For Metallica, the 90s were just like the 80s – only in reverse. The 10 years it took them to go from unloved New Wave Of British Heavy Metal copyists, when they formed in LA in 1981, to globe-straddling multi-platinum-selling rock titans on a sales par with Michael Jackson and U2, with the release of their fifth album, Metallica, aka the Black Album, in 1991, saw them evolve faster than a speeding bullet.

The move from hair-metal LA to anything-goes San Francisco, occasioned by bringing in SF natives, bassist Cliff Burton and guitarist Kirk Hammett; the sparking of a whole new genre in rock – thrash metal – and in its wake close-but-no-cigar imitators such as Megadeth and Slayer; the ability to fit comfortably onto the front covers Kerrang!, NME, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone and The Times of London, New York and LA; the death of Burton and the resulting exultation of a band afforded legend status before they’d even made a video; the conquering of first Britain then Europe then America then the rest of mankind.

They achieved all that between 1981 and 1991. Surely the next 10 years would follow a similarly skywards trajectory. All Metallica seemingly had to do was keep their eyes on the prize. Instead, they appeared to wilfully steer the great metal bird Metallica headlong into the ground, as they spent the 90s veering from one ‘controversial’ decision to another.

First they cut their long hair short, applied garish make-up, and lost more than half their global audience with release of the provocative post-Black Album Load (1996) and, more contentiously still, Reload (’97). Had Metallica gone grunge? Had Metallica sold out? Didn’t Metallica care about their metal-loving fans any more? What were Metallica thinking?

The answer to all those questions was: no. Metallica hadn’t changed their thinking at all. If anything they were staying true to their nature, pushing boundaries, riding their lightning back out to the edge again; exploring those places – musical, cultural – no other metal band would have considered. It was their defining characteristic: a gift and a curse that made Metallica both the only ‘thrash band’ to successfully transcend their origins – and singled them out for special punishment when these experiments exploded in their faces.

By 1998, when Metallica were now giving serious consideration to recording a rock-meets-classical album with a symphony orchestra, it felt almost as though they were on a kamikaze mission to kill or at least badly maim their career. Couldn’t they just make another one like the Black Album or, even better, Master Of Puppets? Another entirely thrash-based album the way Slayer and Megadeth and all the other comet-trailers did?

Actually, no they couldn’t. The boy for whom nothing was ever quite enough, drummer Lars Ulrich, wouldn’t let them. Instead, the 90s became the beginning of what singer/guitarist James Hetfield later described with more than a hint of sarcasm as “the great reinvention of Metallica”.

“It’s not like we all went out together for a group haircut,” said Lars, when I teased him about it. But in many ways that’s exactly what they did do. It was one thing seeing Kirk Hammett showing off his new body tattoos and face piercings; essential oil dabbing, comic-book collecting, dope-smoking Kirk had always leaned that way. Looking at James Hetfield, though, once the poster boy for shit-kicking no-fucking-around heavy dude-ness, in his newly pompadoured hairdo and thick black eyeliner, sitting there in a tight white vest and smoking a cigar, it seemed as though the whole world had tipped upside down.

The only one somewhat off the pace, as usual, had been the irreplaceable Cliff Burton’s replacement, Jason Newstead, who had cut his hair short some months before and was actually in the process of growing it back when the first Load publicity pictures were taken. For Jason, as with most hardcore Metallica fans, there was pushing the envelope, and then there was tearing it to pieces and tossing it in the air like confetti. For Jason, it was as though Lemmy had suddenly walked on stage wearing a long evening gown and tiara. Actually, it was more shocking than that. Lemmy would clearly have been joking; Metallica clearly were not.

As Lars explained: “I’m the one who will go and find out what goes on in Oasis-land or Guns N’ Roses-land or Alice In Chains-land. I’m so curious to see how other bands do things. It’s fun to sit down with Liam Gallagher and talk complete and utter nonsense about music.”

Musically, Kirk had also moved on. Not like Lars, into the emotional quicksand of grunge or the peacocking of Britpop, but towards more leftfield musical innovators such as Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twin and The Prodigy, groups who positioned themselves as musical emissaries of the near future.

“You can only be what the public thinks you are for so long before it becomes boring,” Kirk remarked. Since the phenomenal success of the Black Album, he had “begun to feel quite objectified”.

It would become this mutual desire to multiply the range of Metallica’s inspirations that now drew the drummer and guitarist closer together. Both recently divorced, and more intent on “seeing what’s out there”, as Lars put it, their newfound bond also had the side effect of making James feel more isolated from the group’s central purpose. Kirk would later disingenuously characterise this period as “playing referee” between Lars and James, but the fact is he was never closer to Lars – or further away from James – than now.

By default, both James and Jason now became the metal purists of the band. For the first time, James was starting to see Jason’s side of things. “Why did we get him in the band if we didn’t like him?”

Nothing prepared them, though, for what Lars suggested next: a two-CD live album, recorded with the 90-piece San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the album punningly titled S&M (aka Symphony And Metallica). An ambitious collaborative project, arranged and conducted by celebrated film-score composer Michael Kamen, recorded over two nights at the Berkeley Community Theater, in April 1999, that presented a selection of Metallica songs rearranged for group and orchestra.

A metal band performing their music with a classical orchestra? James and Jason thought the whole thing ludicrous. Lars and Kirk pressed ahead with it.

It had been done before, of course, notably by Lars’s beloved Deep Purple, whose 1969 performance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall had resulted in Purple’s live double album Concerto For Group And Orchestra.

Two years before, the Moody Blues melded the two into their Days Of Future Past album. The 70s was prime rock-meets-classical territory; led by prog-rock ‘virtuosos’ like Rick Wakeman, whose 1974 album Journey To The Centre Of The Earth combined rock ensemble, symphony orchestra and choir. Emerson, Lake & Palmer toured America with a full orchestra.

More recently, Roger Waters had performed Pink Floyd’s The Wall in Berlin with an East German symphony orchestra. Even the Scorpions had recorded an album with an orchestra, Moment Of Glory, which followed just months, in fact, after S&M.

Kamen, a 51-year-old American orchestral composer, conductor and arranger, had also worked previously with Pink Floyd, Queen, Eric Clapton, and David Bowie. It was after Kamen’s original introduction in 1991 by Metallica producer Bob Rock, who’d invited him to score an orchestral arrangement for Nothing Else Matters, that Kamen first suggested to Lars “some sort of collaboration”. Eight years later he got his wish.

According to Kamen, the idea was “to create a dialogue between two worlds that celebrate the power of music”. Apart from the financial motivation, which was certainly significant – the chance to record another five-million-selling album out of two nights’ live recording, along with the attendant redirection of buyers once again towards the band’s back catalogue – it was never really clear what Metallica actually hoped to achieve from the collaboration.

Kamen dutifully studied Metallica’s music for six months – the equivalent, he reckoned, of completing three film soundtracks – and scored arrangements for 21 of their songs, including two new Hetfield/Ulrich compositions: No Leaf Clover and Human. There was also a new arrangement of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold (part of the soundtrack to The Good The Bad And The Ugly) which had opened Metallica shows for years.

An initial rehearsal with the SFSO’s principal players was followed by two lengthy dress rehearsals with both band and full orchestra at the venue – for which harpist Douglas Roth arrived on a motorcycle, his tattooed arms clutching some Metallica CDs he wanted them to sign.

“There’s always [some] snotty old bastards giving you the evil eye, like: ‘Fuck, you guys are cavemen. Your music sucks,’” James complained. “But there were others that understood what we were trying to do; they could see that we fucking mean this shit, man. We have a passion in our music and our music is our life. They just grew up learning it different. They studied theory, and we studied UFO Live.”

As Kirk later said, however, Metallica’s interest in all forms of music, whether strictly metal or not, went all the way back to their former bass player Cliff Burton’s lasting influence on the band. “Cliff liked Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel, he loved classical music and especially Bach, he was the one always pushing to try something new.”

The Berkeley Community Theatre had a longstanding reputation for staging rock artists in concert, and many were recorded and released as live albums, including artists of the stature of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Frank Zappa, to name just a few. Its rust-coloured auditorium and green psychedelically swirling carpet were little changed from the heady days when guest speakers there included Lenny Bruce, Timothy Leary and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Outside they erected a large tent, which served as a temporary backstage area, including portable balustrades still wrapped in plastic. Lighting designer John Broderick was overheard explaining his strategy for the dramatic overture to Kamen: “You come on and it’s bland-bland-bland. The orchestra starts up and it’s bland-bland-bland. James comes on – bland-bland-bland. Then Jason comes on – bland-bland-bland. Then Lars hits the first drum beat, and BOOM! It’s the Fillmore, 1968.”

“Ah,” Kamen said, smiling. “So that was you. I simply assumed I was having a flashback.”

“Even without these shows,” Lars conceded, “I couldn’t have imagined at nineteen what my life would be like at thirty-five – being married, having a baby boy, the way my Motörhead records are gathering dust. I love to embrace ageing, especially because in rock’n’roll it’s such a negative thing to talk about. I know it’s a cliché in rock’n’roll to say ‘We do whatever the fuck we want,’ but I believe I can say it, for the first time, a hundred per cent truthfully. I don’t think we could have done this kind of project five years ago, because I don’t feel that we had the balls to do it.”

The shows themselves were a mixture of the sublime (witness the bow-tied orchestra member waving his tuba around in acknowledgement of the sea of devil-horn signs) to the ridiculous (see the goth girl in tight red vinyl dress, standing on her seat waving her black-gloved arms above her head in some strange invocation). Beware the colossal Hells Angel, doing anything he damn well pleases while the orchestra saw away at Sad But True.

Suddenly the days of Metallica tours featuring “the biggest cocaine mirror on the planet” on which a 20-foot line was carefully chopped into scoops as a treat for the crew, were over.

“If I felt that I could actually get the orchestra to snort speed and smash up their instruments,” a grinning Lars said, “I would.”

James claimed to be only dimly aware of the orchestra once the show started. “We don’t have them turned up in our monitors because they’re doing such wild, crazy and awesome things that it would really throw me off. But when the floor rumbles all of a sudden, I know something right is happening.”

To promote the S&M album and filmed-in-concert DVD, released in November 1999, Metallica also performed single concerts with orchestras in Berlin and New York. Questioned after the Berlin show, though, James laughed it off. When they were first presented with the idea, he said, “we thought: ‘Fuck, that’s got failure written all over it. It’s like fucking in church. Let’s do it!’”

Playing the whole thing down still further, he added: “It would be fun to take [the orchestra] on tour and watch them fall into the debauchery hole and completely turn into rock ruins. Taking them on the road and watching one beer turn into five beers and all of a sudden they’re in jail, divorced and hooked on heroin and smashing their cellos on stage.”

The two new songs – No Leaf Clover and Human – were also impressive, both more genuinely experimental than anything from the Load – Reload period, Clover a swaggering, emotional trial-by-fire with band and orchestra meshing to spectacular effect; Human a sweeping, atmospheric piece that somehow allows oboe and keyboards to sit snugly alongside the explosive guitars, drums and treated vocals.

The remaining 17 tracks, however, often highlight what an odd, difficult fit the two highly emotive forms of music make: One sounds neutered, Enter Sandman simply a mess. Even Nothing Else Matters – Kamen’s original entry point into Metallica’s music – sounds lacklustre, perfunctory. Others, such as Hero Of The Day, work better but only because the orchestra tends to be more in the background.

Ultimately, what may well have been a unique live experience becomes, on record and DVD, more like a beautifully shot home movie: fascinating for those who were there; something that doesn’t really stand up to repeated listening/viewing for those who weren’t.

Reviews of S&M were predictably lukewarm. In Britain, Q magazine was avuncular, describing it as “another just about forgivable flirtation with Spinal Tap-esque lunacy”. Rolling Stone claimed the album “creates the most crowded, ceiling-rattling basement rec room in rock… The effect is… one of timelessness.” Later, however, the magazine changed its mind, describing S&M as Metallica’s “very worst disc… just as useless as every other album on which a rock band plays their hits with an orchestra”.

Nevertheless, Metallica had another US No.1 album. In Britain, however, S&M didn’t even make the Top 30. No Leaf Clover was the only single from the album, but that wasn’t a hit even in America.

If as recording artists Metallica were now beginning to take on the appearance of jaded old gods, as concert masters they were still considered a top-drawer ticket, as monolithic and unmissable as the pyramids. So what if they would never make another album as good as Master Of Puppets or as popular as the Black Album, who cared if they had mislaid the plot artistically, they still kicked ass live, right, dude?

Looming on the millennial horizon: Jason quitting; suing Napster; the St Anger debacle; Some Kind Of Monster.

Compared to that, S&M seemed charming, almost innocent. Almost.

By 2013, Christmas-themed symphonic rockers Trans-Siberian Orchestra were selling over a million tickets per tour – but remained a remarkably well-kept secret in the prog world. As they prepared for theirs first road trip outside the US, architects Al Pitrelli and Paul O’Neill (who died in 2017) told Prog about their continuing ambitions.

It’s difficult not to feel bewildered when you’re escorted past a couple of dozen lorries and 10 tour buses into the vast backstage area of an arena, and you find the star of the show in a locker room fighting a man half his age. But that’s what just happened. It’s shortly before lunchtime on a characteristically sunny day in Denver, Colorado. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra are in town to play not just one, but two shows at the 20,000 seater Pepsi Center.

That’s the level of demand we’re dealing with here: if the number of vehicles wasn’t evidence enough of the scale of the operation, there are also over 120 people working on each show each day. There is a second, identical Trans-Siberian Orchestra tour running simultaneously on the East Coast, also playing two shows today.

The Christmas-oriented nature of this rock opera means that starting in August isn’t really an option, so four shows in two cities is the only way to go. That’s almost 250 people on the road at any one time while circa 80,000 people witness the TSO magic every day. They’ve sold 1.3 million tickets on this American tour. What do you mean, you’ve never heard of them?

“We’re the world’s most famous unknown band,” laughs lead guitarist and musical director Al Pitrelli, relaxing on a sofa in his dressing room after his sparring session with a trainer. “If you were here in ’99, when we did our first show, there was one box truck and two buses. We had a fog machine and some guitars. It’s grown up.”

Locals join the crew in every town. These include the eight-strong string section – and the athletes brought in to spar with Pitrelli. “As I get older I’ve been trying to stay in better shape but I don’t just want to get good at doing chin-ups,” he explains. “And then I discovered the art of fighting.”

“His dad,” he says, pointing to the trainer, “is an ex-featherweight champion from Dublin, Ireland. And he’s a guitar player. Most of my trainers are musicians, because if you fight, you understand rhythm, you understand counts, you understand the mathematics of it. Somebody coined a phrase – ‘A complete art is a dead art.’ As a fighter, you never stop learning; and as a guitar player, as long as Jeff Beck’s alive, I know I still suck.”

Band, transport and stage crew aside, there’s even more going on behind the scenes. Meals are cooked by a catering crew that travel with the band. TSO bring their own washing machines and employ a man to operate them. Everything has been set up to ensure that every day goes as smoothly as possible – and it does. It’s one of the slickest operations Prog has ever seen. While this arena-level production will be pared back when the tour reaches Europe, TSO aim to bring as much of it with them as possible.

To prepare for the two-headed American road trip, the entire crew congregates in Omaha, Nebraska. The bands are set up opposite one another in an arena, allowing Pitrelli to oversee the music from both sides. The quality control is high; Pitrelli – as well as TSO founder Paul O’Neill and Pitrelli’s former Savatage bandmate, vocalist Jon Oliva, have come far too far to allow standards to drop now.

“We hire exceptionally good players for a reason,” says Pitrelli. “They’re respectful to what I’ve created with Paul. But they’re always trying to get away with something – especially the guitar players. Angus Clark is an extraordinary guitar player. Miles Davis said it the best: ‘You get talented people in a room, let them be talented people. Just remind them who signs the paycheck.’ I let them run with it if they come up with a great idea – a complete art is a dead art.”

Via phone from the East Coast tour, O’Neill says: “Bands like Pink Floyd, when I saw them in ’95 on the Pulse tour, taught me you can put on a show where there’s no such thing as a bad seat.” He talks at length about the construction of the live production – and the annual destruction before starting again from scratch. He talks about wanting to be bigger and better each year and about buying every last one of the custom special effects designed for the final Michael Jackson tour that never happened.

“All the special effects companies know that if they come up with something great that’s insanely expensive, there’s one band dumb enough to buy it, and that’s us!” he chuckles. “I just love the look on the audience’s faces when they see a brand new effect.”

We know the history of the TSO and how their massive first single, Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24/, lit up American radio and became the second most downloaded Christmas track behind All I Want For Christmas Is You. We know three of their five albums are Christmas-oriented rock operas – but is their reputation as a ‘Christmas band’ diminishing the quality of their legacy?

“Growing up in New York City, I’ve always been fascinated by Christmas,” says O’Neill. He adds something that really resonates about connecting entertainment and Christmas. “You don’t take on Christmas until you have several platinum albums,” he states. “To this day, when people hear ‘Bing Crosby,’ they think of White Christmas. So we think of it more as a positive thing. Most artists do Christmas later on in their career. We just have to get it out of the way first.”

How are Trans-Siberian Orchestra expecting reserved British audiences to react to their overblown American bombast then? As much as Brits love a good rock opera, surely the Christmas aspect can’t resonate in mid-January.

“It started out that we were a Christmas band because the song got played at Christmas time; but it evolved into this winter tour,” says Pitrelli. “Without the narration, without the Christmassy bits, it becomes a human story as well. We’re going to do a winter tour in Europe and they’re going to hear all the prog rock, all the craziness, all the great singers. If you take Christmas out of our show, it’s still an amazing show.

He continues: “Paul wanted to create the biggest rock show because when we were kids, when Yes came over, when ELP came over, when Floyd built The Wall with an airplane coming out of it… Strip it all away. Take every light, every laser, every pyro shot away. What’s left? Really, really good music. Really good performances. Paul and Jon Oliva’s writing stands up all by itself. You British musicians all started this. We learnt from the masters! We just wanna be you.”

“TSO has always been a rock opera,” adds O’Neill. “We never planned to do rock operas for 15 years in a row. We planned to kinda be like The Who – two years on, two years off – but it didn’t work out that way. In Europe this year, it’ll be the first time we do a straight rock concert, which is a big jump for us.”

The band’s 1999 tour consisted of 10 shows, but more and more promoters were demanding a show, which necessitated the dual touring situation and the division (or further acquisition) of prime resources. “There will be three generations in the audience tonight,” Pitrelli says.

As we walk around the arena he’s unbothered by the thousands of fans milling around, highlighting both his lack of ego and the way the show serves to almost camouflage his true identity. “Nothing makes me happier to look down and see a little girl sitting on her granddaddy’s lap,” he says, thoughtfully. “The two of them are having the time of their lives for two and a half hours. I’ll take that with me; because in that moment in time, they were together for one reason and one reason only.”

It really does seem like it’s about the fans. If it’s not O’Neill’s drive to ensure the live show has the most ridiculous light show, overblown walkways and dramatic pyro possible, it’s that ticket prices are consistently low – no more than $80 – and a dollar of each ticket goes to a local charity.

If they’ve neglected their overseas fans, you’ll have to trust that they’re sorry – it’s a genuine regret for O’Neill – and that they’re about to right every wrong they can in as grandiose a fashion as possible.

Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman is a man with many strings to his bow – singer, author, documentarian, composer, conductor, arranger – and his latest adventure finds him working with a Swiss orchestra on his arrangement of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon.

It's familiar territory for Coleman, who released Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd in 1995 and Kashmir: Symphonic Led Zeppelin two years later, both recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 1999 he worked with the Prague Symphony Orchestra on the album Riders on the Storm: The Doors Concerto.

"I am incredibly excited about the performance of Dark Side Of The Moon on the 26th February 2025 by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande," says Coleman. "As many people know, Geneva is a Killing Joke city (we wrote Eighties and much of Night Time there).

"When I scored Pink Floyd's Us And Them back in 1994, it was 70% Dark Side and 30% The Wall. For this special occasion, I will present the entire Dark Side Of The Moon. I am grateful to the OSR and Antigel Festival for arranging this concert on the day Killing Joke started which just happens to be my 65th birthday!"

It won't be Coleman's first time working with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which was formed in 1918 and is based at the Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland. A year ago he collaborated on an evening of Led Zeppelin orchestrations at the Antigel Festival.

Tickets for the performance are on sale now.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have shared the new single, Phantom Island, lifted from their upcoming album, which currently does not have a title.

The prolific Aussie genre-hoppers share that the project contains the left over songs from the recording sessions of their previously-released, 26th studio album, Flight b741.

Phantom Island commences with atmospheric strings and twinkling piano keys, before a verse takes over with a full, colourful jazz arrangement, reminiscent of a James Bond theme.

“So our last album was 10 songs. Except we recorded 20 in that session,” frontman Stu Mackenzie explains in a press statement. “Here’s a track from the other set of 10. It’s even more maxxed out than the last one. There’s a whole fuckin’ orchestra on there. Hahahahahah!”

Alongside the new track, the band have announced that they'll be hitting the road with an orchestra for their Phantom Island tour. 

The trek will include a full orchestra with conductor and music director Sarah Hicks, as well as city-specific orchestras. Not all dates will feature orchestral arrangements.

It'll kick off on July 28, 2025 in Philadelphia and continue on through to New Haven, Forest Hills, Columbia, and more before wrapping up on August 17 in Buena Vista.

On a social media post announcing the news, the band write: "NEW SONG! NEW GIZZ! We have an orchestra now haha

✈️ Song is called Phantom Island
✈️ Album with orchestra in the works
✈️ So yeah, that last album Flight b741 actually had 20 songs. The other 10 are on this one but we added an orchestra HAHAHAHAHA
✈️ USA orchestra tour announcement in approx. 3 hrs.
✈️ (And some rock shows too shhhh)"

King Gizzard released Flight b741 back in August, which served as the follow-up to  2023’s PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation and The Silver Cord.

Listen to Phantom Island below:

After years of buildup and rumour, Devin Townsend has finally announced his project The Moth will debut onstage with a symphony orchestra next year.

The Canadian prog metal solo artist will perform the as-yet-unheard musical venture with the Noord Nederlands Orkest symphony orchestra in Groningen, Netherlands, on March 27. The show will reportedly be a global one-off.

Marketing materials say The Moth “tells the story of the human experience from birth to death, comparable to the transformation of a caterpillar into a moth”.

They elaborate: “It symbolises the human quest for meaning and offers perspectives on the fear of death through analogy and narrative. Ever since Townsend witnessed large musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Phantom Of The Opera in the 1970s, he has seen this project as his calling.”

Townsend famously started talking about The Moth in a 2016 interview with Vice, where he described the project as “this symphony with all these cocks and vaginas and death”. “The whole show is a metaphor for sex and power, and the idea of it all being related to some sort of God who’s ultimately futile,” he said.

He added: “[I]t’s gotta be so over-the-top, with symphonies and choirs and it’s got to include the best of the best and it’s so fucking expensive! I’d like to not think about money, but what I want to do is just get so much money, absurd amounts of money, and just put it all into this thing that’s a fundamentally unsellable spectacle, but make it so palatable that halfway through you’ll just be like, “The fuck are we watching here?”

Townsend estimated he’d need $10 million to bring the idea to life, and it proceeded to lay dormant for some time. In later interviews, the musician seemed to abandon the symphonic stage show concept, describing The Moth more as an era of his decades-long career than a tangible release or concert.

He told the Everblack podcast last year: “[At] this point Moth almost seems like a blanket term for a number of things, whether or not it’s a bunch of albums or a bunch of other media or it’s an Atmos thing or it’s characters or if it’s streaming – I don’t know what it is yet. But it seems like I’m calling this period of creative output, I just refer to it as The Moth, but I don’t know exactly what it’s gonna entail. I do know it’s a lot of shit though.”

Talk about The Moth restarted earlier this year, when Townsend announced his new solo album Powernerd. The musician revealed that Powernerd will be the first act in a trilogy of new releases, followed by The Moth and Axolotl. He described The Moth as “orchestral, over-the-top, dark and uncomfortable”.

Townsend will release Powernerd via Inside Out on October 25. He’ll tour the UK supporting Myles Kennedy in November. See dates below.

Devin Townsend 2024 UK tour (supporting Myles Kennedy):

Nov 25: Glasgow SWG3
Nov 27: Manchester Academy
Nov 29: Nottingham Rock City
Nov 30: Birmingham O2 Academy
Dec 02: Cardiff Great Hall
Dec 03: London O2 Forum Kentish Town

Manchester prog duo The Blackheart Orchestra release their brand new single Bloodlines today. The duo, multi-instrumentalists Chrissy Mostyn and Rick Pilkington (they play over 13 instruments from guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion to omnichord, glockenspiel, melodica and their collection of ancient synths.
, will also release a video for the track next week, which you'll be able to see in next week's Tracks Of The Week.

Bloodlines is also the name of the band's current UK tour which hits London's Courtyard Theatre tonight.

"Bloodlines draws inspiration from the things passed down through our lineage – not just physical traits but intergenerational trauma, mental illness, strengths and resilience," the pair say. "The song delves into the secrets our bodies hold and asks the question is society’s current epidemic of depression generic or genetic."

The new single is the first piece of music to be taken from their upcoming album, which the band have been working on in the studio recently and which will be released in 2025.

You can view the remainder of the band's October and November tour dates and ticket information below.

The Blackheart Orchestra Bloodlines 2024 tour dates

Sep 20: London Courtyard Theatre
Sep 21: Wycombe Arts Centre
Sep 27: Oundle Talbot Hotel
Sep 28: Winchester Railway
Oct 5: Sheffield Lantern Theatre
Oct 6: Leicester The Musician
Oct 10: Manchester Deaf Institute
Oct 13: Birmingham Kitchen Garden Cafe
Oct 18: Great Yarmouth HRH Prog
Oct 19: Oswestry Hermon Chapel Arts
Oct 26: Middlesbrough Toft House
Oct 31: Cardiff Norwegian Church Arts
Nov 1: Reading Leckhampstead Church

Get tickets.

Jeff Lynne's Electric Light Orchestra have played the first show of their final tour of the US. The Over And Out Tour kicked off on Saturday with a 21-song set at the 11,000-capacity Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms in Riverside County, California.

The date was the first in a mammoth, 31-date trek across the US which will take in a pair of shows at New York's Madison Square Garden in mid-September and climax with two performances at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles at the end of October. Support comes from LA rockers Rooney. Full dates below.

The setlist, as you might expect, comes stuffed with ELO hits, from the opening track of the band's 1971, self-titled debut, 10538 Overture, to Calling America, from 1986's Balance of Power. Perhaps surprisingly, there was no room for material from either of the recent Jeff Lynne's ELO albums. Full setlist below.   

The tour continues tomorrow night (August 27) at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, WA.

Jeff Lynne's ELO: Palm Beach setlist

One More Time
Evil Woman
Showdown
Do Ya
Sweet Talkin' Woman
Strange Magic
10538 Overture
Can't Get It Out Of My Head
Twilight
Rockaria!
Last Train To London
Calling America
Steppin' Out
Fire On High
Livin' Thing
All Over The World
Turn To Stone
Shine A Little Love
Don't Bring Me Down

Encore
Telephone Line
Mr. Blue Sky

Jeff Lynne's ELO: Over And Out Tour

Aug 27: Seattle Climate Pledge Arena, WA
Aug 28: Vancouver Rogers Arena, BC
Aug 30: Portland Moda Center, OR
Sep 01: San Francisco Chase Center, CA
Sep 06: St. Louis Enterprise Center, MO
Sep 07: Indianapolis Gainbridge Fieldhouse, IN
Sep 09: Toronto Scotiabank Arena, ON
Sep 10: Pittsburgh PPG Paints Arena, PA
Sep 13: Cincinnati Heritage Bank Center, OH
Sep 14: Cleveland Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, OH
Sep 16: New York Madison Square Garden, NY
Sep 17: New York Madison Square Garden, NY
Sep 20: Philadelphia Wells Fargo Center, PA
Sep 21: Philadelphia Wells Fargo Center, PA
Sep 23: Boston TD Garden, MA
Sep 25: Washington Capital One Arena, DC
Sep 27: Chicago United Center, IL
Sep 28: Chicago United Center, IL
Sep 30: St. Paul Xcel Energy Center, MN
Oct 02: Denver Ball Arena, CO
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Oct 23: Sacramento Golden 1 Center, CA
Oct 25: Los Angeles Kia Forum, CA
Oct 26: Los Angeles Kia Forum, CA

Tickets are on sale now. 

For a few lucky people – people like Jeff Lynne – dreams really do come true. As a teenager growing up in Birmingham in the early 60s, Lynne, like so many other aspiring musicians, worshipped The Beatles. But unlike so many other dreamers, Lynne not only made it as a rock star but also ended up working with The Beatles themselves. As co-producer of two long-lost Beatles songs, Free As A Bird and Real Love, released in the mid-90s on their Anthology series, Lynne made a boyhood fantasy real.

Lynne has enjoyed a lengthy, varied and hugely successful career spanning five decades. His first big break came in 1970 when he joined friend Roy Wood in The Move, rated by Paul Stanley of Kiss as one of the great British pop rock groups. But it with his next venture, the Electric Light Orchestra, in which Wood also briefly collaborated, that Lynne truly found his voice.

As that arch, punning name indicated, ELO fused electric rock and pop with classical influences, creating a sound that was truly unique. Their classic line-up had Lynne backed by six musicians, including a violinist and two cellists – which, in 1977, was somewhat out of step with the rising tide of punk rock.

But Jeff Lynne’s grand vision extended far beyond punk’s narrow parameters. In their pomp – and in ELO’s case, there really is no other word for it – they sold over 50 million albums in 11 years and performed on stage beneath a giant ‘spaceship’.

It couldn’t last, of course. By 1986, with sales dwindling, Lynne disbanded ELO to work as a producer for George Harrison, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, with whom he also starred, alongside Bob Dylan, in the super-supergroup The Traveling Wilburys. In a bizarre twist, several members of the classic ELO line-up, minus Lynne, reunited in the late 80s as ELO Part II. But in 2015, the main man relaunched a new version of the group, billed as Jeff Lynne’s ELO, with a world tour and a new album, Alone In The Universe. Four years later, he did it again, with From Out of Nowhere.

It was Lynne’s genius – illustrated in songs such as Mr. Blue Sky, Livin’ Thing and Evil Woman – that led Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield to proclaim: “ELO are better than The Beatles!” And even Jeff Lynne never dreamed he’d hear that.

15) Balance Of Power (Epic, 1986)

In the mid-80s, after 15 years of ELO, Jeff Lynne was seeking new challenges. He was recording as a solo artist and working as writer and producer for others, including Dave Edmunds and ABBA’s Agnetha Faltskog. When he returned to ELO (now reduced to a core of three), the whiff of contractual obligation was in the air.

Balance Of Power completed a sorry decline into bland soft rock. It wasn’t so much bad as plain average. “I’m actually quite pleased with the way this one turned out,” Lynne said in 2016. But back in ’86, he wasn’t so happy. Shortly after this album’s release, a tour aborted, ELO split up.

14) Secret Messages (Jet, 1983)

Conceived by Lynne as a double album – an idea nixed by ELO’s major label distributor CBS – Secret Messages was whittled down to a regular 10-track album, and even then it was thin gruel. Rock ‘N’ Roll Is King was a top 20 hit, but the song was as hokey as its title. Four Little Diamonds sounded like something The Beatles had knocked off in five minutes when they were bored. And while the album’s title track had a decent tune, its processed 80s sound was evidence of a band losing its way.

13) Xanadu (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (Jet, 1980)

On ELO’s 1981 concept album Time, Jeff Lynne pondered mankind’s future and sang in a voice from a far-off age: ‘Remember the good old 1980s/When things were so uncomplicated…’ What Lynne the visionary didn’t foresee was ELO’s demise in the coming decade. But they began the 80s with another massive hit, albeit one that alienated many rock fans.

Xanadu, the soundtrack to a silly Hollywood musical, featured five songs by the movie’s star Olivia Newton-John (including a sappy duet with Cliff Richard), four by ELO, and a camp title track performed by ELO and Newton-John together. Mercifully, ELO’s songs were strong, especially All Over The World, one of the last classics from the band’s golden era.

12) Zoom (Epic, 2001)

A Jeff Lynne solo album in all but name, Zoom featured one other member of the definitive ELO line-up in keyboard player Richard Tandy, plus guest appearances from George Harrison and Ringo Starr. The album was not quite the return to the classic ELO sound that fans might have wished for, but in its best moments – notably on the elegant ballad Moment In Paradise – Lynne proved he could do ELO pretty much on his own. Or rather, as the old song goes, with a little help from his friends.

11. From Out of Nowhere (Columbia 2019)

Like 2015's Alone In The Universe, Lynne plays almost every note on the album – guitars, bass, piano, drums, keyboards. He sings all the lead vocals and harmonies. He produces (of course). The only other musicians who play on it are engineer Steve Jay, who adds a little percussion, and ELO keyboard player Richard Tandy, who plays a piano solo on One More Time.

Some of the tracks are a little throaway, but some are truly worthy of the legacy. Down Came The Rain, the upbeat Time Of Our Life and One More Time rock, the way Traveling Wilburys or post-Beatles Lennon rocked. Losing You uses many of the same studio tricks used on Lynne’s co-production of The Beatles’ ’95 single Free As A Bird. But why not?

10) Alone In The Universe (Columbia, 2015)

Although this album was credited to Jeff Lyne’s ELO, it was, like Zoom before it, a solo record. Only more so. Apart from Lynne himself, only two other people were on it – his daughter Laura singing background vocals on two songs, and engineer Steve Jay playing percussion.

If Lynne wanted to call it ELO, he had every right – it was always his band. And while Alone In The Universe was not the full-blown ELO of Mr. Blue Sky or Evil Woman, it was still a fine late-career comeback for Lynne, with a couple of beautiful and magical songs in When I Was A Boy and All My Life.

9) Discovery (Jet, 1979)

By 1979 ELO were one of the biggest bands in the world, but Jeff Lynne faced a tricky dilemma: how to follow an album as brilliant and successful as Out Of The Blue? Lynne’s response was bold, to say the least.

With disco music still flourishing, ELO got funky on an album later nicknamed “Disco-very!” by keyboard player Richard Tandy. Amazingly, it worked. Discovery was ELO’s first No.1 and produced four UK Top 10 singles: Shine A Little Love, The Diary Of Horace Wimp, Don’t Bring Me Down and double-A-side Confusion/Last Train To London. Moreover, ELO’s signature sound remained largely intact.

8) ELO II (Harvest, 1973)

After a promising start, ELO could have fallen at the second fence when Roy Wood quit during the making of this album to form Wizzard. But Lynne carried on with an expanded line-up, and the album was moderately successful, breaking the UK Top 40 and yielding the band’s second Top 10 hit, a version of Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, a natural fit for ELO.

With just five tracks on its original vinyl format, ELO II has a heavy progressive rock influence, most evident on the King Crimson/Beatles hybrid In Old England Town (one of two songs recorded with Wood) and the 11-minute Kuiama. But the best song was Mama, the first sign of Lynne’s pop genius.

7) On The Third Day (Harvest, 1973)

Although it bombed in the UK, ELO’s third album was a minor hit in America, where “the English guys with the big fiddles” were, by 1973, a major concert draw. They also had friends in high places. Glam rock superstar Marc Bolan played lead guitar with Lynne on this album’s big rock tune, Ma-Ma-Ma Belle. And to Lynne’s delight, John Lennon raved about the album’s hit single Showdown, subsequently dubbing ELO “son of Beatles”.

Lynne paid his own tribute to Lennon on Bluebird Is Dead, and went completely overboard with a rocking version of Edvard Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King. But Showdown is Lynne’s favourite song on an album even he admits is “very obscure”.

6) Electric Light Orchestra (Harvest, 1972)

Lynne was still a member of The Move, alongside Roy Wood and future ELO drummer Bev Bevan, when he wrote the very first ELO song, 10538 Overture. With Wood playing a cheap Chinese cello, multi-tracked by Lynne, the song sounded to Wood’s ears like a “monster heavy metal orchestra”. 10538 Overture became the new group’s mission statement, the opening fanfare on a debut album described by Melody Maker as “a gas”.

Wood’s left-field sensibilities led the nascent ELO into what Lynne later called “some really strange places”, but 10538 Overture was a Top 10 UK hit. Def Leppard covered the song in 2006, but as Leppard’s Joe Elliott noted, Paul Weller ripped it off for The Changingman in ’95.

5) Time (Jet, 1981)

It’s strange that an album that went to No.1 in the UK should end being largely forgotten many years down the line, but so it is with Time. It is revered by some diehard fans as one of ELO’s greatest albums. Beyond that is remembered only for its one major hit single, Hold On Tight.

But it is one of the most ambitious records that Jeff Lynne ever created – a concept album in the classic prog rock tradition, based on time travel, but with the influence of synth-pop prevalent throughout, and some wonderful songs including Twilight, Ticket To The Moon and Another Heart Breaks. If there is a lost classic in the ELO catalogue, this is it.

4) Face The Music (Jet, 1975)

1975 was a strange year for ELO. Face The Music, their fifth album, reached the Top 10 in the US, but in the UK, like the group’s previous two albums, it didn’t even chart. It did, however, produce a UK hit single, albeit belatedly.

Evil Woman, a song written in 20 minutes and initially dismissed as filler by Jeff Lynne, gave ELO their first domestic Top 10 hit in three years, and set them up nicely for the next album, A New World Record. Evil Woman remains one of ELO’s best-loved songs, a genuine 70s pop classic and the highlight of an album that includes several great songs (Strange Magic, Waterfall) and one outright turkey, the daft Down Home Town.

3) Eldorado (Jet, 1974)

Loftily subtitled A Symphony By The Electric Light Orchestra, the group’s fourth album is described by Lynne as “one of yer actual concept albums.” The concept itself was somewhat vague. “It’s about a dream world,” said Lynne. But undoubtedly, Eldorado represented a big leap forward for ELO.

Working with a full orchestra for the first time, instead of multi-tracking violins and cellos, Lynne was finally able to realise the sound that was in his impressively furry head. The album’s centrepiece, Mister Kingdom, is a grand orchestral take on John Lennon’s Across The Universe. But best of all is Can’t Get It Out Of My Head, one of Lynne’s most beautiful songs, surprisingly covered in 2007 by Velvet Revolver.

2) A New World Record (Jet, 1976)

ELO’s sixth album was their big international breakthrough. Hitting the Top 10 in every country in which it was released, A New World Record sold five million units worldwide. Its title – inspired by the Montreal Olympics, which held the world’s attention while the band were recording in Munich – was fitting for an album that elevated ELO to global fame.

At home, the album produced three Top 10 singles with Livin’ Thing, Telephone Line and Rockaria!, the latter a prime example of Lynne’s classical/rock style, complete with boogie riff, sawing strings, trilling opera singer and references to Wagner, Beethoven and more. “I was quietly confident about the songs,” Lynne later commented. No wonder.

1) Out Of The Blue (Jet, 1977)

Jeff Lynne’s magnum opus is one of the classic double albums, his answer to The Beatles’ White Album, and ELO’s crowning glory. Lynne wrote the whole of Out Of The Blue, 17 songs, in just four weeks, alone at a Swiss Alpine retreat. Inspiration came to him on the first sunny morning, when, as he later recalled, “The mountains were lit up, and I came up with Mr. Blue Sky.”

A mini-symphony in itself, Mr. Blue Sky was the touchtone for an album on which Lynne gave full rein to his ambitions: a deluxe rock odyssey incorporating dazzling arrangements, state-of-the-art studio wizardry and, most importantly, great songwriting. Selling eight million copies in a year, it was a global phenomenon.

Andy Mackay’s 3 Psalms, released in 2018, was the Roxy Music’ sax and oboe player’s first solo outing in 20 years – and he’d started developing it in the 90s. Ahead of its launch concert he looked back on his career with Prog and explained how he was taking the opportunity to revisit some of Roxy’s catalogue in an orchestral environment.

“I was brought up a Methodist, so we sang a lot of hymns and went to chapel twice every Sunday when I was growing up in London,” Andy Mackay tells Prog during a break in rehearsals for his 3 Psalms concert at the capital’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. “We sang the hymns as they do in Welsh choirs – with lots of enthusiasm.” He continues: “Methodism was the Anglican or the British equivalent of gospel music, really. I’m sure that was an influence on me.”

3 Psalms, his new album, reflects this lifelong approach, and includes a kaleidoscopic swirl of stylistic traits including church music, electronica, classical, jazz and a subtle rock undertow. Utilising a string orchestra and choir – who also join him at the live show – the album very much reflects his love of classical music, which dates back to his teenage years in the early 60s, learning oboe and being a  devotee of the Proms concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.

“I still want to see this music in the context of rock’n’roll,” Mackay says. “I’m a rock musician. I’m not actually a classical composer. They have a much more rigorous and disciplined approach to music than I do. I just write and play the music that feels right to me and it reflects my varied musical background. But I still feel that this is a rock album.”

The album’s genesis dates back to the mid-90s and it’s been a personal challenge for Mackay. “I was terribly excited – I’d got the new music software, Cubase, working on a second-generation Mac with a 1GB hard drive. It was considered quite miraculous at the time!” Mackay remembers. “I got excited about the idea of samples and loops and so on. I wanted to work with a human voice, so I wanted something speech-based. I’ve never been comfortable writing lyrics. I can’t quite get the balance and simplicity without it sounding a bit banal. 

”So I thought I’d use someone else’s words, and it ended up with the Psalms. Initially, it was Psalm 130, ‘Out of the depths’, which appealed to me because it seemed like a movement from despair to hope. Which, in the mid-90s, seemed right. My personal life had been had been quite difficult at that time, and writing the music around Psalm 130 was a good way to focus.

“Then I added the other two to make a symphonic set-up, so it has three movements. There’s a reflective, slightly doomier Psalm to start with, then Psalm 90, which is really about human mortality: ‘The days of our years are threescore years and 10,’ and ‘You are dust and to dust you will return’ – all of that stuff.” (Mackay came face to face with his mortality in 2017, when he was diagnosed with cancer and went through a successful operation.)

The addition of Psalm 150 – ‘Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre’ – which he says is basically about feeling part of a bigger universe, gave the piece a satisfying shape, while a running time of around 40 minutes felt right to him.

Outside of Bryan Ferry’s career, when it comes to Roxy Music members, Phil Manzanera’s solo work tends to garner the most attention; 1975’s Diamond Head and his band Quiet Sun’s sole LP Mainstream –  recorded at the same time – as well as prog  supergroup 801’s 1976 release 801 Live, are been rightly revered.

Mackay’s solo output, by comparison, has been largely and unfairly overlooked. His commissions for television included the theme music and songs for Rock Follies, and the soundtrack netted him a No.1 hit album. But his solo records have never yielded the attention they deserve. 1974’s In Search Of Eddie Riff was a glittering, glitzy and deliberately kitsch celebration in the style of a fictional 50s instrumental idol, and contained some fun rock’n’roll settings of Schubert and Wagner. 

Also lurking amongst the brash riffs, warbling organ and twangy guitar there was the enigmatic Proust-referencing Time Regained, in which a chorus of overlapping tape-looped saxes connected with Terry Riley’s time-lag generator and Brian Eno’s Discreet Music.

Mackay’s next solo album, 1978’s Resolving Contradictions, offered a pan-cultural observation on life in China, inspired by his visit there. Alongside grand themes, orchestral strings and incipient funk-tinged grooves, his saxes and oboes described fiery lines in taut arrangements that reconciled notions of Western rock and Eastern sensibilities. 

While Mackay and Manzanera’s 1980s joint project, Explorers, veered towards the more mainstream songwriting avenues, the sax player's desire to bring wildly contrasting elements together was central to perhaps his most overlooked undertaking, Andy Mackay And The Metaphors. The 2008 six-tracker London! Paris! New York! Rome! was an exquisite post-rock travelogue of tunes from the American songbook such as Three Coins In The Fountain and New York, New York, and a stunning, spacious resetting of The Kinks’ classic, Waterloo Sunset. 

Shimmering waves of processed guitar, ethereal oboe, trickling piano and the tolling chimes of Big Ben create an ambient-style sound portrait of the city and the song’s two star-crossed lovers that is both touching and revelatory. It's a project for which Mackay still harbours a great deal of affection.

“I was really enjoying it – but I’d intended to make that more of a live thing,” he explains. ”But then, for various reasons, we couldn’t quite get it working due to logistical problems. I always seem to choose difficult instrumentations to work with. 

“We had a concert harp player, Julia Thornton, who was with Roxy in 2001. So we were carrying a harp around as well as Paul Thompson’s drums, and we had an experimental keyboard and synthesiser player. It ended up being more complicated because we were spread about: Bristol, East Anglia, Newcastle and so on. So for various reasons I couldn’t take it as far as I wanted.”

Also included on the record is a darker arrangement of Roxy Music’s Love Is The Drug. That song, which hit the top five in singles charts on both sides of the Atlantic, is being revisited as part of his Queen Elizabeth Hall concert, along with other Roxy works.

He reports: “I sketched out some of the ideas; but largely it’s down to Lucy Wilkins, who played violin in Roxy Music, and another old colleague of mine, Ray Russell, who worked with me on Rock Follies. They’ve come up with some arrangements which are much more unusual than most rock-meets-classic collaborations. 

“Quite often people will just play keyboard parts on strings, but we’ve done things that can only be done with real strings, like playing with the back of the bow bouncing on the strings, playing without any vibrato and playing harmonics and very strong attack or very quietly. There’s a whole range of sounds that you can get, and when there's a 16-piece string orchestra doing that, you get a big lift that you really can’t reproduce on anything else."

The idea of revisiting Roxy came fairly late in the day. “Because Phil was going to be guesting at the 3 Psalms concert, I decided to use the choir and orchestra and work on Roxy Music songs,” Mackay explains. 

“I think this is a great way of digging out some of the ways we worked in the middle period. Quite a lot of the songs we’re doing are the ones that I co-wrote. One of them is a version of A Song For Europe.”

The fact that the piece is being performed at a time when Britain’s political antipathy towards the European Union is not lost on Mackay. Playing the tune now has an unmistakable melancholy resonance with the current situation, he says. "You think, ‘Well, where are we going with Europe?’ It looks like it’s going to be a tragedy whatever happens. So there’s a slightly tragic quality about it.”

Whether it's correctly predicting US presidencies or Olympic results, The Simpsons have always had a bizarrely accurate skill at foretelling events. 

Now, Cypress Hill are set to make another moment within the much-loved animated series reality, as they play a historic show with the London Symphony Orchestra tonight (July 10) at the Royal Albert Hall.

In 1996, a Simpsons episode featured a joke where the legendary hip-hop band believed they had mistakenly booked the London Symphony Orchestra “possibly while high” to play with them at Hullabalooza - a play on Chicago's Lollapalooza festival. 

Following years of fan pressure, Cypress Hill finally struck a deal with the LSO, reaching out to them on social media.

The one-night performance will see the band play songs from their acclaimed 1993 Black Sunday album and more, such as Insane In The Brain and I Wanna Get High, with a backing of orchestral arrangements.

Speaking of the collaboration, B-Real (real name Louis Mario Freese), tells the BBC: "It's been something that we've talked about for many years since the Simpsons episode first aired. So it's very special for us. And it's coming off the heels of our 30th anniversary for our Black Sunday album."

Describing their booking at the Royal Albert Hall as "one of those checklist moments", he adds: "We've played a lot of historical venues throughout our career and stuff like that, but nothing as prestigious as this."

Within the Simpsons episode - in which sees Homer Simpson try to impress his kids by hanging out with Cypress Hill and The Smashing Pumpkins at the festival - Peter Frampton also makes an appearance as the booker. When asked if the Humble Pie legend was on the guest list, B-Real laughs and says, "Yes, actually, we've been trying to invite him".

Though they're still waiting to hear a response from the musician, he adds, "We've never met him before, but we thought it would be a kick to invite the legendary Peter Frampton."

Maxine Kwok, LSO first violin and board vice-chair, says of the crossover: "people are beyond excited at the idea of these diverse musicians mixing on the stage", before noting how she remembers the Simpsons episode "well". 

According to Kwok, at rehearsals there were even a few cultural differences. Where the LSO would say "glock" when referring to the glockenspeil instrument, Cypress Hill always used the term to refer to guns. 

Electric Light Orchestra keyboard payer Richard Tandy has died, aged 76, his longstanding bandmate Jeff Lynne has confirmed.

In a statement on social media this evening, Lynne said, "It is with great sadness that I share the news of the passing of my long-time collaborator and dear friend Richard Tandy. He was a remarkable musician and friend and I’ll cherish the lifetime of memories we had together. Sending all my love to Sheila and the Tandy family. Jeff Lynne"

Tandy was notably the only member of the band who featured in all three incarnations, alongside Lynne. He joined ELO in 1971, a year after their formation, and remained until Lynne disbanded the group in 1986, following that year's Balance Of Power album. Alongside Lynne he was in the band for the short-lived reformation from 2000-2001 on the back of the Zoom album – the only member from the band's earlier incarnation to do so – and was again by Lynne's side when he resurrected the band, again with no other former members, for their most recent run of success in 2014.

Born in Birmingham on March 24, 1947, Tandy was at school with future Move and ELO drummer Bev Bevan. Tandy would go on to play harpsichord on The Move's 1968 Number One hit Blackberry Way, and even fill in on bass for the band for a short time.

Tandy also played bass for ELO during his first year with the band, before moving to keyboards, where his lush sound helped propel the band and their mix of progressive rock and Beatles-esque pop to the top of the charts in the late 70s. From the band's 1974 album Elodorado onwards he, along with Lynne and musician and arranger Louis Clark would arrange the band's famous string arrangements.

Tandy appeared on every ELO album aside from their 1971 self-titled debut and 2015's comeback album (as Jeff Lynne's ELO) Alone In The Universe, on which Lynne himself performed all instruments, but was credited with a piano solo on the track One More Time from 2019's From Out Of Nowhere.

Outside of ELO he formed The Tandy Morgan Band with fellow Birmingham musician Dave Morgan (who had played with Magnum) and released the concept album Earthrise in 1985.

In March Lynne had announced US dates for what was being billed as ELO's final tour, Over And Out.

In what is surely the feel-good story of the week/month/year [delete as applicable] LA's premier stoner hip-hop crew Cypress Hill have announced a show with the London Symphony Orchestra, making a 1996 joke on The Simpsons an actual Real Life Thing.

In episode 24, series 7 of The Simpsons, first broadcast on May 19, 1966, Homer Simpson is shocked to learn that classic rock - specifically Grand Funk Railroad and Mountain - is no longer considered cool by 'the kids', not least his own offspring, and seeks to boost his street cred by signing up to join the Hullabalooza music festival - a very thinly-disguised take on Lollapalooza, with Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill on the bill - as a carnival freak. 

At one point in the episode, the stage manager for the festival comes into the artists' area with a gaggle of suited-up classical musicians and enquires, "Who is playing with the London Symphony Orchestra?"

When the question is met with silence, he tries again, saying, "Come on people, somebody ordered the London Symphony Orchestra... possibly while high... Cypress Hill, I'm looking in your direction."

The scene cuts to Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, B-Real and Sen-Dog having a conflab, and Muggs admits, "Er, yeah, we think we did", before asking the orchestra members if they're familiar with the group's 1993 single Insane In The Brain, from the Black Sunday album. The leader of the orchestra admits that he and his fellow musicians "mostly know classical" but gamely suggests "but we could give it a shot."

The scene concludes with the group and orchestra making sweet music together, meeting with approval from Marge Simpson, who says, "Now this I like."

Marge will doubtless be thrilled then to learn that the pairing of Cypress Hill and the LSO will grace London's historic Royal Albert Hall on July 10.

“We are thrilled to be performing with the London Symphony Orchestra in such a prestigious venue as the Royal Albert Hall,” say Cypress Hill in a statement. “It’s a dream come true, a collaboration only The Simpsons could have predicted.”

“After years of social media teasing it, many fans may have started to believe it would only be a pipe dream,” adds the orchestra's managing director Kathryn McDowell DBE, “but the LSO is delighted to finally be joining Cypress Hill onstage and in person, and look forward to creating an unforgettable musical moment! Many thanks to the creators of The Simpsons for the idea and to AEG Artisitc and PolyArts for making it all happen.”

Tickets for what promises to be a legendary evening will go on sale on March 27 at 10am (UK time).

Manchester prog duo The Blackheart Orchestra have been struck with the worry of their 15-years old mixing desk breaking down irreparably at the beginning of their current UK tour, forcing the band to seek help from the prog community.

"Friday was not the start of the tour that we had wished for… just 48 seconds into our first song, our wonderful Dynacord mixing desk of 15 years and 1500 gigs gasped her last breath. So, we are left with a bit of a problem," the band have said.

"With 24 dates to go we need to find a staggering £3121 for a new mixing desk. A few of you lovely folks have already asked if you can help, and as a totally independent band sometimes we have to swallow our pride with a cup of camomile tea and accept help with enormous gratitude."

Anyone wishing to help the pair, Chrissy Mostyn and Rick Pilkington have come up with some novel suggestions. The band's next gig is at Liverpool's Zanzibar on March 9.

BUY A PART OF OUR NEW MIXER AND BECOME PART OF THE BAND

1. £ Any amount. Everyone who donates will have their name in the thank you section of our next album.

2. Buy a knob! There are 209 beautiful knobs on the Dynacord Powermate 1600 and we are offering you the once in a lifetime chance to have a knob named after you. We’re offering any knob for just £25. Your knob will be named after you for eternity.

3. Go further and we will name a channel fader after you for just £50 or for the biggest fans buy the entire channel of your favourite instrument for only £100. Imagine next time you come to a gig, say hello to your very own knob or fader. Invite your partner to meet your knob and take selfies to show your friends!

No matter how much or how little you feel you can donate we want you to know how much we love you and appreciate your contribution. Every single penny is massively appreciated.

Fans can make donations of any amount here.

The Blackheart Orchestra are currently on the road with Foxpalmer and Autumn Dawn Leader. You can view all the tour dates below.

The Blackheart Orchestra Spring tour dates

Mar 9: UK Liverpool Zanzibar
Mar 14: UK Milton Keynes The Stables *
Mar 16: UK Farnham Maltings
Mar 22: UK St. Leonards Kino Teatr
Mar 23: UK Sutton Sound Lounge
Mar 30: UK Abingdon Northcourt
Apr 5: UK Hull Adelphi
Apr 6: UK Gainsborough Trinity Arts Centre
Apr 12: UK Leamington Spa Temperance *
Apr 13: UK Lichfield The Hub At St. Marys
Apr 19: UK Helmsley Arts Centre
Apr 20: UK Barton Upon Humber Ropery Hall
Apr 21: UK York Fulford Arms *
Apr 25: UK Corsham Poun Arts Centre
Apr 26: UK Crediton Arts Centre
Apr 28: UK Southampton Hanger Farm Arts Centre
May 4: UK Irvine Harbour Arts Centre
May 10: UK Newcastle Cluny
May 18: UK Swindon Arts Centre
Jun 2: UK Peterborough Key Theatre
Jun 14: NED Zoertemeer De Boerderij
Jun 15: NED Weert Poppodium de Bosuil
Jun 16: NED Uden De Pul

* with Autumn Dawn Leader

Get tickets.

In 1970, Barclay James Harvest caught the critics’ attention when they experimented with rock and orchestra on their bold self-titled debut. Half a century later, in 2023, John Lees‘ Barclay James Harvest were preparing for their final live shows before the bandleader retires, Lees discussed the band’s incredible career and the tracks that made up their recently reissued second album, Once Again.

"The last time we played with an orchestra was in Athens five years ago,” says Barclay James Harvest guitarist and vocalist John Lees. “We played at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an amphitheatre on the slopes beneath the Acropolis. It was fantastic. Standing there on stage looking up at the Acropolis in spotlight in front of an orchestra was quite surreal.”

Although Barclay James Harvest might not have been the most flash and virtuosic of progressive rock bands, they were certainly one of the most ambitious and broke new ground, in early 1971, by touring with an orchestra. And, as their Acropolis concert demonstrated, they can still do rock and grandeur like no other group. But the road to Athens has been a long, and at times difficult, journey.

They formed in 1967 in the Oldham area and early on played at Middle Earth and with Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, London. They established a melodic style with blues and folk elements and attracted a sponsor and manager, a local fashion entrepreneur John Crowther. They moved into one of his properties, Preston House, an 18th-century farmhouse in nearby Diggle. If that sounds like a cool way to ‘get it together in the country’, the facilities were, if not quite 18th-century, then certainly primitive.

Barclay James Harvest – Lees, Les Holroyd on bass and vocals, Stuart ‘Woolly’ Wolstenholme on keyboards and vocals, and Mel Pritchard on drums – signed a one-off single deal with Parlophone and released a single, Early Morning, in April 1968. The group had already experimented with cello, tenor horn, flute and recorder and although they didn’t have the budget for strings, they had been impressed by The Moody Blues’ use of the Mellotron and hired one for the recording from a piano shop in Derby.

“We were the first and only people to actually rent the thing,” says Lees. “The guy didn’t want it back, so we got it at a knockdown price. And that was the start of introducing orchestral strings as part of the palette. We had some other songs which lent themselves to that kind of sound picture, and from then on it became synonymous with what we did.” 

In 1969 Barclay James Harvest signed to EMI’s new progressive and underground subsidiary Harvest Records. They were one of the label’s first bands and donated a part of their name in the process. Like The Moody Blues on their 1967 album Days Of Future Passed, they wanted to use both Mellotron and orchestra, but whereas Peter Knight’s orchestral passages were largely standalone pieces, they sought a more integrated sound.

The group’s agency Blackhill Enterprises put forward a young arranger, Robert John Godfrey, who was keen to work with them. He became known as their Resident Musical Director – literally, as he had moved into Preston House. By this time, Lees had had enough of the “squalid” conditions there and moved out.

Godfrey was responsible for the orchestration on their 1970 debut album Barclay James Harvest – except Mother Dear, which was arranged by producer Norman Smith, who told Godfrey what he had written was “too bizarre”. Godfrey has called Smith’s arrangement “completely awful” and claims that unlike some string arrangers, he “knows how classical music works”. On Dark Now My Sky, based on the ominous environmental warnings in Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, his arrangement is particularly intricate and expansive.

The orchestra on the album – credited as Barclay James Harvest Orchestra – were actually a London-based student orchestra. “Marrying a rock band to an orchestra was seat-of-the-pants stuff,” says Lees. “In some instances, the orchestra goes out of time. And you’d have thought that we would have had some leeway with the students, but everything was done according to rule books, so even if we had to have extra rehearsals because they weren’t playing it right, they charged us.” 

In 1971 the band and orchestra went on tour with Godfrey conducting. “It was financially a disaster,” Lees recalls. “It’s not that the concerts weren’t well attended, but there was no profit in it, it was all paying to play. You couldn’t charge ticket prices to make the money to pay the expenses that were incurred. And the further we played from London, the smaller the orchestra became due to costs.” 

Both Crowther and the band ended up in debt, but for 1971’s Once Again, Barclay James Harvest decided to carry on with orchestration on some songs, and they also signposted where they were heading in a rock direction.

Much is made of prog’s supposed relationship with JRR Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, but very few tracks actually reference it. Lees’ sweetly sung, folky ballad Galadriel is one. “I’d read Lord Of The Rings, but the song is not specifically about Galadriel, the character in the book,” says Lees. “It’s just a general kind of a love song.” Ever keen to avoid generic pop orchestration, Godfrey embellishes its simple structure with busy string parts, high brass and timpani rolls, which he identifies as like Benjamin Britten. Norman Smith had gone to the gear store at Abbey Road and pulled out a famous guitar for Lees to play on this track, the Epiphone Casino that John Lennon had used on the Apple rooftop concert a couple of years earlier.

Mocking Bird, originally written by Lees in 1968, remains one of Barclay James Harvest’s best-loved songs. Godfrey’s orchestrations on the album are particularly inventive but dense and complex, and at times feel at odds with the vocal lines. Does Lees agree?

“Well, over the years, I’ve just got very used to it,” he replies. “We play our version of Mocking Bird live with the Mellotron and strings so it’s become a different beast by now. But some of the orchestration, like Dark Now My Sky, is well heavy, isn’t it?”

It was to be Godfrey’s last album with the group; he went on to form The Enid in 1973. Personal frictions and a dispute over the extent of his contribution to Mocking Bird and other songs culminated in an unhappy exit. This was followed years later by lengthy and unsuccessful litigation.

Song For Dying is a powerful anti-war song, lamenting the loss of our sons in conflict and showcases a tougher band sound thanks to its impassioned vocals, Lee’s searing lead guitar, Holroyd’s animated bass lines and Pritchard’s dynamic drumming.

The acoustic Vanessa Simmons is an affectionate look back to a former love: ‘Vanessa Simmons, funny kind of name,’ Lees sings.  Here the group’s harmonies are reminiscent of Crosby Stills And Nash. “Yeah, it was West Coast inspired,” Lees admits. “We did have a good harmony, the three of us. We have very similar accents and voices that just sit together really easily.”

Ball And Chain is a tough bluesy rocker topped by Wolstenholme’s rather overcooked vocals. “It was a bit of a spoof and was meant to be a take on Led Zeppelin,” Lees recalls, laughing. “He had this paper cup and was using it like a megaphone in front of the microphone. It was hilarious.”

Less fun is Wolstenholme’s Happy Old World: a grim, ironically titled song, with the protagonist’s threat to die by suicide. It’s inadvisable to be too literal when linking a song’s message with the singer, but Wolstenholme lived with depression and took his own life in 2010. How does Lees look back on it now?

“That was probably written when we first started, when we were sending demos to publishers,” says Lees. “That’s the way he was at that time. He had that tongue-in-cheek, very dry humour; not everyone liked it. We were great friends and it was typical of Woolly. In retrospect, some of his later stuff I felt was too dark for Barclay James Harvest.”

Released at the beginning of this year, the three-CD expanded edition of Once Again includes a remarkable outtake, Wolstenholme’s White Sails (A Seascape). This, the full 12-minute version, is a kind of pocket piano concerto with orchestration by Godfrey and the group notable by their absence. Lees recalls that by this time, Wolstenholme had become a bit detached from the band, “so he would go off and spend this time doing one particular song like White Sails or In Search Of England [from XII]. I was quite happy with that, although not everybody was. But I don’t know why White Sails didn’t make it [on to record] He did a lot of work on that.”

But the pivotal track on the original album is the eight-minute-plus She Said, which introduced the powerful, dynamic 70s BJH rock sound. Written by Wolstenholme and Holroyd, it was originally two songs with folky and rock elements which then morphed into its recorded form. “It was a good live number – still is,” says Lees. Wolstenholme weaves together subtle string and flute Mellotron, and Lees gives his lead guitar lines an extra edge with what became a signature style of playing of two notes together – “split notes”. The song dies down to a ruminative middle section with distant recorder, before surging back up to its conclusion.

And that tune is an early example of the underrated Mel Pritchard’s expansion into a more adventurous drumming style, playing towering snare rolls before launching off – on a wing and a prayer – into lengthy full-kit breaks. It certainly upped the excitement levels. Lees identifies Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice as a particular influence on Pritchard at this time.

Playing with an orchestra affected Barclay James Harvest in a number of ways. It helped define their identity, and while they have continued sporadically recording and playing live with an orchestra – Martyn Ford took over from Godfrey in late 1971 for …And Other Short Stories – they pragmatically tried to achieve an orchestral effect with a four-piece band, through Mellotron, keyboards and more dramatic playing style. This can be heard on the 1971 Radio 1 In Concert recordings on the expanded Once Again – hosted by DJ John Peel, who particularly enjoyed She Said. The money they lost on their initial orchestral tour had to be recouped, and they toured relentlessly for a couple of years to pay off their debts honing their live show, which was captured in full force on 1974’s Barclay James Harvest Live. It included songs from Once Again and ended up giving the band their first Top 40 album. 

Barclay James Harvest are currently on their last-ever tour, but intend to keep on recording and playing one-off concerts “at festivals or special events”, which may well involve an orchestra. “Up to the time we split with the original BJH [in 1998] we’d done 940 gigs,” says Lees. “I don’t know what the total is now. But when you look back on where we played and how many dates we did in a year, and how long the tours were, it’s quite frightening!” 

With his time as a touring musician coming to an end, John Lees previews a pair of historic symphonic concerts by his incarnation of Barclay James Harvest.

What made you decide that 2023 should be your final year of touring? 

I want to quit while I’m ahead, while I can still play guitar and sing. I’ve got two grandkids and it’s difficult to balance music with that. The three years of covid didn’t help, and Brexit has made things so, so difficult. There will be occasional gigs, but as far as organised touring goes, that’s it. 

The BJH website tells us that these concerts with the Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra mark the first time any incarnation of the group has performed orchestrally for more than 50 years. 

Actually, that’s not correct. We played a gig in Athens with an orchestra four or five years ago. But apart from that, in Britain it’s the first in a long, long time. 

What made you want to revisit the format? 

Apart from being a scientist, my son is also a musician. He has played the cornet in a brass band since he was a kid. I’ve got a lot of good friends in that same brass band who also play in orchestras, including the conductor, and they all wanted us to do it. I took ages and ages to consider doing it, but in the end I agreed. 

Has that consent opened a can of worms? 

Those gigs are not the easiest to do but, like I said, we did it not too long ago in Athens, so we know what to expect. There is one particular number that we’ll do called Dark Now My Sky which hasn’t been played orchestrally since a BBC concert [in 1971] – maybe never at all. So that’s going to be a biggie.

The Slaithwaite Philharmonic is an 80-piece ensemble. Will everyone fit on stage at Huddersfield Town Hall? 

I think so. It has a massive stage, so we can fit the full monty onto it. It’s an extremely inspiring place. 

BJH were among the first rock bands to work regularly with an orchestra, notably on their first two albums from 1970 and ’71. What was the attraction? 

We had started listening to the folky American soft rock. Then we heard the Mellotron. Once we adopted that into our sound and made it work, then it led to orchestras, which really affected the arrangements ofthe songs we were writing. 

When BJH took an orchestra on the road with them in 1971 it all went tits-up. 

It was a student orchestra, and they weren’t very co-operative. It was also extremely expensive. Because of that, the further north we got the smaller the orchestra became. 

It’s one of several things that BJH never received full credit for. Another is a willingness to write about real life and so-called ‘politics’ from within progressive music. 

You’re completely right. We never moved to London, that’s why. It seems ridiculous to me now that if we had a couple of gigs in London we would play the first night, drive back home [to Oldham], and the following day return to London. That was financially driven. We couldn’t afford to stay in hotels. Because of that we never became part of the scene, and ended up pretty overlooked. 

A few years ago you told Prog magazine that as younger men BJH could hold their own in the partying stakes. What’s the most rock’n’roll thing you or the band did back then? 

At a hotel in Munich one of our crew rewired the lifts so that if you pressed the button for the fourth floor it would take you to the eighth, and so on. We thought that hilarious, until realising that we were stuck in this hotel for another two nights. Fortunately I was on the second floor, so I could use the stairs. 

During the same interview you revealed that at the funeral of original drummer Mel Pritchard you put aside a lengthy feud with Les Holroyd, another original member who leads a ‘rival’ BJH, to exchange a few words. Did a subsequent conversation ever take place? 

No. But life’s too short, so I made a point of going over to ask how he was. He plays my music, which I suppose is quite flattering. I think he lives in Germany now and the chances of us running into one another again are very, very slim. 

It doesn’t sound like the two of you will ever bury the hatchet. 

The music is so different. We’ve both gone in different directions. Mine is always full of social comment. Besides which, the guys I work with now have been together longer than the original band. 

A new album from John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest is in the works. How is it coming along? 

It’s about two-thirds done. It might be conceptual. The idea is to finish it next year.

John Lees' Barclay James Harvest play Huddersfield Town Hall this weekend, with European dates in November and December. For full dates, visit the Barclay James Harvest website. 

In 1970, Barclay James Harvest caught the critics’ attention when they experimented with rock and orchestra on their bold self-titled debut. Half a century later, John Lees‘ Barclay James Harvest are preparing for their final live shows before the bandleader retires, including a special orchestral concert in Huddersfield in September. John Lees discusses the band’s incredible career and the tracks that made up their recently reissued second album, Once Again.

“The last time we played with an orchestra was in Athens five years ago,” says Barclay James Harvest guitarist and vocalist John Lees. “We played at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an amphitheatre on the slopes beneath the Acropolis. It was fantastic. Standing there on stage looking up at the Acropolis in spotlight in front of an orchestra was quite surreal.”

Although Barclay James Harvest might not have been the most flash and virtuosic of progressive rock bands, they were certainly one of the most ambitious and broke new ground, in early 1971, by touring with an orchestra. And, as their Acropolis concert demonstrated, they can still do rock and grandeur like no other group. But the road to Athens has been a long, and at times difficult, journey.

They formed in 1967 in the Oldham area and early on played at Middle Earth and with Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, London. They established a melodic style with blues and folk elements and attracted a sponsor and manager, a local fashion entrepreneur John Crowther. They moved into one of his properties, Preston House, an 18th-century farmhouse in nearby Diggle. If that sounds like a cool way to ‘get it together in the country’, the facilities were, if not quite 18th-century, then certainly primitive.

Barclay James Harvest – Lees, Les Holroyd on bass and vocals, Stuart ‘Woolly’ Wolstenholme on keyboards and vocals, and Mel Pritchard on drums – signed a one-off single deal with Parlophone and released a single, Early Morning, in April 1968. The group had already experimented with cello, tenor horn, flute and recorder and although they didn’t have the budget for strings, they had been impressed by The Moody Blues’ use of the Mellotron and hired one for the recording from a piano shop in Derby.

“We were the first and only people to actually rent the thing,” says Lees. “The guy didn’t want it back, so we got it at a knockdown price. And that was the start of introducing orchestral strings as part of the palette. We had some other songs which lent themselves to that kind of sound picture, and from then on it became synonymous with what we did.”

In 1969 Barclay James Harvest signed to EMI’s new progressive and underground subsidiary Harvest Records. They were one of the label’s first bands and donated a part of their name in the process. Like The Moody Blues on their 1967 album Days Of Future Passed, they wanted to use both Mellotron and orchestra, but whereas Peter Knight’s orchestral passages were largely standalone pieces, they sought a more integrated sound.

The group’s agency Blackhill Enterprises put forward a young arranger, Robert John Godfrey, who was keen to work with them. He became known as their Resident Musical Director – literally, as he had moved into Preston House. By this time, Lees had had enough of the “squalid” conditions there and moved out.

Godfrey was responsible for the orchestration on their 1970 debut album Barclay James Harvest – except Mother Dear, which was arranged by producer Norman Smith, who told Godfrey what he had written was “too bizarre.” Godfrey has called Smith’s arrangement “completely awful” and claims that unlike some string arrangers, he “knows how classical music works.” On Dark Now My Sky, based on the ominous environmental warnings in Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, his arrangement is particularly intricate and expansive.

The orchestra on the album – credited as Barclay James Harvest Orchestra – were actually a London-based student orchestra. “Marrying a rock band to an orchestra was seat-of- the-pants stuff,” says Lees. “In some instances, the orchestra goes out of time. And you’d have thought that we would have had some leeway with the students, but everything was done according to rule books, so even if we had to have extra rehearsals because they weren’t playing it right, they charged us.”

In 1971 the band and orchestra went on tour with Godfrey conducting. “It was financially a disaster,” Lees recalls. “It’s not that the concerts weren’t well attended, but there was no profit in it, it was all paying to play. You couldn’t charge ticket prices to make the money to pay the expenses that were incurred. And the further we played from London, the smaller the orchestra became due to costs.”

Both Crowther and the band ended up in debt, but for 1971’s Once Again, Barclay James Harvest decided to carry on with orchestration on some songs, and they also signposted where they were heading in a rock direction.

Much is made of prog’s supposed relationship with JRR Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, but very few tracks actually reference it. Lees’ sweetly sung, folky ballad Galadriel is one. “I’d read Lord Of The Rings, but the song is not specifically about Galadriel, the character in the book,” says Lees. “It’s just a general kind of a love song.” Ever keen to avoid generic pop orchestration, Godfrey embellishes its simple structure with busy string parts, high brass and timpani rolls, which he identifies as like Benjamin Britten. Norman Smith had gone to the gear store at Abbey Road and pulled out a famous guitar for Lees to play on this track, the Epiphone Casino that John Lennon had used on the Apple rooftop concert a couple of years earlier.

Mocking Bird, originally written by Lees in 1968, remains one of Barclay James Harvest’s best-loved songs. Godfrey’s orchestrations on the album are particularly inventive but dense and complex, and at times feel at odds with the vocal lines. Does Lees agree? “Well, over the years, I’ve just got very used to it,” he replies. “We play our version of Mocking Bird live with the Mellotron and strings so it’s become a different beast by now. But some of the orchestration, like Dark Now My Sky, is well heavy, isn’t it?”

It was to be Godfrey’s last album with the group; he went on to form The Enid in 1973. Personal frictions and a dispute over the extent of his contribution to Mocking Bird and other songs culminated in an unhappy exit. This was followed years later by lengthy and unsuccessful litigation.

Song For Dying is a powerful anti-war song, lamenting the loss of our sons in conflict and showcases a tougher band sound thanks to its impassioned vocals, Lee’s searing lead guitar, Holroyd’s animated bass lines and Pritchard’s dynamic drumming.

The acoustic Vanessa Simmons is an affectionate look back to a former love: ‘Vanessa Simmons, funny kind of name,’ Lees sings. Here the group’s harmonies are reminiscent of Crosby, Stills And Nash. “Yeah, it was West Coast inspired,” Lees admits. “We did have a good harmony, the three of us. We have very similar accents and voices that just sit together really easily.”

Ball And Chain is a tough bluesy rocker topped by Wolstenholme’s rather overcooked vocals. “It was a bit of a spoof and was meant to be a take on Led Zeppelin,” Lees recalls, laughing. “He had this paper cup and was using it like a megaphone in front of the microphone. It was hilarious.”

Less fun is Wolstenholme’s Happy Old World: a grim, ironically titled song, with the protagonist’s threat to die by suicide. It’s inadvisable to be too literal when linking a song’s message with the singer, but Wolstenholme lived with depression and took his own life in 2010. How does Lees look back on it now? “That was probably written when we first started, when we were sending demos to publishers,” says Lees. “That’s the way he was at that time. He had that tongue-in-cheek, very dry humour; not everyone liked it. We were great friends and it was typical of Woolly. In retrospect, some of his later stuff I felt was too dark for Barclay James Harvest.”

Released at the beginning of 2023, the three-CD expanded edition of Once Again includes a remarkable outtake, Wolstenholme’s White Sails (A Seascape). This, the full 12-minute version, is a kind of pocket piano concerto with orchestration by Godfrey and the group notable by their absence. Lees recalls that by this time, Wolstenholme had become a bit detached from the band, “so he would go off and spend this time doing one particular song like White Sails or In Search Of England [from XII]. I was quite happy with that, although not everybody was. But I don’t know why White Sails didn’t make it [on to the record]. He did a lot of work on that.”

But the pivotal track on the original album is the eight-minute-plus She Said, which introduced the powerful, dynamic 70s BJH rock sound. Written by Wolstenholme and Holroyd, it was originally two songs with folky and rock elements which then morphed into its recorded form. “It was a good live number – still is,” says Lees. Wolstenholme weaves together subtle string and flute Mellotron, and Lees gives his lead guitar lines an extra edge with what became a signature style of playing of two notes together – “split notes.” The song dies down to a ruminative middle section with distant recorder, before surging back up to its conclusion.

And that tune is an early example of the underrated Mel Pritchard’s expansion into a more adventurous drumming style, playing towering snare rolls before launching off – on a wing and a prayer – into lengthy full-kit breaks. It certainly upped the excitement levels. Lees identifies Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice as a particular influence on Pritchard at this time.

Playing with an orchestra affected Barclay James Harvest in a number of ways. It helped define their identity, and while they have continued sporadically recording and playing live with an orchestra – Martyn Ford took over from Godfrey in late 1971 for ...And Other Short Stories – they pragmatically tried to achieve an orchestral effect with a four-piece band, through Mellotron, keyboards and more dramatic playing style. This can be heard on the 1971 Radio 1 In Concert recordings on the expanded Once Again – hosted by DJ John Peel, who particularly enjoyed She Said.

The money they lost on their initial orchestral tour had to be recouped, and they toured relentlessly for a couple of years to pay off their debts honing their live show, which was captured in full force on 1974’s Barclay James Harvest Live. It included songs from Once Again and ended up giving the band their first Top 40 album.

Barclay James Harvest are currently on their last-ever tour, but intend to keep on recording and playing one-off concerts “at festivals or special events,” which may well involve an orchestra. “Up to the time we split with the original BJH [in 1998] we’d done 940 gigs,” says Lees. “I don’t know what the total is now. But when you look back on where we played and how many dates we did in a year, and how long the tours were, it’s quite frightening!”

If you ever want your faith in humanity restored, look no further than a festival crowd. You'll find a sense of togetherness not found anywhere else, with all sorts of amusing shenanigans going on, including ridiculous dancing, crowd surfing and mosh-pits.

At this year's Truck Festival, which took place on Oxfordshire's Hill Farm on July 20 through until July 23, punters exhibited the best example of festival revelry we've seen, with huge crowds moshing to...the Oxford Symphony Orchestra. No, really.

As most mosh-pits usually ignite to the music of rock/metal bands, it's pretty bizarre to see hordes of attendees pummelling their bodies together to famous classical songs, which in their typical setting, are usually met by the delicate claps of fans watching on quietly from chairs in some kind of grand hall.

In footage filmed at the event, the crowd can be seen dancing and moshing to tracks such as Rossini's William Tell Overture: Final, the Indiana Jones theme song by John Williams and a classical version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

There's even an hilarious clip of punters doing pirouettes to the famous ballet number Dance of the Mirlitons from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. Be sure to check out Kermit the Frog getting in on the action too.

In the comments, one viewer writes: "Can you imagine if this happened at the night of the Proms?". While another says: "People wonder why I have a Spotify playlist titled Classical Music That Goes Hard, case and point".

This year, Truck Festival saw a number of indie rock acts take to the stage, including Royal Blood, Alt-J, Two Door Cinema Club, The Vaccines, Self Esteem, The Wombats and more.

Check out the clips below:

"Our last album was definitely a transition and that’s why a lot people might have thought it was strange,” says Olivia Sparnenn. Mostly Autumn’s frontwoman is in a contemplative mood as she and founding guitarist/vocalist Bryan Josh consider the last few years of musical ups and downs. First music distributor Pinnacle went bust, having a knock-on effect on the band’s independent releases; then long‑time member Heather Findlay moved on to pastures new. But with Sparnenn’s subsequent promotion to lead vocalist and their fantastic show at last year’s High Voltage Festival, the British collective are back stronger than ever, with a new album and a new sound to boot. 

It’s hard to ignore the mixed reviews that 2010’s Go Well Diamond Heart received from fans. Even though most of it was written before Findlay left the band, some followers felt it wasn’t up to their usual standards. Josh takes such criticism on the chin and sighs: “Half the buggers would write the album for you if you let them! Honestly, most of the feedback we’ve had was positive, although I suppose the more negative comments are what people remember. You’re always going to get criticism when you do a new album but there will also be new people coming along who like what you’re doing. When it comes down to it, I don’t pay attention to the negative comments – if I did, I’d never get anything done!”

Two years on, and by his own admission, its studio follow-up The Ghost Moon Orchestra is the sort of album that needs a few listens to get stuck into. It’s heavier and more dramatic than their last few releases, adding a touch of metaphorical thunder and lightning to their rich sound. It even invokes the spirit of early 00s releases Storms Over Still Water and Passengers. Although Josh lends his voice to a handful of songs, the album is a showcase for singer Sparnenn, who comes across as a confident and very able frontwoman. 

Josh says: “I guess it was a case of wanting to make a fresh start and demonstrate where we are now… We gained confidence with the last album and felt we could properly move on – it was about half letting go of the past and half moving on, so we wanted to hit the ground running. Some of the heavier influence was to do with Olivia but a lot of it was to do with the way the songs just came about. Musically I grew up with music from the 60s and 70s so that’ll always be in the background, but it’s also nice to get something heavier in there for live shows to get the energy going.” 

Keen to remind fans of their lighter side, they’ve also released a limited-edition version with a second disc of acoustic numbers. 

Even though their recent past has been scattered with peaks and troughs, Mostly Autumn’s actual album-writing process has been a comparative doddle. The fantastical title came to Josh at the beginning of the year, while he was on holiday in the Lake District. Tucked up by a warm fire, he thought he saw a face emerging from the flames and the words ‘The Ghost Moon Orchestra’ popped into his head seconds later. “I have no bloody idea where it came from,” he chuckles, “but it all made sense afterwards. It’s a concept based on a group of phantoms who sit outside of our world playing everybody’s symphony… They’re the ghosts responsible for the musical soundtracks in our heads, like when something sad happens or you hear music in your dreams. It feels like I was a radio receiver and I tuned into something because once I had the title, the music came naturally and the album wrote itself.”

The result is a perfect blend of eclectic genres that expand on Mostly Autumn’s trademark sound. Less folky than their previous albums, their 10th studio release has a strong symphonic influence and a generous helping of Americana, particularly evident on The Devil And The Orchestra. However, one of the stand-out tracks is the Celtic infused Wild Eyed Skies, co-written by Sparnenn. The stunning song also features uilleann pipes from old friend and regular guest musician Troy Donockley. 

“Writing for Mostly Autumn is still quite a new thing for me and I really enjoyed it,” says Sparnenn, who also contributed to the lyrics of two other songs on the album. The singer adds: “Having this new album has given me more confidence because I’ve had a bigger role in the writing process. The real beauty of Mostly Autumn’s music is that it’s about life and it’s very passionate – you can relate to a lot of what it’s about, even if it’s been written with another person in mind. That said, it definitely helps to be singing songs that you’ve had a hand in writing!”

Now nine months after its conception, the 10-part symphony that is The Ghost Moon Orchestra is ready to be officially birthed through the band’s self-funded Mostly Autumn Records. Yet given that so many of their peers have recently secured album deals, do the collective feel the DIY approach is still right for them? Josh says, “We’ve been offered quite a few record deals but the problem is, when you go down that road, you’re lucky if you get 40 pence back per album because the labels take a sizeable cut, so our little business would disappear. But I’d consider it if it was a good deal and we still had the control. If you’ve got a big deal with a lot behind it, you can really get big and that would be fantastic, but those sorts of deals don’t really seem to exist these days. Most of them seem to be about short-term investments and at the end of the day, you’re none the better for signing them. 

“Obviously it would be great if we sold more records so we could put on bigger shows, but I’m pleased with the way things have gone for us so far. After all, we make real music because it’s our passion, not because we want to be rock stars, so if we can just stay where we are but grow, that would be fantastic. I think the very fact we’re still here after 14 or so years is an achievement in itself.”

Of course, Josh has a very good point. Despite their financial losses when Pinnacle Distribution went into receivership at the end of 2008, Mostly Autumn remain determinedly independent, not to mention optimistic about what the future could still hold. Now in their third decade of tireless self-promotion, it’s their never-ending enthusiasm and determination that they’re taking out on the road with them as part of their forthcoming autumn/winter tour. A cluster of dates are already lined up right until the end of the year, and one of those will be filmed for a live DVD. 

“It’ll be our first DVD with Olivia as frontwoman,” Josh explains, “and we’ll be filming it in Holland at the Boerderij, which is one of the nicest venues in the area. We’ve always had a fantastic audience there so we wanted to do something special and it’ll be a record of this moment in time with a lot of the new album on. It should be a magical night.” 

The as-yet untitled DVD comes off the back of last year’s Still Beautiful live CD, which was recorded on their last tour, and Josh gives his assurance that fans of the band’s older material won’t be disappointed with the set. Given last year’s performance at High Voltage, we could all be in for quite a treat.

But perhaps the biggest question on the lips of fans is about the future. Will the next album have the heaviness of The Ghost Moon Orchestra? Josh is hesitant in his reply: “I can’t say because we won’t know until we start writing it. This heaviness is something we’ve been ready to do for a while and it’ll definitely be our sound for the immediate future.”

One thing that remains quite certain is his ongoing friendship with Heather Findlay. In fact, shortly after this interview, Josh and Sparnenn were heading out to the Lake District for a camping holiday with the former Mostly Autumn singer. “We’ve got a lot of booze so we can have a good laugh by the fire,” Josh says, clearly looking forward to the break. 

But will there be any musical activities taking place? He chuckles: “Well, a lot of my inspiration comes from the Lakes and we’ll have a guitar up there… We’ll just have to see what happens. You never know!”   

This article originally appeared in issue30 of Prog Magazine.

Earlier this year, Jack Black released the track Peaches, lifted from the Super Mario Bros. Movie, which sees him co-star and perform as the franchise's villain Bowser. 

The song, in true Black fashion, is characteristically OTT, and sees the actor brood as the anthropomorphic turtle over his one true love, Princess Peach, voiced in the film by Anya Taylor Joy.

Over the weekend, on June 25, the Tenacious D star delivered a surprise performance of the track at The Game Awards 10–Year Concert, a night of video game music held at the Hollywood Bowl, and backed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ahead of the performance, Black strolls out from the side of the stage to the astonishment of the audience, sporting the green suit and red-feathered helmet that he dons in the song's accompanying music video.

Performing with all the ridiculous and theatrical gusto we know and love, Black climbs onto a piano and sprawls out in a sort of melodramatic, lovelorn daze, before then breaking down to the floor and letting out a deranged squawk, making for quite the hilarious watch.

Peaches is Jack Black's first ever solo hit, peaking at No. 56 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its Cole Bennett-directed music video has amassed 45 million YouTube views following its release just two months ago.

Watch the performance, via footage provided by IGN, below:

Bruce Dickinson recently performed a cover of the 1974 Deep Purple classic Burn, during his appearance as part of Jon Lord's Concerto For Group And Orchestra.

The Iron Maiden frontman is currently guesting with the 80-piece orchestra - the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, conducted by Paul Mann - with an accompanying band composed of Jon Lord's Kaitner Z Doka and Bernhard Welz on guitar and drums, Jethro Tull's John O'Hara on keyboards, Whitesnake's Tanya O'Callaghan on bass and Scorpion's Mario Argandonia on percussion.

Dickinson performed the rendition at the April 15 show, which took place at Vibra São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil. 

When first announcing the Concerto For Group And Orchestra shows in a video, Dickinson declared: "So I'm really excited to be doing this Concerto For Group And Orchestra all around the place — around Europe and in Brazil.

"Well, what is it exactly? Well, it's about a 45-minute piece of classical music that was written by Jon Lord from Deep Purple involving a group; in this case, it was Deep Purple.

"And it's like a meeting of minds between a rock and roll band and an orchestra, and they play slightly separately, they play together. I'm basically just the singer in the part of the Concerto that is the singing part; that's basically part one of the show. 

"Part two, we kind of really let our hair down a bit. There's a couple of more classical interactions between the band that's more instrumental, and then we do five Purple songs with the orchestra and the band, so Perfect Strangers, When A Blind Man Cries, obviously, Smoke On The Water, Hush and Pictures Of Home, which is a rarity and it's amazing with the orchestra.

"And then we're also gonna do something a little bit special. We've done an orchestral arrangement of my version of Jerusalem and also Tears Of The Dragon with the orchestra and the band. So, those two are gonna be in there at end — no particular order at the moment. So it's a really good, amazing evening of fantastic playing by incredible musicians. And that's what it is — it's music."

Watch fan-filmed footage of the performance below:

The Prodigy is the most metal dance act of all time. It's an immovable, indisputable fact: no other band from the electronic world sounds as heavy or goes as hard live, and the Essex crew have the Download Festival appearances to prove it. Hell, even Sepultura have covered one of their songs, producing an even beefier, metalled-up take on their 1996 anthem Firestarter back in 2011.

Sepultura certainly aren't the only music group to take a Prodigy song and give it a heavy metal makeover (and no, don't worry, we're not going to point you towards Gene Simmon's disastrously bad Firestarter cover from many years ago). Alternative Ukrainian orchestral group Prime Orchestra do a spectacular Prodigy medley, culminating in a full-throttle version of Voodoo People that will have your head spinning.

The track, originally released in 1994 as a single from The Prodigy's classic second studio album, Music For The Jilted Generation, was famously introduced to a new generation in the mid-00s courtesy of Pendulum's drum and bass revamp. While it's perhaps unlikely that Prime Orchestra's version will have the same impact, we think it's an absolute knockout, the combination of swelling strings, added guitars and the dizzyingly talented players headbanging their hearts out making for one hell of a spectacle. 

Watch the full medley below, or skip to the five minute mark to get stuck straight into Voodoo People. We recommend you watch the whole thing, though. It's bloody great.

The Prodigy have shows planned through the summer, with a new album - the first following the death of Keith Flint in 2019 - expected at some point this year.

Composer, electro-pop pioneer, writer, producer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto has died, aged 71.

The death of the Tokyo-born musician, a founding member of highly-influential electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra, was confirmed today on his social media channels: Sakamoto passed away on March 28.

A statement on the composer's website reads: “We are deeply saddened to announced the passing of artist and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto on the 28th of March, 2023. He was 71 years old.

While undergoing treatment for cancer discovered in June 2020, Sakamoto continued to create works in his home studio whenever his health would allow. He lived with music until the very end.

We would like to express out deepest gratitude to his fans and all those who have supported his activities, as well as medical professionals in Japan and the United States who did everything in their power to cure him.

In accordance with Sakamoto’s strong wishes, the funeral service was held among his close family members. Please understand that we are unable to accept any calls of condolences, offerings of incense or flowers, and the like.

Finally, we would like to share one of Sakamoto’s favourite quotes:

‘Ars longa, vita brevis’
Art is Long, life is short

While many will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's privacy during their time of grief."

Sakamoto's death comes just two months after the passing of his former YMO bandmate Yukihiro Takahashi, who died on January 11.

Aside from his work with YMO, Sakamoto is perhaps best known for his soundtrack work, the composer having scored the soundtracks for The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, The Revenant and more. He made his film-scoring debut with the soundtrack to 1983's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, in which he also made his acting debut, alongside David Bowie. Across his five decade-long carer, the composer won an Oscar, a Grammy, a Bafta and two Golden Globe awards. His most recent album, 12, was released in January. 

Rock legends The Who have released a live version of their 1971 classic Baba O'Riley. The video was filmed at the band's 2019 show at London's Wembley Stadium, where the band performed with the Isobel Griffiths Orchestra.

The release of Baba O'Riley, which originally appeared on the band's Who's Next album, comes less than two weeks after The Who announced a UK summer tour. It comes from the upcoming album The Who With Orchestra Live At Wembley, which is due for release on March 31.

The band will play nine shows in July, kicking off at Sewell Group Craven Park in Hull on July 6, and wrapping up on July 23 at the The 1st Central County Ground in Brighton. The new dates are in addition to four shows in mainland Europe the band announced in December. They'll be joined at each show by a full orchestra - full dates below.      

“Having not toured the UK for six years, it's great that at this time of our careers we have the chance to go to places that are not on the usual touring map Edinburgh Castle and Derby, as well as the other cities across the country that we haven’t been to for decades, will make this very special for me," says Who frontman Roger Daltrey. "This opportunity will give our UK Who fans the chance to hear our current show, which, with the addition of an orchestra, takes our music to new heights.”

The Isobel Griffiths Orchestra have previously worked with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Nick Cave, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Biffy Clyro. 

The Who Hits Back European Tour 2023

Jun 14: Barcelona Paulo Sant Jordi, Spain
Jun 17: Florence Visarno Arena, Italy
Jun 20: Berlin Waldbühne, Germany
Jun 23: Paris La Défense Arena, France
Jul 06: Hull Sewell Group Craven Park, UK
Jul 08: Edinburgh Castle, UK
Jul 09: Edinburgh Castle, UK
Jul 12: London The O2, UK
Jul 14: Derby The Incora County Ground, UK
Jul 16: Brisrol Badminton Estate, UK
Jul 19: Durham Seat Unique Riverside, UK
Jul 21: St Helens Totally Wicked Stadium, UK
Jul 23: Brighton The 1st Central County Ground, UK

Tickets are on sale now. 

A new book on 1970s UK prog rockers Fusion Orchestra is to be published, providing fascinating and humorous insight into life of a prog band on the road in the early 1970s.

The book, Fusion Orchestra – On the Road 1970 Through To 1975, has been compiled from the copious and meticulous notes made by the band's drummer Dave Bell, who documented the band's life on the road, noting venue names, dates of the gigs, supporting or main acts and set lists, as well as many memorable incidents that occurred while the band travelled and performed.

The band's singer Jill Saward and guitarist Col Dawson have now turned Bell's notes into a book complete with many band photographs, line-up details and historical notes.

Fusion Orchestra formed in 1969 and released their debut album, Skeleton In Armour, through EMI Records in 1973. Singer Jill Saward went on to join jazz funk outfit Shakatak, signing on the band's Top 4 album Night Birds in 1982, and with whom she continues to tour and record. Guitarist Dawson left the band in 1974 and was replaced by the late Alan Murphy, who would go on to play with Go West and Level 42. A live album, Live at the Marquee 1974, was released in 2018.

Get Fusion Orchestra – On the Road 1970 Through To 1975.

The Who have announced a UK tour for this summer. The band will play nine shows in July, kicking off at Sewell Group Craven Park in Hull on July 6, and wrapping up on July 23 at the The 1st Central County Ground in Brighton. The new dates are in addition to four shows in mainland Europe the band announced in December. They'll be joined at each show by a full orchestra - full dates below.      

“Having not toured the UK for six years, it's great that at this time of our careers we have the chance to go to places that are not on the usual touring map Edinburgh Castle and Derby, as well as the other cities across the country that we haven’t been to for decades, will make this very special for me," says frontman Roger Daltrey. "This opportunity will give our UK Who fans the chance to hear our current show, which, with the addition of an orchestra, takes our music to new heights.”

“Roger initially christened this tour with an orchestra ‘Moving On!’ I love it," adds guitarist Pete Townshend. "It is what both of us want to do. Move on, with new music, classic Who music, all performed in new and exciting ways. Taking risks, nothing to lose. I’m really looking forward to bringing this show to the UK."

The Who were scheduled to play the UK in March and April 2020, but the run of dates was cancelled due to what was then the "developing coronavirus situation." The tour was rearranged for 2021, but those dates were also cancelled and fans refunded. 

Tickets for the new shows will go on general sale on Friday at 10am. Support at all shows apart from London and Edinburgh will come from UB40 featuring Ali Campbell. 

The band have also announced a new live album. The Who With Orchestra Live At Wembley was recorded London's Wembley Stadium in July 2019, and will arrive in the record stores worldwide on March 31. The album will be available as an orange and red triple vinyl set, a triple black vinyl package, as a double CD/Blu-Ray set – featuring the audio remixed in Dolby Atmos – and as a single CD edition. It's available to pre-order now. 

The Who Hits Back European Tour 2023

Jun 14: Barcelona Paulo Sant Jordi, Spain
Jun 17: Florence Visarno Arena, Italy
Jun 20: Berlin Waldbühne, Germany
Jun 23: Paris La Défense Arena, France
Jul 06: Hull Sewell Group Craven Park, UK
Jul 08: Edinburgh Castle, UK
Jul 09: Edinburgh Castle, UK
Jul 12: London The O2, UK
Jul 14: Derby The Incora County Ground, UK
Jul 16: Brisrol Badminton Estate, UK
Jul 19: Durham Seat Unique Riverside, UK
Jul 21: St Helens Totally Wicked Stadium, UK
Jul 23: Brighton The 1st Central County Ground, UK

We don’t care whether you can arm-wrestle a bear, lift a tank above your head or just shrug at kittens, there’s something about an orchestra which will grab you by the feelings and squeeze a solitary tear down your otherwise stoic face.

Put your tear ducts to the test by watching this video featuring The Lyra Chamber Orchestra. While drumming up support for Metamorphestra’s Kickstarter project to raise funds for their orchestral covers album, The Ship Of Theseus, arranger Nick Proch seized the chance to work with the Burbank-based orchestra and together, the ensemble worked on an ambitious cover of System Of A Down’s 2001 single Chop Suey!.

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“In April, I was fortunate enough to be invited to Capitol Records in Hollywood to record with them,” explains Proch. “I originally intended on recording Chop Suey! with Metamorphestra for our first official album. The opportunity seemed ideal to take advantage of a world-renowned recording studio with world-class players, though, so I decided to record it then instead of waiting for the album.”

So settle back and hear orchestra strip away Chop Suey!’s metallic sheen to reveal a rousing piece which would sit neatly on any James Bond soundtrack – or The Lion King or Futurama, depending on which sections you really pay attention to.

The question is, how much would cost to fly the orchestra over for Download next year?

System Of A Down join Biffy Clyro and Aerosmith as the headliners of Download 2017.

System of a Down Quiz