Author: wamdines

Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett thinks he “should be a lot better” at playing his instrument.

The 62-year-old, who joined Metallica in 1983, makes the admission during an exclusive interview with Metal Hammer, when asked how he feels about the state of modern guitar playing.

“I see a lot of [people on YouTube] and I’m frigging impressed,” he answers. “There are some amazing players out there, where I’m just shaking my head like, ‘Why aren’t these guys working? Why aren’t they recording?’ But then I think… maybe they can’t. Maybe they have jobs, or families, or something they can’t leave behind.”

The guitarist then turns to his own talents. “I should be a lot better than I am,” he admits. “I see some of these younger guitar players and I’m like, ‘Where did I go wrong?’ Ha ha!”

He continues, explaining that his approach to playing is based more on feel than music theory: “It’s hard for me to be objective or subjective for where I stand in all of this. I just know that I like playing the way I do; I know if I keep on playing from my cajónes, somebody is going to be able to relate to that.

“I don’t need to show off or get egotistical by being like, ‘Hey, check out this three-octave arpeggio with tapping in the middle.’ I can’t be fucking bothered! I have a bombastic way of playing – I’ve always been that way, even when I was just in my room.”

Despite Hammett’s self-deprecating take on his ability, he’s frequently featured on ‘best guitarists in metal’ lists. Hammer ranked the lead player and his bandmate James Hetfield as the genre’s joint third-best guitarists in 2019. Interviewed for the piece, Phil Demmel (Kerry King, ex-Machine Head) called Hammett “the master of the memorable solo”.

Hammett released a coffee table book based on his extensive guitar collection, The Collection: Kirk Hammett, last month via Gibson Publishing. He’s currently touring North America with Metallica. See the remaining dates below.

May 01: Nashville Nissan Stadium, TN*
May 03: Nashville Nissan Stadium, TN+
May 07: Blacksburg Lane Stadium, VA*
May 09: Columbus Sonic Temple, OH
May 11: Columbus Sonic Temple, OH
May 23: Philadelphia Lincoln Financial Field, PA+
May 25: Philadelphia Lincoln Financial Field, PA*
May 28: Landover Northwest Stadium, MD*
May 31: Charlotte Bank Of America Stadium, NC*
Jun 3: Atlanta Mercedes-Benz Stadium, GA*
Jun 6: Tampa Raymond James Stadium, FL+
Jun 8: Tampa Raymond James Stadium, FL*
Jun 14: Houston NRG Stadium, TX*
Jun 20: Santa Clara Levi’s Stadium, CA+
Jun 22: Santa Clara Levi’s Stadium, CA*
Jun 27: Denver Empower Field at Mile High, CO+
Jun 29: Denver Empower Field at Mile High, CO*

* Pantera and Suicidal Tendencies support
+ Limp Bizkit and Ice Nine Kills support

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

Taking inspiration from the rainbow-hungry goblin protagonists of a 1970s children’s book, Primus released The Desaturating Seven in 2017. Les Claypool told Prog about the band’s seventh album, another madcap concept work designed to spook and spellbind in equal measure.

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In 1978, Italian illustrator Ulderico Conte Gropplero di Troppenburg published a children’s book. The Rainbow Goblins was a vivid affair that told the story of seven evil characters named after the colours of the spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. They traverse the land, stealing the colour from rainbows with their lassos, filling their bellies with its kaleidoscopic goodness. It all comes to a surprisingly violent conclusion for the miniature protagonists, but the story doesn’t end there.

While Ul de Rico – as he’s more commonly known – went on to publish a sequel (The White Goblin, in 1996) and work as a designer on Hollywood blockbusters The NeverEnding Story and Flash Gordon, the goblins have made something of a comeback: their story is retold in new Primus album The Desaturating Seven.

“I’m getting older,” says Primus mainman Les Claypool, speaking to Prog from his home in Sonoma County, California, punctuating his conversation with suitably maniacal cackles. “I’m figuring I need to pull some of the pots off the stove, and this is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

”My wife used to read The Rainbow Goblins to my kids a lot when they were little. I remember going through it and thinking how amazing it was: the artwork, the colours, the beauty… and yet the darkness, and the creepiness, and the message. It was just an amazing piece of art.

“It was inspiring to me and I wanted to supplement it with my obscure interpretation and perspective. Obviously it’s also fairly relevant to what’s going on today. It just seemed like the right time.”

Thinly veiled political sentiments aside, the album manages to capture the book’s prismatic yet black-hearted vibrance perfectly. The ominous spoken-word introduction is read by Tool bass player Justin Chancellor (“the champion goblin,” says Claypool) to the chilling denouement, it’s an album that conjures up images of peculiar lands, epic journeys and dark, sinister activity with some considerable degree of skill.

From the stumbling lurch of The Valley, with its spookily disembodied vocals that sound as if they were recorded underwater, via the stuttering The Seven – a song with a cadence that makes it feel like a demented, foreboding sequel to John Walter Bratton’s Teddy Bear’s Picnic – to the off-kilter, racing drama of the climactic The Storm, it’s full of squirting rhythms, lolloping basslines and enormous mischief.

It’s like a nursery rhyme set to some form of alien, disjointed jazz, but it somehow succeeds in breathing life into Ul de Rico’s deviant story.

“That’s what I’ve always tried to do with Primus stuff,” says Claypool. “We’ve never been about dance floor lyrics. It’s always been about visuals and trying to evoke some interesting pictures through music. The visual element has always been a very strong part of what we do live, given the parameters of what we can afford.

“We’re not Radiohead, who have a little bigger production budget than we do, but we come up with some pretty cool stuff. For me, the images Ul de Rico painted for this thing are so spectacular and so strong I just really wanted to support that as best I could and not detract. At times it was incredibly easy, and at times it was difficult.

I don’t want to hear 20 songs by my favourite artist. I’d rather hear 10 songs and get to suck them in

“The biggest challenge was to write lyrics about goblins and rainbows and it not to come off like a Tenacious D song. It could easily be interpreted as some form of parody, and if you look through the lyrics I don’t often mention goblins and very rarely mention rainbows. Instead I use the notion of the metaphors that are implied in the story.”

Given the epic nature of the tale, it’s something of a triumph that in an age where attention spans are lower than ever and yet 70-minute albums are the norm, Primus managed to bring the album to a frothing climax in just over half an hour. “That, to me, is the folly of CDs,” says Claypool. “I don’t want to hear 20 songs by my favourite artist. I’d rather hear 10 songs and get to suck them in. For me, one of my all-time favourite records as a kid – it was also my first concert – was Hemispheres by Rush, and this record is either a minute or 40 seconds shorter than that.

“Of course, part of the reason that albums were shorter back in the day was that the more information you put on a disc, the more you included, the more the quality dropped. The grooves got closer together, and you lost the bottom end. So I wanted to make sure it sounded great on a single album.”

Rush aren’t the only band referenced by Claypool as he talks about the album. Lead single The Seven, with its corrugated rhythms and wobbling bass, definitely has an air of Discipline-era King Crimson about it. “There are different eras of Crimson,” says Claypool, “but when I discovered them it was 80s Crimson, the Adrian Belew, Tony Levin Crimson era. That, to me, was Crimson. So when I heard the earlier stuff, I was like, ‘Woah! This is quite a different chapter!’ But those 80s Crimson songs are just spectacular.

“They were very powerful for a young man to hear: Tony Levin and Bill Bruford playing those rhythms together, just the whole package. They’re one of the greatest bands ever. They’re all monsters and they have this chemistry together. When you get a group of individuals – no matter how strong they are separately – and they don’t have that chemistry when they come together, it can be quite interesting. But if they do have that chemistry, it just takes it beyond.”

Sean Lennon has this incredible ability to form vocal melodies and harmonies… that was very helpful for me

In August, Claypool and Sean Lennon released the four-track EP Lime And Limpid Green, the follow-up to The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s whimsical debut album of last year, Monolith Of Phobos. Alongside covers of Flower Travellin’ Band’s Satori, Pink Floyd’s Astronomy Domine and The Who’s Boris The Spider was a faithful version of Crimson’s The Court Of The Crimson King. “It’s a phenomenal song to play, record and perform,” says Claypool.

“Any time you do a project with other people, you grow, hopefully. Working with Sean, he and I pushed each other in directions that we probably wouldn’t go on our own. He has this incredible ability to form vocal melodies and harmonies, and that was very helpful for me on The Desaturated Seven.”

Another different approach Claypool brought to the recording of the album was by creating a storyboard to lay out the goblins’ tale for the other members of the band, guitarist Larry “Ler” LaLonde and drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander, before they came up with their parts. Aside from that, it was business as usual.

“We do everything in my house,” says Claypool, “where I’ve assembled all this old vintage gear. Every now and then I need to kick things to keep them going, but I’m the only one who knows exactly where to kick them, so I’m the only guy who can run it.”

Maybe I’ll start telling people I play Beatles music… but sideways

Have his kids heard the album? “They’re adults now,” says Claypool. “And like everything else I do, my daughter thinks it’s incredibly weird, whereas with my son, it’s right up his alley. When I played The Residents in the car when they were little, my daughter would cry and say it was scary, while he loved it and wanted to hear it again.”

The band have been in touch with Ul de Rico, (“a thoroughly eccentric fellow,” says Claypool) to licence the artwork. “My manager was emailing with him there for a while because we needed his permission. To me, a huge part of the pie is utilising all those images. He painted all that stuff on these wood panels, and we’ve had a couple of people do some reproductions of some of it, and it just doesn’t look nearly as good as what he came up with.”

The fruits of the collaboration will be seen when Primus take the goblins on the road, and if all goes according to plan, it’s going to be spectacular. After all, the band set the bar high with the tour for the Primus & The Chocolate Factory album, which reimagined the soundtrack to the classic children’s film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.

“We have a pretty amazing team that have been part of our visual world for a while,” says Claypool, “and when we did the Wonka thing, we put together a pretty interesting stage show. It started off with us going out and doing the stripped-down production version of Primus, before we opened the curtains of this magical world that was Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, with Oompa Loompas jumping around and lots of video visuals. We’re going to do something similar to that on this. Obviously there’s going to be a lot of rainbows and lots of goblins. Not a lot of helicopters on this one.”

Prog asks if Claypool is familiar with synaesthesia, the neurological condition in which real-world stimulation is experienced by more senses than would normally be the case. Those affected might see a picture of the sea and immediately taste apricots, or unfailingly think of January as being yellow. One variant, chromaesthesia, results in different musical notes provoking the listener into visualising involuntary, simultaneous bursts of colour.

It sounds like the kind of thing Claypool might have a theory or two about, given the visual impact of Primus’s new album and the brilliance of Ul de Rico’s images, but he’s not biting. “I see music in the form of sandwiches,” he chortles, before asking how to spell synaesthesia and writing it down. Don’t be surprised if it shows up on the next album.

Or maybe it won’t. Primus are nothing if not unpredictable. “I’ve no idea what kind of music I play,” says Claypool. “Maybe I’ll start telling people I play Beatles music… but sideways.”

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

Pearl Jam began the new millennium keen to show that they were not the same band who had helped define the music of the previous decade. Binaural, the Seattle legends’ sixth record, was released in mid-May, 2000, and turns 25 this month. The idea was that it would signify some sort of fresh start for Eddie Vedder & co., more exploratory and experimental than their already-exploratory and experimental previous two albums (No Code and Yield).

They have never been a band who traded happily on past glories, mixing it up each time in the quest to introduce a little fresh magic dust into the equation, and on Binaural the reset was double-pronged. One major difference since Yield was that ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron was now behind the kit. Another key change was that after working with producer Brendan O’Brien on every album since the all-conquering Vs., they now had a new face manning the mixing desk. Tchad Blake, celebrated for bringing a dynamic sound to records from Tom Waits, Tracey Chapman and more, was on board. His approach to recording was the technique from which the album took its title: binaural recording was a method that used two microphones to create a 3D stereo sound. “Tchad has a very distinctive way of recording the sound of the room,” Eddie Vedder said in the band tome Pearl Jam Twenty. “We were interested in exploring that atmosphere. A lot of the time on Binaural, it’s almost like the listener is there in the room with us.”

That listener might have felt a bit awkward, though. Pearl Jam had a lot to untangle as they got to work in Studio Litho, a recording facility owned by the group’s guitarist Stone Gossard, in Seattle. One major issue was that Vedder was suffering from writer’s block. “I almost went completely crazy,” he told the NYRock website at the time. “I kept changing the lyrics and then changed them again, just to write another version. I ended up with several versions and then used the best and put them together and that worked surprisingly well. But I before I did that, I thought it would never happen, I’d never be able to finish it… It was my own personal hell. I had a great time but at the same time the lyrics just didn’t come together and I was wrecking my head. I still can’t believe that it’s all done and over with, that I finally got all the lyrics together.”

He wasn’t helping himself, he added, by constantly comparing his work to that of his heroes, having recently noticed that his idol Pete Townshend had already written their rock opera Tommy by the time he was Vedder’s age. “That made it much harder to come up with good lyrics,” he said, understandably. “I was always comparing my lyrics to great lyrics. There’s so much junk on the radio that I set myself very high standards.”

He’d also noticed listening to the radio, he explained to Rolling Stone, that there was an alarming amount of Eddie Vedder soundalikes out there on the airwaves. “Last time I listened to the radio, I was like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy and maybe I should call an attorney!’,” he wise-cracked. “It’s kinda funny that you can copyright a note progression but you can’t copyright your voice and the way you sing.”

Vedder’s concerns over his lyrics – and his copycats – weren’t the only thing going awry at Pearl Jam HQ at the time with guitarist Mike McCready mired in prescription drug and health issues. “Binaural is a dark time for me,” he confessed. “I was struggling with Crohn’s disease and struggling with addiction. I was taking pills to take care of that. And then that got out of hand, and it was dark.” McCready would enter rehab for the second time during the recording sessions.

The band found a way to the end, though, creating a collection of songs that pinballed from surging rockers (Breakerfall, God’s Dice, Insignificance), yearning ballads (Light Years), experimental art-rock (Sleight Of Hand, Evacuation) and one ukulele-fuelled ditty (Soon Forget). But still, there were hurdles to get over. There found at the mixing stage that perhaps Blake wasn’t the guy to get the record across the finishing line and turned to their old pal Brendan O’Brien instead. “Tchad had some great ideas, he did a great job on the slow songs,” explained McCready. “But other songs were harder for him, so we called Brendan to remix, to make the songs heavier.”

Looking back on the record with a decade and more’s worth of hindsight, guitarist Stone Gossard viewed Binaural as a missed opportunity. “That’s an album I need to listen to in another ten years,” he shrugged. “We weren’t as loose with one another or sharing as well as we usually did. It was our first record with Matt Cameron. He’s a genius, one of the heaviest drummers of all time. It feels like we should have gotten more out of him… We’re never going to remember that record as one of the greats.”

Incidentally, it has been over ten years since Gossard made that comment so, if you’re reading Stone, it’s time to stick on Binaural and see what you make of it, 25 years on…

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

Featuring ex-Deep Purple bassist/co-vocalist Glenn Hughes, blues guitar star Joe Bonamassa, keyboard king Derek Sherinian and drummer Jason Bonham, Black Country Communion have established themselves as one of the greatest supergroups of the last two decades. In 2011, as they geared up to release their second album, the four members sat down with Classic Rock to talk about how it was on the way to becoming bigger than any of them could have imagined.

What began as a brief side-project for Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian has grown into something closely resembling the real deal: a contemporary classic rock group comprised of four musical over-achievers with their collective artistic compass pointing to some time in the early 1970s.

There is also another component to the group: the man whose vision it was the persuaded them to work together, producer (“don’t call me ‘svengali”) and co-songwriter Kevin Shirley. Like the band, whose combined CV includes time with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Dream Theater, Shirley’s resumé also includes some of the biggest names in rock: Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, the Black Crowes, Journey… The full list is huge and impressive.

According to Shirley, “The master plan was begun before we even started. To the point where we scripted the ‘no touring until we had enough for a two-album set’. We had a little hiccup at the beginning of the second record, which was the result of many managers in the room, but other than that it’s been pretty much like clockwork.” Well, almost. With so many super-egos involved, ‘clockwork’ was never going to be an accurate description of how things work in Black Country Communion. But, as we learn, it’s been amazingly close – so far, anyway.

How did this whole journey begin for you?

Glenn Hughes: John Bonham was my good friend, and I had Jason on my knee when he was a kid, though he doesn’t remember that. I met Joe at a NAMM show five years ago. Joe and I started to hang out and write a couple of vignettes, nothing heavy, just kind of bluesy Americana. Then he invited me to sing a couple of songs with him at the House Of Blues. He loved Medusa from Trapeze, and he liked Mistreated from Purple. And Joe’s audience, you know, they’re a blues audience. But when I went on there and did my shtick they went fucking mad! Kevin Shirley ran backstage, sweating going: “I can see it! I can fucking see it now! We’ve gotta get Jason and Derek…” Me and Joe went, okay. Then the next day, a conference call and the band is born.

Derek Sherinian: Any time Kevin gives me a call I always make myself available. I’ve known Glenn for a long time, and of course I knew who Jason was. I’d never heard of Joe before. I think I’d heard his name, but I didn’t know anything about him. So I just went down there blindly to see if there was some kind of vibe, and we ended up doing a whole album.

Jason Bonham: I was doing the weekly grocery shop in Florida, where I live, and Kevin called me. I knew Glenn, I know Joe, I didn’t really know who Derek was. I didn’t do any homework, I didn’t listen to any of the songs, and kind of just went in there with that: “Okay, we’ll see what happens.” I think I was six hours late the first day. And then they had bets the second day what time I’d get there. I didn’t take it very seriously at all. I kind of had a bee in my bonnet about how it was being put together. I was still kind of upset that my dream hadn’t come true.

With Led Zeppelin, you mean?

Bonham: Yeah. And I was still kind of in a bitter place. So I was a little bit off. Not so much with everybody – Kevin. I didn’t kind of get the deal. And I made quite a bit of a problem. I’ve since very much apologised to the guys. You know, the old, ‘You’re exploiting the talents of Led Zeppelin. How much kick-back you getting?’ kind of vibe. And then when I heard the album I was like, hey, well, this is pretty good. I’m so pleased with my drumming on it. But I couldn’t really imagine it being a success, I don’t know why. I just didn’t really get it, until people started to go: “Oh my god. This album’s fantastic!” And it just grew on me. You know, on the new album the song Cold is one of my… I’m getting goose bumps talking about it. That is to me just beautiful, beautiful writing.

Joe, you and Kevin had a longstanding relationship before BCC. How does it work and why?

Bonamassa: First of all, we wouldn’t be having this conversation without Kevin. He really is the fifth member. He basically took those ramshackle tracks [on the first album] and made something out of it. I mean, you should have seen the look on my face when I heard the first record! I didn’t even remember doing it, we’d just cut it so quickly. He was the guy who kind of gave the mandate at the very beginning. Like, “Let’s get in our time machine, go back to 1970-71 but make it new and make it original and make it in 2010. Because I think there is a gap where bands are not doing that anymore.” You can’t buy any new music that sounds like the old school. There’s old school bands doing new music but there’s not like a brand new band. So I thought it was really clever of him to come up with that, and I was like, “Yeah, that should be fun”. And it’s been a blast.

With this second album, the band have suddenly got something to live up to. Did that make it more difficult for you?

Hughes: Kevin said to us: “I want you all to go write music for the next album.” I don’t write for a project, I just write every day because I like to write. It makes me feel good. So I wrote a lot of songs. But Joe doesn’t write on the road, so I said: “I need you for two weeks,” right after the two live shows. But he went up to Hogmanay with his girlfriend and I had him for three days. We went in with no pre-production, we went in cold again. And Jason and Derek hadn’t really heard what I’d been writing. They’d heard little bits and pieces. We just huddled together and I shared my music with the guys, and built the songs from there.

Bonamassa: We’d done Black Country, the first one, then four months later I’m in the studio again doing what would become [this year’s solo album] Dust Bowl. Then as soon as I get off the road after nine months of hard touring, Glenn’s ringing like: ‘So, Joseph, on Monday you’re going to come to my house and we’re going to start writing…’ I’m like, whoa! Fellas! Man, I’m not a machine! Give me a second to get my head-space! [laughs] But it did work out well. I warned Glenn: “I won’t be able to bring in half the record this time, but I will be able to commit to like doing two [new songs],” which took a little bit of the pressure, and he and I collaborated on some other songs. But it was basically ideas that he had gestated.

Bonham: It was a much better experience. Like we were a big fucking family, honestly. I felt in a completely different place. I didn’t want to say to Kevin: “You were right and I was wrong,” but I did. Me and Kevin had a really good chat and we both left hugging, and since then we’re getting on in leaps and bounds and speak to each other quite often. The strangest thing, I haven’t stopped listening to it since we finished it. I listen to it on a daily basis. Which is really bizarre for me.

Let’s talk about some of the songs on the new album, starting with the opener, The Outsider.

Hughes: I wrote that riff at the start of the song. Joe freaked when he heard that. But it’s so simple – it’s five notes, it’s a scale, you know? I wrote a song called Good Man. It broke down into a half-time on the chorus, with a really acoustic, almost Crosby, Stills & Nash vibe. And it sounded fantastic. But when we got into the chorus after playing that intense lick, it just went somewhere else.

The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall is something of an epic.

Bonamassa: I brought in Ordinary Son and I wrote The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall. Live, I may have to lower the key just slightly on …Hadrian’s Wall. I kind of sang myself into a corner on that one.

Bonham: In my head I was still thinking of a Zeppelin song at the end when the drums come back in. I kept thinking: “What would dad do in an environment like this?” I remember Kevin saying something like: “Don’t worry what your dad would do, just do what Jason would do.” And I was like: “Well, yeah, you’re right.” But in my head I use him as a building block.

How about Save Me?

Bonham: That actually started back with me, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, one of the days we were working in 2008, when we got together just as a three-piece to see what we could come up with. I remember one day, the greatest day of anyone’s kind of life, Jimmy Page turns to you and says: “Hey, you got any ideas?” Like, what? “Er, yeah. Hold on a minute…” Rush to the computer and suddenly go through all of my favourite Zeppy kind of riffs that I had flying around my head. And that was it. I had the basis of the song, of the main riff, but I never got to finish it. Glenn took my idea and finished it. I was so stoked when I first heard it. And Derek came up with the chorus chords, and Joe with the bridge.

The tag, like the Indian part, was through a friend called Chris Blackwell who played with Robert [drumming in Plant’s 90s backing band]. I contacted him a long, long time ago: “You haven’t got any more ideas like Calling To You [from Plant’s Fate Of Nations], have you?” And he sent me an idea of a song. And that was just the one part of the song I really liked. So I said, you know what, we need that kind of part there. So I had to give him a writing credit on it. It’s like a collection of bits and piece that kind of all stem back to the boys [Zeppelin], I suppose.

Hughes: I said to Jason when he played it to me: “Can I have that?” And he said: “Yeah. Write something that’s gonna make me cry.” He’s really emotional, that boy. So I wrote something… But these songs sort of wrote themselves. Kevin is in the studio, directing, conducting us with the headphones on. We know what key we’re in and we’ve run through it once in the control room with acoustic guitars. Then we go out there and the tape is rolling, and the magic, I swear, just happens.

What can we expect from the shows this summer?

Hughes: This is my first band since Purple. It’s been fucking 34 years, for Christ’s sake! Come on! It’s out of this world. I’m back in a rock band again. And I’m in it for the right reasons now; I’m not in it for the drugs and the booze and the blow and the birds. I’m really enjoying being in a rock band, a real rock band, a great band. I said to Joe early last year: “We have got to do shows before the end of this year, and we’ve got to do it in England.” It wasn’t hard to convince him.

Bonamassa: Well we certainly had that not-knowing-what’s-going-to-happen-next thing at those gigs in Wolverhampton and London [laughs]. I felt we didn’t have enough material. There’s no reason for me in Black Country Communion to be singing [solo song] …John Henry, you know? Now that we have a second record we’ll have a really comfortable hour-and-a-half of all of the band stuff, and we can still throw in a [Led Zep’s] No Quarter cos that was one of my favourite songs to play. Then you have a real show, and it won’t be like a 20-minute guitar solo.

Glenn, Joe told us he was taken aback at the start of the first show in Wolverhampton when you just ran on from the wings all guns blazing. That he felt he had to try and keep up.

Hughes: [Smiles] That’s a work in progress. Jason won’t look at you onstage. And I like to engage everybody but Joe won’t look at me either. He’s never had anybody engage him [onstage]. His manager’s going, ‘Push him! Push him!’ Kevin’s going, ‘Give him a fucking…’ you know? But we’re a work in progress, we’re like two gigs! So God knows what happens after three months. I see us being another Purple, Zeppelin, where live the songs will morph into longer things, because we have the musicianship in the band. Jason Bonham, pound for pound, right now has gotta be the best musical rock drummer we have – period. He is fucking insane!

How do you see BCC proceeding from here?

Bonamassa: Our next real challenge is to go out there and make a real live show out of it. Everybody was kind of running on adrenalin those first two gigs, but now let’s make sure we can keep that spirit three or four weeks into the tour when the novelty of it wears off and we’re grinding it out on the road.

Bonham: I’d love to give it the proper attention that it needs. To make sure the albums get toured and the band gets seen all over the world. I just hope the band gets a chance to progress and be what it could be. At the same time, you can’t really ask Joe to give up such a successful solo career. Glenn is a hundred per cent into it. I’m a hundred percent into it. Obviously we’d all like to do more, but I’m totally behind whatever the decision is of the band. We will play to our best ability at every show we play.

Hughes: I said to Joe at dinner last week: “Joe, I need you to invest your time into this band as well as your solo career.” And he told me very frankly: “I absolutely love this band. I love being the guitar player. I don’t have to be the leader, and I love being your partner.” My dream is to establish ourselves even more so next year. I shouldn’t really talk about next year, cos I’m in the program and we’re supposed to deal with today and stuff. But I know that I’ve got tour dates coming up with BCC. I’ve got my own full European tour in the fall. But Black Country to me, truly, is my first love. When people think of Glenn Hughes I want them to think of Black Country Communion. Glenn has actually found a band again and he’s not fucked up and he’s focused and he’s hungry to be part of it.

Now is our time. What the beautiful thing about those two shows and the second one you saw was – if we were that good on those first two shows, my fucking word, how is it gonna go after like three weeks?

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 160, June 2011

Mick Wall is the UK’s best-known rock writer, author and TV and radio programme maker, and is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books, including definitive, bestselling titles on Led Zeppelin (When Giants Walked the Earth), Metallica (Enter Night), AC/DC (Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be), Black Sabbath (Symptom of the Universe), Lou Reed, The Doors (Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre), Guns N’ Roses and Lemmy. He lives in England.

If there’s one day that every sci-fi fan has circled in their calendars, it’s not Boonta Eve or the Wookiee-favourite Life Day – no, it’s May the 4th, officially known as Star Wars Day! Today, fans across the galaxy (and right here on Earth) will don their Jedi robes and stormtrooper helmets, celebrating all things Star Wars with enthusiasm that can be felt across the stars. Sites such as Amazon and Logo are ready to join the intergalactic party, rolling out epic deals on everything from Star Wars-themed Lego sets to an array of out-of-this-world memorabilia.

Now, with an entire galaxy packed with Star Wars treasures, you might feel like you need to make a few hyper jumps just to track them all down. But fear not, my fellow Jedi! I’m here to guide you on this thrilling quest through the cosmos of collectables. 

Below, I’ve curated a list of my top picks for Star Wars merch that’s sure to get your heart racing faster than a Podracer at full speed. With these stellar selections, finding a fantastic deal this Star Wars Day will be easier than winning a game of holochess against Chewie! 

Okay, let’s start with Lego. With so many cut-price sets, there’s no time like the present to start building your collection. Lego is celebrating Star Wars Day with some special discounts and even some brand-new sets to build. Lego Insiders members can get access right now, and it’s easy and totally free to get set up. You can check out all the deals over at the Lego site.

Notable discounts include £84 off the Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser, £42 off the X-Wing Starfighter, and the Mos Espa Podrace Diorama is down to only £59.49.

Moving over to Amazon, I’ve picked out the incredible Black Series Sabine Wren Premium Electronic Helmet. Sabine is a fan favourite who made her debut in the animated Star Wars Rebels, but has recently made the jump to live action, showing up in the Ahsoka mini-series. A trademark of the character is her very cool Mandalorian helmet, and now you can snag one for yourself at a heavily discounted price. Over at Amazon, you can pick one up for only $73.99, down from $99.99.

Sticking with fan favourites, next up I have to mention this Vintage Collection Cad Bane action figure, donning his look from The Book of Boba Fett series. Down from $18.99 to only $10.99, this is a must-have collectable for anyone who is a fan of this gunslinging, galactic bounty hunter.

Of course, as you’d expect, there is much more on offer, so I highly recommend heading over to Amazon and Lego to see what else is available. Not sure where to start? You might also enjoy our guide to the best Lego sets for adults, which includes everything from band logos and guitars to Beatles sets and our favourite Star Wars models.

Daryl’s a Senior Deals Writer on Louder’s sister sites MusicRadar, Guitar World and Guitar Player. He has a passion for anything that makes a sound, in particular guitars, pianos and recording equipment. In a previous life, he worked in music retail, giving advice on all aspects of music creation, selling everything from digital pianos to electric guitars, and entire PA systems to ukuleles. He’s also a fully qualified sound engineer with experience working in various venues in Scotland.

Back in the days when God was a boy and bath nights were as much a weekly treat as they were a necessity, the local flea-pit cinema would occasionally open its doors late to deviate from its scheduled programming to indulge in all-night horror marathons, cult movies or concert films, catering for those whose tastes and interests ran counter to the mainstream.

It may seem rather quaint now in a time of information overload, instant-access entertainment and short attention spans, but for those who made the effort to rock up with smuggled beers, a packet of 10 fags and perhaps something more exotic, these encounters with the counterculture were as meaningfully informative and impactful as they were fun.

Ergo Pink Floyd‘s Live At Pompeii, which showed the generation that latched on to music in the 70s and 80s that there was so much more to the band than the imperial period that ran from the release of 1973’s The Dark Side Of The Moon to the final brick that built The Wall six years later.

Filmed and recorded live over several days in October 1971 in the ruins of Pompeii’s Roman amphitheatre with only the camera crew as the audience, these performances show a band in transition as they begin to find their direction and identity following the enforced departure of founder member Syd Barrett after his drug-induced meltdown.

With one foot in the band’s psychedelic past and the other pointing at the future, the updated and retitled Pink Floyd At Pompeii – MCMLXXII is a vital historical snapshot. Earlier material such as Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun and Careful With That Axe, Eugene are less concerned with the discipline of song structure – or indeed songcraft – as they are with creating music that enhances altered states of consciousness via the exploitation of sound effects and guitar pedals. Looking forward with the then-contemporary dips into Meddle via One Of These Days and the monumental Echoes (here split into two parts), Pink Floyd take off from the more disciplined launch pads of melody and purpose.

Visually cleaned up, and remixed by Steven Wilson, Pink Floyd At Pompeii – MCMLXXII is liberated from memories of scratchy sound and grainy visuals. Crucially, as a document of four hungry musicians working in common cause and without later bells, whistles and recriminations, this stands as Pink Floyd’s best live album.

Julian Marszalek is the former Reviews Editor of The Blues Magazine. He has written about music for Music365, Yahoo! Music, The Quietus, The Guardian, NME and Shindig! among many others. As the Deputy Online News Editor at Xfm he revealed exclusively that Nick Cave’s second novel was on the way. During his two-decade career, he’s interviewed the likes of Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Ozzy Osbourne, and has been ranted at by John Lydon. He’s also in the select group of music journalists to have actually got on with Lou Reed. Marszalek taught music journalism at Middlesex University and co-ran the genre-fluid Stow Festival in Walthamstow for six years.

Readers of a certain age may recall seeing Pink Floyd At Pompeii as part of a series of all-nighter screenings featuring various rock docs in the mid-70s – events frequently accompanied by a large alcohol intake beforehand. Inevitably, as the movies in the dark and warmth of the cinema ticked by, and the booze and the wee hours took their toll, falling asleep was often the outcome.

Happily there’s no danger of nodding off in front of this extended edition of Floyd’s historic performance exhumed from their archives. With the 85-minute feature film version and a 60-minute edit, lovingly restored from the original 35mm negative, and audio remixed by Steven Wilson in Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and stereo, this 54-year-old concert now boasts crisp audio that nicely complements the improved visuals. Vinyl fans will also covet the two-LP soundtrack accompanying this release.

Taking place in a deserted amphitheatre in October 1971 with roadies and director Adrian Maben’s camera crew looking on, the group roam through a memorable set including A Saucerful Of Secrets, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Careful With That Axe, Eugene and a truly vibrant rendition of Echoes from Meddle – which the band had only finished mixing the previous month.

The performance, interspersed with studio footage and interviews, captures Floyd at a major transition in their career. While the music of Echoes has a foot in their psych/underground past, it also points to future elements they’re seen honing for The Dark Side Of The Moon, which will arrive just three months later.

Hindsight inevitably freights portions of the interviews with a degree of extra resonance. Roger Waters – seen in Abbey Road studios working on a record that would sell more than four million copies in the UK alone – scoffs at the then-media reports that rock was a dying art form, declaring, “The market in rock’n’roll is expanding at a phenomenal rate.”

Elsewhere, the ever-diplomatic Nick Mason, asked about the state of the band’s interpersonal relationships, states that all is well; but admits that the real danger to future cohesion could be “when one person finds that what he’s doing doesn’t interest him, or he feels he could do something better by himself.”

Even the amphitheatre’s oval in which the band play seems to foreshadow the famous circular projection screen that would feature in Floyd shows from 1974 onwards.

All told, this is a truly historic artefact.

Pink Floyd At Pompeii – MCMLXXII is out now in DVD, Blu-ray, CD and vinyl formats.

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

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