Arrested. Blacklisted. Out of control.
ISSUE 271
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With Jim Morrison in the grip of alcoholism and at times barely able to perform live, facing a possible 13 years in jail, on a downward spiral and threatening to take the rest of The Doors with him, it was decided that the best thing to do was get back in the studio. Against the odds, they came out with one of their greatest albums: Morrison Hotel. Words: Mick Wall CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 27
David Bowie
It was the dawn of the 70s, a period that delivered some now iconic albums – although some could easily have gone straight to the bargain bins. So why were they dismissed at the time?
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achievements. A work of bleak, gothic, otherworldliness, featuring guitarist Mick Ronson and the prototype Spiders From Mars band, it found Bowie at an early heavy-rock peak with The Width Of A Circle and She Shook Me Cold, and boasts another iconic title track, elevated by the famous version by Nirvana, among others. Rolling Stone called Bowie’s album “uniformly excellent”, and it has since been lionised as his “first great album” (it was actually his second album). Yet when it was released in 1970 in the US (1971 in UK), it stiffed. No chart action whatsoever. It was only two years later, after the success of the Ziggy Stardust album, that The Man Who Sold The World finally entered the charts and began its long, gradual ascent to hallowed status. Other albums released around the same time suffered a similar fate. In America, ZZ Top’s First Album and the
self-titled debut by The Allman Brothers Band were both commercial non-starters. The subsequent success and longevity of the Texan trio has prompted a predictable reappraisal of their fledgling effort, while the Allmans’ album has long been viewed as an outright classic, with songs including Trouble No More, Dreams and Whipping Post among the most evergreen in that long-running band’s repertoire. So what was going on at the turn of the 1970s? Were audiences and critics really so cloth-eared? How could these all-time great albums have been ignored at the first time of asking? What has happened since then to change our minds?
‘1970 was a strange, in-betweener year. The 1960s were over and The Beatles were on their last legs.’
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f course, we look back on the past, in this case on certain albums, through a telescope that zooms in with a clarity provided by hindsight, while ignoring the bigger picture of the times in which they were framed.
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ou can make a case that Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs is Eric Clapton’s greatest post-Cream achievement. A double-album of musical grit and emotional tenderness featuring the heavenly glissando of guitarist Duane Allman, it reshaped blues rock into a new soft-rock genre. And the title track is about as iconic as a song can get. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 2000 and it figures in just about any ‘Greatest Albums Of All-Time’ chart you care to name. But it was an almighty flop at the time of its release in 1970, when it made a brief, mediocre showing at No.16 in the US chart and failed to chart at all in the UK. The reviews were not great either, with Melody Maker complaining of “pretty atrocious vocal work” and songs that induced “complete boredom”. David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World is likewise an album that stands close to the summit of the starman’s
Words: David Sinclair
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ZZ Top
1970 was a strange, in-betweener year. The 1960s and psychedelia were over and The Beatles were on their last legs. T.Rex and the glam revolution were just around the corner (Ride A White Swan came out in October 1970 but didn’t peak in the chart until the following year). Rock was in a good place. Led Zeppelin were rampant, topping the album charts in both the UK and US twice (with II and III); Free were, for sure, All Right Now; and Deep Purple’s In Rock had finally given Richie Blackmore’s boys a substantial hit after three previous albums that had all failed to chart. As one of the pioneers of the genre, Clapton should have been sitting pretty. Instead he had made himself unmarketable. Battered by the split-up of Blind Faith the year before – a ‘supergroup’ that had been undone, as Clapton saw it, by hype and hubris – he had insisted from the outset that this new band should be billed as anonymously as possible. Hence Derek & The Dominos, with Clapton’s name strictly kept out of all sleeve artwork and promotional materials. So successful was the ruse that, for a time, people simply didn’t know that Layla was by Clapton. Not only had Clapton
Eric Clapton With Derek & The Dominos
embraced a new, more mellifluous style of performance, he’d also actively renounced his guitar-god status, begun with John Mayall and redoubled with Cream. “By the time we went to America, we’d play half-hour solos in the middle of anything,” Clapton recalled. “We’d do it in any song. We got into a lot of self-indulgence and a lot of easily-pleased people went along with that.” Be that as it may, when Polydor Records released Live Cream – a collection of old performances recorded in San Francisco in 1968 – in April 1970 The Allman Brothers Band
it gained considerably more traction than Layla could manage. Live Cream reached No.4 in the UK, and is now regarded as a classic display of the band at an early peak of their powers, playing extended, take-no-hostages versions of songs from their first album, Fresh Cream, including N.S.U., Sleepy Time Time and Rollin’ And Tumblin’. The intensity and sheer bravado of the playing is insane, making the album an early marker in a hard-core style of improvisational rock performance that has truly never been bettered. But you could see Clapton’s point. Cream had already taken that line of attack about as far as it could go. Others would follow – notably the American four-piece Mountain, whose 1970 debut Climbing! was indeed climbing the US chart. But for Clapton, it was time to reinvent himself – a trick that Bowie would later take to another level. Both Layla and The Man Who Sold The World were albums that would shape the course of rock over the decade that was just dawning – and far beyond. Clapton and Bowie were outliers who, in their different ways, were both ahead of the curve in 1970. The industry was still figuring out how to market them. And rock audiences had yet to retune their ears to the different approaches that both were applying to a broader genre that was still under construction. For all the brilliance of their work that has been revealed over time, 1970 just wasn’t their moment. CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 39
Once upon a time, a garage band from Phoenix moved to LA and became Alice Cooper, with a little help from Frank Zappa, a dark alter ego and... West Side Story. This is the story of their album Easy Action.
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Words: Ian Fortnam
n 1967, a year after graduating from Phoenix, only white guys in the neighbourhood”), before finally Arizona’s Cortez High School, The Spiders – an settling in the decidedly more sedate Topanga Canyon. Anglophile garage band based around cross-country Meanwhile in Berkeley, another Phoenix band, the Holy lettermen Vince Furnier (vocals), Dennis Dunaway Grail, were similarly trying to break into California, but their (bass) and Glen Buxton (lead guitar) – grew tired of drummer, Neal Smith, was becoming disillusioned at the being big fish in a small pool. After they brought in rhythm extent of his bandmates’ drug use. As destiny would have it, guitarist Michael Bruce, their second single, Don’t Blow Your while Smith was visiting Dunaway in LA, John Speer Mind, had given them a local hit, reaching the dizzy heights announced that he was leaving. “John quit, Neal was there,” of No.11 in Tucson. They were on the radio and in demand says Dunaway. “It wasn’t pre-planned, it just happened.” on the South-West club circuit, but Tinseltown beckoned. With Smith in place, the band – and vocalist Vince – “It was like Dorothy landing in Oz,” Dennis Dunaway adopted the name Alice Cooper, and acclimatised their recalls of the band’s arrival into Los Angeles. “We were young, lifestyle to that of the burgeoning Los Angeles freak scene. had a vision, so just jumped in a van and While San Francisco was the centre drove there.” of the blissed-out hippie scene, LA’s With no money for a hotel, the quintet counter-culture was defined by (initially completed by drummer John significantly more militant freaks, and the Speer) slept in Griffith Park. As dawn Coopers recognised kindred spirits. Their broke they begged stale sustenance from regular Cheetah Club performances soon a truck-based sandwich vendor as he found favour with local scenester Vito binned his previous day’s stock. “We and his ever-present harem of young girls. pushed Vince to the front, as he was the Their downstairs neighbours were skinniest and most pathetic-looking. That Rushton Moreve of Steppenwolf night we walked down Sunset Boulevard and his aptly named girlfriend and it was unbelievable; The Byrds were Animal Huxley (novelist Aldous here, The Doors there, Love… We’re like: Huxley’s ‘wild’ granddaughter, Dennis Dunaway ‘Okay, we’re gonna have to start all over. who wasn’t averse to smashing We’re gonna have to up the ante to guitars when roused). compete here.’” The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), an The band were able to gain a foothold in the city thanks to, all-female band of Frank Zappa associates, Dunaway recalls, “this guy named Doke, who worked for befriended the Coopers. [film star] Tony Curtis. He had a little apartment and said we “Everybody says they did our look,” says could stay. We got some mattresses, covered the floor with Dunaway. “But we used to shop in the them at night so we could sleep, and the windows during the women’s section of the thrift stores back in day so we could practise. Doke was too nice to ask us to leave, Phoenix. That was our look. When we got to but we finally got some gigs and got our own place.” LA we asked the GTOs: ‘Where’s the thrift stores?’ They The band moved, somewhat incautiously, into the [US soul showed us, but didn’t style us. [GTOs member] Miss Christine group] Chambers Brothers’ old place in Watts (“[we were] the ratted Alice’s hair and dyed it blond, though. Tiny Tim was
“The Byrds were here, The Doors there... We’re like: ‘Okay, we’re gonna have to up the ante to compete here.’”
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Pretties for you – Alice Cooper at a Venice art gallery in LA in February 1970: (l -r) Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Neal Smith.
Like most young budding rock musicians, Corky Laing had a dream. Unlike most, his came true, as he steadily scaled the rock’n’roll mountain and made it to the very top.
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Words: Dave Ling
he entire course of Corky Laing’s life was changed by a power cut. A little over 50 years ago, in the summer of 1969, the drummer and his band Energy were playing a gig at a beach hut in Nantucket, a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. With the entire population having cranked up their air conditioning, the power supply crashed suddenly at half-past midnight. Energy had been firing up the room and nobody wanted the show to stop – especially Corky. “I was hyped on soul pills. I had been unable to take my eyes off a gorgeous southern babe called Molly who was wearing a see-through, skin-tight dress covered in flowers,” he recalls today. That Molly was dancing with Roy Bailey, a friend of Laing’s, seemed irrelevant. “She was grinding and humping and I was thumping and staring,” he says with a smile. “When the juice went out there was no way that I would stop and lose Molly on the dance floor.” Almost as if guided by some external force, Laing began smashing away at a cowbell over and over again, and at the top his lungs
bellowing out the words: “Mississippi queen, do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?” As the dancing began again, the eyes of Corky and Molly locked together and nobody left the room. Laing swears that his primal, rhythmic chat-up line lasted for more than an hour before a generator kicked into life and sufficient power to fire up the band again was restored. To Laing’s great disappointment, Molly didn’t leave on his arm on that night, and instead remained with Bailey (who in years to come would draw the whale on the cover of Mountain’s album Nantucket Sleighride). Apart from the incident leaving Corky with a small long-term injury, try as he might, he just couldn’t get the events of the night before out of his head. So he put the kernel of a song idea on tape. Of course, he had no inkling that it would eventually be the basis of a classic rock song. “After screaming so loudly and for so long that night, I gave myself chronic laryngitis, and it screwed up my voice forever,” Laing says today, before adding with a contented smile: “It was worth it.”
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In January 1970, Jimi Hendrix pulled the plug on stardom to chase a funkier, freer direction with his Band Of Gypsys. In the trio’s brief existence, they helped redefine the nature of the rock gig. Words: Bill DeMain
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n his last ever interview, in September 1970, half of them still unfinished and untitled. And Jimi Hendrix said: “I have this little saying: Hendrix himself, dressed down in a blue silk shirt ‘When things get too heavy, just call me and bell-bottomed jeans, cut a surprisingly helium – the lightest known gas to man.’” understated figure on stage, eyes closed, digging Eight months earlier, in that spirit, Jimi deep for fiery licks. His Stratocaster remained had begun the decade with four New Year cradled against his hip, never once flying behind performances at New York’s Fillmore East with his his head or through his legs. newly formed trio Band Of “I don’t want to be a clown Gypsys, the ‘helium’ vehicle any more,” Jimi famously which he assumed carried told Rolling Stone in late ’69. him away from what he “I don’t want to be called the “ego-tripping” a rock’n’roll star.” A month dead end he’d reached with later, he said: “I consider the Experience, and into myself first and foremost uncharted territory. a musician. My initial success In a true ‘’Scuse me while was a step in the right I kiss the sky’ moment, direction, but it was only everything about Hendrix a step. A couple of years ago, Jimi Hendrix in 1969 seemed up in the air. His all I wanted was to be heard; former bandmates, ‘Let me in’ was the thing. Now drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, I’m trying to figure out the wisest way to be heard.” two white English guys, were replaced by black Engineer Eddie Kramer, who mixed the 1970 Americans Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Out went album Band Of Gypsys, said: “When Jimi did the three-minute hits, in came hard funk jams that concerts he was in the embarrassing position of: expanded to eight minutes or more. The set-list ‘I don’t really want to get down on my knees and ignored proven favourites in favour of unheard spray lighter fluid on my guitar and put the guitar songs such as Machine Gun and Who Knows, at least behind my back and play with my teeth, and
“I don’t want to be a rock’n’roll star… I consider myself first and foremost a musician.”
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How psychedelic outlaws the Flying Burrito Brothers mixed rock with country and in the process paved the way for the Eagles and more. Words: Rob Hughes 56 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
Psychedelic posse: (l-r) Michael Clarke, Pete Kleinow, Chris Ethridge, Chris Hillman, Gram Parsons.
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re you ready for the country? So asked The Byrds in August 1968, with their album Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. On that, their sixth album, partly recorded in Nashville, they tackled songs made famous by Merle Haggard, the Louvin Brothers and others, alongside two country-centric originals from the band’s newest member, Gram Parsons. The answer to The Byrds’ question, most emphatically, was: “No.” Sweetheart Of The Rodeo bombed, having alienated both country followers and The Byrds’ core fan base. The album sold just 50,000 copies. The creative licence of the late 60s had allowed all kinds of musical hybrids to flourish: King Crimson brought heavy riffs to European classicism in the pursuit of prog; Fairport Convention gave trad folk a fiery electric jolt;
Wendy Carlos brokered the worlds of ready for it either,” Hillman sighs. “It was too gritty Bach and electronica; Captain Beefheart and raw for most people.” took free jazz and blues way out The Burritos were a far less focused playing live. beyond. But it seemed as though the Having brought in another ex-Byrd, drummer marriage of country and rock was Michael Clarke, they lived hard on the road. a step too far. Parsons, Clarke and Ethridge were particularly Country was viewed as establishment fond of booze, mescaline and cocaine, resulting music, the soundtrack to straightin erratic shows that were either brilliant or backed, conservative America. And in forgettable. An added distraction was Parsons’s the age of student riots, Vietnam and burgeoning friendship with Keith Richards and the civil unrest – with battle lines drawn Rolling Stones. “That’s when he decided to become between the counterculture and those a rock star,” Hillman laments. “Gram just wasn’t in power – it represented the enemy. a person you could work with any more.” Parsons and fellow Byrd Chris Hillman Against this backdrop, the Burritos recorded were nevertheless undaunted. Keen to a second LP. Burrito Deluxe, released in April 1970, further explore the links between rock lacked the intensity and ambition of its predecessor, and country, the pair quit to form the although it still had its moments. Guitarist Bernie Flying Burrito Brothers in late ’68. Leadon, brought in as replacement for Ethridge, Adding pedal steel player ‘Sneaky’ was an extra songwriting foil. This was best Pete Kleinow and bassist Chris Ethridge, illustrated by the sublime Older Guys (co-written the Burritos moved to California. There with Parsons and Hillman), while Parsons gave Lazy they set about realising Parsons’s vision Days, one of his earlier songs, a chugging Stones of a place where gospel, soul, R&B, makeover. As a gesture of goodwill, the Stones country, psychedelia and rock could gifted them Wild Horses, which eventually appeared co-exist, each genre informing and on the Stones’ Sticky Fingers album. shaping the other. “Gram had this idea Sales-wise, Burrito Deluxe did just as poorly as The of ‘cosmic American Music’,” says Gilded Palace Of Sin. By July, Parsons’s recklessness Hillman. “In the late sixties, when had become too much. Hillman fired him after record labels were run by real music a disastrous gig in Los Angeles, for which he people, you were allowed to develop showed up at the last minute, drunk. Hillman, and experiment. Music had no rules who likens their final shows with Parsons to “the back then. People borrowed from other Keystone Cops crashing into a wall”, carried on styles. There was so much freedom.” with the Burritos for another couple of years before Rleased in February 1969, the joining Stephen Stills’s band Manassas. Frustrated Burritos’ The Gilded Palace Of Sin at their lack of success, Leadon had already left to introduced the West Coast hippie form the Eagles – which is where the Burritos’ true aesthetic to juke-joint country. Most of value started to become apparent. the songs emerged from an accelerated The Eagles smoothed the rough edges from the creative spurt between Hillman and Burritos’ sound, ditched the pedal steel and aimed Parsons at Burrito Manor, a house they themselves squarely at mainstream America. shared in the San Fernando Valley. “It Their platinum-selling debut of 1972, featuring was one of the most productive times in Take It Easy and Peaceful Easy Feeling, made country my life,” Hillman recalls. “We came up rock palatable for mass consumption. The Eagles’ with some of the best things either of us Glenn Frey recalled studying the Burritos when ever wrote – songs like Sin City, Christine’s they played at the Troubadour in LA: “We got to Tune, Wheels and Juanita, which conjures see them play live, watch what they were doing up some wonderful imagery.” and check out the harmonies.” Particularly striking were their covers Others followed suit, among them Linda of two Chips Moman/Dan Penn songs Ronstadt, the Doobie Brothers, Pure Prairie League, – Do Right Woman and Dark End Of The and Firefall, who included Michael Clarke and Street. “Gram opened up these other another ex-Burrito, Rick Roberts. Further down the areas to me: the real R&B coming out of decades, the Burritos were cited as a key influence Memphis,” explains Hillman. “For the Burritos to on the alt.country boom of the early 90s; Uncle do Do Right Woman in Tupelo, Whiskeytown and a country style was pretty Wilco were just a few who far-fetched at the time. But acknowledged a debt. it worked so well.” In the sleeve notes to a 90s The album sleeve posited reissue of The Gilded Palace Of the Burritos as counterculture Sin, The Long Ryders’ Sid cowboys, a psychedelic posse Griffin placed its poor of desert outlaws in nudie commercial showing into suits emblazoned with a wider cultural context: “Like cannabis leaves, peacocks the first album by the Velvet and flaming crosses. Underground, it would seem Chris Hillman It wasn’t the only thing that every one of those 50,000 confused the band’s potential [people] went out and formed audience. The music did too. Despite a glowing a band inspired by what they’d heard.” review in Rolling Stone and the ringing endorsement Chris Hillman summed up the Burritos’ legacy of Bob Dylan, The Gilded Palace Of Sin was in Hot Burrito, co-written with John Einarson: “The a commercial flop. “It wasn’t slick enough to be on Byrds invented country-rock. Gram and I refined it country radio, but the rock crowd weren’t quite in the Burritos and the Eagles took it to the bank.”
“Music had no rules back then [the late 60s]. There was so much freedom.”
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She could have ended up a classical pianist, but then one day Suzi picked up a bass guitar, and found herself on the road that would lead to her becoming a glam-rock icon. Along the way she’s appeared in a smash TV show, been a published poet, a DJ, a West End star and much more…
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a place to be. I had to separate myself somehow. And I found I could hold an audience at a very young age. Because we were a big musical family, we used to do family shows, and when I was seven or eight years old I noticed that whenever I did, whatever I was doing, I held them. So I developed it. It wasn’t a case of being an egotist, it was more a case of just going: “Oh, I can do this.”
is exactly what you’d expect: a room full of racked vintage sunglasses. Hundreds of them… And it’s very probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Growing up in the Quatro family, did you have to be an extrovert to get noticed. I didn’t want to be just another child. I had to find
Your father was a semi-pro musician who also worked at General Motors. There were four children in the house; from time to time foster brothers and sisters came in and out of your life. Presumably solitude became something you craved? Oh God, yeah. You were never alone, even in the bathroom – my sister could pick the lock, and she often did. So you’re in there thinking: “I have my space.” You don’t. It’s fun in a way: crazy, loud, opinionated, argumentative and warm. But this [indicates her surroundings] says it all, doesn’t it? Here I am in this Elizabethan manor house, most of the time by myself. My husband [Suzi married German concert promoter Rainer Haas in 1993] and I live in two countries a lot of the time, so I’m often here on my own with my peace and my space, and I love it. When you took up bass playing it was considered a very male-dominated discipline, so for you to adopt the instrument was… Unusual, weird. I’d already played drums,
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rriving into an early-70s landscape of clearly defined gender roles, where rocking was the exclusive preserve of the male of the species (all then caked in catastrophic glam-rock slap), and music’s pop-confined women were invariably reduced to simpering Stepford encouragements while trussed up in pinafore dresses of quite astonishing ugliness, Suzi Quatro was impossible to ignore. Bursting on to the UK scene, fresh from an invaluable apprenticeship on the Detroit garage circuit, Suzi dyed her hair pink and went on tour with Slade. Having hooked up with Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, glam’s premier tunesmiths, she made her Top Of The Pops debut in ’73 poured into a figure-hugging leather catsuit that stopped clocks. Her single Can The Can immediately rocketed to No.1 in the UK (similar chart-topping success followed across mainland Europe, and even in Australia, where Suzi’s star soared to unprecedented heights), and a run of perfect hits followed that set her legend in stone. Today’s Suzi – a published poet, novelist, star of West End musicals, TV chat show sofas, Happy Days, Radio 2’s Rockin’ With Suzi Q and Wake Up Little Suzi, touring solo rock star (with new album No Control), and the Q fronting Q.S.P. (her glam supergroup with the Sweet’s Andy Scott and Slade’s Don Powell) – lives in an Elizabethan manor house in Essex. As we prepare to settle down for our chinwag, Suzi takes me on a detour into her Ray-Ban room, which
Interview: Ian Fortnam Portrait: Kevin Nixon
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Blue-collar poets and shitkicking rockers for the new age, Canada’s the Glorious Sons are on anthemic form with their brilliant new album. Words: Grant Moon
MAIN: AVALON
on the US Modern Rock chart) and S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun) as if at a stadium show. Both songs are on Young Beauties And Fools, The Glorious Sons’ 2017 album, which won Best Rock Album at 2018’s Juno Awards (Canada’s Grammys). “Honestly, award shows never really appealed to me,” says Emmons. “It’s nice to get a tip of the hat from our fellow countrymen and the people in the music industry, but it’s gone the way of the Grammys – they don’t even put the rock award on during the televised night any more! But I’m grateful, it does you a lot of good and people do find your music through it.” Back in 2001, Emmons was into the first year of his English Literature degree at the University Of Halifax. He says he was there mainly to appease his parents. He really wanted to be a musician, and felt unsettled. When he began experiencing panic attacks, he quit and returned home to Kingston to join the Glorious Sons, formed by his elder brother, Rising Sons: (l-r) Adam Paquette, guitarist Jay. And that’s another way the Emmons Josh Hewson, Chris Koster, Brett, boys buck rock‘n’roll tradition – they’ve been best Jay Emmons, Chris Huot. friends all their lives. “Jay wants to bring a cohesive piece of art ive years ago, the Glorious Sons made the decision forward,” Brett says, “so he plays for the song. I tend to be the to not sound like a band from the 1970s. From creative leader, and when it comes to business I don’t touch the their beloved home town of Kingston on the damn thing, I leave that to Jay. People talk about us having north shore of Lake Ontario, they’d watched as catchy music and depressing lyrics. And that’s natural – he countless young bands got their retro, Deep comes up with these singable melodies, and I write the lyrics. Purple groove on, and so resolved to give their own music It’s a good dynamic.” a 21st century heartbeat. While their 2014 debut The Union attracted plenty of guys to “For me the rock genre needs to talk about now,” singer Brett their shows, after Young Beauties And Fools Emmons noticed a lot Emmons tells Classic Rock, “and exploit some of the stuff they more female fans catching on to the band. “I’d gone through didn’t have in the seventies. Modern tech can really break a song more life experiences, the songs were more introspective and wide open, you can let your imagination run wild and be free.” sensitive, and it drew a female audience in,” he says. “The Union The Canadian quintet’s superb third album, A War On was a little more meat-and-potatoes, and maybe women can Everything is full of catchy tunes with a classic rock punch and smell the bullshit more than guys.” a present-day sheen, among them One More Summer (a toxic love At their best, his lyrics reflect the music’s blend of new and affair set to a crunchy bass/organ riff) and the sleekly produced old tropes, throwing back to the storytelling, blue-collar poetry Kingdom In My Heart. Fans of Rival Sons and local colour of a Bruce Springsteen and The Black Keys will latch on to Wild record, but broaching 21st-century Eyes’ modern verse, but on the chorus concerns. The biographical Panic Attack Emmons channels Jagger circa Sticky hit No.1 in the US Mainstream Rock Fingers, yelling a timeless: ‘The colour on your Chart. Kick Them Wicked Things is about lips is the same as the blood on my hands/These the hopelessness Emmons sees in his wild eyes are yours’. peers who go to college, come out saddled The Glorious Sons have supported with debt and also drastically reduced the Rolling Stones twice since forming prospects of employment. “That’s my love in 2001, just two gigs among hundreds letter to Canadiana,” says its writer. across North America and beyond. Classic “I know plenty of people working in a bar Brett Emmons Rock watched the band in action at after college, trying to pay off their debt London’s Scala late last year, supporting for a degree that’s worth nothing. It’s Ohio blues rockers Welshly Arms. On record the Sons are a tough place to be, and people wonder why rates of depression slick and anthemic, while live there’s a danger to them, their and anxiety are so high, and why mental health is so bad.” performances teetering on the brink, the energy threatening It’s interesting to think that Emmons – a compelling and to push it over the edge, but they claw it back, thrillingly. complicated Son – was something of a jock as a kid, playing Emmons, for one, has struggled with the whole touring baseball and boxing (a skill that hasn’t left him; Everything Is thing. “You tend to overdo it when you’re excited and young Alright’s line ‘I punched a man on his wedding night’ refers to an and don’t know how to tour,” he says. “I took a break from actual event). He also spent too many red-eyed hours alone drinking last year. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but I certainly had playing videogames obsessively. And if he initially got into a drinking problem. It’s easy to get swept up and find yourself music to impress the girls, he has discovered something more a prisoner to a lifestyle. We do still party, but we’ve matured profound altogether. – have a drink before the show, but not ten drinks. I’ve been “I have an addictive personality – you get that idea for a song, there, and it doesn’t make for a good show.” and you can spend twelve hours working on it and it feels like When chatting, Emmons, 27, is open, softly spoken and can forty-five minutes. You walk around talking to yourself, chainwax eloquently on the literature of David Foster Wallace and smoking cigarettes, and after a series of many miracles you’ve the music of one of his heroes, Layne Staley. Live, he channels got something you created in your brain from thin air. Nobody Staley, Axl Rose, even Kurt Cobain, singing, screaming, hurling can ever take it away from you.” himself around the stage and into the front row. The The Glorious Sons – bringing rock’n’roll back to now. predominantly young audience chants along to the choruses of A War On Everything is out now on Black Box Music. their best-known songs such as Everything Is Alright (a No.1 hit
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“Rock needs to talk about now, and exploit some of the stuff they didn’t have in the seventies.”
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Bauhaus performing at the Roundhouse in London during the shooting of their video for Ziggy Stardust, August 1982.
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As punk’s light faded, something new began to stir in the darkness. After goth’s early days as a look/fashion/scene rather than a music genre came some of the greatest music of the 80s.
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THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING
The Soundtrack Of My Life Blues-rock guitarist/singer
Kenny Wayne Shepherd on
the special records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance to him. Interview: Paul Elliott
My dad was a disc jockey on the radio in my home town, so I’ve been surrounded by music my entire life. The first concert my dad took me to see, when I was three years old, was Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. I firmly believe that was instrumental in cultivating my appreciation for blues music at such a young age.
THE FIRST SONG I PERFORMED LIVE In middle school I played a talent show with a couple of other kids, and we played Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne. We didn’t play the whole song, only that main guitar riff, over and over again.
THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME In my opinion, Hard Again by Muddy Waters. Johnny Winter produced it and played guitar on it, and Muddy had this Who’s Who band… You can tell the whole album was cut live, no fancy overdubbing, just the band firing on all cylinders.
THE GUITAR HERO Stevie Ray Vaughan changed my life. He was the spark that lit the flame in me to want to play guitar with that kind of passion and intensity that he played with. But the greatest of all time was Hendrix. That guy was doing things back then that have yet to be outdone today. And what he accomplished in such a short amount of time…
THE SONGWRITER Lennon and McCartney consistently turned out incredible songs with amazing vocal melodies, and I love McCartney’s stuff beyond The Beatles, with Wings and solo. But if I’m talking about blues, Willie Dixon is the man. He wrote many of the most popular blues songs ever written.
THE SINGER I have to go back to Muddy Waters again. I always wanted to sound like him. He had such character in his vocal delivery. It’s like he’s having a conversation with you as he’s singing a song, which makes the music sound more personal, and as a listener it brings you more into the music.
“Muddy Waters had such character in his vocal delivery.” 122 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
THE BEST RECORD I’VE MADE I like what I did with my second album, Trouble Is… [1997], and it sold millions. But my goal every time I go into the studio is to make the best album of my life. And without trying to do some sort of shameless plug for my new record [The Traveler, 2019], I honestly believe it’s the best work I’ve ever done.
THE WORST RECORD I’VE MADE I’m not going to throw any of my records under the bus, but if I could do one over again it would be the third one, Live On [1999]. It was kind of a hectic time making that record, and I feel like I could have been more focused
MY SATURDAY NIGHT PARTY SONG I have children, the youngest is a year and a half, so when I’m at home, the last thing I’m doing is throwing parties. But in my younger days – I’m a product of the nineties – I was into Nirvana and Pearl Jam and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. So for me, Smells Like Teen Spirit was a party song.
MY ‘IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE’ SONG Maybe it’s the old soul in me, but the minute I’m in a mood for love I think of Al Green, Love And Happiness. Or if I’m really going all the way, straight-up cheesy, I’ll put on some Barry White, like Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe.
THE ANTHEM For me, the greatest guitar anthem is Hendrix’s Voodoo Child (Slight Return). If there is one song I wish I’d written, that’s it. A close second would be We Will Rock You by Queen. That’s as big an anthem as there has ever been.
MY CULT HERO Not a lot of people know about Son House. He had one of the most haunting voices I’ve ever heard in my life. He was really able to convey the pain and suffering in his music.
THE BEST LIVE BAND I’VE SEEN I was part of James Brown’s band a few times. One time he brought some of his former band members – Maceo Parker on saxophone and Bootsy Collins on bass – and I was playing guitar. And that was the hottest band I’d ever physically been a part of.
THE SONG THAT MAKES ME CRY I’m not a big crier. You should talk to my wife about that, ha ha. But I find myself getting emotional with my own music when a song comes from personal experience. I’ve written a song for my next album – it doesn’t even have a title yet – which is about my kids and how blessed I am. That makes me tear up.
THE SONG I WANT PLAYED AT MY FUNERAL A funeral can be a celebration of life, so I would like something upbeat, maybe Gonna Have A Funky Good Time by James Brown, something to lift people’s spirits. It goes: ‘We gonna take it higher!’ It’s like the ascension to the next life, so it would be really appropriate. The Traveler is out now via Provogue.
MUDDY WATERS: GETTY; KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD: MARK SELIGER/PRESS
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enny Wayne Shepherd is not only a blues player, he’s also a blues scholar. “I’ve really dug deep,” he says. “Thoroughly researching the blues, tracing the lineage back to the early origins.” This obsession started early. Born on June 12, 1977 in Shreveport, Louisiana, he fell in love with this music when he was just a toddler. And in a 25-year recording career begun at 18, he has remained faithful to what he calls “my brand of blues rock”. But the soundtrack to his life is not one-dimensional. It also features Nirvana, Ozzy, Johnny Cash, James Brown and Barry White.