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Best of 2014: The Year In Review
ac/dc H robert plant H Gregg allman H royal blood H the best of 2014 H jeff lynne H Foo fighters JANUARY 2015
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cover story
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2014 The Year In Review
The albums, the songs, the bands, the hellos, the goodbyes… the lot.
january 2015 issue 205
Features 35 That was the year that was 2014
They came, they played, they fought, they did the Ice Bucket Challenge… we took it all in.
36 AC/DC
The earth-shattering music, the drama, the heartache. We get inside the most hotly anticipated return of 2014.
45 The Comebacks
Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and even Monty Python. Some big names returned this year.
48 The Quotes
Pearls of wisdom, moments of rage, lines of lunacy… It’s all there in the stars’ rip-roaring quotes of the year.
52 Robert Plant
Having locked away for good the jewel box engraved ‘Led Zeppelin’, the singer continues his quest for the new.
60 Albums Of The Year
From Orange Goblin and Ryan Adams, to Royal Blood and Rival Sons, we present our top albums of 2014.
72 Photos of 2014
Because a picture can paint a thousand words.
80 Gregg Allman
After bidding farewell to the Allman Brothers Band, Gregg Allman looks forward to a bright future, and back over a troubled, tumultuous past.
84 Songs Of The Year
Your ultimate playlist of the best tracks from 2014.
90 Royal Blood
Jimmy Page and Lars Ulrich are fans, the press love them, their album and gigs have made them the most talked-about band of 2014… It’s been a hell of a year for the Brighton duo .
96 Johnny Winter
The legendary blues rocker passed away in 2014. Fellow bluesman Leslie West reflects on his life.
98 In Memoriam
Looking back on other great figures we’ve lost this year, including Jack Bruce, Jimi Jamison and Tommy Ramone.
100 Jeff Lynne
Nobody expected the best gig of the year to be by a bunch of soft-rock relics (ELO) who haven’t toured since 1986. Least of all the bloke behind it all.
102 Kill It Kid
We meet the old souls in young frames who are bringing us the future of modern blues.
104 Foo Fighters
Dave Grohl and co. returned this year with a beast of a new record, and accompanying TV series. We look at their legacy of 2014.
’s whatur on yocd? free REX FEATURES
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Regulars
january 2014 issue 205
16 The Dirt
Results, photos, gossip and more from the Classic Rock Roll Of Honour; new Ramblin’ Man Festival details; The Who announce another gig next summer… say hello to Purple; welcome back Gong and Tony Wright; goodnight Jack Bruce, David Redfern…
33 Raw Power
The Mesa/Boogie King Snake – the recreation of a combo that will appeal to guitarists of all musical styles.
113 Reviews
New albums from AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Melvins, Bob Dylan, Machine Head, Gong, Flying Colours, Ruts DC… Reissues from David Bowie, King Crimson, T.Rex, Cream, Caravan, Mott, Bill Nelson, Gary Moore, The Fall… DVDs, films and books on Genesis, Paul Rodgers, Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode, Frank Zappa, Lou Reed… Live reviews of Purple, Royal Blood, Black Stone Cherry, Motörhead, Thunder, Steve Hackett, Kill It Kid…
130 Buyer’s Guide Heart
Your definitive insight into the allbums by Ann and Nancy Wilson and co.
135 Letters
Got something to say? Let us hear it – shout it out loud!
137 Lives previews
Gig previews from Machine Head, Graveltones and Winter Rocks Festival, plus gig listings – who’s playing where and when.
162 Heavy Load Corey Taylor
The Slipknot/Stone Sour main man gets deep ‘n’ meaningful.
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The Classic Rock Roll Of Honour 2014
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£484! * p108
“Did I win anything, Sharon?” ”I dunno, love. Let’s go to page sixteen and find out, shall we?” Ross Halfin
* Unless you’re a subscriber, in which case you get a Q&A with Genesis’s Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks.
Hooray for
Hollywood For its 10th anniversary, the Classic Rock Roll Of Honour upped sticks and high-tailed it to Los Angeles to host rock’s biggest party of the year. Words: Geoff Barton Portraits: Ross Halfin Additional photography: Stephanie Cabral, Alex Solca
T
he steps up to the awards podium resemble the foothills of Mount Everest. At the summit, on stage, belying his 67 years of age, awaits the evening’s host, the tousle-haired, effervescent Sammy Hagar. He’s bouncing around like a spinning top pinging off the buffers of a pool table. Taking the deepest of deep breaths (trust me, we’re taking lanternfish territory here) I mount the podium and ham‑fistedly high-five it with the Red-faced Rocker. It’s time to reveal the winners of the Film Of The Year award (sponsored by AXS.TV): Metallica, for Through The Never, as voted for by the readers of Classic Rock. Lars and co. can’t be here tonight, so I’ve been asked to accept the gong on their behalf (due to nebulous New Wave Of British Heavy Metal connections). My speech, painstakingly handwritten in bold capital letters on Sunset Marquis hotel notepaper, only amounts to a rough approximation of what I actually say. My tongue isn’t so much tied as in a state of extreme and inextricable bondage. Still, I manage to mention that Herr Ulrich, as a young, tennis-playing Dane, used to read my NWOBHM scribblings in Sounds music weekly. This, in part, inspired him to take up the drums, pursue a career in rock’n’roll and co-found Metallica with James Hetfield. Hunting around for reference points, I find myself namechecking the likes of Iron Maiden (cheers from the audience), Saxon (mild cheers), Sweet Savage (isolated murmurs) and Blitzkrieg
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(deathly silence). I also credit Def Leppard, while adding the proviso: “But Joe Elliott might disagree with his band’s NWOBHM connections.” “Don’t worry about it, Geoff!” pipes up Joe himself from somewhere beyond the spotlights. The crowd chuckles and the ice is finally broken. In the blink of an eye it’s over and we’re playing a video clip of Lars saying thanks. “Hmm… we could be here for some time,” mutters Hagar over the soundtrack. “He does have a reputation for going on a bit.”
Remarkably, the loquacious tub-thumper keeps it brief this particular time. I vacate the stage hastily and Hagar quips to the crowd: “I know when British guys come up you can’t understand them. When Ozzy comes up, we’ll have subtitles.” Oh, what a circus. Oh, what a show. Welcome to the Classic Rock Roll Of Honour 2014, presented by Orange Amplification.
I
t seems inconceivable that Classic Rock’s first awards ceremony took place 10 years ago in the intimate confines of London’s Café De Paris, when the biggest stars in attendance were Lemmy, Arthur Brown and, er, Peter Stringfellow. This year we’re living it large in Los Angeles at the legendary Avalon nightclub, on the corner of Hollywood and Vine and in the looming shadow of the iconic Capitol Records tower. We’re in good company. Fifty years ago, in 1964, a little-known group called The Beatles played their first-ever US West Coast show at this selfsame venue. The evening begins with the traditional red carpet parade. Henry Rollins appears, looking smaller and slighter than you might imagine, reciting War And Peace to any reporter who’ll listen. Brian May and Anita Dobson sashay into view, closely followed by Queen cohort Adam Lambert, who has a surprisingly understated presence. Dave Mustaine is here, somehow managing to combine a cheerful demeanour with an air of brooding menace. Duff McKagan and ➻
Have guitar, will travel: Billy Gibbons backstage with Nuno and Joe.
Electric Man: Rival Sons put on a short but blistering set. Dos hombres: Billy Gibbons with Living Legend Gregg Allman.
Statuesque statuette-deliverers Georgie Leahy and Lora Leigh.
California Breed’s Andrew Watt and Glenn Hughes. Hank’s giving day: Rollins presents the Inspiration award to The Doors.
The imposing Avalon, home of the Classic Rock Roll Of Honour 2014.
Rock royalty: Adam Lambert and Brian May celebrate Queen’s Band Of The Year award.
He did it hiiiiiis way: Scott Weiland pilots his Wildabouts through a storming pre-meal set.
GETTY CONTOUR
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OF
From Led Zep’s Golden God to today’s self-proclaimed dignified sexagenarian, Robert Plant has never stopped pushing musical boundaries and loves that he’s “free to fail”. Words: Nick Hasted
n Brazil in 2012, on an early tour with his new band the Sensational Space Shifters, Robert Plant spotted some downtime in the schedule. He immediately led them on an intrepid train ride over a mountain range to an utterly isolated town, its houses painted in a patchwork of colours. Huge ROBERT Brazilian stews were served to them as they sat in blazing midday heat by the massive river running through the town’s heart. “My God,” Plant’s frequent guitarist and travelling companion Justin Adams remembers thinking, “we’re very far from anywhere.” Like other old hands in Plant’s 21st-century bands, though, Adams wasn’t exactly surprised. There was that time when a Russian gig inspired a detour to a studio Plant suddenly recalled in Tallinn, Estonia. “I think they’d been informed we were coming,” says keyboardist John Baggott, laughing, “but they looked just as surprised that we actually turned up.” Local papers would be flicked through, on tour with the Space Shifters or their predecessors Strange Sensation, and expeditions launched to see gigs by surf guitarist Dick Dale, jazz giant John Coltrane’s great drummer Elvin Jones, or traditional musicians in Morocco. “If you were to say why has his music stayed fresh, and his band feel like a real band rather than a bunch of hired hands,” Adams considers, “it’s that he’s kept himself uninsulated. He actually gets out there and he does things. He came to Mali with me soon after we met in 2003. Our car broke down in the sand and he was out there pushing, and sleeping with all of us in a tent on the ground. And then in the middle of a tour he drove me down Highway 61 to juke joints he knew in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He showed me amazing things. And all the time we’ve carried that on. “We’re so lucky, and so stimulated, and that comes into the music. It’s shocking to me that some ‘rock stars’ live the life of hotel rooms and backstage, and they don’t want to go anywhere. It’s just having a curious mind.”
When I suggest to Plant later that his class of rock star usually leads a more protected life, he reacts with distaste. “Well, that’s an affliction,” he says. “I mean, life doesn’t stop because you have a purple patch. The only reason that anything ever happened for me in the first place was because I was in good company. And then, more so or probably equally as much, we adventured, Page and I, with PLANT a couple of roadies. We just kept on going and looking. And in the pre-Sahara, or Aberystwyth or Tunis, people don’t care who you are. And I need to be around that feeling. So that I can be counted for my moment in anybody’s life just like anybody else. So I don’t feast with the gods.”
“You start doing obvious things, and people start smelling opportunities for other things.”
P
lant’s wanderlust has today taken him only as far as Whitstable, Kent. He’s driven down from the Black Country to take the sea air with his new girlfriend, in between rehearsals for Later… With Jools Holland at the BBC’s Maidstone studios. Classic Rock finds Plant in a loose casual shirt, leading the Sensational Space Shifters through songs from their new album, Lullaby… And The Ceaseless Roar. They finish with a version of Kashmir very much in that record’s mercurial style, mixing North African and American blues and early rock’n’roll. “Ah, Classic Rock!” Plant booms, bounding over to shake hands. Ever since he passed on the opportunity to repeat old glories after Led Zeppelin’s O2 Arena triumph in 2007, instead pursuing the new ones suggested by Raising Sand, that year’s Grammy-winning album with Alison Krauss, Plant has challenged what ‘classic rock’ can mean. He seemed then to be facing down the myth of his past, preferring a more interesting, wide-open future. As he explains, sitting in a quiet back room, that decision was taken much earlier. “In the year 2000 I was really looking for clues,” he explains. “Jimmy and I had come to the end of Walking Into Clarksdale’s prolonged exercise of examining the dark interiors of different European basketball stadiums, and the game was up. I couldn’t face it. I didn’t know where I was, who I was or what
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CROWN
OF
Jimmy Page and Lars Ulrich are fans, the press love them, their album and gigs have made them the most talked-about band of 2014… It’s been a hell of a year for the Brighton duo. Words: Paul Brannigan Photos: John McMurtrie
n the evening of September 30, 2014, Their performances at Download, Glastonbury, Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr and Ben T In The Park and the Reading and Leeds festivals Thatcher had their conversation this summer drew huge crowds to small tents, interrupted by a knock on the door of they’ve been fêted by Jimmy Page (who showed up their dressing room in San Francisco’s to a New York show in May) and had their debut Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium. album nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. Outside stood Metallica drummer A 14-date tour of Britain and Ireland scheduled Lars Ulrich. Invited into the room, for next February/March, taking in venues such MIKE KERR he introduced himself as a fan of Royal Blood’s as London’s 4,800-capacity Brixton Academy, debut album, and spoke enthusiastically with the two twenty-somethings Blackpool’s Empress Ballroom(3,000) and a two-night stand at Glasgow’s from West Sussex about his latest musical discoveries, probing both for further Barrowland sold out within minutes of tickets going on sale in October. As if recommendations. He then asked the English pair for their impressions of his all this weren’t dizzying enough, mainstream media outlets have now taken adopted home town. to labelling the duo the new Saviours Of Rock. “We haven’t really had the chance to see much of it,” admitted Kerr. There are audible sighs from Kerr (bass, vocals and beard) and Ben Thatcher “Let’s change that,” said Ulrich, holding up his car keys. “Let’s go.” (drums and even bigger beard) when that tag is brought up in front of them. As Ulrich’s car sped across the Golden Gate Bridge, Kerr and Thatcher Sipping coffee in the corner of a Tyneside bar ahead of the opening night of their sank back into the leather upholstery and exchanged disbelieving smiles. latest sell-out UK tour, the pair may be sufficiently well known that a couple of By any given standard, 2014 was proving to be a most remarkable year. blushing female fans will sidle over for selfies and hugs, but in their black hoodies and sensible winter jackets, they resemble engineering students more than ’ve seen the future of riff rock and its name is #Royal Blood.” Rage rock gods, and their conversational tone is unfailingly polite and low-key to the Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello’s tweet after seeing Royal point of self-deprecation. Open enough to confess that a dinner of seared tuna Blood play Los Angeles’ storied Troubadour club in September may in Dublin the previous evening brought on a worryingly intense dose of pre-gig have carried a knowing echo of music critic Jon Landau’s famous assessment diarrhoea for both of them, they exhibit a certain guarded wariness when the red of a young Bruce Springsteen, but its tone was entirely consistent with the hype light on the tape recorder placed on the table between them is illuminated. and excitement that has accompanied the Brighton’s duo’s vertiginous rise over “We’re not interested in selling ourselves, we’re interested in playing music,” the past 12 months. Kerr says at one point. “We’ve never sold this band on personality.” This, unquestionably, is the most talked-about band of the year. To date, Nevertheless, their thoughtful, reasoned outlook on the tumult which Royal Blood’s self-titled debut album has sold 155,000 copies in the UK, 66,000 has enveloped them offers an interesting snapshot of the mechanics and of those in its first week on sale in August – a statistic which not only secured machinery of modern fame. the record the top spot on the national album chart, but also ensured that Royal “There’s nothing we can do to control what the press write,” says Blood became the fastest-selling rock debut in the past three years. Kerr. “That ‘Saviours Of Rock’ tag is a dramatised headline, but it doesn’t
“To say rock’n’roll is dead is mental. It’s impossible for something that important to die.”
“I
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