Author: Logan Rocker

For a band who came across as an impenetrable gang for their first few years, the Manics have dished out a surprising number of visitor passes over the course of their career. As singer and guitarist James Dean Bradfield said to this writer recently, the number of Manics songs featuring a guest has now reached the stage where they could even do a specially-themed gig. “Nick was saying that we could do a whole concert based on our duets,” he said. “We’ve done the set list, it looks amazing!”

One reason that the band like welcoming other artists into the fold, Bradfield explained, is that they have been together for so long. Their dynamic is well established so it’s good to mix things up now and then. “I’m the singing guitarist in the band, the audience has been listening my voice for 15 albums,” he said. “You realise that when somebody else sings, if you get two people to sing the same song, it can be a remarkably different result. A different singer does sometimes give new life to a song more often than not. That’s why we’ve always done it, because we’ve been together so long and sometimes you think, ‘What angle have we missed on this?’ Ah yeah, getting some other fucker to sing it!”

Sometimes, that approach has gone beyond a vocal change-up and into the instrumentation. John Cale has cropped up on a Manics track offering “keyboards and noise” (on the Futurology cut Auto-Intoxication), Nicky Wire has handed bass duties over to a Guns N’Roses legend, My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields has added his trademark guitar menace to a song or two and more. It would certainly make for one long, brilliant gig. Here’s the ten best Manics songs featuring a guest, in order…

10. Between The Clock And The Bed feat. Green Gartside

Fellow Welshman and Scritti Politti frontman Green Gartside lends his honeyed vocal to this melancholic, electronic-pop highlight from 2014’s Futurology, his croon coming across as yearning and desolate at the same time. “This was a case of working with one of our heroes,” bassist Nicky Wire told me a couple of years ago. “We were a bit scared to ask him as we were such massive fans. We didn’t really give him any guidance, the results are absolutely magical, his phrasing and his harmonies are out of this world. A properly sublime vocal.”

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9. This Sullen Welsh Heart feat. Lucy Rose

Their 2013 record Rewind The Film is the Manics’ most wistful and stripped-down album and this plaintive, gently anguished opener set the tone perfectly. British singer-songwriter Lucy Rose’s haunted, airy vocal is a perfect counterpoint to Bradfield’s hushed delivery.

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8. Blank Diary Entry feat. Mark Lanegan

This cut from 2021’s chart-topping The Ultra Vivid Lament playfully pivots from minor-chord moodiness to a bright, uplifting chorus. Occupying the shady side of the room is a masterful vocal from the late, great Mark Lanegan, the only man in the world who could growl like that and still make you want to give him a hug.

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7. 4 Lonely Roads feat. Cate Le Bon

A folky breeze of a song lifted up by a light-as-a-feather vocal from Welsh singer-songwriter and producer Cate Le Bon, 4 Lonely Roads sums up the shrug-style ease that runs right through Rewind The Film, the most un-tetchy collection of work in the Manics’ catalogue. “Cate was living in LA when we sent her this song,” Wire said. “When the file came back, we were all blown away, we didn’t need to change a thing, it all just fitted perfectly. We left in the sound of her shoes as she walks to the mic at the start of the song. Little known fact – it’s the only Manics track that I play drums on. It took me three days because I had to record each drum separately.”

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6. The Secret He Had Missed feat. Julia Cumming

This driving, Abba-meets-The War On Drugs single from The Ultra Vivid Lament features a cracking vocal from Sunflower Bean singer Julia Cumming, an appearance that’s elevated by hearing an ice-cool New Yorker sing about Tenby.

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5. Freedom Of Speech Won’t Feed My Children feat. Kevin Shields

In his time, My Bloody Valentine leader and sonic maniac Kevin Shields has been known to fashion a guitar sound that can make your intestines want to drop out of your arse, but he tones it down on this fierce standout from 2001’s Know Your Enemy, his maze of kaleidoscopic guitar sounds propping up the track’s melodic, R.E.M-ish veneer.

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4. Some Kind Of Nothingness feat. Ian McCulloch

The emotional anchor of this stirring, sumptuous anthem from 2010’s Postcards From A Young Man is a poignant back-and-forth between Bradfield and Echo And The Bunnymen singer Ian McCulloch, one of the Manics’ most big-hearted and bombastic songs ever.

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3. A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun feat. Duff McKagan

One of the most pleasing Manics guest spots comes on this thrilling track, also from Postcards From A Young Man, bringing their Guns N’ Roses-aping Generation Terrorists-era material full circle. A year earlier, Duff McKagan had presented the band with their award at the Mojo Awards but their union went one step further with this sizzling rock gem, McKagan supplying one of his trademark lithe, leering bass parts and Bradfield responding with a Slash-style solo.

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2. Little Baby Nothing feat. Traci Lords

It could be top spot. Maybe it should be top spot. But it’s not top spot. Originally the band wanted Kylie Minogue to sing the female part in this mournful pop-rock epic from Generation Terrorists but it’s hard to see how Kylie could’ve topped the vocal from ex-adult actress Traci Lords, reflective and powerful and fuming and despairing all at once. A Manics classic. Kylie did get a go at it eventually, though, performing it with the band live on a handful of occasions.

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This gets top spot for being one of the most important Manics singles in their history, second only to A Design For Life for its reenergising alchemy. The trio were in a bit of a tight spot following the muted reaction to Lifeblood, a very good record but one that had a worringly minimal impact. This brought them back into the spotlight, heralding the masterful Send Away The Tigers and getting everything back on track. A crunching anthem featuring a big hook for its verse and a bigger hook for its chorus, the duet between Bradfield and Cardigans singer Nina Persson is an all-timer. “I remember collecting the vocal for Your Love Alone Is Not Enough,” Bradfield told me last year. “We finished recording in Ireland and I caught the flight from Shannon Airport over to New York and Nina Persson recorded her part right there. After the first take, I knew the song was going somewhere else from where it had lived for the last two weeks when we had recorded in Grouse Lodge, Ireland. I knew after the first take that with her singing it, the song had already found another destination, a higher plateau. It was stunning to see how somebody’s voice can do that to a song.”

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.

Best known for the evergreen All Right Now, Free were part of the blues rock explosion of the late 1960s. Alongside Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac, they took the music in a harder direction, laying the foundations of the house that hard rock built in the 1970s.

Formed in April 1968, they held their first rehearsal at the Nag’s Head pub in Battersea, South London, and knew they were onto something immediately. “We just played blues because everybody could play it straight away,” frontman Paul Rodgers told us. “We were four separate guys at the beginning of the afternoon, and by the end of the evening we were a band.”

They struck a deal with Island Records with the support of blues scene lynchpin Alexis Korner, and debut album Ton Of Sobs followed in 1969.

“We did the album, I think, in two or three days,” said drummer Simon Kirke. “It was a pretty good showcase of where we were at that time. We were essentially a blues band with adventurous leanings.”

1970 was their year. All Right Now was a massive hit, the band played to over half a million people at the Isle Of Wight Festival, and the Fire And Water album became a huge seller. At the same time, the success of All Right Now had created a problem.

“We were always a rock/blues band,” said Rodgers. “But a rift in our direction did start to become obvious – between the authentic and the obviously commercial.”

In May 1971 the group splintered, but they were back together within a year, albeit temporarily. By June 1972 bassist Andy Fraser had departed, Kirke had been diagnosed with appendicitis and tonsillitis, and Rodgers had started played guitar onstage after guitarist Paul Kossoff‘s drug use had rendered him incapable.

Final album Heartbreaker was released in January 1973, and Kossoff spent the next three years fighting addiction. He died on an overnight flight from Los Angeles to New York in March 1976.

These are Free’s six studio albums – and one live album – ranked in order of greatness.

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Former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven has claimed that frontman Axl Rose now collects 50% of the band’s income. Niven was speaking with Appetite For Distortion, the Guns N’ Roses-themed podcast hosted by Brando Weissle.

“It’s a control thing with Axl,” says Niven. “Here’s another little snapshot that is illuminating and goes to forming a correct perception. Axl takes 50% of the income of Guns N’ Roses now. 50%, okay? That, to me, is anathema. He is not Guns N’ Roses.

“They were five individuals. It was a chemistry. It was a moment. But Axl wants to be in control of everything all the time. And look what that gets you. A boring solo record and a shitty thing of punk covers. And that’s it.”

Niven is presumably referring to the last two Guns N’ Roses albums, 1993’s covers album, “The Spaghetti Incident?”, and 2008’s famously long-awaited Chinese Democracy.

This isn’t the first time Niven – who managed Guns N’ Roses from 1986 to 1991 and oversaw their chaotic rise to prominence – has criticised Axl Rose.

“I have no hope of, or interest in, a new Guns N’ Roses album,” he told Classic Rock in 2022. “The tantrums of youth look absurd on a 60-year-old. It’s a shame they have been creatively impotent since 1991.”

Alan Niven’s book Sound N’ Fury: Rock N’ Roll Stories is published on June 24 and can be pre-ordered now.

Guns N’ Roses’ Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things Tour kicks off at Songdo Moonlight Park in Incheon, South Korea, on May 1. Full dates below.

Guns N’ Roses Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things Tour 2025

May 01: Incheon Songdo Moonlight Park, South Korea
May 05: Yokohama K Arena, Japan
May 10: Taoyuan Sunlight Arena, Taiwan
May 13: Bangkok Thunderdome Stadium, Thailand
May 17: Mumbai Mahalaxmi Racecourse, India
May 23: Riyadh Kingdom Arena, Saudi Arabia
May 27: Abu Dhabi Etihad Arena, UAE
May 30: Shekvetili Parka, Georgia^
Jun 02: Istanbul Tüpraş Stadyumu, Turkey^
Jun 06: Coimbra Estádio Cidade de Coimbra, Portugal^
Jun 09: Barcelona Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, Spain
Jun 12: Florence Firenze Rocks, Italy*^
Jun 15: Hradec Kralove Rock For People, Czech Republic*^
Jun 18: Dusseldorf Merkur Spiel-Arena, Germany^
Jun 20: Munich Allianz Arena, Germany^
Jun 23: Birmingham Villa Park, UK
Jun 26: London Wembley Stadium, UK
Jun 29: Aarhus Eskelunden, Denmark+
Jul 02: Trondheim Granåsen Ski Centre, Norway+
Jul 04: Stockholm Strawberry Aren, Sweden+
Jul 07: Tampere Ratina Stadium, Finland+
Jul 10: Kaunas Darius and Girėnas Stadium, Lithuania+
Jul 12: Warsaw PGE Nardowy, Poland+
Jul 15: Budapest Puskás Aréna, Hungary+
Jul 18: Belgrade Ušće Park, Serbia+
Jul 21: Sofia Vasil Levski Stadium, Bulgaria+
Jul 24: Vienna Ernst Happel Stadion, Austria#
Jul 28: Luxembourg Open Air, Luxembourg#
Jul 31: Wacken Festival, Germany*

* = Festival appearance
+ = with Public Enemy
^ = with Rival Sons
# = with Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter

Tickets are on sale now.

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.

The first British folk singer to crack the UK pop charts, Donovan made the Top 5 with his first single, Catch The Wind, early in 1965. By the end of that year the ‘British Bob Dylan’ had scored two more hit singles, two hit albums and a hit EP. As flower-power blossomed, so did Donovan as songs like Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Barabajagal soaked up rock and jazz embellishments.

He stepped off the merry-go-round in the early 70s before it turned into a treadmill, and recorded and toured intermittently. After the Happy Mondays sponsored his revival in the early 90s with a track on their Pills ’N’ Thrills & Bellyaches album, Donovan recorded Sutras with producer Rick Rubin in 1994. In 2008, he sat down with Classic Rock to look back over his cosmic journey and some of the larger-than-life characters he met along the way.

Brian Jones

One day in 1964 Brian Jones walked into a basement studio in Denmark Street. He had heard about this new kid on the block. He came in and saw what I was doing.

He had a word with Elkan Allen at [TV pop show] Ready Steady Go. I went on for three weeks – completely live, no pre-recording. And that set me up. Afterwards I met a girl, Linda Lawrence, who would become my muse and wife. She’d had a child with Brian. I didn’t even know this when I met her. There was a very interesting karmic triangle going on. And next year we’ll be celebrating that triangle – the 40th anniversary of Brian’s death.

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Bob Dylan

It wasn’t like you see in the Don’t Look Back film. We had met before, briefly. Folk met rock when Dylan, Joan Baez and myself were together that May in 1965. I’d already had a hit with Catch The Wind, and Bob and Joan, who were both album artists, released singles – Joan had There But For Fortune and Dylan’s was The Times They Are A Changing. It was clear that Bob was going to go electric and I was going to go electric folk jazz. It was also clear what we were going to do with it, too, because a few days later Bob introduced me to The Beatles.

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The Beatles

Martin Lewis, the legendary Beatleographer, told me: “You don’t know this, Don, but you had more social, musical and spiritual contact with these four guys than anyone of your generation.” At the time, of course, we were young and crazy and we didn’t know how long it was going to last.

George and I were closest because of our spiritual paths and the books we were both reading. John was fascinating to be around; he didn’t suffer fools gladly. Paul was full of light and energy and jokes and we would constantly be jiving each other. We tried to write songs together but it was impossible, because every idea I had sparked him off and every idea he had sparked me off.

But the real deal happened in India. George said later that you can hear me all over the White album. We only had the acoustic guitars, and that’s when we really got to know each other.

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Marc Bolan

Marc asked if he could open for me when I played the Royal Albert Hall. That was with T. Rex and they sat crossed-legged on the floor, much like me. But sleeping inside Marc Bolan was a little rock’n’roll guy. We met again on his rise to fame in a funky little flat near Marble Arch. He’d brought two little metal dinosaur toys back from Tokyo and said: “Do you want a battle?”’ We got these two tin T. Rex’s going at each other, and they made all the roaring sounds and out of their mouths came little puffs of talcum powder.

I made a recording with him in Munich about a year before he died, a rock version of Lalena, but it’s lost. I asked his son Roland if it had been found but there’s no sign of it.

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Mickie Most

Mickie Most was the Phil Spector of Britain. He was very experimental. We were introduced by Allen Klein as part of a deal. Allen said: “Here’s your producer.” Mickie said: “I’ll pick the singles and you do what you want on the albums.” And that opened a whole world for me.

The studio became a bohemian painter’s studio for me. And Mickie would say: “I’ll have that one” – Mellow Yellow, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man. I didn’t know whether they were popular songs or not; Mickie knew. And he had this instinctive sense: “Take that out, put that in.” And it worked. I wish he was still here. I’d like to make another record with him.

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John Paul Jones

Our initial meeting was a little strained. He’d come in to arrange Mellow Yellow and it had this great New Orleans thump to it. But when I listened to the playback something sounded wrong. I didn’t know what it was. So I’m frowning, and John is glaring at me because he thought he’d done something wrong. I said: “No, it’s just that there’s something… not mellow.” And Mickie Most is going: “Well for fuck’s sake find out what it is.” And then one of the horn players says: “I know what Don means. We gotta put the hats on.” And Mickie goes: “For Christ’s sake, what’s an ’at?” And the main horn player says: “The mutes, Mickie, the mutes.” So they did it again with the mutes and everyone went: “Wow.” Now it was mellow.

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Jeff Beck

When Mickie Most first heard Barabajagal he couldn’t make head nor tail of it. He was working on [Jeff Beck’s album] Beck-Ola at the time and suggested that he bring the band in to see what they could do. So one morning the band troop in, except for Jeff, and I played them the chords. Eventually Jeff ambles in, sits down and doesn’t say a word. Mickie Most says: “Okay Jeff, get your guitar out.” Jeff looks around and says: “Where is it?” The roadies had dropped off the other instruments but not Jeff’s guitar. It was locked up in a van in Manchester. Jeff says: “I suppose we could rent one.” So the call went out: Jeff Beck needs a great Fender Stratocaster. One showed up and we did the session.

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Nigel Kennedy

He played at the Proms, and Jeff Beck made an appearance and they were going to play a song dedicated to me that opens his new album but they ran out of time. Linda and I have been friends with Nigel and his wife, Agnieszka, for years. Whenever I go to his concerts we play an acoustic version of Hurdy Gurdy Man and he plays his wild violin.

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Jimi Hendrix

I saw him at [London club] the Bag O’Nails. Everyone was there: the Stones, The Beatles, The Who, the Kinks. Chas [Chandler, Hendrix’s manager] had invited everyone. He’d put this thing together. He told me: “I’ve got a jazz drummer and a bass player who’s a guitar player.” And it was quite incredible. Such a superb blend of musicians.

I didn’t see him much after that because we all went on the road and we all got famous and our paths only crossed occasionally. But when I wrote Hurdy Gurdy Man I thought of Jimi. I said to Mickie Most: “This is for Hendrix.” And he said: “No it isn’t, it’s for you.”So I said: “Let’s get Hendrix to play on it.” Mickie phoned Chas who said: “Jimi’s playing shows back-to-back.” So we got Jimmy Page. And aren’t we happy about that. Because what came out of that, thanks to Jimmy, Mickie Most and John Paul Jones, was something that was pagan Celtic rock’n’roll, not a copy of American rock’n’roll.

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Shaun Ryder

I was doing a gig in Manchester when my son Julian, Brian Jones’s boy, said: “There’s five guys in a van out the back and they say they’ve come to take you to the Hacienda.” I said: “I remember Manchester but I don’t remember a hacienda there. So not this time, boys.”

I got to know Shaun and his brother Paul later and when I listened to the Happy Mondays. Linda and I realised they were the Rolling Stones of the 80s. You could hear that they were going to be the ones to lead the way. And then Shaun and Paul fell in love with our two daughters. Which was rather frightening at first because we didn’t know how they would take to Manchester madness. But Linda wasn’t scared. Oriole and Shaun fell in love and fell out of love but they produced a beautiful girl called Coco.

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Rick Rubin

He called me up in 1994 and said: “Do you want to make a record?” And I wondered who he was. Then I found out that he was meditating, just like David Lynch and I. And when I went to his house I found that his bookshelves were full of books on spiritual paths and meditation. He is a major talent. He said very little but we made beautiful music and created the Sutras album. It was a pivotal time in my career because I realised that I wanted to continue to make records on this level. I had kind of dropped out a little but I came back with Rick. I’d rank Rick with Mickie Most, George Martin and Phil Spector. Because he listens to the song. He knows the song is everything. He also knows what he wants, but he also wants the artist to come forward and he knows that he mustn’t get in the way.

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David Lynch

David and I are both outsiders within our own art. He’s an outsider in the film world, and nobody can put their finger on what I actually do. That’s given us quite a bond, and we have teamed up to promote transcendental meditation.

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 128, January 2009

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 50 years. Actually 61 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.