Author: wamdines

In an exclusive excerpt from Ted Templeman and Greg Renoff’s book Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life in Music, the legendary producer of Van Halen‘s first six records explains how an impromptu stage rap from singer David Lee Roth turned into one of the band’s most beloved songs.

The story picks up with Templeman, who had already produced Van Halen’s first two albums, catching up with the band at the end of their tour in support of Van Halen II, and witnessing the inspiration for what would become one of the most important songs on their next album, 1980’s Women and Children First: 

At the end of their 1979 tour, I saw their show in Phoenix. I’d catch them live whenever I could because I found that I’d pick up little ideas that could be used on their upcoming album. That night, I stood at the side of the stage and watched. In between songs, Dave launched into this rap about all the hot girls in the audience. He said something like, “You Arizona guys out there are some lucky fuckers! But hey, I get it! Everybody wants some, and I want some too! How about all of you?”

The crowd went crazy.

After the show I went backstage. I grabbed Dave and said, “Write that down in your notebook. That’s a great idea for a song.” That was the beginning of “Everybody Wants Some!!”

The development of that song is a good example of our working relationship. At the time, Ed had put together a little melodic chorded intro before the main riff of the song kicked into gear. I thought it was a good idea when we worked on it in the basement, but when we got into Sunset Sound in December 1979, I thought it was kind of lame.

But it was all we had, so we went with it when we initially tracked it. I don’t remember what Dave’s original ideas were for the song, but he and I didn’t like them all that much. So when Dave asked, “Hey, Ted, got anything?” I reminded him of what I’d heard him say in Phoenix. His eyes lit up. He said, “Oh yeah!”

He flopped into a chair and started writing on a notepad. In less than ten minutes, while Donn was polishing the sound of Alex’s tom-toms, he came up with a lyric pretty close to what ended up on the album. Now I wasn’t surprised, because he has an uncanny ability to come up with words on the spot. He’d done nearly the same thing with “Jamie’s Cryin’” back in 1977.

Read More: 10 Things We Learned From Ted Templeman’s Book

His last-second writing bursts produced quality too, because what he came up with was both clever and unique. To top it all off, when he sang the words to me, he had the melody as well. When Dave was locked in like that, you couldn’t ask for more as a producer.

The song had a steamy breakdown propelled by Alex’s jungle drums, an atmosphere that Dave contributed to with his vocalizations. Hearing that gave me an idea that took me back to my childhood when I’d hang out at my grandfather’s music store. I suggested we cop the drum intro of the Cadets’ “Stranded in the Jungle.” They were a fifties R&B group, and “Stranded” had been one of my favorite records when I was a kid.

Hear the Cadets Perform ‘Stranded in the Jungle’

Alex’s drumbeat worked wonderfully as an opening for the song, and so we scrapped Ed’s chorded intro. Even though Dave’s first passes at his vocals were usually pretty rough, I always wanted Dave in the vocal booth when the other three guys were laying down tracks together; I firmly believed that Dave needed to sing with each and every take. He’d settle in after a while, and Donn and I would get some good performances from him on tape.

At the end of the recording process, we’d comp his vocals from his multiple takes as needed or, if necessary, bring Dave back in the studio to repair any bum notes on his live takes. This approach of having the vocalist always sing along while the instrumentalists recorded their basic tracks is not something that I always had my other acts do, but Ed, Al, and Mike really played off Roth as he did his thing.

I’d watch him in the booth, listening to those guys as they recorded. It was like having the Big Bad Wolf cartoon character in full view of, and in the headphones of, the other three guys, and that was especially true for “Everybody Wants Some!!” It made the vibe great.

What we got on tape from Dave was always memorable. His ad-libs were hilarious. He interjected all of these X-rated asides during the song’s breakdown. Donn and I sat in the control room and cracked up, listening to all of these lines that Dave put on tape. The three other guys were out in the studio having a blast too, while Dave’s spouting all of this stuff. Dave’s tongue-in-cheek approach to recording that song kept us all loose. Of course we had to edit out almost all of his lines, but you can still get a taste of them on the record. He was just a genius when it came to all of this stuff.

From Ted Templeman: A Platinum Producer’s Life in Music. Used with permission by ECW Press.

Hear Van Halen Perform ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’

Strange as it may sound, there was a time when Guns N’ Roses did not fully believe in themselves. Or at least, they didn’t imagine things would get as big as they did.

“I thought the band was f****** great,” Slash said to Classic Rock in 2022, looking backward at GNR’s career. “It would have been a band that I would have listened to had I not been in it. I would have had the T-shirt, right? But I saw it as being a cool cult band. I didn’t have any fantasies of it being anything super-huge.”

Axl Rose, on the other hand, had grander visions. He knew what it was like to struggle and wanted the success. The band’s debut album, Appetite for Destruction, wound up No. 1 in America after months of relentless touring and radio play, things that took a lot of elbow grease to get done.

“Everything was directed at trying to achieve the sales without sacrificing the credibility of our music,” Rose explained to Rolling Stone in 1989. “We worked real hard to sell this many records. The album wasn’t just a fluke. Maybe Appetite will be the only good album we make, but it wasn’t just a fluke.”

Speaking of touring, we’ve crunched the numbers with the help of data from setlist.fm. Below, we’re taking a look at The Most and Least-Played Song Live Off Every Guns N’ Roses Album. For the purposes of this list, we’re avoiding songs that have never been played live, and sticking to originals with the exception of GNR’s 1993 covers album.

Album: Appetite for Destruction (1987)
Most-played: “Welcome to the Jungle”
Least-played: “Think About You”

It’s fitting that “Welcome to the Jungle,” the opening track to Guns N’ Roses’ debut album, is not only the most-played song from that release, but the most-played song out of the band’s entire live career with 989 plays. (To be fair, “Mr. Brownstone,” “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” are not far behind, each of which have over 900 plays themselves.) As a matter of fact, every song from Appetite for Destruction has been played live at one point or another. “Think About You” is the least-played among them with 78 performances.

Album: G N’ R Lies (1988)
Most-played: “Patience”
Least-played: “One in a Million”

GNR has also played every song from 1988’s G N’ R Lies, including its two covers: “Mama Kin” by Aerosmith and “Nice Boys” by Rose Tattoo. “One in a Million” is the least-played with just two performances, both of which took place before the album even came out, which is probably a good thing given its controversial lyrics. At the top of the list is “Patience,” which also started getting played prior to the release of G N’ R Lies and has continued to appear in set lists.

Album: Use Your Illusion I (1991)
Most-played: “November Rain”
Least-played: Tie Between “Garden of Eden” and “Bad Apples”

Technically speaking, Guns N’ Roses’ cover of Paul McCartney and Wings‘ “Live and Let Die” is the most-played track from Use Your Illusion I with 817 plays. But if we’re talking about originals, then “November Rain” is top dog with 810 plays. Though the studio version is around nine minutes long, live versions have stretched longer than that. (This makes sense when you consider the rumor that the song was originally around 25 minutes long.) Just one song from this album has never been played live, “Don’t Damn Me,” but the two least-played songs haven’t fared much better — “Garden of Eden” and “Bad Apples” have each been played only twice.

Album: Use Your Illusion II (1991)
Most-played: “You Could Be Mine”
Least-played: “Breakdown”

Like Use Your Illusion I, the top-played track from Use Your Illusion II is also a cover, this time in the form of Bob Dylan‘s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” with 931 performances. Next up then is “You Could Be Mine” with 794 plays, a song that got its live debut at the 1991 Rock in Rio festival. A handful of songs from this album have never been played, but “Breakdown” managed to squeeze itself onto a set list twice, both in December of 1991.

Album: “The Spaghetti Incident?” (1993)
Most-played: “Attitude” by Misfits
Least-played: “New Rose” by the Damned

Forget what we said about focusing on originals, since 1993’s “The Spaghetti Incident?” consists of covers only. A mere three of them have been performed live: “Down on the Farm” by U.K. Subs (58 times), “New Rose” by the Damned (65) and “Attitude” by Misfits (259). With “Attitude,” Duff McKagan takes over on lead vocals.

Album: Chinese Democracy (2008)
Most-played: “Chinese Democracy”
Least-played: “Riad n’ the Bedouins”

This brings us to GNR’s most recent release, 2008’s Chinese Democracy, an album that took years to fully complete. Despite this, the band has managed to play every single one of its songs live. The title track takes the No. 1 spot with 585 performances, while “Riad N’ the Bedouins” rounds out the pack with six plays. Of course, due to the amount of time it took for the album to be finished, both of those songs started getting played live several years before Chinese Democracy was officially released.

UK metalcore band Bury Tomorrow want one of their new single to be John Cena’s entrance theme now he’s a bad guy.

The Southampton outfit took to Instagram on Tuesday (March 25) to make their case. “This should be John Cena’s new theme song,” they wrote, with the video then showing a series of clips of the superstar wrestler soundtracked by their 2024 track Villain Arc. See how they match up below.

For those not up to date on all the latest WWE developments, Cena turned heel (i.e., became a bad guy) at this month’s live event Elimination Chamber. The turn shocked many fans, given that Cena has been a face (good guy) since 2003 and is a mainstream figure that’s starred in multiple Hollywood blockbusters.

The heel turn set up Cena’s ongoing feud with current WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. The two are set to go head-to-head with Rhodes’ title on the line at WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas on April 19 and 20.

Bury Tomorrow first released Villain Arc in May. The track will appear on the band’s upcoming album Will You Haunt Me With That Same Patience, which comes out on May 16 via Music For Nations. The singles What If I Burn, Let Go and Waiting have also come out.

Frontman Dani Winter-Bates spoke about Bury Tomorrow’s sound on their new album in an interview with Metal Hammer in October. “We want to really push ourselves, to be a bit different and bit shocking,” he said. “Villain Arc was the first of that, after releasing [2023 track] Abandon Us, which was pretty much a deathcore song. But people seem to really like it. It’s gone down really well.”

The band will tour North America in April then play a series of Will You Haunt Me… release shows in the UK in May. A more extensive European tour will kick off in October. See all dates and details via the Bury Tomorrow website.

Ten years under Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s benign dictatorship almost destroyed The Mars Volta – but the Texan zonk rockers’ wild ride got back on track with 2012’s Noctourniquet. That year the leader told Prog about the trials and tribulations of making their sixth album.

“Baaa… baaa…” The man with the hair like a sheep leaning into the breeze is making suitably ovine bleating noises at his audience. And not in a good way. “I think it’s a very, very sad day when the only way you can express yourself is through slam dancing,” he accuses. “Are you all typical white people? Look at you: you learnt that from the TV; you didn’t learn that from your best friend. You’re a robot, you’re a sheep. I have the microphone and you are all sheep.”

It’s January 2001 and Cedric Bixler-Zavala is of the “chauvinistic macho brutality” of the rapidly growing crowds he’s playing to. Tired of reading that his seven-year-old band At The Drive-In are the best ‘new’ thing in rock music. Tired of the conformist rules and regulations of the underground punk and hardcore scenes that spawned him.

He doesn’t even listen to that type of music any more. The rented Los Angeles space he shares with guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and their collection of old stereos, reel-to-reel tape machines and a wall of 16 televisions – always tuned to the same channel – resounds to the tones of prog and jazz, Latin American music and dub reggae. They listen to Syd Barrett, Can, Kraftwerk and Captain Beefheart while gorging on the mind-expanding films of Federico Fellini and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

On that stage at the Big Day Out Festival in Australia, At The Drive-In’s angular and explosive 21st-century punk is no longer something Bixler-Zavala or Rodriguez-Lopez want to be part of. The two old friends have been discussing it more and more: they haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye with their bandmates. Their music feels neither pioneering or remotely progressive.

So they know what they need to do: they split up At The Drive-In, just as the world is finally cottoning on to them. The Mars Volta – the most far out, wig-flipping sonic explorers to win a Grammy and the only ones named after an obscure Fellini reference – are born. And so a new, vastly different, journey begins.

Eleven years is a long time in music, but it seems like The Mars Volta have filled every second of it with noise. Right from the beginning they painted from a different sonic palette to At The Drive-In – or indeed any of their rock contemporaries. They are arguably the biggest prog band in the world, without ever tagging themselves as such.

And if their previous outfit was about righteous ire, skewed melodies and energy over ability, then The Mars Volta have been about breaking musical moulds with an amorphous maelstrom of mind-blowing musicality.

Even the approach to the band dynamic is different. Longstanding fans will know The Mars Volta is the music inside Rodriguez-Lopez’s head, augmented by the linguistic and vocal gymnastics of Bixler-Zavala. They make no bones about the fact everyone else is just there to help the cause.

That’s why at the last count there have been 17 members of The Mars Volta, including former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, drum prodigy Thomas Pridgen and sound technician Jeremy Ward – whose death from a heroin overdose in 2003 prompted Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala to curtail their own dalliances with opiates. The Mars Volta’s revolving door is well greased and continually spinning.

“There’s probably a view of us as being people who burn through others because we’re assholes, but if you want a perfect working vessel you get perfect working people,” says Cedric Bixler-Zavala. “You don’t get slackers. If they’re some loud asshole who embarrasses you, or a shitty LA person just interested in making money and being famous, then they’re not for us. And that’s exactly why we got rid of the people that we got rid of earlier on.”

The Mars Volta v1.0 came together in 2001 during extended jams in Monkey Island, the communal warehouse/rehearsal space that Cedric and Omar shared in Long Beach, California. A potential member would arrive, a bedroom would be built for them to live in, and practice would begin the next day. “Living around someone, you soon realise whether they’re right or not,” says Bixler-Zavala.

With an initial line-up in place, they hit the road and debuted with the Tremulant EP in 2002, a glorious mix of prog/jazz fusion, breakbeats, backwards masking and hints of the thrusting, Zeppelin-esque riffs which would follow on their half million-selling debut album Deloused In The Comatorium.

Early shows mixed the chaotic energy of The Mahavishnu Orchestra with the complexity of prog’s first generation. On their first UK tour they dazzled audiences by playing like they were on crack. Because they were on crack.

“We weren’t doing it all the time but we would find places… Technically it was freebasing,” Bixler-Zavala later confessed. “Crack and ether together. We’d only do it occasionally on tour, and when we got home. And sometimes during practice. When we smoked freebase I’d like to think we made a lot more interesting music than other bands. The effect it had on us was we played faster; but some people didn’t understand and it caused rifts.”

Such drug explorations are now a thing of the past. In the intervening years all energies have instead been channelled into albums that meld high concepts – stories woven around rediscovered diaries, the suicide of a friend – with the acid-soaked musical intensity of Santana or King Crimson. It’s all made unique by Rodriguez-Lopez’s idiosyncratic guitar style, as his love/hate relationship with the instrument pushes him to make it sound like something else entirely.

The Mars Volta’s new album Noctourniquet is their sixth. Add to this a live album, four dub records with side band De Facto, Omar’s 22 solo records and a half dozen collaborative albums, plus production work and filmmaking, and you have a vast body of recorded work, matched only in quantity and variation by improv-jazz greats such as Miles Davis or Sun Ra.

“I’m not doing this for the purposes of major success and I don’t have anyone telling me what to do,” Rodriguez-Lopez explains. “I think people have this idea of me always working, but that’s not strictly true. There’s plenty of time in the day to go to the movies, have lunch, hang out with friends. But ultimately what I enjoy most is going home and playing with my toys. Making music.”

It’s a work ethic that puts many bands to shame. “A lot of ‘musicians’ are in love with the idea of being in a band!” he laughs. “It’s a lifestyle thing; it’s all about being seen to be a rock star. Also the industry aspect of music is promotionally driven. That’s why I’m talking to you now: to help promote my music.

“However, as an artist, during the actual creative process you have to keep away from all that stuff, otherwise you get distracted – you get sucked in. We don’t have an A&R guy dropping by. I have complete control over it all. We record the album, then we present it to the label. I’m really very lucky to still be doing what I love, every single day.”

Still, the creation of Noctourniquet has not been without its troubles. Recording of the music was completed three years ago, straight off the back of making previous album Octahedron. But after a decade of frantic activity, Bixler-Zavala admitted he was struggling to keep up with the creative pace. Crisis talks were conducted and creative issues aired.

“We had an argument at the time,” Rodriguez-Lopez says, “in which he told me that after 10 years of The Mars Volta being my project, my baby – my totalitarian rule – he couldn’t keep up with that rhythm. He wanted time to sit with the record and do it at his own pace. So it took him three years to write the lyrics. And that caused some further arguments.”

So it’s fair to describe The Mars Volta as a benign dictatorship? “Yeah. For better or for worse, for all my faults and all that might not be cool about that approach, we have at least made some interesting records. People might not like them, but at least we polarise people. There is nothing else out there that sounds quite like this band and I’m very proud of that.”

Noctourniquet fits neatly in The Mars Volta’s colourful canon of work, yet also explores new avenues. While lead single The Malkin Jewel is less a sprawling prog opus and more reminiscent of the jarring time signatures of Captain Beefheart or the twisted blues of The Bad Seeds, a song such as Empty Vessels Make The Loudest Sound sees Bixler-Zavala delivering his most direct lyrics yet.

“The artist has to keep changing,” says Rodriguez-Lopez. “I love the way Cedric writes lyrics. He’s built a whole body of work where everything is cryptic, open to interpretation and shrouded in metaphor. So I challenged him to do the opposite this time. I tried to change my approach too, and move away from methodical perfectionism. That song, Empty Vessels, I wanted to try and do in one take.”

The release of Noctourniquet also arrives at a time when the duo have finally confronted the lingering animosity of At The Drive-In’s split by reforming the band a decade on. But The Mars Volta’s mad musical carnival continues.

“I think the fact I still feel like the kid playing with his toys in his dad’s garage enables me to produce so much work,” says Rodriguez-Lopez. “When I was kid I absolutely loathed school and all I could think about all day was getting home to the garage to play. To create. To make music. And I still have that spirit in me today.”

American rapper and singer Lizzo will play the lead role in Rosetta, an upcoming biopic about the life of rock’n’roll pioneer Sister Rostetta Tharpe.

The film will be made by Amazon Studios in conjunction with Lizzo and executive producer Kevin Beisler (who worked on the star’s Amazon series Watch Out for the Big Grrrls and the Lizzo: Live in Concert film).

“Let me be very clear: there were no auditions for Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” says Lizzo. “Because this is a film I’ve been producing for years, fighting for her story to get told. I’ve been honouring her in my music videos and performances, pitching her movie to people who’ve never heard of her, studying her life and reading every book that exists about her.

“This is my baby, my passion – because Rosetta deserves. The Godmother of rock’n’roll is in good hands, y’all. Stay tuned.”

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915. After becoming a star in her mother’s church in Chicago – one of the few that allowed women to preach, and also encouraged musical expression beyond the hymn book – she moved to New York, where the legendary talent scout John Hammond introduced her to big-city audiences.

Signed to Decca Records, and singing with Lucky Millinder’s orchestra, Rosetta shocked her gospel fans by recording saucy material like Four Or Five Times and I Want A Tall Skinny Papa. Her 1945 record of Strange Things Are Happening is one of a handful of candidates for the first-ever rock’n’roll record.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe died from a stroke in 1973, aged 58. Her epitaph reads: “She would sing until you cried and then she would sing until you danced for joy. She helped to keep the church alive and the saints rejoicing.”