Author: wamdines

Paul McCartney entered the 21st Century while in his late 50s, an age when most people are coasting toward retirement. The former Beatles star had certainly earned it.

He’d been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Beatles more than a decade earlier. He’d just joined them as a solo act, celebrating a blockbuster era that already spanned some 30 years. Wings had been broken up for 20. The legacy was set in stone.

Yet, since 2000, McCartney has issued another seven rock albums – including Electric Arguments, his 2008 collaboration with Martin “Youth” Glover as the Fireman. All but one of his solo records (2001’s patchy Driving Rain) reached the U.S. Top 10.

READ MORE: Top 10 Wings Songs

In 2018, Egypt Station became McCartney’s first Billboard charttopper since the early ’80s. McCartney III just missed at No. 2 in 2020. Both 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and 2007’s Memory Almost Full were certified gold. McCartney even scored yet another multi-platinum single a couple of years after 2013’s New with “FourFiveSeconds” alongside Rihanna and Kanye West.

Laurels? What laurels?

Along the way, McCartney added 15 key tracks to a list of keepsake gems that already stretched back several decades. Here’s a list of the best Paul McCartney songs from the 21st Century:

No. 15. “I Can Bet”
From: New (2013)

McCartney makes a very successful pass at Wings’ sound but within a fizzy new musical context: As with most of New, he heavily treats his vocal; there’s also programming and some patched-on loops. In truth, however, McCartney had been appending things to “I Can Bet” for a while. He started with a solo-recorded multi-overdubbed demo, then had touring-band members Rusty Anderson and Wix Wickens contribute guitar and Hammond organ, respectively. But McCartney’s final passes – as he dialed up classic Wurlitzer and a Moog sounds, presumably with producer Giles Martin at Hog Hill Studios – brought this modern construction back around to those mullet-sporting, polyester-wearing days of yore.

No. 14. “Dominoes”
From: Egypt Station (2018)

An endearing career travelogue, “Dominoes” finds McCartney going even further back to reclaim his own considerable legacy in the Beatles. He starts with a lithe acoustic riff that would have been at home on the White Album, then continues to flip through his back pages: There’s the crackling cadence of his ’80s albums, the enveloping background vocal style of his ’70s work, a backward guitar straight out of the ’60s. His lyric, about how one thing can unexpectedly lead to another, underscores this stirring musical journey. “Dominoes” then ends with a delicately conveyed, note-perfect line: “It’s been a blast.“

No. 13. “Spinning on an Axis”
From: Driving Rain (2001)

Driving Rain found McCartney struggling to combine two parts of his craft – a natural inclination toward ornate pop and an interest in lengthier forms. McCartney was also trying to balance the loss of wife Linda with the arrival of a new love. He didn’t get there. In fact, “Spinning on an Axis” became the best thing on this strangely inhibited project by attempting to put all of that aside. McCartney shucks his occasional penchant for overthinking, opening with a loose rumination and then catching – and keeping – a plucky little groove. That gives the song a first-take freshness. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to break the logjam on this often-impenetrable LP. It seems there was simply too much going on inside McCartney’s head.

No. 12. “Fine Line”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

You get the sense that McCartney could write catchy songs like this in his sleep. (And maybe he does?) But that doesn’t make “Fine Line” any less charming – and there’s a cool little quirk buried beneath its radio-ready hook. But first, the Top 20 U.K. hit opens with a telling lyric: “There’s a fine line between recklessness and courage.” McCartney knew something about that, having thrown out his entire way of working for this aptly named LP. The biggest change was hiring Nigel Godrich, best known for producing Radiohead. He’s the one who encouraged McCartney to continue building “Fine Line” around that wrong bass note.

No. 11. “New”
From New (2013)

Maybe the thing that was newest about New was how comfortable McCartney seemed in his own skin again, after a brief period spent singing the Great American Songbook. There are next-gen flourishes, principally in the production style, but thankfully this title track doesn’t feature anything too outside McCartney’s basic musical framework. Rambling along like a tougher “Penny Lane” or a less refined “Got to Get You into My Life,” “New” doesn’t particularly live up to its name — but that’s better than creating a quickly forgotten modern-day curio.

No. 10. “Deep Down”
From: McCartney III (2020)

McCartney still doesn’t know what “Deep Down” is about. He didn’t have to, not with this title-earning groove. Recorded in the maddening isolation of a pandemic-inspired lockdown, III offers McCartney an opportunity to stay within himself in a way that his most recent albums weren’t always brave enough to attempt. Instead of bringing in hired-gun producers to give things a hip new feel, he just rolled tape. That conjures up the unconscious abandon of deep cuts from the White Album and his first solo record, something an artist of his vintage – after so many PR campaigns, so many A&R meetings, so much BS – usually struggles mightily to achieve. Instead, McCartney just lets “Deep Down” discover its truest, freest place. It’s a wonder to hear.

No. 9. “How Kind of You”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard/em> (2005)

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard started out with the producer from McCartney’s last album and a studio setup involving his touring band, before Nigel Godrich arrived and blew it all up. Good thing. Otherwise, we might never have experienced the gorgeous drone of “How Kind of You.” Largely a studio creation, the track began in typical jangle-pop territory as McCartney offered a starkly vulnerable thank you to those who stuck with him through difficult times. Godrich oversaw its transformation, creating an involving music bed that sounds something like an underwater harmonium.

No. 8. “Queenie Eye”
From: New (2013)

What if the Beatles never broke up? By the ’10s, they might have sounded something like “Queenie Eye.” The ruminative orchestral opening, fizzy wordplay, nervy groove and processed vocal point like a streaking arrow back to late-’60s successes with producer George Martin. Yet the production feels completely of the moment. When “Queenie Eye” comes to a momentary pause, it’s as if the dream-state reverie is complete. Then McCartney does what every Beatles trope says he should do: Start all over again, with a swirling chorus of vocals, a banging piano and a second sudden stop.

No. 7. “Anyway”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

There’s a consistency in tone – of quietness, really – about this decidedly serious, mostly solo project that might lead to distraction for those enamored with McCartney’s more obvious quirks. The album-closing ballad “Anyway” solves this issue, ending things on a more expected, orchestral-laden note. Everything feels familiar again, from a refrain that seems to recall the earlier “Little Willow” to a piano signature straight out of “People Get Ready.” That puts a bow on one of the very best McCartney LPs of any era.

No. 6. “Vintage Clothes”
From: Memory Almost Full (2007)

“Vintage Clothes” seemed to tap into the hippie narratives of McCartney’s lengthy first marriage to the late Linda McCartney – and no one could blame him for feeling wistful for that era. Linda died after a cancer battle in the late ’90s, and his next marriage was falling apart by the time McCartney set about completing Memory Almost Full. Certainly, the setup is vintage: McCartney navigates the song’s unusual tempo changes behind a Mellotron, liberated from Abbey Road Studio. In fact, he used the same setting from the “Strawberry Fields Forever” sessions.

No. 5. “Jenny Wren”
From: Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)

This Grammy-nominated track recalls the finger-picking triumphs of “Blackbird” and “Calico Skies,” allowing McCartney to explore his still-strong upper range on a lyric born of nature. Seems he found himself with a guitar overlooking this picturesque canyon scene. McCartney made an interesting sound, then recalled a character from Charles Dickens – one who shared the name of his favorite bird, a tiny, quite shy species – and allowed the instrument to guide him the rest of the way. “Jenny Wren” was completed later with the addition of an Armenian woodwind called a duduk.

No. 4. “Sun Is Shining”
From: The Fireman’s Electric Arguments (2008)

The Fireman records don’t represent McCartney’s first solo forays into experimental pop; it’s just that the others were typically unfocused vanity projects, self-involved noodlings or simply half-finished demos. Electric Arguments boasted a frisky, yet more controlled spontaneity, as if the original “Get Back” idea had been brought into the indie era. Everything – even a song like “Sun Is Shining,” which in many ways is your typical light-filled McCartney song – feels as if it’s been cuffed around some.

No. 3. “See Your Sunshine”
From: Memory Almost Full (2007)

A canny Wings redo, this is the kind of pure pop that McCartney parlayed into a soundtrack for the decade immediately following the Beatles’ breakup. That’s fitting since he was enduring another split, this time from second wife Heather, during the sessions for Memory Almost Full. In truth, “See Your Sunshine” is part of an ardent project known for its striking musical variety. But let’s face it, McCartney is supposed to sound like this song. That he once again meets that standard during a period of crushing adversity is part of his charm. It always has been.

No. 2. “I Don’t Know”
From: Egypt Station (2018)

McCartney’s first No. 1 album since 1982 opens with this looming sense of doubt, a most surprising emotion from the world’s most famous progenitor of silly love songs. You expect him to be glib, but he instead uncovers something far more revealing in the all-too-rare expression of his own thoughts. These verses, perhaps the bleakest McCartney has ever penned, eventually give way to a gorgeous, more typically consoling chorus. His piano figure is there to guide you along, tracing this brilliant juxtaposition perfectly.

No. 1. “Only Mama Knows”
From: Memory Almost Full (2007)

Embroiled in a very public divorce, Paul McCartney might have been expected to do what Paul McCartney does: hide behind a pastiche pop facade and/or a series of homespun character studies. Certainly, that’s what he did in the aftermath of splits with the Beatles and then Wings. Instead, McCartney plugged in for “Only Mama Knows,” simply bulling his way through gauzy nostalgia. This muscular track went on to become a concert staple for McCartney’s long-standing backup band.

Was Paul McCartney’s ‘Broadstreet’ Doomed to Fail?

Former Yes drummer Bill Bruford reflected on his return to the band for 1991’s Union album, telling Rolling Stone the experience was, simply, “no good.”

Bruford cofounded Yes and played with the band from 1968 to 1972, leaving after they released the landmark Close to the Edge (which is getting a deluxe reissue next month). He went on to play with King Crimson and Genesis that decade, and he formed the jazz group Earthworks in 1986. Bruford reunited with some of his Yes bandmates in the late ’80s for Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, which joined the then-current Yes lineup (Tony Kaye, Chris Squire, Trevor Rabin and Alan White) to write and record Union.

Sound like a lot of cooks in the kitchen? Bruford agrees. “Too many people. Too artificial,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s a kind of Hollywood idea. It was a mad idea, I think, seven or eight odd people [playing at once]. It was a kind of fantasy that a record executive would dream up. So it wasn’t a great place to be. But on the other hand, if you’re overpaid for doing very little, as I was there, you can often take that money and inject it into some other project you’re working on like Earthworks, which is a band I ran for 20 years and feed the money into that. So that worked well.”

Bruford also took part in the ensuing Union tour, sharing drumming duties with White. When asked how they divided the parts, Bruford replied: “Pretty badly, I think. Mostly, I was on electronic drums and playing percussion to his heavy rock drums. Occasionally, I think I played maybe ‘Heart of the Sunrise’ alone, something like that. One critic I thought put it really well. They wrote that ‘Bill Bruford was Hollandaise sauce to Alan White’s meat and potatoes,’ which I thought was really nice. It was about right.”

READ MORE: Top 50 Progressive Rock Artists

Bill Bruford Has No Desire to Reunite With Yes

Bruford left Yes for the second and final time in 1992, going on to briefly rejoin King Crimson and then reform Earthworks. He announced his retirement from drumming in 2009, though he returned to much humbler stages in 2022 with the Pete Roth Trio.

Despite returning to music, Bruford has no desire to play with Yes again. “I think I’m asked that twice a week, and have been for about 15 years,” he said. “And the answer remains, ‘No, thanks. I’m fine. I’m not going to do that.'”

He’s also not holding his breath for Yes guitarist Steve Howe and former singer Jon Anderson, who now performs with the Band Geeks, to reconcile. “No, I don’t hope for those things at all,” he said. “Funnily enough, Jon and I have something in common. I think we’ve both returned in a way. Jon had a lot of time away from Yes, and he’s returned with this fresh thing and a new album. He’s putting new miles under his belt, which I think is great. And I feel kind of the same way.”

Phish is off to a very strong start after one week of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame fan voting.

The jam band kings have gotten 101,157 fan votes since they were announced as one of 14 nominees for the class of 2025. This is the first time the group has been nominated for the honor.

Billy Idol is in second place with 58,673 votes. Soundgarden is right behind him with 57,084, followed by Cyndi Lauper (50,308), Bad Company (47,582), Joe Cocker (47,004) and Chubby Checker (42,803.)

The Black Crowes lead the back half of the list with (39,184), followed by Mariah Carey (36,876), Outkast (35,563), Oasis (32,445), Joy Division / New Order (31,927), The White Stripes (31,055) and Mexican pop-rockers Mana (12,177.)

Read More: Rock Hall’s 2025 Nominees Roundtable: Snubs, Surprises and More

Fans can vote for up to seven artists once a day until April 21, at the Rock Hall of Fame’s official website. All fan votes are combined to make one ballot, which will be tallied along with those of 1,200 artists, historians, and music industry professionals to select the inductees.

Dave Matthews Band won the fan vote in 2024, earning 586,745 votes according to Future Rock Legends. Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Ozzy Osbourne and Cher rounded out the top five. All five of those artists were inducted into the Hall last year.

This year’s inductees will be announced in late April, along with the artists and industry leaders entering the hall under the Musical Influence, Musical Excellence and Ahmet Etregun Non Perform Award honors.

This year’s ceremony will be held in Los Angeles, with venue, date and ticket information details expected to be revealed shortly.

Ronnie James Dio fronted several bands through the late 1950s into the early 1980s. The most notable of the bands were Elf and Rainbow. In 1979, Ronnie James Dio was asked to front Black Sabbath. Ronnie James Dio would face the difficult task of replacing the fired Ozzy Osbourne. It was there that Ronnie met drummer Vinny Appice. In 1982, Ronnie James Dio left the band Black Sabbath over creative differences. When departing Black Sabbath, Dio convinced  Vinny Appice to accompany him. The two would go on to form the band Dio. The band Dio would also feature Vivian Campbell on guitars and Jimmy Bain on bass and keyboards. Soon after, they added Claude Schnell to the keyboards. That was the initial lineup, but Dio frequently changed members as the years passed.

The themes of Dio-as-a-band almost universally portrayed magic, fantasy, medievalism, and the tension between light and dark, Heaven and Hell. Most of the music was written by Ronnie, with plenty of help from other band members. Dio was sucked into the mid-80s furor over “Satanic” bands due to their admittedly dark and religious imagery. Some bands merited that label; some didn’t. However, since Ronnie’s motifs are shown in so much of his music, his beliefs are worth a brief look at. Several interviews throughout his career revealed that, while he wasn’t a Christian, he was no baby-sacrificing Satanist either. He was raised Catholic, but that environment struck him as frightening and judgment-based, so he turned from it to a perspective of relativist humanism. He saw good and evil as emanating from the same source, mirroring pre-Christian paganism, which was ultimately the human soul.

Furthermore, Ronnie was fascinated with magic and myth from a young age. As he formed Dio, there was a concurrent rise in sword-and-sorcery interest, exemplified by works like J.R.R. Tolkien or role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Ronnie made use of those elements. He once said, “When I became a songwriter, I thought what better thing to do than what no one else is doing… to tell fantasy tales. Smartest thing I ever did.” So, in the ’80s if you were a fantasy nerd and a metalhead, you got a two-for-one punch with Dio.

Top 10 Ronnie James Dio Songs

# 10 – The Last in Line –  The Last in Line 

The Last in Line

was Dio’s single best-selling album, coming only a year after Holy Diver, which slung them to instant recognition. It fetched #24 in the U.S., going platinum, and a respectable #4 in the U.K. Later in Dio’s career, as an interviewer was asking Ronnie about his philosophy, Ronnie explained that, in his view, humanity was indeed “the last in line.” He meant that we create our heaven or hell with our choices, implying there is no higher arbiter. This first pick on our list describes a quest for self-discovery.

The song starts with a bard-like acoustic trill and then morphs into an indomitable metal parade. Campbell mixes rapid fretwork with lingering whang bars to an artful effect. Appice throws in a cowbell during the bridge and chorus. Somehow, despite the album’s success, “The Last in Line” did not chart at all. Go figure. Two other singles did, though. One of them, “Mystery,” reached #20 in the U.S. and #34 in the U.K.

# 9 – Between Two Hearts –  Lock Up the Wolves

By 1990, Dio had undergone a complete lineup change from their previous album, retaining only Ronnie himself. It featured Rowan Robertson on rhythm, lead, and acoustic guitar, Jens Johansson on keyboards, Teddy Cook on bass, and Simon Wright on drums. Whether because of that change or despite it, Lock Up the Wolves

boasted some of Dio’s best music.

Our next pick is “Between Two Hearts.” In a departure from the usual subject material, this slow piece decries the plight of a female character in love with a man who treats her shabbily. We’ve all been through that at least once, regardless of the jerk’s gender. The song has an interesting structure in that the guitars play a sort of staccato arpeggio in the chorus while lapsing into long, mournful notes in the verses. Picture a sad, lonely violin with the ‘woe is me’ card, then set it to heavy distortion. Somehow, it works, and the listener gets weepy and ticked off immediately.

# 8 – Night People –  Dream Evil

Dream Evil featured Craig Goldy on guitars, replacing Vivian Campbell, who eventually ended up with Def Leppard. Other than that, the group members stayed the same, and on this album, they churned out some excellent creations. One of Dio’s better techniques was using enough keyboards to provide a wonderful counterpoint to the hard axe work. Like a steak so gravy-laden you can’t taste the cow, many 80s bands poured excessive synthesizers all over their tracks. But Dio never went glam, didn’t even experiment. Their guitars were some of the heaviest for their day, in line with Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil.”

“Night People” opens with a keyboard teaser before Goldy’s guitar slashes in at triple time. It’s a tribute to the night owls, the movers, and the shakers in the moonlight. If you “come alive when neon kills the sun,” this round’s for you.

# 7 – Holy Diver –  Holy Diver

For those bands that make it big, some start out in obscurity and then gradually win the limelight. Others explode right out the gate. Dio was one of the latter, and Holy Diver was their first breakaway sprint. It charted at number fifty six in the U.S. and managed #13 in the U.K., achieving platinum and silver statuses respectively. With this release, Dio established itself as an entity that could fine-weave adamantine riffs with gorgeous melodies.

The title track attained number forty in the U.S. and number seventy two in the U.K. Appice showed off his skills nicely with machine-gun fills. As for Ronnie, this would be one of the first introductions to his voice. Never having taken voice lessons, there was a definite gravelly timber there, but early listeners were impressed by his sheer decibel level. The voice led Rainbow/Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to describe shivers down his spine when he heard it. In this song, Ronnie managed an impressive howl in the bridge: “There’s a truth that’s hard as steel… like some never-ending wheel.”

Speaking of exploding out the gate, if we were to continue the race track analogy, Dio would be that horse that attained a healthy lead at the beginning but faded well back toward the end. Dream Evil was the first album not to do metal, selling only 52,000 copies. And despite releasing records well into the 2000s, Dio would never medal again. In a way, this is unfortunate because, in some reviewers’ opinions, Dio’s very best songwriting was displayed on Dream Evil and the next album, Lock Up the Wolves. But then, we don’t rely on popular opinion to tell us where to go for our music.

With “All the Fools Sailed Away,” we embark on another journey for identity and self-discovery. This track begins with a lovely trickle of acoustic guitar as Ronnie chants, “And as we drift along, I never fail to be astounded by the things we’ll do for promises and a song.” The verses kick into a lock-step 8-count progression as the keyboards call out in two tones, like a foghorn’s warning. How do they know to place those just so? The chorus manages an introspective and fanciful air, which is impressive given that it’s hard to achieve those moods in metal. Guitarist Goldy joined Ronnie in writing this piece, which is the longest one on the record, and we applaud the finished product.

# 5 – Egypt (The Chains Are On) – The Last in Line

Since the original movie Stargate, themes of aliens meddling in ancient human affairs have become trendy in American sci-fi culture. But before those notions hit the mainstream, Dio released “Egypt (The Chains Are On).” A saga is spun of a people living in a land of milk and honey until the arrival of the “strange ones” with rainbows in their eyes. Extra-terrestrials? Ancient gods? You pick. But they are not friendly, and the people are enslaved. The stanzas lift a haunting wail as the people look to the blowing desert sands which know the liberty they cannot have. And yet, there is a small kernel of hope disguised almost beyond recognition. “Maybe one day you’ll be just like me, and that’s free.” The lyrics are multi-hued and powerful, Dio’s storytelling at its best.

For those interested, the 2000 tribute album Holy Dio offers a cover to this song performed by female metal legend Doro Pesch and a healthy array of other Dio cover tunes.

# 4 – Lock Up the Wolves – Lock Up the Wolves 

As with Dream Evil

, Lock Up the Wolves features keen songwriting. Dio has always excelled at those pieces that combine very slow tempos with massive dynamism, like battalions of clone soldiers passing in review. This song is one of those. Cook’s bass and Wright’s drums start us down a foreboding trail. A gorgeously-timed synthesizer lilt picks up as Ronnie takes us to another time “at the cradle of the world.” This is an unmistakable warning to be on guard against evil. The mood is tense and otherworldly, and we are reminded that darkness can take many forms. Don’t give an inch!

# 3 – Sacred Heart –  Sacred Heart

Sacred Heart was well-received, reaching number four in the U.K. number twentynine and in the U.S. It was the last album to feature Campbell, and Campbell wasn’t included in most of the songwriting. Still, the band had buffed their sound to a high shine, and this album presented some fine songs.

“Sacred Heart” is one of them. It’s just a treat for the ears, the aural equivalent of a king’s coronation. The high quest theme radiates by melody and lyrics as hard guitars chime together with pipe-organ keyboards. It’s an unabashed beacon for those who still resonate with the archetype of noble deeds. After you hear it, don’t be surprised at the urge to put a saucepan on your head, a fire poker in your fist, and search for dragons to slay… or at least a lizard or two.

# 2 – Rock’n’roll Children – Sacred Heart

“Rock’n’roll Children” relates to a story of a boy and a girl who initially do not like each other but are fated to be together like Romeo and Juliet. They are cast into a world that does not treat them kindly, and they must trust each other to survive. The corresponding video fleshes out this theme. We watch as the boy and girl, both counter-culture rockers, are lured into Ronnie’s curio shop, with Ronnie playing the part of a wizard. The wizard casts them into a magic maze, and around every corner are scenes from the real world in which ridicule and shame prevail: failure in gym class, bombed tests, parents’ lectures, snide older siblings, etc. It’s like the heavy metal version of the movie “Pump up the Volume,” and it parallels the message of Rush‘ “Subdivisions”: “In the high school halls, in the shopping malls, conform or be cast out.”

The song builds majestically with keyboard and drums, then unleashes screaming guitars as Ronnie growls, “Just like somebody slammed the door, bang, yeah!” The result is a metal inferno, searingly beautiful, flinging melodrama in all corners.

# 1 – Rainbow in the Dark – Holy Diver

“Rainbow in the Dark” is our choice for the number one spot on our Top Ten Dio Songs list. It offers no build-up or gentle introduction. It simply shatters the walls of mundanity and unfurls like a flower of chromatic sheen and diamond-edged petals. It boasts a standard keynote riff, but to this day still remains one of the best and strongest songs to do so. Campbell’s guitar groans in the voice of thunder while synthesizer notes dance like ball lightning, coaxed by Ronnie himself on keyboards. Though gloom and threat try to destroy the rainbow, in the end, the rainbow is still there, defiant and vindicated.

Ronnie’s career with his various bands spanned almost 50 years. One of his albums in 2002 was entitled Killing the Dragon

, but in 2009, Ronnie came under assault from his own personal dragon, stomach cancer. After the diagnosis, his wife, Wendy Dio, claimed that Ronnie would kill

this

dragon and get back onstage. Alas, the dragon was stronger, and Ronnie died in 2010 at 67. But if the dragon is death itself, that dragon always claims us in the end. Perhaps the real victory is not eluding its clutches for as long as possible but in reaching past it to the height of what lies beyond. Certainly, that’s what Ronnie would have hoped for.

Less than a month before his death, Ronnie accepted the Revolver Golden Gods awards for “Best Heavy Metal Singer.” He was the oldest artist ever to do so. Ronnie exemplified the best of heavy metal for his day, with the weight and brilliance of gold.

Read More: Top 10 Ronnie James Dio Albums

Top 10 Ronnie James Dio Songs article published on Classic RockHistory.com© 2025

When Joe Deninzon moved from the former Soviet Union to the US and discovered MTV, he couldn’t have dreamed he’d wind up as a member of Kansas, one of the bands who immediately influenced him. With a new album from his own group, Stratospheerius, out now, the violinist, guitarist and vocalist offered Prog a glimps into his musical world.

Where’s home?

Old Tappan in New Jersey, which is about 45 minutes away from midtown Manhattan.

What’s your earliest memory of prog?

Watching MTV in the early 80s and seeing a video of Kansas’ Dust In The Wind and Yes’ Owner Of A Lonely Heart. MTV played some good music back in those days! We had just emigrated from the Soviet Union and I’m the son of a classical musician – MTV was a culture shock, and my gateway to the ‘dark side.’

What was your first prog album?

One of the first prog bands I got deeply into was Rush. I bought Presto when I was 14 – I dug it and I quickly bought their entire back catalogue, then started going to their shows regularly.

And the latest?

Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks’ True. It’s a masterpiece! The writing, the production, the musicianship; and Jon can still sing as well as he did 50 years ago. One of my favourite albums of 2024.

What was your first prog gig?

The Rush Presto tour at the old Richfield Coliseum near Cleveland, Ohio in June of 1990, with Mr Big opening. Growing up in Cleveland, The Coliseum was like a second home for me.

And the most recent?

Beat at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, NJ, last October. The early 80s was my favourite era of King Crimson and it was great to see that music performed live by musicians at the top of their game. Just a mind- blowing concert! Stratospheerius cover Frame By Frame on our new album, Impostor!, which is out now on 7D, Trey Gunn’s label.

What’s your guilty musical pleasure?

I’m a lifelong Bruce Springsteen fan, and I had the privilege of playing some shows with him in a backup string section. Check out Jungleland – an epic 10-minute track, probably my favourite of his. I’m also a fan of some pop music – Pink and Bruno Mars, and my daughter recently got me into Sabrina Carpenter.

Outside of music, what else are you into?

I love to run. I ran the New York Marathon in 2016 and have run many 5ks, 10ks and half marathons. It’s something I do to clear my head. I run in silence and get into a meditative state.I come up with a lot of musical ideas when I get in the groove.

What are you reading?

I recently read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act and can’t recommend it enough. Really great advice for artists, especially if you’re experiencing writer’s block. He has always fascinated me with his approach to creativity, and how he manages to coax the best performance out of artists. Definitely a producer I would love to work with.

Ever had a prog-related date?

Many, with my wife Yulia, who’s a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. She grew up in Russia and was bootlegging Deep Purple and Scorpions albums, which were banned there at that time. One of the reasons I fell in love with her is because she loves hard rock and prog in addition to classical music.

Your prog hero?

Frank Zappa – he broke all the rules and created a cottage industry for his music. His body of work is so eclectic and he introduced the world to a long list of groundbreaking musicians who got their start playing in his band.

What’s the quintessential prog rock piece?

Close To The Edge. Everything about it is just perfect – the groove, the harmonies, Chris Squire’s melodic bass groove in verse two. I can go on and on. A true masterpiece.

Which prog muso would you most like to work with?

Zappa. Some of my favourite rock violin solos – by Jean-Luc Ponty, Sugarcane Harris, Eddie Jobson – are on his albums. Also Neal Morse: Spock’s Beard are one of the most underrated bands of all time, and I love his writing both with them and solo.

Which prog album gets you in a happy mood?

McStine & Minnemann’s II; Zappa’s Roxy & Elsewhere or anything from that era.

What’s your favourite prog album cover?

Anything by Roger Dean, but I also like clever covers that are a play on words – like Rush’s Moving Pictures or Zappa’s Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch.

What are you up to at the moment?

Stratospheerius’s new album, Impostor!, was six years in the making. We’re planning some shows soon, and there will be more Kansas dates too. Also, 10 years ago I wrote a 30-minute electric violin concerto for full orchestra and I’m finally getting around to recording that. The conductor who premiered it described it as “Philip Glass meets Rush meets Led Zeppelin.”

To be a musical genius is also to be, in many ways, a captive of your own talent. There is much to be celebrated, and much to be cautious of, particularly if you come from a marginalized background.

This is more or less the message of Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), a new film about Sly Stone directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, available on Hulu. It covers Stone’s ascent to stardom and undeniable achievement in the world of popular music, but more importantly, the ways in which his very existence as leader of a mixed race, mixed gender band made him a target for hypocritical journalists and industry executives. Sly Lives! follows Stone as drug addiction overtakes his life, career and family, the unfortunate result of constant pressure to fit a narrative he was never going to adhere to, plus the usual tribulations of enormous fame.

As Vernon Reid of Living Colour, one of the film’s many talking heads points out, it could be boiled down to a question Black artists have been faced with in the music industry for decades: who do you think you are? Questlove himself, who also directed 2021’s critically acclaimed Summer of Soul and won an Oscar for it, wrestled with this idea in relation to his own career. 

UCR recently spoke with producer Joseph Patel, who also worked with Questlove on Summer of Soul, about Sly Lives! and why Stone’s story matters.  

At the beginning of the film, Questlove mentions this theory he has that success for many Black artists can be as intimidating, if not more so, than failure, and that Sly was one of the first Black artists to really publicly go through that. Can you elaborate on that and also: do you think it’s gotten easier or harder for Black artists in those circumstances?
It’s not really my question to answer. I mean, this is more Ahmir’s question, but just from my observation, I think he was seeing…he was going through it as well. I think he had enormous feelings of guilt after winning the Oscar for Summer of Soul. You know, would his bandmates treat him the same? … I think this has been on his mind for a while. I think he was still going through it. And my proximity to Questlove, both as his friend and collaborator, is understanding that idea and then how do we bring this to life as a part of Sly Stone’s story? And it was like — the theory is that Questlove sort of traced it back. The theory is that Sly is the first artist in the post Civil Rights Era who’s serving Black audiences and white audiences in equal measure, and what that must have been like. I mean, imagine being 26 years old, you’re a Black artist running this genre-mixing rock band, you’ve just headlined Woodstock, you’re on the cover of Rolling Stone, and you’re serving Black and white audiences, who all think that you’ve solved race relations through your music. And what pressure that must have been like for him, knowing that he had no template to follow. … It’s like, this is a movie about Sly Stone, but it’s also about the burden that comes with success for Black artists in America.

Yeah, I can definitely see that. It’s about the intersectionality of race and gender in the arts, it’s about how drug addiction is treated in the music industry, it’s about all these other broader conversations. 
Yeah, I mean, there’s this great thing that happens towards the end of the movie where Sly Stone is talking about being in rehab. He’s talking about trauma and understanding generational trauma that’s sort of buried deep, but he doesn’t have the language for it. We didn’t have the language for it back then. He doesn’t ever use the word trauma, and the way he describes it, he’s like “Some things that might have happened to you that you don’t remember.” It was shocking to me when we saw that clip. It was just like, there was no language for what he was experiencing. Rehab had a stigma, therapy had a stigma. And that wasn’t that long ago, that was in the ’80s.

Exactly. I noticed also that the film highlights this idea that drug addiction was often treated as something that the user themselves was responsible for, instead of something that was happening to them as a result of external forces. Sly was never really asked during those years: what is happening to you that is causing this? Instead it was: why are you doing this?
Yeah, and, you know, it’s a fine line, too, because we wanted to show Sly’s story and tell his story with empathy, that these pressures and anxieties might have caused him to sort of hide behind — like Chaka [Kahn] says it, right? It’s like, cocaine gives you this sort of feeling that everything’s okay when it’s not. But we also wanted to give him agency, right? Like, we didn’t want to let him off the hook.

I know you’ve spoken recently about why Sly himself was not involved in the making of this film. He got sober a few years back around the time of Summer of Soul, and I’ll quote you directly here: “He can’t speak in full sentences. His eyes reveal a precociousness and a lucidity that’s there, but his motor function doesn’t exist.” This is something I’ve really been thinking about a lot over the past year or so — I actually run a podcast about Joni Mitchell, and she’s another person who, you know, has that lucidity, has all the elements of her true personality, but she’s not able to physically express herself in a way that I guess people would refer to as “normal.” I’m just curious your thoughts on that — what’s it like to make a film about somebody who’s very much still with us and also not? I would imagine there’s some challenges to that.
It presents a challenge. It was really a choice, right? Like, we could have forced the issue, and I think it would have been antithetical to the empathy we wanted to show in his story. But at the same time, you know, Sly is someone who became successful and came to our attention at a time when media was exploding, so we knew there were plenty of archival interviews that we could tap into where you would hear his voice.

But it also gave us a creative opportunity. Like in a perfect world, even if we got Sly on camera, could we get him to be reflective about these key moments in his career or these key struggles that he went through? Probably not. Most artists aren’t revealing in that way. But we could talk to [R&B singer] D’Angelo, who went through something similar. We could talk to Chaka Kahn who went through something similar. … I think that gave us this creative opportunity to add a layer to the storytelling where these artists serve as proxies for Sly. So when we brought them in to talk about Sly, they’re talking about Sly, but they’re also talking about themselves, and that was a kind of cool little layer to the story that makes this far from traditional music documentaries. … We didn’t want to talk to people who didn’t have skin in the game.

Watch the Trailer for ‘Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)’

There’s another section where the film is focusing on how Sly’s career and his musical output changed as the ’60s gave way to the ’70s, specifically around the “There’s a Riot Going On” era, and I believe it’s Q Tip in the film that talks about this idea of someone like David Bowie, a white man — progressive and innovative as he was, still a white man — going through career iterations and shifts in style and being, for the most part, praised for it. And Sly wasn’t afforded the same praise. He was met with a wall that essentially said: you can only be this one thing.
Yeah, and as soon as he sort of leaned the other way, you see language that those rock critics write about him — “pimp’s wisdom,” “gangster looks,” “house n-word of the Woodstock generation” — like the audacity to describe him that way. And it’s interesting you mention this because this is a specific story about a Black artist, and this idea of Black genius and the burden of Black genius, but if you look at the key art, the word Black is crossed out. And the idea behind that is — we didn’t want to put it in the film, and we didn’t want to beat people over the head with it — but the idea is, this is specific to Ahmir’s perspective, so he talks about Black genius, but really, you can extrapolate that to talk about the burden of success, the burden of genius in general. One of Ahmir’s close friends is Fiona Apple. She’s an artist that’s gone through something very similar, where she found success early in her career, but because she’s a woman, she got treated horribly for it. And, you know, it was just like, chewed up and spit out by the industry. So the idea really is, again, this is Ahmir’s story to tell, but we wanted people to understand that you could really extrapolate this to all levels of success in all facets of creativity.

What’s the most surprising or interesting thing you learned about Sly while making this film?
Specifically I had no idea that he produced the Great Society’s “Somebody to Love,” which becomes Jefferson Airplane‘s “Somebody to Love.” And it’s such a hippie anthem, psychedelic era anthem, and I didn’t know that Sly produced that. You know, we show it on screen for just a second, but in his studio session sheets, there’s a session he produces with the Warlocks who become the Grateful Dead. … But just his ability to produce, you know, white rock bands and R&B, I didn’t really have a handle on it until I saw and heard the music that he was producing. That was something I learned about him that I just was, you know, really floored by from a just music nerd level.

Listen to the Great Society’s ‘Somebody to Love’

What do you hope people will take away from watching this film?
I think we want the audience to leave the film with a sense of responsibility to the artists that give us so much, to give them empathy and grace and allow them to be human. I think that is something that Ahmir and I talked about in our first meeting as sort of where we wanted to land the plane. And that means, you know, not imposing our expectations on these artists if they don’t have it in them, and giving them grace to try new things and not have it be jokes or a mandate of some kind. I think that’s what we really want people to feel, is just the sense of empathy and allowing grace to these artists that give us so much, you know, and understanding that creativity is not a commodity like that. It’s human expression and and we should allow these artists to be human.