together very quickly. It was obviously meant to be as a song. I’m very proud of that one.”

“Those were fun times,” says Marsden. “Ask Jon Lord about it – he never stopped laughing for two years. The best and funniest time he ever had in his career was in Whitesnake. We did have a laugh, but one of the main instigators of these laughs was David Coverdale. He was a clever wind-up merchant. I’ve got pictures of us playing football in Spain, and they’re not pretty. David’s playing centre forward with his hair all greasy and his shirt off. Micky Moody is in goal wearing a pair of big boots. I have the photos. And this is from a guy [Coverdale] who later said me and Micky didn’t take our careers in Whitesnake seriously enough.”

Ian Paice also had the time of his life in Whitesnake, although he’s not so convinced about Coverdale’s sense of humour: “The funniest band I’ve ever been a member of was Whitesnake. David’s not a funny guy but Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden were a constant source of laughter. Touring was so much fun, I can’t remember the bad times even though I know there were some. Neil Murray is a straight guy and these two used to take him to bits all the time. They used to do it to Coverdale as well, take the piss out of him.”

The ’Snake albums kept on uncoiling at a remarkable rate. Ready An’ Willing (1980) reached No.6 in the chart and Live… In The Heart Of The City (also 1980) climbed to a position higher. These were heady, boozy, bluesy times, and they reached their climax when 1981’s Come An’ Get It got to No.2. It was only kept off the top spot by Phil Collins’s mawkish Face Value.

“Come An’ Get It is my favourite of the early Whitesnake albums,” says Coverdale. “It’s down to the band’s performance and the consistency of the songs. Production’s good from Birchy [Martin Birch] too.”

Neil Murray concurs: “Come An’ Get It is a great album. It’s the zenith of the ‘classic’ line-up. Ready An’ Willing is very good, the live album is pretty good, but overall Come An’ Get It takes the biscuit. Who knows? Ask the fans, really. Don’t ask me. I was perfectly happy with the way things changed later on as well. The 1987 album [which Murray played on, although he wasn’t part of the touring band] was great too. I’m very much on the fence when people say Whitesnake were crap after Saints An’ Sinners [the 1982 follow-up to Come An’ Get It], or when they say they hate all the old blues stuff. I can enjoy a lot of it, right across the board.”

Sadly, the demise of the Coverdale-Moody- Marsden-Lord-Murray-Paice line-up was approaching. 

Coverdale: “The vibe in the band had noticeably changed. The energy was low at rehearsals and it was evident that enthusiasm was on the wane. The suggestion of adjourning to the pub was greeted with more eagerness than working on the new tunes. It seemed to me that some of us were content just to cruise on our ‘gold’ status… and I was hungry to go further.”

Moody: “More interested in going to the pub than the studio? Well, yeah. Personally I think I was at the time. That was my way of saying: ‘I’m bored now. I’ve had enough of this.’”

“Everything was fine up to Saints An’ Sinners,” Marsden remembers. “But at some point or other David decided he would be king of Whitesnake.”

Management shenanigans with John Coletta, an old nemesis from Deep Purple days, plus the distraction of solo albums from the likes of Lord and Marsden, played their part. Coverdale’s marriage to his then-wife Julia was in trouble, and their daughter, Jessica, suddenly contracted bacterial meningitis. All of which contributed to the singer’s decision to place Whitesnake, as he put it, “on a holding pattern over Heathrow”.

By contrast, Marsden claims that he, Ian Paice and Neil Murray walked out on Whitesnake after a make-or-break meeting with management that Coverdale failed to attend.

“David is very good at remembering only the bits he wants to in interviews,” claims Marsden.

“Coverdale had become a bit detached from everybody,” confirms Moody.

Murray: “It may well have been that David wanted a complete change. At the end of the Saints An’ Sinners recordings, there came a time when he [Coverdale] was splitting from not only the management, but also from the publishing and record companies. It was quite a major thing to do. He had to buy himself out. So he may well have said: ‘Okay, I’m going to start completely afresh with a new band, we’ll see what happens after that.’ Who knows? The difficulty is that David will say something to the press and, even though it’s not quite what actually happened, he’ll say it so many times that he comes to believe it himself – and therefore everyone else does, too.”

The blues-rock era of the band was coming to an end, but the ’Snake slithered on. In October 1982 a brand new line-up emerged to promote Saints An’ Sinners, which had had a long and painful gestation. Lord and Moody were still there alongside Coverdale, and the band was completed by guitarist Mel Galley (ex-Trapeze), bass player Colin Hodgkinson (ex-Backdoor) and drummer Cozy Powell (ex- just about everyone). It was this version of Whitesnake that headlined the 1983 Monsters Of Rock, complete with swooping helicopters and blazing searchlights during Powell’s drum solo.

But all the showmanship was becoming too much for Micky Moody: “David had become the star. He wanted to put together more of a spectacle than a show. You had to have an appointment to go and see him. I resented that. This guy used to help carry my gear a few years ago.” Eventually ex- Tygers Of Pan Tang guitarist John Sykes replaced Moody. A little later, Neil Murray was welcomed back into the fold.

Moody: “What David didn’t – and still doesn’t – realise is that I never wanted to be a great big star. I was always a muso. I found it difficult to be a rock star, I really did.”

Explaining his intentions at the time, Coverdale says: “I wanted the blues element in the band’s identity to ‘rock’ more. John and Cozy put a welcome firecracker up my arse after all the jolliness, merry-making and the safe approach. And that’s why they were there. To electrify Whitesnake and help me take it to the next level. And that’s what happened.”

But Whitesnake’s next album, Slide It In, emerged in February 1984, certain sections of the music press were baying for Coverdale’s blood. Most of the tracks had been co-written by Coverdale and Galley at the former’s house in Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. But in-between still-brilliant songs such as Love Ain’t No Stranger Coverdale’s boisterous machismo had reached fever pitch. Spit It Out, for example, contained the chorus: ‘Spit it out, spit it out, spit it out/If you don’t like it/Spit it out, spit it out, spit it out/If you don’t like it.’ About as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Sounds journalist Garry Bushell gave a hammering. The headline to his review was ‘Chop It Off’. “The Coverdale I recall was a vain, preposterous oaf,”

Coverdale remembers Bushell’s review vividly. “It was most unfortunate and unnecessary. But who cares? It [Slide It In] sold over four million in the States alone. Probably more, by now. It’s his [Bushell’s] karma. In any case, the blues has always had a strong macho streak. Listen to Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters… I have some very early recordings that make my stuff sound like nursery rhymes.”

Whitesnake had never managed to crack the American market. But since Saints An’ Sinners they had acquired a powerful new label over there, Geffen. They also had a fierce supporter of their cause in John Kalodner, Geffen’s legendary A&R man. Kalodner was determined for Whitesnake to succeed in the States and his ruthless approach rubbed off on Coverdale.

Moody: “Kalodner turned up at some German dates. I looked around mid-performance and there he was – this rather sinister character – making notes by the side of the stage. That didn’t make me feel too secure. I thought: ‘Sod this, I’m off.’ I was being treated as a session player.”

When Mel Galley injured his arm in Ludwigshafen, Germany, he soon found himself out of Whitesnake. “We’d been to a funfair and we’d played some 10-pin bowling,” says Galley. “Me and John [Sykes] came out and did the old prank of running over cars. There were two Mercs and I fell off the boot of the second one, and then John landed on my arm.”

Galley contracted a virus while in hospital that ate away the nerves from his hand right up to the base of his skull. To enable him to play guitar, his hand was encased in a metal contraption that resembled a toast rack.

“I’ve still got it. I call it The Claw. I still have to wear it. The nerves that control the muscles don’t work so it acts like a mechanical muscle.”

“[Coverdale] said, ‘I don’t want to see you in the band with that on your hand’,” Galley says diplomatically. “But I have no regrets. You have to be philosophical. The Kalodner period was taking over and Whitesnake were turning into an MTV band. Obviously I smashed my arm but I’m not going to say anything bad about him, because it’s David and it’s something we went through.”

With Jon Lord leaving to join the re-formed Deep Purple Mk II, the stage was set for Whitesnake’s transformation into the multi-platinum, tight-trousered, Tawny Kitaen’d combo that most people remember today. But ironically, the glossy new Whitesnake relied heavily on two songs recycled from the old days to launch their career: Here I Go Again (originally on Saints An’ Sinners, written by Coverdale/Marsden) and Fool For Your Loving (on Ready An’ Willing, by Coverdale/ Marsden/Moody).

Marsden: “John Kalodner had heard Here I Go Again and he said to David: ‘It’s a No.1 record.’ He was right. Even now, Here I Go Again grows another arm every year. It’s a massive, massive song. The royalty cheques are very welcome. David said I should thank him for that.”

Moody: “There’s no emotion on the new version of Fool For Your Loving. The original with Bernie’s great guitar solo is far superior.”

These days Marsden, Moody and Murray are intent on keeping the spirit of early Whitesnake alive in M3, their band that specialises in playing classic ’Snake songs. “There’s legions of people in America who don’t know me and Micky Moody were ever in Whitesnake,” Marsden says. “But they certainly know our tunes. Equally, there’s legions of people in Europe who wish they could see Coverdale-Marsden-Moody on stage again.”

“It’s funny,” muses Murray, “because me and Bernie would quite often enjoy listening to soft American rock on the road, and David would pooh-pooh it and say: ‘What’s this rubbish?’ But then three or four years later he’s deeply into that style. I’m not saying that when he did it, it wasn’t genuine. We all change. But to me, the modern Whitesnake play the old stuff in a very heavy-handed, rather bludgeoning way.”

Coverdale reflects: “The early days were without question totally necessary. Everything needs a beginning, a foundation in order to grow. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start the ball rolling, or better players and people to be involved with. I’ve recently seen some of the things I’ve said [about the old band] over the years and I regret most of them. It wasn’t necessary.”

However, he offers the proviso: “On the other hand, it doesn’t disturb me that some people are unaware of how long Whitesnake has been kicking around. I have never had a problem slipping from one bed to another. Besides, it’s still me singing and writing what I feel, what I want to share. Sometimes I just felt it necessary to redecorate the House Of ’Snake. No disrespect to my former colleagues. Just my need for change.”

Moody responds: “That sounds like a cop-out to me. Whitesnake is an an old band. C’mon – it was formed in 1978. That’s getting on for 30 years ago. Knowing David, I would think he’s not particularly happy about being a grandad in his mid-50s. He doesn’t like people to know that Whitesnake have been going for so long. Mick Jagger would never make a comment like that about The Rolling Stones, that’s for sure.”

Indeed. Whatever David Coverdale might say, the blues still casts a tall shadow over the history of Whitesnake.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 95. Note: since this first appeared, Bernie Marsden, Mel Galley and Jon Lord have sadly passed away.

Electro-pop pioneers OMD – Orchestral Maneouvres In The Dark to their mothers – influenced a new wave of artists doing poppy things with synthesizers in the late 70s and early 80s but there is one band that sticks out like a sore thumb when OMD co-founder Andy McCluskey looks back over the list: ZZ Top.

In an interview with Substack music letter The New Cue a few months ago, McCluskey said that a friend pointed him in the direction of a book by the bearded Texan rockers because his band had been mentioned.

“Somebody said, ‘Have you read ZZ Top’s autobiography?’,” McCluskey explained. “I went, ‘No, why would I read that?’. They said, ‘Well, you know, you did [British music show] Old Grey Whistle Test with them back in 1980?’. I said, ‘Yeah yeah, it’s not my cup of tea. They said, ‘You should read it, look at this page.’ We had treated them like a bunch of hairy blues wankers, didn’t say anything nasty to them, just ignored them, like ‘This is the old shit, we’re the new shit’.”

But despite McCluskey and his bandmates dismissing Billy Gibbons & co., it appears their performance had quite the impact on ZZ Top.

“It turns out that they credit us for two things,” McCluskey continued. “One, they said, ‘The lead singer out of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, the way he swung his bass, we rip that off - all the Eliminator videos where we’re swinging our guitars, we’re copying that guy from Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’, and they said, ‘And that’s when we went to electric drums and an electric sequencers and basses on Eliminator, because of OMD’. I wish we’d had the bloody sales that Eliminator had!”

OMD didn’t do quite so badly themselves: the Liverpool duo, who released their 14th studio album Bauhaus Staircase last year, have sold north of 25 million singles and 15 million albums over the course of their career. But ZZ Top’s OMD-nicking Eliminator managed a whopping 11 million all by itself.

Now that you know where they got their moves from, you can watch the video to Gimme All Your Lovin’ below, cast in a whole new light:

Long John Baldry’s influence extends far beyond his pivotal role in founding the British blues scene in the early 1960s. Seeing Long John perform in the early 1960s sealed Eric Clapton’s intention to become a professional musician. Then it was Baldry who discovered Rod ‘The Mod’ Stewart and gave him his first gig in 1964. And a few years later, Elton John chose his stage surname in Long John’s honour; and when Elton topped the single charts in 1975 with Someone Saved My Life Tonight the ‘someone’ that the song was written about was none other than Long John. Stewart and John remained good friends of Long John’s until his untimely passing in July 2005, aged 64. 

He had a middle-class upbringing in 1950s north London and he first heard American blues, aged 12, on a neighbour’s gramophone. “A couple of doors down,” he told this writer in 2003, “was a painter called Oliver Graham Bradbury. Later Oliver’s fame made him enough money to buy a string of racehorses… it’s not often you hear of painters buying racehorses! Anyway, he turned me on to Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy around about 1953.” 

American blues records were very hard to get hold of in post war Britain so it was mostly down to luck and networking that Baldry’s generation began to get access to this faraway music. Young John soon became deeply fascinated by the voice and 12-string guitar sound of Huddie Leadbetter – Leadbelly. Aged 14, he got his first guitar – a 12- string made by a furniture builder and future guitar-making legend, Tony Zemaitis. 

Like other blues-obsessed teenagers at that time, Baldry then gravitated towards the Soho skiffle and folk scene where in the mid 50s he played in the Thameside Four and then met and formed a duo with the renowned acoustic guitar visionary, Davy Graham. 

By then he known as Long John Baldry, he tried to be a musician by night whilst holding down a day-job as a commercial artist. But then he turned professional in 1960 as blues slowly was gaining a foothold as part of the British trad jazz scene. His first pro gig was touring Denmark with the Bob Cort Skiffle group, then in July 1961 he joined the Ken Sim’s Jazz Band, and after that guested with Acker Bilk and Chris Barber.

Increasingly during the 1950s, band leader Chris Barber had invited over American bluesmen like Big Bill Broonzy and Lonnie Johnson. (Brit skiffle star, Tony Donegan, adopted the name ‘Lonnie’ after appearing on the same bill as Johnson.) Broonzy died in 1958, the year when British blues rock first saw the light coming from a visiting torchbearer of Chicago blues. As Long John explained: “That was the year that Muddy Waters and Otis Spann came over and then, of course, everyone castigated them and said ‘Oh my God… we can’t bear all this rock’n’roll!’” 

Today it beggars belief that the reason why Muddy Waters back then was the unacceptable face of rock’n’roll was simply because he played electric guitar through an amplifier. Similarly, trad jazzers in the years after 1958 would sometimes try to stunt the growth of Britain’s homegrown rhythm and blues movement, because, as they saw things, this music was an aberration – it was amplified sound! 

Similarly, in early 1962 two future Baldry collaborators and founders of British blues – Alexis Korner and harmonica player and guitarist, Cyril Davies – were kicked out of a regular gig at London’s Roundhouse for no better reason than the pub’s landlord also objected to amplifiers. 

The evicted pair then moved to the Ealing Club in March 1962 which was a damp basement jazz venue below an ABC tea shop. Here they were allowed to make noise in peace. It was also at Ealing that Korner and Davies consolidated and established Blues Incorporated – the first ever white-boy blues band in the world, who had earlier debuted at the Marquee club, then also a jazz venue. At the Ealing club, Long John Baldry was Blues Incorporated’s first vocalist, along with Art Wood. The rest of the band comprised Dick Heckstall-Smith on sax, drummer Charlie Watts, bassist Andy Hoogenboom, with Keith Scott on piano.

Alexis operated an open-mic policy: “Alexis was too hospitable,“ recalled Baldry, “other musicians and I did not want to share the stage with 20 other singers.” These then-unknowns included Mick Jagger, Eric Burdon and Paul Jones. So in July 1962 Long John left to tour Germany with the Swiss Storyville Hot Six as well as the Melbourne N.O.J.B. and by the end of that year had made quite a name for himself. Word soon got back to the UK. 

Back home that November, two significant developments took place in Long John’s absence: Decca’s Ace of Clubs label released a Blues Incorporated album on which he sang, called R&B From The Marquee. Secondly, the five year partnership between Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies ended. 

British blues was already beginning to splinter, with Korner focusing more on jazz influences such as Charles Mingus, whilst Davies’ bag was the pure stuff – Muddy Waters Band Chicago blues. Alexis and Cyril both now wanted Long John in their respective groups. Korner even took care of travel expenses to get him back to England and for a while he appeared with both bands before settling with Cyril Davies and The R&B All Stars in January 1963. 

1963 was the year that British R&B went into overdrive. In the space of that one year a splinter group from Blues Incorporated – the Rollin’ Stones (named after a Muddy Waters’ lyric) – had gone from obscurity into world-domination mode – adding a ‘g’ to their name on the way. 

The band’s ascent began on Wednesday January 9th with a new residency at the Red Lion pub in Sutton, Surrey. This was Charlie Watts first Stones’ gig replacing the sacked Tony Chapman. But as far as mid-1960s’ Brit-blues musicology is concerned, it was the Stones’ guitar-based Chuck Berry/ Bo Diddley take on R&B which marked them out from the rest – and took them into the pop charts, with blues-based bands like the Yardbirds hot on their heels. 

Meanwhile Cyril Davies and Long John Baldry stuck to their Muddy Waters harmonica/ vocals groove, whilst Alexis Korner went for jazz-tinged blues – significantly, it was sax and Hammond organ player Graham Bond who replaced Cyril in Blues Incorporated.

The tragically untimely death of Cyril Davies – in January 1964 – resulted in Long John taking over as leader of the All Stars and renaming the band the Hoochie Coochie Men. Enter Rod ‘The Mod’ Stewart on vocals.

It was totally by chance on the platform at Twickenham railway station that Long John first heard Rod Stewart singing one night after Rod had attended a gig at the Eel Pie Island R&B venue. What Baldry instantly recognised was a raw talent which he then nurtured in his band. According to legend, Stewart’s first ever song sung on stage with the Hoochie Coochie Men was greeted with a stony silence from the crowd, but Long John stuck to his conviction that here was a massive talent.

That band split after releasing one single and the album Long John’s Blues, and in July 1965 Baldry formed Steampacket – a soul revue with himself, Stewart and Julie Driscoll on vocals, backed by a band including organist Brian Auger. Surprisingly unsuccessful, Steampacket split in May 1966 after which Baldry formed Bluesology. Enter keyboardist Reg Dwight and sax player Elton Dean: of course Reg then soon morphed into Elton John.

After Bluesology, 1967 and 1968 saw Long John’s controversial brush with middle-of-the-road chart success in the shape of the number one ballad Let The Heartaches Begin and then the theme for the 1968 Olympics – Mexico. 

Rod Stewart and Elton John co-produced Long John’s early-1970s albums It Ain’t Easy and Everything Stops For Tea which charted in America. But this proved to be a short-lived return to the spotlight. Sadly, mental health problems and hospitalisation followed during the 1970s after which, typically, Long John let the world know he’d recovered by releasing 1979’s Baldry’s Out album. He released in the region of 40 albums during his career. 

Baldry also had a parallel career in TV and film, first appearing in the 1971 Up Pompeii! spin-off Up the Chastity Belt, alongside Frankie Howerd and Eartha Kitt, and did many voiceovers for TV programmes and commercials. The most famous of these was as the voice of Dr Ivo Robotnik on the popular kids’ animated series The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog. 

Long John settled in Vancouver in 1980, became a Canadian citizen and then frequently toured Canada and North-west America. But he returned to his blues roots in the new millennium: his final studio album was called Remembering Leadbelly, and in 2004-2005 on several occasions he fronted the British Blues All Stars – a blues festivals outfit masterminded by British blues piano stalwart Bob Hall. It featured, on occasion, Peter Green, Kim Simmonds, Dave Kelly, and Tom McGuinness. 

Those artists and musicians who had the pleasure of knowing and working with Long John Baldry throughout his career now all give similar eulogies about the man’s personality: he could be utterly outrageous and yet he remained a perfect gentleman; he was always very self-effacing about both his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the blues, and of the crucial role he played throughout the birth of British blues in the early 1960s. 

Long John lost a four-month long fight against a severe chest infection on July 21 2005, in Vancouver. He was 64. 

Widely known as the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans also created blues music as powerful and distinct as any coming out of Chicago, Detroit and Memphis. Inevitably, it was rooted in jazz, but with a Caribbean influence. The emphasis was placed on piano and horns, although later bass, drums and guitar figured too.

A pivot in its evolution is Professor Longhair, born Henry Roeland Byrd in 1918 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He played exhilarating piano blues dubbed rumba-boogie. He also sang, wrote and was a huge influence on every Big Easy keyboardist since, from Fats Domino, Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and James Booker to Allen Toussaint and Dr John. His Go To The Mardi Gras, Tipitina and version of Big Chief are staples of the Big Easy songbook and 1972’s New Orleans Piano provides a great introduction to his talent.

If Professor Longhair set the standard for piano playing in the city, it is Guitar Slim, aka Eddie Jones, who did so for the guitar. Influenced by T-Bone Walker and Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, he cut a striking presence, jumping into the audience with his guitar, walking through the crowd playing it and going onto the street outside with it. 1954’s The Things That I Used To Do, a captivating 12-bar blues, is his calling card. Issued on Specialty, produced and arranged by Ray Charles, who also plays piano on it, and recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans, it remained at the top of the US R&B chart for six weeks, and with its pioneering distortion provided a signpost for Jimi Hendrix and all electric guitar players going forward.

The aforesaid J&M Recording studio was at the heart of New Orleans blues. It captured virtually every musical talent in the area and many more travelling through it, notching up 250 US charting singles and 21 gold discs. Of the many collections gathering material recorded at the studio, Cracking The Cosimo Code: 60s New Orleans R&B And Soul is the best. Spanning 1960 to ’68, it’s all history-making stuff, rounding up tracks by Jessie Hill, Chris Kenner, Lee Dorsey and Aaron Neville.

...and one to avoid

TV music show Jools' Annual Hootenanny is a long-established New Years' Eve tradition in The UK. It's a pre-recorded show in which various stars pretend they're performing at a Hogmanay party, and while it's almost as famous for its predictability as it is for its countdown to midnight and communal version of Auld Lang Syne – one running joke suggests that the BBC broadcast the same show every year, but no one notices – occasionally, something bright shines through the musical murk.  

This year it was the turn of 17-year-old Muireann Bradley, an Irish country blues guitarist and singer from Ballybofey, County Donegal, who received a standing ovation for her cover of Candy Man, a 1920s song attributed to blues great Reverend Gary Davis and later popularised by the likes of Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk and Hot Tuna. The clip of Bradley playing the song has since gone viral. 

The teenager appeared on the show alongside established faces like Rod Stewart, Joss Stone, P.P. Arnold, Sugababes, Ruby Turner and Pogues founder Spider Stacey. "To see all them legends was just crazy for me," she told the BBC. "When I came home the next day it just felt like a dream, to be honest. It was crazy. I was pretty nervous, but once I kind of got on the stage it kind of all went away to be honest."

Bradley is signed to San Francisco folk label Tompkins Square, and released her debut album, I Kept These Old Blues, last month. It includes covers of songs by the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten, Taj Mahal and Robert Wilkins. The songs were recorded live in the studio, without overdubs.

"Most of these tunes were originally recorded by the great blues men and women who were making records from the 1920s and 1930s right up in some cases to the early 1970s," says Bradley. "I have also found inspiration for the renditions recorded here in the playing of some of the musicians who began recording this music in the 1960s and later, and who in some cases learned at the feet of the greats."

In November Bradley released film of her cover of When The Levee Breaks, first recorded by Delta blues pioneer Lizzie Douglas, a.k.a. Memphis Minnie, during her debut recording session in 1929, and later made famous by Led Zeppelin. The video is below. 

I Kept These Old Blues is available from Bandcamp. 

Former Wings and Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine has passed away at the age of 79. The news was confirmed in a social media post by his wife, Elizabeth Hines.

In the statement, she wrote: "My darling husband passed away peacefully early this morning. I was at his bedside, holding his hand as I played his favourite Christmas songs for him. He’s been singing Christmas songs the past few weeks and I continued to play Christmas songs while he’s been in ICU on a ventilator this past week.

"He and I both believed he would overcome his health setbacks and return to the rehabilitation centre and eventually home. Unfortunately, his lung disease, Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD), is unpredictable and aggressive; each infection weakened and damaged his lungs. He fought everyday. He was so strong and brave, never complained.

"All he wanted was to be home with me and his pet kitty, Charley, playing his gypsy guitar.

"Denny was so very thankful to all of you who sent him so much love, support and the many kind words during these past few months of his health crisis – it brought him to tears.

"I thank you all for sending both of us love and support. It was my absolute honour and privilege to not only be his wife, but to care for him during his illness and vulnerability."

Hines went on to thank hospital staff in Naples, Florida, for their support.

Denny Laine was born Brian Frederick Arthur Hines on October 29, 1944, in Birmingham, England. After leading his own band at school, his career took off in the mid-1960s when he joined the M&B 5 as founding guitarist and vocalist. The band changed their name to the Moody Blues, and Laine sang on their first big hit, Go Now. He recorded just one album with the band, 1965's The Magnificent Moodies, before leaving the following year for stints with Electric String Band and Ginger Baker's Airforce, and to release a pair of solo singles.

In 1971, Denny Laine became a founding member of Paul McCartney's post-Beatles outfit Wings. "I just phoned him and said, ‘What are you doing?’,” McCartney told Classic Rock. “Denny said, ‘Nothing’, so I said, ‘Right, come on then!’.”

He would go on to play a pivotal role in the success of the band, contributing not only as a guitarist and vocalist but also as a songwriter, including the co-writing of Mull Of Kintyre, the first single to sell over two million copies in the UK. Laine left Wings in 1981, after McCartney retreated from public performance in the wake of John Lennon's murder.  

Laine also pursued a solo career, releasing three albums under his own name while with Wings, and another nine after his departure from the band. His last solo album, The Blue Musician, was released in 2008. Earlier this year he revealed he was working on new material, and embarked on a Acoustic Songs & Stories US tour, playing music from Wings and the Moody Blues as well as solo material and covers. His final show was in Richmond, Virginia in July.  

"You never stop creating, and therefore you’re never 100 percent satisfied," Laine  told Guitar World in January. "You can’t be. But when the finished product goes out and a lot of people are happy with it, that’s good enough encouragement for me."