Flotsam And Jetsam guitarist, Michael Gilbert, has shared the new video below, along with the following message:
“Awesome 5 day trip I did on the bike in April. Some places it got pretty chilly especially after I passed through Big Sur and Monterrey. I highly recommend this trip even if not on a cycle its absolutely beautiful. 5 days is not enough…”
Gear:
– GoPro 7 Black – GoPro 8 Black – DJI Mini Mavic – Harley Davidson Seventy-Two – Feiyu Tech G4 Pro Gimbal
Software:
– Divinci Resolve
Flotsam And Jetsam’s latest album, I Am The Weapon, landed at #3 on our BravePicks 2024. See the complete list here.
I Am The Weapon was composed and produced by the whole band and the eleven new songs were recorded at SonicPhish Productions, Gnome Lord Studios, Wayne Manor Studios, and Seventh Spike Studios. The cover artwork was again created by Andy Pilkington.
Order your copy of this must-have album, one that belongs into every well-sorted metal record collection, here.
“This entire record was special to us, and we did our best to make music that inspired us first and foremost,” the band comments. “We all genuinely love this record, and every song on the record, so hopefully our listeners feel as strongly as we do.”
“Thank you so much for your support, your love, and your encouragement for the last 40 years. You are the reason we continue to tour and to make music! You are the best, and we will continue to fight for the music as long as we have breath!”
I Am The Weapon tracklisting:
“A New Kind Of Hero” “Primal” “I Am The Weapon” “Burned My Bridges” “The Head Of The Snake” “Beneath The Shadows” “Gates Of Hell” “Cold Steel Lights” “Kings Of The Underworld” “Running Through The Fire” “Black Wings”
That’s right. Jaws is as old now as silent movies were when Jaws came out. (I told you you should be sitting down for this.)
If you were alive for 1975 — or even if you just remember watching the movies of 1975 as a kid in the 1980s or ’90s — this can be a very tough pill to swallow. But we have no choice. We have to accept it. Time marches on.
And for the 25 movies below, which run the gamut from huge blockbusters to arty classics to big awards movies to the tiny indie debuts of some of the 20th century’s biggest filmmakers, time has marched on to such a degree that they are now all half a century old. Every single one. Old old old. Sigh.
Still sitting down? The movies that came out in the year 2000 are now 25 years old. 2000 was a quarter century ago. None of this makes any sense. Regardless, here are 25 movies turning 50 years old in 2025.
25 Movies Turning 50 in 2025
1975 was a big year for movies — all of which are now 50 years old.
During a recent appearance on The Downbeat Podcast, hosted by Stray From The Path drummer Craig Reynolds, Cradle Of Filth vocalist Dani Filth spoke about his band’s highly anticipated, and long-awaited, collaboration with British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. An excerpt has been transcribed as follows:
What’s going on with the Ed Sheeran collaboration?
Dani Filth: “ The Ed Sheeran one is done and dusted. We did it like two years ago. It was weird, because we were planning to do it for about a year and a half.”
How did that come about?
Dani Filth: “I don’t know. I think our managers got in touch with each other somehow. His manager, Stuart, used to listen to Coal Chamber when he was growing up. Ed did a single where he played a vampire, and I think one day he got asked questions somewhere where it was, like, ‘Are you into heavy metal?’ I don’t know why? And he said, ‘Yeah, I was really into Slipknot and Cradle Of Filth….’ So apparently they talked, and the chat came around, we should do a collab, it’d be hilarious. And he was right up for it. So when he was eventually free and we were free, he just comes to the studio by himself. He didn’t even ask, like, ‘Are you gonna be there with your mums and everything?’ So we were very respectful. It was just me, the producer and him in our little countryside studio, probably 15 miles away as a crow flies from where he lives. He turns up in his wife’s secret Mini, the one he can get out of the house, on his own, Cradle hoodie, guitar on his back. That was it. We spent the afternoon recording. He was telling us loads of funny stories, really cool. And then when we finished, we were, like, ‘Do you wanna go for a pint?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m bit peckish.’ So we went to the local pub, at which point everybody in the pub, and it’s like a very, very rustic old country pub, suddenly everybody, all these old dears and that, all knew his mum and they were all flocking over. And he’d be, like, ‘I have no idea who that is.’ But it was really cool. The song’s great. We didn’t wanna release it back then because we were busy with other things. Then he couldn’t release it because he was doing a bunch of stuff. So it’s just gonna come out when it does. We didn’t wanna put it on the album.”
Is it a Cradle Of Filth song featuring Ed Sheeran, or an Ed Sheeran song featuring Dani Filth?
Dani Filth: “It’s a brand new Cradle Of Filth song featuring Ed Sheeran, and a lot of it sounds like Ed Sheeran. He’s playing acoustic guitar, he’s singing Ed Sheeran, but a lot of it sounds like us. There’s a blast beat, scream. Ed really pushes himself in it as well. He does rock vocals.”
What’s the lyrics about?
Dani Filth: “It’s called – no, I can’t talk about it cause I’ll get in trouble. It’s about affirmation. It’s a bit about self-affirmation. It works. It’s a really good song. Only about a handful of people… my mum hasn’t even heard it. That’ll come out as and when.”
In October 2024, Cradle Of Filth, delivered a brand-new, entrancing single. “Malignant Perfection” arrived just in time for the Halloween season, haunting with eerie keys, vampiric atmosphere, intricate riffs and revered frontman Dani Filth’s iconic soaring vocals. The track is accompanied by a deliciously dark new official music video, which promises to be only the first of several upcoming visual delights brought to you by Cradle Of Filth as they creep closer to the release of their 14th full-length album and Napalm Records studio debut.
Dani Filth divulged about the track and video: “Our new single and video, ‘Malignant Perfection’, is our horrific homage to All Hallows Eve, as embodied by the female deification of evil. It is a perfect musical accompaniment to the spirit of the witching season; invoking dark, Autumnal splendour and celebrating the time when the thin line between life and death is at its most tenuous and the denizens of the otherworld seek to break the veil into ours.
The video, directed by the imitable Vicente Cordero and featuring the creative masterstrokes of one Missy Munster, is a playground of seductive darkness rife with malicious monsters and cryptid creations, all vying voraciously for the viewer’s eternal soul.
Stream/download “Malignant Perfection” here, and watch the official music video below:
German hard rockers Bonfire have shared a new single, “Lost All Control.” The track is off their new studio album, Higher Ground, out on January 24, 2025, via Frontiers Music Srl. The track is accompanied by a new music video, available below.
Bassist Ronnie Parkes comments on the new single: “’Lost All Control’ is a powerful song with great performances throughout the track and it is very melodic. It talks about the isolation and the disconnection of reality that people with mental illness sometimes have to deal with. One of my favourites off the new album!”
“Nostradamus” “I Will Rise” “Higher Ground” “I Died Tonight” “Lost All Control” “When Love Comes Down” “Fallin'” “Come Hell Or High Water” “Jealousy” “Spinnin’ In The Black” “Rock’n’Roll Survivor” (2024 Version)
“I Will Rise” video:
“I Died Tonight” video:
Bonfire is one of the most seminal German hard rock bands of the past 50 years. Originally founded as Cacumen in 1972 by guitarist Hans Ziller in Ingolstadt, Germany, the group initially played local venues, steadily building a fan base before releasing their first album under the name Cacumen.
In 1986, the band rebranded as Bonfire, and their debut album as Bonfire, Don’t Touch the Light, marked their international breakthrough. They followed it up with Fireworks in 1987, which further cemented their status in the rock and metal scene. Despite their success, Bonfire experienced several lineup changes, including the departure of key members. However, Ziller, the band’s driving force, kept Bonfire alive, continuously adapting to the challenges faced by the group.
In the 1990s, Bonfire briefly disbanded but returned in 1996, with Ziller reclaiming the rights to the band’s name. Since then, Bonfire has released numerous albums and maintained a strong presence on the international rock scene. Bonfire has remained a resilient force in hard rock, continuing to tour and release new material well into the 21st century.
During their most successful phase with album classics such as Don’t Touch The Light (1986), Fireworks (1987) and Point Blank (1989), the group – alongside Scorpions and Accept – counted among the three most popular German acts on a global basis, including triumphal accomplishments throughout Europe and overseas, celebrated tours alongside Judas Priest and ZZ Top, gold records, high chart positions, TV appearances and more than 35 million YouTube views of their hit “You Make Me Feel” alone.
The band’s trademarks continue to be and always have been deeply melodic hard rock songs, driven by captivating guitar parts, grooving rhythms, and haunting vocal melodies. To this day, band founder/guitarist Hans Ziller and his exceptional group regularly awe their fans with new releases and impressive shows.
Higher Ground is a new life chapter for Bonfire and the very first release under the wings of Frontiers Records.
Bonfire are:
Hans Ziller – Guitar Dyan Mair – Vocals Frank Pané – Guitar Ronnie Parkes – Bass Fabio Alessandrini – Drums
Long running Deep Purple site, Darker Than Blue, have released the image below, along with the following message:
“Many Deep Purple fans will recognise this collectable single sleeve, released in Holland to celebrate Child In Time‘s place at the top of the countries most popular rock tracks of all time in 1975. But who would have thought it would still be in the top twenty (just!) 50 years later? Tonny Steenhagen has crunched the numbers from 1999 on (let’s hope my translator for the header has worked or he’ll be on to us!). If that doesn’t merit a limited edition 12″ over there I don’t know what does.”
“Child In Time” (7:49) “Smoke On The Water” (3:45) “Fireball” (3:23)
Lineup:
Ritchie Blackmore – guitar Ian Gillan – vocals Roger Glover – bass Jon Lord – organ, keyboards Ian Paice – drums
Deep Purple frontman, Ian Gillan, recently announced the February 14 release of the 7CD boxset, Gillan: 1978 – 1982. The set includes studio recordings, a live album and a wealth of B-sides and bonus material.
Limited editions, including a print signed by Ian, are available while stocks last. Pre-order here, and watch a video message from Gillan below.
The new Gillan 7CD box set offers a comprehensive collection of the band’s work during the years from 1978 to 1982, when they rose to prominence in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) scene.
The set includes seven albums from this era, featuring studio recordings, a live album, and a wealth of B-sides and bonus material. The albums featured in this set are as follows: Gillan (The Japanese Album) – Originally released in September 1978, this was the debut of the band formed by Ian Gillan after leaving the Ian Gillan Band. It marked a shift away from jazz fusion to a heavier rock sound. Mr. Universe – Released in 1979, this was a key album that solidified their success, featuring a mix of hard rock and NWOBHM influences. Glory Road – A 1980 release, this album is considered the height of the band’s success, both commercially and musically. Future Shock – Released in 1981, this album continued the band’s momentum, but guitarist Bernie Tormé left shortly afterward. Double Trouble – A double album from 1981 that combined studio tracks and live performances and marked Janick Gers’ debut as guitarist. Magic – Released in 1982, this was the band’s final studio album before they disbanded after their last performance at Wembley Arena in December 1982. Live From Reading ’80 – A live album capturing the band’s powerful live performances at the Reading Festival in 1980.
The collection includes a new interview with Ian Gillan conducted by Rich Davenport, providing deeper insights into the band’s history and the albums. The audio has been remastered from the original tapes where possible, ensuring high-quality sound. The packaging is designed in a 7” x 7” format, with 32-page booklet, offering a unique visual presentation for collectors. This set is a valuable offering for fans of Gillan and collectors of rock history, especially from the era of NWOBHM, showcasing the evolution of a band led by one of rock’s iconic vocalists.
Tracklisting:
Disc One: The Japanese Album “Street Theatre” (Instrumental) “Secret Of the Dance” “I’m Your Man” “Dead Of Night” “Fighting Man” “Message In a Bottle” “Not Weird Enough” “Bringing Joanna Back” “Abbey Of Thelema” “Back In the Game” “Vengeance” “Move With the Times” “Sleeping On the Job” “Roller”
Disc Two: Mr Universe “Second Sight” “Secret Of the Dance” “She Tears Me Down” “Roller” “Mr. Universe” “Vengeance” “Puget Sound” “Dead Of Night” “Message In a Bottle” “Fighting Man” “Smoke On the Water” – Live at Kingsway Studio “Parliament Square” – Mr Universe Out Take
Disc Three: Glory Road “Unchain Your Brain” “Are You Sure?” “Time And Again” “No Easy Way” “Sleeping On the Job” “On The Rocks” “If You Believe Me” “Running, White Face, City Boy” “Nervous” “Handles On Her Hips” – B-side of “No Easy Way” “I Might as Well Go Home (Mystic)” – B-side of “No Easy Way” “Higher And Higher” – For Gillan Fans Only “Your Mother Was Right” – For Gillan Fans Only
Disc Four: Future Shock “Future Shock” “Night Ride Out of Phoenix” “(The Ballad Of) The Lusitania Express” “No Laughing in Heaven” “Sacre Bleu” “New Orleans” “Bite The Bullet” “If I Sing Softly” “Don’t Want the Truth” “For Your Dreams” “Trouble” – A-side “Your Sister’s on My List” – B-side of “Trouble” “Mutually Assured Destruction” – A-side “The Maelstrom” – B-side of “Mutually Assured Destruction” “Take A Hold of Yourself” – B-side of “New Orleans” “One For the Road” – B-side of “No Laughing in Heaven” “Lucille” – B-side of “No Laughing in Heaven” “Bad News” – B-side of “No Laughing in Heaven”
Disc Five: Double Trouble “I’ll Rip Your Spine Out” “Restless” “Men Of War” “Sunbeam” “Nightmare” “HadelyBop Bop” “Life Goes On” “Born To Kill” “Spanish Guitar” – Flexipop magazine Dec 81
Disc Six: Double Trouble (Reading 29.8.81) “No Laughing In Heaven” “No Easy Way” “Trouble” “Mutually Assured Destruction” “If You Believe Me” “New Orleans” “Bite The Bullet” – B-side of “Nightmare” / Reading 29.8.81 “On The Rocks” – B-side of “Restless” / Reading 29.8.81 “Mr. Universe” – B-side of “Trouble” / Reading 22.8.80 “Vengeance” – B-side of “Trouble” / Reading 22.8.80 “Smoke On the Water” – B-side of “Trouble” / Reading 22.8.80
Disc Seven: Magic “What’s The Matter” “Bluesy Blue Sea” “Caught In a Trap” “Long Gone” “Driving Me Wild” “Demon Driver” “Living A Lie” “You’re So Right” “Living For the City” “Demon Driver” [reprise] “Breaking Chains” – B-side of “Living for The City” “Purple Sky” – B-side of “Living for The City” Pic Disc “Fiji” – B-side of “Long Gone” “Helter Skelter” – Album outtake, issued on first CD release 1988 “Smokestack Lightning” – Album outtake, issued on first CD release 1988 “South Africa” – A-side – Ian Gillan solo single 1988 “John” – B-side of “South Africa” “South Africa” – Extended 12” version
On New Year’s Eve, December 31, original Queensrÿche singer, Geoff Tate, hosted a party at Finland House in Lantana, Florida. Photos and video from the event can be viewed below:
Geoff Tate, who left Queensrÿche in 2012, recently announced Operation: Mindcrime – The Final Chapter, an extensive US tour. For ticket links, head here. For Meet & Greet passes, head here.
Tour dates:
March 18 – Tucson, AZ – Rialto Theatre 20 – Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater 21 – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre 22 – Wichita, KS – TempleLive Wichita 23 – Kansas City, MO – Knuckleheads 25 – Lincoln, NE – Bourbon Theatre 26 – Fort Smith, AR – TempleLive Fort Smith 27 – Dallas, TX – Echo Music Halt 28 – Houston, TX – House of Blues 29 – San Antonio, TX – Aztec Theater 30 – Austin, TX – Empire Garage
April 1 – New Orleans, LA – House of Blues 2 – Atlanta, GA – Center Stage 3 – Jacksonville, FL – Florida Theater 4 – Clearwater, FL – Ruth Eckerd Hall 5 – Orlando, FL – House of Blues 6 – Fort Lauderdale, FL – Parker Playhouse 8 – Louisville, KY – Mercury Ballroom 9 – Detroit, MI – St Andrews Hall 10 – Grand Rapids, MI – Elevation 11 – St Charles, IL – Arcada Theatre 12 – Cincinnati, OH – Taft Theatre 13 – Fort Wayne, IN – Clyde Theatre 15 – Cleveland, OH – TempleLive 16 – Columbus, OH – TempleLive 17 – Plainfield, IN – Hendrick’s Live 18 – St Louis, MO – Delmar Hall 19 – Milwaukee, WI – Pabst Theater 21 – Green Bay, WI – Epic Event Center 22 – Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater 23 – Fargo, ND – Sanctuary 25 – Boise, ID – Revolution Center
September 25 – Greenville, SC – Radio Room 26 – Myrtle Beach, SC – House of Blues 27 – Raleigh, NC – Lincoln Theatre 28 – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore
October 1 – Hopewell, VA – Beacon Theatre 2 – Glenside, PA – Keswick Theatre 3 – Greensburg, PA – Palace Theatre 5 – Harrisburg, PA – XL Live 8 – Hartford, CT – Infinity Hall 9 – Newton, NJ – Newton Theatre 10 – Red Bank, NJ – Count Basie Theater 11 – Tarrytown, NY – Music Hall 12 – Fairfield, CT – Sacred Heart Theatre 16 – Patchogue, NY – Patchogue Theatre 17 – Homer, NY – Center for the Arts 18 – North Tonawanda, NY – Riviera Theatre
Neil Peart in 1980(Image credit: Fin Costello/Redfern)
We were sitting in Topanga Canyon, California, Neil Peart and I, at the Inn Of The Seventh Ray, his choice. We had already moved seats once, because a nearby babbling brook was overwhelming my tape recorder. But if it wasn’t the small stream of water coming down the nearby hill that stopped us, then it was the extraordinary mixture of pan pipes and soothing new-age music coming from the venue’s speakers.
At one point a unique interpretation of Greensleeves made us look up sharply from our raw soup. Soup, the menu told us, that had been ‘created through the vibrations of each day’. I was quick to point out how much that sounded like one of his lyrics, and that that was clearly why he’d chosen this place.
It was spring 2012. Spirits were high, and I was there to interview Neil for Clockwork Angels,Rush’s final album. This seemed like an impossible idea at the time, given its energy and lustre. The band were in town to add the final touches to the record’s mix at Jim Henson Studios. It was Neil’s eighteenth album alongside bassist/singer Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson, who he’d joined in Rush following the departure of John Rutsey, arriving in time for second album Fly By Night.
Unusually for a drummer, Peart also wrote Rush’s lyrics. “I am a fan of Neil’s, and I love being a collaborator with him, because he is so objective and easy to work with,” said Geddy. “He’ll even allow me to suggest lyrics – a word that might work well – and he’ll accept it or he’ll come up with a better one. He’s really a pleasure to work with. With Neil there are no hissy fits, ever.”
Neil and I sat for hours that afternoon on the restaurant’s patio, in an idyllic corner of old California that had been attracting the well-heeled rock star for years. Among other things, we talked about time passed, the shape of things, not least because Neil had turned 60 the previous September. I asked him how he felt about that.
“I feel proud as hell,” he said, and he seemed it too. “I’m at the height of my powers in one sense, but also I can’t help feeling the empathy for someone like Keith Moon. He never got to be fifty-nine. Dennis Wilson neither. John Bonham… These are cautionary tales in a sense, but they break my heart: they had children, they had loved ones, they never got there, they never got this – this kind of career.”
Neil was bold and brilliant and a lot of fun (an interview with him was never dull, but on that day he had been especially avuncular, open to talking about anything). We walked out to admire his latest Aston Martin, one of his collection – a purple shell under which was a terrifying-sounding engine, in a car that looked capable of space flight. We promised to meet at the studio later and he dropped down the hill and out of sight at an alarming speed, lost almost instantly to the traffic. He was brimming with life.
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Neil Peart was born on his family’s farm near Hagersville in Ontario, Canada on September 12, 1952. A few years later the family moved to St. Catherines, a middle-class Canadian suburban town 70 miles from Toronto. In 1994, Peart wrote a lovely, evocative piece for local paper The Standard on his formative years there. It wasn’t only his lyrics that sang, his prose came right off the page too. He once told me he’d struggled writing fiction, but the idea of travel writing and memoirs always moved him more. “What I want to do is look around and try to put it into words, how you try to portray those memories for other people, that’s plenty.”
I urge you to read The Standard piece, not only to remind anyone of the pain that adolescence can hold, even for a rock star-in-waiting, but also for the flashes of colour that came from Peart’s pen, moments that sound like a Rush song we somehow might have missed. His musings on dinner at the Niagara Frontier House read: “Red-upholstered booths, lights glinting on wood, Formica, and stainless steel, the Hamilton Beach milkshake machine, the tray of pies on the counter, and the chrome jukebox beside each booth, with those metal pages you could flip through to read the songs.”
And later, something a little more honest from a kid who felt things a little more keenly than others, who permed his hair and wore a purple cape on the bus ride across town. “So, what was it like to grow up in St. Catharines in those days? Well, as some of these stories will attest, it was a wonderful place to be a boy. I have since written that mood into songs like The Analog Kid and Lakeside Park. For a teenager, however, especially a rebellious and self-consciously different teenager, St. Catharines in those days was not so nice. I have written about that mood in songs like Subdivisions.”
It was writing Subdivsions, for Rush’s 1982 album Signals, that took Neil further away from the fantastical and towards the more personal in his lyrics. As he told Rolling Stone: “A lot of the early fantasy stuff was just for fun, because I didn’t believe yet that I could put something real into a song. Subdivisions happened to be an anthem for a lot of people who grew up under those circumstances, and from then on I realised what I most wanted to put in a song was human experience.”
Rush pose for a group portrait on Parliament Hill, on Hampstead Heath, London, England, Great Britain, circa 1978 (Image credit: Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images)
It’s been seven fleeting years since our lunch in Topanga. Since then, Rush wrapped up their final album and then played some of the best live shows I’ve ever seen them play. Not least that final gig at the LA Forum on August 1, 2015, where Neil crossed to the front of the stage at the end – he was usually in the wings and on the way to his own bus at that point in the evening – and embraced a startled Geddy and Alex and bade us and them farewell one final time.
Gone then and forever now, we were lucky to even have that final era of Rush. Geddy still calls it his favourite time with the band.
Neil had already left Rush once. He told his bandmates to consider him retired after the death of his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, in a single-car accident in August 1997, as she drove from her parents’ home back to university in Toronto.
Subsequently, Neil and his partner, Jackie Taylor, spent time in London, perhaps trying to escape the mental anguish by putting physical miles between themselves and that moment. While in counselling for their grief, Jackie complained of back pain. Only five months after their daughter’s death, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She succumbed quickly.
Neil disappeared. He grabbed his beloved BMW motorbike and rode toward the fast-fading sun. He sent occasional, cryptic postcards to Geddy and Alex from far-flung corners of the USA, just to let them know he was still living somehow, still moving forward.
Neil Peart at the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio on 17th December 1977 (Image credit: Fin Costello/Redferns)
We talked about that period later, after he’d published that story in the best of his books, Ghost Rider: Travels On The Healing Road, and how he said that his motorbike had saved him.
“The bike did save me, absolutely,” he confided. “I had nothing else to do. There was nothing else I could do. The telling episode was on the first day out. I’m in terrible weather, with logging trucks flashing me, and I’m miserable anyway and I’m lacking fortitude of any kind. And I thought: ‘I’ve got to turn around, I don’t want to do this.’ And then the other voice went: ‘Then what?’ Because I had nothing else. And the stupid things people say to you at a time like that… ‘Oh, at least you have your music.’ Fuck, what?! It’s so maddening. I just wish people wouldn’t say it, it’s so stupid. You don’t have anything. But it, the bike and the journey I took, absolutely did save me. But so did the booze and drugs!”
He meant it about the music too. Neil had played his drums every day since he was teenager, ever since he got his first kit for his fourteenth birthday, and only took a day off at Christmas. But after his twin tragedies he didn’t touch his drums for years. This from the man who, as Geddy would often say, “plays to play”. It was true, too. Neil would do a full hour of unrelenting drumming before he went on stage to play for another three, including a drum solo that actually dragged people in from the bar, not propelled them towards it.
Geddy and Alex would occasionally watch him from the wings, still stunned as they had been the day they first met him when he’d auditioned for the band. Then, Geddy thought Neil was a goof, Alex wasn’t sure what to make of him. But they both remember exchanging glances as soon as he began to race around his drums, silent, and they telegraphed signals between them that this was their guy.
When Neil finally came back to Rush in 2001, for the sessions that would become Vapor Trails, the band would work through the day, Geddy heading home as night fell while Alex, one of life’s natural night owls, would sit up with Neil.
“And we’d just play,” Alex remembered, “anything to help get his chops back up, just jam into the night.”
Neil Peart at Bridgestone Arena on May 1, 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee (Image credit: Frederick Breedon/Getty Images)
The sunlight coming in through the cab window is so strong it’s bleaching the California sky from blue to milky white. I’d landed just a few hours earlier and was heading to Jim Henson Studios. There, a smiling Kermit The Frog is set atop both posts of the iron gates. The studio is filled with history. Charlie Chaplin owned it for years, and forged his legend there. His footprints are still in the concrete path at the back of the outer buildings. The Muppets and ‘The Tramp’ all in one space. No wonder Rush were excited about mixing Clockwork Angels there.
“Did you see the footprints yet?” asked Neil, almost before I’d sat down. He was one of the first people to greet me in that labyrinth of corridors, soundproof doors and cavernous studio space. He was courteous and warm, holding a bottle of 12-year-old Macallan Scotch as a welcoming gift. He sourced tumblers too (and then Alex drank half of it, but that’s another story for another time), and in a small side studio we sat and listened to some of the fades and mixes of what would be their last album.
Neil and Geddy closed their eyes to fully feel the music as it disappeared to a whisper. Then Neil, Alex and I stood, as Geddy stepped into the next room and the vocal booth with producer Nick Raskulinecz to readdress the final parts of the vocal for The Garden. “Too much vibrato, try that again,” Raskulinecz said as Geddy was put through his paces.
They played me a few of the finished songs hrough the giant speakers in the main room and goofed around, the odd awkward smile as their beautiful music fell towards us, still strangely abashed by their accomplishments together after all these years.
The band liked Nick greatly, not least Neil, who had spent his career mapping out every drum part before he played it in the studio. On their previous album, Snakes & Arrows, Nick had pushed for Neil to play and feel more – groove and thunder, enjoy improvisation… He’d stand in front of Neil with a baton, keeping time, his arms acting as a human metronome, while Peart raged. I watched it through the glass once, me and Ged entranced by Neil’s new-found freedom, his freewheeling joy as he moved from drum to drum, his arms seemingly totally independent from what his feet were doing.
Rush in 2012 (Image credit: Robert Knight Archive/Redferns)
Later, as we stood in the studio car park waiting to head for dinner – Neil was planning on staying there a little longer to go over the record – he showed me his silver Aston Martin, the model that James Bond drove in Goldfinger (the purple spaceship one would be his ride the following day). It practically glowed in the sunshine, a low, sleek, omnipresent feat of engineering and hubris. I wanted to embrace it. Instead I asked him about working with Nick.
“He goofs around, but the enthusiasm and the energy is fantastic,” Neil said. “The first time we worked, he’d ask me to play something, and would mimic it and sing the parts, and it would be so over-the-top, just extraordinary, I’d be ashamed to throw a fill like that in myself. But I’d be like, ‘okay’, and then I’d pull it off and he’d be: ‘That’s great!’ It’s like the Caravan drum fill that I laid out. We went back into the booth to listen, and Ged looked over his glasses at me and said: ‘Oh, he wants to make you famous.’
“This time, it was more immediate. He was in the room with me, not listening to playbacks. He was right there, so that every time we stopped we’d be conversing over the parts. He was playing along with me. I didn’t have to learn the arrangements. He’s a generation younger than us, too, and that’s kind of an important touchstone. We did Snakes & Arrows with him and wanted him back, and he wanted to be back. He’s the perfect catalyst, that’s the word. He’s more than a collaborator.”
And then, while he was still in this happy reverie, Neil started talking about my first novel, Cross Country Murder Song. I knew he’d read it and I knew he’d enjoyed it – there had been an email that had almost made me faint with delirium and made the teenage Rush fan in me hyperventilate – but now this: “I read it again. It’s better the second time.” I looked at him like he’d just grown wings and had begun to levitate. “I took it on my last trip on my motorbike. It’s a road trip, so it was perfect to read while I was on the road,” he said.
I think he might have clapped me on the back as he told me we’d be heading to Topanga Canyon in the next few days for a more formal interview (which was anything but). Geddy was calling me to our car to go for dinner, and Neil walked away with a cheery wave.
I suppose I’m telling you all this to try to explain the happiness and energy that came off Rush (and Neil in particular) in waves on that trip. After so many years of them being together, Clockwork Angels was one of the best records the trio had ever made, and the future looked brighter still. Fast forward to early spring 2015, and I’m talking to Neil via Skype about his latest travelogue, Far And Near: On Days Like These and the impending R40 tour. For the first time in a long time, doubt was starting to catch in his voice. Having lost one family, it was clear he was going to embrace the time he had with his family now.
“People say: ‘Are you excited to be going on tour,’” he said. “Should I be excited about leaving my family? No. And no one should. It’s as simple as that. I pour my entire energy and enthusiasm into it, but, of course, I’m of two minds about the whole idea. Olivia [his daughter] is five now and I’ve been doing this for forty years. I know how to compartmentalise everything, and I can stand missing her, but I can’t stand her missing me. It’s painful and impossible to understand for her, and you feel guilty about it, of course. I’m the one causing her pain.”
Neil Peart Drum Solo – Rush Live in Frankfurt – YouTube
Neil Peart never knew how much he touched my life, and I’m not sure he would have been comfortable with knowing. He was a goof, supremely talented, kind, open, and could catch a drumstick even if it had dropped from the sky. His words spurred me on to be a writer, his music to go on even when I didn’t want to and, along with his two incredible bandmates, reminded me that not all rock stars are self-serving morons.
So I’ll hold this moment in time and think of that long lunch in the Californian hills, being backstage with him in Nashville on the R30 tour, sitting behind his practice kit in a rehearsal room in Toronto (I’m not sure who was more nervous, him or me), and that last time at the LA Forum, his face a mask of sadness as Rush rode the circus out of town one final time; lost to one final horizon and out of sight for all of us now.
Neil died on Tuesday, January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 67. The cause was brain cancer, which he’d been quietly battling for three and a half years.
I’ll leave you with one final thing he said to me once. “Remember: nobody’s perfect,” he said, a bottle of Macallan between us. “But when you have the chance to make a decision, you can make perfect decisions. So there are no regrets, in the truest sense. And also, I hope someone who likes us, who likes Rush and our music, or admires us as people, can feel that we would never let them down.”
Neil Peart never let me down. I miss him. We all do.
The original version of this feature appeared in Classic Rock 272 (March 2020). Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee talk about their final shows with Neil Peart in the new issue of Classic Rock.
Philip Wilding is a novelist, journalist, scriptwriter, biographer and radio producer. As a young journalist he criss-crossed most of the United States with bands like Motley Crue, Kiss and Poison (think the Almost Famous movie but with more hairspray). More latterly, he’s sat down to chat with bands like the slightly more erudite Manic Street Preachers, Afghan Whigs, Rush and Marillion.
With the release of 2024’s acclaimed Luck And Strange, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour’s solo output came under the spotlight once more.
Despite the relatively prolific output of the mothership, none of the Pink Floyd band members have been particularly generous when it comes to solo ventures. Gilmour leads the charge, alongside his nemesis Roger Waters, each man responsible for five studio albums (Waters also has two classical releases to his name, and a collection of home recordings).
In contrast to the conceptual narrative threads that run through Waters’ work, Gilmour’s output highlights his songwriting prowess and the guitar playing that made his name. More recently, lyric writing has been the domain of Gilmour’s wife, the author Polly Samson, much to the chagrin of some fans of a certain age.
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Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.
Finnish musician / producer Otu, who works under the banner Moonic Productions, has shared his take on what would happen if Iron Maiden wrote the Queen classic, “Don’t Stop Me Now”. Check it out below, get the full version via Otu’s Patreon page here.
Iron Maiden have shared the new video below, in which frontman Bruce Dickinson says goodbye to 2024, and hello to 2025 and the band’s Run For Your Lives World Tour 2025-26.
Says Bruce, “Right, hello folks. You know, this is my tour pass for 2024. That’ll get me anywhere in 2024, but I don’t need that anymore now because 2025 is gonna be something special. Not just because of the tour pass, honestly. We are pushing the boat out with the tour. Not that I need to tell anybody, ’cause basically the tour is sold out already. So for those of you who have bought tickets, which is like all of you, it’s gonna be really, really cool. I’m really looking forward to it. We’re gonna be doing stuff we’ve never, ever done before, and it’ll be a setlist for the ages. So, I’ll see you there. And it’s not gonna stop in 2025. It’s gonna roll into 2026 ’cause there’s parts of the world that we need to get to, that we can’t get to in 2025. So there you go.”
The Run For Your Lives tour is set to launch on May 27 at Budapest Aréna in Budapest, Hungary. Find the complete tour itinerary, and tickets where still available, here.
Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice spoke to Flotsam And Jetsam guitarist Michael Gilbert and drummer Ken Mary about the band’s new album, I Am The Weapon, and the trends and changes in the music industry over the years.
When asked to compare today’s US metal scene to the rest of the world:
Ken Mary: “If you look at Europe they’re open, they never stopped loving metal, and the weird thing in the United States I feel like metal is actually squashed on social media, on things like YouTube. I think they restrict metal. I’m not sure exactly why or what the reasoning is, but metal is huge everywhere else in the world (except the USA). Let’s take a band like Arch Enemy for instance: they’ll play huge festivals in Europe. They’ll play in front of half a million people in South America, huge shows in Japan. They come to the United States and Play House of Blues with a thousand people. So you tell me what’s going on? How can a band and how can a genre be huge everywhere else but not in the United States? It seems kind of squashed to me.
There’s a few bands here and there that are doing okay, but by and large there’s a whole genre that is not doing well. I think the fans (in he USA) aren’t as connected as in Europe. There’s a huge metal scene and everybody is connected and everybody goes to the festivals, and everybody loves the music, and it really doesn’t matter… are you thrash metal? Are you melodic metal? Whatever you are, the fans embrace everything. They’re not going, ‘Okay, I’m only a thrash metal fan, so I will only listen to thrash metal.’ I think that happens maybe a little more in the United States, too, where somebody goes ‘Okay, I like only a specific genre, a very specific area of a genre and I’m not going to listen to anything else.’ I think that happens maybe a little bit more in the US, but I do think in terms of the mechanics of the industry I think that there is an effort in my opinion to elevate things like rap and pop, and to sort of push metal to the wayside. Like I said, there’s a few bands here and there that kind of buck the trend but for the most part that’s what I’m seeing in the United States.”
I Am The Weapon was composed and produced by the whole band and the eleven new songs were recorded at SonicPhish Productions, Gnome Lord Studios, Wayne Manor Studios, and Seventh Spike Studios. The cover artwork was again created by Andy Pilkington.
Order your copy of this must-have album, one that belongs into every well-sorted metal record collection, here.
“This entire record was special to us, and we did our best to make music that inspired us first and foremost,” the band comments. “We all genuinely love this record, and every song on the record, so hopefully our listeners feel as strongly as we do.”
“Thank you so much for your support, your love, and your encouragement for the last 40 years. You are the reason we continue to tour and to make music! You are the best, and we will continue to fight for the music as long as we have breath!
I Am The Weapon tracklisting:
“A New Kind Of Hero” “Primal” “I Am The Weapon” “Burned My Bridges” “The Head Of The Snake” “Beneath The Shadows” “Gates Of Hell” “Cold Steel Lights” “Kings Of The Underworld” “Running Through The Fire” “Black Wings”
“The Head Of The Snake”:
“A New Kind Of Hero” video:
“Burned My Bridges”:
“Primal” video:
“I Am The Weapon” lyric video:
It’s been almost 40 years since Flotsam And Jetsam, formed in Phoenix, Arizona released their landmark debut, Doomsday For The Deceiver, the only album to ever receive a 6K rating from the influential British magazine Kerrang! Bassist Jason Newsted would jump ship to Metallica while the band released the unstoppable No Place For Disgrace in 1988. Cuatro (1992), Drift (1995), High (1997), and My God (2001) all still rank extremely high in heavy metal circles. But it was the first part of this unofficial trilogy in 2016’s self-titled Flotsam And Jetsam that a certain rejuvenation and reset was clearly felt.
Fast-forward five years to a planet that was forced to its knees. While spending most of the pandemic times in a holding pattern like the rest of the world, Flotsam And Jetsam made the best of a struggling situation and just let those creative juices and angst flow. What emerged was the much-acclaimed Blood In The Water, released in 2021 via AFM Records.
