When Pink Floyd released extensive box set The Early Years 1965-1972 in 2016, it provided an unmissable opportunity to re-evaluate their contribution to movie soundtracks during the period. That year Prog offered an analysis of what was and what could have been.

The years 1965 to 1972 highlight Pink Floyd’s fertile relationship with leftfield filmmakers. From their very first stage appearance, it was obvious their music was the perfect accompaniment for visuals, as their pioneering Mike Leonard-designed liquid light show expertly demonstrated. After troubled, charismatic frontman Syd Barrett left the group in early 1968, their increasing facelessness underlined their desirability to filmmakers, with their blankly emotional soundscapes adding gravitas to any cinematic climax.

Floyd are linked to four major movie works from the era: Barbet Schroeder’s More and La Vallée (Obscured By Clouds); Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point; and Adrian Maben’s not-actually-live-in-concert Pink Floyd: Live At Pompeii. But beyond these, their music is scattered throughout various films. Significant moments date from right at the outset of their career. Peter Whitehead’s documentary Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London and Peter Sykes’ The Committee are two early examples of how the Floyd could be called on to provide an instant trip to your movie.

Tonite Let’s Make Love In London was a fantastic capture of the city at the summit of the 60s. Essentially a document measuring just how far England’s capital swung, it interspersed interviews with scenesters such as Mick Jagger, Eric Burdon and Julie Christie and footage from the fabled April 1967 14 Hour Technicolor Dream at Alexandra Palace. It captured the band three months earlier at Sound Techniques in Chelsea, recording a fiery version of Interstellar Overdrive, and the rather less flammable tom-tom driven 12 minutes of Nick’s Boogie.

The Committee from 1968 is a different matter entirely. The 55-minute film saw Floyd contribute arguably little more than a glorified collection of sound effects. Director Sykes’ initial idea had been to work with Barrett, which was not to be. Writer Max Steuer recounted that Floyd were tremendously together when it came to their contribution.

“We started at nine each morning and did 12 hours or so. Roger Waters was always there at 8.30, David Gilmour shortly after; then Nick Mason, and Rick Wright just before nine. It was amazingly professional. The road crew set up the first day by 8 o’clock or so.” The two main recordings were drone-led, helping usher in the band’s next phase. The plot – very stylized and surreal – centred on Paul Jones as a hitchhiker hauled up before a mysterious committee, called to explain a man’s murder. It was tremendously in-era.

These films were relatively low-key; their next venture, More, was not. The band’s relationship with Iranian director Barbet Schroeder – a protégé of Jean-Luc Godard – was to be easy and productive. Mason later recalled that the group’s members were paid £600 each; not insignificant amount for eight days’ work. “Roger came up with a number of songs for the film that became part of our live shows for some time after,” the drummer added.

One of those, Cymbaline (which began life as the nightmare sequence from their concept The Man and The Journey) was a live staple and the greatest advert for this album as a whole. Elsewhere, Crying Song established Gilmour as a solo guitarist on a Floyd album, and The Nile Song underlined the band’s rockier side.

There was little budget so the band watched the film, timing sequences, then recorded at Pye Studios in London’s Marble Arch, rather than their usual Abbey Road. At Pye they worked for the first time with Brian Humphries, who’d later collaborate on Wish You Were Here and Animals. The film itself was a meandering tale of the naïve Stefan (Klaus Grünberg) who becomes entranced with Estelle (Mimsy Farmer), drops out and joins the hippie scene in Ibiza, before succumbing to the thrall of heroin. Floyd’s music is used sparingly yet effectively.

Their next film project was not as much fun. Zabriskie Point was Michelangelo Antonioni’s love letter to the collapse of the 60s; and as well as the Floyd, weapons-grade ambassadors of the counterculture such as Jerry Garcia and the Rolling Stones were on the soundtrack. Floyd recorded a wealth of material in Rome for the soundtrack, much of which was rejected. Most famously, Wright’s The Violent Sequence would form the basis of Us And Them from The Dark Side Of The Moon four years later.

The music choices, like most of their soundtrack work, sit outside their canon – especially Crumbling Land, which is the closest to Americana they ever came. As Floyd historian Stuart Shea notes, “Antonioni created a film depending on and celebrating empty space: musical, physical and emotional.”

Like the other Floyd films of the era, few will actually admit to watching it all the way through – yet its closing sequence is possibly the greatest of all Floyd links with movies. Female protagonist Daria (Daria Halprin) looks out across Death Valley as she visualises the residential desert development exploding repeatedly in slow motion, as Come In, No. 51 Your Time Is Up (a reworked version of Careful With That Axe, Eugene) plays out to spectacular effect.

The music element of Live At Pompeii, their most famous film outing of this era, is director Adrian Maben’s portrayal of their performance without an audience in the historic Roman amphitheatre; and it’s become a cornerstone of their mythology. It truly kept the band alive when their touring schedule slowed down. It was seemingly the choice of late-night picturehouses for the whole of the 70s, often paired with Crystal Voyager (more of which later).

Released in 1972 to accompany the film La Vallée the album Obscured By Clouds is one of Floyd’s most straightforward; its meaty rock songs and plaintive ballads illustrate what could have happened to the group for the rest of the decade had Waters not taken his stand. Working once more with Barbet Schroeder, the film looked at the rejection of society in favour of a countercultural nirvana. Set in Papua New Guinea, French diplomat’s wife Viviane (Bulle Ogier) sets off on an expedition, led by guru figure Gaëtan (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), in search of a mythical valley – with ultimately tragic consequences.

The band convened at Château d’Hérouville near Paris (soon to be enshrined in pop legend by Elton John on Honky Château, and where the Bee Gees would later record their significant contribution to Saturday Night Fever). Here, as they’d done with More, Floyd watched a print of the film and set about recording what was initially incidental music. Schroeder later told journalist Mark Blake: “[They] wonderful to work with. It was beautiful and fantastic music. The biggest present.”

The menacing title track is one of the rockiest things the group recorded, emanating out of Gilmour’s electronic VCS3 drone, with walls of guitar over Mason’s tribally influenced early drum machine-driven percussion. It was also – subliminally or otherwise – affectionately referenced on the frequently-seen 1970s Denim aftershave commercial. Free Four gave the group a toehold in the US, and saw Waters for the first time making explicit reference to the wartime death of his father (although Corporal Clegg from 1968 had alluded to it). The success of Free Four on FM radio opened the way for The Dark Side Of The Moon. There’s a view that More and Obscured By Clouds are somehow not ‘proper’ Floyd albums. Not so: they’re the sound of a band with the pressure off.

After the victory of Dark Side, Pink Floyd invested money in films to accompany their live performances. That didn’t stop their music being used in a variety of other people’s movies – most notably in David Elfick’s Australian surf documentary Crystal Voyager, written and narrated by surfer George Greenhough. Echoes plays out its full length under rolling waves, and the group were sufficiently impressed to use the footage to accompany the track onstage. Even controversial Polish director Walerian Borowczyk utilised a section of Shine On You Crazy Diamond in 1976 in the Sylvia Krystal/Joe Dallesandro vehicle La Marge (The Margin) to accompany a sequence in the film of oral sex.

There is, of course, a fifth major work later on: Pink Floyd – The Wall, which is a very different beast. Alan Parker’s imagining of the album’s concept has proved an enduring success since its release in 1982, mired in controversy, mainly because of the fiery relationship between Waters and the director, who’d risen through TV adverts and had enjoyed significant success with his films Bugsy Malone, Fame and Midnight Express. Both wanted to control the project; eventually, Parker forbade Waters to join him on set on a daily basis. The film is just like the album: not for everyone; but if it is for you, the sensory overload, the bludgeoning by Gerald Scarfe’s animations, and the relentless attack of Waters’ lyrics make it an unparalleled tour de force. The Wall starred Bob Geldof as Pink, and charts with little subtlety his descent into mania. As difficult and as challenging as its parent album, the movie is about as far away as possible from the mellowness the group had become associated with.

Parker would subsequently work with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack of his film Birdy – although the director was initially reluctant because of Waters. “Peter’s not of that world,” Parker told Spencer Bright in 1988. “He’s a very different person. He doesn’t have any of the hang-ups or the unpleasantness of that particular business. We got on so well; he’s such a sweet man. It was a refreshing change.”

Aside from later concert films and the instrumental soundtrack to Mason’s racing car showcase La Carrera Panamericana, there’s one last Floyd visual curio: The Final Cut, made to accompany the much-misunderstood album of the same name from 1983. Directed by Willie Christie, it’s fundamentally a longform video – over the course of 19 minutes, we follow the teacher from The Wall (Alex McAvoy) as he mourns the loss of his son in the Falklands conflict. We see a skewed attack on bingo-driven Britain in Not Now John and the teacher fantasises about assassinating the world’s dictators in The Fletcher Memorial Home.

Waters himself, freed of any artistic constraints, makes a series of cameo appearances. As Floyd commentator Toby Manning has written: “There’s a ghost of something interesting here, though it’d require a séance to discover it.”

Although seen often as stopgaps, Floyd’s film recordings of their first seven years act as a vital piece of the jigsaw – a prompt to what happened next. The palate-cleansing of More took them away from attempting to ape Barrett on an ever-diminishing parade of 45s. Obscured By Clouds was an opportunity to let their hair down in a short burst and deliver to order – something as a band they were never able to do again.

This writer interviewed David Gilmour in 2002 and asked him for his recollections of Obscured By Clouds. He said: “Good fun. Château d’Hérouville. We never categorised film soundtracks in the same way – that’s why they never make it on to collections.” The Early Years 1965-1972 offers the chance to realise how vital a part they play in the legacy of the group.

It’s something we’ve seen time and time again over the last few years: a massively successful band venturing into cinemas with a movie that’s part concert film, part documentary. Everyone from Ghost to Pulp has given it a go, and while it’s often gratifying seeing such stars unload their hits on the big screen, the behind-the-scenes looks sometimes lack. Like autobiographies with glaring omissions, these self-produced reflections give subjects the chance to downplay difficult truths.

This is why it was so interesting when Linkin Park announced their intention to wade into the genre. Arguably the biggest nu metal act of all time, their 2000 debut Hybrid Theory having defined a generation, their story has become one of resilience following frontman Chester Bennington’s suicide in 2017. They reformed in 2024, with new vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer/producer Colin Brittain, then endured the scrutiny of Armstrong’s past ties to Scientology to (quite quickly) reach the mountaintop for the second time in their careers. In the last two years, they’ve topped charts with the From Zero album, put on their biggest-ever gig at Wembley Stadium and become the first band with a female singer to headline Download.

Directed by turntablist/co-founder Joe Hahn, it would have been easy for Unshatter to focus solely on the positives: the fact that the six-piece are back on top of the musical world, and how big and passionate the crowd was when they played São Paulo’s Allianz Parque stadium on their reunion tour. But Hahn, a proven director with 2014 feature-length thriller Mall under his belt, tells a gripping, heart-rending story.

Within 10 minutes, the members open up about the impact of Bennington’s death, how it sent them hurtling in disparate directions. They later admit their heartache after longtime drummer Rob Bourdon refused to return, and singer/guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda reveals his complex feelings over guitarist Brad Delson’s initial reluctance to get involved.

Hahn also shares studio footage that captures difficult talks about the band’s future (should it be called Linkin Park anymore?) and offers intriguing easter eggs, such as Shinoda’s early demo for comeback single The Emptiness Machine. The sole elephant in the room is the backlash towards Armstrong’s history with Scientology: a knotted, possibly dangerous topic, given the church’s power and reach.

The São Paulo live footage is less prevalent here than in other recent rock-docs, but it’s integrated brilliantly. The highlight is watching Armstrong record Heavy Is The Crown in the studio, then the jumpcut to her screaming it before 55,000 people. Discussions of how she’ll handle Bennington’s parts are followed by the rap metal barbs of Bleed It Out, which evidences what the other members say about her filling the old singer’s shoes without being a carbon copy.

Ending with archival video of Shinoda and Bennington together onstage, Unshatter is reverent without falling into hagiography. The anguish of losing a friend and bandmate, and the emotional minefield of continuing afterwards, is never shied away from. Even the most obsessive fan will see new things – and probably gain extra respect for how Linkin Park have scaled nu metal’s peak all over again.

Unshatter hits cinemas on Tuesday, September 30, via Trafalgar. The soundtrack is out now via Warner.

The trailer for the concert film Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning has been released.

The feature-length flick – which will recap Black Sabbath’s blockbuster reunion show at Villa Park in Birmingham on July 5, 2025, shortly before frontman Ozzy Osbourne’s death – is set to hit cinemas on October 28. Tickets are now available. Watch the trailer below.

The list of songs performed during the all-day event has also been released, and it can be seen in its entirety below.

As well as a headlining Black Sabbath set – which marked the heavy metal pioneers’ first time onstage since 2017, and their first performance to feature all four founding members since 2005 – and a set by Ozzy’s solo band, Back To The Beginning featured short slots from Metallica, Tool, Guns N’ Roses, Gojira and many others, who performed both original material and Sabbath and Ozzy covers.

There were also supergroups featuring Tom Morello, Billy Corgan, Tobias Forge, Yungblud, Sleep Token’s II and many others, who performed renditions of Sabbath and Ozzy hits. The cover of Changes by Yungblud, II, Frank Bello, Adam Wakeman and Nuno Bettencourt, which won the Best Rock Performance trophy at the 68th Grammy Award in February, will be among the songs making the cut.

Announced in early 2025, Back To The Beginning was put together as Ozzy’s final bow, following his retirement from touring in 2023 due to Parkinson’s disease and other health issues. The show was held a short distance from where the singer grew up in Aston, with proceeds going to local charities Cure Parkinson’s, the Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity and Acorns Children’s Hospice.

The show was Sabbath’s first since the end of their farewell tour, The End, in 2017. Although Ozzy, guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler took part in that tour, founding drummer Bill Ward didn’t, due to a contractual dispute ahead of the band’s 2012 reunion and the recording of the band’s final album, 2013’s 13.

The 44,000 tickets to Back To The Beginning quickly sold out upon release, and a livestream of the event was watched by more than five million people. An estimated $11 million US (£8,323,425) was raised for charity.

Ozzy died on July 22, 2025, just over two weeks after Back To The Beginning, following a heart attack at his Buckinghamshire home aged 76. Geezer Butler wrote in trouble after the news broke: “Four kids from Aston – who’d have thought, eh? So glad we got to do it one last time, back in Aston. Love you.”

Villa Park will be the site of the first edition of Ozzfest, the festival co-founded by Ozzy and his wife/manager Sharon in 1996, since 2018 next year. A US edition of the festival is also in the works.

Songs appearing in Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning

• Ozzy Osbourne – I Don’t Know
• Mastodon – Supernaut
• Rival Sons – Electric Funeral
• Anthrax – Into The Void
• Halestorm – Perry Mason
• Tool – Hand Of Doom
• Ozzy Osbourne – Mr Crowley
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. David Draiman, Jake E. Lee, David Ellefson, Mike Bordin, Adam Wakeman – Shot In The Dark
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Whitfield Crane, Scott Ian, Nuno Bettencourt, Frank Bello, II (Sleep Token), Adam Wakeman – Believer
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Yungblud, Nuno Bettencourt, Frank Bello, II (Sleep Token), Adam Wakeman – Changes
• Lamb Of God – Children Of The Grave
• Alice In Chains – Fairies Wear Boots
• Gojira – Under The Sun
• Pantera – Electric Funeral
• Slayer – Wicked World
• Ozzy Osbourne – Suicide Solution
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Travis Barker, Danny Carey, Chad Smith, Tom Morello, Nuno Bettencourt, Rudy Sarzo – Symptom Of The Universe
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Billy Corgan, Tom Morello, K.K. Downing, Adam Jones, Rudy Sarzo, Danny Carey – Snowblind
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Sammy Hagar, Nuno Bettencourt, Adam Wakeman, Rudy Sarzo, Chad Smith, Vernon Reid – Flying High Again
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Papa V Perpetua, Vernon Reid, Nuno Bettencourt, Adam Wakeman, Rudy Sarzo, Travis Barker – Bark At The Moon
• Tom Morello’s All Stars Ft Steven Tyler, Ronnie Wood, Nuno Bettencourt, Tom Morello, Andrew Watt, Rudy Sarzo, Travis Barker – The Train Kept A-Rollin’
• Tom Morello’s All Stars feat. Steven Tyler, Nuno Bettencourt, Tom Morello, Andrew Watt, Rudy Sarzo, Chad Smith – Walk This Way
• Guns ’N’ Roses – Never Say Die
• Metallica – Hole In The Sky
• Ozzy Osbourne – Crazy Train
• Black Sabbath – War Pigs
• Black Sabbath – N.I.B.
• Black Sabbath – Iron Man
• Black Sabbath – Paranoid
• Ozzy Osbourne – Mama I’m Coming Home

Famously described as "The Citizen Kane of British pop movies” by BBC film critic Mark Kermode, 1975's Slade In Flame movie was expected to be another rung on the ladder to international stardom for Slade, but it didn't quite work out like that. In 2003, Classic Rock spoke with frontman Noddy Holder about one of the greatest, most enduring dramatic rock films of all time.

It's all too easy to forget just how enormous Slade actually were. Perhaps it's because it would be inconceivable today for four homely rapscallions from Wolverhampton to gain even the most tentative foothold in a contemporary pop scene almost entirely based on airbrushed skin and washboard six-packs. But in the spring of 1974 Slade – undeniably the least glamorous glam band of them all – appeared utterly invincible.

Despite being fronted by a mutton-chop-whiskered, tartan-suited foghorn in a mirrored top hat who had a voice so caustic it could very probably peel paint, Slade were relaxing in the afterglow of Merry Christmas Everybody, their sixth number one hit single to date, which had sold half a million copies on its first day of release, debuted at the top spot and set up camp there for five weeks. Their third consecutive chart-topping album Old, New, Borrowed And Blue had just hit the racks, and Slade were, officially, the biggest band to hit the UK since The Beatles.

Consequently, band manager Chas Chandler (ex-Animals bass player and formerly manager and producer to Jimi Hendrix) was looking to consolidate Slade's position with an entirely new challenge and, following Brian Epstein's exemplary Beatles template, decided that the time was right for Slade to make a film.

"We just saw it as the next step in our career," remembers Noddy Holder, Slade's effusive former vocalist today, "We always took our career in stages: when we had our first hit we wanted a Number One; then we wanted another; then we wanted to go in at Number One on the day of release. We always had a goal to aim for, but had never really considered making a film. Chas Chandler saw it as the next inevitable step on our career path. I don't think he looked on it to widen our market; he just thought it was another step up the career ladder and something we should try."

Noddy's protestations notwithstanding, Slade were intent on broadening their market as they set to work on what would become Slade In Flame. Ubiquitous at home and all points east Slade might well have been, yet in spite of dogged touring, the all-important, enormously lucrative American market remained relatively oblivious to the band's parochial charms. Slade's all-stomping, boots-and-braces lads' rock may have entirely entranced Britain's teens, but the peculiar, quintessentially English spectacle of the band's perpetually prancing guitarist Dave 'Superyob' Hill simply didn't translate into significant sales across the Atlantic.

The natural progression and maturation of Holder and bassist Jim Lea's songwriting prowess also saw Slade courting a more adult market at home; the deliberately misspelt rowdiness of Mama Weer All Crazee Now and Skweeze Me Pleeze Me had given way to the reflective balladry of My Friend Stan and Everyday, a pair of singles that, significantly, failed to reach the Number One spot.

"We knew that we couldn't carry on churning out things like Cum On Feel The Noize over and over again," Noddy remembers, "We didn't want to be stuck in a rut doing one type of thing. We knew we were a far broader band musically than that."

It was at this pivotal juncture that Slade decided to launch themselves onto the big screen. At a time when it was crucial not to further alienate their wavering core audience (already dumbfounded by Everyday for its reinvention of Noddy as a love-sick crooner, and also slightly resentful of the amount of attention that the band were paying to America), the hitherto happy-go-lucky Slade spent an entire year working on an uncharacteristically dark film that absolutely nobody expected.

Most ironically of all, the very qualities that so completely perplexed mid-70s youth on Slade In Flame's initial theatrical release ultimately assured the film's enduring longevity.

"The reason that Flame has stood the test of time so well," Noddy reckons, "is because it wasn't what people expected. They expected a slapstick, speeded-up comedy with car chases and not much plot, but we went totally the other way. We made a film that would show the other side of the rock business, not the side that the public generally see, and I think the public, certainly in '75, were very shocked by it. It wasn't what they expected from Slade at all, but I think it's helped it stand the test of time as a good rock film."

Directed by Richard Loncraine (who later worked with Sting on Brimstone And Treacle), Slade In Flame follows the swift rise and spectacular fall of Flame, a late-60s rock band who sound uncannily like Slade. Stoker (Noddy Holder) fronts a tragic theatrical horror rock band, based loosely on Screamin' Lord Sutch And The Savages.

He then teams up with Barry (Dave Hill), Paul (Jim Lea) and Charlie (played with brave aplomb by Slade drummer Don Powell, still suffering the short-term memory loss symptomatic of the head injuries he'd received in a July '73 car crash), who have been enjoying the collective ignominy of backing PJ Proby-style club crooner Jack Daniels (a magnificently convincing performance from Alan Lake).

The four-piece become Flame, and are quickly discovered by high-class wheeler-dealer Robert Seymour (Tom Conti, in his first film role), who casually grooms them for stardom. All is going swimmingly until the band's former agent, violent underworld shark Ron Harding (menacingly realised by bespectacled Johnny Shannon), turns up with a long-forgotten, watertight contract and comprehensively pisses on the party.

Rather than simply offering a tarted-up time capsule of the brickies-in-blouses glam rock epoch, the gritty, unflinching realism of Slade In Flame harked back to the kitchen-sink dramas of the early 60s, and as a consequence joins A Hard Day's Night and The Girl Can't Help It as one of the greatest, most enduring dramatic rock films of all time.

Although it's a cautionary tale of credibility-stretching exploitation that's laced with moments of eye-watering violence and highly improbable road-life preposterousness, apparently it's all based on cold, hard fact, as Noddy recalls: "While working on the soundtrack we went out to America to do some dates, and took the writer (Andrew Birkin, brother of 'Je T'aime' Jane) and director out to America with us to tell them stories of what life was like in a rock'n'roll band-not only from our point of view, but from other bands that we knew. They then came back and finished off the storyline and script while we finished the tour.

"So every scene in the film is actually true, even though some of them do seem far-fetched. Even the story of the gunfire on the pirate radio station [Flame have shots fired at them as they endeavour to conduct an interview with a staggeringly youthful Tommy Vance on an offshore pirate station], that's a true story that happened at Radio London in the Thames Estuary back in the 60s. And yes, Screamin' Lord Sutch did get trapped in his stage-prop coffin when someone leaned the lid against a wall - he was rather accident-prone."

If it was the anecdotal script that provided the realism, it was the supporting cast that provided the grit. Johnny Shannon, fresh from intimidating Mick Jagger in Nicholas Roeg's Performance, was a genuinely scary individual, a textbook East End wide-boy pitched somewhere between Mike Reid and Ronnie Kray. "When he pulled your hair," Noddy confides with a wince, "he really pulled your hair".

Alan Lake had just come out of prison. While enjoying a few libations in a nightclub, renowned hell-raiser Lake had assaulted a fellow boozer who'd had the effrontery to insult his wife, Diana Dors, and was subsequently detained at Her Majesty's pleasure. Slade In Flame marked Lake's return to the screen, and he was expected to be on his best behaviour.

However, on the very first day of filming, he headed for the nearest available hostelry, enjoyed a hearty liquid lunch, returned to the location and took a full-blooded swing at the manager of the club in which they were filming. Lake was clearly a loose cannon, and simply had to go.

Despite Slade's forthright assertions that Alan Lake was Jack Daniels, the producers gave him his marching orders. The following day, Diana Dors – in all her pneumatic glory - arrived on the set and literally begged for Lake to be reinstated. She gave her personal assurance that he would stay off the sauce and from that day forth be as good as gold. He was given one more chance.

And true to Diana's word, his subsequent behaviour was exemplary. In the thumb-twiddling downtime between takes, Lake, a seasoned raconteur, would unravel colourful, hair-curling tales of inebriation, fisticuffs and porridge that most certainly kept the band entertained, but by electing to use unpredictable wild cards of Lake and Shannon's calibre, Slade were hardly making life easy for themselves.

"That's why we chose them," Noddy says. "They were menacing characters in their own right, and that's why we picked them to be in the movie. We wanted to give the movie a menacing look and to have the realism that those old black-and-white movies from the 60s used to have, the gangster-type movies that used to be around. We wanted to give Flame that sort of atmosphere.

"But, on the other hand, we got in Tom Conti, who was a real bona fide trained actor. So Flame had a bit of everything; it had a bit of the dark side of the rock business, it had a bit of comedy in it had all different sorts of acting abilities in there, but it all seemed to mesh together and click."

Far Far Away, the first single to emerge from the Slade In Flame soundtrack - released an almost unprecedented five months after its predecessor, there, Bangin' Man (at their most prolific, the gap between Slade's singles was a truly head-spinning nine weeks) - stalled at No.2. The next one, How Does It Feel? never rose higher than No.15, bringing to an end Slade's impressive run of 12 straight top five singles.

Still one of Noddy's favourites, How Does It Feel? certainly wasn't lacking in quality. And while its relative commercial failure was partially symptomatic of the listening public's growing disillusionment with the glam rock scene as a whole, it was proof positive that by taking a year out to make a movie, and concentrating all their remaining efforts on breaking America, Slade had ultimately bitten off more than they could chew.

"I'm sure that it did cause us to lose momentum," Noddy concurs. "I mean, when you're as hot as we were at the time, you have to be there all the time, plugging away on Top Of The Pops every week. That was the only way of promotion in those days. There wasn't no MTV or videos to promote you; you had to go out and actually do the legwork and go all around the world promoting yourselves, doing TV, radio and live gigs all the time. You couldn't just send the video out to the territory and expect it to give you a hit record. That wasn't the way it worked in those days.

"But I think with the type of movie that Slade In Flame was and by going to America we did lose impetus. We'd been to America in short bursts before, but then we decided to make a concerted effort, and of course when you do that your other territories suffer."

Of course, since disbanding Slade, Noddy has cultivated quite a reputation as a singularly naturalistic thespian, so how goes his post-Grimleys acting career?

"I don't really want to go down the path of playing ageing rockers that top themselves," he says. "But I do get sent quite a few of them."

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 53, published in May 2003. Slade In Flame can be streamed via the BFI Player or Amazon. A remastered 50th Anniversary Blu-ray/DVD was released in 2025.

On July 29, 2026, Universal Studios announced a new haunted house inspired by Ozzy Osbourne for Halloween Horror Nights in both Orlando and Hollywood. The announcement was met with excitement from many Ozzy fans - for them, an opportunity to step inside the mythology of one of metal's most beloved figures, with an actor-led experience recreating highlights from his musical career, seemed like a dream combo.

There was, however, also a little cynicism. For some, the timing felt uncomfortably transactional. Is turning a recently deceased musician into a theme-park attraction simply another way of cashing in on their legacy while the grief is still fresh?

Going off the rails on the gravy train?

That sentiment was particularly pronounced on social media, where some fans accused Osbourne's family of turning his name into a commercial asset:

“He died and his family IMMEDIATELY turned him into a theme park attraction!"

“His family is just using his name on everything they can to get paid!"

You get the gist. There’s a major problem with this argument, though: Universal Studios had been doing Ozzy Osbourne-themed attractions long before his death.

The theme park titans had already incorporated Ozzy and Black Sabbath into a haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights more than a decade ago. In 2013, Universal Studios Hollywood featured Black Sabbath: 13, an attraction inspired by the band's then-new album and its occult imagery. Ozzy himself even visited the attraction at the time, giving it his own seal of approval by saying it’s “great, scared me a couple of times.”

Ultimately, there’s only one way to find out if the Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness haunted house is a loving tribute or a cynical cash grab, and that’s to head over to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Orlando and experience it for myself. So I did.

No more fears!

Imagine being able to step inside your favourite piece of album artwork. The thrill of being surrounded by its dark beauty, taking actual footsteps within its brooding world. That’s exactly what the Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness haunted house is. It’s the gothic fantasy visuals of heavy metal realised in tangible, 3D form.

The indoor walkthrough experience begins with a beautiful facade of gothic church ruins. Look down and there’s Ozzy’s face projecting through the water while Straight to Hell from 2020’s Ordinary Man plays in the background.

Then we jump back to 1988’s No Rest for the Wicked in the first scene, with Bloodbath in Paradise blaring as we walk beneath a temple of cloaked cultists wearing masks bearing Ozzy'S symbol.

Next, we tiptoe nervously through claustrophobic dungeons, strobe lights flash red and the soundtrack fittingly switches to Patient Number 9. Actors leap out to jump-scare from behind bars, disappearing back into the shadows too quickly to for us to fully appreciate their artfully crafted makeup and prosthetics.

From this point onwards, things descend into full-scale glorious madness in the most Ozzy ways imaginable. An enormous bat descends from the ceiling and bites the head off of the Prince Of Darkness (no, this isn’t a fever dream). Werewolves dressed as Ozzy leap out from behind giant tombstones as Bark At The Moon plays at full volume (no, this still isn’t a fever dream)

Then, lights on a full-sized train carriage flash brightly, illuminating a wide-mouthed Ozzy actor towering over us on stilts. He is dressed as a train conductor, and ushers us aboard. We are actually stepping on to the Crazy Train (at this point, is there anything I can possibly do to convince you this wasn’t a fever dream?).

Sure, stepping onto an actual crazy train is ridiculously literal. But it’s also ridiculously fun. And that’s, ultimately, is the tone that sums up the Ozzy Osbourne haunted house experience. It salutes his musical legacy in a theatrical, playfully dark way.

Despite the final scene featuring the throne from his very last concert, the attraction never feels like a sombre tribute that says “we miss you.” Instead, it’s a loud celebration that says “we loved you” with a wild grin on its face.

There’s also a variety of Ozzy-themed snacks for fans to enjoy at the event, including a milk chocolate bat with a raspberry-filled head, a mini black carrot cake (Ozzy’s favourite) and a Black Rain tequila-based drink, amongst others.

While the keyboard warriors will inevitably bemoan the Ozzy haunted house from a viewpoint that is, frankly, misinformed, the attraction itself champions his musical career in unique and special ways. It’s a legacy handled with love and respect. You suspect the man himself would have approved.

The Ozzy Osbourne: Prince Of Darkness haunted house will be at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood until November 1, 2026

John Carpenter, the auteur filmmaker behind horror classics Halloween and The Thing, is open to making a Metallica music video.

Talking to Metal Hammer, the 78-year-old reveals that he’s a fan of the California heavy metal giants, after his kids introduced him to their music via 1991 hit single Enter Sandman.

“We all loved it when it came out,” he says. “That album [1991’s self-titled album, AKA The Black Album] is just fantastic. And they are, right?”

He continues, “They were just this huge band, but I loved that album for introducing me to them. I’ve never actually seen them live,” then confirms, “I’d totally direct a music video for Metallica if they asked, though.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Carpenter celebrates rock music for being “still alive and still here” after many decades, “like me!” Although it “may be a bit less transcendent and popular than it was … it still speaks to people like it spoke to me all those years ago”.

He adds: “Music as an art form is probably the greatest thing that humanity ever created. It transcends language, going from country to country, across the world. Someone in Bangladesh can hear an American song and still love it.”

Carpenter is best known for manning the director’s chair on Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Christine, Big Trouble In Little China, Escape From New York and other cult pictures, but he’s also a prolific musician in his own right. He composed the scores for 15 of his 18 feature films, and has been releasing standalone studio albums with his son Cody Carpenter and his godson, composer Daniel Davies, since 2015.

Carpenter put out his latest album, Cathedral, in August via Sacred Bones. The metal-inspired project came with a tie-in graphic novel but was intended to stand as its own musical statement. “That’s first and foremost,” the director said in promotional materials.

He added: “It’s all about making the music work. This is somewhat different sounding stuff that we've done, but it's done with the same desire in mind. In other words, put this thing on and imagine you're watching a movie. That’s what we want you to do.”

Carpenter released his last feature-length directorial effort, The Ward, in 2010. He then served as executive producer on David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween legacy sequel and its two follow-ups. He continues to compose for films, including the opening credits score of Studio 666, the 2022 horror-comedy starring Foo Fighters.

Meanwhile, Metallica recently completed their three-year-long M72 world tour and are gearing up for a residency at Las Vegas multimedia venue The Sphere. Performances will begin on October 1 and end on March 13.

Brütal Legend developers Double Fine Productions say they’ll make a sequel to the 2009 heavy metal videogame starring Jack Black and Ozzy Osbourne – on one condition.

Two months after cutting ties with Xbox, the independent US studio pledge to make the game if their current Kickstarter campaign receives $100 million US (£74,068,500) in donations.

Double Fine describe the campaign, Amnesia Fortnight, as “a two-week period in which we forget about all the things we should be working on to pitch one another our wildest game ideas, choose our favourites, and make prototypes of them”.

Backers who donate more than $15 (£11.11) will be able to vote between the ideas developers present and decide which four get made. $30 backers get double voting power, and those who donate $60 and above get four-times the vote. At time of writing, the campaign has raised $385,867 (£285,856), just shy of its $400,000 goal with 28 days left.

Double Fine confirmed they were serious about Brütal Legend 2 and its proposed $100 million budget in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

“We aren’t joking,” they wrote. “If someone wants to give us $100M (or some miracle happens and the Kickstarter makes more than double the current record holder, which is $44M raised), we’ll make Brütal Legend 2. We’d love to do it, but a game like that requires significant funding.”

They added in a reply: “It would require the entire studio to solely focus on a single game for a long time, and funding would have to cover many elements of development. But if enough people want it that we raise $100M, who are we to refuse?”

The pledge comes two years after Double Fine head Tim Schafer admitted he was “torn” about making a follow-up to the action-adventure title, which was considered a commercial disappointment but went on to find a cult following.

“People ask about Brütal Legend 2 all the time, and I’m torn about that,” he wrote in a blog post marking the original’s 15th anniversary. “I know some of them want it with an evolution of the RTS [real-time strategy] stuff and some of them just want God Of War with [main character] Eddie Riggs. I understand the logic of making the second option, but I’m much more excited about the first.”

Programmer Chad Dawson added, “There’s so much of a world to explore that could be done in many ways. It could be an RPG [role-playing game], it could be an RTS. Or even an auto battler!”

As well as Black, who voiced protagonist Riggs, and Osbourne, who lent his voice and likeness to the Guardian Of Metal, Brütal Legend’s cast included rock musicians Lita Ford, Rob Halford and Lemmy Kilmister. Decorated actor Tim Curry, who died last month at the age of 80, voiced antagonist Emperor Doviculus. To honour Curry after news of his death broke, Double Fine made Brütal Legend free to download for 666 minutes.

2026 will go down as the year Mastodon were reborn, rebounding from tragedy with new members and a triumphant new album, Marrow Deep. Metal Hammer has honoured the occasion by teaming up with the Atlanta metal masters for a bundle unavailable in the shops!

Only through the Louder webstore, you can get your hands on the new issue of Hammer with a cover featuring The ’Don’s revamped lineup, as well as a stylish t-shirt dedicated to the band. Pre-order yours while stocks last!

Inside the new Hammer, we talk to founding members Brann Dailor, Troy Sanders about Bill Kelliher about the journey leading up to Marrow Deep, including the death of their long-time bandmates Brent Hinds last August, five months after he parted ways with the band, and their reinvigorations.

“I was immediately shocked and saddened,” Troy says of Brent’s death in a motorcycle accident, aged 51. “But unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised. I don’t mean that in any distasteful manner, whatsoever. I’ve done everything I could as a friend and as a bandmate over the years. I don’t know what else I could’ve done, so I’m kind of forced to just let go.”

“I wasn’t surprised that it happened, but I was shocked,” adds Bill. “I just didn’t think it was going to happen like that.”

They also cast a hopeful eye towards the future.

“I feel like the next record, in another year or two, will showcase even more of Nick [Johnston, new guitarist] and me playing off each other,” Bill says. “Toward the end of Brent’s time in the band, I was writing most of the rhythms and song structures anyway, and he would come in like a finishing carpenter to add the crazy solos. It’s a similar set-up with Nick, but Nick is much more receptive and absolutely full of fresh ideas.”

Elsewhere, we talk to metalcore heroes Motionless In White as they celebrate 20 years on the scene and release their best album yet, the aptly titled Decades.

“I ground myself to the bone for this record,” frontman and sole constant member Chris Motionless says. “I was going into these toxic cycles of workaholism and just burnt myself out. It took a little bit of my passion away, because it felt like a job for the first time, so I definitely wanted to walk away and come back to it. That’s part of why it took so long.”

We also go inside Ghost’s massive new concert movie, 2 Big To Rig. Tobias Forge tells us about how they captured the epic Skeletour stage show, the unfortunate incident that nearly derailed it, and his “extracurricular” future plans.

Meanwhile, seven years on from his throat cancer diagnosis, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine revisits his journey in an exclusive interview and an extract from his new book, In My Darkest Hour.

Green Lung take us on a tour of London’s graveyards and occult hotspots, Halestorm power couple Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger tackle your questions about love, keytars and… killer farts?! And Snot explain why they’re back in the studio, almost 30 years after the tragic death of frontman Lynn Strait.

Sleep Theory’s Cullen Moore shares his soulful playlist, Mudvayne/Hellyeah veteran Chad Gray delivers the lessons he learned from hanging out with a young Slipknot and meeting James Hetfield, and Godsmack give us the inside story of their blockbuster anthem, I Stand Alone. Plus, we meet Decessus, the Chilean death metal band led by a beauty queen.

All this, along with Eddfest, Metallica, Bring Me The Horizon, Sigh, Rory, System Of A Down, Acid Bath, Duff McKagan and much, much more.

Only in the new issue of Metal Hammer, available to pre-order now with that Mastodon cover and shirt!

The talent contest at this year's Miss World pageant, held at Khanh Hoa Children's Cultural Palace in Nha Trang, Vietnam, has been enlivened by a crushing performance from Ignacia Fernández, the Chilean contestant who went viral late last year after sharing her death metal vocal skills during the Miss World Chile pageant in Santiago.

Fernández, who has fronted the Chilean progressive melodic death metal band Decessus since 2020, sang the band's The Hollow Descent – released as a single last year – during the contest.

Unfortunately, the judges failed to reward Hernandez for her efforts, and England's Grace Richardson, Guadeloupe's Annaëlle Ibo and the Philippines' Asia Rose Simpson filled the medal positions.

"Getting to bring metal to the Miss World stage and share a part of who I am through music was an incredible experience," says Hernandez. "Every contestant who took part in the talent competition was extraordinary and unique. The level of talent was truly incredible, and I want to congratulate England on winning first place!

"Thank you to everyone, the organisation, and my fellow sisters here at MW who cheered me on and made this moment so special."

Decessus have released five singles – Deliverance, Dying Hope Blossoms, My War Of Pain, The Hollow Descent and Dark Flames – and made their UK debut at this year's Download Festival.

"Igancia exudes a quiet confidence that screams star quality," wrote Metal Hammer's man on the spot. "Holding herself with precise, careful movements that bring to mind the likes of Gaahl or Maynard James Keenan, where rabid energy isn't what makes them so captivating.

"She might have been crowned Miss World Chile, but we could be seeing a future death metal queen. Closing out on the apocalyptic Deliverance, we'd like to think this won't be the last time we see Decessus on these shores."

The Miss World 2026 pageant will come to a climax on September 5, with the current title holder, Thailand's Suchata Chuangsri, crowning the victor.

Ghost are playing Rats. ‘They’re still coming at you / And there is nothing you can do’, goes the song. “But there is something I can do!” Tobias Forge/Papa V Perpetua shouts to a crowd of 20,000 devotees at Mexico’s Palacio de los Deportes. “Tear you a new asshole – each!”

It’s very generous of him. Filmed across two nights of the Skeletour in September 2025 and directed by the tour’s creative director Amir Chamdin (who’s overseen seven of the band’s music videos), this is Ghost’s second concert movie, 2 Big To Rig. While 2024’s Rite Here Rite Now was shot on the Impera cycle and spliced live footage from a pair of gigs at the Los Angeles Kia Forum with skits furthering the Ghost lore, this document of the Skeletá era is more about romanticising their show. It features segments with crew members talking about how logistically complex the production is. “It’s too big to rig!” laughs one – adding that, still, they manage it every night.

2 Big… opens with Peacefield, the first track on Skeletá, and is startling from the off. Shot on 16mm film, it looks like an 80s VHS tape, grainy and high contrast. The effect is jarring, but 100 percent Ghost, indirectly nodding to their mythology and evoking nostalgia for a past that never existed, as if they’re a historic band playing a seminal concert like Live Aid. Where Rite Here Rite Now crisply revealed every thread of embroidery on the band’s costumes, 2 Big… is a blur of Rhinestones sparkling in the spotlights.

Watching it on an IMAX screen, you’re simultaneously immersed in a thrilling analogue world where Ghost are all that exist for the next 90 minutes, yet confused about why you can’t pick out the visual details at such scale. At one point, there’s a clip of a woman behind the scenes, touching up the silver bones painted on someone’s shoe. It’s exactly the kind of detail that Rite Here Rite Now revelled in showing during the live parts, but this film deliberately obscures. The format does allow for a brilliant moment, though, where the kaleidoscopic prism lens effect used on Papa’s face during Majesty – usually shown on the stage’s screens – is blown up to the size of three London buses, a montage of ghostly visages filling your field of vision.

Of course, there are the songs. And what songs! It’s hard not to dance in your seat as the likes of Cirice, Satanized, Year Zero and the rest keep on coming. It’s louder than a gig – bring earplugs – and the camera work makes you feel like you’re onstage as part of the crew, getting up close with each person, seeing guitar solos from behind, and noticing other crew members crouching in the shadows. The crowd shots are genuinely beautiful, the camera looking out at a sea of ecstatic faces, some crying, some screaming, many painted in Papa makeup. There’s an emotional intimacy to this film that the glossy Rite Here Rite Now didn’t have.

Yet, as the title suggests, 2 Big To Rig also throws a spotlight on the sheer scale of the Skeletour production, via black-and-white segments with the crew. Ghost have a team of at least 120 people, plus a local crew of a similar size on each stop. The enormously heavy Grucifix that hangs over the band while they play is shown on the venue floor during set-up, and a crew member needs a leg-up to get on it. Of another part of the production, a man says, “You might not want to film this – it’s not working,” highlighting how much effort goes into making the whole thing look seamless. This is as much a love letter to the often-overlooked people who bring Ghost to life, as it is to the bandmembers themselves.

It’s also a love letter to the fans, without which there would be no tour. After Papa apologises for cancelling a show the night before because he was struck down by the “curse of Montezuma”, they squeal with joy. Whenever he speaks in Spanish, they squeal with joy. When he promises to tear them a new asshole (each!), they… well, you get the idea. It’s a lot of fun. In heartwarming footage from outside the venue, one Ghost fan proposes to another.

Seeing as phones weren’t allowed on the Skeletour, Ghost get to decide how it’s immortalised, and 2 Big To Rig is just that: a rapturous spectacle captured in an undefined time. The graininess is a stylistic risk and can be frustrating at times, but you don’t come to Ghost looking for normal. You come to be welcomed into a world like no other.

2 Big To Rig hits cinemas and IMAX screens worldwide today (Wednesday, August 26). Get your exclusive Ghost x Metal Hammer bundle, featuring a magazine cover and t-shirt unavailable in shops, via the Louder webstore.

Ghost have shared a performance of Umbra from their forthcoming Skeletour concert film 2 Big To Rig.

The song was previously released as the fourth single from 2025's Skeletá, the Swedish band's first Billboard chart-topping album.

Directed by Amir Chamdin, 2 Big To Rig captures the band on 16mm film over the course of their two sold-out shows at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes in September last year. The film is described as "a love letter to all those who have shared the Ghost ritual, in-person or otherwise."

A stunning spectacle blending classic Ghost lore with Gothic symbolism, Brutalist architecture and the light and shade dynamics of a classic 1970s or '80s stadium rock show, the Skeletour launched on April 15, 2025 at the AO Arena in Manchester, England, and concluded on February 23, 2026 at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. The tour had a strictly-enforced 'no phones' policy.

The film's title is a reference to the band’s intention to bring the Skeletour to the faithful who were not able to witness the spectacle in person, especially in towns and cities where staging the epic show wasn’t an option logistically.

A press release about 2 Big To Rig reads: "From behind-the-scenes interludes showcasing the crew members that make the band's theatrical vision into nightly reality to the only pro-shot footage of mesmerizing frontman Papa V Perpetua and his band of Nameless Ghouls on the entire phone-free tour, 2 Big To Rig is the definitive document of Ghost's unforgettable "Skeletour" world tour."

The film will be shown in cinemas and IMAX theatres worldwide from August 26.

“[It] creates a nostalgic experience and a fitting farewell to an era for fans," says Kymberli Frueh of Trafalgar Releasing, who worked with the band on their previous concert film Rite Here Right Now in 2024. "We’re proud to share it with cinema audiences worldwide before Ghost takes a well-publicised break. It’s the perfect way to close such a significant chapter in the band’s history and give fans a chance to relive this moment together.”

Tickets for the film are available here.

Demon Hunter, the Christian metal band from Seattle, are suing Netflix over their hugely successful film KPop Demon Hunters, claiming that their copyright has been infringed.

The Washington state group, who have been touring for 25 years and released 12 studio albums, argue that Netflix's plan for a global concert tour celebrating their most-watched original title on the streaming platform, along with the movie and merchandise, means there is "almost complete overlap" with what they offer, which has led to trademark infringement, unfair competition, and brand confusion.

KPop Demon Hunters is a 2025 animated film about a KPop trio, Huntrix, who have double lives as demon hunters, as you may have guessed. Netflix won Best Animated Film and Best Original Song for Golden at the 2026 Golden Globes and Oscars. The video for the song has 1.6 billion views on YouTube.

Complex website reports that the band, via their company Hyde Lane, filed a trademark lawsuit in the Central District of California against Netflix, Netflix Studios, and live events promoter AEG Presents yesterday, (August 18).

The lawsuit states, "The brand that Hyde Lane has carefully built over the course of the past quarter century now faces an existential crisis, thereby necessitating the filing of this action and the granting of the requested relief from this Court."

As part of their filing, Hyde Lane included an email from someone who spent $500 on tickets to a Demon Hunter concert in Albany, New York, mistakenly believing that they’d be taking their children to a KPop Demon Hunters show.

The band argue that Netflix and AEG are "massive companies that jealously guard and enforce their own intellectual property rights wilfully disregarding the rights of others in pursuit of profits."

Demon Hunter are asking that the court order Netflix to stop using the KPop Demon Hunters name for recorded music, live shows and merchandise, and to award unspecified damages.

Demon Hunter, whose most recent album, There Was a Light Here, was released last year, have almost 350,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, while the KPop Demon Hunters cast have 27 million monthly listeners on the platform.

Weezer will release their own movie next year, with Keanu Reeves starring alongside the Los Angeles geek rock kings.

The Los Angeles band referenced the film during an appearance at last year's Coachella festival, with frontman Rivers Cuomo telling the audience, "We’ve been busy making the Weezer movie in LA but when Coachella called us up and said, ‘Hey Weezer, could you guys make it out for a surprise appearance?’, we were like, Heck yeah!.”

Now, if guitarist Brian Bell is to be believed, the movie is done and dusted, but won't hit the screens until next year.

Bell was in attendance at the premiere of Green Day's Nimrods movie in Los Angeles on Wednesday (August 12) and when a reporter from Los Angeles. radio station Alt 98.7 asked the guitarist if Weezer were going to make their own movie, he replied, "We already have."

"I’m not supposed to talk about it," Bell added, according to Stereogum. "But yes, it’s in the can. It’s gonna be incredible. You’ll see it in 2027."

Last year it was revealed that that film would be a mockumentary with Keanu Reeves starring as a villain, one theory going that the premise would pitch the Point Break and John Wick star’s band Dogstar against Rivers Cuomo and co. There is some history between the two bands: Weezer played their first gig opening for Dogstar in LA in 1992, a show the two bands re-created at the city’s Lodge Room venue in 2024 to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Weezer’s Blue Album.

At one point, Rivers Cuomo. hinted that Jack Black would also appear, but that notion has since been shut down.

Weezer will release their new album, The Gold Album, next Friday, August 21. A single, C.E.O., was shared last week.

The LA quartet also recently announced further dates for their The Gathering world tour with new dates booked in the UK, Europe, and Japan.

Following on from the quartet's previously announced North American tour which begins on September 8 in Sacramento, California and closes on October 24 in the band's hometown Los Angeles, the group will play five Japanese shows in February, launching in Tokyo on February 12, then head to Europe in May.

Weezer The Gathering tour dates 2027

Feb 12: Tokyo,Garden Theater, JPN
Feb 13: Tokyo Garden Theater, JPN
Feb 15: Kyoto Roam Theater, JPN
Feb 16: Osaka Zepp Bayside, JPN
Feb 18: Nagoya Portbase, JPN

May 12: Dublin 3Arena, IRE
May 14: Newcastle Utilita Arena, UK
May 15: Manchester Co-op Live, UK
May 17: Leeds First Direct Bank Arena, UK
May 19: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
May 21: Birmingham Utilita Arena, UK
May 22: London Alexandra Palace, UK
May 23: Cardiff Utilita Arena, UK
May 25: Paris Zenith, FRA
May 26: Amsterdam AFAS Live, HOL
May 29: Oslo Spektrum, NOR
May 30: Stockholm Hovet, SWE

Jun 01: Helsinki Veikkaus, FIN

Nixon watches have a long history of collaborations with music artists, including past partnerships with Metallica, the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. Sadly, all those watch designs have long since sold out - but one that’s still going strong is the American brand’s Nirvana watch range.

Launched in 2024, only four designs still remain available - but the good news is that all of them currently have a 25% discount through August 18 and are part of a site-wide sale celebrating the Nixon’s 28th birthday.

The Nirvana Sentry Wobble in either the Yellow Smiley colour scheme or its Matte Super Black/Blue counterpart are both down from $/£375 to $/£281.25. The next Nirvana watch on sale is the Sentry Leather version in its starburst Unplug Fade design is even cheaper - down from $/£225 to $/£168.75.

Finally, and in the US only, the Black and yellow Nirvana Time Teller is down from $175 to just $131.25.

The Nirvana Sentry Wobble is my favourite design, with Kurt Cobain’s famous smiley face design front and centre. But the most eye-catching detail is that the watch face has been contorted and squeezed to give it its “wobble” look. In addition, the watch has a 50m waterproof rating and it’s available in two distinctive colour combinations.

The Nirvana Sentry Leather has a sunburst colour design on the face which Nixon call Unplug Fade. Rather than numbers around the circumference, the watch face has letters spelling the band’s name. The watch strap takes its inspiration from Nirvana’s “sweater selections” with the result a “cushy leather band.”

As for the US-only Nirvana Time Teller, it features the smiley face logo in the centre of the watch in black, with the numbers displayed in vibrant yellow.

The Nixon site-wide sale runs August 14-18, so get in quick before the deal door slams shut.

In 1979, after wrapping the recording of their fourth studio album, Eat To The Beat, Blondie signed a new management deal with Alice Cooper's manager Shep Gordon. A larger-than-life character who also handled the business affairs of comedian/actor Groucho Marx and actress Raquel Welch, Gordon's first proposal to the New York band was that they take a cameo role in a new musical comedy film, Roadie, to which he'd already signed up Alice Cooper.

Roadie was produced by Carolyn Pfeiffer, formerly a PR who worked with The Beatles, Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand among others, and more recently, a partner at Shep Gordon's management company. It was Gordon who suggested Meat Loaf to play the film's central character, Travis W. Redfish, a Texan good ol' boy who happened to possess unparalleled skills for fixing broken equipment, and who gets sucked into the rock 'n' roll world. Meat Loaf at the time was an international star thanks to the phenomenal success of 1977's Bat Out Of Hell album, but he had never taken on such a high profile acting role.

In a refreshingly honest interview conducted with Australian TV host Molly Meldrum at the film's Austin, Texas location in 1980, Meat Loaf admitted that he'd had some "emotional problems" dealing with the success of his debut album - still the biggest selling debut album of all time - admitting that he never wanted to be called a "star", and revealing that the past few years had been "mentally tough" for him. But his enthusiasm for his new project was clear.

"The idea of the movie is to create the new American hero, or the new world hero, meaning me, which is sorta humorous to me," he told Meldrum. "He [Travis W. Redfish] knows nothing about the music business at all, and he doesn't understand why anybody makes records, and why anybody did since Buddy Holly died anyway."

Giving a brief synopsis of the plot, Meatloaf revealed that his character "gets picked up by a girl named Lola Bouilliabase [actress Kaki Hunter] from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who is a groupie and a virgin... so she takes him on this adventure, and he becomes a roadie. He doesn't know what a roadie is when it first starts... They cut the power on a Blondie concert, and he uses hay wagons and horse manure and and all this stuff and puts it all together and creates this entire unit to run an entire concert...

"And I save Alice Cooper's concert," he adds. "Alice has got this brand new world famous sound equipment and nobody can fix it, nobody knows what's wrong with it... but [Redfish] wants to go home because his sister's getting married to his best friend, and Alice says, 'Well if you fix my sound system I'll get you a bus'."

Intrigued yet?

Debbie Harry, meanwhile, had a very specific memory of her band's time on set in Austin, during which the New Yorkers performed a cover of Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire.

"The film had a number of dwarf actors," she recalled in her excellent 2019 memoir Face It. "There was one scene in a café where a fight broke out with the dwarves and a few of us actually got roughed up, because those little guys were very active and very, very strong. It was chaotic and a lot of fun... Chris [Stein's] hearing was never the same after he got squirted in the ear during the fight scene."

Meat Loaf and Blondie share some on-screen time in the film, including a sequence where the band bundle a confused Redfish into their car after their show, and start spouting random lines such as "I love guns" and "Sometimes I travel 3000 miles just to spit on people!"

No doubt it all made sense at the time.

We'll refrain from any more spoilers. Except to note that Roadie was not a commercial or critical success. It failed to recoup its reputed $5 million budget, and while critics heaped praise on Meat Loaf - "in his first starring role he doesn’t sing a note and still steals the movie" wrote People magazine - most found the film's storyline weak, confusing and un-engaging.

Awarding the film one and a half stars out of a possible five, legendary US film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "If the movie had given us more of their songs, this could have qualified as a concert movie. If it had given us more of Meatloaf it might have developed into a character study. But Roadie never makes up its mind. The movie's so genial, disorganized and episodic that we never really care about the characters, and yet whenever someone starts to sing the performance is interrupted for more meaningless plot development."

But critics be damned, why not watch the film below and decide for yourself?

A new documentary about late, legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart is to receive its world premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Directed by Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn, the team behind 2010's acclaimed Rush documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage, as well as Iron Maiden: Flight 666 and the Metal Evolution documentary series, Neil Peart: No One's Disciple, will premiere on September 16, with a subsequent public screening on September 19.

The 96-minute film will also air on Canada's CBC network on September 23 as part of the series The Passionate Eye.

According to a press release, Neil Peart: No One's Disciple "documents the late Canadian musician's tough start as a young artist, followed by his meteoric rise", with the film-makers promising "an exhilarating and poignant tribute" to the late drummer.

The film includes interviews with Rush vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson, alongside reflections from other acclaimed drummers. It also features Lee and Lifeson performing Rush classics with the likes of Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Stewart Copeland (The Police), Danny Carey (Tool) and Gavin Harrison (King Crimson, Porcupine Tree) filling Peart's seat at the drum kit.

In an archival interview used in the documentary, Peart states, "I think it matters for me to play better all the time, and to play my best all the time, to keep it fresh and changing. It’s kind of my responsibility, I see it, as a drummer."

Peart, 67, passed away on January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California after a three-year battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Announcing his death, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson called the drummer "our friend, soul brother and band mate".

Stevie Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen's faithful brother-in-arms in The E Street Band, says that he has written scripts for no fewer than six TV series, and that his number one ambition right now is to have a TV network or major streaming platform commission at least one of the six.

In 1999, having had no previous acting experience, Van Zandt was cast in New Jersey Mafia drama The Sopranos, and proved a revelation in his role as mobster and strip club owner Silvio Dante. Twenty years on he was cast as a singer in Martin Scorsese's gangster movie The Irishman.

In 2011, the guitarist co-wrote, starred in, and was an executive producer on Netflix comedy-drama Lilyhammer, and in a new interview with Vulture, the 75-year-old star says that he would relish being given another television project.

"It doesn’t have to be one of my scripts," he says, "but that would be nice."

"My favorite script is called Nobody Loves and Leaves Alive," he reveals. "As all my stuff is, it’s a little bit of a dramedy. It’s about three brothers. And actually, I’m going to be playing two of them.

"The first brother is a gangster, which I’m going to play. People love me as a gangster. The second brother is a rock-and-roll guy, a real hippie type of rock-and-roll guy, which I can fake. And a third brother is an FBI guy, a role that I’m offering to Johnny Depp. I’m hoping he reads it. The show is about how they interact with each other — those three lives of the mob world, the rock-and-roll world, and the FBI world.... I already have the soundtrack done and the script done. So it’s a matter of somebody saying, 'Let’s go'."

Earlier this year, Van Zandt revealed that Bruce Springsteen, and his band members, had received death threats while on their Land of Hope and Dreams tour in the US.

"This tour has been a little bit different because of the high security," he told UK tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail. "It's a very specific political theme to this tour and there's been a lot of threats, death threats. Usually there's always some, but this time it's been increasing."

Revealing that Springsteen has had to "beef up security", Van Zandt added, "it's mostly just talk. And it's not like we're saying something that's not true or we're saying something that's so really particularly controversial, but it's specifically political."

"So the FBI and others have been really watching things and been overly concerned about it, as they should be," he continued. "We want the fans to be safe and feel safe. So we really go the extra mile with extra security for that reason alone."

Tim Pope, The Cure's long-time video director, has revealed that working with disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein on gothic horror film The Crow: City of Angels left him with "mental scars I bear to this day".

Pope, who shot 37 videos for The Cure, in addition to working with David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Queen, Rush, Neil Young, The Bangles, The The and more, signed up to direct the 1996 sequel to cult hit The Crow for Miramax, the hugely successful film and TV production company founded by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. But the experience proved to be hugely frustrating, deeply humiliating and traumatic for the now 70-year-old Pope, to the extent that he didn't make another film for 25 years.

Pope writes about his spectacular career in his forthcoming memoir I Shoot Rock Stars, and lays bare his painful memories of working with Harvey Weinstein in new interviews with British newspapers The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Having carved out a reputation as one of the most imaginative and innovative video directors of the MTV era, Pope was approached to direct the sequel to The Crow, a surprise commercial hit for Miramax, and a cult favourite film for a generation of goths and metal fans. Tragically, the film's charismatic leading man, Brandon Lee - the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee - died during the film's production due to an on-set accident with a prop gun, which left Pope at an immediate disadvantage when seeking to follow up the film's success.

"It was a tricky situation," Pope admits to The Guardian, "but I’d loved [Quentin Tarantino's award-winning Miramax films] Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. This was before we knew about [Harvey Weinstein] wanking into flowerpots and destroying women’s lives.

"He was still seen as ‘good old Harvey’, the most powerful man in Hollywood, but his other nickname was Harvey Scissorhands. He had a reputation for meddling in the cutting room and I suffered that really badly. I poured everything into that film and ended up with something I loathed."

At a disastrous test screening, Pope learned that his original cut of the film had been completely reworked at Harvey Weinstein's request. In The Telegraph Pope recalls that during this screening Weinstein threw popcorn at his head and shouted, "Call yourself a fucking director?" at him. Afterwards, at dinner, Weinstein told Pope, "Just cut the damn picture as we want it, or else, you fucking bastard… Remember, pal, we own you."

Pope calls the whole experience of working with Weinstein "brutal".

"There were times working with him when I thought I was going to end up at the bottom of the Hudson River wearing concrete wellington boots," he told The List last year.

"I hope Harvey Weinstein reads my book" he tells The Guardian.

Weinstein is currently in prison in theUS after being found guilty of three counts of rape, plus sexual assault. More than 80 women made allegations of sexual harassment or rape against him.

Diamond-selling nu metal sensations Linkin Park have announced a documentary about their return and a tie-in live album.

The California six-piece have confirmed that their new film, Unshatter, will get a cinema release on September 30. Tickets go on sale on Thursday, August 13. Its soundtrack Unshatter: Live In São Paulo, recorded in Brazil during their comeback tour in 2024, comes out on September 25.

To accompany the news, the band have released Unshatter’s trailer as well as live footage of their performance of Somewhere I Belong in São Paulo. Watch both below.

Unshatter will tell the story of Linkin Park’s reunion in 2024, following their inactivity in the wake of former singer Chester Bennington’s death in 2017. Fans will see glimpses of early studio sessions in 2022, the recording of their comeback album From Zero, their return to the stage and the blockbuster 18-month From Zero world tour.

Joe Hahn, Linkin Park’s turntablist and Unshatter’s director, comments: “Unshatter follows a very particular moment in Linkin Park’s history and documents a path through loss, uncertainty, friendship, and reinvention.

“I hope longtime fans see parts of our journey they've never seen before, and I hope people who are just discovering our music come away with a better understanding of how we got here. But even beyond Linkin Park, I hope people connect with it as a story about relationships, resilience, and what it really takes to move forward when you don't have all the answers.”

Linkin Park reunited with Emily Armstrong (Dead Sara) on lead vocals and Colin Brittain on drums, replacing ex-member Rob Bourdon. The comeback was initially controversial, with some fans expressing concern over Armstrong’s past ties to the Church Of Scientology and her previous support of convicted rapist Danny Masterson. She responded in a statement, saying, “I do not condone abuse or violence against women.”

Although Armstrong didn’t clarify whether she was or has ever been a follower of Scientology, the BBC reported that several of her lyrics in her rock band Dead Sara “suggest criticism and rejection of Scientology's teachings”. It highlighted lines in 2018’s Heaven’s Got A Back Door, which criticised conservative religious attitudes towards sexuality.

Despite the furor, From Zero – released on November 15, 2024 – was a critical and commercial success. It topped the UK albums chart and hit number two on the US Billboard 200, and has since been certified three-times Platinum in Brazil and two-times Platinum in France.

The From Zero world tour was one of the biggest in the band’s history, drawing an estimated three million fans worldwide and grossing more than $200 million (£148,600,000). On June 28, 2025, they played their largest headline show ever at a sold-out Wembley Stadium in London. The following June, they headlined Download festival, becoming the first band with a female singer to top the bill at the grounds in Donington Park, UK.

In a BBC interview at Download, co-singer/multi-instrumentalist Mike Shinoda responded to the distinction: “I asked [Emily] and she said: ‘If it wasn’t us, it would’ve just been someone else, because there are so many great female-fronted bands.’ But, she’s so grateful, she wanted you guys to know, she’s so grateful that she is the one and that she’ll remember it forever.”

Linkin Park have no further shows on their schedule at time of publication.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the Funny Or Die sketch below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First appearing in the hallowed pages of Marvel comics over sixty years ago, Spider-Man has become one of pop culture's most iconic and enduring superheroes. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, ol' Web Head quickly established himself as a foundational part of Marvel's world, making an eventual transfer into the movie world inevitable.

While Spidey made his feature-length debut in 1977 courtesy of a pilot for the 70s live action TV show, it was Sony's purchasing of the film rights to the character in 1999 that laid the foundation for his legacy on the Big Screen. Since then, we've had no fewer than eleven Spider-Man movies across four entirely difference franchises, making his cinematic journey a rather convoluted one that ranges from the spectacular to the, quite frankly, slightly rubbish.

With latest MCU outing Spider-Man: Brand New Day htting cinemas today, we've ranked all eleven of those 'proper' film adaptations in reverse order of greatness. Note: we've elected to leave the TV pilot by the wayside for this one, and we're not including our friendly neighbourhood hero's numerous appearances in other Marvel outings. You only have so much time in the day.

11. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Given one of the biggest issues with Spider-Man 3 was there being too many villains to make for a compelling, focused plot, it's baffling as to why Marc Webb's sequel to his own Spidey universe reboot fell into the exact same trap. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are both fantastic, arguably packing the best chemistry of any Spider-leads, but they're lost in a convoluted story that introduces Jamie Foxx's unconvincing Electro as chief antagonist while recycling Harry Osbourne's pseudo-Goblin arc from Raimi's three-quel. Plus, we also get a clunkily realised Rhino, throwaway Norman Osbourne, Felicia Hardy and Alistair Smythe cameos and a Sinister Six tease that never went anywhere. Garfield's Spider-Man deserved better.

10. Spider-Man 3 (2007)

When the first teaser poster for Spider-Man 3 revealed our titular hero in a black suit, fans went doolally with excitement over what that likely telegraphed. Sadly, Raimi's trilogy would end on the dampest of squibs, offering a messy plot, a bloated rogues gallery, a terrible take on Venom and one of the most cringe-inducing scenes in blockbuster history courtesy of that Toby Maguire dance segment. We'd later learn that studio pressure led to Venom being included in the film in the first place, which is doubly frustrating given that it took time away from Thomas Haden Church's brilliant, layered performance as Sandman. The special effects are magnificent and there are some great set pieces, but this felt like an almighty piss had been unleashed into the Spider-pool.

9. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

After a good first full outing in Homecoming, Tom Holland's second solo flick had a high bar to grab at. Sadly, while it's by no means a bad movie, Far From Home falls short in having to cater so fullheartedly to the wider MCU, Tony Stark's death dominating too much of the film's emotional pull and Nick Fury's presence rendered flat by a fully phoned-in showing from Samuel L Jackson. There are also way too many rug-pulls, eroding the impact of any major plot twists to the extent that, by the time Jake Gyllenhaal's (admittedly very good) Mysterio meets his demise, you're left second-guessing yourself. Still, the core cast's chemistry fizzes wonderfully, and the segment involving a zombified Iron Man is amongst the MCU's most unique and visually impressive.

8. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

With Raimi's franchise biting the dust due to the director not feeling compelled by any of the new ideas being put in front of him, it was up to Marc Webb to reboot the Spider-World. In Andrew Garfield, he found a pitch-perfect Peter Parker who ably embodied the character's geekiest, cheekiest and most arrestingly charming traits. Garfield would find the perfect romantic foil in Emma Stone, and while Rhys Ifans' Lizard just didn't feel as emotionally wedded to Parker's world as Doc Ock and Green Goblin had before him, the film's mixture of dazzling visuals and intimate emotional stakes made for a very solid first outing for Spidey's new era.

7. Spider-Man (2002)

After languishing for years in development hell, Spider-Man finally made his big screen debut proper courtesy of Sam Raimi, and Hollywood would never be the same again. While X-Men had officially made superhero films a mainstream concern again two years prior, Raimi's eye for an unforgettable visual (the upside down kiss!) and an emotionally compelling narrative backbone gave Spider-Man the feel of both a true cinematic blockbuster and an adaptation in keeping with the spirit of its source material.

Toby Maguire was easy to root for as the nerdy but determined Peter Parker, while Willem Dafoe's increasingly unhinged turn as Norman Osbourne/Green Goblin remains world class. Then there's J.K. Simmons' legendary portrayal of J. Jonah Jameson, so good that it'd survive well beyond the Raimi era. Some of the effects looked a little ropey even for the time, and Dafoe's Power Rangers-esque Goblin suit remains an absolute howler, but this is still a great first showing for the Webbed One.

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

After a show-stealing turn in Captain America: Civil War, Tom Holland confirmed once and for all that he was another inspired casting choice as Peter Parker, his overawed, youthful enthusiasm providing the perfect emotional backbone for a more grassroots, very local friendly neighbourhood-centric take on the character. His cohorts, MJ and Ned, warmly brought to life by Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, offered a different dynamic to what we'd seen on screen to this point, while Michael Keaton's turn as Vulture is one of the MCU's most underrated villain portrayals. Breezy, funny as hell and action-packed, Homecoming gave us hope that we might finally have a Spider-Man franchise built to last.

5. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Even given the rumours that had been doing the rounds for months and despite the MCU finally toying with multiverses, the idea of Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire's Spider-Men all sharing the screen at once seemed too good to be true. That it happened and produced some of the most triumphantly exhilarating moments in MCU history is one thing, but the fact that John Watts managed to so deftly weave those three heroes, their accompanying villains, a bonus Doctor Strange and a major character death together is an amazing achievement.

No Way Home isn't just the ultimate love letter to Spider-Man on the big screen; it's a riotously fun, hilarious and emotionally devastating ride, giving welcome second winds to Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, a nice new coat of paint to Jamie Foxx's Electro and a much-needed, satisfying moment of cathartis for Garfield's Spidey.

4. Spider-Man: Brand New Day

While the Tom Holland era of Spider-Man has been very good and, on occasion, great, his Spidey has often felt compromised by being tied to the MCU's ever-expanding mythos (not to mention also being tied to former Spider-Man franchises by the time No Way Home turned up). Taking over from Jon Watts, Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton attempted to fix that for Holland's fourth solo outing in the mask, crafting a film that gave Peter Parker his Neighborhood Friendly stripes back while still wrangling with the fall-out of Brand New Day and stuffing a few MCU cameos in for good measure.

The result is a brilliantly entertaining, emotionally resonant sequel that is easily the most SPIDEY!!!! of Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies so far, evoking some of the narrative swings of Raimi's films and peppering them with some particularly dazzling set pieces. It's not perfect - those MCU connections are still tying Peter Parker down just a little too much - but it's arguably the best Spider-Man movie of the MCU era and a hopeful signpost for what's to come.

3. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023)

Topping the visually astonishing and wonderfully original Into The Spider-Verse was a tall ask, and while Across The Spider-Verse doesn't quite manage that, it absolutely does its predecessor justice and is a brilliant, retina-singeing, breathless epic in its own right. Packed with so many stunning visual quirks and narrative flourishes that it requires repeat viewings to take everything in, Across The Spider-Verse very nearly comes off the rails thanks to its relentless pace and head-spinning array of new Spider-People, but manages to hold on thanks to the sheer charm of its voice cast and lovingly crafted characters, Hailee Steinfeld's Gwen Stacy stepping up magnificently to help hold the film together alongside Shameik Moore's conflicted Miles Morales. Not for the first time, we find ourselves tantalisingly close to having a great Spider-Man trilogy. Will Sony finally pull it off?

2. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Having confirmed it was possible to bring Spider-Man to the Big Screen in style, Sam Raimi upped the stakes dramatically, producing not just an all-time great comic book movie, but one of the greatest blockbusters of the 2000s. Key to this is Alfred Molina, whose haunted, methodical and, eventually, maniacal Doctor Octopus arguably remains the greatest on-screen Spidey baddie, bringing an extra emotional weight to his dynamic with Maguire's Peter Parker that makes the stakes feel that much more tangible. Raimi also brings Doc Ock's battles with Spider-Man to life in astonishing fashion courtesy of some world class cinematography and brilliant set-pieces. Other great (and not so great) Spider-flicks would follow, but Spider-Man 2 perfected the simple supes formula of a hero that's easy to root for, a believable love interest and a compelling, memorable villain.

1. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

With Tom Holland's Peter Parker now bedded into the MCU, the idea of another new Spider-Man entering the chat seemed like overkill. That it could outdo the MCU's take on the character seemed implausible. With Into The Spider-Verse, however, directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman struck gold by shifting the focus to a different Spider-Man entirely, going for broke with a wildly out-of-the-box plot and embracing the limitless possibilities of animation to produce something thrilling, surprising and completely new. Into The Spider-Verse isn't just the best Spider-Man movie; it's the most accomplished piece of animation Hollywood has produced in a generation, every risk and strange flight of fancy paying off handsomely as we get to experience new visions of familiar characters and a near-unprecedented level of visual flair.

None of this would matter as much if the story itself wasn't convincing, however, and with Miles, Gwen and their increasingly ludicrous cast of Spider-buddies, Into The Spider-Verse becomes a film, more than any of its predecessors, that just gets what Spider-Man is all about. The message of anyone potentially being under the mask wasn't just an easy catchphrase Stan Lee liked to throw out; it represented the potential for greatness that we all have within us, and this instant classic nails that idea. It took almost twenty years for us to get there, but Into The Spider-Verse finally gave us a perfect Spider-Man movie, and all without Peter Parker even being its central Spidey.

Historic, previously unreleased footage of Black Sabbath playing the classic N.I.B. has been uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the pioneering German music show Beat-Club.

Beat-Club, which ran for 83 episodes between 1965 and December 1972, was broadcast from Bremen, West Germany, and hosted Black Sabbath twice in 1970.

On the first occasion, in June 1970, they played a cover of Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes while the studio's audio and camera levels were being set up, unaware that the performance was being filmed, as well as their own Black Sabbath. They also performed N.I.B., but footage of the latter performance has not been officially released until now.

It is believed that the footage of N.I.B. wasn't broadcast in 1970 because Ozzy Osbourne made a mistake with the lyrics, singing "Your love for me has got to be true" instead of "Your love for me has got to be real".

Black Sabbath returned to the show in September 1970 to perform two tracks from their second album Paranoid: the title track and Iron Man.

Other bands to appear on Beat-Club during its seven-year run included Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, The Who, The Kinks, Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, King Crimson, the MC5, Mountain, Status Quo, Yes and Santana. The show was syndicated to more than 30 countries, but not to the UK or the US.

"Our idea when we started the programme was that we couldn't please both the mums and dads and the kids too," producer Michael Leckerbusch told Record Mirror in 1970. "So why not do something that appealed exclusively to the kids – even if the adults thought it disgusting?

"British television fits the Establishment view of things. Young people don't necessarily want to accept that view. And that's what I try to show with Beat-Club."

The show was rebranded as Musikladen in late 1972, which ran until 1978.

Pulp have shared the first trailer for their forthcoming documentary film What Do You Do For An Encore?, and announced its release date.

Directed by Garth Jennings (Sing, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), the 90-minute film promises to chart the Sheffield band’s “extraordinary journey from obscurity to cultural touchstone”, according to a press statement.

The press release goes on to say that the documentary, which is narrated by frontman Jarvis Cocker, "fuses the brilliantly choreographed stage spectacle of Pulp's biggest ever arena show – part of the global tour for More, the band's first album in 24 years – with four decades of colourful, never-seen-before archival material", and that it will serve as "a vibrant tribute to a band of brilliant misfits, whose unique blend of irony, rebellion, and razor-sharp social commentary resonated with generations of listeners and helped define an era of British culture."

“You’re invited to come and experience a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life," a voiceover in the trailer promises.

Global distributor MUBI have announced that What Do You Do For An Encore? will be screened in cinemas in the UK and Ireland for one night only on September 18, and US cinemas on September 24.

Following its brief cinema run, the film will be streamed exclusively on MUBI, from a date yet to be announced.

Accompanying the film, Pulp are releasing Live!, a new live album which doubles up as the film’s soundtrack.

"A concert is an event where songs come back to life," says Jarvis Cocker. "That’s why this album is called Live! It’s both a statement of fact (it’s a recording of a live band) & a challenge (come on! Everyone come alive!)."

Live! will be released via Rough Trade on August 28, and will be available on double vinyl, double CD and via digital streaming services.

Grammy-winning hard rock devil church Ghost have released the first trailer for their upcoming concert film 2 Big To Rig.

The follow-up to 2024’s Rite Here Rite Now is set to hit cinemas and IMAX screens worldwide from August 26, and tickets are on sale as of today (July 23). Watch the trailer below and get tickets via the film’s website.

“You have been chosen to partake in a ritual celebration that world has not yet seen,” a voiceover says at the start of the trailer. “Welcome to a night you will remember forever.”

Unlike Rite Here Rite Now, which mixed concert footage with an original story connected to the Swedish band’s mythos, 2 Big To Rig offers a behind-the-scenes look at the globe-trotting Skeletour, which took place from 2025 to ’26 in support of their sixth album Skeletá.

The live recordings were captured during Ghost’s residency at the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City in September 2025. Originally scheduled as a three-show run, the first planned gig was cancelled last-minute due to singer Tobias Forge (who performs as Papa V Perpetua) contracting food poisoning.

The 10-month Skeletour was an entirely phone-free event, after Ghost experimented with banning mobile devices at two shows in 2023 and enjoyed the results. Concertgoers kept their phones on their person, but had them placed into magnetically sealed Yondr pouches upon entering the auditorium. The only way the pouches could be unsealed was by a member of venue security.

In April 2025, Forge explained that he was banning phones because he felt an “ever-growing distance” between himself and his audiences.

“I felt that I have a problem with watching someone [in the audience holding up a phone in front of their face]. It’s irritating,” he told Metal XS. “Maybe I’m old-school, maybe I’m old-fashioned. I just feel that we’re having an intimate moment, and it disturbs me that you’re filming while we’re doing this together. I’m doing something for you to respond to me.”

Response to the phone ban was widely positive, and it inspired other rock artists to follow suit. Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson told Hammer last year that he supported the practice. When the UK metal giants hit the road for their 50th-anniversary Run For Your Lives tour last spring, they discouraged fans from bringing phones. Mobile devices were then outright banned for a gig in Paris this summer.

2 Big To Rig was announced last week and will come out via Trafalgar Releasing, who distributed Rite Here Rite Now.

Kymberli Frueh, EVP of Content Acquisitions and Programming at Trafalgar, commented: “We’re proud to share it with cinema audiences worldwide before Ghost takes a well-publicised break. It’s the perfect way to close such a significant chapter in the band’s history and give fans a chance to relive this moment together.”

Ghost are currently on hiatus, as Forge hopes to spend more time with his family and gain inspiration for future projects.

“I’ve had two kids waiting at home with my wife for 15 years,” the frontman told Full Metal Jackie. “And maybe that says something about me that it wasn’t a pushing enough factor during those years. Believe me, I felt bad, but I’ve definitely come to a point where I feel, physically and mentally, I need to be home. [My kids are] 17; they’re not gonna be around for an eon.”

It's fair to to say that Nancy Spungen was a divisive presence on London's punk scene in the 1970s: Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious loved her, everyone else hated her.

Known as 'Nauseating Nancy' by the English media, Philadelphia-born groupie Spungen came to London with The Heartbreakers in December 1976, ahead of the New Yorkers jumping aboard the Sex Pistols' ill-fated Anarchy Tour, and immediately latched onto bassist Vicious after being rejected by Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon).

The relationship between Spungen and Vicious was tempestuous and violent, not helped by the young lovers both developing addictions to heroin. In January 1978, following the Pistols break-up on their debut US tour, Spungen and Vicious relocated to New York, taking up residence at the city's iconic Hotel Chelsea. It was here, in room 100, that Spungen was found dead on October 12, 1978, aged 20: she had been murdered by a single stab wound to the abdomen, the murder weapon being a knife Vicious owned. The English musician gave conflicting accounts of what had happened, and was immediately arrested, and charged with second degree murder: however, his lawyers were able to get him released on $50,000 bail, on condition that he would not leave New York.

The news of Spungen's murder caused far less shock in London than one might imagine.

"Normally in a situation like that, there would be an emotive response from family and friends alike," Chrissie Hynde, who Vicious once offered to marry, wrote in her autobiography Reckless. "'Sid? He would never do anything like that - not to the woman he loved!' However, the nonchalant shrugging of shoulders like a Mexican wave making its way across London's punkerage was palpable. No one who knew them was particularly surprised to hear that Sid had inserted a blade into exhibit 'N'. We were only surprised that he'd stuck it out as long as he had."

The bleak and brutal end to what was a seemingly doomed relationship was partly what drew English film-maker Alex Cox (and his co-writer Abbe Wool) to make Sid & Nancy, his 1986 biopic about the pair: that, and rumours that a Hollywood studio was interested in casting Madonna and Rupert Everett in a film about the ill-fated lovers.

"In the spirit of punk," Cox told Clash magazine, "Abbe and I felt this had to be stopped, or at least pre-empted."

"I thought, for the times, the story was a good one to tell," the film-maker told money-into-light.com. "Sid and Nancy were terrible fuck-ups and they betrayed the punk ideal, but in the midst of all this chaos was a romantic story. It was all so tragic the way it played out."

Once Cox had secured a $4 million budget for the film, he set about casting the two lead roles. Daniel Day Lewis was considered for the role of Vicious, but the part was ultimately given to a young Gary Oldman, who would later claim that he turned down the role twice, which Cox denies.

"Gary came from the same neighborhood as Sid, Bermondsey," Cox told Money Into Light, "and he had the same understanding and desire to escape, to create a new persona and life for himself."

Courtney Love pleaded for the chance to play Spungen, but eventually accepted a part as fictional character Gretchen, while American actress Chloe Webb was cast in the title role.

Iggy Pop also had a minor part in the film, while the members of Guns N' Roses were employed as extras for scenes shot in a Los Angeles club, for which they were paid $100 per day. "It wasn't much fun," Slash recalled in his 2007 autobiography. "Actually it was like jury duty... I was the only one of us pathetic enough to show up for the duration."

At the conclusion of the film, after Spungen is stabbed during an argument with her drugged-up lover, Vicious is collected in a New York taxi, and in his confusion, he believes that Nancy is still alive and in the back seat, and the pair are driven away from the crime scene. In reality, after a stay in prison, Vicious died of a heroin overdose on February 2, 1979.

"The end feels bogus," Cox admitted 30 years on. "We should have shown Sid dying in a pool of vomit. Instead we opted for a touchy-feely way out."

The ending irked Vicious' friend John Lydon, who called it "stupid."

"To me this movie is the lowest form of life." Lydon stated. "I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction."

"It's all wrong," he wrote in his autobiography. "It was all someone else's fucking fantasy, some Oxford graduate who missed the punk rock era. The bastard."

Cox, however, defended the film in a 2017 BFI article.

"The most important scene in the film, from the perspective of [co-screenwriter] Abbe Wool and myself, was in the methadone clinic, where Sy Richardson plays the guy who won’t hand over their dose of methadone until he’s delivered a lecture about how they’re screwing up," Cox wrote. "Essentially, Sid and Nancy betrayed the punk movement. They should have been out there on the barricades, but instead they became another example of junkie rock stars getting high in a hotel room.

"That’s what we wanted to say, how they’d become such a disappointment to punk, but because the film got deeper and deeper into their horrible little world, everything outside them got a bit lost. The last we see John Lydon, he’s in the corner of some club, fading away. All that explains a sort of misunderstanding in the UK, where it was taken to be a film about the punk scene. The reception in America, where it was viewed as a horrific love story, was closer to our intentions."

AC/DC appeared on the Australian TV show Countdown numerous times over the years.

The show ran between 1974 and 1987, but broadcaster ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) would frequently tape over shows that had already aired, as film was very expensive and no one expected the footage to have any historical value.

Some of AC/DC's early performances, such as the March 1975 performance of Them's Baby, Please Don't Go – the one where Bon Scott is infamously dressed as a schoolgirl – are available on YouTube, while others (including the November 1974 performance of the same song, where Angus Young is dressed as an Aviation Pioneer, or the following month's version, where he's wearing a Zorro costume) have been lost.

In the last couple of weeks, more Countdown footage has emerged on the official Bon Scott YouTube channel, notably two clips filmed in 1976 as AC/DC visited London on their Lock Up Your Daughters tour.

Incredibly, AC/DC played 27 London shows over the course of the year, from their European debut at the Red Cow in Hammersmith in April for fewer than 100 fans, to a headline show at the 3500-capacity Hammersmith Odeon just seven months later. Over the course of those months, AC/DC also played 11 residency shows at the iconic Marquee Club on Wardour Street.

The first Countdown segment, which was broadcast in July 1976, finds the band in Covent Garden, where a shirtless, shorts-wearing Bon Scott (it was a famously hot summer) can be seen toying with a banana before the band runs between the Nag's Head and White Lion pubs.

The second clip, shown in Australia the following month, finds AC/DC hanging out with the tourists in Piccadilly Circus before heading to the Marquee, where anyone watching the filming would assume that then-bassist Mark Evans was the band's leader.

Other footage recently uploaded to the official Bon Scott YouTube channel – which is curated by his estate – includes four live clips of the singer fronting his pre-AC/DC band Fraternity, a short 1977 interview clip filmed in Hobart, Tasmania, and a 15-minute interview filmed for Countdown in November 1977.

Bon Scott would have turned 80 today.

Rush have released an official t-shirt to raise money for victims of last month's Venezuelan earthquakes.

The t-shirt is being produced in conjunction with Fantoons, the illustration and animation company who've worked with Rush on a series of comic books. The series was created by David Calcano, a Venezuelan national, who reached out to the band and asked for help. They responded with a new design featuring Rush's iconic first album logo and the 2112 starman, which is available to pre-order now.

Money raised from the sales will be donated to Hogar Bambi, a non-profit organisation who advocate for institutions dedicated to the care of children at risk in Venezuela. The earthquakes that hit the country on June 24 have left more than 11,000 injured, with the current death toll confirmed at 2,295.

The news comes in a week when Rush were forced to postpone two shows at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, TX, after frontman Geddy Lee was diagnosed with laryngitis and bronchitis. The two shows – on June 30 and July 2 – have been postponed until Jul 11 and 13. Full dates below.

Rush: Fifty Something tour dates 2026

Jul 11: Fort Worth Dickies Arena, TX
Jul 13: Fort Worth Dickies Arena, TX
Jul 16: Chicago United Center, IL
Jul 18: Chicago United Center, IL
Jul 20: Chicago United Center, IL
Jul 22: Chicago United Center, IL
Jul 28: New York Madison Square Garden, NY
Jul 30: New York Madison Square Garden, NY
Aug 01: New York Madison Square Garden, NY
Aug 03: New York Madison Square Garden, NY
Aug 07: Toronto Scotiabank Arena, ON
Aug 09: Toronto Scotiabank Arena, ON
Aug 11: Toronto Scotiabank Arena, ON
Aug 13: Toronto Scotiabank Arena, ON
Aug 21: Philadelphia Xfinity Mobile Arena, PA
Aug 23: Philadelphia Xfinity Mobile Arena, PA
Aug 26: Detroit Little Caesars Arena, MI
Aug 28: Detroit Little Caesars Arena, MI
Sep 02: Montreal Bell Centre, QC
Sep 04: Montreal Bell Centre, QC
Sep 12: Boston TD Garden, MA
Sep 14: Boston TD Garden, MA
Sep 17: Cleveland Rocket Arena, OH
Sep 19: Cleveland Rocket Arena, OH
Sep 23: San Antonio Frost Bank Center, TX
Sep 25: San Antonio Frost Bank Center, TX
Oct 05: Denver Ball Arena, CO
Oct 07: Denver Ball Arena, CO
Oct 10: Seattle Climate Pledge Arena, WA
Oct 12: Seattle Climate Pledge Arena, WA
Oct 15: San Jose SAP Center, CA
Oct 17: San Jose SAP Center, CA
Oct 25: Washington Capital One Arena, D.C.
Oct 27: Washington Capital One Arena, D.C.
Oct 30: Uncasville Mohegan Sun Arena, CT
Nov 01: Uncasville Mohegan Sun Arena, CT
Nov 05: Hollywood Hard Rock Live, FL
Nov 07: Hollywood Hard Rock Live, FL
Nov 09: Tampa Benchmark International Arena, FL
Nov 11: Tampa Benchmark International Arena, FL
Nov 20: Charlotte Spectrum Center, NC
Nov 22: Charlotte Spectrum Center, NC
Nov 25: Atlanta State Farm Arena, GA
Nov 27: Atlanta State Farm Arena, GA
Dec 01: Glendale Desert Diamond Arena, AZ
Dec 03: Glendale Desert Diamond Arena, AZ
Dec 10: Edmonton Rogers Place, AB
Dec 12: Edmonton Rogers Place, AB
Dec 15: Vancouver Rogers Arena, BC
Dec 17: Vancouver Rogers Arena, BC

Rush: Fifty Something tour dates 2027

Jan 15: Buenos Aires Movistar Arena, Argentina
Jan 22: Curitiba Arena da Baixada, Brazil
Jan 24: São Paulo Allianz Parque, Brazil
Jan 26: São Paulo Allianz Parque, Brazil
Jan 30: Rio de Janeiro Estádio Olímpico Nilton Santos. Brazil
Feb 01: Belo Horizonte Estádio Mineirão, Brazil
Feb 04: Brasília Arena BRB Mané Garrincha, Brazil

Feb 19: Paris La Défense Arena, France
Feb 21: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany
Feb 23: Amstersam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands
Feb 25: Munich Olympiahalle, Germany
Feb 28: Cologne Lanxess Arena, Germany
Mar 02: Hamburg Barclays Arena, Germany
Mar 04: Stuttgart Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle, Germany
Mar 08: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
Mar 10: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
Mar 12: Manchester Co-op Live, UK
Mar 14: Manchester Co-op Live, UK
Mar 16: London O2 Arena, UK
Mar 18: London O2 Arena, UK
Mar 21: London O2 Arena, UK
Mar 27: Kraków Arena Kraków, Poland
Mar 30: Milan Unipol Dome, Italy
Apr 01: Basel St. Jakobshalle Basel, Switzerland
Apr 04: Copenhagen Royal Arena, Denmark
Apr 06: Oslo Unity Arena, Norway
Apr 08: Stockholm Avicii Arena, Sweden
Apr 10: Helsinki Veikkaus Arena, Finland

Find Rush tickets.

Today is Blink-182 Day – a fan-created celebration of the Californian rockers that's held annually on the 182nd day of the year.

Although an unofficial event, it's been recognised by the band themselves in recent years and they've flagged the day on their Facebook page this year too.

To mark the occasion – and while we wait for the 25th anniversary edition of Take Off Your Pants And Jacket on October 30 – I've picked out a number of Blink-182 products – everything from t-shirts and hats, to tote bags and concert posters.

Looking for rock-themed gifts?

• Gifts for Iron Maiden fans: Run To The Hills with our pick of perfect presents
• Best gifts for Ozzy and Sabbath fans: Our top picks
• Best presents for metalheads: Heavy-duty gift ideas

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery are hosting a one-day event in honour of late Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne.

Legacy of a Madman: A tribute to the Prince of Darkness – which is in addition to the Museum's ongoing Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero exhibition – will take place on July 25 in the Industrial Gallery.

"Legacy of a Madman is a free memorial and legacy event celebrating the lives, music and cultural impact of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath," say the organisers. "Created in partnership with Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, the event brings together fans, musicians and the wider community to celebrate Birmingham's place as the birthplace of heavy metal and honour the artists who inspired generations around the world."

The event is being held in conjunction with a pair of guided walks, which will take participants through some of the most significant landmarks in Ozzy's story, before arriving at BMAG for two hours of live music.

The walk departs from BMAG at 10am on the 25th, with a second leaving at noon, and will visit the Black Sabbath Bridge and the Black Sabbath Bench, the Black Sabbath mural on Navigation Street, Ozzy the Bull at New Street Station, and the Crown Pub, widely recognised as the birthplace of Black Sabbath. The live music runs from 2pm to 4pm, and an after-party will follow.

The event's organisers include Children Of The Grave Bookings, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of Birmingham's musical heritage, and the UK branch of the Black Label Society, who organised the fan memorial held just days after Ozzy's passing in July 2025.

For more information, visit the Children Of The Grave Bookings Instagram page.

Hollywood superstar Javier Bardem has revealed that listening to Slipknot, Linkin Park and Bad Omens helped inspire his frighteningly intense performance as vengeance-seeking psychopath Max Cady in the new Apple TV+ remake of Cape Fear.

First screened in cinemas in 1962 with acting legends Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum cast, respectively, in the roles of attorney Sam Bowden and fresh-out-of-prison convicted rapist Max Cady, Cape Fear was remade in 1991 with Martin Scorsese directing and Robert DeNiro turning in a terrifying and unforgettable performance as Cady.

Only a brave or really foolish actor would attempt to out-do De Niro's acting masterclass in the 1991 version of the thriller, but Oscar-winning Spanish star Bardem says that listening to metal helped him get into the appropriate headspace to put his own stamp on the challenging role in the new 10-part Apple TV+ limited series.

"We absolutely went for a metal look, I loved that," the 57-year-old star tells Kerrang!

"I listened to five songs especially," he says. "Two from Linkin Park, Given Up, with the great Chester [Bennington], and Up From The Bottom from the last album, From Zero. I think [Emily Armstrong] is an amazing singer.

"She really brought it back," he continues. “Those two songs really express frustration and the fight for raising up from [one’s] own ashes that [resonates] with Max. And songs by Slipknot, Falling In Reverse, and Bad Omens. I’m so bad with the names of songs, but they were in my head all day long before doing anything and helped put me in the mood."

With that said, Bardem goes on to declare that he'd be listening to metal however his life had turned out.

"It's not that I use the music," he says. "It's that I can't live without it. It's what I listen to: when I drive, when I’m being driven, before I go to sleep... For me, metal is… a way of living."

Earlier this year, in an interview with Metal Hammer, Bardem revealed how Iron Maiden changed his life.

"I put my hand on the Number Of The Beast vinyl and I put it on, then life changed," he recalled. "They have the most amazing lyrics that really convey mostly everything that you can think of – philosophy, religion, politics, war, love, family, friends, metal... I mean, it’s fantastic."

Even if you haven't been one of the millions of people glued to their keyboards for the last few years for so much as a sniff of an update on the most highly anticipated video game sequel ever, chances are, you're aware that Grand Theft Auto VI is finally, finally mere months from release.

Two and a half years since the first trailer dropped, Rockstar Games finally made pre-orders available this week, with the game's much-delayed release date of November 19 surely set to stick.

The GTA series has a long history of absolutely smashing it when it comes to its soundtracks, with rock, metal, hip hop, pop, dance and even classical all richly represented at various points throughout the franchise. In that spirit, ranking every main entry Grand Theft Auto soundtrack from worst to best seems a nigh-on impossible task. But you know what? We're gonna try and do it anyway.

7. Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)

Just like the original, Grand Theft Auto 2 features a brilliant, diverse array of original compositions, building on its parent game by adding in more radio stations that can be accessed depending on which area of the game you're driving through. The reason it's bottom of this particular list? Despite expanding the soundtrack size of the first GTA, the sequel still feels like a slight step back because of the outstanding soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, an expansion to the original that was released just a few months before. That bolt-on featured licensed music in a GTA title for the first time, so the hop backwards to a 100% original soundtrack felt like a missed opportunity. Still, GTA 2's music is hella decent in its own right.

6. Grand Theft Auto (1997)

Every great gaming franchise has a thoughtful, immersive soundtrack to match, and the original Grand Theft Auto's was a game-changer in every sense of the term. Introducing the ingenious idea of having an interactive, in-car radio that could switch between stations and, therefore, genres gave the game's open-world-ish feel extra depth and personality. It also added a hilariously unhinged layer to the game's controversial violence; gleefully smashing into cop cars while playing propulsive 70s funk jams felt like the kind of cheekily subversive chaos that was destined to be lapped up by a generation weaned on South Park and 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin. Rockstar would innovate even further as the series wore on.

5. Grand Theft Auto III (2001)

Featuring three hours of music that included both real world and fictional artists, GTA III's soundtrack felt like as much of a leap forward for gaming as its namesake's much anticipated jump into 3D. From lush instrumental tracks like Scary Movies to classical cuts from the likes of Mozart and Verdi, it packed in an impressively diverse selection of songs in its runtime. Plus, it gave many hip hop fans an introduction to Royce Da 5'9", who'd later find fame as one half of hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, also featuring some fella named Eminem. GTA III's music would inevitably pale in comparison to what followed, but this was as forward-thinking as gaming soundtracks got in 2001.

4. Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)

After some 80s and 90s detours, GTA IV brought the series screeching back into the present day, and had a soundtrack to match. This was rarely as prevalent as with the introduction of the radio station Electro-Choc, which brought with it glitchy EDM cuts from the likes of Simian Mobile Disco, Deadmau5, Justice and K.I.M. There were plenty more fresh strokes being added, too: Liberty City Hardcore brought the rage courtesy of punk rock killers like Bad Brains, Sick Of It All, Cro-Mags and Murphy's Law (whose frontman Jimmy Gestapo presented the station). There were also rock anthems from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, plus a ton of hip hop, indie, pop, jazz and reggae. It lacked the stand-out anthems that felt title-defining like those offered by Vice City and San Andreas, but on a purely musical level, GTA IV still delivered the goods.

3. Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

GTA V did a particularly great balancing act that both tipped a cap to the nostalgic soundtracks of the sixth gen GTA titles while injecting a huge dose of contemporary, cutting edge whoppers. As well as getting stuck into the West Coast Classics Station and jamming Dr. Dre, N.W.A. and and Snoop, you could also switch on Radio Los Santos and enjoy fresh cuts by the likes of A$AP Rocky, The Game, Freddie Gibbs and Future. If rap wasn't your thing, you could still get stuck into old school hardcore, classic rock, modern electronica, millennial pop and much, much more. For sheer variety, it's hard to look past the latest entry into the series, and on that front, GTA VI certainly has its work cut out.

2. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)

Much like the game itself, San Andreas's soundtrack took the blueprint of its predecessor and built on it spectacularly. While the game's vastness and crazy amounts of character customisation/upkeep was a little too much for some, what was in no doubt was that its music absolutely slapped. Adding lashings of r'n'b, soul, country and reggae, San Andreas also made the most of its 90s setting courtesy of ringing in tracks from decade-defining heavyweights including 2Pac, Cypress Hill, Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More, Jane's Addiction, Soundgarden, Bobby Brown, Boyz II Men and many more. It made for an incredibly eclectic, bulletproof soundtrack that could appeal to music fans across the board.

1. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)

Capturing the feel of its mid-80s setting magnificently, Vice City doesn't just boast the best soundtrack of any GTA game, but one of the single best video game sountracks of all time. Anyone who picked it up at the time will never forget that first moment they jumped onto a moped and parped along blasting Billie Jean. With over nine hours of music across seven unique radio stations, players could hear heavy metal classics from Twisted Sister, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest or Iron Maiden on V-Rock, switch over to Wave 103 for some synth pop bangers courtesy of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Tears For Fears and Blondie and then have a listen to Wildstyle for foundational hip hop anthems by legends like Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC.

All at the tap of an L1 button. GTA soundtracks have got even more diverse since then, but for creating the perfect soundtrack to a game set in a particularly iconic era for pop culture - as well as providing countless hits perfect for heists and high speed chases - Vice City remains GOATed. Oh, plus: that main theme is an absolute worldie.

Grand Theft Auto VI releases November 19. Pre-orders are available via Playstation and Xbox

We're now into the final day of Amazon Prime Day, but if you're quick, there's still time to get a sweet discount on a fresh pile of rock and metal t-shirts. We've already had a look at some brilliant Sleep Token merch deals, but if your loyalties lie elsewhere, I've got you covered.

Let's kick things off in the US, where you can get this Black Sabbath World Tour 1978 Sketch t-shirt with a 20% discount – down from $24.99 to £19.99.

If you're in the UK and have been enjoying seeing Metallica on the latest leg of their M72 tour and want a throwback t-shirt, then there's 30% off this ...And Justice For All tee, which is down from £20 to just £13.98.

There are loads of cut-price tees on Amazon, but let's focus back in on the US for a bit.

Def Leppard are one of the biggest rock bands on the planet and I can recall going into my local HMV back in 1987 and buying Hysteria on cassette. I also saw them on that tour in Edinburgh, but I'm getting side-tracked by nostalgia! If you want to display your love of that era of the band, then this classic Hysteria t-shirt is down from $29.99 to $23.99.

Prefer your rock a little more classic? Then how about this Led Zeppelin 1975 US tour t-shirt? It's down from $24.99 to $20.79 and it's one of my favourite designs in this list of Prime Day t-shirt discounts.

If you're after something a little more straightforward, then this AC/DC red logo t-shirt should fit the bill – and it's down from $25.99 to $20.79. Meanwhile, Motorhead fans can get their fix with this awesome Snaggletooth design, which has been reduced from $24.99 to £19.99 and it's a bona fide classic look.

Let's take a look at the UK side of things again, and you really can't go wrong with a Pink Floyd The Dark Side Of The Moon design. It's down from £24.99 to 18.99 for Prime Day.

We're still getting over the loss of The Prince Of Darkness so if you'd like to pay homage to Ozzy, you can get your hands on a Diary of A Madman tee at Amazon, with the price cut from £24 down to £20.28.

Another classic logo design is on display with this no-nonsense Linkin Park tee, with the price cut from £24.99 to £20.99 making it a must-have for fans of the band.

My final pick goes to the band of the moment: Rush. Geddy and Alex are on tour right now with drummer Anika Nilles and keyboardist Loren Gold – and the four of them are delivering spectacular shows. They won't be in the UK until next year, but while we wait, you can relive the good old days with this America 1977 Tour t-shirt – down from £24.99 to £20.99.

For more Prime Day discounts, take a look at Louder's Prime Day music deals page, our Prime Day turntable deals, and don't forget we're also collecting our favourite Prime Day vinyl deals too.

I’ll be totally honest with you, at least 25% of the clothes I own are Sleep Token-related. I went slightly nuts/bankrupt at the merch table during their late-2024 Take Me Back To Eden tour, last year at Download, and I even bought an ST tee at Primark last month, because that’s a thing now.

So, I was positively giddy when an email from Sleep Token hit my inbox announcing ‘Behold, Prime Day is here’. Now, Sleep Token aren't shy about merch drops (can we have a new tour instead please, lads?), but this sale is actually really decent: for a limited time you can save 15% off a range of Sleep Token clothing and merch for a limited time. I’ve also tracked down a 15% Amazon saving on Even In Arcadia double vinyl and a small discount on Sundowning on CD.

By ‘limited time’ I’m referring to the fact Prime Day is scheduled to end tomorrow (Friday 26 June) and currently there's no telling if these deals will stick around after this point.

I’ve been covering the Prime Day Music deals for a while now, but nothing brings me more joy than helping people save money on clobber relating to their (and my) favourite bands. And this one’s a doozy, so here goes.

The main thrust of the sale is clothing from Vessel and Co’s visually awesome Take Me Back To Eden era, featuring album art on everything from t-shirts and tanks, to hoodies and this rad iPhone case. You’ve got the characters from Granite, Rain and the album's title track to choose from. There’s also a couple of colourways for a cool This Place Will Become Your Tomb sigil design that is in my basket right now.

Elsewhere on the sale page, there’s some merch that I’ve not seen before - and isn’t actually on sale, dangit - but well worth checking out. In particular I love this stainless steel 30oz water bottle featuring the Sleep Token logo in Arcadia pink. There’s also a range of basic tees and hoods featuring the Sleep Token logo solo. There’s something for everyone here, and believe me when I say these prices are a fraction of what you’d pay at a show.

Get ‘em while they’re hot. Or as Sleep Token would say: Act with haste, nothing lasts forever.

Shop more Prime Day sales

• Amazon: Shop all the Prime Day deals
• Argos: Hundreds of sale items under £25
• Currys: Bluetooth speakers from £9.99
• EMP: Festival deals - Save up to 20%
• John Lewis: Up to 50% off AirPods
• Lego: Star Wars savings
• Nixon: Free shipping on the Nirvana watch

If you love metal and classic rock and love to collect things, then you need to check out the Funko Pop! range of vinyl figures.

There are a ridiculous amount of these pint-sized creations to discover, but to help steer you on your way, I've picked out a selection of some of my favourites that are on sale in both the US and UK this Prime Day.

One Funko Pop! Rocks legend that's on sale in the UK right now is AC/DC icon Angus Young which has been reduced from £22 to £14.04. There are many Funko Angus Youngs to find out in the wild, but this particular one is inspired by the cover art of the band's classic Powerage album.

In the US, meanwhile, Angus and the rest of the AC/DC gang are available in a single Funko box, complete with stage amps and cannons. Amazon has reduced the price from $160 to $130 and you can grab it right now.

Also in the US, Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie in his Night Of The Dead guise has received the Funko treatment, with the price down from $14.99 to $11.99.

Being a musician, filmmaker and producer to name but a few, there are many strings to Rob Zombie's bow, and he can now add Funko figure to his long list of achievements. His vinyl figure complete with zombie bandana is also on sale at Amazon, reduced from $14.99 to $12.49.

And that's not all, because The White Stripes’ Jack and Meg double pack is also down in price for Prime Day - from $23.99 to $14.02.

Back in the UK, there are plenty more Prime Day Funko discounts to be snaffled, including Ghost’s Papa Emeritus IV - down from from £13 to £9.94, and Guns N' Roses top-hat wearing guitar god Slash in all his Funko glory has been reduced from £13 to £8.90.

Much-loved Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury, wearing his iconic yellow military jacket from the band's 1986 Magic tour is also on sale, with the price cut from £11.90 to £9.52.

And if the hair side of mid-80's metal is more your thing, then this Funko figure of Jon Bon Jovi should be one for the collection. Wearing basically the same outfit as me when I saw Bon Jovi on the New Jersey tour back in the day, you can pick up the singer for £17.30, that's down from the usual price of £22.98.

For more Prime Day discounts, take a look at Louder's Prime Day music deals page, our Prime Day turntable deals, and don't forget we're also collecting our favourite Prime Day vinyl deals too.

Given that Fugazi have never shown any inclination whatsoever to sell merchandise, the launch of a news Fugazi x Vans trainers collection has raised eyebrows, and raised hackles online. Not least because this new collection has absolutely nothing to do with the Washington DC hardcore band.

"I’m guessing someone from vans will reach out to us," Dischord Records, the label co-founded and owned by Fugazi vocalist/guitarist Ian MacKaye posted on Instagram in response to Vans launching the line by offering free pairs of trainers to those showing up at Vans Le Marais in Paris.

The Fugazi that Vans are collaborating with is a Los Angeles streetwear company founded in 2018 by entrepreneur Trevor Gorji. In a hilariously over-the-top profile of the brand by NSS magazine, its described as "a brand that would defy norms and make luxury accessible without compromising on quality."

"Fugazi's success is not just about its products," the profile states. "The brand stands out for its narrative approach and commitment to the community... Each collection is accompanied by reflections on themes of authenticity, illusion, and resistance."

Forgive us if the irony here proves too much for you.

In case there was any doubt whatsoever that Gorji's company's collaboration with Vans is no in way affiliated with the band, Dischord Records also posted on the streetwear company's Instagram, "We have nothing to do with this to be clear."

When a skateboard company called Animus replied, "you should be, things change and no shame in the game, you deserve it", Dischord replied with a 'thoughtful face' emoji which here roughly translates as "Have you got the slightest fucking idea about our ethics?"

Capitalism, of course, abhors a vacuum, and if one of the most popular and inspirational bands from America's underground punk scene has zero interest in producing T-shirts, posters, hoodies or any other branded paraphernalia, then bootleggers have been only to happy to step in.

Type 'Fugazi T-shirt' into any search engine and you'll see scores of designs for sale on Amazon, Etsy and elsewhere. None are official merch, or in any way endorsed by the band, who have been on hiatus since completing a three-night stand at London's Kentish Town Forum in November 2002.

There is, however, one interesting outlier within the bootleg Fugazi T-shirt universe, a T-shirt bearing the slogan 'This Is Not A Fugazi T-Shirt'.

In the mid-90s, Ian MacKaye traced one of these 'fugazi' Fugazi shirts to a company in Boston, he revealed in an interview conducted for The Art Of The Band T-Shirt, and spoke with the main guy, telling him to desist.

"Of course, he wanted to do a deal," MacKaye said. "And, of course, the answer was still no. Still, we had a nice chat. He was curious why we didn’t want to sell shirts, and after I explained our position, he seemed to respect it. About one month later, a friend at a record store alerted me to the ‘This is not a Fugazi t-shirt’ shirt. I traced it back to the same Boston dude. What a smart motherfucker he was!"

"I called him up," MacKaye continued, "and said, Okay, you’re funny and you’re creative, so let’s see how creative you are with accounting. I asked him to choose an organization doing good work in his community and give them what would amount to the band’s royalty for the shirts. I think he chose a women’s shelter up there, and as far as I know he sent them money right up until he quit the business."

In 2013, a writer for defunkd followed up on the story, and learned that the owner of the T-shirt company did indeed honour his pledge to MacKaye, and donated money from every shirt sold to a women's homeless shelter in Boston named Rosie's Place.

Gamers around the world have been drooling with anticipation since it was announced that The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time is being remade for the Nintendo Switch 2, with the release date pencilled in for some point this year.

The original game was released for the N64 console back in 1998 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made, and while we patiently wait for further details to emerge, there's plenty for Zelda fans to get excited about this Prime Day, including a price drop on the Lego Great Deku Tree. The recreation of the Ocarina Of Time favourite is down from $520.92 to £459.

Be warned though, Prime Day comes to an end just before midnight tonight (June 26) so if you see something you like, grab it fast!

The Lego Nintendo Deku Tree is made up of 2500 pieces, so it should keep you entertained for a while. Not only that, but this Lego model can be turned into either the Ocarina Of Time version, or the Breath Of The Wild version. It also comes with three Link minifigures and Princess Zelda.

Speaking of Link's first outing on the original Switch console, The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild- Creating A Champion book has been reduced from £47.99 to £28, and it's an essential addition to any Zelda fan’s bookshelf. It features 424 pages of sketches, illustrations and commentary related to the award-winning video game.

Speaking of books, The Legend Of Zelda Encyclopedia has also had a price cut – down from £33.50 to £27.01. It's a comprehensive 320-page bible dedicated to the iconic series. And you can even carry a Zelda memento around with you, thanks to the super-cute Korok key-chain which is down from £12.54 to just £9.90.

If you’re exploring Tears Of The Kingdom on your Nintendo Switch, you can light up the Depths with this lovely Heart Container light. It has a Prime Day discount of 20%, with the price chopped from £24.99 to £19.89. It gently pulses when switched on too and is powered by batteries or via the included USB cable.

Back to the US, and gamers who have yet to experience the sprawling Tears Of The Kingdom can now do so with a 25% discount on the Switch 2 edition. Amazon has cut the price from $79.99 down to $59.99.

Stateside gamers can also pick up a digital code for the brilliant and imaginative Echoes Of Wisdom on Switch 1 for $39.99, reduced from $59.88. In the In the UK, you can pick up the cartridge edition for less too - down from £49.99 to £36.99.

While we wait for the Ocarina Of Time remake, you can show your love of the game with 15% off this classic t-shirt. Amazon have cut the price from $19.99 to $16.99 – and it’s available in a variety of colours.

My final pick goes to the Manga collection Twilight Princess Complete Box Set which spans 11 volumes. The Master Sword has been taken to the list price and it's now down from $129.99 to $101.33.

Global Beatles Day takes place on June 25 - a fan-created event that celebrates the anniversary of the first international satellite TV broadcast of The Beatles classic All You Need Is Love, which was beamed to an estimated 400 million people live from Abbey Road Studios back in 1967

And with the Prime Day savings n full swing, it seems only right to highlight some of The Beatles discounts that are available on Amazon right now - including massive savings on the The Beatles: Get Back hardcover book. The 240-page volume has been reduced from $60 to $23.24 in the US, while in the UK, it's down 68% from £40 to just £12.75.

The Beatles may have split up in 1970, but the legendary four-piece seem to be as popular now as they ever were. And with loads of discounts available for Prime Day, I've highlighted some of my other favourite deals below.

If you’re in the US, there's a nice saving on The Beatles: 1967-70 vinyl box set, which has been reduced by 16% from $75.98 to $64.12.

American fans also have access to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band short-sleeve t-shirt which is down from $22.99 to $18.39 – and if you think you know everything about the George, Paul, John and Ringo, you test your knowledge with the officially licensed Beatles Trivial Pursuit game – down from $21.99 to $17.49. With over 600 themed questions, answering everything is going to take you a very long time indeed.

Across in the UK, you can get your hands on the The Beatles: Yellow Submarine graphic novel which is down in price from £26.99 to £21.99.

The 8CD Beatles Anthology Collection is also on sale for Prime Day, with Amazon taking the price down from £87.32 to £76.02. The collection includes a total of 191 tracks, including live songs and studio outtakes.

My final pick foes to this Abbey Road hoodie which Amazon have cut from £33.99 to £28.78. It's available from sizes S- XXL and you can order it in a variety of colours.

These are just some of many Beatles-themed discounts this Prime Day and to discover even more bargains, head on over to Louder's Prime Day music deals page which we're updating throughout the week. And don't forget to visit our pages highlighting the best Prime Day turntable deals, and we're also collecting our favourite Prime Day vinyl deals too.

A week after Jack Osbourne defended news that there are plans to launch an Ozzy A.I. avatar project, the son of the late Black Sabbath singer has now responded online criticism for attending the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House this week.

The mixed martial arts competition was held on the South Lawn as part of the USA's 250th anniversary celebrations of the Declaration of Independence. By absolute coincidence, the big-budget gathering coincided with the 80th birthday of President Donald Trump.

Jack attended the occasion with his wife Aree, and posted a number of photographs on his Instagram account along with the caption 'Ultimate Date Night'. It quickly drew vicious criticism from people drawing assumptions about his political affiliations and suggesting that his father would disapprove.

On June 17, Osbourne posted a video addressing the comments made about him and his late father on his official YouTube channel.

"Some of the comments I've been getting are completely insane. And like, what the fuck, I went to a sporting event – that's it," says Jack. "I didn't go and throw my hat in the ring for political office. I wasn't there going to endorse a politician or some kind of, you know, foreign affairs issue. Nothing. I literally went to the White House to go see UFC.

"I have been into combat sports my entire life," he continues. "So when I got invited by Dana White to attend the fight at the White House, of course I would go. Any person out there who would get an invite would have gone. I'm sorry. There was no one I could think of that would have been like, 'No, I'm not doing that because I don't approve of, you know, orange man or whatever the fuck.' It's ridiculous."

Osbourne believes that the sporting event was not political and treated the invite for what it was. Other celebrities spotted that evening included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and boxer Tyson Fury.

"It was a fucking fight at the White House," he clarifies. "Who gives a fuck? And in fact, when I was there with my wife, I looked over at one point and I was like, 'Hey, why aren't why does this not happen more often? It would be amazing to have sporting events at the White House.' In fact, there are politicians back in the day that did used to do that. So, just food for thought."

Many of the comments we've read suggested that his late father would not have attended the event, and repeatedly brought up the subject matter of Sabbath's anti-war song War Pigs as an example.

"As far as the people bringing my father into this saying, 'Oh, Ozzy would not approve. He's rolling over in his grave.' Shut the fuck up," You did not know my father. You did not know where he stood with things. Yes, he wrote a song called War Pigs. Sure, anti-war song. He wasn't anti-UFC. He wasn't anti- going to an event at the White House. He was anti-war. Sure, fair enough.

Jack was quick to point out that Ozzy did his part in entertaining the troops on USO tours and visiting soldiers convalescing at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

"To bring my father into this to say he would or wouldn't approve is completely insane," he concludes. "I simply attended a sporting event for a sport that I have a great amount of respect for and something that's been a part of my life since I can remember. So, deal with it. I'm sorry you weren't invited."

A new Pulp documentary film, Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?, will be streamed exclusively on Mubi later this year.

Directed by Garth Jennings (Sing, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), the 90-minute film promises to chart the Sheffield band’s “extraordinary journey from obscurity to cultural touchstone”, according to a press statement.

The press release goes on to say that the documentary, which is narrated by frontman Jarvis Cocker, "fuses the brilliantly choreographed stage spectacle of Pulp's biggest ever arena show – part of the global tour for More, the band's first album in 24 years – with four decades of colourful, never-seen-before archival material", and that it will serve as "a vibrant tribute to a band of brilliant misfits, whose unique blend of irony, rebellion, and razor-sharp social commentary resonated with generations of listeners and helped define an era of British culture."

The film will be accompanied by Live!, a new live album which doubles up as the film’s soundtrack.

"A concert is an event where songs come back to life," says Jarvis Cocker. "That’s why this album is called Live! It’s both a statement of fact (it’s a recording of a live band) & a challenge (come on! Everyone come alive!)."

Live! will be released via Rough Trade on August 28, and will be available on double vinyl, double CD and via digital streaming services.

No date has yet been announced as the first screening date for Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?

The band are set to play festivals and arena shows this summer.

Jun 02: Mexico City Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico
Jun 06: Bogotá Movistar Arena, Colombia
Jun 08: Santiago Movistar Arena, Chile
Jun 12: Buenos Aires Movistar Arena, Argentina
Jun 25: Berlin Tempodrom, Germany -
Jun 27: Berlin Tempodrom, Germany
Jun 29: Cologne Palladium, Germany

Jul 02: Beauregard Festival, France
Jul 04: Les Eurockéennes, France
Jul 06: Paris, Zenith, France
Jul 08: Lyon Les Nuits De Fourviere, France
Jul 11: Mad Cool Festival Madrid, Spain
Jul 18: London Southbank Centre, UK
Jul 31 All Together Now, Ireland

Aug 28: Manchester Wythenshawe Park UK
Sep 05: End Of The Road festival UK

By this point, we’re familiar with the concept of the spit ’n’ sawdust garage-blues duo. But Patrick Carney (drums) and Dan Auerbach (vocals/guitar) can stake a solid claim as originators of the format, launching The Black Keys in Akron, Ohio at the turn of the millennium, and finding their voice (alongside some revved-up covers of Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside) on 2002 debut album, The Big Come Up.

The pair’s history as music aficionados and vinylcrate magpies is writ large on the Keys’ latest album Peaches!, and Carney is happy to go deeper down the rabbit hole over a cigarette.

The first music I remember hearing

The first song I can remember being obsessed with was Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant. I’ve met a couple of other people around my age who also said it was a track that opened their eyes. There’s just something magical about it. In the video, he’s revving up a motorcycle. And it’s got, like, a modulating Minimoog bass line. Ever since then the fuzzy grind of a Minimoog has always done something for me.

The first song I performed live

Dan and I started with Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside songs, but the first time we played a rock’n’roll song, it was The Beatles’ She Said She Said. We were too young to know that covering The Beatles is not something you’re supposed to do. My dad gave me Revolver one year for my birthday, and that song just always stuck out to me.

The greatest album of all time

There’s been times when I thought it was London Calling, and other times when I thought it was The Dark Side Of The Moon or the White Album. But today, if I had to turn someone on to a record, I’d say Television’s Marquee Moon. There’s no singles or hits on it. But it’s just this melodic, wonderful thing, with two guitars interweaving in a way that’s not just shredding. There’s very few albums like that, and even that band was unable to create that magic before or after.

The songwriter

Bob Dylan. There’s definitely some hooks, but I think there’s a magical quality about his poetry. He had a run that was kind of unrelenting for about twenty years, into the late seventies, and I actually really enjoy a lot of his recent albums. My favourite is the Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3. I love a song like Santa-Fe, where you can barely even tell what he’s saying. I like the demo quality of it. It’s not precious, it’s capturing a feeling

The guitarist

Marc Ribot, maybe. My uncle played with him in Tom Waits’ band, and when Rain Dogs came out I was five, and my dad would play it all the time. So I grew up with his guitar playing. I love the tone that he gets, even on his acoustic stuff. I like a musician who, when they pick up an instrument, you can tell from the first note it’s them playing.

The singer

I think I’m gonna go with Al Green. He has a run of albums that started in, like, ’71 through about ’75, including Al Green Gets Next To You and Let’s Stay Together. I like the Hi Records sound and the Willie Mitchell production. There’s something about that era of Memphis, post-Stax, that I’m very fond of.

The best band I've seen live

There’s been moments when I’ve just been floored, and a lot of that happened when I was a teenager. The first time I saw Beck, in ’96, was pretty powerful. He’s a total showman and has songs that translate well live. It was at a place in Cleveland in front of, like, seven hundred people on the Odelay tour. It was a kind of supernatural experience.

My cult hero

In my book, there’s a ton of bands that even if they’re highly rated, they’re still underrated. Then there’s a lot of bands that are just way fucking overrated. I think Modest Mouse is underrated. If you listen to their first four albums, it’s kind of fucked up what they did there. And they were only kids. I think they were seventeen or eighteen when that first record came out.

My guilty pleasure

I’m kind of interested in late-period Italian disco. And some of that stuff can be borderline cheeseball.

The anthem

I think (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction is designed that way. It’s the Stones’ first great song. It starts a long pattern of them making great singles. It sounds ahead of its time. It’s one of the first songs to use a fuzzbox – and I’m a sucker for a fuzzbox.

My Saturday night party song

It might be The Slits’ cover of I Heard It Through The Grapevine. A buddy played it for me a couple of years ago and I was like: “Yeah, this is just familiar enough”. But then it transforms towards the end into a pretty solid groove. It walks that line between postpunk and disco, which is always fun.

The song I want played at my funeral

Maybe everybody should make a death playlist that gets unsealed when they die. But I wouldn’t put sad songs on it. I think a good song to play at a funeral is Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem.

Peaches! is out now via Easy Eye Sound/Warner

Father's Day will be with us on Sunday, June 21 so if you've been struggling for ideas, I've picked out 15 products that should cover your music-loving, pop-culture-obsessed dad - and if you're quick, everything here should be delivered before the day itself.

I've covered a range of budgets: from £12.99 - £199.99 and included a Slayer vinyl box set, a brilliant portable turntable from the experts at Audio-Technica, a Sleep Token colouring book, a pair of SHOKZ headphones, a brilliant JBL portable speaker, a Metallica t-shirt and whole lot more.

So dive in and hopefully I've given you some inspiration for your dad this Father's Day.

More gift ideas

• Gifts for Iron Maiden fans: Run To The Hills with our pick of perfect presents
• Best gifts for Ozzy and Sabbath fans: Our top picks
• Best presents for metalheads: Heavy-duty gift ideas

The first billion-dollar franchise in gaming history, Guitar Hero made a new generation of kids want to pick up an instrument. It also made Slash, the cover star of the third entry, a celebrity all over again. In 2010, Classic Rock looked back on how the Guns N’ Roses guitarist became just as famous among gamers as he was rock fans.

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell identified and explored “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point,” at which something cool becomes something global, something unstoppable, a cultural touchstone.

Speak to any A&R man, any journalist, any ad exec, look in your record collection or at your pile of DVDs, watch a TV show like Shark Tank/Dragons’ Den, and you’ll discover lots of good stuff that never reached the Tipping Point, that never went global, that remain instead small and generic pleasures.

Guitar Hero, a simple, clever computer game that distilled the essence of playing a musical instrument down to the push of a button, and that has become a revenue stream so great that it might yet forge a new and unseen future for the flagging business of flogging records, nearly didn’t reach its Tipping Point. It nearly didn’t tip, it nearly didn’t become the first single game in history to generate one billion dollars in revenue; it almost didn’t become the entry point for a new generation of kids to get into guitars and guitar music.

That it did is one of the more remarkable success stories of the new century, and at its centre is a man who hasn’t seen the inside of too many boardrooms over the years.

Guitar Hero was devised by video game company called RedOctane, who had created some hardware for an arcade game named Guitar Freaks, which was a hit in Japan, and liked the idea of producing a version for home gaming. They partnered with a developer, Harmonix Music Systems, and made the first version for around $1m. Their hunch was good: the inaugural edition of Guitar Hero, which had a metal-style logo on the box and a hand-held controller shaped like a Gibson SG – the guitar favoured by AC/DC’s Angus Young and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi – was a hit. It won awards, was called ‘probably the greatest rhythm game ever invented’. RedOctane realised that the guitar-shaped peripheral was what they called ‘the magic sauce’ – the little extra ingredient that made the game special.

The 47 playable songs it featured were expanded to 64 for Guitar Hero II, which became the fifth-biggest selling game of 2006. It was now available for both Playstation 2 and X-Box 360 platforms, the latter version came with a Gibson Explorer-shaped controller. The key to its expansion was the arrival of big name bands like AC/DC and Aerosmith, Van Halen and Guns N’ Roses.

“We’d hit the sweet spot,” said developer John Tam. “They [the bands] understood that we’re not going to embarrass their music, we’re going to actually pay homage to their music and get it to the point where people are going to understand their music in a totally different way than they’ve ever experienced it before.”

The franchise was now worth serious money, but it still hadn’t tipped. It wasn’t a brand known to the man in the street. The game meant nothing outside of gaming circles. Then a company called Activision bought RedOctane, paying $100m to acquire Guitar Hero. A few months later, Harmonix was purchased by MTV Networks (they would go on to develop the rival Rock Band game). With Harmonix gone, the third edition of the Guitar Hero franchise was developed instead by Neversoft, an Activision subsidiary whose team had become so obsessed with the first editions of Guitar Hero that they spent their weekends off playing it.

While the template was set, the game still lacked the extra edge that would push it beyond its natural boundaries of hardcore gamers. Guitar Hero had real songs by real bands, but the game featured no actual rock stars, relying instead on a series of avatars created for the purpose – avatars with faux rock star names like Axel Steel and Izzy Sparks. The company decided to address the issue for the third edition.

Slash, the man who would ultimately ‘tip’ Guitar Hero into popular culture, had already encountered the game, and was at best ambiguous about its pleasures.

“I was on the Gibson tour bus with the Gibson guys for a meeting and I had my wife and kids with me,” he says. “You know how little kids are at a meeting, so I was looking for something for them to do, and they had Guitar Hero. So I figured out how it worked and got it working for them and realised they had all this cool music that you don’t hear all the time. Anyway, the Gibson people realised that I was sort of like intrigued by this game so they sent me one to my house. I have a little office at the back of the house with a TV set in it, and I hooked it up. I got obsessed with the fucking game! I had to beat the game. I think I spent the better part of a week in that room, not taking calls, missing out on dinner. That was on ‘medium’. Next I started on ‘expert’. I started going through that – same fucking songs over and over only a lot faster. I was about halfway through, and I thought, you know what? This is embarrassing. So I unplugged it and put it in the closet. About a week later, Guitar Hero called and asked me if I’d be interested in working with them in developing the game.”

Slash wrestled with the idea. “I’m not a real video game guy,” he admits. “You get asked to do things a lot, and my first reaction is to ask, ‘Is this cool or not cool?’ You can’t do everything that people put in front of you because a lot of it’s lame, and I have a bad tendency to just go for whatever. But I sort of analysed it for a second and I guess what happened was, initially, I didn’t think it was all that cool, but the fact that I was so into the game itself, I was sort of won over. I went and met with them anyway.”

Even so, there was no immediate rapport between the parties. “The meeting was in one of those big boardrooms with all these executives,” says Slash, “and I think there was one guy in there who really knew who I was. Activision has all of these different levels because it’s a multi-billion dollar company and it’s made up mostly of executives. Apparently they didn’t really want to meet me because they didn’t know what to expect. It’s funny, actually, because five years ago I probably would have scared the shit out of them but I had it together when I went in this time. Went in sober and all that kind of stuff.”

When it came to discussing the specifics, things were woolly too, as Slash remembers. ‘They really didn’t know what they were doing when I first went in there. They had this idea of having an individual sort of representing the game. They wanted someone who was going to be the guitar hero. I think it was down to a couple of people. We sat and talked about it and we wanted this character in the game that was going to be me, and there would be these battles. All that was fine and dandy but I have to admit, when I signed on to do it, it was only the nerdy kid in me that made me say yes. Everything else about me said, no, don’t do it.”

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes: ‘Things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference. That’s a little bit counterintuitive. As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect. And when there isn’t – when a movie made on a shoestring budget ends up making hundreds of millions of dollars for example – we’re surprised. I’m saying, don’t be surprised. This is the way social epidemics work.’

The little thing that made a big difference for Guitar Hero III was not the presence of Slash in the game – after all, it also features another rock star, Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine – it was the box that the game came in. Slash’s avatar, all top hat and cool curls, was front and centre. All of a sudden, the game had a face recognisable to a demographic that extended way beyond gamers.

“I didn’t know it had come out,” Slash says. “I never saw the box. What happened was, we were doing the Velvet Revolver tour for the second record [Libertad], we were about to do a US tour and I asked them if they would be interested in supplying me with a bus, because I was taking my family out with me. I needed my own bus for that. They could paper the bus. They were like, ‘Okay, cool’. It showed up in Boston. I went to get something to eat, and walking back to the hotel I see this fucking huge picture of me on the side of the bus. I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, how am I supposed to travel around in that?’ That’s when I first got exposed to what the image on the box was going to be like. It was pretty overwhelming. I mean, Tom Morello’s in the game too. It was not so much being in the game; it was having my image on that fucking box.”

The game hit stores in October 2007, carrying the sub-title Legends Of Rock, another subtle parent-persuader. It featured 73 songs, and was available across Playstation and Xbox platforms, and this time Wii, PC and Mac too. Activision called it “our largest product launch ever”. It made $100m in its first week, and in the remaining months of 2007 became the year’s biggest-selling game. Activision could barely meet the Christmas demand. Six months later, when the thing had really tipped, it had sold more than eight million copies. As of the middle of 2009, Guitar Hero III had exceeded one billion dollars in revenue, and is now said to be the second-biggest selling computer game of any kind since 1995.

The by-product of all of these sales has been the impact on the life of the man on the box. “I have a specific story that will sort of shine a big bright light on that fact,” says Slash. “A friend of mine who’s a producer, he’s got, I guess, a six-year-old little boy. I went over to their house, and I’d never met his little boy. I went over there, and the kid lost his mind. ‘You’re the guy from Guitar Hero’. He couldn’t get over it. A bit later on that night, he came over to me and went, ‘Hey, do you play real guitar too?’ I try not to pay attention to all of that going on, but the biggest change in my day-to-day existence was the acknowledgement of kids under 10 years old.”

Ironically, for a platform that has produced a new, unexpected and much-needed revenue stream for the dying business of selling music, Slash didn’t actually make much money from Guitar Hero.

“For me, personally, when I signed up to do it, that particular game really took off,” he explains. “The game wasn’t as big before that. It was a little more under the radar when they called me up. And I did it for a pretty modest amount of money. There was no offer of a royalty or anything. Now after the fact, I’m like, fuck…

“It’s definitely changed the way we look at selling records, because as the record business goes into decline, the gaming business has been selling a lot of music. That’s been an interesting development for sure. If you’re in a band, the luckiest thing you can have is a guy from Activision or from the Rock Band people come along and say, we’d like to chronicle your career. There is a lot of money in it.”

Enough money, in fact, to make it a key part of the promotional strategy of many bands. Slash’s friends in Metallica, for example, began work on the Rock Band version of their 2008 album Death Magnetic just days after they had finished recording it.

“It’s nothing like playing the guitar. I’ll be the first to tell you that,” says Slash of the game and its success. “I was off the road and wasn’t doing anything when I got exposed to Guitar Hero II. When I hung around for that week, I wasn’t jamming or anything. I got physically used to playing it. When they sent me the new one with me on it, it showed up and I didn’t take it out of the box for probably three or four months. My security guard was over at my house and he wanted to see how it worked. I’d been touring, I’d been playing guitar every day for however long – probably close to a year – and I took it out figuring I was probably still good at it from before. Because I’d been playing real guitar, when I plugged it in and played it, the difference was such that I could not play Guitar Hero. I would have had to have practiced. There’s nothing similar apart from the way that you hold the guitar.”

And yet, in spite of that, it has a strange and magnetic appeal to it that is reinvigorating rock music and the rock business.

“It’s a work of genius because it works,” says Slash. “When you design something you can come up with all kinds of crazy ideas, but it’s when it really hits a nerve that it becomes a sort of phenomenon. It’s done a couple of cool things. It’s opened kids’ eyes and ears to a lot of music they never would have been exposed to, great rock’n’roll stuff that’s just generations away from them. It’s been spearheading a rock revival for kids, it really has. The other thing is, one of the big questions I got asked when I first got hooked up with Guitar Hero was, as expected, ‘Oh, it’s just more mindless gaming. It’ll kill the guitar industry’ and all this other naysayer crap. But in the course of a pretty short amount of time, it turns out that statistically, more kids were picking up the guitar as a result of Guitar Hero.”

Not a bad legacy for an old boy in a top hat who doesn’t care much for computer games.

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents Slash, March 2010.

Linkin Park are teasing fans with details of a new movie on their merchandise.

The band, who are currently touring Europe, have printed unshattermovie.com inside their tour T-shirts, which has led to speculation among fans as to what the movie will be about.

Those curious enough to investigate the URL – the name of the domain owner has been protected – will currently see the band's circular logo from 2024 and nothing more.

A sticker can also be spotted in the corner of an Instagram story countdown to their appearance at Rock am Ring in Nürburg, Germany this evening (June 5).

The band – who recruited vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain in time for their eighth album – recorded a song titled Unshatter which was featured on their 2024 album From Zero and released the following year as a single.

A simple Google search suggests it could be the highly-anticipated filmed show which took place at the Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil, on November 15, 2024. The concert footage, with an additional documentary, was slated for release the following year but was consequently postponed.

While pulling this story together, an Instagram post from LPLive showing the URL has since been removed.

The band's European shows run until June 30, where they play Zürich's Stadion Letzigrund. Catch them at the following shows and festivals.

June 5: Nürburg, Rock am Ring, Germany
June 7: Nuremberg, Rock im Park, Germany
June 9: Vienna, Ernst Happel Stadium, Austria
June 11: Munich, Allianz Arena, Germany
June 12: Munich, Allianz Arena, Germany
June 14: Donington Park, Download Festival, England
June 16: Lyon, Groupama Stadium, France
June 19: Santiago de Compostela, O Son do Camiño, Spain
June 21: Lisbon, Rock in Rio Lisboa, Portugal
June 23: Madrid, Auditorio Miguel Ríos, Spain
June 24: Madrid, Auditorio Miguel Ríos, Spain
June 26: Florence, Visarno Arena, Italy
June 28: Werchter, Werchter Parklife, Belgium
June 30: Zürich, Stadion Letzigrund, Switzerland

If you subscribe to Netflix, chances are the streaming platform has politely suggested you might want to watch their latest drama. It was, after all, executive produced by Matt and Ross Duffer, the twins responsible for Stranger Things.

The show is called The Boroughs – and spoiler alert – it features a gang of boomers trying to solve the mystery of a monster who's terrorising their gated community in a New Mexico desert. If we're being lazy, imagine kids from Stranger Things are now of a pensionable age and they're pooling their energy for one more adventure.

That said, it's very watchable. And like The Duffer Brothers used the title track of Metallica's 1986 iconic album Master of Puppets as a narrative hook in Stranger Things, the creators of the show – Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews – are doing it in a far more genteel way with a 1975 Bruce Springsteen song and potentially introducing Bruce Springsteen to a new generation.

Early on The Boroughs, Thunder Road – the opening song from Springsteen's third studio album – plays while the show's main character Sam Cooper (played by Alfred Molina) watches his wife Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek) collapse after suffering a stroke. The traumatic event haunts him throughout the story and, after beginning to settle in his retirement community, decides to revisit the song during a pivotal moment in the show.

Throughout the episodes, his adult daughter Claire (Jena Malone) repeatedly yet gently requests that he dig out his mother's vinyl copy from storage, as she wants it as a keepsake.

Sure, everyone loves Bruce Springsteen, and there comes a moment in a person's life when his kitchen sink dramas set to music speak to them. But why did the show pick this song in particular?

"Partly because it had never been done before and everyone thought we were crazy for trying," show co-creator Will Matthews tells Decider "Thunder Road has never been used in any show or movie specifically. Bruce, in general, is very hard to get and so everyone thought that that was nuts. But also, everyone agreed it was the perfect song."

It is, too, and it had to be, really.

Thunder Road opens the most important album of Springsteen's career. The critical acclaim of his first two albums – 1973's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and it's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, recorded and released the same year – was not reflected by sales other than on the East Coast.

If his third album flopped, Springsteen would be dropped by Columbia. His manager negotiated a bigger studio budget and although the sessions were "gruelling", Springsteen and his band emerged with an album that reflected a country reeling from the Vietnam war, political scandal and a litany of disappointments.

“The songs were written immediately after the Vietnam War,” Springsteen told Brian Hiatt, author of Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs. “And you forget, everybody felt like that then. It didn’t matter how old you were, everybody experienced a radical change in the image they had of their country and of themselves. The reason was, ‘you were changed.’ You were going to be a radically different type of American than the generation that immediately preceded you, so that line was just recognising that fact."

And four decades after writing the song on a piano, Springsteen's own take on the song changed during his Springsteen on Broadway show.

"There's nothing like that moment in your life of being young and leaving some place," he said. "All that youthful freedom, you finally feel untethered from everything you've ever known: your past, your parents, the world you've gotten used to and you've loved and hated. Your life laying before you like a blank page.”

It makes perfect sense, then, that this song was hand-picked by The Boroughs creators from the millions written and recorded. Sure, it's about the dreams of escaping a dead-end town, but It's a song that will have a deep emotional resonance with people like Sam Cooper who are navigating the depths of grief while attempting to honour their ghosts by living life to the full.

The Boroughs is available to stream on Netflix.

A trailer for Frampton, the upcoming documentary about Humble Pie guitarist and solo star Peter Frampton, has been released. The film, which has been made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his breakthrough live album Frampton Comes Alive, will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City today (June 4).

Frampton follows the guitarist's career from his early days with The Herd to his recent battles with the muscle-wasting disease Inclusion-Body Myositis (IBM), and features contributions from Ringo Starr, Bill Wyman, Tom Morello, Joe Bonamassa, Mike McCready, Vince Gill, Sheryl Crow, Alice Cooper, Herb Alpert, Kate Hudson, Cameron Crowe, Roger Daltrey, Chris Lord-Alge, Tommy Shaw and Nancy Wilson, in addition to Frampton and his family.

"Drinking too much, too many drugs... and then a car accident!" says Frampton, reflecting on the period after Frampton Comes Alive and the near-fatal 1978 car crash that almost ended his career.

"He was the golden god," says Nancy Wilson. "They don't give you the handbook for that."

Frampton is directed by Rob Arthur, who's been Frampton's bandleader for more than two decades and has previously worked on videos for the Doobie Brothers, Dave Mason, Damon Johnson and Orleans.

"One of the blessings for me was that everybody we wanted to interview said yes," Arthur tells GoSeeTalk. "It says something about him [Frampton] right there, you know? It would have been incredible to talk to Jerry Moss, it would have been incredible to talk to Steve Marriott, but these people are gone.

"But we got Herb Alpert instead of Jerry Moss, and that's pretty damn good. Herb was very happy to do this, and I was out of my skin, just 'I'm talking to Herb Alpbert! He's the 'A' of A&M. Oh my god.' You know, it was incredible for me."

Frampton premieres this evening at 8pm at the OKX Theater at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan. For more information about the film and other screenings, visit the official website.

In 1984, Robert Fripp dissolved the then-current lineup of King Crimson after three albums. Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair might have been well-received, but the ever-restless Fripp felt that the quartet – completed by Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Tony Levin – had fulfilled its original artistic purpose.

Besides, he wasn't happy, later telling Prog magazine that recording of the third album had been "the most awful record-making experience of my life, and one I would never choose to repeat."

The following year, Fripp released the 20-minute Network EP. He undertook a tour of UK record shops, including a stop at Rough Trade in West London, where he discussed – among other things – his recordings with Police guitarist Andy Summers, the abandoned album he worked on with Brian Eno and Scott Walker, and his sporting exploits. And, most peculiarly, he was the focus of a documentary made by BBC South.

Robert Fripp: New York – Wimborne, which has recently resurfaced online, was broadcast on September 3, 1985. The film, presented by late BBC DJ Anne Nightingale as a BBC2 Late Night in Concert film, follows Fripp as he attends a variety of events, including a marketing conference at Polydor Records in London, where he presents Three Of A Perfect Pair to the assembled marketeers.

"It's time that King Crimson extended itself," Fripp tells them. "We would like a new audience, so that we can get away from the expectations of our reliable audience. New music, new audience. This is what you can do for us."

The film also spends some leisurely time with Fripp in his hometown, Wimborne in Dorset, a place he describes as the "centre of the universe". It's where Fripp was given his first guitar, a cheap Manguin Frere acoustic, in 1957. It's where he made his first public appearance, playing second violin in the Kathleen Gartell Corfe Mullen School of Music Junior Orchestra, in 1959. And it's where, in 1961, he formed his first band, The Ravens.

In the Wimborne footage, Fripp visits a family gravestone, enjoys afternoon tea with his mother, and watches neighbourhood band Sports Day rehearse in their front room. He also offers advice to a young band called Social Science during a record signing at Square Records, a store that's been trading on Wimborne High Street since 1974.

"If you want to be successful in music in England, you have to live in London," says Fripp. "I'm very sorry to say that you cannot do it from Wimborne. You have to go and live in London for seven years. Resign yourself to it. They are not going to come to you. Even trips on the river or tea at the Yew Tree Cafe will not seduce the industry to come here."

Asked if Social Science should send demo tapes to record companies, Fripp doesn't hold back.

"It'll do nothing at all," he advises. "10,000 tapes a week arrive. Don't send a tape. Take a tape. Put a face on the name. You'll still be rejected 99 times out of 100, but nevertheless, go there with it. And it'll take time."

It's not known if Social Science moved to the capital, but it appears that they never released anything, so it must be assumed they failed to heed the great man's advice. And so Robert Fripp remains Wimborne's greatest musical export, although stoner metal pioneers Electric Wizard and folk-rock icon Al Stewart might beg to differ.

"We used to take the bus together when he was 15, and I actually took 10 guitar lessons from him," Stewart told Prog in 2021. "He taught me all these jazz chords that I never used again in my life."

Pretenders leader Chrissie Hynde has spoken out against fans who film live shows on their mobile phones, accusing them of feeling "entitled" to carry out a "weird compulsion" that's often at odds with the wishes of the musicians they're watching. In a letter to fans posted on social media, Hynde goes on to compare those who film concerts to "monkeys wanking."

"What is it with people and their phones?" asks Hynde. "Why do people have to know how many steps they take every day? What difference does it make?

"But my real question is: Why do people have to film or take pictures at concerts or museums? Why?"

Hynde goes on to describe a discussion with country icon Emmy Lou Harris, in which both artists expressed their despair over the fact that fans often ignore "no camera" requests from musicians, with some going as far as to smuggle phones into venues where they're meant to be sealed in a locked pouch for the duration of the performance.

"It's like a weird compulsion that people can't control," says Hynde. "It reminds me of monkeys wanking in full view of the people standing around their enclosure. And frankly, in that case, people deserve to be wanked at because monkeys should not be in an enclosure in the first place. However, an artist on a stage?

"No one seems to be able to understand why artists don't like it. If you've ever had a mosquito buzzing around your head when you're trying to go to sleep, you will get a vague idea of what it's like to have people filming your show or taking photos while you're on stage.

"After having the conversation with Emmy, the minute her show started at the Albert Hall, a guy in front of me started filming it on his phone. So the concert was obscured by the bright light of his phone throughout the whole show. (Someone did eventually tell him that he was being rude and his filming was distracting. His response was, 'mind your own business')."

Hynde goes on to describe an occasion in which her enjoyment of actor Sarah Snook's Tony Award-winning, one-woman version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was spoiled when a patron in the front row began filming the performance. She also says she no longer goes to museums after attending a Van Gogh retrospective marred by fans more determined to take photographs of the paintings on display than to actually look at them.

"I wanted to cry," Hynde says. "My conclusion is: If Jesus Christ were to walk into a room, the first thing everyone would do would be to pull out their phone. Can someone please explain?"

Not us, Chrissie. Not us.

Perfect Crime, the unreleased Guns N' Roses documentary filmed during the band's Use Your Illusion tour between 1991 and 1993, has been leaked online.

The film, which has long been considered a holy grail among Guns N' Roses fans, has appeared online as a 38-minute rough cut, having remained unseen since it was originally completed – reportedly 90 minutes long – in 1994. It documents one of rock's most famously chaotic tours, and features behind-the-scenes material and previously unseen live footage.

The version leaked online includes footage of aftershow parties with waiters dressed as Roman legionaries, fans in various states of undress, a pig served on a platter and lederhosen-clad dancers, plus Axl Rose receiving treatment from an osteopath on an airport taxiway.

Also included are interviews, footage of Izzy Stradlin and Slash jamming in a hotel room, Rose singing The Skyliners' Since I Don't Have You in the studio, Duff McKagan being stretchered offstage after being hit in the head by a bottle, and live performances of two complete live songs filmed at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in October 1992.

"This is what I always wanted to do," says Axl, interviewed as Guns N' Roses played Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1992. "I always knew it was going to happen. I never gave up hope. We've seen so many cats come and go in Hollywood that gave up. And it's hard. It's very difficult."

"We all know each other, and we've known each other for so long, it's hard for us to sit back and go, 'Hey! We're in the biggest rock band in the world!'" he continues. "It's not like that. We're still us, and we've got more albums to make, and we've got more shows to do."

Guns N' Roses are just about to begin the European leg of their 2026 tour, with dates in the US, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand to follow. Full dates below.

Guns N' Roses 2026 Tour

Jun 04: Gliwice PreZero Arena Gliwice, Poland
Jun 06: Gliwice PreZero Arena Gliwice, Poland
Jun 10: Dublin 3Arena, Ireland
Jun 13: Donington Download Festival, UK ∞
Jun 18: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands
Jun 20: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands
Jun 23: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany
Jun 25: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany
Jun 28: Antwerp AFAS Dome, Belgium
Jul 01: Paris Accor Arena, France
Jul 03: Paris Accor Arena, France

Jul 23: Raleigh Cater-Finley Stadium , NC *
Jul 26: Saratoga Springs Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NY *
Jul 29: Tinley Park Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre , IL *
Aug 01: Hershey Hersheypark Stadium , PA *
Aug 05: Toronto Rogers Stadium, ON *
Aug 08: Shakopee Mystic Lake Amphitheater, MN *
Aug 12: East Rutherford MetLife Stadium, NJ *
Aug 16: St. Louis Busch Stadium, MO *
Aug 19: Kansas City Morton Amphitheater, MO #
Aug 22: Las Vegas Allegiant Stadium, NV >
Aug 26: Edmonton Commonwealth Stadium, AB >
Aug 29: Vancouver BC Place, BC >
Sep 02: San Diego Snapdragon Stadium, CA >
Sep 05: Pasadena Rose Bowl, CA <
Sep 09: Arlington Globe Life Field, TX +
Sep 12: Ridgedale Thunder Ridge Nature Arena, MO #
Sep 16: San Antonio Alamodome, TX +
Sep 19: Atlanta Truist Park, GA

Nov 29: Adelaide Grand Final, Australia ≠
Dec 02: Townsville Queensland Country Bank Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 05: Brisbane Suncorp Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 08: Newcastle McDonald Jones Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 11: Melbourne Marvel Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 14: Sydney Engie Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 17: Auckland Eden Park Stadium, New Zealand ≠

* with Public Enemy
# with The Barbarians of California
> with The Black Crowes
< with Ice Cube
+ with Pierce The Veil
≠ with Airbourne
∞ festival date

Find Guns N' Roses tickets.

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, otherwise known as the composers for the original music for the hit TV series Stranger Things, not to forget members of the synth prog outfit S U R V I V E, have announced a live European tour where they'll be delivering a definitive performance of the entire Stranger Things saga.

At the same time, Invada Records UK and Lakeshore Records release two volumes of double vinyl albums for Stranger Things 5 — Original Score From The Netflix Series on July 15. The 95-track collection includes the score to Season 5 Volume 1 and Volume 2 as well as the music from the finale.

The Invada Records versions (for World excluding the Americas) are V.1 ion Metallic Bronze coloured vinyl and V.2 in Metallic Silver coloured vinyl, both versions are housed in a gatefold sleeve and printed inner with full colour photos.

Lakeshore Records' versions are 2xLP on Blue Smoke coloured vinyl with gatefold jacket and full colour printed sleeves.

Pre-order Invada release.

Pre-order Lakeshore Vol. I.

Pre-order Lakeshore Vol. II.

You can see the full list of live shows and ticket details below.

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein Stranger Things European tour dates

Jun 26: ITA Fiastra Fiastrapalooza Festival
Jun 28: BEL Brussels Ancienne Belgique
Sep 3: SRB Belgrade Drugstore
Sep 5: SPA Barcelona Paral·lel 62
Sep 8: SPA MadridThe music Station PRÍNCIPE PÍO
Sep 12: POL Sopot Brasswood Festival
Sep 14: BUL Sofia National Palace of Culture
Sep 16: SVK Bratislava Majestic Music Club
Sep 19: GRE Athens Hellenic Cosmos
Sep 21: IRE Dublin 3Olympia Theatre
Oct 31: FRA Nantes Le Lieu Unique
Nov 4: UK Belfast Ulster Hall
Nov 7: UK Birmingham Town Hall
Nov 9: UK London EartH Theatre
Nov 14: POR Braga Theatro Circo
Nov 16: GER Berlin Theater Des Westens

Get tickets.