Author: u0zp4y

In 2007 German rock legends the Scorpions released their 16th album. After several misfires, Humanity – Hour 1 was an album that found the band returning to the sound that made them superstars in the 80s and 90s. It was a good time for the Scorpions to tell their story… and what a story it turned out to be.

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The year is 1972. The place is Cologne, Germany. The Scorpions are in the recording studio, about to lay down their debut album, Lonesome Crow, with producer Conny Plank. But first they have an important decision to make. Do they remain the Scorpions (that’s ‘the’ all in small letters to be accurate and pedantic), a name that came with founder member, songwriter and guitarist Rudolf Schenker from a band he formed in 1965? Or do they go for a new moniker and image to celebrate the new line-up and a fresh start?

Conny, already well known for creating the krautrock sound – having worked with the likes of Kraftwerk, Cluster and Neu! – has some definite ideas about their image and direction.

“We knew if we wanted to change something we’d better do it now,” recalls vocalist Klaus Meine. “Scorpions we thought was alright, but there were names like Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Starship, and we thought our name sounded too simple. So Conny said: ‘Let’s find something more aggressive – how about Stalingrad?’

“He wanted us to dress up in army uniforms and then storm on to the stage! I think he wanted to make us into an early Rammstein, with a theatrical show.”

Meine pauses and raises his eyes as if in disbelief that this event actually ever happened. “So we stuck to our original name. And, looking back, I think it was the right decision.”

Thirty-five years later and the Scorpions are still rocking like a hurricane in a ruthless business that saw off punk in the 70s, shot down hairspray rock in the 80s and annihilated grunge in the 90s. They have survived the current music industry meltdown by being one of the hardest-working live bands on the circuit, consistently conquering new, uncharted markets which so far this year include Mongolia and China.

While other equally established groups have gone into panic mode and taken the easier route of producing lamentable covers albums or touring a greatest hits show (or even doing both) the Scorpions have invested their own money and time into the production of a new album. Humanity – Hour 1 was made under the guidance of über producer/songwriter Desmond Child and is an effort to re-establish their rock credentials.

This, coupled with a recent appearance at the Wacken Festival which reunited them with most of their former members in a spectacular three-and-a-half-hour show, marks a return to form for the band. A band who had been abandoned by their more hard-core following for producing some execrable rock ballads – the main offender being Wind Of Change with its lamentable Roger Whittaker-esque whistling.

But more of that later. First I have to admit that the mighty Scorps had fallen off my musical radar for about 24 years. The last time we met was during the recording of Blackout which, along with albums such as Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism and Love At First Sting, proved to be a healthy antidote to the shambolic village hall buffoonery going under the guise of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. The Scorpions’ professionalism, wide-eyed enthusiasm and endearingly basic grasp of the English language made them a joy to behold.

But as the decades passed they became a distant memory, consigned to the bargain bin of musical history. Until 2006, that is, when they made a spectacular comeback at a Royal Albert Hall memorial for rock DJ Tommy Vance, with a tight, polished show that made headliners Judas Priest look positively Jurassic. As my jaw hit the floor, the band proceeded to assault an initially wary audience of classic rock dilettantes with a tight, well-thought-out set of their musical highlights.

“I am glad that you mentioned the Albert Hall,” Klaus says. “When you have a long career and you are a powerful and energetic band, if you can’t deliver on the same level again, it’s very hard to continue. We feel that we can deliver as a live band, and we also want to deliver as recording artists.”

The Scorpions’ long, diverse history has taken them from being underground German metal merchants to the internationally established artists they are today.

Classic Rock caught up with the band in Paris in spring 2007, where they were playing one of a series of shows featuring original guitarist Uli Roth, a move inspired by the success of the reunion at Wacken. On the British dates in July Rudolf’s errant sibling, Michael, would also join them.

Today’s band is the same line-up that made the victorious return at the Albert Hall, featuring the long-standing triumvirate of Rudolf, Klaus and guitarist Matthias Jabs, plus relative newcomers, Pawel ‘Baby’ Maciwoda (bass) and James Kottak (drums). I spoke to the original members over a couple of days to get an overview of their career, the highs and lows, and also to talk about the new album, tour and their attempt to re-establish themselves.

The first thing that becomes apparent is that Matthias is not too happy about featuring ex-guitarists on the current tour. “Here we are in Paris, on the day the new album is coming out, and we’re playing a show featuring members from the past playing old songs,” he grumbles. “Fans do not come for a history lesson. Don’t get me wrong, Wacken was a great idea and very enjoyable experience, but we’ve invested a lot in making Humanity – Hour 1 and it’s important that we push it.”

So why do it? “Because certain people are reacting to requests on the internet. When 50 people mail you asking for old members to come back, it seems like a lot. In reality it isn’t, it’s just a bunch of die-hard fans scattered across the globe.”

Meine is not of the same opinion. “For the fans it’s very important that we go back in our history and even play songs from the 70s, which sometimes even we feel is a long time back,” he explains. “And having Matthias in the band as lead guitar player, of course he’s not very much interested in playing songs by Uli. That was way before his time and you’ve got to respect that. But the fans appreciate that the Scorpions are still rocking like crazy. I think it gives us a lot of street credibility.”

Adding to the intrigue, later in the evening Uli Roth reveals that he was actually asked to play on the new album but couldn’t fit it into his schedule. Aside from this minor quibble, the band appear to be a solid, functioning unit, and they still look and sound incredibly healthy and optimistic. While Meine and Jabs disguise their follicle erosion with designer headgear, Schenker has replaced his uniform centre-parted bob with tufts of bleached hair gelled in a style that makes him look like a Bavarian elder counterpart to David Beckham.

To cover the Scorpions’ whole history in the confines of one article is an impossible task as it spans over 40 years, countless albums and line-up changes, along with every rock’n’roll soap opera scenario imaginable. But there are pivotal points and events that stand out. Firstly it’s important to understand the musical landscape of the band’s home town of Hanover in the early 70s. While the UK music press focused on the experimental electronica of groups like Tangerine Dream and Can, there was also a burgeoning hard rock scene in Germany.

“Hanover was well known all over Germany as a heavy metal town,” reveals Meine. “I was in a band called Copernicus with Michael Schenker. We used to do covers of songs by bands like Taste and Led Zeppelin. We would compete with the Scorpions, as we played the same venues. It was all about who had the biggest PA and got the best reaction. At that time Rudolf used to sing in the Scorpions, with his back to the audience.”

Matthias, who is almost ten years younger than his sparring partners, remembers both bands during his early tenures with German groups Lady and Fargo.

“We used to pass each other on the autobhan. In those days we all had our band names plastered on the side of the van to stop them getting stolen.”

Eventually Rudolf convinced both Michael and Klaus to join the band and record Lonesome Crow. This was a false start as they promptly lost the prodigious Michael to the clutches of UFO. They immediately went to Uli, who had turned them down before.

“I knew the Scorpions back in 1970 when they were virtually a rhythm’n’blues band,” recalls Uli, an amiable chap whose gentle manner matches his 60s retro-hippy finery. “When they first asked me to join, I declined. I had a band called Dawn Road which was an amateur thing, we were doing Emerson, Lake & Palmer stuff and still at high school. I was doing mainly classical music and that wasn’t my direction.”

After much cajoling from Rudy (Schenker’s persuasive skills are a theme prevalent throughout the band’s history), Uli agreed to fill in on one live performance. Shortly after the group disbanded.

During this hiatus Rudy spent a lot of time with Dawn Road. “I guess he liked what he heard or saw and we started to play together,” remembers Uli. “And then we got Klaus back in again. Even though there were more members of Dawn Road than the Scorpions, we decided to change the band’s name to the Scorpions because they already had a record deal.” The band also included bassist Francis Buccholz who would become an integral member but eventually split in acrimonious circumstances.

The Scorpions recorded Fly To The Rainbow in 1974 and proceeded to tour extensively, although even then it was obvious that Schenker and Meine were on a different path to Roth. “Rudolf and Klaus are a great song-writing team, one of the best ever,” Uli says. “I wrote the other half of the stuff, which was a bit more rock’n’roll. It was a strange mix but it worked.”

In Trance followed and then the band released the notorious Virgin Killer, featuring a suspiciously young, pre-pubescent girl posing in a provocative manner on the cover. The record was the first in a series of controversial Scorpions album sleeves that would gain the band notoriety and publicity all over the world. Although they point out that the picture on Virgin Killer was not their idea and it’s something they would baulk at doing today, it didn’t do their profile any damage.

“With Virgin Killer, the record company guy said: ‘I want to do this and I don’t care if they put me in prison for it!’” Meine recalls. “I remember we walked home with the completed artwork and I was thinking this is definitely an album you don’t want to show back home.” But he adds: “I admit later on we used covers like weapons of provocation. People would talk about them and we loved doing them, especially with Storm from Hipgnosis. We followed his work from Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin – they were our heroes.”

Two significant things happened between the recording of In Trance and Virgin Killer. Producer Dieter Dierks came on board and over the years became responsible for moulding the band’s sound to such an extent that he was regarded as the sixth Scorpion (in fact, it turns out that Dierks was second choice to Chas Chandler). It was also becoming apparent to Uli Roth that he no longer wanted to play in a hard-touring rock outfit even though the Scorpions were by now making waves all over Europe and Japan.

“Each album got bigger and bigger and the Tokyo Tapes live album was an international breakthrough, but I had really mentally left the band some time before that,” says Roth. “I wanted to go a more experimental route. I wanted to be a little freer in music, rather than just watch album sales. It was a foregone conclusion that I needed to split but it took a year. I told them to look for a guitarist but they never did.”

Both Michael and Uli, although extremely talented players, seemed too self-indulgent to be a part of the vision that Rudolf and Klaus had for the band.

“They had very big egos, that’s for sure,” Klaus agrees. “They both had their own vision of what they wanted to do and they were definitely not team players. Now the focus was much more on the songwriting of Rudolf and myself. The band was becoming more focused on the artistic direction.”

Geographically, the direction they were headed in was the States. But before that, they needed to establish a solid line-up. With Uli about to depart, they had another setback when drummer Rudy Lenners left due to ill health. However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In a strange turn of events they went to Britain to look for a replacement, only to find a German, Herman Rarebell, who was a regular customer at a legendary London watering hole known as The Speakeasy.

Rarebell had left Germany for Britain when he turned 21 in order to expand his CV and get some studio work. While in the UK he bumped into Michael Schenker, who suggested he go and check out his brother Rudolf’s band. This led to a successful audition, and Rarebell was soon heading back to Germany. Herman was a charismatic and energetic character, and immediately got involved in the songwriting process, penning the lyrics to He’s A Woman, She’s A Man (based on a true-life experience in the Parisian red light district) on his first Scorpions album, Taken By Force.

As the years passed Herman would become the one who wrote some of the Scorpions’ most popular songs. He explains: “The reason for this was that my English was the best and Dieter liked my words. I wrote about what happened to us while we were out on the road. And I think people can associate with that.”

Klaus admits that it took him a while to feel comfortable singing in English, even though he had done so throughout his career. “It was very difficult at first but German lyrics just didn’t fit in with the music and we wanted to go all over the world. Growing up in postwar Germany, to be a German was nothing to be proud of [laughs]. We wanted to be respected in an international community of musicians.”

Taken By Force was Uli’s swansong and the band set out on the arduous task of auditioning over 150 guitarists. They finally settled on a former member of the Pretty Things, Peter Tolson. Unfortunately, things didn’t gel and they again found themselves axeless. Once more they found the solution closer to home, in the form of Matthias Jabs.

“Rudy rang me up to say that he was recording a solo album and would I like to play on it, “Jabs recalls with amusement. “That was typical Rudy, finding a way to hook you in.”

But when Jabs joined the Scorpions, the unexpected happened. Michael Schenker had left UFO after an altercation with lead singer Phil Mogg and had also developed severe drug and alcohol problems in the process. An American management team expressed interest in working with the Scorpions, but strongly suggested it would be a good idea to take Michael on board, regardless of his state of mind. Desperate to break in the States, Rudy agreed and promptly let go of Matthias.

“What you have to remember,” Jabs explains, “is that the Scorpions weren’t a big band at all at the time, so it was really no big deal.”

Michael’s problems manifested themselves early on in the Scorpions’ US tour – he collapsed on stage during the third show. As the tour progressed the band had to plead with Matthias to help them out. “Rudy kept calling me to help out on the shows, and every time I said: ‘Okay, but just this one time.’ And he agreed… typical Rudy.”

Finally, an incoherent Michael departed and Jabs joined full-time, completing the classic Scorpions line-up. Michael did manage to stay long enough to contribute to a couple of tracks on the next album, Lovedrive, which marked the beginning of the band’s full-on assault of the US.

“I remember the first show we did in Cleveland,” says Rudy. “We were the opener and we were rocking like a hurricane already [laughs]. We were only allowed 30 minutes but we played 40. The management and the other bands were looking at each other saying: ‘What are these crazy Germans doing?’ I remember Ted Nugent coming down to the dressing room and saying: ‘Guys, you have to calm down!’ We finished the show before they managed to unplug us, and this was the beginning of the American success.”

With a more polished, tighter sound, the Scorpions’ formula of mixing heavy rock and power ballads was already in place. Lovedrive (with another controversial cover photographed in the back of Elton John’s Rolls-Royce) entered the Top 50 in the Billboard chart and soon after the band went back into the studio to record Animal Magnetism. It wasn’t as successful as its predecesser but the band continued to build a strong following on the road. However, Klaus began to experience problems with his throat. This became more noticeable when the band started work on their next album, Blackout.

“When we started working on arrangements Klaus’s voice sounded very unhealthy,” says Rudy, “then after about three or four weeks he couldn’t sing any more. When we got back to Germany he went to the doctor. The doctor looked at his vocal cords and said: ‘What is your job?’ When he said singer, the doctor said: ‘Klaus, you have to get another job!’”

Klaus recalls: “It would have been easy for the band to walk out and look for a new singer, but they didn’t. Rudolf kept pushing me and challenging me. He said: ‘Whatever it takes, we will wait for you.’”

With Don Dokken helping out on guide tracks, Klaus returned after a couple of operations to sing his herz (German for ‘heart’) out on easily the best Scorpions album ever.

Producing three hit singles, Blackout was the band’s most successful album to date, although Meine was wary of the inevitable tour.

“I had no idea if I would survive going on the road. My voice was untested. But after a year we came back loaded with platinum albums. This was the next level and in a way I was starting again.

Two years later, in 1984, came Love At First Sting and its smash Rock You Like A Hurricane, which was propelled to mega-hit status by MTV.

A succession of successful albums and tours followed and as the 80s drew to a close the group found themselves coming to the end of their relationship with Dierks – much to their relief.

As Klaus explains; “We were not happy with Dieter. We were enjoying a lot of success and it was not our choice to keep going back to Cologne and record. Our desire was to go to places like the Record Plant in Los Angeles, but we couldn’t because we were tied up in contracts.

“Savage Amusement was our last album with Dieter and it was a difficult time for us. We had come to the end of our contract but there were still issues. What you have to remember is that when we signed up with him we were young kids. Looking back on it we just tired of each other and we had to split.”

Rudy: “The chemistry had gone because Dieter wanted to do an album like Mutt Lange, because of the success of Def Leppard. He wanted samples, programming… all that stuff. If you listen to Savage Amusement, it’s very sterile.”

Without Dierks at the controls, the band looked to an American producer for inspiration. Keith Olsen twiddled the knobs for Crazy World, which spawned one of the Scorpions’ greatest hits… their Stairway To Heaven… their Freebird… their albatross? It was Wind Of Change, of course. Inspired by the Scorpions’ performance at the 1989 Moscow Peace Festival, it came at a most fortuitous moment.

“It was the end of the 80s when we did Crazy World,” Klaus reflects. “We were on the edge facing a huge musical revolution with grunge and alternative music in the early 90s. Almost every act that came from where we did in the 80s got killed. If this album had been a flop, it could have easily been the end of us too. The success of Wind Of Change helped us survive… and it was on the first album we did without Dieter.”

Were they aware that the song – and Klaus’s whistling – alienated some of the Scorpions’ fans?

Rudy: “Wind Of Change was a big success because mothers liked it, grandmothers liked it and kids liked it. But a lot of rock fans said: ‘No, this is not my band anymore.’ But it helped us survive to make another album. I am a rocker but our ballads work because we have an outstanding singer and he can sing them well. It’s just become a part of us. I like Deep Purple because of Child In Time. Always when a rock band writes a ballad it’s something special. The problem is if the ballad on the album becomes too big… then there’s something wrong.”

Rudy and co continued to play festivals all over the world including Donington, Rock In Rio and a historic guest appearance in Roger Waters’ performance of The Wall in Berlin.

Unfortunately, the euphoric glow was shattered when the Scorpions found themselves in financial dispute with their business manager. This led to the departure of bassist Francis Buchholz, leaving them angry and dismayed.

“People often think our divorce from Dieter was ugly, but it wasn’t really,” says Klaus. “However, with Francis, it was a very ugly divorce. To cut a long story very short, when we made a decision to change our whole business structure and fire our business manager, unfortunately Francis went with him. We lost a friend and great musician.”

The wounds are still deep – as was revealed at Wacken, where Buchholz was the only Scorpions member noticeable by his absence. (Ironically, Buchholz is now bassist with the Uli Roth Band, who would support the Scorpions on their British summer 2007 dates.)

As the band ploughed their more commercial furrow, they had another loss when Herman Rarebell decided to leave in 1996, explaining that he was “sick of playing Wind Of Change for the millionth time and living on the road”.

Some die-hard fans will have you believe that with the departure of Rarebell, a larger-than-life figure, the Scorpions’ career took a downward trajectory, especially as the drummer wasn’t there to help out with the lyrics. In some ways this is true. Although they continued to deliver great live shows, on record they made some serious errors including 1999’s Eye II Eye, a misjudged stab at techno.

By 2007 the Scorpions had come full circle. They were again determined to crack the international market, and at its best their album Humanity – Hour 1 recalled Blackout’s glory days.

“You never know – this album may be our last one, who knows?” Klaus says. “You can’t take it for granted there will be another one. So when we do a record we want it to be great. We want to end on a high, to keep going and find a moment to have a nice way out of this madness. The best thing is that we have a good chemistry. And our friendship is still intact. Who else can you say that about after so many years?”

This article originally appeared in Classic Rock 108 (Summer 2007)

Pete Makowski joined Sounds music weekly aged 15 as a messenger boy, and was soon reviewing albums. When no-one at the paper wanted to review Deep Purple‘s Made In Japan in December 1972, Makowski did the honours. The following week the phone rang in the Sounds office. It was Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. “Thanks for the review,” said Blackmore. “How would you like to come on tour with us in Europe?” He also wrote for Street Life, New Music News, Kerrang!, Soundcheck, Metal Hammer and This Is Rock, and was a press officer for Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Motörhead, the New York Dolls and more. Sounds Editor Geoff Barton introduced Makowski to photographer Ross Halfin with the words, “You’ll be bad for each other,” creating a partnership that spanned three decades. Halfin and Makowski worked on dozens of articles for Classic Rock in the 00-10s, bringing back stories that crackled with humour and insight. Pete died in November 2021.

Featuring Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme and ex-Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, Them Crooked Vultures were one of rock’s great one-and-done supergroups. In 2010, shortly after they released their self-titled debut (and only) album, Classic Rock jumped talked to the trio about their all-star union – though not before being kept waiting for several days…

“You’re kidding, right?”

She’s got to be kidding.

“No, I’m afraid not. Really sorry.”

“But I’ve flown all this way to meet the band! And you’re saying it’s not going to happen?”

“Honestly, it was never actually confirmed that they’d do it. Sorry.”

Surely they can give me some time, I reason, desperately clutching at a fat metaphorical straw. Is there anything they can manage? What about tomorrow?

“There’s no room in the schedule either tomorrow or the day after,” she counters.

I’m due to fly home the day after.

“There’s a chance I might be able to get Josh on the phone on Sunday.” (Heavy emphasis is placed on the might.) “Or I might be able to get Dave sometime on Monday, though I really can’t be sure.”

I’m trying to stay serene on the outside, attempting to stem a fast-rising tide of inner panic and rage. This really wasn’t supposed to happen. Part of me – the illogical, eternally hopeful part of me – thinks it must be some kind of perverse joke, some grand comedic record company/management sting.

Only it really is true. I’ve travelled over 6,000 miles, across continent and ocean for the best part of 24 hours to meet and interview Them Crooked Vultures, the newest, biggest and most successful of that much-maligned über-genre of rock: the Supergroup. Only it’s not gonna happen. At all.

It’s mid-April and I’m standing outside Club Nokia, a smart live venue in the newly-generated entertainment complex that fringes downtown Los Angeles. It’s an area that also serves a 7,000-seat arena – Nokia LA Live – as well as hotels, restaurants, luxury condos, a Cineplex and the Staples Centre. Tonight Club Nokia is playing host to Them Crooked Vultures – the trio formed amid much stealth and secrecy last year by Foo Fighter/Nirvana man Dave Grohl, Queens Of The Stone Age/Eagles Of Death Metal magus Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin legend John Paul Jones.

A week earlier, your Classic Rock scribe had met with the affable, eminently likeable Jones in a London hotel room, talking up his Vultures residency over that most English of afternoon delicacies: biscuit assortments and a pot of Earl Grey. Now I’m in LA to meet the other two as well, maybe hang out together for a bit, get a sense of what makes them motor. There’s much excitement at the prospect. This interview has been something of a marathon to organise, involving much heave-ho’ing between management camps and a slew of meetings and phone calls. Even Ross Halfin’s photoshoot, I’m told, was an arseache.

So here I am. The woman I’m talking to is Kristen, manager of all things Josh Homme and, therefore, one third of the decision-making team that oversees the Vultures. She’s polite and perfectly amiable but, it transpires, this whole proposal has fallen victim to some kind of misunderstanding or communicative blip. I can get in to see the show tonight, but that’s as much access as I’m going to get. The band’s UK PR had told me earlier in the day that there’d been a few “issues with scheduling” over the past 24 hours. But even he hadn’t anticipated this. Someone, somehow, somewhere – I understand later – has decided that the band aren’t going to meet me after all. It was a decision apparently taken while I was mid-air, mid-Atlantic.

Days pass and, thanks to a certain bloody-minded volcano in Iceland, I find myself in LA for over a week. I still don’t hear as much as a peep.

Back in England a fortnight later and I finally get to talk to Josh Homme, on the phone from his home in California. I ask if he was aware of the LA hoo-ha. “I found out yesterday that you were there,” he replies. “Yeah, I’m sorry to hear about that. I think one of the things that’s been great about the Vultures is that it’s been less talk and more rock. And what happened to you seems to be a by-product of the ethos of this band. In some respects, there isn’t much to say. The make-up and situation is clear from a distance.”

Likewise Dave Grohl, over the phone a day earlier, seems genuinely surprised at what happened, attempting to untangle any crossed wires by way of gentle self-mockery: “You were there to interview me? Oh, well… fuck. Well, to be honest, dude, once you get to know me I’m one of the most forgetful people you’ve ever fucking met in your entire life. Except when it comes to my kids. My mind’s just mush. How long were you here? A week? I bet you fucking drank yourself silly every night…”

Mention ‘supergroup’ to any professional musician and it’s likely they’ll spit it back with barely-veiled disdain. It’s a word with its own in-built sense of slow dread, a default setting with connotations of monstrous egos, dysfunctional relationships and bloated excess. Even Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – perhaps the most famous example of all – were loathe to describe themselves as such. “We’re four individuals playin’ together,” griped a somewhat pedantic David Crosby at their early 70s peak. “Don’t call us a group and don’t call us super”. Eric Clapton first heard the term when he, Steve Winwood and Ginger Baker were about to record as Blind Faith in 1969. “That’s when I saw the red light…” he admitted later. Blind Faith ended almost as quickly as it had begun, with Clapton sifting through the wreckage of two bands within 12 months.

Supergroups were almost de rigueur by the tail end of the 60s. In the UK, Humble Pie and ELP were stirring. The Rock’n’Roll Circus had been curated by The Rolling Stones as an all-star excuse to buddy up with Clapton, The Who and John and Yoko. Touted as “the last great jam of the 60s”, the two-day Supershow – recorded for TV from an abandoned London factory in 1969 – featured Clapton, Jack Bruce, Buddy Guy, drummer Buddy Miles, jazz player Roland Kirk and Stephen Stills.

The latter, ever the musical gadfly, had already played on the fabled Super Session with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield, before hoofing it over to David Crosby’s gaff, inviting over some English bloke and forming CSN. This threesome came to embody the good, bad and contrary nature of your superstar combo. All three had fled problematic bands. Graham Nash had become disillusioned within the restrictive parameters of The Hollies’ pure pop; Crosby had been unceremoniously booted from The Byrds; Stills had been crushed by the break-up of Buffalo Springfield. Yet as a trio – and soon with the addition of Neil Young – they could all pull in one direction, harmonised by devotion to a single cause: making the kind of folksy, acoustic statements that both played to their individual strengths and chimed with the new, socially-conscious generation of protest and change. But that was before all the in-fighting.

Resentment set in, magnified by attendant egos and a volatile chemistry that Crosby compared to “juggling bottles of nitroglycerin”. The whole on-off shebang became a byword for indulgence in the 70s. Their 35-date tour of 1974, for some time the most commercially successful in US history, grossed over $10m. CSNY each had their own soundman and crew and blew into town in Lear jets (aside from Young, that is, who preferred his customised GMC Camper), armed with up to 30 catering staff. The combined tour entourage was around 85. Spinal Tap writ large – and very real. It prompted a major piece in Time magazine – ‘Return of a Supergroup’ – which posited that, despite pulling in megabucks, such bands were doomed to failure. The whole thing, they said, was merely a “potent but short-lived phenomenon”.

Go tell that to the class of 2010. They’re all at it: Chickenfoot, Dead Weather, Velvet Revolver, Monsters Of Folk, Black Country (or whatever the new Hughes-Bonamassa-Bonham outfit is called). And of course Them Crooked Vultures, the most high-profile of the lot. Much like CSNY did in the 70s, the Vultures seem to embody a sea change in rock sensibility. Except that the new model is one of democratic utopia. Today’s deferential supergroups claim to leave their egos outside the door. The songs on the Vultures’ terrific self-titled debut were all co-writes (though Homme provides the lyrics), each member’s input as valid as the next, a climate of consensus prevailing over any self-serving notions or accusations of subterfuge. It’s a formula that suits them well, judging by live shows and the thunderous, metallic KO of their recorded output.

“We’re kinda like a Special Forces Unit,” offers Homme. “We each have our own speciality and it’s three guys who are willing to listen to each other and take a minute rather than snap to a judgement. I believe any one of us could turn the other guys to their way of thinking, given the right discussion. The decision-making is done by the three of us.”

The music itself takes Zeppelin as a rough fix, then canters off at all points on the compass. James Brown grooves get busy with huge Sabbath riffs; clavinets and keytars bulge from Metallica-sized party pants; Middle Eastern figures loom behind jagged QOTSA rhythms. There are soft textures and strange subtleties, but most of the time it’s plain HUGE. “We could have easily taken a more mellow turn with that record,” explains Homme, “because we also had three acoustic songs written. But in the end we felt like the first record should be a steamroller of eerie darkness.”

It’s clearly a symbiotic relationship that felt right immediately. “There wasn’t a lot of discussion, ever, about dynamic or control or even music,” explains Grohl. “If someone didn’t like something, they’d just say so and we’d move forward from that. It’s a simple band to be in, because you rely on this person next to you and you have this trust with everyone. When we have those moments where we go off on a jam, on our way to somewhere we’ve never been before, we’re not worried about how to get back. As long as the three of us are there together, we’ll make it.” John Paul Jones concurs: “It’s very democratic, very organic. To be honest, I’d forgotten the term ‘supergroup’, until people point out: ‘Oh, you’re a supergroup!’ It’s definitely just the ‘S’ word for me. Everyone just seems very natural and relaxed in the Vultures. And I think it helps that we’ve all done what we’ve done before. We all know who we are and none of us have to prove anything. There’s a lot of life and vitality in the band. And everyone just seems to know when something isn’t working. You don’t have to pussyfoot around anybody.”

There seem to be no hidden agendas, the band instead propelled by an innate sense of self-confidence. Indeed, Jones sees parallels between the natural surety of the Vultures and that other band of his. “People really didn’t know what to make of Zeppelin back in the day,” he remembers. “Every album we brought out was greeted with: ‘Oh what do they think they’re doing now? It’s too commercial, they’re going to lose all their fans!’ That happened with every record, but it didn’t bother us at all because we knew what we were doing. The idea was that if we liked it, then someone else was bound to. It’s the law of probability. And it’s the same with the Vultures. If you start worrying about trying to second-guess the public, you’re screwed. If you liked and truly understood Zeppelin, you’ll probably like the Vultures. It’s got the same drive and impulse.”

Jones also sees similarities in the easy chemistry between the two bands, likening the Vultures’ instant rapport to that of Zeppelin’s first ever rehearsal, back in London in August 1968. “We were doing songs that none of us knew more than four bars of, but we just started to play. And I remember [manager] Peter Grant put his arms around all four of us at the end and lifted us all up off the floor: ‘Boys, you were bloody great!’ I think we all knew we had something special.”

So are the Vultures the very ideal of what a supergroup should be? They’re certainly aware of the implications of the word. Says Homme: “I never turn to Brody [Dalle, Homme’s then-wife] and say: ‘Sweetie, I’m off to jam with my supergroup. I’ll be back in an hour.’ I think it would be different if I lived inside a graphic novel, like Sin City or something. [Affects dramatic anchorman voice]: ‘Rock’n’roll is dying! It’s out in the ocean somewhere! We need a supergroup to save us!’ The word has a connotation of resting on your laurels, presupposing you’re super. I think it’s really important for a band like this to not worry about what the current trend is, but just be itself.”

Grohl is similarly dismissive of the whole idea. “I know this might sound ridiculous,” he says, “but the Vultures began just like any other band I’ve ever been in. Josh and I talked about starting up something and I said: ‘Hey, want me to call John?’ And he said: ‘Sure’. It’s not unlike my band Brain Damage when I was 15 years old. My buddy Dave and I said: ‘Y’know, that guy Reuben’s pretty good. Let’s call him’. I guess with supergroups, there are connotations of intention that might be questionable. But at the same time I get the fact that we’re three different musicians with three established careers, we’ve made three names for ourselves and now we’ve come together to do one thing. But I think the term is kinda silly – if I didn’t, I’d be kind of an asshole for thinking that I’m super.”

So here they are. Not for them the preciousness of CSNY, the inter-band sniping of Velvet Revolver, the ongoing soap opera that is Black Country or indeed the schisms that ruined Cream (twice – even their brief 2005 reunion fell foul of “a certain amount of animosity”). No, the Vultures are solid, old enough and wise enough to avoid any of those common traps. It still sounds like some idyllic three-way honeymoon.

“There are certain moments when I’m reminded that John was in my favourite rock band of all-time,” says Grohl. “It’s when we’re on stage and I’m soaking wet from playing for the last hour and a half, and we’re in the last jam of the night, and he’s got the neck of his bass underneath my Riot cymbal and we’re staring each other in the eyes, smiling and thinking: ‘OK, let’s go, let’s fucking go!’

“For the past 20 years I’ve been recognised as the cymbal-cracking, punk-rock Muppet-Animal drummer, when really my whole life I’ve loved listening to funk, dance, disco and R&B. When John and I sit down at soundcheck we don’t bust into some fucking hard’n’fast rock thing. We just start to fucking groove together. It’s one of the great things about Zeppelin and one of the great things about the Vultures: it can be dark and it can be heavy, but it can still groove.”

The factors which will ultimately determine the Vultures’ long-term fate are likely to come from outside the band, rather than within. As highlighted by the LA fiasco, there are clearly logistical and potentially destabilising issues in running a group with a three-way management set-up. But the biggest foreseeable hazard might well be the small matter of how to work around the day jobs. Grohl has plans for a new Foo Fighters album – “We’ve been writing and demoing Foo Fighters stuff for the last couple of months, so we’ll go into the studio in September to start working on the next one” – while Homme has dusted off QOTSA for a bunch of festival shows this summer.

After Reading, he reveals, “Queens are going to get back in the studio and begin the process of trying to destroy everybody else”. So how are all these activities compatible? “The Vultures and the Foo Fighters are two entirely different experiences, but they serve each other well,” reasons Grohl. “The drums, for me, even though they’re not my first instrument, are definitely my home. But the Foo Fighters represent something more than just a band to me; they represent something very deep and meaningful. It’s the thing that helped me get over Nirvana. It’s the thing that helped me continue to fall in love with music over and over again. I don’t want to make a stupid analogy, but being in the Vultures is like taking a Maserati down the fuckin’ autobahn, with the speakers on 10. It’s really fuckin’ exciting. And it’s great to go from one to the other. I can’t wait to come back and do shows with the Vultures. Y’know, it’s like visiting someone you haven’t seen in a long time and they’re three inches taller and they have tits!”

Homme mirrors his bandmate’s sentiments. “I’ve always embraced my own musical schizophrenia,” he says, “and the Vultures is just another room in that mansion of personality. [QOTSA, Eagles Of Death Metal, The Desert Sessions and Them Crooked Vultures] are all kind of requirements for each other. They eternally till the soil for the other. When I get involved in something, you get everything I have to give.”

It’s fighting talk alright, but will schedules and other commitments really allow enough light for a second Vultures album? Or, as the rumour mill has been suggesting of late, are they over before they’ve really begun? Grohl, Homme and Jones are all convinced they’re in it for the long-term. “I really hope there’ll be a second album,” contends Grohl. “It doesn’t feel like a side-project, it feels like a band. It’s just a matter of figuring out how we can make it work. Personally, I think we could walk into the studio and make a record in two weeks. There’s no question in my mind that we could do that.”

Says Jones: “It’s just a question of finding time. We all bring different things to the mix and are all keen to keep this going. I love it.”

Homme is particularly adamant: “I feel very comfortable speaking for everyone: there has to be another Vultures record. Part of why I love doing this is because there’s absolutely no rulebook. There’s a flow of suggestions and endless opinions. There’s really no way to do this wrong. The Vultures has to happen, because we have too much of a good time doing it. What we need is to come together the same way we did the first time. And I think that requires a little bit of air. The mystery and magic – the surprise element – is what I love in music. It works so well that there’s no reason why we couldn’t turn up just behind your shoulder again. Like we did the first time round.”

Here’s hoping.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 146, May 2010

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2008, and sister title Prog since its inception in 2009. Regular contributor to Uncut magazine for over 20 years. Other clients include Word magazine, Record Collector, The Guardian, Sunday Times, The Telegraph and When Saturday Comes. Alongside Marc Riley, co-presenter of long-running A-Z Of David Bowie podcast. Also appears twice a week on Riley’s BBC6 radio show, rifling through old copies of the NME and Melody Maker in the Parallel Universe slot. Designed Aston Villa’s kit during a previous life as a sportswear designer. Geezer Butler told him he loved the all-black away strip.

Southern rock and country music has always been part of Black Label Society leader and Ozzy Osbourne right-hand-man Zakk Wylde’s DNA. But 2016’s solo album Book Of Shadows 2 found Zakk leaning into his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers, as he explained when Metal Hammer talked to him at the time.

For metalheads around the world, the name ‘Zakk Wylde’ conjures images of a hulking, flaxen-haired rock god, swaddled in leather, chains and denim, slaying the howling legions of the pit with bone-crushing riffs and dazzling fretboard heroics that seem to defy the intended anatomical capacities of the human hand.

But long before he claimed his pedestal in Heavy Metal’s Pantheon Of Shredders, Zakk saw himself as just another long-haired kid from the South, rapturously devoted to the barrelling, whisky-marinated jams of Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band and Molly Hatchet. Wait, the South? We thought you were from… Zakk roars with laughter before clarifying,

“The running joke has always been, ‘Zakk, you’re always listening to Southern rock. Are you from the South?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, South Jersey!’ Down near the shore, bro!”

Zakk is still very much a Southern boy – Southern California now, to be precise – and we’ve arrived at his SoCal manse this morning (he calls it the Black Vatican) to pull out the acoustic guitars, kick our feet up and shoot the breeze over his love of old-school Southern rock, clearly heard on his enthralling new solo album, Book Of Shadows II – the long-awaited follow-up to 1996’s Book Of Shadows.

The roots of his obsession lie deep; he discovered the music in grade school, when he pillaged the record collection of his friend’s older brother.

“My buddy Scott had 11 siblings,” he remembers. “His brothers would listen to all the cool music – stuff like The Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, Neil Young, The Allman Brothers – obviously – and Skynyrd.”

In his early days as a guitarist, playing with Ozzy Osbourne in the 80s and 90s, Zakk proudly displayed his influences for all to see. “I had the rebel flag on my guitar as a tribute to the whole Southern rock movement,” he remembers. “As far as the music, even with Ozz, we’d be rolling down the road after a gig and we’d just be up all night listening to The Band, the Eagles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bob Seger. That’s the stuff I listen to when I’m just chilling out.”

The unmistakable influence of each of these artists rings out loudly throughout Zakk’s catalogue, but particularly on his mid-90s Southern rock side project, Pride & Glory, the original Book Of Shadows and contemporary country-infused material such as 2013’s unplugged album, Unblackened, as well as songs like Scars, from Black Label Society’s 2014 album, Catacombs Of The Black Vatican. But what draws Zakk to these musicians is more than just insidiously catchy melodies and syrupy acoustic chord progressions – it’s that he finds them all incredibly heavy. Heaviness, he explains, comes in many forms.

“To me it’s a combination of everything,” he says, “but it’s got to have a weight to it, whether it’s [Simon & Garfunkel’s] Bridge Over Troubled Water or [Neil Young’s] Heart Of Gold. Those lyrics have weight. Doing songs like Desperado [the Eagles] or Heart of Gold is different than doing something powered by a riff, like say, Black Dog or Smoke On The Water.”

In any discussion of Zakk’s biggest influences, Skynyrd, The Band and The Eagles pop up repeatedly, and he talks about Neil Young a lot, but there’s a conspicuous absence of references to the forefathers of country music – guys like the hard-drinking George Jones – arguably the greatest country singer of all time. Or Merle Haggard, the godfather of country’s own version of the punk movement – the snarling, anti-authoritarian ‘Outlaw’ genre – or the man whom many claim as the first American rock star, Hank Williams, Sr.

“That’s real country,” Zakk says. “When you talk to people who love country, there’s a division between the old guard and today’s country music, which is an infusion of that and pop. Look at [mainstream country megastar] Garth Brooks – he loves Kiss, so he takes the production and the fire from them and turns it into a country Rammstein show! Obviously you’d never see that during a Hank Sr. show. The only thing you’d see in those shows is a lot of booze and a lot of brawling! Ha ha ha!”

This spring, two decades after the release of the original, Zakk will release solo album Book Of Shadows II, a deeply reverential canon of slow-rolling Southern rock balladry, shimmering with vibrant splashes of piano, lush acoustic texturing and a warm tonal palette that invests his themes of loss and regret with a trembling sense of intimacy. What prompted this follow-up now?

“First off,” he explains, “I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. Secondly, we’ve been touring all the time and running into all of the extended Black Label family, whether it’s the Boston Chapter, the London Chapter, the Australian Chapter, the Stockholm Chapter or whatever, and people were always asking me, ‘Are you ever going to get around to doing another Book Of Shadows record? I really dig the mellow stuff.’ We toured Catacombs… for the past two years, so when we did an Unblackened run from New York to L.A. [in April 2015], we got to really focus on the mellow side, and I thought that since it was the 20-year anniversary of Book Of Shadows, why not do another chapter?”

Although Zakk gleefully points out that his 20-year gap shatters Axl Rose’s 15-year wait for Chinese Democracy, he explains that his songwriting process for Book Of Shadows II was both organic and uncommonly verdant. By way of example, he explains how hearing a random song on the radio in the morning could yield a new song by dinner.

“If you and I were making a coffee run and listening to [Neil Young’s] Heart Of Gold, you might come back and say, ‘Man, it would be great to have something like this on the record.’ When we get back to the Black Vatican, I’ll pick up the acoustic, and you’ll get behind the drums and say, ‘Let’s start it out like this.’” Next thing you know, they’ve written a new song. “That’s why it’s so much fun,” he says. “You’re constantly creating.”

Book Of Shadows II coincides with a thunderous mainstream resurgence of country music and, by extension, Southern rock, in North America. Outside of the US, however, the genre is barely generating a spark. Is it just an American thing?

“Well, the analogy is punk rock,” Zakk says. “Between The Clash and the Sex Pistols, the attitude is very English. That’s how movements get created – they flow from a certain spot.”

He points out that while the Southern rock pioneers gravitated towards the top British hard rock bands of the day, their sound emerged in Florida – a region steeped in traditional American country. The convergence of those particular influences, he explains, could not have occurred anywhere else on the planet. “Skynyrd really loved Bad Company. It’s blues, but heavy blues. And you hear Stones mixed in there, too. But when you think of Skynyrd, there’s country in it obviously, because of where they’re from – Florida. They were hearing that music all the time. I’m sure that Ronnie [Van Zant, Skynyrd’s original frontman] loved Hank Sr. and he loved traditional country music.”

Zakk demurs at any suggestion that Book Of Shadows II, or its predecessor, for that matter, are country albums, insisting that a massive distinction separates true country music from Southern rock, which is straightforward classic rock enhanced with traditional country elements.

“[Hank Williams is] really traditional country music, which is different from Skynyrd and the Allmans. You can’t say that’s really country. Or when Neil Young does Heart Of Gold, because it has the pedal steel in there, it has elements of country music. I love the sound of pedal steel. On Darkest Days [from Black Label Society’s 2010 album Order Of the Black], I used a slide with a volume pedal to recreate the sound of a pedal steel. It’s a beautiful sound. That’s country.”

Beyond his abiding love of Southern rock, it’s clear that Zakk has no plans to move to Nashville, to launch a full-on country career or to distance himself from heavy metal. He insists that Book Of Shadows II is simply a heartfelt celebration of the music that he’s enjoyed since he first turned on to rock’n’roll.

“This music has always been there,” he says. “Even with Ozzy, when we did Mama, I’m Coming Home, and Road To Nowhere and stuff like that, that’s how long it’s been around. I love the fact that we can take a break from it and then come back to it, and I’m sure that when we finish touring Book Of Shadows II, we’re going to be itching to do the heavy stuff again.”

He pauses for a moment before invoking the man’s name one last time. “I’m truly blessed to have sort of a Neil Young thing going on. Neil Young can play with Crazy Horse and then he can do Neil Young with him sitting on an acoustic. Nobody’s telling me, ‘You’ve got to make a record like this.’ I can do any album I want to do. I wouldn’t change my situation for anything.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 282, April 2016

Hailing from San Diego, California, Joe Daly is an award-winning music journalist with over thirty years experience. Since 2010, Joe has been a regular contributor for Metal Hammer, penning cover features, news stories, album reviews and other content. Joe also writes for Classic Rock, Bass Player, Men’s Health and Outburn magazines. He has served as Music Editor for several online outlets and he has been a contributor for SPIN, the BBC and a frequent guest on several podcasts. When he’s not serenading his neighbours with black metal, Joe enjoys playing hockey, beating on his bass and fawning over his dogs.

Jeff Beck was the guitar hero’s guitar hero. The British axeman – who died in 2023 – dazzled with his sizzling six-string sonics for more than half a century. From the psych-tinged R&B of The Yardbirds, to the Jeff Beck Group with Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart, to the radio-friendly jazz/rock instrumental masterpiece Blow By Blow, a Who’s Who of guest appearances (Mick Jagger, Roger Waters, Brian May, Paul Rodgers, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner) and beyond, Beck he constantly exploring and moving forward. In 2009, he sat down with Classic Rock to look back on some of his more memorable encounters.

Jimi Hendrix

When I saw Jimi we knew he was going to be trouble. And by ‘we’ I mean me and Eric [Clapton], because Jimmy [Page] wasn’t in the frame at that point. I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating. He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you’, but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs.

Reporters got the number of my flat the day he died. I was suicidal at the time, because my girlfriend had dumped me. And to have to the deal with a call saying “Jimi Hendrix is dead. How do you feel about that?” At first I thought it was a bloody hoax, but as the day wore on I realised it was tragically true.

I don’t want to say that I knew him well, I don’t think anybody did, but there was a period in London when I went to visit him quite few times. He invited me down to Olympic studios and I gave him a bottleneck. That’s what he plays on Axis: Bold As Love. We hooked up in New York and played at Steve Paul’s club The Scene.

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Sly Stone

Carmine [Appice, drummer with Beck, Bogert & Appice] knew that I was a big fan of Sly so he arranged the session. We went to San Francisco to do some recording and we were stuck in a hotel for 10 days and never saw him.

Eventually we got into the studio and Sly saw Carmine’s drums and said: “You can take half of that away, we don’t need that.” Then he disappeared into a back room and never came out again. He eventually called me through his microphonic system. I remember sitting in his office cross-legged, with his wife giggling, and we played for about two hours. I’ve got it on tape somewhere.

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We did a gig in Florida and there was this monsoon-type rain going on; there was a lot of condensation in the air. Ronnie did this fabulous bass solo, I slapped him a high five and 400 volts went across our two hands and blew us both off the stage. We’ve both got small pockmarks on our hands where the sparks hit.

I’d seen quite a lot of him and then, to my amazement, his marriage took a left turn and he’s ensconced in a new relationship, so I haven’t so much of him recently. But he did induct me at the Classic Rock Awards, and that was fun.

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Cozy Powell

I was auditioning for drummers and I was late. When I finally arrived there were 15 drum kits set up and one double kit in red glitter. I said to my assistant: “Whose is that flash-bastard kit over there?” And she pointed and said: “He’s the guy you want.” I said: “Let me hear him first and then we’ll go from there.” Cozy and I played for about a minute and you could see all the other drummers packing up their kits. He looked the part as well as being the part. Cozy had the image and he played great. We struck up a friendship from that time on. His idol was John Bonham, and I guess he was my John Bonham.

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Keith Moon

I’ve got plenty of stories about Keith. There’s the one about when he wanted to sell me a car. It started off in the gents at the Speakeasy – as most of his stories do. He came up to me and said: “I’ve got a roadster I want to sell you.” I said: “I don’t want it.” He said: “Alright, come down the house tomorrow and I’ll give it to you.” So I drove down. Right on time he turned up in this white [Rolls-Royce] Corniche with this beautiful blonde-haired girl and said: “She’s yours. This is my house-warming present for you.”

That night he put me in this room with a jukebox in it and a single mattress on the floor. I went to sleep, and right in the middle of the night Beck’s Bolero [Beck’s first hit single] started up and it played over and over again, it wouldn’t stop. So I unplugged the jukebox. The girl came in and said: “Why did you unplug that? Keith and I were really enjoying it.” Then she said: “By the way, I’m not to go back up to Keith’s, I’ve got to stay with you.” It was a very enjoyable weekend.

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Jimmy Page

My sister knew Jimmy from Epsom Art School. She came to my room one day and said: “There’s a weirdo at school, he’s got a weird guitar like yours,” and then slammed the door. I ran after her saying: “Where is he?” She said, ‘I’ll take you over there because I’d like to see him play. I don’t believe he can play.” We went over there, he opened the door and we got tea and cake. We visited regularly from then on. His mum had bought him a really good-quality tape recorder, so we’d record there. I don’t know where those tapes are now but there’s some rare stuff on them.

When I first heard what he’d done with Led Zeppelin I thought: “That’s a little bit more than inspired by the [Beck’s] Truth album.” When I finally got over that I realised I needed more than I had. I needed a frontman with girly appeal. Plant certainly had that in abundance – the bare chest, golden locks and all that. We [the Jeff Beck Group] had Rod Stewart [laughs].

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Eric Clapton

I know he didn’t like the fact that I took over from him in the Yardbirds and we did great. The general buzz of the band was that they thought they were finished when Eric left. At my debut with the Yardbirds at the Marquee I showed them what was what and I got a standing ovation, so that was the end of that.

Two months after that things took off in the States, which pissed Eric off big time. I think he was hankering after going there – like we all were. That was our holy grail, going to America to see the blues players. Within a week we were down in Chicago looking at Howlin’ Wolf. So I think Eric was a bit jealous on that front. But then along came Cream and he blew everybody away.

Nowadays he’s a changed person. He seems a lot more mellow and happier with himself. I think he’s realised that you don’t have to be mean or in anyway guarded, you can offer yourself in so many ways. And he’s given so much pleasure with his playing and deservedly got the accolades.

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Frank Zappa

I loved his political outbursts. From what I could read between the lines he probably could have made the best American president ever. He was very knowledgeable about world affairs and he had a deep cynical streak.

Me and Ronnie Wood knew no fear when we were together [in the Jeff Beck Group] in ’69. I knew where Frank lived and I drove up to Laurel Canyon in a rented Camarro and did a rubber burnout outside his house. He of course heard it, and came out and said: “You can cut out that shit,” and invited us in. He took a shine to me and Ronnie big-time.

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I met him at a CBS convention in Hawaii in 1981. He was a little worse for wear. He was eating KFC out of a box and then ate the box as well.

We went on the road together in ’89. He’d got a beautiful new girlfriend and he was as straight as a die. We were on the road for about three months. And then the tragic story was when he went in that helicopter he didn’t want to get on it. The people around him talked him into it by saying: “Look Eric [Clapton] has just got on one.” So off he went and never came back. I think Stevie Ray was the closest thing to Hendrix when it came to playing the blues.

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Eddie Van Halen

He was the great white hope when he did the solo on [Michael Jackson’s] Beat It. I’d seen him, and I don’t like the speed tapping style very much, but he had it down. I once saw him play a blues solo and it was astonishing, he really can play. But he was on the booze, and objectionable a lot of the time.

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Mick Jagger

I used to get mistaken for him all the time in ’61. I used to have girls screaming at me and I didn’t know what the fuck they were screaming about. I’d pull up along somebody in a car and they’d go: “Mick!” And I’d be thinking: “Who the fuck is this Mick?” Then I realised it was this guy in The Rolling Stones called Mick Jagger.

I was always thinking: “I wonder if I could play in that band?” I seemed to fit the style, loved the blues and all the rest of it. I kept my eye on them. And lo and behold Mick calls me up and wants me to do an album [She’s The Boss]. And that was the first time I met him. I thought Mick was charming. He treated me really well. Loved women, of course.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 133, May 2009

Pete Makowski joined Sounds music weekly aged 15 as a messenger boy, and was soon reviewing albums. When no-one at the paper wanted to review Deep Purple‘s Made In Japan in December 1972, Makowski did the honours. The following week the phone rang in the Sounds office. It was Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. “Thanks for the review,” said Blackmore. “How would you like to come on tour with us in Europe?” He also wrote for Street Life, New Music News, Kerrang!, Soundcheck, Metal Hammer and This Is Rock, and was a press officer for Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Motörhead, the New York Dolls and more. Sounds Editor Geoff Barton introduced Makowski to photographer Ross Halfin with the words, “You’ll be bad for each other,” creating a partnership that spanned three decades. Halfin and Makowski worked on dozens of articles for Classic Rock in the 00-10s, bringing back stories that crackled with humour and insight. Pete died in November 2021.

You know how sometimes you put on a coat you haven’t worn for a while and discover a tenner in the inside pocket (great feeling), some artists get into such a fruitfully creative run in their career that they have classics lying about all over the place. You could say it’s the true mark of generational artists, shopping out era-defining hits to their peers because, well, ‘We’re just stacked over here, we haven’t the space’.

It’s a shame this act of generosity seems to have dried up a little of late. The last notable gift could well be Coldplay saving the career of post-Britpop also-rans Embrace by giving them the Top Ten hit Gravity, but no-one wants to read a list of ten classics that features a song by Embrace, that would be mad. Instead, here are ten given-away masterpieces that will last for the ages…

Mott The Hoople – All The Young Dudes (1972)

One of the most famous artist donations of all time. Hereford rock quartet Mott The Hoople were on the verge of splitting up due to lack of success in 1972. Luckily, in David Bowie they had a famous fan who was willing to lend a hand. Actually it wasn’t a hand, it was a really great song. Bowie originally offered the band the stomping The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars cut Suffragette City, which they rejected (which is weird). Not to be deterred he came up with this glam-rock anthem in two hours instead. He produced it for them and it became a Top Three hit. Mott The Hoople were saved. He offered them Drive-In Saturday as a follow-up and they rejected him again. They didn’t help themselves, did they?

Badfinger – Come & Get It (1969)

Being gifted a song does not necessarily mean that the receiving party can’t write their own, it’s just sometimes an artist needs that certain something to light a fire under their career. That’s certainly the case with Martin Scorsese faves Badfinger, who wrote a number of early 70s crackers including Baby Blue, Day After Day and Without You. But it was this Paul McCartney-penned tune that got them going, their first release as Badfinger. McCartney had a vested interest given the band were on The Beatles’ Apple label, giving them a hit and sparking a topsy-turvy and sometimes-tragic career.

The Bangles – Manic Monday (1985)

Of the many songs to be outsourced from Paisley Park, the most famous is Sinead O’Connor’s timeless take on Nothing Compares 2 U. But given it had already been recorded by Prince offshoot The Family, it probably counts as a cover. The jaunty, jubilant pop of Manic Monday doesn’t, though. Prince originally wrote it for his female singing trio Apollonia 6 before re-diverting it to LA pop-rock quartet The Bangles, who happily received it. Prince, who donated the song under the pseudonym of Christopher, kept the track off the Number One spot in the US charts because his own Kiss was planted there.

Stevie Nicks – Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around (1981)

It’s perhaps being a bit liberal with the truth to describe Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around as a song given to Stevie Nicks – this was more a song stolen. Nicks is one of the all-time great songwriters but she was desperate for Tom Petty to write her a track that would give her debut solo album a taste of the Heartbreakers’ sound that she was so into at the time. Petty did – the song was called Insider and turned out so good he decided to keep it for himself. Here’s where producer Jimmy Iovine, working with Nicks and Petty at the same time, pulled off a sneaky move. Petty and his band had laid down a version of Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around and the producer got Nicks to do her own version, turning it into a duet. Petty was miffed at the time but came to grow fond of the clandestine collaboration, sometimes joining Nicks onstage to perform it.

Diana Ross – Chain Reaction (1985)

The Bee Gees were prolific – and prolifically successful – writers for other people. Standouts included Dionne Warwick’s Heartbreaker, Islands In The Stream for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and the Grease theme tune for Frankie Valli. And no backchat please – the Grease theme tune is cracking. But this pips them all, transplanting a swaggering 80s singalong onto a Motown groove for one of the latter’s biggest stars, Diana Ross. It became Ross’s second UK Number One upon release in November 1985.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Woodstock (1970)

Joni Mitchell’s lilting tribute to the iconic festival – which she missed because her manager advised her it would be better for her career to appear on a TV show – was included on her 1970 record Ladies Of The Canyon. But she was pipped to the post when Graham Nash, her boyfriend at the time, recorded an amped-up, grizzled take on it with his group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and they included it on their second record Déjà Vu, which came out a month before Ladies Of The Canyon. I mean, is there a better example of the sharing-is-caring approach to being in a relationship? Even better, there’s also a version out there from 1969 featuring guitar and bass from Jimi Hendrix.

Bedtime Story – Madonna (1994)

Madonna had long been a pop superstar by the time her sixth studio rolled around in the mid-90s, but after the iffy reaction to her 1992 triumvirate of sauciness – album Erotica, book Sex and film Body Of Evidence – she was determined to get her musical credentials back on track. Showcasing the out-of-the-box thinking that made her such an trailblazer in the first place, she turned to synth-pop experimentalist Björk (a genius, but hardly a go-to artist if you’re after a massive hit) for help. Reluctant at first, the Icelandic star soon crafted a song for Madonna in the trance-y, pulsing Let’s Get Unconscious with producer Nellee Hooper. Retitled Bedtime Story by Madonna, it became the sort-of title track to parent album Bedtime Stories and opened up Madonna’s sound to the sort of electronic-pop anthems she would take to new heights with her late 90s masterpiece Ray Of Light.

Tina Turner – Private Dancer (1984)

Everything about the title track to Tina Turner’s all-conquering, career-changing fifth solo album changes when you discover it was written by Dire Straits’ mainman Mark Knopfler. In Turner’s hands, the lyric is weary and soulful, lending the huge hook its emotional anchor. There is, on a shelf somewhere, a Dire Straits recording of it, but no-one ever needs to hear Mark Knopfler, the sort of bloke who has always looked like he was born in his late 40s, sing the words “I’m your private dancer/A dancer for money/And any old music will do”. Not unless it’s a scene in an Alan Partridge show. Knopfler obviously thought the same, binning off his band’s version and giving it to Turner two years later. But not before he repurposed the melody for Dire Straits’ Love Over Gold (which is pretty rubbish, FYI).

James Taylor – You’ve Got A Friend (1971)

That’s an understatement – US singer-songwriter Taylor had one of the most generous friends of all in Carole King. The two were working on their new albums together simultaneously, sharing ideas and musicians in the sessions, when King wrote a reply-song to Taylor’s downbeat ballad Fire And Rain and came up with one of the best songs of all time. You’ve Got A Friend is one of those rare tracks that feels like there couldn’t have been a time when it didn’t exist and both Taylor and King included versions on resulting albums – King’s Tapestry and Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon – that were released within months of each other. It was Taylor’s version that was released as a single and became a huge hit. Hope he said thanks.

Patti Smith Group – Because The Night (1978)

In another cunning little manoeuvre by Jimmy Iovine, the producer was working with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the same time he was in the studio with Patti Smith and when he watched The Boss struggling to lay down a satisfactory version of Because The Night, he had a lightbulb moment. Telling Springsteen how much he wanted Smith to have a hit, he suggested giving this driving, powerful anthem to her and Springsteen was down with it. The punk-poet legend tweaked the lyrics slightly and its success propelled her third studio Easter to triumph.

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he’s interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.