Led by electrifying guitarist Rory Gallagher, Taste were touted as Ireland’s answer to Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But their heyday lasted just two albums before a disillusioned Gallagher bailed to go solo. In 2014, as a new box set, I’ll Remember, was released, Rory’s brother Donal looked back at the stellar rise and premature implosion of one of blues rock’s greatest trios.

July 1967, and Taste are settling into their residency at Belfast’s Club Rado in the Maritime Hotel. Already the Cork trio have picked up a loyal local following, and the ballroom is packed with students, sailors, working girls, local bands and music fans from across Northern Ireland. Some are merely curious, wanting to check the hot new ‘southern’ guitar slinger in town; other are already converts and spreading the gospel that proclaims: “Taste are the best Irish band since Them!” The Rado’s atmosphere is thick with cigarette smoke and excitement as youths pack themselves against the stage, spilling beer as they cheer on the band.

The three teenagers who make up Taste are enjoying themselves immensely. They play a dynamic mixture of blues covers and original songs, sounding raw and dynamic. Their 19-year-old guitarist and vocalist Rory Gallagher blazes up front, his T-shirt soaked in sweat while he caresses great rips of sound from his beloved Fender Stratocaster. Taste slow things for Catfish. Youths punch the air as Gallagher channels feedback into his solo, while sailors whoop with joy and hug the ladies they call “shore relief”.

When Catfish finishes, Gallagher announces, “This one’s a new one I just wrote called Blister On The Moon.” He then plays a stinging riff and sings, ‘Everybody is saying what to do and what to think/and when to ask permission when you feel you want to blink.’ After years spent in showbands, being told what to play and how to behave, Gallagher is revelling in the freedom of making his music, his way. And Belfast loves him for his freedom and defiance.

Admittedly, not all of Belfast does. Later that evening, after Taste finish their first set, Gallagher steps outside the Rado, wanting some fresh air and quiet. Suddenly, a group of youths surround him, and they aren’t ones he recognises from the venue. “Got a cigarette?” one asks. “Sorry, I don’t smoke,” replies Gallagher.

Suddenly he’s set upon. Not for his lack of tobacco, but because his accent gives him away – he’s from the south and on the wrong side of town. Gallagher stumbles, almost falls, but manages to regain his balance as fists and feet rain upon him. He runs for his life and within minutes is inside Club Rado. Everyone notices Gallagher’s terrified expression and battered features. They don’t have to ask what happened.

Instead, the Rado faithful empty onto the street, and suddenly the gloating gang are fleeing as music lovers teach the bigots a lesson. An unspoken rule at the Rado involves leaving religion, politics, whatever else, outside. Here Belfast gathers to celebrate the gospel of great blues and jazz and rock’n’roll. And throughout his life, Rory always embodied such unity.

If Taste took beautiful shape in Belfast across the summer of 1967
– a summer, locals noted, not marked by love – they would cease to exist in this same city some three and a half years later in the depths of winter. The band’s final performance took place at Queen’s University, Belfast, on New Year’s Eve, 1970. As they waited to go on stage for a final time, car bombs exploded across the city. On a wet, windswept, bomb-scarred Belfast night, Taste ended in an atmosphere as bitter as the city’s climate.

Taste’s brief timeline runs like this: formed in Cork in late 1966, they quickly established themselves in Belfast in 1967, then began to win wider recognition with their regular forays at London’s Marquee. As their UK status rose, manager Eddie Kennedy insisted on changing the band’s rhythm section before they released their eponymous debut album in April 1969. This album achieved immediate continental success.

The band were championed by fellow musicians – the likes of John Lennon and Eric Clapton publicly praised Taste even before they had a record deal – and they played support at Cream’s Royal Albert Hall farewell concerts, as well as touring the US opening for Blind Faith. Their On The Boards album (released January 1, 1970) won wide critical acclaim and chart success. T

aste provided a standout performance at 1970’s Isle of Wight Festival yet split acrimoniously at the end of that year. Rory Gallagher immediately set off on his solo career while the rhythm section formed Stud, a band as forgettable as their name is vulgar. A flurry of Taste live albums and a collection of 1967 Belfast demos were released across the 1970s, none with Gallagher’s permission or approval.

Those who love Taste’s music must wonder why this band, who shone so brightly and so briefly, appear to have been banished. Gallagher refused to include Taste material in his live sets for the rest of his life: that he felt such enmity towards what he experienced in the band that took him from the showband circuit to international stardom suggests severe trauma.

Yet the music contained on Taste’s two studio albums is superb: their eponymous debut is dynamic late-1960s blues rock, while On The Boards is a striking blend of blues, jazz, rock and pastoral psychedelia. Taste were both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, yet in the decades since they split up, their legacy has been marginalised.

This is finally about to change. A Taste box set, I’ll Remember, is being released alongside a DVD containing the band’s Isle of Wight performance. These releases are due to the diligence and care of the Gallagher estate, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that Rory’s legacy is properly handled. “For me, Taste has always been a passion,” says Donal Gallagher, Rory’s only sibling. “But this has been a walk through a nettle field.”

On paper, Taste epitomised the Aquarian ideals of the British counterculture. Combining youth and talent, a willingness to experiment and improvise, a dedication to playing for the people and an ability to bring Northern and southern Irish music fans together, Taste embodied the best principles of that era.

And Rory Gallagher, in his humility and honest passion, stood for all that’s good in rock’n’roll. But a duplicitous manager would ensure that Taste emerged from the 1960s as burnt and bitter as The Beatles. Perhaps even more so, because few tales of industry machinations are quite as sour as that of Taste.

“Rory was proud of the two albums Taste made,” explains Donal, “but we were never even told by Polydor that they were going to release live Taste albums. And the Belfast demos were never supposed to be issued. The whole situation was a mess and Rory just preferred to avoid dealing with it. We have wanted to see Taste’s recordings handled properly for a long time but my feeling, initially, was that anything to do with Taste becomes a nightmare.”

Donal pauses then adds, “Due to various legalities and personalities involved.”

Nightmare number one was Taste’s manager, the late Eddie Kennedy. Kennedy, a Northern Irish music promoter, caught Taste’s first Belfast performance at Sammy Houston’s Jazz Club. Sensing talent and scenting money, Kennedy signed Taste to both a residency at the Maritime Hotel and a management deal.

Seventeen-year-old William Rory Gallagher had gained a musical education way beyond his years in, firstly, The Fontana Showband and then The Impact Showband as they toured Ireland, the UK, Spain and Germany, playing pubs, dance halls and US military bases. Time in London playing the city’s Irish ballrooms had allowed Gallagher to check out that city’s many gifted musicians. He saw Davey Graham in folk clubs and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (with Peter Green) in pubs, and it made him determined to lead a stripped-down R&B band.

His last showband engagement, at Hamburg’s Big Apple club, found him leading The Impact Showband as a trio. When the Big Apple club’s manager asked where the missing showband members were, Gallagher swore they were all stuck in London with food poisoning. After a week, the manager surmised that he’d been told a fib but Gallagher played with such passion and skill, he let the 16-year-old continue his residency.

Back in Cork, Gallagher retired The Impact Showband and set about forming his ideal band, poaching Norman Damery and Eric Kitteringham from The Axills (Cork’s “answer to The Beatles” at the time). With Dublin being a soul music town, Taste found Belfast more responsive to their blues-drenched sound, and with Eddie Kennedy making promises, the trio settled there in 1967, initially living in the Maritime’s tiny, cell-like rooms (it was built as a residence for sailors between ships).

Van Morrison’s Them had made their name playing at the Maritime Hotel and were now internationally famous, and Kennedy saw in Taste a band who could follow in Them’s footsteps. As Kennedy regularly booked English bands to come and play at the Maritime, Taste mastered their craft opening for the likes of Cream, Fleetwood Mac and Chris Farlowe’s Thunderbirds.

“Those bands would come out to play four or five nights,” says Donal, “and so Taste really got to know them and Rory got to play with a lot of great musicians. The Belfast Taste/Fleetwood Mac gigs were amazing. There was a real purity to both bands and how they played blues. Chris Farlowe had Albert Lee on guitar – he was a brilliant picker right back then. And when Cream came over, Eric [Clapton] was so impressed by Rory that he offered him his Marshall stack to play through. Rory tried it but couldn’t get the sound he wanted so reverted to playing through his Vox amp.”

Kennedy’s connections with Robert Stigwood (manager of Cream and the Bee Gees) meant he could get Taste – or The Taste, as he initially insisted they were billed – gigs at London’s celebrated Marquee club. In late 1967, Taste visited London, living out of their van and opening for anyone and everyone. Word spread about the beautifully raw Belfast band and when they returned to settle in London in early 1968, they were soon headlining nights at the Marquee.

“The Marquee was huge back then,” recalls Donal. “This was before they put a bar in, so you could pack about 1,500 people in. There was no such thing as health and safety and as it wasn’t licensed, no one ever checked on it. The Marquee was also a place where promoters from across Europe would come to check the new talent.

“After one of Taste’s first London gigs in 1967, this guy from Nottingham, who booked The Boat House, offered us a fiver to come up and support Captain Beefheart. We leapt at it. The fiver probably covered the petrol! I remember we stayed at the worst doss house in Nottingham, along with about 30 lorry drivers! But the gig was great and Rory was very impressed by Captain Beefheart and his band as they had strong blues and jazz influences.

“After the show was over, Rory was chatting with Beefheart, and Beefheart said, ‘I hit all the bum notes I can.’ That was new to Rory. He had come up in the showbands where every note had to be perfect. So playing with different bands got Rory thinking about music in different ways.”

Taste then got booked to play at the Woburn Abbey Festival on July 7, 1968. Woburn Abbey was one of the first British rock festivals and the bill featured the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Donovan. Taste were still unsigned at the time but they produced such a dynamic performance that John Peel, the former pirate radio DJ whose Perfumed Garden show on Radio 1 featured rising stars of the rock underground, told Gallagher that he would make sure Taste got a BBC session. Peel had already begun playing Taste’s debut 45 Blister On The Moon. This had been released on Belfast label Major Minor without the band’s consent. The two songs were taken from a demo and it’s likely Eddie Kennedy allowed the single to come out to generate major label interest.

Taste were now rising stars of the British rock scene – John Lennon had attended a Marquee performance and subsequently told a New Musical Express writer: “I heard Taste for the first time the other day and that bloke is going places” – and Polydor expressed interest in signing the band. Kennedy then insisted that the rhythm section be sacked. He told Gallagher that this was at Polydor’s insistence, the label deeming the rhythm section not good enough (listening to the Woburn Abbey concert proves the lie in this). Gallagher said he was having none of this and they would have to find another label.

But – and Donal is unsure why – he then backed down, and Damery and Kitteringham were sent back to Cork while Ulster musicians John Wilson and Richard McCracken were drafted in on drums and bass. Wilson-McCracken had recently played in Cheese, a Belfast band Kennedy had managed. The new duo were both gifted, experienced musicians – Wilson had been a member of Them and played on their second album, Them Again – and they quickly clicked with Gallagher.

Taste’s new line-up signed with Polydor, with Kennedy promising the band that the label would allow them the kind of independence The Who and Cream were then enjoying. What he didn’t tell them was that as they were minors – the legal age for contracts back then was 21 – it was Kennedy who was signed to Polydor, while the members of Taste were individually under contract to him as employees. Not that the band paid any attention to the intricacies of contracts, preferring to concentrate on taking their music to the people.

“Taste played every gig they could get, every place, building a following,” says Donal who, having started as his brother’s roadie, was now the tour manager. “The crowd would be packed up against the stage and cheering the band on. This was the fuel Rory worked on – Taste would combust on stage, just catch fire with the excitement of the audience and take the music places they didn’t know it could go. I’ve found pictures of them on stage on a winter’s night and they are boiling!”

Taste settled into two Earls Court bedsits with Rory and Donal sharing one – “two single beds, a closet, a cooker, a wash basin” – and Wilson and McCracken in the other. The band toured in an old Ford Transit van, playing anywhere they were booked.

“Our diary was always quite full because we didn’t mind going up to Inverness one night and Plymouth the next, both for low money,” Gallagher told ZigZag magazine when asked about his early days with Taste. “It was the only way to establish ourselves as far as we were concerned, because people soon forget what they read in a paper but they rarely forget a gig… so we just gradually worked our way up.”

So rooted in playing a highly personal form of blues rock were Taste that Eric Clapton, frustrated by Cream’s inter-member acrimony, insisted they play at the Royal Albert Hall as part of Cream’s farewell concerts. Taste, still without an album out, were thus anointed as Cream’s heirs.

“Cream performed two shows in one evening at the Royal Albert Hall,” recalls Donal, “and that was a pity as it meant everything was rushed. Apparently it was because they could only book the Royal Albert Hall for one night and so they squeezed the two shows in. Also, Tony Palmer was filming the shows and I think he liked the idea of shooting both of them on one day. Yes were also on the bill so for the first show Taste opened, and then for the second show Yes opened.

“To my mind, Taste sounded better on the second show and Rory’s guitar sounded great – he was still playing through his Vox amp. He didn’t use any effects pedals beyond a treble booster to get greater sustain. There were lots of well-known musicians backstage – David Crosby and some of the Bee Gees, among others.”

While the Royal Albert Hall concerts turned the spotlight on Taste, it also brought about a degree of derision: as Cream and Jimi Hendrix had pioneered the power trio format, Taste were dismissed by certain London scenesters as mere Irish copycats.

“Rory formed Taste in 1966 with no intention of copying anyone,” says Donal. “He was friendly with Jack Bruce, having met him in his Hamburg days, and loved the early Yardbirds – their raw, raunchy blues – but he never aimed for Taste to be like Cream. Obviously Cream had been trailblazers in America so they paved the way for Taste. But if you listen to the Taste albums, they sound nothing like Cream.

“When Cream finally split [following their 1969 US farewell tour], Rory was approached by Eddie Kennedy with the suggestion he join Jack and Ginger [Baker] in a new version of Cream. Eddie was working closely with Robert Stigwood’s agency and it must have been mooted that a version of Cream could continue with Rory in Eric’s place. Rory wouldn’t have a bar of it.”

As Taste’s live reputation continued to grow, Polydor determined to get them into the studio and hired Tony Colton, a highly touted British singer-songwriter who was, at that time, fronting Heads Hands & Feet as producer. Taste’s self-titled debut album was recorded at De Lane Lea Studios, a facility in the centre of Soho, in one day. The next day was devoted to mixing the album.

Released in April 1969, Taste is essentially their live show. It opens with Gallagher’s anthem Blister On The Moon, finds him rearranging blues standards Leavin’ Blues, Sugar Mama and Catfish, and touches on the psychedelic flavours then prevalent with Born On The Wrong Side Of Time.

He bemoans life spent up and down Britain’s then-primitive motorway network with Dual Carriageway Pain, which is followed by a handful of unremarkable Gallagher originals, then the album closes with country singer Hank Snow’s anthem I’m Movin’ On. This gets played in a remarkably straightforward manner, harking back to Gallagher’s 1950s childhood in Ballyshannon where he was taught the song by his uncle Jimmy, who returned to Northern Ireland after having worked in Detroit’s car plants.

Taste received largely positive reviews – Gallagher noted that it was “raw and honest” – and sold strongly in northern Europe. The band stayed on the road and went on to break The Marquee’s attendance record (previously held by Jimi Hendrix), but they remained on the same tiny salary Eddie Kennedy paid them. They may have now been internationally celebrated recording artists but they continued to live in grimy Earls Court bedsits.

“Earls Court was dubbed ‘Kangaroo Valley’ back then due to the huge number of Aussies living there,” says Donal. “The bedsit was very cramped and you had to feed the gas meter with an endless supply of coins to be able to cook or get heat. I would always be going off to the local laundry to do the band’s washing – Rory would just sweat through everything on stage – and the lady who owned the bedsit saw me doing this and installed coin-operated washing machines in the basement. In winter the laundry basement was the warmest room in the building so we would huddle down there, and Rory found it was a place where he could practise guitar and saxophone without annoying the other people living in the building.

“We lived in a crescent and met many other bands living there, including Brian May’s Smile. Brian would come and see Taste all the time. He would hang around after the gig finished to talk guitar with Rory, and Rory would explain to him how he got certain sounds.”

Eric Clapton’s enthusiasm for Taste remained strong and saw that the band were invited to support Blind Faith on their US tour across July and August 1969. While Taste played well, Blind Faith were imploding and, Donal recalls, the tour was poorly organised.

“It had always been a dream of Rory’s to play music in America. But once we got to America, the Blind Faith tour was a shambles. It was very badly managed, chaotic. They didn’t have enough material ready so Eric and Ginger ended up having to do Cream numbers – which is what the audience wanted, but not what Eric and Stevie [Winwood] had formed Blind Faith to do.

“Everything about that tour was a mess – it really felt cobbled-together – and due to Blind Faith’s controversial album cover [featuring a young topless girl], their record release had been delayed so the audiences weren’t familiar with the new songs. Rory was unhappy with Eddie and disliked playing stadiums, preferring clubs, and animosity was building in the band. Eric worked out something was wrong with Taste and asked me one time: ‘What’s wrong with the guys?’ He could feel the vibes. Rory took on an air of depression on that tour. ”

Taste were well received by US audiences and their debut album on Atco (Atlantic) entered the Billboard and Cashbox charts, but Eddie Kennedy had done little for the band there and, at the tour’s end, they found no further US dates booked. Back in London, Polydor requested that Taste re-enter the studio with Tony Colton to record album number two. This time they were given almost a week to get things done. And Gallagher, emboldened by success and determined to pursue his musical vision, stretched out on what would become On The Boards.

Gallagher composed all 10 tunes and demonstrated a versatility few could have imagined. Alongside driving blues rockers were acoustic ballads and experimental jazz-blues fusions, with Gallagher playing alto saxophone. No one else in contemporary rock music was creating anything comparable and when On The Boards was issued on January 1, 1970, it entered the charts across Europe and attracted hugely complimentary reviews. Yet when Polydor issued opening track What’s Going On as a single in Germany – it was a Top 5 hit there – Gallagher was furious. Just like Led Zeppelin, he refused to allow singles to be issued from albums.

“I’m not sure where that came from,” says Donal, “as we grew up loving listening to 45s by The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry. I think Rory saw his albums as akin to what jazz musicians were doing, so didn’t want them chopped up. At that time he had jammed with Larry Coryell and was in awe of Ornette Coleman, so the idea of being a pop star just did not appeal.”

As for Gallagher’s skill on the alto saxophone, which would never feature prominently on his albums again, Donal recalls his brother teaching himself in their bedsit. “Rory taught himself to play alto sax in one week. He did it in our bedsit in Earls Court. It was a frigging nightmare! He ended up playing into our closet, using it as a sound booth. It got so many complaints from other residents in the building!”

Taste were in the charts and on the road, playing to ever larger audiences, yet remained on the same poverty wages that Kennedy had begun paying them in 1967.

“Eddie kept Taste on a meagre weekly salary,” notes Donal. “Rory got an extra fiver a week as he had to buy so many guitar strings. But the band were still playing through the meagre PA Rory had inherited from his showband days and travelling in a very basic Ford Transit with no proper heating. Here Taste were headlining festivals, setting attendance records at The Marquee and topping the charts across Europe, and they were just as poor as when they were an unknown band. It simply wasn’t good enough.”

By the time Taste came to play the Isle of Wight Festival on August 28, 1970, the band were on the verge of splitting. Rory and Donal both knew that Kennedy was looting Taste, yet Wilson and McCracken sided with their manager. Just as Noel Redding had resented the attention Jimi Hendrix received, Taste’s rhythm section spoke bitterly of how the focus on the band appeared to be all “Rory, Rory, Rory”.

“Things weren’t looking great for Isle of Wight,” recalls Donal. “The van was broken into the night before and some of the drum pedals were stolen. This just added to the tension as Rory had been on to Eddie about getting a better van. At the Isle of Wight, you had a band imploding on itself – Rory was very upset that John and Richard had decided to take the manager’s side.

“John believed all the promises that Eddie made – how he was going to make them all millionaires and pay a mortgage on John’s house – while Rory felt that Eddie had done what was necessary: he had got them from Belfast to London and had now run his course. And Eddie held on to all the money Taste generated. Also, there was the issue of jealousy: John and Richard resented Rory getting all the limelight but he was the bandleader, the guitarist, the singer, the songwriter.”

Donal sighs wearily as he recalls this difficult time. Taste were a band at the top of their game, widely loved and achieving great things, but they were poor and miserable. “We didn’t even have enough wages to eat properly. It turned out that John and Richard had signed separate contracts with Eddie and that Taste were not signed to Polydor so much as Eddie Kennedy was. All this came to a head two days before the Isle of Wight. By the time they played the festival, Rory and I knew that Taste were over, that he was going to break up the band and go solo.”

Yet the Isle of Wight ignited around Taste. Murray Lerner, who was shooting a film of the festival, had planned on only shooting one or two songs of Taste’s set, but they were so exciting and the audience response so strong that he kept the cameras rolling for much of the band’s performance. It’s this footage that features on the Taste Live At The Isle Of Wight DVD.

Gallagher wanted to end Taste after the festival, but found out that Polydor had booked a major European tour for the band. He agreed to do it, but insisted that he got paid directly by Polydor. Kennedy continued to treat the band poorly; during this tour, a backstage visitor asked Donal, ‘Where’s the beers? Where’s the food?’ I said, ‘This band don’t get any. What’s it to you?’ He replied, ‘I’m Peter Grant and I manage bands and Taste should be treated better than this.’ We got to talking and Peter would help us get out of Polydor’s clutches – they wanted to hold on to Rory as a solo artist.”

Once the European tour was over, Gallagher made it clear that Taste also were. Gentle as he may have been, he knew he had been robbed by Kennedy and was furious at his bandmates’ disloyalty. He agreed only that the band should play a farewell concert in the city that launched them: Belfast. Finishing on New Year’s Eve appeared suitably symbolic.

“We performed two shows on the same day,” says Donal. “I guess it was because everyone was trying to earn their last crust. I recall their performance had an eerie feeling to it as they were playing beautifully, playing great music, but very soon it was to be no more. The second concert was at Queen’s University and as it came up to midnight, 11 car bombs had gone off across Belfast. And everyone was saying that the twelfth car bomb would go off as it hit midnight.

“So we were all waiting for this ominous moment. In London people were counting down the seconds until Big Ben chimed midnight, and in Belfast we were counting them down until the twelfth car bomb went off. And you know what? It never exploded. I don’t know if this was due to a fault in the bomb or what, but that is my abiding memory of Taste’s final concert – the band breaking up and Belfast being torn apart by car bombs.”

Gallagher quickly moved on, establishing himself as a hugely successful solo artist. Peter Grant saw off Eddie Kennedy – who initially claimed to “own” the frontman – but Gallagher never saw any of the funds Taste had earned across their four-year existence. As Donal got more involved in managing Rory, he determined to resolve the Taste conundrum.

“I got more and more angry at how he was being ripped off over the Taste material and Eddie was still holding on to some of Rory’s publishing. Then, in the mid-1970s, we had just signed a new contract with Chrysalis and suddenly this album of the Taste Belfast demos came out in the US under Rory’s name and with a photo of him on the cover, as if it was a new album by Rory.

“I hired lawyers and went after the label, and they declared bankruptcy rather than pay up. It cost us a fortune. I then took Eddie Kennedy to court and Rory was very nervous about it. He told me that he doubted he could get in the witness box and testify against Eddie, but Eddie capitulated before it reached court. He then signed over the Taste royalties, although he claimed to have no money so Rory never saw any of the money generated from Taste’s album sales up until then.”

In the early 1990s, the most unlikely of events almost happened: a Taste reunion. “Rory and John Wilson got friendly again after John turned up for a few of Rory’s Belfast concerts. We were considering a Taste reunion being held in Belfast’s Titanic dry dock as part of the Northern Ireland peace process, but then Rory got sick.

“Anyway, by now we were all talking again and I explained to John and Richard that we had gone after Eddie for the Taste royalties. At around the same time, Polydor announced it was reissuing the Taste albums on CD and I pointed out to them that they did not own the digital rights. We sorted this out and an agreement regarding Taste was finally signed by all parties in 1999. Better late than never.”

Then, in 2000, Wilson and McCracken revived the Taste name (with Sam Davidson on guitar and vocals) and went out on the road. If the Gallaghers and the rhythm section had put their differences behind them in the 1990s, this ‘reunion’ again proved divisive.

“It upset me that Richard and John went out on the road again as Taste,” says Donal. “That was an abysmal decision and not in the spirit of the agreement. When I heard about it, I said to them, ‘Why don’t you go out as Stud?’” Donal shakes his head in quiet disbelief, then says, “The synergy of Taste was great. Rory loved playing with the band, the way Richard understood jazz really worked for him. But Taste without Rory… it’s not right.”

What Donal has done is get Taste right. The I’ll Remember box set and Live At The Isle Of Wight DVD (“I contacted director Murray Lerner and said, ‘I don’t want my descendants talking to your descendants so let’s get this done’”) capture one of the most remarkable bands of their era. They only existed for a few brief years but the music they created then touched many. And now, treated with the respect Taste deserve, it will continue to do so.

Originally published in The Blues magazine issue 23 (July 2015)

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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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.

The Kris Barras Band have released a video for Lovers Or Losers, taken from their new album The Divine And Dirty. The album is out this Friday.

“Lovers Or Losers is one of my favourite tracks off the new album,” says Barras. “It’s one of the last songs that I wrote and for me it’s one of the songs that captures the dirty side of the album, with the slide riffs and the southern rock sound. We had great fun shooting the video. The fight scenes were actually filmed with one my training partners from the gym! It was also really fun to do all of the fighting stuff in a more choreographed way than what I’m normally used to!”

Barras is a former Mixed Martial Artist who spent a decade fighting professionally everywhere from Thailand to Las Vegas before choosing to concentrate on his guitar. In 2017, Music Radar selected him as one of the 17 Best Blues Guitarists In The World.

“Fighting was an adrenaline thing,” he says. “I got a massive buzz doing it – it was incredible. You’re under incredible amounts of pressure. You put a foot wrong, you don’t just lose, you can lose your teeth. But I thrive on pressure, whether that’s fighting or music.”

“Thailand was brutal,” he continues. “You get up at six in the morning, run 8 or 10 kilometres, then you’d do a few hours or bag work and pad work, then circuit training. That’s all before you eat breakfast. Vegas was different, still hard work but more glamorous. You’re fighting guys who were training since they were six years old. But then at night you’d go to pool parties and hang out with Rampage Jackson, who played Mr. T in the A Team movie, [former porn star] Jenna Jameson and some of the biggest UFC stars.”

Barras also revels that his and his late father’s hero was Gary Moore, and adds: “He was my dad’s favourite and that fed down to me. He was the best guitarist in the world, and my first introduction to the blues. Everything else came after him.”

The Kris Barras Band will head out on tour in support of The Divine And Dirty throughout March and April and will also play a set at this year’s Ramblin’ Man Fair. Full details below.

The Divine And Dirty is released on March 23.

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The Kris Barras Band The Divine And Dirty tracklist

1. Kick Me Down
2. Hail Mary
3. I Don’t Owe Nobody Nothing
4. Propane
5. Wrong Place, Wrong Time
6. Lovers Or Loser
7. She’s More Than Enough
8. Stitch Me Up
9. Hold On For Tomorrow
10. Blood On Your Hands
11. Watching Over Me

Tour Dates

Kris Barras Band – Kris Barras Band

It’s not often you get four stellar blues guitarists under one roof, but that’s happening this week as the Rockin’ The Blues Tour 2018 climaxes at The Garage in London this Saturday.

The tour is organised by Provogue Records – home of many modern blues greats – and features four guitarists at the very top of their game: Eric Gales, Gary Hoey, Quinn Sullivan and special guest Lance Lopez.

Fans not only have the opportunity to witness what’s sure to be an extraordinary evening, but to meet and greet the musicians at a pre-show guitar clinic. Shows in Munich, Hamburg, Zoetemeer precede the London Garage show.

• Mar 13: Mufathalle, Munich, DE [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]
• Mar 15: Batschkapp, Frankfurt, DE [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]
• Mar 16: Boerderij, Zoetermeer, NL [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]
• Mar 17: Garage, London [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]

Eric Gales

A ‘who’s who’ of guitarists have declared their admiration for the Memphis bluesman. Jane’s Addiction man Dave Navarro, blues icon Joe Bonamassa and the legendary Carlos Santana have all proclaimed their love, whilst Alter Bridge axeman Mark Tremonti says, “this guy could be the best player on Earth.”

Quinn Sullivan

The 18 year-old-prodigy shared the stage with Buddy Guy aged just eight, played with Eric Clapton, and opened for B.B. King. He’s performed at the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden, as well as becoming almost a fixture on US TV, appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Oprah, Jimmy Fallon, Conan and The Ellen DeGeneres show.

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Gary Hoey

Combining an exuberant fusion of blues and rock, Gary caught the ear of Ozzy Osbourne back in 1987 and almost ended up in his band (The gig ultimately went to Zakk Wylde.) Hoey scored a major-label record deal, where his version of Focus’s Hocus Pocus brought him huge success.

Lance Lopez

Texas is well known worldwide for its fiery blues guitar players, and Lance is no exception. Also the singer and guitarist for blues supergroup Supersonic Blues Machine, he’s been mentored by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and counts Jeff Beck and the late, great B.B. King amongst his fans.

Rockin’ The Blues Touer 2018

• Mar 13: Mufathalle, Munich, DE [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]
• Mar 15: Batschkapp, Frankfurt, DE [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]
• Mar 16: Boerderij, Zoetermeer, NL [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]
• Mar 17: Garage, London [tickets] [ticket + guitar clinic]

John Fogerty and the Steve Miller Band have both been confirmed for the opening night of Bluesfest 2018, which takes place across four nights at the O2 in London from October 25-28. Tickets cost £45 and go on general sale this Friday at 9am.

The show mark’s John Fogerty’s first UK performance since the former Creedence Clearwater Revival man played at London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of the Revival tour in 2008. The Steve Miller Band’s appearance will be their first UK show since 2012, and coincides with the 50th anniversary of their debut album, Children Of The Future.

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“Of course it goes without saying that John Fogerty and Steve Miller Band are two acts that have been on our wish list for some time and we’re delighted to have confirmed exclusive shows with them for this year’s BluesFest,” says Leo Green, Director Of Live Events at Live Nation.

“BluesFest 2017 was a resounding success and I’m incredibly pleased with the progress we’ve made over the last seven years. Once again we’ll be at The O2 for BluesFest London and following the success of the inaugural BluesFest Dublin last year, I’ll be looking at increasing our international presence and expanding into a number of new territories whenever and wherever appropriate.”

The Story Behind The Song: Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival

In the 1990s there was a great blues club and restaurant in Dallas called the Greenville Bar & Grill. On Monday nights they had a fantastic blues jam there. The first night I decided to go down to the jam at GBG was the day after Christmas in 1994. I got up onstage at the Blues jam and began to play a complete set of Jimi Hendrix songs, ya know, Purple Haze, Red House, Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) the whole bit… because that’s what I used to do when I was a punk kid.

Next door to the Greenville Bar & Grill is an amazing Italian restaurant called Terilli’s. Billy Gibbons was with some friends having dinner there and heard through the wall that somebody next door was playing Hendrix. They finished their dinner and decided to go next door and have a look. By the time I was done with my 20 minute version of Voodoo Chile the manager of the club grabbed me and told me to go with him to the back, as someone wanted to meet me.

As I approached the back of the bar I saw the outline of Billy, his hat, his beard the whole thing… just like the MTV videos. I couldn’t believe it was really him! The manager of the bar introduced us and the first thing Billy ever said to me as he leaned in near me and pulled his sunglasses down over his nose away from his eyes was, “I knew Jimi Hendrix, he was my friend” It was amazing!

After that I saw Billy quite frequently in Dallas, and we hung out quite a bit at places like Cafe Brazil late at night, talking about everything from amps to Lightnin’ Hopkins to Jimmy Page. We lost touch for a few years, and then in 2004 we reconnected at Eric Clapton’s first Crossroads Festival in Dallas. Then, a couple of years after that I was opening shows for ZZ Top in Europe. A couple of years after that I went to Los Angeles to begin recording Tell The Truth with Fabrizio Grossi and after Fab and I recorded three songs, Billy called Fabrizio and asked him what he’d been up to, and Fab told Billy he’d just started “working with one of your fellow Texans,” and Billy asked “oh yeah, who?”

After Fabrzio told Billy that we started working together on my album, and he then suggested we put a band together – and that if we did he wanted to play with us – and then came Supersonic Blues Machine!

Billy has always been a great mentor to me. He has taught me so much about the Blues and especially how to be a true Texas gentleman. I am so very grateful for all of the knowledge that he has imparted on me. From the beginning of our friendship he really made me understand the importance of tone and how to get it in your hands first. His creativity and genius is unparalleled. It makes me really understand why Jimi Hendrix loved Billy so much.

Billy has truly inspired me, whether he was imparting knowledge to me or was giving me a look over his shoulder while we were jamming and just saying, “hey now, LL.” Every time I always knew I was receiving a blessing from the Reverend Willy G himself… and what a mighty blessing that is Amigo…Mercy!

Lance Lopez’s new album Tell The Truth is out today. Lopez will be special guest on this year’s Rockin’ The Blues tour, which also features Eric Gales, Gary Hoey and Quinn Sullivan, and climaxes in London on March 17. Full dates below.

Below, Lance chooses his Top 10 ZZ Top songs.

Neighbor, Neighbor (ZZ Top’s First Album, 1971)

Whiskey’n Mama (Rio Grande Mud, 1972)

Rio Grande Mud and the first few ZZ albums were recorded at Robin Hood Brian’s Studio in Tyler, East Texas, which is our home soil. Rio Grande Mud possesses such a heavy, yet tight sound. Robin really captured some great sounds during those sessions. Billy’s slide guitar on Rio Grande Mud was a very stout 1958 Les Paul (the same one used for Just Got Paid) and with it Billy drives those slide riffs straight to the point with pure authority! When I hear the opening riffs of Whiskey’n Mama it makes me think of those wild rides from East Texas down to Houston on Highway 59 back in my younger days. It’s a good old Texas tale that warns you that if the girl you’re with can drink more whiskey than you… you had better watch out!

Precious And Grace (Tres Hombres, 1973)

Anytime Billy gets to talkin’ about vintage flat-head Fords and picking up chicks it’s gonna make for a great story! The riff of Precious And Grace is one of the most tone-filled, heavy examples of Texas Blues Rock ever recorded! Frank Beard’s interplay between Billy and Dusty’s heavy, unison riff is what made Frank so great on these early recordings. Billy’s slide guitar solo is so unique and unlike anything that was really happening in the early 1970s, playing high up behind the bridge, and all of the slide colours are so imaginative and way ahead of it’s time.

Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings (Fandango 1975)

The opening riffs of Nasty Dogs are a warning that a whole lotta badass Texas Tone is about to be headed your way! Frank and Dusty are grooving so hard on this track that it sets up the perfect foundation for Billy to use his unparalleled swagger to use sparse chords during the verse. It sounds like delta blues from outer space! The solo section riff is one of the heaviest, funkiest, bluesiest riffs I’ve ever heard in my life. Billy’s guitar overdubs on the outro are swirling around like a big swarm of bees down in South Austin in the Summer! Another Texas-tale of, “you better look out, it could happen to you too, you could be a fool too.”

Arrested For Driving While Blind (Tejas, 1976)

There is one thing for sure… they don’t mess around with drinking and driving in Texas! This track is a constant reminder of that. I love the way Billy, Dusty, and Frank announce themselves at the very top of this track! BFG’s tone on this track is some of the most unbelievable guitar tone ever recorded! The shuffle that Frank plays on Arrested is 100% Texas, and so reminiscent of his dear friend and running buddy from Irving, Texas Doyle Bramhall Sr., who, legend has it, is the one that imparted a lot of shuffle knowledge to Frank back in the day in Dallas.

BFG’s guitar solos on this track are such a great example of getting right to the point! The outro solo jam section is such a fun, rollicking, galloping jam, and sounds like somebody driving back to their house and trying to dodge the law after a long night of beer drinking and hell-raising!

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Cheap Sunglasses (Deguello, 1979)

Every time I hear the opening riffs of Cheap Sunglasses I have to immediately find my Ray Bans and put them on! It’s one of the most funky ZZ tracks ever! The groove is unstoppable, and it makes you want to ride around slow all night downtown and listen to it over and over. It’s one of the most imaginative and creative arrangements in the ZZ catalog, the break downs with the “woo woos.” Frank’s tom rolls coming out of them alone prove that! The way the guitar solo sections modulate from C to B flat is something I’ve used a lot in my own writing, and again BFG’s guitar tone on the solos is as meaty and juicy as a Central Texas Beef Rib! The funkiness of the interplay in the outro section is what makes ZZ one of the greatest power trios in rock’n’roll. I just love the way it slows down and ends as if just to say, “OK, that’s enough grooving for now.”

Party On The Patio (El Loco, 1982)

The ultimate house party song! Dusty is basically telling us that they declared “squatters rights” on a house to then have a huge blow out party! It’s so hilarious! I can always totally picture myself at that party on the patio! Again, I love how the guitar solo modulates between minor keys. BFG’s use of thematic phrasing is something to aspire to, I love how he sets up the solo with the big bends and then tears it up on the second half. Party On The Patio is a great summertime party song, and I always love hearing Dusty Hill singing with such great authority.

If I Could Flag Her Down (Eliminator, 1983)

I feel like If I Could Flag Her Down doesn’t get much attention because Sharp Dressed Man, Legs and Gimme All Your Lovin’ kinda ruled the roost on MTV back in the early 1980’s! Eliminator was one of the first cassettes I ever bought as a child in the early 80s, and I bought it the day it came out. It was such an amazing time to see ZZ Top on MTV and the beginning of music television. Billy, Dusty and Frank were like comic book super heroes to me back then when Eliminator came out because of MTV.

Everyone we knew in East Texas and North Louisiana had a copy. We heard it everywhere we went, people had huge dance parties at their houses and would dance to the entire album. It’s such a huge part of my childhood. ZZ had moved into a new sound and a new direction, however, Flag Her Down masterfully blends the “modern era” ZZ with the vintage East Texas shuffle sound. I think that’s what I love most about it. BFG’s guitar solos are a pure lesson in Texas groove on this track, and if you can’t get through this track without dancing, something’s wrong!

Sleeping Bag (Afterburner, 1985)

The first time I ever heard Sleeping Bag was a couple of days after it came out at the Louisiana State Fair in 1985. There was a ride called the Gravitron that was like a giant flying saucer. You got inside and then the Gravitron would start spinning very fast and you laid on a padded panel and the centrifugal force would be three times the force of gravity so it was like being in a spaceship! Inside were lots of coloured, flashing lights and very loud music.

When we got on the Gravitron they played Sleeping Bag it was unlike anything I ever experienced as a young boy, it was like being on a flying saucer and Sleeping Bag was the soundtrack! It’s one of my favourite childhood memories. The thing I love the most is how truly innovative it was, and, more importantly, how the outro really set up the entire genre of techno music. It’s so great to hear BFG play the Blues over techno synths and the crushing four on the floor beats.

My Head’s In Mississippi (Recycler, 1990)

The first time I ever saw ZZ Top perform live in concert was in October of 1990. Everyone in Texas was still mourning the loss of Stevie Ray Vaughan. ZZ Top, Steve Miller and Santana performed at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas. It was such a powerful concert and so inspiring to me, I had just turned 13 and it was the first concert I saw as a young teenager. This concert really helped to bring everyone out of mourning the loss of SRV. It was so powerful, and My Head’s In Mississippi was being played regularly on Dallas’ Q102 rock radio station by legendary DJ Redbeard.

Mississippi was not only so innovative and ahead of it’s time – and BFG’s tone yet again so huge – but it really helped everyone after just experiencing the loss of SRV in our community. They were always talking about SRV and how sad it was on Q102 radio, but then they would play My Head’s In Mississippi and everyone bounced back and felt better, at least I know I did! I love the story! I have been on a constant quest for a naked cowgirl on the ceiling mumbling to some Howlin’ Wolf about some voodoo heathen ever since!

Rockin’ The Blues Tour 2018

09 Mar: Fabrik, Hamburg, DE
10 Mar: Columbia Theater, Berlin, DE
11 Mar: FZW, Dortmund, DE
13 Mar: Muffathalle, Munich, DE
15 Mar: Batschkapp, Frankfurt, DE
16 Mar: Boerderij, Zoetermeer, NL
17 Mar: The Garage, London, UK

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Supersonic Blues Machine guitarist Lance Lopez has released a video for Down To One Bar. The track is taken from upcoming solo album Tell The Truth. The album is released on March 2, and is the follow-up to last year’s Live In NYC collection.

“Down To One Bar is the tragically funny story of how drinking never worked out very well for me!” says Lopez. “It always started out as a great party and then ended badly. What seemed like good times and lots of fun was not always that way. Today I am able to look back and tell the truth about how my partying usually ended up in Down To One Bar.”

In addition to his role in Supersonc Blues Machine, Lopez has performed with Johnny Taylor, Lucky Peterson and the Buddy Miles Express, and been mentored by the likes of Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons.

“Texas has been known throughout the years to be the breeding ground for some of the baddest guitar players of all time,” says Gibbons. “Lance is yet another one to carry on that Texas tradition.”

Tell The Truth was produced and recorded over the last three years by Fabrizio Grossi in Los Angeles, and is influenced by the British blues rock invasion of the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Earlier this month, Lopez streamed another track from the album, The Real Deal. Tell The Truth is released on March 2, and is available to pre-order now.

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Lopez will be special guest on this year’s Rockin’ The Blues tour, which also features Eric Gales, Gary Hoey and Quinn Sullivan. The tour arrives in the UK for a London show on March 17. Full dates below.

Rockin’ The Blues Tour

09 Mar: Fabrik, Hamburg, DE
10 Mar: Columbia Theater, Berlin, DE
11 Mar: FZW, Dortmund, DE
13 Mar: Muffathalle, Munich, DE
15 Mar: Batschkapp, Frankfurt, DE
16 Mar: Boerderij, Zoetermeer, NL
17 Mar: The Garage, London, UK

The Top 10 Best Rolling Stones Blues Songs

The Kris Barras Band have released a stream of Propane, taken from upcoming album The Divine And Dirty, the follow-up to their 2016 album Lucky 13. Fronted by former cage fighter Barras, voted one of the 17 Best Blues Guitarists In The World Right Now by Music Radar, the song is something of a departure for the band.

“Propane is quite different to the other songs on the album and anything I’ve written before,” says Barras. “It’s got a driving groove behind it but it’s a bit softer than the other tracks. The song is about using people’s negativity towards you as fuel to fire you up on whatever journey you might be on. It’s about taking what the doubters say and using it to drive you on to succeed. The guitar solo on this track is one of my favourites of the album.”

The Divine And Dirty was produced by Josiah J Manning at Momentum Studios, Plymouth, and is Barras’s second album since retiring from Mixed Martial Arts in 2014.

“People used to think I was crazy to be fighting in cages, risking damage to my hands,” he says. “Truth is though, I always enjoyed it and found that the fighting world offered me more opportunities than the music industry. I got to fight in front of 8000 people in Asia, I would’ve much rather have played to them instead of getting punched in the face.”

“Gary Moore was my first hero,” he continues. “He was my dad’s favourite and that fed down to me. He was the best guitarist in the world, and my first introduction to the blues. Everything else came after him.”

The Kris Barras band will be on tour throughout The UK in March and April, and will play the Ramblin’ Man Festival in July (full dates below).

The Divine And Dirty is released on March 23, and is available to pre-order now.

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Superstar session guitarist Michael Landau, who’s performed with the likes of Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, BB King, James Taylor, Ray Charles, Rod Stewart, Phil Collins, Boz Scaggs and David Bowie, has released We All Feel The Same, from upcoming album Rock Bottom, which is released on February 23. The album is the follow-up to 2012’s Organic Instrumentals.

“I wrote We All Feel The Same in St. John’s Newfoundland a couple of years ago,” says Landau. “St. John’s is the most easterly city on the North American content, it’s basically a huge rock way up there in Canada. The lyrics of the song suggest simplifying your life while holding strong to your beliefs about the world, and recognizing that most of us all strive for the same basic needs in life: freedom, respect and safety for our loved ones. The guitar on this track reflects all of the insane banter around us in the world today.”

The album features vocals from David Frazee, who performed alongside Landau in Burning Water, a band who released four albums in the 1990s.

“I’ve been playing mostly instrumental music for the past 10 years,” says Landau. “Out of nowhere I woke up one morning with the strong urge to play some hard edged music with vocals… guess it makes sense because it’s really the music I grew up on. So I reunited with my ole pal David Frazee from the Burning Water days. We wrote a lot of songs together, most of which ended up on this new Rock Bottom record.”

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Also playing on the album are Landau’s brother and fellow Burning Water veteran Teddy Landau on bass, Larry Goldings on organ, and drummer Alan Hertz.

“We recorded the basic tracks on analogue tape then finished it in the digital world,” says Landau. “I mixed the record on an API console and kept it as big, open and natural sounding as I could.”

“We mastered the record to be played at a healthy volume on a real stereo system, or with a good set of headphones. I recommend listening to it with a hot cup of green tea, or perhaps eight Guinness beers, or any other drug of your preference…or maybe just let the music be the drug…?”

Rock Bottom is available to pre-order now.

The top 10 best guitar solos of all time, as chosen by Amplifier's Sel Balamir

Lance Lopez, a key member of blues supergroup Supersonic Blues Machine, has released a stream of The Real Deal, taken from his upcoming seventh studio album Tell The Truth. The album is released on March 2, and is the follow-up to last year’s Live In NYC collection.

“The Real Deal is what the Tell The Truth story is all about,” says Lopez. “It’s about being who you are and being as true as you possibly can. It’s my story from my perspective told with unapologetic honesty. It’s like shaking hands with someone and looking them in the eye while you do it.”

Lopez started playing professionally in New Orleans bars at the age of 14. He performed with the likes of Johnny Taylor and Lucky Peterson as a teenager, and eventually joined the Buddy Miles Express. Along the way he’s built something of a reputation amongst his fellow musicians.

“Texas has been known throughout the years to be the breeding ground for some of the baddest guitar players of all time. Lance is yet another one to carry on that Texas tradition,” says ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, while Jeff Beck describes him as “very exciting and intense.”

Tell The Truth was produced and recorded over the last three years by Fabrizio Grossi in Los Angeles, and is influenced by the British blues rock invasion of the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The album is released on March 2, and is available to pre-order now.

Lopez will be special guest on this year’s Rockin’ The Blues tour, which also features Eric Gales, Gary Hoey and Quinn Sullivan, and climaxes in London on March 17. Full dates below.

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Rockin’ The Blues Tour

Supersonic Blues Machine - Californisoul album review

Californian blues trio Supersonic Blues Machine have released a stream of Hard Times, taken from their new album Californisoul, which is released tomorrow. The track features a guest appearance from Toto guitarist Steve Lukather alongside full-time members Lance Lopez (guitars/vocals), Fabrizio Grossi (bass), and Kenny Aronoff (drums)

“Fabrizio, Kenny and I go way back and have played together many times,” says Lukather. “I love and respect all the guys involved and I love playing a little blues. This was a no brainer. I was honoured to be asked to be a small part of this cool band. Hope I get too play live again too!”

“Hard Times is the true soundtrack of what’s going on today in our lives,” says Grossi, who produced the album. “Collectively, we are empowered to navigate the world as it gets more confusing and lost by the hour, and whoever is supposed to make things better is actually doing quite the opposite.

“Musically , this song is a voyage! It’s like a meditation session with all these transitions and thoughts deconstructed that culminate in the final release… and Luke is the therapist guiding us through it! It could not have been another brother doing this with Supersonic Blues Machine , since together we fought so many similar battles throughout the years. As a songwriter and a producer I consider this amongst the best music I’ve ever put my hands on, and as a friend…well just listen to Luke tearin’ it up, and you’ll understand why I love him so much! It goes beyond the notes!”

Californisoul is the follow-up to last year’s West of Flushing, South of Frisco, and also features appearances from from Billy Gibbons, Eric Gales, Robben Ford and Walter Trout.

“Lots of people have been saying to me, ‘why does Supersonic Blues Machine always bring guests around? You guys can stand your own ground,‘” says Grossi. “There are three answers to that. One, we’re all super friends and we’re having a blast. Two, most of them don’t give lessons and for us it’s only way to learn their secret ways. And three, because the inspiration and the challenge they bring to the table.

Previously, the band have released streams of Elevate with Eric Gales, The One, and L.O.V.E.

Californisoul is out on October 20, and is available to order now.

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Supersonic Blues Machine Californisoul tracklist

1. I Am Done Missing You
2. Somebody’s Fool (ft. Robben Ford)
3. L.O.V.E.
4. Broken Heart (ft. Billy Gibbons)
5. Bad Boys
6. Elevate (ft. Eric Gales)
7. The One
8. Hard Times (ft. Steve Lukather)
9. Cry
10. Stranger
11. What’s Wrong (ft. Walter Trout)
12. Thank You
13. This Is Love

Supersonic Blues Machine head to Norway for Notodden Blues Festival

“Freddie King is an absolute monster in the blues world,” says Black Stone Cherry mainman Chris Robertson. “From his first playing to his powerhouse voice he was the total package. It’s no wonder the music Mr. King left us with continues to influence all genres of guitars players and — and singers — whether they know it or not!”

It’s perhaps appropriate then, that Black Stone Cherry’s new Black To Blues EP pays features a cover of King’s Palace Of The King. Written by Leon Russell and two Stax Records legends — Mar-Keys saxophonist Don Nix and Booker T. and the MGs bassist Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn — the song was first released in 1971, and has since been covered by artists including John Mayall, Leslie West. Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Stone The Crows.

Black To Blues not only pays tribute to King, but features covers of songs by Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Albert King. It’s available now.

Below, Chris Robertson picks his five favourite Freddie King songs.

Going Down

This is one of Freddie’s most famous works in the rock’n’roll world, and has been covered by many artists. The drive in this song is absolutely crushing!

Woman Across The River

This song starts out with a nice backbeat groove, and Freddie delivers his signature sounds, both vocally and with the guitar! The kicker to this one is the way the change happens for the chorus, where the entire groove changes flawlessly!

Palace Of The King

This song has a groove like a freight train! It chugs along, never letting up. And the breaks are so impactful. The song has a great guitar lick for the backbone of the song. We slightly manipulated this on our version to make it a tad more like what we would do!

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• The 5 Best Albert King Songs, by Black Stone Cherry's Jon Lawhon
• Black Stone Cherry's track-by-track guide to Black To Blues
• The 5 Best Howlin' Wolf Songs, by Black Stone Cherry's Ben Wells

Pack It Up

In this song Freddie was feeding off of the funk! This song has that infectious phased-out guitar lick that you either move to or you don’t move at all! Ha! His vocal performance on this song is as good as anyone could have ever sang it! And the guitar solo is on fire!

Have You Ever Loved A Woman

This……this song alone would be a good enough reason for me to give Freddie the title, “King of the Kings”! Vocally, guitar, it’s all there, as is the case with all of Freddie’s material (in my opinion!). But this song is just something special.

Black Stone Cherry - Black To Blues album review

Los Angeles-based rock, blues and soul outfit Supersonic Blues Machine have released a stream of The One, taken from Californisoul, the band’s upcoming follow-up to their 2016 debut West Of Flushing, South Of Frisco.

Last month the band released a stream for Elevate, featuring blues-rock star Eric Gales, who joins a number of star musicians on the album, including Billy Gibbons, Steve Lukather, Robben Ford and Walter Trout.

“The One is probably the most representative song of the whole California soul-attitude that is the spirit of Californisoul,” says says bassist and producer Fabrizio Grossi. “I cannot hide the huge influence that artists like War and Santana had on my upbringing.

“The musical aspect of The One is drenched with those influences: it’s a simple blues progression, but it has a very Latin percussive groove, and its buttery-toned guitars stand and belong to the whole California dream, just like a lowrider would be well at home at the corner of Alvarado and Temple in downtown LA!”

“Even though not everyone in the Supersonic Blues Machine’s circle of friends is a California native, we definitely become part of that legacy of sounds that our adopted and beloved State is so famous for,” Grossi adds. “Lyrically, it’s a song about a promise of love. When you father a little girl — who you hold in your hands at birth, and witness them growing into a beautiful person of her own right, day by day — you cannot wonder about how her life will be when the most important man in her life (you!) will no longer be around .

“The bond you have built with her throughout the years will go beyond that, and you know that your spirit will always be there to remind her of the love and the lessons you shared with her from her birth to your own passing. It might sound sad, but actually it’s a quite a beautiful and loving thought.”

Californisoul is released on October 20, and is available to pre-order now.

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Supersonic Blues Machine Californisoul tracklist

1. I Am Done Missing You
2. Somebody’s Fool (ft. Robben Ford)
3. L.O.V.E.
4. Broken Heart (ft. Billy Gibbons)
5. Bad Boys
6. Elevate (ft. Eric Gales)
7. The One
8. Hard Times (ft. Steve Lukather)
9. Cry
10. Stranger
11. What’s Wrong (ft. Walter Trout)
12. Thank You
13. This Is Love

Supersonic Blues Machine head to Norway for Notodden Blues Festival

“The blues is such honest music,” says Black Stone Cherry singer Chris Robertson. “When you hear it, it’s like ‘I’m down on my luck, and, damn, that guy gets just how I feel.‘”

With an attitude like that, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Atlanta Rockers have released an EP of blues covers, some of them songs the band has been playing live for over a decade. Black To Blues is out now.

“I hope by sharing this music we have the beautiful opportunity to expose a new generation to the blues,” says Robertson. “Our approach was to do these songs as if we’d written them, with attitude and heavy guitar.”

Below, Black Stone Cherry guitarist Ben Wells takes through the EP, track-by-track.

1. Built For Comfort

This song was the initial song that got this whole thing going I think. We had been doing this song in our live set for at least a couple years and we constantly got asked if it was our own song, and if we had a recorded version of it. For us, playing it live was a way for us to showcase the blues side of the band and really allow us to spread our wings and show our roots. We didn’t know how well it would go over at each show, but it quickly became the highlight each night. So we decided the EP needed to happen, and this song was a shoe in! Plus, it’s Howlin Wolf… you cant go wrong with the Wolf!

2. Champagne and Reefer

If you dig the blues, you have to dig Muddy Waters. John Fred actually brought this song to the table and of course we jumped at it! It’s a clever song with a killer vibe. Like any song we cover, we put our spin on it and I think it came our killer!

3. Palace Of The King

Love some Freddie King! We compare Chris a lot to Freddie King because they both have those bellowing loud voices that really get your attention. Freddie King had a certain spank, if you will, to his guitar playing too. The man could burn up a 345! This is one of the first blues covers we put into our live set, way back in 2003-ish! So again, when the EP came up, we knew we wanted to put our version on there! It stomps! Love the horns and vocals on this one!

4. Hoochie Coochie Man

Another classic. A blues staple. We started doing this song live in 2005. Again, people loved it. Thinking back, it’s really cool how many blues songs we did at such a young age! I love this track on the EP! Very low down and probably my favourite performance from the horn players. They totally nailed it! It’s like blues meets New Orleans brass! Love it!

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• The 5 Best Albert King Songs, by Black Stone Cherry's Jon Lawhon
• The 5 Best Howlin' Wolf Songs, by Black Stone Cherry's Ben Wells
• An evening with Black Stone Cherry - live review

5. Born Under A Bad Sign

I remember saying we HAD to do this song! The guys of course were on board. The riff already sounded like something we would write for one of our own songs, so in my mind I knew we could totally rock this song This is another blues staple! I hope Albert King would be proud! I even played my Flying V to conjure up his mojo in studio!

6. I Want To Be Loved

Another Muddy Waters classic! When Chris brought this song up and played it, everyone just kinda came to life. You can’t help but smile and feel good when you hear it. It’s a quirky fun song and on one of Muddy’s incredible albums Hard Again Love the piano in this, too!

Black To Blues is out now.

Black Stone Cherry - Black To Blues album review

Los Angeles-based Supersonic Blues Machine have launched an audio stream of Elevate, taken from their Californisoul album, the follow-up to their 2016 debut West Of Flushing, South Of Frisco.

The star-studded blues-rock project was formed by Lance Lopez, Fabrizio Grossi and Kenny Aronoff – and Californisoul will include guest performances from Billy Gibbons, Steve Lukather, Robben Ford and Walter Trout, while Elevate features the talents of Eric Gales.

“Elevate is a very special song in the context of this album,” says bassist Fasbrizio Grossi. “Music-wise it’s mesh of blues, rock and funk with a very big Hendrix and Sly Stone influence and all the elements of the two segments of the song are the ying-yang of the Supersonic Blues Machine musical journey.

“Lyric-wise, even though it might appear as a straight chastising of despicable people with despicable attitudes and acts, it’s actually an invite to use what we see as negative to be the inspiration to boost all the good and positive in us, despite the outside interferences. Hence the ending mantra ‘elevate your soul’.

Then there’s the Gales factor !!! …Having one of the most “poetic” and “blessed” guitarist on the planet, to counter-point the song’s message, makes it absolutely a dream turned into reality. It’s the gospel of the Re-Birth, and I know brother Eric feels as strong about this as SBM does !”

Californisoul is released on October 20, and is available to pre-order now.

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Supersonic Blues Machine Californisoul tracklist

1. I Am Done Missing You
2. Somebody’s Fool (ft. Robben Ford)
3. L.O.V.E.
4. Broken Heart (ft. Billy Gibbons)
5. Bad Boys
6. Elevate (ft. Eric Gales)
7. The One
8. Hard Times (ft. Steve Lukather)
9. Cry
10. Stranger
11. What’s Wrong (ft. Walter Trout)
12. Thank You
13. This Is Love

The 10 Essential 80s Blues Albums

With their Black To Blues EP released this week, the blues are clearly on Black Stone Cherry’s mind. Yesterday guitarist Ben Wells picked his five favourite songs by the great Howlin’ Wolf, and today bassist Jon Lawhon has selected five tracks by Albert “the Velvet Bulldozer” King, the man behind the timeless Born Under A Bad Sign.

Born Under A Bad Sign was a hit for King in 1967, and has since been covered by the likes of Blue Cheer, Paul Butterfield, Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Paul Rodgers and Rita Coolidge. It also features on BSC’s new EP, which celebrates the 60’s electric blues scene with covers of songs by King and others.

Below, Lawhon picks his five favourite Albert King songs. Black To Blues is available to pre-order now.

What a voice and guitar player! Albert King was such an amazing artist. Ever since we were all kids we’ve been listening to blues, and the knowledge and experience passed to us by our families and the Kentucky Headhunters would not have been the same without the influence of Albert King. Truly one of the three kings of the blues. His voice was so unique to me because it sounded smooth and clear. That voice is one of the main reasons he always stuck out to me. It definitely separated him from the rest.

One of my all time favourite blues tracks ever. The vibe on this song just feels so heavy. It leans into an electric Delta blues sense which speaks loudly to me. The groove is undoubtedly one of the coolest ever recorded, and I was so glad we decided to cut it for our EP.

Hound Dog

While most of the world would, more than likely, recognise another King’s version of this track, Albert absolutely astounds you as the listener. It doesn’t matter if you’re the worlds biggest Elvis fan — like my brother and bandmate Ben — you have to admit this one is over-the-top good!

Crosscut Saw

Vibe. The second the song starts you’re immersed in Albert Kings tasteful guitar playing. Then when you think it can’t get any better, you hear his sultry voice command your attention. This is a stellar cover originally done by Tommy McClennan. Tommy was a Delta bluesman, and hearing Albert’s version makes you appreciate his feel and the way he really owns it. The swing just feels great.

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• The 5 Best Howlin' Wolf Songs, by Black Stone Cherry's Ben Wells
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• An evening with Black Stone Cherry - live review

Cold Feet

I love this song. It’s almost hilarious to listen to the lyrics. Every musician can identify though. Haha. Personally, I can relate to the the line about the woman with cold feet because my wife tortures me every night! Aside from that, my favourite verse in this song is:

“I’m gonna give every disc jockey
The blues across the country
If he don’t dig this
He got a hole in his soul”

That’s the Black Stone Cherry mentality through and through. The last part sounds like a lyric we would write. It’s almost like Albert wrote it about us!

“If you hear a little fuss
It ain’t nobody but us”

Angel Of Mercy

Now, of all the blues songs on earth, this one has to be the quintessential electric blues song. Albert at his best. The guitar work is extraordinary, and lyrically it maps out the working man’s life to a T. We’ve all been in that spot where it feels like finding a way to get your head above water is just simply impossible, and every wall around you is either closing in or falling down. Music like this is what we did to fight depression at one point in history. I feel like today it still rings true. It helps to hear someone else’s problems and to know you aren’t alone.

Black Stone Cherry - Black To Blues album review

Kentucky rockers Black Stone Cherry have released their cover of Albert King’s Born Under A Bad Sign. It’s taken from their upcoming Black To Blues EP, which will be released by Mascot on September 29.

“We wanted to do that song because Cream did that song,” says bassist Jon Lawhon,“but we were looking for songs that were ‘obscure,’ but not so obscure that people hadn’t maybe heard them before and have some familiarity with it. It was tough to pick some stuff; I’ll be honest with you. And too, we had to think about the arrangement; how could we alter the riff a bit and make it ours. So, it was a deep process!”

Black To Blues pays tribute to the electric blues revival of the 1960s, when bluesmen like King found a new audience. Born Under A Bad Sign was released in 1967, covered by Cream a year later on their Wheels of Fire album, and has since been performed by artists including Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, Paul Butterfield, Paul Rodgers and Pat Travers.

“The blues is such honest music,” says Black Stone Cherry singer Chris Robertson. “When you hear it, it’s like ‘I’m down on my luck, and, damn, that guy gets just how I feel.’ I hope by sharing this music we have the beautiful opportunity to expose a new generation to the blues.”

Black To Blues also features tracks by Muddy Waters, Freddie King and Willie Dixon. It’s available to pre-order now.

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Black To Blues Tracklist

1. Built For Comfort
2. Champagne & Reefer
3. Palace Of The King
4. Hoochie Coochie Man
5. Born Under A Bad Sign
6. I Want To Be Loved

Black Stone Cherry - Black To Blues album review

“There’s nothing you can really hide in a two piece, especially live,” says Suck The Honey frontman Lucas Frazier. “When it comes down to it, a good song is a good song.”

Good songs are what Suck The Honey specialise in. Formed late last year in Cincinnati by Frazier and drummer Jake Grove, the band only played their first show in November. But debut album All Hail Having Failed is as solid a collection of snarling rockers and melancholy ballads as anything you’ll hear this year.

From the disturbed folk of album opener Love The Best — which sounds like the kind of thing Kurt Cobain might have written in the wake of Nirvana’s haunting cover of Where Did You Sleep Last Night? — to the furious, sinister rocker Bite Yr Tongue, it’s an album filled with violence and tension.

It’s also an collection that never loses sight of melody at the expense of the dynamics. They Want Meat would be a throwaway thrash it weren’t attached to the kind of chorus The Buzzcocks used to write, while the title track is a swaggering, bible-black beast of a song. Throw into the mix Frazier’s voice, which has the sneering tone of a midwestern Johnny Rotten but soars when required, and you’ve got something that’s more than just another guitar-drums duo churning out fat riffs without much thought as to where the rest of the song is going.

“I don’t know if any rock’n’roll act can really, truly be unique anymore,” says Grove. “We are all playing things we’ve heard someone else do, and that’s what’s inspired us. What makes Suck the Honey different is dynamics, lyrics, and a live show that leaves nothing on the table. We will make an audience believe there is a five-piece band with volume and then drop it down to a whisper in an instant. Look to our album title, and you’ll understand the mindset of our lyrics and we completely embrace that. With live shows the goal is for us to be ready to pass out or throw up by the last tune.”

How did the two of you meet up?

Jake: We originally hooked up in our old band, Pop Goes The Evil. I had seen Lucas’s previous band’s last performance and was floored with his stage presence. When I heard through a friend that PGTE was quietly looking for a drummer I harassed him with my previous recordings until he gave me an audition. We’ve been together ever since for better and worse.

How would you describe yourselves to an alien?

Lucas: Hey, Alien. We are what’s known as “dudes”. We use these devices called “instruments” and our bodies to convey our “feelings” via loud sounds. You should try it sometime. Please don’t destroy our planet.

Why are there so many two-piece bands around at the moment?

Lucas: I think popular music has gotten to the point where the formulaic over-produced approach is getting more and more obvious every day. It would seem the resurgence of the two piece rock band comes from a desire to strip away all the excess. Maybe you can add to that and make it better, but I’d rather write a better song than an okay one I feel needs something else to make it reach its full potential.

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It’s sounds to us like there’s a punky, British influence in your music. What’s going on there?

Lucas: I’m glad you said that. I think one of the hardest things for a musician to do is describe their music to someone else and be satisfied with their description. I believe the sound and style of the songs we write comes from a lifetime of listening to music and drawing from what we’ve loved whether it be a conscious act or not. HOWEVER, to actually answer your question. I, in particular, am a huge fan of early Sabbath, Marc Bolan, Arctic Monkeys, and most recently Royal Blood. I also play Orange amps which is a classic British tone. Love it.

All Hail Having Failed is available to pre-order from Bandcamp. Limited edition vinyl pressings will be available from Romanus Records on September 30. Suck The Honey play the WTF Festival at Discher Park, Horicon, Wisconsin on September 16, and are holding an album launch party with Brother O’ Brother at MOTR in Cincinnati on September 23.

Romanus Records: the little label that's reinventing vinyl

Onsale today, Classic Rock presents The Blues Collection, a 148-page special edition devoted to the blues.

The Blues Magazine started off as an offshoot of Classic Rock magazine in June 2012, and ran until 2016. This handbook contains a collection of some of the mag’s finest moments – and there are many fine moments to choose from.

There’s great writing on – and some amazing photographs of – the genre’s biggest stars: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Moore, ZZ Top, Howlin’ Wolf, Dr Feelgood, Walter Trout, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Green, Buddy Guy & more. These are artists whose stories and voices resonate still – honest, authentic, talented, aware & musical. On top of that, there’s the making of The Blues Brothers movies, an oral history of the birth of heavy blues in late 60s London, and the first ever Joe Bonamassa cover story from Classic Rock magazine – the story that effectively launched The Blues Magazine.

From the Mississippi Delta to the guitar shops of London’s iconic Denmark Street, these are just some stories of the Blues…

The Blues Collection: onsale now from all good newsagents or direct from here.

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The first son Billy Gibbons ever learned to play was What I’d Say by Ray Charles. He’s just received a 1962 Gibson Melodymaker for Christmas, a budget version of the Les Paul Junior with a thinner body, a narrow headstock, a single pick-up and a single cutaway.

“I’d just turned 13,” says Gibbons. “I plugged it in, cranked it up and by the end of the afternoon I’d worked out that opening figure.”

Half a century later Gibbons is still cranking up the guitar, but now he’s a legend. And these are the 10 records that helped out along the way.

The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th floor Elevators

Whoa! That one stands as a literal mind blower. It alters the neurons when hearing it. Roky Erickson didn’t consider adhering to any traditional boundaries or formats. In fact, The Elevators became self-appointed pioneers of a psychedelic trip that seems to have the impact of lasting past the present.

Cream - Fresh Cream

A trio sound but like that of a freight train. Totally blues-based yet weren’t bound by any particular strain which makes the offering endlessly refreshing and innovative. Cream explored the outer reaches that three players could accomplish and platformed the profound influence ZZ Top would take directly following the release of this quality recording. Killer tones.

Jim Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced? 

The question that the title poses was immediately answered once the needle settled down in the grooves. Nothing before that one sounded anything like it and the result was a sonic explosion for just about everybody who was playing in a band at that time. It pretty much opened the door to another dimension.

Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward

It’s the home of Master and Servant and People are People. I am constantly impressed with how they meld a bleak world view with synch and turn it all into great pop music. That’s alchemy!

The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request

This is a crazy, spacey, album that some say was the Stones’ answer to Sgt. Pepper’s but what was the question? It’s a sonic tour de force that 50 years later underscores what masters of the studio they are. 2000 Light Years From Home is a whole SciFi film that just begs for a few visuals. It’s a door-opener.

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Muddy Waters at Newport 

Here’s where we heard Hoochie Coochie Man and Got My Mojo Workin’ when we were starting off. The band, with Otis Span and Francis Clay and James Cotton aboard. It didn’t have to get any better and serves as the single best introduction to the blues one could want. Life changer on every level.

B.B. King - Live At The Regal

Could be one of the best live performances ever captured on wax. B.B. was at the apex of his powers as a vocalist and did that thing where he plays the part of the girl that still makes for a good laugh-out-loud. It underscores that B.B. was, in fact, the king of the blues.

Complete and Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul 

WOW! Mark this one with Steve Cropper’s always appropriate Telecaster accompaniment and, of course, Otis’s, ahem, complete and unbelievable vocal attack. Otis actually mimics the horn parts in Sad Song — that’s what the “Fa-Fa-Fa’s” are all about and, of course, the build on Try A Little Tenderness is the classic bringing drama to a song. Great singer, great band, great songs — the whole deal.

Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey

Al Jorgensen is a guy whose commitment is total and this is the album where he really found his footing. It paves the way to the possibilities offered by it’s rich and dark, industrial approach. The wicked application of hands-on electronics on that excursion are most substantive. What can I say? I’m a fan.

Jeff Beck - Truth

Some say this is ground zero for heavy metal and it certainly created a huge influence on players too numerous to even attempt tallying. Jeff’s Yardbirds bandmate Jimmy Page would take some of it with Led Zeppelin yet remember. The first time I heard this one it felt like something truly revelatory. Blues, rock, psychedelic, pop fusion, metal… it’s all here.

Blues sensation Quinn Sullivan doesn’t envy his former classmates. “They’re struggling to come up with what they’re going to do when they’re out of school,” he says. “But I’ve decided this is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life.”

Since appearing onstage with the legendary Buddy Guy as a fresh-faced eight-year-old with a talent for pulling notes from the guitar, Quinn Sullivan has built himself something of a reputation amongst the blues cognoscenti. He’s appeared onstage with the likes of Guy, Eric Clapton, Los Lobos, The Roots, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and Joe Bonamassa, and under Guy’s tutelage has come to know many more, from Keith Richards to Jeff Beck and Ringo Starr.

Eventually the twin novelties of teenage and talent must translate into something more substantive, and new album Midnight Highway (out now on Mascot Label Group/Provogue) might just do the trick. Recorded in Nashville with a cast of stellar musicians, it marks a step forward for Quinn, away from the pure blues that dominated his two previous albums. “I wanted to see how far we could get musically on this album,” says Quinn. “I had a lot more creative input on this one and was more active in writing, so it’s something of a mixture.”

The album’s producer is Tom Hambridge, who’s worked with everyone from Chuck Berry to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bo Diddley, BB King, Johnny Winter and beyond, so he knows a thing or two about a thing or two. “Quinn is a sponge who soaks up everything that’s around him,” he says. “He’s listening all the time, and he just so happens to be around great artists. Every time he plays, it’s a little deeper.”

Once you count up “everyone around him”, it’s quite a list. From onstage blasts to backstage handshakes, Quinn is one helluva well-connected young musician, as the pictures below show. The descriptions come from Quinn himself.

1. Quinn and Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy is my mentor and someone I’d like to call my best friend. Buddy has been in my corner since the beginning and is the reason I’m doing what I am doing now. I owe everything to him.

2. Quinn and Eric Clapton
I first met Eric Clapton at Apollo Theater during a tribute to Hubert Sumlin. I sat in with Buddy Guy on Goin’ Down that night. I met him again in 2013 at Madison Square Garden during the Crossroads Guitar Festival. It was a true honour to be in his presence and to be able to meet my greatest hero and get introduced to him by my other greatest hero, Buddy Guy.

3. Quinn and Billy Gibbons
I played with Billy recently in India at the Mahindra Blues Festival (Feb 2017) with Supersonic Blues Machine. But I first met him in New York at the Rock Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary show and then again at Montreux Jazz Festival in 2016. He is a brilliant guitarist and singer and he was the coolest guy you’ll ever meet. There’s no one like him.

4. Quinn and Keith Richards
This was at Madison Square Garden for Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Festival, and he couldn’t have been any nicer. He really is a class act and you can just tell he has so much respect for guys like Buddy and BB King, so it made it even more special that he took time out to talk to me.

5. Quinn and Derek Trucks
Probably my biggest role model and favourite guitar player. I have developed a really good friendship with Derek over the years having hung and played with him a few times. The greatest guy you’ll ever meet and the nicest, too. His guitar playing I think is just on another level, and his attitude is real and inspiring

6. Quinn and Eric Johnson
Eric is a great guy and an insanely gifted guitar player who I admire a lot. We’ve spent some time together on the Experience Hendrix tour and he’s always been cool.

7. Quinn and Zakk Wylde
I’ve met Zakk a few times on the Experience Hendrix Tour. He’s absolutely down to earth and a very nice guy. It’s very cool to hang with him on those tours, and he’s always killing it.

8. Quinn with Dave Grohl and LL Cool J
It was so cool hanging out with Dave and LL Cool J. This was at the Foo Fighters Fourth of July festival at RFK stadium in Washington, DC in 2015. Both of them are amazing guys; Dave especially was a down to earth, really nice guy.

9. Quinn and Ringo Starr
When I met Ringo he told me I was a “well dressed lad” which I couldn’t believe because THE Ringo Star was saying I had nice style. A memory I will never forget!

10. Quinn and Jeff Beck
I’ve run into Jeff on many occasions, most recently this summer on his Tour with Buddy Guy. We spent some time together at Buddy’s 80th birthday party in Chicago (where this photo was taken). I have always wanted to play with him but haven’t had the chance… yet! He’s one of the best and always will be.

11. Quinn and Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Kenny is another great guy,and it’s been brilliant to hang with him on the Experience Hendrix tour over the years. I really admire him for having a major impact on making blues/rock guitar playing popular.

12. Quinn and Joe Bonamassa
Joe and I have developed a great friendship recently. I sat in with him in late 2015. We’ve hung together a few times including September of 2016 when we played together along with many other incredible artists at the BB KIng Tribute presented by the Grammy Foundation. He’s a fantastic guitar player and vocalist and seems to have everything figured out business wise, which I admire and respect a lot.

Midnight Highway is out now on Mascot Label Group/Provogue.

Quinn Sullivan premieres new track Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming

“We’re just not professional musicians,” says The Picturebooks’ singer Fynn Claus Grabke. “I play guitar solos like a 12 year old girl plays basketball.”

The Picturebooks hail from the quiet German town of Gütersloh in north-west Germany. It’s a place not normally associated with men like Fynn and his percussion partner Philipp Mirtschink. They’re men who live on the wild side, men who build motorbikes and make music because something primal drives them to do so. Now kicking up a storm in California, the pair previously resided in a garage in Gütersloh, making music amongst the saddles and the steel.

New video I Need That Oooh, taken from the duo’s second album Home Is A Heartache, is typical of the band’s approach. It’s a rattling chunk of primitive blues rock played with the ferocity of a V-twin, a song pumped full of gasoline and ready to belch smoke.

How did you meet?

Philipp and I met in the local skatepark in our home town. We were pretty much the only kids looking the way we did and listening to the kind of music we were listening to. We immediately clicked and became best friends, and have hung out every day ever since.

Who are your influences?

We forbad each other to listen to music for two years at one point so we weren’t influenced by other bands. In that period we learned that you can get inspired by so much more then music. We don’t consider ourselves musicians. We don’t even see ourselves as a band. Neither of us knows how to really play an instrument for real. I can’t play a single “real” chord to this day.

Our approach to music and making music is completely different to a professional musician’s. We decide how we want to sound first, and then we´ll find a way to make it happen. We had to do everything wrong to make it sound right to us. So I guess the short answer to who our influences are is: no one - we influence each other.

What’s ‘I Need That Ooh’ about?

I need that Oooh was written in a parking lot somewhere in Wales by a beautiful river. We were on tour with Les Butcherettes, and I had an idea while driving to Cardiff. I was singing into my phone recording this idea that I heard in my head, and all of the sudden Philipp joined in making drum sounds and stuff. At some point we recorded what we wanted things to sound like and how we wanted the production to be for that song. It’s a 30-minute memo where we completely wrote the song with lyrics and everything right there and then. Two weeks later we went into our studio/garage and recorded it in four days.

The song is about looking for inspiration, looking for that Oooh! Being bored, having writer´s block and all the stuff that comes with it. Like most of my lyrics, the lyrics are improvised. I like to use the voice almost as a percussive instrument rather then having a deep message behind the lyrics.

Tell us about the making of the video.

We shot the video out in Yucca Valley and Pioneer Town in California. Apart from us performing in the middle of the desert, the video is about us riding our choppers (one of us is a bike that we built ourselves, and the other bike belongs to one of our buddies in the US.)

While we were filming though, my dad (who is also our manager, producer, live mixer and camera guy) got hit by a truck when we left him alone for 10 minutes. It was a hit and run. He was just sitting down on the side off the road checking some of his footage he filmed earlier while it happened. He broke 10 ribs, fractured his spine, punctured his lung, tore some ligaments in his left knee and cut up his elbow pretty badly. He was rushed to the Frank Sinatra Hospital in Palm Springs immediately, and we were lucky we had great insurance.

Anyways, three weeks later he’s back on his feet again, and with the help from our friends in the skateboarding and chopper scene we finished the video and things turned out for the better.

You record in your garage. What does that offer that a normal recording studio doesn’t?

Being from a small town like Gütersloh where nothing’s going on, where there’s no scene or anything like that, you have to come up with something otherwise you either die or end up in some kind of 9-5 job. My dad had a studio on this farm at some point where he would record bands, and we would help him out every once in a while. At some point we rented out the barn next to it and started building and repairing our bikes in there, then used it as a rehearsal room to practice and write songs. We also built a skate ramp outside. We just made it our own little paradise in a place where before there was nothing.

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• The Picturebooks - Home Is A Heartache album review

Every time we finished writing a song in the garage and went next door into the studio to record, it all sounded so predictable and boring in a way. Which has nothing to do with the studio itself. It was just that it didn’t sound the way it sounded back in the garage. So why try to imitate it, when we can just record in there between our bikes, with the smell of gasoline and old oil, skateboards and guitars hanging on the wall together with a bunch of art pieces that either friends or myself did, motorcycle parts lying around everywhere… all that jazz. We felt so much more comfortable in there than in the studio.

In the studio we would also close mic everything, which we don’t do anymore. We use two microphones 12 feet away from us and play most of the songs live, trying to improvise a lot and using first takes.

Skating. Bikes. Rock’n’roll. For you, what’s the connection?

It goes hand in hand for us. When you build a bike, you kind of go through a similar creative process like you do writing a song. You choose what colour, what kind of handlebars, what gas tank, seat… and so on. And skateboarding is just somewhere in between everything we do. You see this world differently when you’re a skateboarder. It’s hard to explain and only skateboarders will understand this.

What’s the greatest motor-biking anthem ever?

On These Roads I’ll Die, by us on our new album Home Is A Heartache has got be way up there. It’s a about being on the road on a bike or in a van. But to name some of the classics: Canned Heat’s On The Road Again - especially this time of the year - Bob Seger’s Night Moves (we always sing that song when we ride our bikes on a warm summer night in our heads or scream it out loud) and the Greg Kihn Band’s The Break Up Song”. For some reason it’s the one song we always have in our heads when we ride our choppers.

Home Is A Heartache is out now. The band play Desertfest at The Underworld in London on April 28, and at Ramblin’ Man Fair on July 29.

Bluesbreakers: The Picturebooks

It’s been four songs and frontman Chris Vos has already had four gear changes. There was the harmonica and green bullet mic for opener On The Move (with bassist Alex Stiff fulfilling a rhythm guitarist-like role), then the biting Telecaster, the acoustic guitar and some sweet slide action. Together with Stiff and drummer Marc Cazorla, Vos has swiftly squashed any suggestion that their unassuming appearance (and slightly hipster-y band name) might translate into their performance. It really hasn’t.

“Alright! We broke something!” he beams, after the bluesy strum n’ thump of Hard Day Coming Down, before recalling, in awe, the time he saw the Stooges (“they broke everything after, like, two songs!”). He looks genuinely delighted, having thrashed around a hell of a lot more than we’d expect from a modest-looking bloke in a bluesy band. The crowd – impressively sized for the 100 Club on a Wednesday night – cheer in approval.

Formed via Craigslist in 2011, The Record Company aren’t your typical rootsy American rockers. They’re LA-based but hail from Wisconsin, Philadelphia and upstate New York – and sound like something cooked up in Detroit, via London, in the 60s/early-70s. On record their album Give It Back To You is a slick, cool cocktail of John Lee Hooker blues, proto-punk hints and contemporary sensibilities. Onstage it’s a far more loose, energetic affair – fun and funky, yet hard-as-nails when they need it to be. And Vos’s voice becomes especially soulful, lending a 70s, Paul Rodgers-esque richness to proceedings.

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• Read Classic Rock, Metal Hammer & Prog for free with TeamRock+

It all means that where onemight have expected a solid, straight-head night of blues rock, what we actually get is much more colourful and interesting. And it’s no less passionate or engaging for it; the three of them clearly mean every note of this, from commanding single Off The Ground to their jammed-out cover of the Beastie Boys’ So Whatcha Want. This is a band doing something genuinely refreshing with a Rolling Stones-meets-Free (via the USA) style, and it’s a delight to watch. “I hope this one sends you home thinking dirty thoughts!” Vos declares cheerfully, before closing the night with shuffling, feel-good knees-up In The Mood For You.

So no, don’t be deterred by any quieter first impressions. We’ll sure as hell be checking them out next time they’re in town, and recommend you do the same.

John Lee Hooker Buyer's Guide

Aaron Keylock is beginning to build a serious reputation. A teenage blues prodigy with nationwide tours with Blackberry Smoke and Cadillac Three under his belt, he’s also played the Download and Ramblin’ Man festivals, and the release of last month’s Cut Against the Grain album had critics salivating into their laptops.

It might be daunting being compared to Gary Moore when you’re not legally old enough to drink, but Aaron seems to be taking it all in his stride. And now he’s released an acoustic session version of the album closer No Matter The Cost, which strips away the electrics of the original recording whilst retaining its Stonesey swagger.

What’s No Matter What The Cost about?

No Matter What The Cost is a song that was inspired by Gregg Allman. Lyrically I guess it’s very headstrong and just about not letting anything knock you down. I’m saying be honest and true to who you are and you’ll get where you want to be. Bob Dylan said “you’re successful if you wake up in the morning and love what you do”, and that’s pretty much what the songs is about for me: just having belief in what you do and who you are.

Which guitarists inspire you?

The guitarists that have had the biggest effect on me are guitarists that have their own sound and style. Everyone from Neil Young to Keith Richards, Chet Atkins and Nick Drake to Johnny Winter and Peter Green. I play music for freedom and expression, and you can hear who I am, and what’s what moved me from a young age, in my music.

What did you learn touring with Blackberry Smoke, The Answer and Wilko Johnson?

You learn loads of things from bands who have been playing for as long as they all have but I think the main thing was the respect for the crew and other bands around you.

What does Fabrizio Grossi bring to a recording session?

Working with Fab was cool for me in the fact we were definitely making a record for me and no one else. There wasn’t anyone in the studio telling us what to do or how to sound, I wasn’t thinking of anything other than “do I like the record and will I listen to it at home?” Fab had great ideas and brought great musicians to the record. Some of the songs we didn’t change anything on from the demos I first had and others came out as completely new songs, but overall he helped me as a songwriter and brought my vision of the songs to life.

What can fans expect from your upcoming shows?

We’re changing the set list every show and jamming a lot too, I love experimenting with rhythms. Coming from blues, dynamics are a huge thing and improvisation is a huge thing for me, but we play rock’n’roll music. We’re not a blues band, so there’s a lot of different things going on and every show is different.

Are there any other young blues guitarists you can recommend to us?

There’s a lot of great music out there at the minute. We finished last year off with a tour with SIMO and JD has incredible soul. I’ve jammed a few times with Jared James Nichols now and he’s great, Tyler Bryant is really cool. I love bands like Alabama Shakes and Gary Clark Jr. I jam all the time with a great player and songwriter called Sam Hare. There’s some great stuff out there!

What do you listen to to relax?

Whatever I’m really into at that time I guess. Recently I’ve been really getting into Little Feat. Lowell George was an incredible songwriter and musician. I also listen to Leon Russell a lot to relax.

Aaron supports Sari Schoor at London’s Borderline on March 20, and headlines the Black Heart in Camden on April 4, before heading to the HRH Blues Festival in Sheffield on April 16. Cut Against The Grain is out now.

Aaron Keylock - Cut Against The Grain album review

For any band, the loss of a charismatic lead singer and figurehead is a tricky thing to overcome. When that lead singer is a force of nature like Janis Joplin, it seems all but insurmountable.

And yet psychedelic San Franciscans Big Brother And The Holding Company did carry on, and these two later albums of deeply funky, soulful blues rock are a testament to their resilience. The songs have a loose, jam-band feel – from the swing of Black Widow Spider to the stripped-down blues of Sunshine Baby – that screams of the late-60s/early-70s dropout hippie culture they were central to.

With sleevenotes written by their late singer and guitarist Sam Andrew, care has been put into the artwork on this repacked twofer. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the CD itself, as the tracklisting is in entirely the wrong order, songs popping up in the wrong place like disorientated meerkats. It’s a shame, because the music holds up all these years later, but maybe hunt down a version that doesn’t require you to sit there with Shazam working overtime in order to get your bearings.

This article first appeared in The Blues #5, February 2013.

Joe Bonamassa is always tickled to read about the antics of his evil twin. By this, we mean the fictional Bonamassa dreamt up by internet trolls in dark corners of blues forums; the Bonamassa who spends his time tearing into merch girls, barking orders from a sedan chair and berating his troupe of serving-dwarves for fanning him with the wrong ostrich feather.

“I mean, some of these cats are creative,” says the bluesman, mock-impressed. “I gotta give it up for the creativity. To come up with this fantasy land. The best one was that, according to ‘inside sources’, when I was touring with Black Country Communion, I would relegate the other band members into one small dressing-room, while I took two. I wound the crew up with my outrageous demands, and was a tyrant for nine weeks.”

He gapes: “And the guy was dead serious about it! And so you say to yourself, what ‘inside source’? The reality is, backstage, you’ll find me sat in a small room, with six Diet Cokes and Red Bulls, maybe a computer or an iPad, looking for guitars online. You can ask anybody on my crew. It’s the most mundane, un-rock‘n’roll hang ever. It’s like a retirement party back there.

“But these people who post negative stuff about you,” he sighs, “they just make shit up. This was on some forum, and of course, then it goes viral and people make judgements about you. You just go, ‘What in the world inspires someone to make something like that up in their heads?’ What it is – and I figured this out – is it’s really like a new Darwinism. It’s like the survival of the fittest, but on the internet, it’s the survival of the meanest. Your core fans and the people who truly know you, they’ll read that stuff and they know it’s just absolute fantasy. But it’s the ones who go, ‘Well, yeah, I’ve heard of him, and see, he’s an asshole’. There’s always gonna be that level of absolute fiction. I don’t even know how to respond.”

Our apologies if this seems a negative tack on which to start a cover interview. The fact is that when The Blues calls Bonamassa at home in LA, the subject of a backlash keeps coming up – not least because he’s on the promotional trail for an album he fears “could go down like a lead balloon”. Perhaps Mr Blues is right to be worried. That love/hate polarity isn’t just online. You can feel the Bonamassa battle-lines drawn in the clubs, on the streets, in the love letters and poison-pen diatribes that fire into our mailbox.

“The backlash?” Bonamassa echoes. “It’s already started. There already is one. There has been one forever. I’m probably one of the most argued-about players. For every one person that sings your praises, there’s somebody else on some forum who will post something to the contrary. But at the end of the day, it’s all part of the game. And that’s not just me, it goes for everybody in the business, or anybody who has enjoyed a little bit of notoriety. You’re never gonna be universally liked.”

We should stress, the statistics prove beyond doubt the ‘pro’ camp is winning: the venues are getting bigger, the suits better-cut, the magazine features more lavish and the chart placings higher, with last year’s Driving Towards The Daylight a career-best UK No.2 (pipped by Emeli Sandé, of all people). The modern blues king ain’t about to be dethroned.

And yet, there have been sleeve-mutterings, even among those who broadly term themselves ‘fans’, that Bonamassa is in danger of saturating his market, spreading himself too thin. The statistics back that up, too. As a solo artist, in Black Country Communion and alongside the spirited soul singer Beth Hart, he’s put out a total of eight studio albums in the past four years (to discount the myriad live releases and axe-for-hire cameos with acts as disparate as Europe and Henrik Freischlader). He’s a man in motion; a pathological pie-fingerer; a studio junkie looking for his next fix. Like a shark, you sense that if Bonamassa ever stops swimming, he’ll die.

The point is hilariously illustrated today, when we praise Bonamassa’s talking-head appearance on the BB King documentary, The Life Of Riley, only to find him non-plussed, apparently so dizzy with projects and press that he wasn’t even aware he contributed. “Am I in that?” he asks, wracking his brain. “You know, with a lot of this [press] stuff, they bring in cameras, because they do multipurpose filming, and everybody asks me about BB King, so you end up talking ’til you’re blue in the face and don’t even know what it’s for. I really should pay attention. Well, I’m honoured…”

All over the scene like a rash, then, but even the trolls would struggle to form a pub argument that Bonamassa is simply churning ‘em out. From his unfussy, blues-breaking pre-millennial roots, through 2007’s acoustic-leaning Sloe Gin, to the well-judged world-music flavours of 2010’s Black Rock, he’s actually risked tearing up his meal-ticket at every juncture, rather contrary to the sneered theories that he’s a dead-eyed careerist mass-producing hay while the sun shines.

Refreshingly, it’s a tradition that continues with the Live In Vienna CD/DVD capturing the 22-song acoustic set recorded last July at the Austrian capital’s opera house, where this electric warrior fully expected to fall on his arse. “It really is Kryptonite to me, the acoustic guitar,” he mutters. “It wears you out after a while. So it was like, ‘This could either go down really well… or else we’re really screwed here.’”

• Q&A: Joe Bonamassa
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Risky or not, it was a five-year itch that needed to be scratched. “Kevin Shirley [long-time producer] and I were talking about this going right back to the album Sloe Gin,” he recalls. “That record originally started as an acoustic album, and finished up as kind of a hybrid. Kevin and I kept the thought in the backs of our minds to do something on acoustic guitar, but to me, to sit in the studio and light the candles… it’d lack a bit of fire. In my mind, the fire is gonna come when you’re responding to a crowd.

“So we had this opportunity last year,” he continues. “The people who book the Jazz Fest at the Vienna Opera House – who had inexplicably booked Black Country Communion – approached us about doing something special there. So we knew we had this date over the summer, on hold, to do anything we wanted. We could have just brought the electric band, I could have had a dance troupe with Michael Flatley, it didn’t matter.”

What they came up with was almost as suicidal.

“It was like, ‘Hey, why don’t we finally do this acoustic thing that we talked about all the way back then?’” Bonamassa explains. “My original idea was me sitting in a chair, surrounded by guitars, telling stories about the songs, just me on my tod, nobody else. Kevin looked at me, and he goes, ‘No offence to you personally, but just talking about that bores me’. I was like, ‘Fair enough’.

“So then it was, like, how about we get a guy to play traditional Irish fiddle and mandolin, and maybe a percussion player who has a real ‘world’ feel? Maybe we should get a right-field instrument, something that not everybody has heard of. And then maybe we get keyboards, but not in a traditional sense. And maybe we have accordions, glockenspiels, a utility guy… all of a sudden, it all kinda came together.”

Bonamassa didn’t transform his songbook beyond recognition, à la Unplugged’s Layla, but he’s certainly bent it out of shape. “Kevin and I sat in the studio for about four hours,” he recalls of choosing the set.

“I thought we weren’t going to be able to do songs like John Henry; I thought the riffier stuff was gonna go out of the window. I had this weird idea to do [Tom Waits’s] Jockey Full Of Bourbon. And the day before the first show, we were at a meet-and-greet at this music store in Vienna; y’know, I’m there to sign autographs, put my hands in some clay and geek out with the dudes. When we’re all done, Kevin goes, ‘Joe, check this out’, grabs two mallets and starts playing the melody to Sloe Gin on this glockenspiel-looking device. That was the day before the first gig. So we didn’t sit and woodshed it for months. There was no time for that.”

All he had was an ethos. “You know, I watched MTV Unplugged as a kid, and those things were a definite lesson on what to do and what not to do,” he reflects. “Eric Clapton nailed it with the Unplugged album; I mean, he was arguably the best of all, and that was one of his pivotal records of the past 30 years. And then there’s the other bands, who just decided to go, ‘Hey, let’s just play it like we do in the arenas, with rubberband-sounding guitars’, and you’re going, ‘Uh-oh, that’s not exactly my idea of a good time’. I remember Stevie Ray Vaughan did a great Pride And Joy, where he was such a powerful musician that he could just come out with a Guild 12-string, like a Chris Whitley sort of situation, where a guy makes so much music with one guitar that he doesn’t need anybody to back him up. So when we started talking, we said, ‘Listen, let’s do this old school, nothing is allowed to be plugged in’. Which presented a huge challenge for the crew, because now you have 27 open mics onstage, and it just can’t get that loud.

“So we put this thing together in three days,” he continues. “We showed up in Vienna and rehearsed in this huge sound stage where they shoot movies. I’d obviously met [multi-instrumentalist] Arlan Schierbaum and [percussionist] Lenny Castro before, but the two other guys, Mats Wester and Gerry O’Connor, I’d never met. But it was like, we had 72 hours before the first gig, so it was just, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, thanks for doing this’. And honestly, it was the most fulfilling musical experience of my life, from day one to the very end. Nobody wanted it to end.”

It takes balls to work that fast, doesn’t it?

“Well,” considers Bonamassa. “I would say that what starts bad ends bad, and what starts good ends good, y’know? The intention was right, and the first couple of tunes we ran through, it just kinda glued itself together and I knew we had the right band. The middle of day two, my voice started to give out, because I was finding it such a heavy burden to sing in that frequency. It’s like, normally, I’ll do 17 or 18 tunes a night, and I do sing, but there’s a break for a two-minute guitar solo and you don’t realise how much that affects your stamina. So we had to cut the rehearsal halfway through the second day, because I said, ‘There won’t be a third day if we keep going’. Had a good night’s sleep, recovered, sang again, ran through it all, then had a pretty big soundcheck at our first gig.”

It would have prudent, you might think, to iron out the kinks at a low-key, last-minute club gig. “Actually, our first date was Montreux Jazz,” grins Bonamassa. “For the first three songs the crowd went crazy and I just thought ‘Thank God’. It may have been a little loose, but the spirit was there, and I’d rather have spirit than be note-perfect and flat. So that’s how it went down. We did seven shows and the first couple we were a little shaky, made a few mistakes, but by the time we hit Vienna, we knew the arrangements and chords and thank God, that was when the cameras showed up. The DVD came out great, but you can see the challenge it was for me as a singer.”

As the Live In Vienna releases testify, that night in Austria was a well-received triumph, pushing this consummate professional out of his comfort zone, but never into the ditch. Still, that was in front of a home crowd of non-haters. There will be those, we suggest, who will read Live In Vienna as final evidence that the 35-year-old has drifted irredeemably from his vital, lead-in-pencil, blues-rocking early releases – Blues Deluxe, let’s say, or Taking The Hit – to a tame, wicker-chaired brand of comfortably-seated campfire rock.

“You know what?” he reasons. “I’ve done three albums with Black Country Communion, and that’s enough rock for me. That really got me to exorcise my rock tendencies. Acoustic blues can absolutely be as powerful as electric, if you play it with the same intensity and fire. A lot of people, you give them an acoustic and for some reason it’s in their DNA to resort to a campfire song. But I mean, look at Woodstock: one of the most powerful performances was Crosby, Stills and Nash doing Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, and that was two acoustic guitars and three voices, and it was as heavy and had as much impact as Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner. If you take that kind of approach, it works. If you take the ‘hotel café, let’s see how mellow we can get here’ approach, it may not work out, especially in the context of blues. I had stuff in the back of my mind when we did this thing. Neil Young on Saturday Night Live, when he did that beautiful version of Harvest Moon. I’m a huge fan of Robert Johnson. I love Rory Gallagher’s acoustic bootlegs from the 90s. When I play acoustic, I hear bits of Doc Watson, bits of Ricky Skaggs, bits of Stephen Stills…”

The Vienna cover of Charlie Patton’s High Water Everywhere is particularly powerful, we tell him.

“Well, we first covered that in 2006, when Hurricane Katrina had just happened, and in the US, everything was a flood. And it was just one of those things where you happen to be in a Charlie Patton mood, and you put on a whole record, and all of a sudden, those lyrics just kinda started coming out of the speakers like daggers. I researched the history of the song, and it was about when they blew up the levee, trying to get the sharecroppers out of this land that they wanted. It was almost the same situation, where a levee breaks and then all of a sudden this whole neighbourhood is flooded out and people are dead. I’m not a political guy – at least not publicly – but I was like, ‘Well, that’s a very cool way to say that history sometimes does repeat itself’.

“But I think even more so,” he continues of the acoustic artists that influenced Vienna, “what really got me were guys like Chris Whitley. I mean, he was a one-of-a-kind player, just a hybrid of punk-rock and blues, with Dylan-esque lyrics – but he played it on a dobro. I opened up for him one time in Indianapolis, in front of about 80 people, and it was kinda strange going on before a guy with one dobro. I’d never heard of him, and he got up there and took us out. It was the heaviest display of music I’ve seen in my entire life. I was like, ‘Well, obviously, I was very wrong about this.’”

Likewise, Bonamassa is asking us to suspend our preconceptions for next month’s run of four London shows, held at four disparate venues, from the 200-capacity Borderline to the Royal Albert Hall. As The Blues went to press, he was still ironing out the details, but seemed set on shedding his musical skin each night.

“We’re recording all of those shows, both for DVD and audio,” he explains. “It’s a different band, a different show every night. It’s like, one night will be horns and blues, and another night will be just the three-piece. Maybe the Hammersmith Odeon will be rock, and then the Royal Albert Hall – which will be the end – will probably be the acoustic band, and maybe we’ll get the double-drums out again. So that’s the concept.”

Like we say: not just a man going through the motions. There’s a tantalising whiff of danger about the whole enterprise, even if Bonamassa’s chosen city is predictable, as an unashamed Anglophile who fell for London via the grooves of John Mayall’s Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.

“I really immersed myself into British culture when I got into British blues,” he recalls. “You know, I wanted to live in London in the 60s; that would have been my ideal point, just to hang. People think I’m British over here, because I buy a lot of my coat collection in London. I’ve been to Savile Row, and Sandi [Thom, girlfriend] has taken me to some of the finer shopping places.

“The Albert Hall speaks for itself,” he continues of the chosen venues. “The fact that we’ve been able to play the Hammersmith Odeon, three or four times now, that’s hallowed ground, especially in the 70s. Everybody played there, from Rory Gallagher to Whitesnake, and back. I mean, when I first came over to the UK, back in 2005, we were playing pub gigs, but they’d ram these little pubs full of people. That was how it all started.”

Culturally, London is quite a change from Los Angeles…

Bonamassa laughs: “LA is a sunny place for shady people. It really is. If you went to Beverly Hills, chances are you will see some really good plastic surgery – and some really bad plastic surgery. But it’s not all like that. There’s a working class that lives out in the Valley, and a lot of my friends are here. I could live anywhere and do this, because I’m not, quote, ‘in the business’. It’s not like I need to be in LA to make the scene.”

On the contrary, it feels like the blues scene revolves around him. Throw in another soul-rock covers album with Beth Hart, plus the inevitable slew of guest spots (“This Thursday, I’m doing a solo for James Cotton’s new album – he was the first professional blues act to ever give me a shot to play onstage with him, when I’d just turned 11.”) and the year ahead sounds like masochistic business as usual for Bonamassa. The whole look-how-hard he-works line of questioning is getting old now, but it’s hard to skim over that work ethic when your subject is yawning and banging the coffee-maker.

“I just got back from South-East Asia and Australia,” sighs Bonamassa of his permanently jetlagged state. “We finished up in Honolulu a couple of nights ago. It’s like a 15-hour plane journey from Sydney to Honolulu, but you land six hours before you left, technically, because you’ve crossed the date line. So I’m a little upside-down time-wise. I’ve been going to bed at eight, and waking up at six. I’m on businessman hours, as opposed to musician hours!”

Bonamassa fever is conquering the last few territories, then?

“Yeah, exactly,” he nods. “We went to a few places that we’ve never been to, such as Manila and Bangkok. It was 31,500 miles on an airplane over the course of 28 days, so a lot of flying. But it was great; the shows went good.”

Don’t they always?

He shakes his head: “It’s strange how it works. When I think I have a bad show, sometimes they’ll go, ‘That was the best one I’ve seen’. Some nights when I think I have a great show, people are like ‘Pfft, it was okay’. There’s still rough crowds, even now. I still get heckled. There’s always some dude who’s had a few too many Heinekens, like, ‘Joe, play it faster…!’, that kind of thing. But I’m a wise ass. I have a tendency to come back. If one guy gets away with it, then you’re gonna get another one. So you’ve got to make an example of them.

“I can tell you what kind of audience there is as soon as the lights go out,” he says. “Our intro music rolls – we’re doing Hayseed Dixie’s Highway To Hell right now – just to get people into the room, like, ‘Okay, it’s showtime’. And I can tell you exactly what the audience is gonna be like from the minute the stage goes black. If they roar, just from the lights going out, then it means it’s gonna be an energetic show. If they don’t, it’s like, ‘Okay, we gotta work tonight’. It depends what day it is, too. Sunday night is the toughest, because the weekend has happened and people are just in a mellow mood: it doesn’t matter if there’s four thousand of them. But you’ll win ’em over by the end.”

Enjoy him while he lasts, some say. There’s a theory that Bonamassa is firing out enough albums to secure his financial future, then he’ll retire to the trout farm.

That seems unlikely but, certainly, it feels like he’s in need of a break. First came the Grammys blast in 2011 (“I’m honestly so done with this bullshit!”). Then came last year’s tit-for-tat spat with Black Country’s de facto leader, Glenn Hughes. His graciousness and good humour has never slipped during an interview with this writer, but it’s only a semi-bombshell when he reveals there won’t be a studio solo album this year.

“I’m not slated to get back into the studio until January 2014,” he says, sounding relieved. “I think that 14 releases – between live and the studio – in a dozen years is enough. I think it’s good to take a break and recharge the creative batteries. I did that last summer, and the fact that I had two months off, and didn’t work as hard as I worked in the past decade, made the gigs more fun, less wound-up. I think this summer we’ll have the same luxury, just get out of the festival crowd and all that traffic, where every band in the world is touring. And we’ll just do spring and fall.”

A summer of domestic blues bliss at home with Sandi, then?

Bonamassa laughs: “Sandi and I don’t talk about music at home, at all. We have a strict policy of separation of church and state. I only heard Sandi’s record when it was finished. If things get mixed up like that, it won’t work, because to have parallel careers in the same profession, doing arguably the same thing, it’s gotta be deeper than that. Her and I are like best friends, and we talk very little about music. There’s no jam sessions at our place. The ‘power couple’ of the blues? I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s more Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. They actually have a band together.”

Which bands are playing on the Bonamassa-Thom stereo?

“Y’know, I’ll tell you, I think the best band to come out in a very long time is The Black Keys,” he says. “To me, that stuff has changed the game, and I think the record [Dan Auerbach] produced for Dr John was just great. Some people do lo-fi for the sake of being cool, and maybe the hip rock magazines will pick it up, but, no, those guys, they walk the walk and talk the talk. One of the people that I really take a lot of arrangement ideas from – and people might be surprised at this – is Bruce Hornsby. The forgotten crooner, y’know? He’s like a musical nomad, and I take a lot of cues from him, because one day he’s doing a bluegrass record, next thing he’s got techno riffs, next day he’s putting out the best Americana stuff. He’s got musical ADD – just like I do.”

It’s not just musical. It’s easy to forget, as Bonamassa gabbles away like an old friend, that you’re in the presence of an arena-league superstar. His interview persona is the guitar-geek-done-good, and today he explains that the jut-jawed, Terminator-shaded figure of his electric shows is less a stab at cool, or an attempt to ‘hide himself’, as a practical necessity.

“I’ll tell you why that is,” he says. “I always wear sunglasses because I’m very light-sensitive. If there’s a bright light, I start to tear up, so imagine two 40,000-watt spotlights pointed at you, at all times. You know, it’d be like, ‘Why is he crying all the time?’ I wear sunglasses just because I see better, it’s less taxing on the eyes, plus, when I get tired, I get black circles, and it’s not very flattering.

Haven’t you ever had an obsessed fan?

“I mean, there’s been a few. There’s a few people that go a little bit far. There’s been a few that have harassed Sandi, but by and large… I mean, I talk to people at the venues, and, y’know, my tour manager always has the security guys there, and I go, ‘Listen, this is almost a joke’. I say, ‘Everybody is here to have a good time, they’re not here to tear the place up or tear me up’. I walk around the venue, I’ll walk around the streets, and you’ll run into people who are coming to the show and they’re like, ‘I’m surprised you don’t have somebody with you’. I’m going, ‘Nobody wants to punch me. I just play guitar. Nobody wants to hit me’. It would be pretentious. I’m not that big of a name. I don’t have three million Twitter followers like Kim Kardashian.”

Aren’t you starting to feel iconic?

“No!”

Have you ever used the expression ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

“No!” he protests. “Because people generally don’t. Never ask a question if you know the answer will be contrary to what you want to hear. Any sense of that Hollywood glitz and pomp and circumstance, or anything like that, I run from. But I will say this: I do not wear a backstage pass at my own shows. I have a driver’s licence that has my name on, if it comes down to that. That’s my only thing, that I don’t do. I don’t know if maybe it’s some kind of phobia I have, but I refuse to wear a dog-tag that has my name on it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The fact is, 13 years since A New Day Yesterday, Bonamassa knows exactly who he is. And in case he ever needs reminding, he simply turns the tourbus towards Utica, upstate New York. “They haven’t made me a statue yet, no,” he laughs, “but I enjoy playing my hometown. I’m proud of being from Utica. My old high school friends have come to watch some shows, and I haven’t seen them for 20 years. They’ll come to me backstage and say, ‘We didn’t recognise you when you get onstage because you were always this shy person in high school, but we recognise you now, back here’. They’ll go, ‘You haven’t changed much’. And I’ll go, ‘No, my whole life is still guitars, amps and gigs’. It’s just, now I’m 35 and not 15.”

And how about your family: the folks who kick-started all this with that first cheap teenage guitar and the weekend vinyl sessions spinning Rory Gallagher, Eric Clapton and Paul Kossoff. They must be knocked out by your ascent?

“Yeah, my family is very supportive,” Bonamassa replies. “For all this hoopla that goes around, basically they’re pretty simple, middle-class folks. My father is really proud of me. He’s got a guitar shop and people drive up just to see him, because he’ll sit there and talk to you for an hour, and he sells bobble-heads.

“I remember when he called me up and said, ‘I’m calling the shop Bonamassa’s Guitars…’ and before I could get a word out, he goes, ‘Don’t say anything – I had the name first!’”

You sense that this approval – along with his own steely vision – is enough to dilute the venom and fuel Bonamassa’s formidable momentum. Whatever muck the hipster critics, blues purists, awards boards and forum trolls might throw his way, he knows he’s knocked his life out of the park. “I would not change a thing about the first 13 years of my career,” he states.

“I mean, there have been missteps and mistakes, mostly by me. Some records have been better than others. Some shows have been better than others. But you learn from it, and it’s all led me to this point.

“I mean, you know, I’m 35 years old, and I’ve put out a lot of records, and been in business all the time. I keep a positive mental attitude, even though the earth still rotates the sun every year and I have to put another digit on my age. So I still feel relatively young, and relatively new in this thing. And I think we’ve accomplished some stuff that, y’know, has made people take notice and say, ‘I can’t believe those guys pulled that off.’”

This article first appeared in Issue 1 of The Blues, June 2012

In New Orleans, gumbo isn’t just an entrée; it’s a philosophy for life. Just like the legendary Louisiana stew, disparate elements blend together effortlessly on the streets of ‘New Awlins’. Tourists, prostitutes, students and lunatics crowd the sidewalks of the city’s French Quarter. The air is thick with the smell of Cajun, Creole, BBQ and Mexican cuisine. Blues, funk, soul, country and ska music spills out of the countless local bars and dives. It’s a melting pot; a smorgasbord if you will.

It’s in the French Quarter, at The House Of Blues, that we meet a new Southern supergroup that defines the term ‘musical gumbo’. In a real gumbo the Cajun Holy Trinity is chopped onions, celery and bell peppers. In the Royal Southern Brotherhood, it’s blues, soul and rock. RSB is blues guitarist Mike Zito, Neville Brother and ex-Meters percussionist Cyril Neville, guitarist Devon Allman (son of Allman Brother Gregg), ex-Derek Trucks Band drummer Yonrico Scott and bassist Charlie Wooten.

The thinking behind the Royal part of the band’s name is clear when you take into account the legacy of the Neville and Allman surnames. Two great Southern brands have been joined at last. Like any good gumbo, the success of Royal Southern Brotherhood is down to choosing ingredients that complement each other, then letting them simmer until the magic happens.

It was all Rueben Williams’ doing. “What would it be like to have an Allman Brother and a Neville Brother in the same band?” the mover and shaker on the Louisiana music scene, and RSB’s manager, pondered with Mike Zito one day. “How come no one’s ever tried to put them together?”

“We should try that,” replied Zito, and the blue touch paper began to smoulder. Until then the five cats that now make up the Royal Southern Brotherhood were happily going about their business. No one was looking for a new gig; none of these guys were out of work.

As it happens, Zito had already scored a 2009 Blues Music award with Pearl River, a song co-written with Cyril Neville. The two men had never met before. “That was the first time I’d written a song with anybody,” says Mike. “He sent me some lyrics and said, ‘Check these out. See what you think.’ That’s what started our friendship; winning an award.”

Mike and Devon Allman go way back. “We knew each other in St. Louis,” he comments. “We worked in a music store together. After that we stayed in touch over the years. We’d be touring and see each other on the road.”

The three men started talking, and soon Rueben’s dream of a Neville and Allman in the same line-up became a reality. All that was missing was a great rhythm section. When Zito, Neville and Allman found out that Yonrico Scott was available they jumped at the chance to lure him into the line-up. As it turned out, the drummer was just as excited by the prospect of playing in a band with a Neville and Allman as Zito was. Yonrico was in. Respected bassist Charlie Wooten – who was absent during our interview – completed the group. “From the original idea to the conception it was almost a year and a half,” says Mike.

“We’d been doing telephone calls, emails, texts; putting song ideas together,” says Cyril. “We were getting to know each other.”

The shit got real when the guys finally met, as a band, in a room in Louisiana. “It was a match made in heaven from the first note,” recalls Yonrico. “The first time we played together in the studio we just knew. It just came together. It felt right. The vibe was right.”

Royal Southern Brotherhood recorded their self-titled debut at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana. “BB King, Gatemouth Brown… everybody that’s somebody has recorded there,” says Yonrico of the studio that’s located on a 12-acre estate. Dr. John, Junior Wells, Johnny Sansone and Derek Trucks have also recorded there.

Yonrico is right about the chemistry. The record came together so fast the band barely had time to unpack their suitcases. “Five days,” he states proudly. “The whole thing.”

“Yeah, 12 tracks in two days and the record was finished in five,” adds Cyril who realised something special was happening from the moment he set foot inside the studio. “I got to the session at about 10 o’clock the morning after these guys got there,” he says. “The drummer and the guitar player were there. When I walked in they had already recorded two tracks.”

“And they were good…” Yonrico says.

They must have been. Cyril is not so easily impressed: “Coming from New Orleans you know, if the most critical person in the room tastes your gumbo and you see them smile then it was done the way it was supposed to be done to make that gumbo be what you wanted it to be.”

Not everyone in the band was initially happy with the speed that gumbo was taking shape…

“Everybody had their own ideas even coming in cos we’ve all done records different ways,” tiptoes a diplomatic Zito. “The way the music business is today it’s not as easy to spend as much time and money and things like that. I always like to do it live and it’s quick and you’re trying to capture something. Everybody had their own thing but we had to make it happen.”

“He’s talking about me!” laughs Devon. “I freaked out. I wanted 30 days; I wanted to go over every note. I had it in my head. Then I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna trust this. I completely changed the way I looked at making records after that. I’m never making another record for more than five days for the rest of my life.”

“I wanted it to be like it was when I grew up watching the sessions that went on in New Orleans,” adds Cyril. “What wound up on those records was performances. That’s what happened with this record.”

The album was produced by Jim Gaines, the man the band wanted in their corner from the start, or ‘Jump Street’ as Devon puts it. “When we as musicians know that this cat has produced Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan [“he did Fly Like An Eagle too remember,” adds Mike], you bring your A-game, you self-edit instantly. You don’t want to let him down. Just his presence made us get it together real quick.”

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Royal Southern Brotherhood, the album, sounds spontaneous, not rushed. It’s essentially the sound of a great band getting their rocks off playing together in a room. The band stir blues, soul, R&B, country and Southern rock flavours into an irresistible gumbo. Cyril Neville’s Sweet Jelly Donut is a prime example of just how well the groove of the Neville Brothers and the electric Southern blues of the Allman Brothers can work together. It’s a combination you just won’t hear anywhere else. “It’s exciting,” says Zito. “I think it sounds exactly like the Allman Brothers and the Neville Brothers.”

“I think the audiences are shocked when they hear us,” says Yonrico. “Yeah, shocked in a good way!” laughs Cyril before recalling his first ever encounter with the Allman Brothers.

“I was in Macon, Georgia, recording my first record with The Meters, produced by Leo Nocentelli and Allen Toussaint. Someone said, ‘There’s a band playing out in the park; they’re giving (Sweet Soul Music singer) Arthur Conley the key to the city. You gotta hear this band.’ That’s all he said.

“So, we started walking to the park and I’m in Macon, Georgia where I knew James Brown was from. So, in my mind, I’m about to go to school. I’m about to see the real deal. When we turned the corner, I heard this straight hard blues, and the first thing I see is long blond hair flying and a B3 organ being beat completely up. Then the second thing I noticed was they got two drummers. The intensity of what was coming from them musically wasn’t the picture I had in my head when I turned the corner. I was just sold on that forever. I even got an earring in my ear because they had an earring in theirs!”

“They were a groundbreaking band at the time,” says Devon. “They got a lot of shit for coming into truck stops and having half white and half black members. So, kudos for them for making it about the music… there’s no colour in music. This is souls and spirits and creativity.”

Ironically, given RSB’s make-up, the Brotherhood part of their name has caused them some problems. “It’s funny when we put this band together, says Devon, “and put the name of the band on social media, people were like, ‘You better change that name. It’s pretty racist.’ I’m like, half the band’s black and half the band’s white! How do you figure?”

Speaking of prejudice, blues purists, snobs, musical Luddites, whatever, are unlikely to accept Royal Southern Brotherhood as a blues band. For those with such a tightly defined perspective, Cyril offers a cautionary tale…

“I remember I once changed the channel on my Dad’s car radio because some country and western music was playing,” he remembers. “I could hear James Brown playing on the radio in someone else’s car. ‘Put my radio back where I had it,’ my Dad said.

‘Why do you want to listen to that?’

‘You like the blues don’t you? You like BB King and all that?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Well, that’s the white man’s blues. Put it back.’”

The song on the radio was Your Cheating Heart by country music deity Hank Williams, a tortured soul who always regarded himself as a blues singer.

“That was my lesson that music is music,” continues Cyril. “All the other stuff is about someone trying to sell magazines; stuff that had nothing to do with that feeling that I was getting from the music.”

“This is an American band,” says Mike. “There is no way you’re gonna be an American band and not have blues in you. It’s just the way it is. But Royal Southern Brotherhood isn’t a blues band.”

Somewhere a needle just scraped across an old LP. This is an interview for a blues magazine with a band that isn’t a blues band. Damn it. Digging deeper it turns out that Mike, like Cyril and the rest of the guys, doesn’t really go for pigeonholing musicians in a big way. That’s just not how it goes down in Louisiana. “It’s our foundation,” says Devon of the blues strands you’ll find embedded in the band’s DNA but he, like the others, refuses to allow Royal Southern Brotherhood to be defined by a single genre.

“The only person I’ve met who was like a real blues purist was a white man that wanted to sound exactly like the 1950s,” says Mike. “I mean, who’s going to play Muddy Waters better than Muddy Waters? I haven’t met a black man in my life that told me ‘that’s not blues’. I grew up in St. Louis and played with all these blues cats. The only people that told me ‘that’s not blues’ were white doctors and lawyers.”

“Some people think if you don’t sound like Muddy Waters – and you’re not playing I, IV, V chords – that’s not blues,” adds Devon. “That’s not true at all. The blues is all about taking the ball and running with it. If you just do the same thing everyone else is playing you’re not doing anything for the blues. It’s got to flower.”

“Blues music has to evolve,” agrees Mike. “The same way it did in the 60s when it was all over and done and Muddy Waters couldn’t sell a record. Then all these English guys learned the music, came to the United States and made Muddy Waters famous by playing his music.”

“Luther Allison once said something along the lines of, ‘You can’t jive anybody with the blues. They’ll know if you’re bullshitting,’” offers Mike. “You’ve got to do it your own way so you’re not bullshitting.”

The membership of the Brotherhood frequently refer to the band as a project but all agree it’ll be a long time before the ladle hits the bottom of this pot of gumbo. Mike, Cyril, Devon, Yonrico and Charlie are so fired up about RSB that they’ve essentially put their regular bands on hold for the foreseeable future. Still, they seem surprised that it’s all worked out so well considering that, according to Devon, the band “was a side project like, ‘when we have time, let’s play with Royal.’”

“This has become project one for me,” claims Cyril. “There was no doubt then; there’s no doubt now. This record is going to stand the test of time.”

The rest of the guys nod their heads in agreement. “None of this was on purpose – I’ll tell you that,” says Mike. “There was no masterplan. It wasn’t to do something that was marketable, or to make money. It was in steps. Can we write? Can we play together and like each other? You had five guys that were doing their own thing. They have careers and are doing well. So, it was like, can we put that aside? Is this really going to work?”

It obviously has, but if things hadn’t worked out so well, and the chemistry wasn’t there, none of these guys would have hesitated in calling it a day.

“It isn’t like we need to do this,” says Devon. “We want to do this. It feels right.” Like the rest of the band, Devon takes the sentiment behind the Brotherhood part of the band’s name very seriously: “We keep the same hours. We’ve been down the same highways. This is home.”

The Allman Brothers Band were among the pioneers of what would become the southern rock genre. What they did was combine blues, hard rock, consummate songwriting, and some astonishingly creative virtuoso musicianship. They never allowed themselves to be reined in by genre constraints, in doing so fashioned timeless, influential songs.

10) In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed

A jazz oriented instrumental written by Betts for the Idlewild South album. He named it after a headstone he saw in a graveyard in Macon, Georgia. While the studio version is confident and intricate, it was the live rendition on At Fillmore East when the composition came into its own.

9) Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More

Written by Gregg Allman and featured on the Eat A Peach album, this was specifically written for his late brother, although Gregg had begun to compose it while Duane was still alive, dealing with returning Vietnam vets. It has a lean, mournful refrain that benefits enormously from being just three minutes long.

8) Good Clean Fun

The band’s only chart topping single in America, it was written by Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts and Johnny Neal. Also featured on the album Seven Turns, this was a welcome return to the type of harmonic guitar sound which had been such a crucial part of their sound in the early years.

7) Blue Sky

Written by Betts for Eat A Peach, this was also the first song where he handled the lead vocals. Inspired by his girlfriend, the track is also the last one on which Duane Allman played. His performance is a remarkable mix of sadness and gentility, giving this an extra frisson.

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6) Melissa

This was first recorded by Duane and Gregg Allman as a demo in 1967. When Duane died in 71, Gregg played it at the funeral as his brother loved the song. It was then decided to record this for Eat A Peach. Dickey Betts’ guitar solo here gave the ballad an extra dimension.

5) Statesboro Blues

A song written by Blind Willie McTell in 1928, this has been recorded by a lot of artists. However, the version done by the Allmans for At Fillmore East is regarded as the best. Duane Allman’s stunning slide guitar work lifted this rendition into a thrilling class of its own.

4) Midnight Rider

Featuring an acoustic guitar, congas and swelling organ, this was written by Gregg Allman with help from roadie Kim Payne. Once the song was completed, Allman broke into the studio during the night to record it for Idlewild South. The lyrics have the desperation of traditional blues, but it has an overall stylish power.

3) Whipping Post

An early Gregg Allman composition, this was lyrically highly emotive, talking about the struggles to make an impact as a musician. This was written quickly to fill in a hole on the band’s debut album. But it was live when it came into its own, allowing for a breathtaking panorama.

2) Jessica

This instrumental was written by Betts and named after his daughter. Musically, it’s a tribute to gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. There’s a bouncy, vibrant attitude created to reflect the upbeat mood. While the version on the Brothers And Sisters album is nearly eight minutes’ long, an edited single edition was also done.

1) Ramblin’ Man

Perhaps the band’s most popular song, it was originally thought to be too country oriented for the band. However, they persisted with it, eventually recording the song for Brothers And Sisters. Betts’ vocals were a little more mainstream than Gregg Allman’s, while there was an iconic guitar jam at the conclusion.

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