Author: Web Rock Radio News Dept

Complete List Of Shakira Songs From A to Z

Posted on by Web Rock Radio News Dept

7 minutes ago

Complete List Of Shakira Songs From A to Z

Feature Photo: Junta de Andalucía, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, hailing from Barranquilla, Colombia, has emerged as one of the most transformative figures in global music. Known for her ability to seamlessly blend Latin, rock, and pop influences, Shakira’s artistry transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries. From her humble beginnings as a child prodigy in Colombia to becoming a worldwide sensation, her career is a testament to innovation and resilience.

Shakira’s musical journey began at a young age when she wrote her first song at eight and secured her first record deal with Sony Music Colombia at just 13. Her early albums, Magia (1990) and Peligro (1993), laid the groundwork for her career but struggled to gain commercial traction. It wasn’t until her third album, Pies Descalzos (1995), featuring hits like “Estoy Aquí,” that Shakira catapulted to stardom in Latin America. Her distinctive voice, poetic lyricism, and genre-defying compositions resonated deeply with audiences.

Her international breakthrough came with Laundry Service (2001), a bilingual album that introduced the world to hits such as “Whenever, Wherever” and “Underneath Your Clothes.” The album sold over 13 million copies worldwide, establishing Shakira as a global phenomenon. Known for her captivating live performances, she became synonymous with precision choreography and her signature hip movements, epitomized by “Hips Don’t Lie,” a chart-topping single from Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 (2005). The song became one of the best-selling singles of the 21st century.

Throughout her career, Shakira has released 11 studio albums, including the critically acclaimed Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 (2005), She Wolf (2009), and El Dorado (2017). Her discography spans Spanish and English, cementing her status as one of the most versatile artists of her generation. Songs like “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” the official anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, further solidified her global influence, blending African rhythms with pop accessibility.

Shakira’s accolades include three Grammy Awards, 12 Latin Grammy Awards, and multiple Billboard and American Music Awards, making her one of the most decorated Latin artists in history. Beyond her commercial success, Shakira’s humanitarian work has further endeared her to fans. In 1997, she founded the Pies Descalzos Foundation, which focuses on providing education and nutrition to underprivileged children in Colombia. Her efforts earned her recognition as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, highlighting her commitment to social change.

Despite her immense success, Shakira has remained a symbol of authenticity and cultural pride. She continues to push boundaries, collaborating with artists like Beyoncé, Maluma, and the Black Eyed Peas, showcasing her ability to adapt to evolving musical landscapes. In 2020, her electrifying performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show alongside Jennifer Lopez reinforced her position as a cultural icon.

From her early days as a singer-songwriter in Colombia to becoming a global ambassador for music and philanthropy, Shakira’s impact on the music industry and beyond is undeniable. Her career serves as an inspiring blueprint for artists seeking to fuse creativity with social consciousness, leaving an indelible mark on both the entertainment world and the lives she has touched through her charitable endeavors.

(A – E)

“1968” – Peligro (1993)
“23” – Shakira (2014)
“Acróstico” – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2023)
“Addicted to You” – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Always on My Mind” – VH1 Divas Las Vegas (2002)
“Amarillo” – El Dorado (2017)
“Amor (Celos de ti)” – Al Compas de un Sentimiento (1996)
“Animal City” – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“Antes de las Seis” – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Antología” – Pies Descalzos (1996)
“Años Luz” – She Wolf (2009)
“Ask for More” – (Unreleased) (2003)
“Ay Haiti” – (Single) (2010)
“Back in Black” – Live & Off the Record (2004)
“Beautiful Liar” (with Beyoncé) – B’Day (Deluxe Edition) (2007)
“Blanca Mujer” (with Draco Rosa) – Vida (2013)
“Boig per Tu” – Shakira (Spanish/Latin American Deluxe Edition) (2014)
“Broken Record” – Shakira (2014)
“Brujería” – Peligro (1993)
“Can’t Remember to Forget You” (with Rihanna) – Shakira (2014)
“Cazador de Amor” – Magia (1991)
“Chantaje” (with Maluma) – El Dorado (2016)
“Chasing Shadows” – Shakira (Deluxe Edition) (2014)
“Ciega, Sordomuda” – Dónde Están los Ladrones? (1998)
“Clandestino” (with Maluma) – (Unreleased) (2018)
“Coconut Tree” – El Dorado (2017)
“Cohete” (with Rauw Alejandro) – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2024)
“Comme Moi” (with Black M) – El Dorado (2017)
“Cómo Dónde y Cuándo” – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2024)
“Controlas Mi Destino” – Peligro (1993)
“Copa Vacía” (with Manuel Turizo) – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2023)
“Costumes Makes the Clown” – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“Cuentas Conmigo” – Magia (1991)
“Cut Me Deep” (with Magic!) – Shakira (2014)
“Dançando” (with Ivete Sangalo) – Real Fantasia (2012)
“Dare (La La La)” – Shakira (2014)
“Deja Vu” (with Prince Royce) – El Dorado (2017)
“Despedida” – Love in the Time of Cholera (Soundtrack) (2008)
“Devoción” – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Dia de Enero” – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“Día Especial” (with Gustavo Cerati) – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“Did It Again” – She Wolf (2009)
“Don’t Bother” – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“Don’t Wait Up” – (Single) (2021)
“Don’t You Worry” (with Black Eyed Peas) – Elevation (2022)
“Dónde Están los Ladrones?” – Dónde Están los Ladrones? (1998)
“Dónde Estás Corazón?” – Pies Descalzos (1996)
“Dreams for Plans” – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“El Jefe” (with Fuerza Regida) – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2023)
“Empire” – Shakira (2014)
“En Tus Pupilas” – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“(Entre Paréntesis)” (with Grupo Frontera) – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2024)
“Eres” – Peligro (1993)
“Escondite Inglés” – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“Esta Noche Voy Contigo” – Magia (1991)
“Este Amor Es Lo Más Bello del Mundo” – Peligro (1993)
“Estou Aqui” – Pies Descalzos (Brazilian Edition) (1996)
“Estoy Aquí” – Pies Descalzos (1996)
“Eterno Amor” – Peligro (1993)
“Eyes Like Yours (Ojos Así)” – Laundry Service (2001)

(F – M)

“Fool” – Laundry Service (2001)
“Gafas Oscuras” – Magia (1991)
“Girl Like Me” (with Black Eyed Peas) – Translation (2020)
“Gitana” – She Wolf (Spanish/Latin American Deluxe Edition) (2009)
“Give It Up to Me” (featuring Lil Wayne) – She Wolf (North American Deluxe Edition) (2009)
“Good Stuff” – She Wolf (2009)
“Gordita” (featuring Residente Calle 13) – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Gracias a la Vida” (with Juanes, Alejandro Sanz, Laura Pausini, Miguel Bosé, Beto Cuevas, and Michael Bublé) – (Unreleased)
“Gypsy” – She Wolf (2009)
“Hay Amores” – Love in the Time of Cholera (2007/2008)
“Hey You” – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“Hips Don’t Lie” (featuring Wyclef Jean) – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (Reloaded Edition) (2006)
“How Do You Do” – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“I’ll Stand by You” (featuring The Roots) – Hope for Haiti Now (2010)
“Illegal” (featuring Carlos Santana) – Oral Fixation Vol. 2 (2005)
“Aatini Al Nay” (Intro) – Oral Fixation Tour (2007)
“Inevitable” – Dónde Están los Ladrones? (1998)
“Islands” – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Je L’Aime à Mourir” – Shakira: Live from Paris (2011)
“King and Queen” (with Wyclef Jean) – Carnival Vol. II: Memoirs of an Immigrant (2007)
“Knock on My Door” – (Unreleased) (2003)
“La Bicicleta” (with Carlos Vives) – El Dorado (2016)
“La Fuerte” (with Bizarrap) – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2024)
“La La La (Brasil 2014)” (featuring Carlinhos Brown) – Shakira (International Physical Deluxe Edition) (2014)
“La La La (Brasil 2014) (Spanish Version)” (featuring Carlinhos Brown) – Shakira (Spanish/Latin American Deluxe Edition) (2014)
“La La La” – Shakira (2014)
“La Maza” (with Mercedes Sosa) – Cantora 1 (2009)
“La Pared” – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“La Tortura” (featuring Alejandro Sanz) – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“Las de la Intuición” – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“Lejos de tu Amor” – Magia (1991)
“Lo Hecho Está Hecho” – She Wolf (2009)
“Lo Hecho Está Hecho” (featuring Pitbull) – She Wolf (Spanish/Latin American Deluxe Edition) (2009)
“Lo Imprescindible” – Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2005)
“Lo Que Más” – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Loba” – She Wolf (2009)
“Loca” (featuring Dizzee Rascal) – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Loca” (featuring El Cata) – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Loca por Ti” – Shakira (2014)
“Long Time” – She Wolf (2009)
“Magia” – Magia (1991)
“Mariposas” – Sale el Sol (2010)
“Me Gusta” – (Single) (2020)
“Me Enamoré” – El Dorado (2017)
“Medicine” (featuring Blake Shelton) – Shakira (2014)
“Men in This Town” – She Wolf (2009)
“Mi Verdad” (with Maná) – Cama Incendiada (2015)
“Mon Amour” – She Wolf (2009)
“Monotonía” (with Ozuna) – Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (2022)
“Moscas en la Casa” – Dónde Están los Ladrones? (1998)

(N – S)

About The Author

Emily Fagan

Emily Fagan

More from this Author

Emily Fagan grew up in the town of Burford in Oxfordshire, England. She was raised on Progressive Rock music. She is currently writing a book on the history of Charles The Great and the impact of the Carolingian Renaissance.

“I’ve always wanted to be in a metal band… Pantera and Dream Theater are great”: Carl Palmer on his desire for a life beyond classic prog, the final ELP show, and why he wishes they’d had a guitarist

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Carl Palmer first gained attention as drummer with The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, and then Atomic Rooster, before securing immortality with Emerson Lake & Palmer. He’s also a co-founding member of Asia and spent three periods with the prog supergroup, the most recent ending in 2022.

In 2011 he answered Prog’s questions about the previous year’s ELP reunion at the inaugural High Voltage Festival in London, his feelings about Keith Emerson and Greg Lake (who both died in 2016) and his longing to play heavier music.

Your solo group is about to undertake its first tour of the UK in six years. Why so long?

I’ve been pretty busy with Asia and the solo band has been to US twice with a third visit a few days away. We used to tour here once a year but it’s becoming harder to do that. We still play a lot in Italy because ELP were bigger than the Sistine Chapel over there.

The solo band is a three-piece, with guitarist Paul Bielatowicz interpreting the keyboard parts with which we’re so familiar.

At the beginning of ELP we looked around for a guitar player but we couldn’t find one with the technique or capabilities. In some ways, I still wish we’d had a guitar in ELP. It would have given us something more – which isn’t to demean Keith – but it might have taken us down a different road.

Paul Bielatowicz has been with me for seven years. I didn’t go down the route of using keyboards and having a vocalist again because why copy ELP? I went completely the other way. It’s younger, fresher and more exciting; it’s prog rock with a strong metallic streak, which I love.

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On this tour you’re revisiting Pictures At An Exhibition.

It’s something I’ve loved since the age of seven and I’m really looking forward to playing it with a prog-rock-metal power trio.

Hearing you talk with such affection of harder music is interesting!

I’ve always wanted to be a bit harder-edged. I love classical, rock and pop music, but heavy metal is great. I’ve never been in a metal band; this is the closest I’ve ever come to that. A lot of those bands bore me, but Pantera and Dream Theater are great.

Talking to us after ELP’s reunion show at the High Voltage festival, which marked the band’s 40th anniversary, you said it seemed like “a great way to finish things.”

As somebody to work with he’s quite laborious… just a very slow person

Carl Palmer on Greg Lake

I still feel that way. After 12 years away it was great to come back – but people get older and some don’t do what they did as well as they used to.

I’ve listened to the High Voltage CD and I know it’s not up to the standard at which we stopped. Had it been so, I’d have happily continued, but it wasn’t. That was quite hard for me to swallow. But we’ve left a great legacy.

Did you enjoy playing the show?

Yes, but we had to use sequencers for things that couldn’t be covered. It worked – in part. For me, it was a bit of a shame to see people so nervous about playing. We’d done five weeks of rehearsal, which for me, as someone that plays 90 concerts a year, was ridiculous. I was ready to roll. But for others, six days a week for five weeks in an aircraft hangar at Shepperton Studios was insufficient rehearsal time – I know that now.

A DVD of the gig is about to be released. Was some ‘fixing’ done?

Yeah, there was some serious fixing up. Keith went in and did what he could do to his keyboard parts.

Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy – Trilogy – YouTube Carl Palmer's ELP Legacy - Trilogy - YouTube

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Can you describe your relationship with the two ELP bandmates? Firstly, Greg Lake?

As somebody to work with he’s quite laborious. He’s slow; very slow. Just a very slow person. There are quite a few bass players like that – except John Wetton, who’s the opposite.

He doesn’t care about the business side of things, so he gets confused

Carl Palmer on Keith Emerson

And Keith Emerson?

Keith’s very entertaining and jovial. A funny guy. He’s very much into playing music but doesn’t care much about the business side of things, so he gets confused because musicians these days need a complete understanding of everything that goes on.

Despite being 61 years old you’re incredibly well preserved. What’s the secret – some kind of pact with the Devil?

You should see me first thing in the morning; it’s a bit of a struggle! I’m definitely getting older but I’ve stopped dying my hair after seeing some recent photos of Paul McCartney. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol and I’ve never smoked. I’ve done a fair amount of drugs, nothing heavy, but I tried most things. I eat well and I run and swim, which definitely helps.

“I bought some fake diamond earrings for 28 dollars”: What Linkin Park spent their money on after Hybrid Theory sold 14 million copies will definitely surprise you

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“I bought some fake diamond earrings for 28 dollars”: What Linkin Park spent their money on after Hybrid Theory sold 14 million copies will definitely surprise you

Linkin Park - Meteora
(Image credit: Press)

Linkin Park were possibly nu metal’s biggest breakout stars. Hybrid Theory, released in October 2000, quickly became one of rock’s biggest-ever debuts, going gold in just five weeks before becoming the best-selling album of 2001. By the time the Californians released follow-up Meteora in 2003, they’d already sold 14 million records and gone Platinum many times over.

Such monumental success of course fattened the band’s wallets, and in a 2003 interview, Q magazine asked them what they’d spent their Hybrid Theory earnings on. They probably expected them to come back with answers like ‘supercars’, ‘a mansion’ and ‘hot tubs full of champagne’. Instead, the answers they got were far less rock’n’roll – but respectably, brilliantly random.

“I bought toy robots,” DJ Joe Hahn revealed.

Bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell added that he got a dog. “That was a project,” he quipped.

Then-drummer Rob Bourdon went, erm… grocery shopping? “Just being at home after two years [on tour], you appreciate simple things,” he said. “I had fun shopping for food. That was the greatest.”

The best answer, though, may have come courtesy of guitarist Brad Delson: “I bought some fake diamond earrings for 28 dollars in Macy’s.” Lovely stuff.

In the same interview, guitarist and co-vocalist Mike Shinoda admitted he still couldn’t wrap his head around all the massive numbers attached to Hybrid Theory, even after three years.

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“The sheer numbers of what happened with Hybrid Theory I still don’t completely comprehend,” he admitted. “When people start relating it to numbers of people who live in one city I start to think, ‘Wow, we sold 10 times that city!’”

After Meteora came out, Linkin Park would have even more huge figures to wrestle with. The album reached number one on the charts of 13 countries. It’s sold 16 million units and been certified eight times Platinum in the US. Plus, at least four singles – Numb, Faint, Breaking The Habit and Somewhere I Belong – have all become generation-defining songs.

22 years on, the band are still hitting new heights, with their 2025 From Zero tour taking them to some of their biggest-ever venues, including Wembley Stadium in the UK. See Linkin Park, now with Emily Armstrong on vocals and Colin Brittain on drums, at one of the tour dates listed below.

Linkin Park 2025 tour dates:

Feb 16: Jakarta GBK Madya Stadium, Indonesia

Apr 12: Las Vegas Sick New World, NV *
Apr 26: Austin Moody Center, TX ^
Apr 28: Tulsa BOK Center, OK ^
May 01: Grand Rapids Van Andel Arena, MI ^
May 03: Baltimore CFG Bank Arena, ND ^
May 06: Raleigh Lenovo Center, NC ^
May 08: Greenville Bon Secours Wellness Arena, SC ^
May 10: Columbus Sonic Temple, OH *
May 17: Daytona Welcome To Rockville, FL *

Jun 12: Nisckelsdorf Novarock, Austria *
Jun 14: Hradec Kralove Rock For People, Czech Republic *
Jun 16: Hannover Heinz-Von-Heiden Arena, Germany ~
Jun 18: Berlin Olympiastadion, Germany ~
Jun 20: Bern Bernexpo, Switzerland
Jun 24: Milan I-Days, Italy *
Jun 26: Arnhem Gelredome, Netherlands $
Jun 28: London Wembley Stadium, UK $&
Jul 01: Dusseldorf Merkur Spiel Arena, Germany ~&
Jul 03: Werchter Rock Werchter Festival, Belgium *
Jul 05: Gdynia Open’er Festival, Poland *
Jul 08: Frankfurt Deutsche Bank Park, Germany ~&
Jul 11: Paris Stade De France, France

Jul 29: Brooklyn Barclays Center, NY +
Aug 01: Boston TD Garden, MA +
Aug 03: Newark Prudential Center, NJ +
Aug 06: Montreal Bell Centre, Canada +
Aug 08: Toronto Scotiabank Arena, Canada +
Aug 11: Chicago United Center, IL +
Aug 14: Detroit Little Caesars Arena, MI +
Aug 16: Philadelphia Wells Fargo Center, PA #
Aug 19: Pittsburgh PPG Paints Arena, PA #
Aug 21: Nashville Bridgestone Arena, TN #
Aug 23: St Louis Enterprise Center, MO #
Aug 25: Milwaukee Fiserv Forum, WI #
Aug 27: Minneapolis Target Center, MN #
Aug 29: Omaha CHI Health Center, NE #
Aug 31: Kansas City T-Movile Center, MO #
Sep 03: Denver Ball Arena, CO #
Sep 06: Phoenix Footprint Center, AZ #
Sep 13: Los Angeles Dodger Stadium, CA !&
Sep 15: San Josa SAP Ceter, CA &
Sep 17: Sacramento Golden 1 Center, CA &
Sep 19: Portland Moda Center, OR &
Sep 21: Vancouver Rogers Arena, Canada &
Sep 24: Seattle Climate Pledge Arena, WA &

Oct 26: Bogota TBA, Colombia
Oct 29: Lima TBA, Peru
Nov 01: Buenos Aires TBA, Argentina
Nov 05: Santiago TBA, Chile
Nov 08: Rio De Janeiro TBA, Brazil
Nov 10: São Paulo TBA, Brazil
Nov 13: Brasilia TBA, Brazil
Nov 15: Porto Alegre TBA, Brazil

Festival performance *
With Queens Of The Stone Age !
With Spiritbox $
With AFI =
With Architects ~
With Grandson ^
With Jean Dawson #
With Jpegmafia &
With Pvris +

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.

Former King Crimson bassist Peter Giles now a Gold Medal winning athlete. At 80!

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Former Giles, Giles & Fripp, King Crimson and 21st Century Schizoid Band bass player Peter Giles has been unmasked as a Gold Medal-winning athlete at 80 years of age!

In a recent interview with The Times newspaper in the UK, Giles, who appeared on King Crimson’s second album, 1970’s In The Wake Of Poseidon, has revealed how he has been a competitor in Masters Athletics, the term for competitors over the age of 35.

In The Times interview, writer Simon Usborne that Giles has recently broken the British 5km road record in Battersea last December with a time of 22min 29sec, while at last August’s World Masters Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden Giles was in the team of fellow octagenarians who broke the British record in the 4x100m relay. Giles himself would go on to pick up five gold medals and a silver, all in the M80 category for men aged 80 to 84 at the event.

“What a memorable championship,” Giles, who began competing at 44, states. “I had come from schoolboy cross country winner to world champion in only 69 years.

“For half my life I’ve wanted to find out what I was capable of as a runner,” he says. “It’s been a strange but happy experience.”

Currently in his sights are his favourite distance, 1,500m, and the 5km and 10km track records, both set by 80-year-old Stephen Charlton back in 2007 and. the 1hr 41min British half-marathon time set 30 years ago by the Scottish engineer Gordon Porteous, also 80.

“If you stop moving, you’ve got no chance.“Most runners overtrain. I find that the older I get the simpler everything gets. I don’t complicate anything.” Although he does admit that he doesn’t favour the standard athletes warm down after a race, laughing, “I usually go and have a coffee and a cigar.”

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Musically Giles also remains active, with his wife Yasmin, and you can discover more about their activities via their website here.

‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Film Review

Posted on by Web Rock Radio News Dept

‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Film Review

Feature Photo: Bruce Alan Bennett / Shutterstock.com

As a longtime Led Zeppelin fan, seeing the lack of post-Led Zeppelin releases has been frustrating. There’s a simple explanation for that—the band did not often film its performances, and most of the tracks they recorded were released on their albums. There are few outtakes, rare cuts, or unreleased gems. Jimmy Page has pretty much released anything in the vaults on the remastered editions that came out in 2013.

A couple of live albums have been released, like Live at the BBC and How the West Was Won, both of which were phenomenal, as well as Celebration Day. There was also the fantastic and phenomenal DVD set Led Zeppelin, but for the most part, there hasn’t been much new material for a band that many, including us, feel is the greatest rock band of all time.

I was one of the lucky ones who got to see Led Zeppelin back in 1977, and as I’ve said so many times before on this website, it was like seeing God. With all that said, fans like myself have been extremely excited about the release of the new film Becoming Led Zeppelin. And let me tell you, my rock and roll friends, it does not disappoint.

Becoming Led Zeppelin was released in Imax Theaters yesterday, February 7, 2025. Living on Long Island, there are not many theaters that are showing this film right now, so that’s a bit frustrating, but I would have driven through rain, sleet, snow, and volcanic eruptions to see this film.

This film isn’t just another documentary—it’s a pilgrimage. It captures the birth of a legend, weaving together rare video footage, fresh and archival interviews, and a treasure trove of photos, memorabilia, and more. If you ever wished you could have been there when it all began, this might be as close as you’ll ever get.

But pulling this off was no small feat. As I previously stated, Zeppelin wasn’t exactly fond of cameras. Because of that, early performance footage is scarce—grainy TV appearances, a few shaky fan-shot clips, and their electrifying 1970 show at London’s Royal Albert Hall captured by the BBC. That footage alone is enough to send chills down your spine. Director Bernard MacMahon and his team knew they had to work with scraps, but what they did with those scraps is nothing short of magic. They’ve blended never-before-seen period photos, vintage newsreels, and concert footage from the golden age of rock into something that makes Zeppelin feel alive again. And the real kicker? They unearthed an unheard audio interview with John Bonham—a guy who almost never spoke to the press. Hearing Bonzo’s voice again after all these years? That alone is worth the price of admission.

This wasn’t a rush job. According to writer and producer Allison McGourty, the team spent five years chasing down every attic, basement, and forgotten reel they could find, tracking down rare film footage, unseen photographs, and lost recordings. They didn’t just dig it up—they restored it with painstaking precision, making sure these 55-year-old artifacts would explode off the IMAX screen like they were fresh out of the lab. The effort paid off. The result isn’t just a documentary—it’s a resurrection.

The film wastes no time lingering in nostalgia—it moves fast, dropping us right into the band members’ early years. But the real story begins when Page and bassist John Paul Jones cross paths in the ’60s during their time as session musicians, while Plant and Bonham were already thick as thieves—lifelong friends bound by music before they even knew their fate.

Then came August 1968. The Yardbirds had imploded, and Page was on a mission to form something new. He was tipped off about some singer named Robert Plant, who brought Bonham along, and when Jones got wind of Page’s search, he threw his hat into the ring. And then, it happened. The four of them walked into a tiny London studio, plugged in, and as Jones puts it in the film, “The room just exploded.” when John says those words you just  you just feel chills, because you know what happens next.

It’s the moment Becoming Led Zeppelin captures so well—the instant four guys walked into a room and walked out as legends. It may sound like a Hollywood Story, but it’s as real as it gets. This film is a time machine for those who lived through the era. For those who didn’t, it’s an invitation to witness the birth of the greatest rock band ever to walk the earth. Either way, you don’t just watch this film—you feel it. It brings you back to wishing you were 16 years old again. Even more importantly for people who are 16 now, it’s the definite statement to show why this band mattered so much to us, how it helped us fall in love with rock and roll, and how nothing on this Earth can make us feel like we do when the music is this perfect.

Check out more Led Zeppelin articles on ClassicRockHistory.com Just click on any of the links below……

Top 10 Led Zeppelin Songs
Top 10 Led Zeppelin Deep Tracks List
Led Zeppelin Albums Ranked
Best Led Zeppelin Box Sets
Top 10 Led Zeppelin Album Covers
Best Led Zeppelin Outtakes
Complete Led Zeppelin Discography, CDs, Vinyl, Compilations & Songs
Led Zeppelin I Album Review
Led Zeppelin II Album Review
Led Zeppelin III Album Review
Led Zeppelin Houses Of The Holy Album Review
Led Zeppelin In Through The Out Door Album Review
What It Was Like To Experience A 1970’s Led Zeppelin Concert
The Story Behind Led Zeppelin’s “Travelling Riverside Blues”
Why Led Zeppelin’s Blueberry Hill Show Was One Of Their Best
Read Why Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin Book Is So Worth Owning
50 Years Later, Led Zeppelin Is Still The Best Ever
9 Classic Rock Bands That Did Great Led Zeppelin Covers
How Led Zeppelin’s “Hey Hey What Can I Do,” Surprised Everyone
Don’t Miss Led Zeppelin’s Brilliant Performance of Kashmir in 2007
Best Cover Versions of Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog
Best Cover Versions Of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll.”
Sitting On Stage With Led Zeppelin 1969
Why Led Zeppelin Won the Trial
A Bonham Blast on Led Zeppelin’s Sick Again at Kneborth 1979
Led Zeppelin’s Reimagining Of The Blues Began With Whole Lotta Love
Why Black Dog Was Led Zeppelin’s Greatest Song
Top 10 Led Zeppelin Love Songs
Complete Meanings Behind The Lyrics To Stairway To Heaven
10 Cool Cover Versions Of Led Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain Hop
John Bonham’s Best Opening Drum Beats
10 Most Underrated Led Zeppelin Songs
Complete List Of Led Zeppelin Songs From A to Z
20 Best Led Zeppelin Songs To Turn Up To Eleven
Led Zeppelin’s Best Song On Each Of Their Studio Albums

Top 10 Jimmy Page Projects Post Led Zeppelin
Top 20 Jimmy Page Guitar Solos
Why “Wasting My Time,” Was Jimmy Page’s Best Post Led Zeppelin Song
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Complete List Of My Chemical Romance Band Members

Posted on by Web Rock Radio News Dept

My Chemical Romance Band Members

Feature Photo: Mint13green, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

My Chemical Romance (MCR) is an American rock band that formed in 2001 in New Jersey. The band was created by lead vocalist Gerard Way, guitarist Ray Toro, bassist Mikey Way, and drummer Matt Pelissier, along with guitarist Frank Iero, who joined shortly thereafter. MCR gained widespread attention with their debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (2002) but reached mainstream success with their second album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004), which included hits like “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Helena.” The band’s third album, The Black Parade (2006), solidified their position in rock history, with songs like “Welcome to the Black Parade” becoming anthems for a generation. Despite their success, the band announced their breakup in 2013 after their fourth album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (2010), marking the end of a major era in alternative rock.

After their breakup, the band members focused on solo projects, with Gerard Way releasing his solo album Hesitant Alien in 2014, while Frank Iero and Ray Toro pursued various musical ventures. MCR reunited in 2019 for a series of concerts, marking their first performances together in nearly a decade. The band has since maintained a devoted fanbase, and their legacy continues to influence new generations of musicians. My Chemical Romance’s music spans multiple subgenres, from pop-punk to post-hardcore, with an emphasis on theatricality and emotional expression in both their lyrics and performances. Over the years, they have won numerous awards and have been credited with revitalizing the emo and punk rock scenes in the mid-2000s.

Below is a detailed look at the current and former members of My Chemical Romance, starting with the core band members.

Gerard Way

Gerard Way is the lead vocalist and founding member of My Chemical Romance. He formed the band in 2001, and his distinctive voice and lyrical themes of existential angst, loss, and rebellion became central to the band’s identity. Way’s contributions to MCR’s music include writing most of their songs, particularly those on Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006), both of which achieved commercial and critical success. Way’s theatrical stage presence, combined with his unique vocal delivery, earned him recognition as one of the most influential rock vocalists of the 2000s.

Outside of MCR, Gerard Way has worked on various projects, most notably as a writer for DC Comics’ The Umbrella Academy, which was adapted into a successful Netflix series. He also released his debut solo album, Hesitant Alien (2014), which reflected a departure from the MCR sound, incorporating more alternative and indie rock elements. Gerard Way’s creative vision both in music and comics has continued to shape his career, and his influence on both the music and entertainment industries remains significant. In 2019, he reunited with MCR for their comeback shows, marking the first time the band had performed together since their breakup in 2013.

Ray Toro

Ray Toro is the lead guitarist and backing vocalist for My Chemical Romance. He was a founding member of the band, playing a crucial role in their sound with his intricate guitar work and emotional solos. Toro’s contributions to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006) helped define MCR’s signature style, blending post-hardcore influences with theatrical rock elements. His guitar playing is especially noted for its technicality and melodic qualities, which set him apart from other guitarists in the genre.

Toro has also pursued a solo career, releasing his debut solo album Remember the Laughter (2016), which showcased a more introspective and alternative rock sound compared to his work with MCR. He also contributed to various musical projects outside of the band, collaborating with artists and producing music. Despite his solo endeavors, Toro continues to be recognized for his pivotal role in My Chemical Romance, and in 2019, he reunited with the band for their reunion shows.

Mikey Way

Mikey Way is the bassist for My Chemical Romance and the younger brother of Gerard Way. He joined the band in 2001, and his bass playing became an integral part of MCR’s rhythm section, providing a solid backbone for their energetic and emotional sound. Mikey Way’s bass lines on albums such as Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006) were crucial in establishing the band’s dynamic between its aggressive instrumentation and melodic moments. His backing vocals also added depth to the band’s harmonies, particularly in songs like “Helena” and “Famous Last Words.”

Mikey Way has also been involved in various projects outside of MCR. In 2014, he released a solo project under the name Electric Century, a collaboration with musician Dave Haus, which explored a more synth-driven, new wave sound. Way’s work outside the band has helped further establish his presence in the alternative rock scene. In 2019, Mikey Way rejoined My Chemical Romance for their reunion concerts, much to the excitement of their fanbase.

Frank Iero

Frank Iero is the rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist for My Chemical Romance, joining the band in 2002 after its formation. Iero’s raw and energetic guitar work provided the perfect complement to Ray Toro’s lead guitar, and his backing vocals added another layer to the band’s powerful harmonies. Iero was a key contributor to MCR’s most iconic albums, including Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006), where his energetic stage presence and driving guitar parts were a significant part of the band’s sound.

Outside of My Chemical Romance, Frank Iero has released several solo albums under the moniker Frank Iero and the Patience and Frank Iero and the Future Violents. His solo work incorporates elements of punk rock, post-hardcore, and alternative rock, showcasing his ability to branch out from MCR’s sound. Iero’s solo career has been well-received, and he continues to be a prominent figure in the rock community. He rejoined My Chemical Romance for their reunion shows in 2019, bringing his signature energy back to the band.

Matt Pelissier

Matt Pelissier was the original drummer for My Chemical Romance, playing with the band from its formation in 2001 until 2004. Pelissier played on the band’s first album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (2002), helping to establish their early sound, which blended punk rock and post-hardcore influences. His drumming style was central to the band’s energetic live performances and the raw production of their debut album. However, Pelissier left the band in 2004 and was replaced by Bob Bryar.

After leaving My Chemical Romance, Pelissier remained active in the music scene, participating in various musical projects, but did not achieve the same level of fame as he had with MCR. His contributions to MCR’s early work, however, remain an essential part of the band’s legacy.

Bob Bryar

Bob Bryar was the drummer for My Chemical Romance from 2004 to 2010, joining the band after Matt Pelissier’s departure. Bryar played a significant role in the creation of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006), both of which were monumental albums in the band’s career. His drumming was instrumental in shaping the band’s high-energy sound, particularly in tracks like “Helena” and “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Bryar’s ability to blend punk rock rhythms with more intricate, progressive drumming helped elevate the band’s music to new heights.

Bryar left My Chemical Romance in 2010 during the recording of Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, and his departure marked the end of an era for the band. Bryar continued to work in music after leaving MCR, but he was not as prominently featured in the public eye. Sadly, Bryar passed away in 2024, leaving behind a legacy as one of the key figures in My Chemical Romance’s iconic rhythm section.

James Dewees

James Dewees was the keyboardist and percussionist for My Chemical Romance during their Danger Days era, joining the band in 2012 as a touring member and becoming a full-time member in 2013. Dewees played keyboards and contributed backing vocals to the band’s final album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (2010). He also added percussion elements to the band’s performances, helping to flesh out their sound during their tours. His contributions to the band helped further expand the band’s already diverse sonic palette.

Dewees is also known for his work with the band The Get Up Kids and his solo project Reggie and the Full Effect, which blends elements of pop-punk and indie rock. His time with MCR marked another chapter in his prolific career, adding depth to the band’s live performances.

Pete Parada

Pete Parada joined My Chemical Romance as a drummer for the 2007 tour. He was involved in the band’s live performances during that period and played a role in supporting the band’s energetic stage presence. While Parada didn’t record on any of MCR’s studio albums, his contributions during live performances helped the band connect with their audience during the Black Parade era. After his time with MCR, Parada continued his career in music, including playing drums for The Offspring and other musical projects.

Matt Cortez

Matt Cortez was a rhythm guitarist and bassist for My Chemical Romance during the band’s early days in 2007. Cortez briefly contributed to the band’s sound during live performances, stepping in as a guitarist and bass player as needed. His tenure with the band was short-lived, as he was a touring member rather than a permanent part of the lineup. After his time with MCR, Cortez continued to play in various projects, although his career outside the band did not achieve the same level of recognition.

Tucker Rule

Tucker Rule was a drummer and percussionist for My Chemical Romance during the 2007-2008 touring period. He was part of the band’s extended live performance lineup, bringing his energetic drumming style to their concerts during the Black Parade era. Rule’s work with MCR helped ensure that the band’s live shows maintained their intense pace and energy. Outside of MCR, Rule is known for his work with the band Thursday and other projects in the alternative rock scene.

Todd Price

Todd Price was a rhythm guitarist for My Chemical Romance during the 2008 period, contributing to the band’s sound during a time of transition. His work during this era helped to reinforce the band’s live performances, but he was not a permanent member and only participated in live shows for a short time. Price’s role with MCR was more of a supplemental one, providing additional guitar work during the band’s tours, and he moved on to other musical projects after his time with the band.

Michael Pedicone

Michael Pedicone was the drummer and percussionist for My Chemical Romance from 2010 to 2011. His tenure with the band was marked by the recording of Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Pedicone’s time with MCR was brief, as he was dismissed from the band in 2011 following an incident in which he was caught stealing from the band during their tour. Despite his brief time with the group, Pedicone’s involvement in the Danger Days tour marked an important chapter in the band’s history.

Jarrod Alexander

Jarrod Alexander was the drummer and percussionist for My Chemical Romance from 2011 to 2013 and then again after their reunion in 2019. He filled in for Michael Pedicone during the band’s final touring cycle before their hiatus and was involved in the live performances of Danger Days during their last years as an active band. Alexander’s drumming was integral to maintaining the band’s sound during their transition and helped them close out their live performances on a high note. After MCR’s reunion, Alexander continued to be a part of their lineup, joining them for their 2019 comeback shows.

Jamie Muhoberac

Jamie Muhoberac is the keyboardist for My Chemical Romance since their reunion in 2019. His role has been important in adding additional layers of sound to the band’s live performances, especially on songs that feature prominent keyboard and synth elements. His contributions help bring a richer, fuller live sound to the band, complementing the other members’ performances. Muhoberac’s involvement with MCR during their reunion showcases his ability to bring new textures to the band’s sonic landscape.

These members, though some were touring or temporary, all contributed to My Chemical Romance’s musical and live legacy, assisting in shaping the band’s sound and live presence across various periods in their career.

“Almost overnight after the Sex Pistols, prog rock came to a halt”: 1977 was the supposedly the year punk killed prog. The truth is very different

Posted on by Web Rock Radio News Dept
A composite photograph of Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour performing onstage
(Image credit: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

In all of the interminable books, memoirs, articles and TV documentaries contemplating punk rock, there’s one thing they all seem to agree upon: that punk killed progressive rock. “Almost overnight, after the Sex Pistols prog rock came to a halt,” declaimed one pundit in a recent BBC documentary. Very well phrased – but totally untrue.

The fact that Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten once wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words ‘I HATE’ scrawled in biro above the band’s name is always held up as evidence that punk was some kind of reaction to prog. Yet Rotten (as John Lydon) was a huge fan of Hawkwind, Van Der Graaf Generator, Can and various other bands whose progness was never in doubt. The idea that punk ‘had to happen’ because a whole generation was idly fuming away at the complexity of King Crimson or the overblown theatricality of Rick Wakeman’s – admittedly daft – staging of King Arthur & The Knights Of The Round Table on ice is just absurd.

The cover of Classic Rock magazine issue 97 featuring The History Of Prog

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock magazine issue 97 (August 2006) (Image credit: Future)

As a crop-haired angry young man myself, I can’t recall ever wasting a minute of 1976, ’77 or ’78 thinking about how much I hated prog. Like most of my contemporaries I was having too much of a good time to really give a toss about prog, disco, rockabilly, pub rock or chart pop one way or another. There were too many other things in the world to hate. If there was anything musically that I couldn’t stand it was the constant diet of crap novelty records and golden oldies and smug DJs that ruled Radio One and Top Of The Pops in those days.

It was in the pages of NME, Melody Maker and Sounds that we were told that prog was the class enemy and encouraged to feel hatred. This was a revolution and, to paraphrase Lenin, what use is a revolution without firing squads? The thesis was that punk was a product of the salt-of-the-earth discontented proletariat, while prog was made exclusively by evil, right-wing toffs, and consumed only by Tory voters, fox hunters and those addled by false consciousness.

The reality, of course, was that while prog certainly had its share of former public schoolboys, at least the prog rockers were honest about their origins while people like the privately educated Clash frontman Joe Strummer felt that it was important to fake a prolier-than-thou past for themselves. At my comprehensive school, as well as a small smattering of punks, the popular artists of the day in 1976 were Frank Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra and – for some reason – The Incredible String Band. Conversely, the boys from the nearby fee-paying school were always trying to convince you that they were ‘too street’ to listen to anything more complicated than The Ramones, and that their spare time was spent sniffing glue, getting nicked by the pigs (maaaan) and smashing the state.

The attitude of prog musicians to punk was sometimes pretty condescending: Rick Wakeman allegedly sent a letter to the head of his label, A&M, asking to have the Sex Pistols dropped; Roger Waters made it clear that he hated punk; the lack of musicianship was decried. You could sense that they felt threatened, though obviously they needn’t have. Outside of the fantasy world created by the music press, it was prog that really ruled.

Genesis travelling in the back of a car in 1977

(Image credit: Graham Wood/Evening Standard/Getty Images))

In the official history, 1977 was the year of anarchy in the UK, The Clash, no future. But it was also the year of Rush’s A Farewell to Kings, Pink Floyd’s Animals, Yes’s Going For The One, Genesis’s Wind & Wuthering: all Top 10 albums, all accompanied by massive tours, some the bands’ biggest ever. In the same period that saw the Pistols shoot and burn, not only did prog not die, it actually enjoyed one of its golden ages.

In the last years of the 70s, prog continued to outsell punk both on album and live. The decade culminated with one of the most massive prog albums ever: Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Around the time, new bands like UK, IQ, Pendragon, Twelfth Night, Marillion, After The Fire and Pallas all formed, while a realignment of prog’s superpowers created bands like Asia. It says much about the hubris of the media that, having failed to notice these bands, there was a sort of collective assumption that they didn’t exist. But with practically no press, radio or TV coverage anywhere, these bands regularly sold out shows and shifted millions of albums.

What’s more, away from the stadium-level bands, the thriving UK progressive underground continued to make challenging and innovative music: Soft Machine, Henry Cow (and successor band The Art Bears), Van Der Graaf Generator and Bill Nelson (formerly of Be Bop Deluxe and later Red Noise) made some of their best albums around this time.

Perhaps even more interesting were the bands who emerged in the immediate aftermath of punk who tried to make music that did more than repeat the same three chord formula. Cabaret Voltaire from Sheffield incorporated electronics, sampling and Hawkwind-like light shows; Glasgow’s Simple Minds, particularly on their Steve Hillage-produced 1981 double album Sons & Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, incorporated many elements from classic Genesis along with krautrock, disco and the avant garde; Ultravox, on their third classic album Systems Of Romance, made an album that seemed to continue the direction that Roxy Music abandoned after For Your Pleasure.

The fact that many of the post-punk generation were making a new kind of prog was not lost on some. “It’s bloody Curved Air,” sneered Nick Lowe when asked about Siouxsie & The Banshees, whose first three albums definitely pushed the boundaries of punk rock to their limits. And when Wire – arguably a synthesis of Ramones-style minimalist punk and high-prog complexity – recorded a 15-minute track called Crazy About Love for a John Peel Show session in 1979, Peel grumbled that it was a step backwards.

Today, prog is almost all-pervasive. There are so many bands – from the Dream Theater prog metal school to the experimental post-indie rock of Radiohead, to leftfield superstars Tool – who can all be termed prog, and who are indeed comfortable

with the tag. Pink Floyd’s Live 8 reunion not only stole the show but saw their album sales go through the roof afterwards, while the influence of King Crimson, Floyd and Yes is everywhere. (King Crimson themselves still make seriously cutting edge music.) Not bad for something that supposedly ‘came to a halt’ in 1977.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 97, August 2006

Allan McLachlan spent the late 70s studying politics at Strathclyde University and cut his teeth as a journalist in the west of Scotland on arts and culture magazines. He moved to London in the late 80s and started his life-long love affair with the metropolitan district as Music Editor on City Limits magazine. Following a brief period as News Editor on Sounds, he went freelance and then scored the high-profile gig of News Editor at NME. Quickly making his mark, he adopted the nom de plume Tommy Udo. He moved onto the NME‘s website, then Xfm online before his eventual longer-term tenure on Metal Hammer and associated magazines. He wrote biographies of Nine Inch Nails and Charles Manson. A devotee of Asian cinema, Tommy was an expert on ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano and co-wrote an English language biography on the Japanese actor and director. He died in 2019. 

“This song is for everyone who’s ever felt defeated but chose to fight another day”: Watch the video for Bryan Adams’ muscular new single Roll With The Punches

Posted on by Web Rock Radio News Dept
Bryan Adams with a semi-acoustic guitar
(Image credit: Bryan Adams)

Bryan Adams has released a new single, Roll With The Punches, a sturdy rocker with a chorus bigger than a barn.

The title track from Adams’ upcoming 16th studio album – out later this year – Roll With The Punches was co-written with Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, the super-producer who oversaw Adams’ Waking Up The Neighbours and 18 Til I Die albums in the 1990s and has been a frequent collaborator in the years since.

“Roll With The Punches is a song about resilience and the spirit of getting back up no matter how hard you’ve been knocked down,” says Adams. “This song is for everyone who’s ever felt defeated but chose to fight another day.

“I believe the song captures the idea of getting through things when confronted with challenges and disappointment by simply rocking out!”

Bryan Adams is currently in Australia on the final leg of his So Happy It Hurts Tour, and will begin the Roll With The Punches tour in North America next month in Thackerville, OK, before a seven-date Las Vegas residency.

The tour will arrive in the UK in May, with dates in mainland Europe beginning in June. Further US and Canadian shows will be announced shortly. Full dates below.

Bryan Adams – Roll With The Punches – YouTube Bryan Adams - Roll With The Punches - YouTube

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Bryan Adams: So Happy It Hurts tour 2025

Feb 07: Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Australia
Feb 09: Perth RAC Arena, Australia
Feb 12: Sydney Qudos Bank Arena, Australia
Feb 13: Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Australia

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Bryan Adams: Roll With The Punches tour 2025

Mar 02: Thackerville Winstar World Casino & Resort, OK
Mar 07: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV
Mar 08: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV
Mar 09: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV
Mar 12: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV
Mar 14: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV
Mar 15: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV
Mar 16: Las Vegas Wynn Encore Theater, NV

May 08: Newcastle Utilita Arena, UK
May 09: Manchester AO Arena, UK
May 10: Leeds First Direct Arena, UK
May 11: Aberdeen P&J Live, UK
May 13: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
May 15: London The O2, UK
May 16: Liverpool M&S Bank Arena, UK
May 17: Nottingham Motorpoint Arena, UK
May 18: Birmingham BP Pulse Live, UK
May 20: Dublin 3Arena, Ireland
May 21: Belfast The SSE Arena, UK
May 23: Dublin 3Arena, Ireland

Jun 06: Pamplona Navarra Arena, Spain
Jun 10: Malaga Auditorio Municipal Cortijo de Torres, Spain
Jun 14: Sierre Blues Festival, Switzerland
Jun 22: Olpe Biggesee Open Air, Germany
Jun 24: Tilburg Spoorpark Live, Netherlands
Jun 28: Rotselaar Outdoor, Belgium
Jun 29: Uelzen Open R, Germany
Jul 02: Fulda Domplatz, Germany
Jul 06: Helsingborg, Sweden
Jul 12: Santiago de Compostela O Son do Camiño, Spain
Jul 25: Pompei Anfiteatro Scavi Di Pompei, Italy
Jul 27: Lucca Piazza Napoleone, Italy
Jul 29: Pula Arena, Croatia
Aug 01: Hradec Králové Park 360, Czech Republic
Aug 02 Klam Clam Castle (Burg Clam), Austria
Aug 03: Schlossgarten Schwetzingen Schloss Schwetzingen, Germany
Aug 05: Halle Freilichtbühne Peißnitz, Germany
Aug 06: Chemnitz Küchwaldwiese, Germany
Aug 12: Oulu Halli, Finland
Aug 13: Helsinki Helsingin jäähalli, Finland
Aug 14: Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, Estonia
Sep 26: Kempten bigBOX Allgäu, Germany

Tickets are on sale now.

Bryan Adams - Roll With The Punches cover art

(Image credit: Bad Records)

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 39 years in music industry, online for 26. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.

“Behind those dark glasses and unsmiling visage, he presented an inscrutable presence.” Soft Machine’s Mike Ratledge remembered…

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Mike Ratledge
(Image credit: Getty Images/Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

They say you should always leave the audience wanting more. Mike Ratledge, who died yesterday aged 81, did exactly that. In the 49 years since he left Soft Machine, somebody, somewhere would be commenting that they would love to see Ratledge play live with the Softs ‘one more time’ or perennially asking what he was up to in letters to music magazines and later, in the message boards and fan forums of the internet.

Decades after the urbane, softly-spoken had played his last note with the band, wherever and wherever the school of musicians who were part of the so-called ‘Canterbury Scene’ were performing, it was a certainty that after the gig curious fans would make earnest inquiries about the long-absent keyboardist. Such was their regularity, a slightly exasperated Pip Pyle, drummer with Gong, Hatfield And The North, National Health, gently lampooned the situation in the lyrics of his song, What’s Rattlin’. Recorded by Richard Sinclair in 1994 it has the classic line, ‘One question we all dread, ‘What’s doing Mike Ratledge?’

Behind those dark glasses and unsmiling visage, he presented an inscrutable presence. Seemingly aloof to whatever was happening around him on stage he was nevertheless seated at the centre of a whirlwind where his soloing would explode in a torrent of blazing, creativity that was as savage as it was eloquent. With his shoulders rising and falling as his hands jabbed, pawed, and parried at his electric piano, he exerted a magnetic kind of cool that endeared him to so many fans.

Canterbury Scene band Soft Machine eating cream buns in 1967

(Image credit: John Williams/BIPs/Getty Images)

Born in 1943 and the son of a headmaster, he received a solid grounding in classical music as a child. However, his formative interests as a teenager in the early 1960s were influenced by Daevid Allen who introduced him to the rapid-fire circularities found in the playing of jazz musicians such as pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist John Coltrane’s ‘sheets of sound’ technique. These elements ultimately found a vivid expression in Ratledge’s late 1960s playing that fuelled The Soft Machine’s breakneck experimental pop. Having left Oxford with a degree in psychology and philosophy, he was a fervent reader of poetry and literature. His love of American fiction, particularly William Boroughs’ fourth novel, The Soft Machine would ultimately provide the name of the band for which he is best known.

Interviewed about the origins of the name to a reporter on Belgian TV in 1969, Ratledge says, “It’s a generic term for the whole of the human species. Because we’re a pop group we assume that we’re going to get through to a lot of people therefore we’re part of the soft machine. Everybody is part of the soft Machine.”

Having augmented his Lowery Continental organ with a fuzz pedal he fashioned a stinging sound brimming with a glowering, Hendrix-inspired distortion. Unique among his Hammond, Vox, and Farfisa-playing contemporaries Ratledge’s singular trademark timbre and legato-style soloing darted around the keyboard sounding like a homicidal wasp on the warpath. Throughout the group’s history, they played as loud as their equipment would allow. His solos were forever teetering on the brink of glowering feedback as his volley of rapid phrases frayed at the edges as he raced into the upper registers.

Having toured the USA opening for Jimi Hendrix and recording their 1968 debut album in New York, Ratledge’s writing for the group rapidly stretched beyond the initial psychedelic milieu surrounding the band, turning instead from the fractious pop dadaism into something more precise and cerebral on 1969’s Volume Two. His accelerated writing for Soft Machine’s legendary but sadly short-lived septet line-up stylistically paved the way for 1970’s Third. A landmark double album, it stands as the arrival of Soft Machine proper boasting Robert Wyatt’s Moon In June, Hugh Hopper’s Facelift and Ratledge’s Slightly All The Time, and Out-Bloody-Rageous. All absolute classics of the Canterbury genre, this latter in particular track marries Ratledge’s articulate writing with his love of Terry Riley-inspired tape-looping., something he would explore further in the proto-ambient so-called ‘cosmic tinkles’ of his echo-plexed Fender Rhodes piano as heard on Fifth, Six and especially Seventh.

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Amidst the sound and fury of his steely, propulsive themes and frenzied soloing such as the formidable Teeth from Soft Machine’s Fourth in 1971, it’s easy to overlook the tenderness inhabiting some of his compositions. The languid organ chords that swell and ebb beneath Elton Dean’s flowing sax solo in the Backwards section of Third’s Slightly All The Time possess an aching melancholy, whose bittersweet qualities Caravan amplified on 1973’s For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night when they adapted it as part of their L’Auberge du Sanglier suite. The diaphanous melody of Chloe And The Pirates from 1973’s Six and The Man Who Waved At Trains from Bundles in 1975 also sing and shine with a mellifluous, haunting delicacy.

Soft Machine

(Image credit: Getty Images)

During his time in Softs, he contributed distinctive guest spots on albums by Syd Barrett and Kevin Ayers, as well a truly caustic contribution to Elton Dean’s self-titled solo LP. When Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was performed on BBC TV’s Full House arts show in 1973, with a cast of the great and good of the progressive music scene, the first thing viewers hear is Ratledge on grand piano playing that now-famous trickle of notes that binds the work together. Eagle-eyed Ratledge-spotters will also see him traversing the studio floor as he moves from one keyboard to another.

Leaving Soft Machine in 1976 he appeared on his friend David Bedford’s 1977 release Instructions For Angels in 1977, along with the suitably gnomic sequencer-based score to the cult film, Riddles Of The Sphinx, in the same year. His other work outside of Soft Machine included a partnership with Karl Jenkins, writing and performing advertising jingles which, somewhat bizarrely saw the pair credited as the brains behind the forensic recreation of Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine which was used in a famous TV advert for Levi 501 jeans in 1985. In the 90s Ratledge also assisted Jenkins with his Adiemus project but also spent time getting deep into tech, and even writing apps including one designed to help make a perfect boiled egg.

The abundance of posthumously released bootleg recordings of Soft Machine that have steadily flooded the market over the years goes some way to capturing the restless, fiery spirit that fuelled his playing and made it take flight. Mike Ratledge was only in Soft Machine for ten of his 81 years on the planet but he’ll be forever remembered as an innovative and energetic force within the progressive community and beyond.

Sid’s feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including Prog, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Q, Mojo and Uncut. A full-time freelance writer with hundreds of sleevenotes and essays for both indie and major record labels to his credit, his book, In The Court Of King Crimson, an acclaimed biography of King Crimson, was substantially revised and expanded in 2019 to coincide with the band’s 50th Anniversary. Alongside appearances on radio and TV, he has lectured on jazz and progressive music in the UK and Europe.  

A resident of Whitley Bay in north-east England, he spends far too much time posting photographs of LPs he’s listening to on Twitter and Facebook.

“Oh my God, this is mind-blowing”: The makers of Becoming Led Zeppelin say they found some amazing unseen footage from later in the band’s career

Posted on by Web Rock Radio News Dept

The makers of Becoming Led Zeppelin, the documentary that focuses on the band’s early years, have talked about the difficulties involved in making the movie, the likelihood of producing a second film to continue their story, and the unseen footage they’ve found.

In a new interview with Classic Rock, director Bernard MacMahon and co-writer/producer Allison McGourt are asked if they’d like to make a sequel.

“If we have another five years to kill,” says MacMahon (work on Becoming Led Zeppelin began in 2017). “But if the band were even agreeable to telling the next part of that, I would have to think long and hard about the idea.

“We haven’t given the matter any thought, not unless you consider finding a really cool clip [from later on in the band’s tale] and going: ‘Oh my God, this is mind-blowing’. There were a couple of those that we left on the shelf.”

“Films like this one are very hard to make,” adds McGourt.

“The scale of the workload is so difficult to describe,” MacMahon continues. “It’s like making War And Peace but cutting out all of the words from newspapers, like a ransom note.”

The full interview with MacMahon and McGourt will appear in the next issue of Classic Rock, published on March 4.

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Classic Rock‘s review of Becoming Led Zeppelin describes the film as “a fascinating portrait of a band whose legend is tied up with their careful custody of their own legend” before going on to say that, “It doesn’t wholly demystify this most mystical of rock bands, but it does reveal the human brilliance at their heart.”

Becoming Led Zeppelin is in cinemas now.

US Screenings | UK Screenings

BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN | Full Length Trailer (2025) – YouTube BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN | Full Length Trailer (2025) - YouTube

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