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US rockers Styx shared the first new music from their upcoming new album, Circling From Above, releasing a video for new single Build And Destroy.

The septet have just announced that they will release their 18th studio album, Circling From Above, through their Alpha Dog 2T/UMe label on July 18, and which the band say looks at the “complexities of the human experience through the intersecting lenses of technology and nature.”

The new album continues the more progressive direction the band have taken on recent albums such as The Mission (2017) and Crash Of The Crown (2021), mixing the prog approach of the early Wooden Nickel albums with the melodic hard rock with which they made ntheir name in the late 70s and early 80s.

“When you start writing an album, there’s generally something that piques your imagination, and all of a sudden, you’re a storyteller starting with the seed of a story,” says guitarist and vocalist Tommy Shaw. “A good song is like a straight road — it’ll get you to the next place.”

“That little melody, I kept singing Build And Destroy,” explains singer/keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, who takes the lead vocal on the new single. “Even though we don’t sing over that part, I kept thinking that would be a good title. It’s thematic. The melody feels like a little Star Trek or Twilight Zone thing — just a small tag that reinforces the title.”

“We knew it was strong,” Gowan says. “Even though it was the second-to-last song we finished, it felt like a quick way into the album’s overall theme.”

Circling From Above has been produced by the band’s guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Will Evankovich, who also produced the band’s previous two albums before becoming a full-time band member.

Styx will embark on a summer tour of the US with The Kevin Cornin Band, on what is being dubbed the Brotherhood Of Rock tour.

Pre-order Circling From Above.

Styx: Circling From Above
1. Circling From Above
2. Build and Destroy
3. Michigan
4. King of Love
5. It’s Clear
6. Forgive
7. Everyone Raise A Glass
8. Blue Eyed Raven
9. She Knows
10. Ease Your Mind
11. The Things That You Said
12. We Lost the Wheel Again
13. Only You Can Decide

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.

U2 frontman Bono has spoken about his band’s work on a new album, saying, “Nobody needs a new U2 album unless it’s an extraordinary one.”

The 65-year-old Dubliner was talking to US chat show host Jimmy Kimmel, promoting his new film, Bono: Stories of Surrender, which will premiere on Apple TV+ tomorrow, May 30.

However, guitarist The Edge later stated that he and the vocalist were working on “some crazy kind of sci-fi Irish folk music.”

Watch the full interview below:

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Bono: Stories of Surrender, filmed at the Beacon Theatre in New York, is described as “a bold and lyrical visual exploration of Bono’s one-man show by the same name, based on his celebrated memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and the accompanying book/theatre tour.”

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

CMAT, Black Country, New Road and Katy J Pearson are among the artists who’ve been added to the line-up for The Maccabees’ All Points East headline show on August 24.

This summer’s other All Points East events are headlined by Chase and Status (August 16), Barry Can’t Swim (August 22) and Raye (August 23).

Full details of the shows, and remaining tickets, can be found here.

CMAT’s set at Wide Awake festival was one of the highlights of the south London event, staged at Brockwell Park on May 23.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

As jazz rock pioneer John McLaughlin neared his 70th birthday in 2012, he showed little sign of slowing down, artistically or otherwise. That year he told Prog about his latest album, Now Here This, looked back on some of his career highlights to date, and reflected on the nature of music and musicians.

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“Am gannin doon the road to get mesel’ a paper!” laughs John McLaughlin. A rough-as-rivets Geordie accent isn’t quite what you expect to hear from this remarkable musician, whose work as a solo artist – and with the likes of Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, the genre-blurring Shakti, and, of course, the Mahavishnu Orchestra – have made him a legendary figure in the worlds of jazz and rock.

Although born in Yorkshire, after his parents split up his formative years were spent in the North East seaside town of Whitley Bay near Newcastle. It was here that he first picked up on the sing-song vagaries of the Geordie dialect, and more importantly, where he first picked up the guitar.

“I was 11 years old when it first arrived in my hands. I’d been playing piano for a few years prior to that. My mother was an amateur violinist who did nothing but encourage me to play music. She was a great woman. I fell in love with that guitar and took it to bed that night. It was just a cheap thing, but I was absolutely entranced by this instrument and I have been ever since. Without my mother’s support I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

He’s at his home in France, undertaking an intensive round of interviews supporting the release of a new album by the 4th Dimension Band, Now Here This. For a man now in his 70th year on the planet, he could be forgiven if he sounded a little jaded – yet his conversation is frequently peppered with laughter, and an infectious sense of wonder and boundless enthusiasm that would be more in keeping with a musician just starting out, rather than that of a player with countless albums to his name.

“If you trace my history through groups like One Truth Band and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, they’re kind of pivotal in my history, and the 4th Dimension Band is very much part of my continuing development as a player,” he says of his bandmates Gary Husband (keyboards and occasional drumming), Etienne M’Bappé (bass guitar) and Ranjit Barot (drums and Indian percussion). “This group gives me the possibility to grow, for want of another word. I can really grow with these people.”

Much like his work in other ensembles, a feature of the 4th Dimension Band is the way McLaughlin’s guitar bounces across the grooves and beats of the new album. It’s heady stuff at times, and clearly something he thrives on. “It’s like skimming stones, a wonderful feeling. There’s a turbulence, but there’s this marvellous golden connection between everything that just carries us along in waves. Of course, that’s wonderful for me as a player.

“I’ve been so lucky in my life to have played with so many of the greatest drummers: Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Billy Cobham, Narada Michael Walden, Trilok Gurtu, Mark Mondesir, and of course in the band at the moment we have two drummers.”

If you’re a bit of a bugger in life then you’re going to be a bit of a bugger in music… I try to find the great players I can live with and laugh with

The album displays an unashamed virtuosity from each member; but as McLaughlin explains, the key to what makes for a successful group isn’t necessarily about how fast they can dash off a scale or a chorus. “If you’re a bit of a bugger in life then you’re going to be a bit of a bugger in music. There are some great musicians whom I admire, but with whom I have no real desire to play. You can’t be one way in life and another way in music. If you’re like that in life then you’re like that in music.

“So while it’s true you look for great players, you also look for somebody who’s on the same wavelength as you. This allows a kind of complicity to develop. I try to find the great players I can live with and laugh with.”

Being around great players is something he’s done right from the off. He spent years paying his dues in stints with Graham Bond, Alexis Korner, Georgie Fame and session work that took him into the light entertainment sphere populated by Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and Cilla Black.

He was 27 when he recorded his first solo album Extrapolation in 1969 – a sparsely furnished but versatile album that showcased not only his fluidity, but his emerging abilities as a composer. By the time it was released he’d already swapped London for New York after receiving a call from Miles Davis’ drummer, Tony Williams, then in the throes of putting together his own band, Lifetime.

A month after completing Extrapolation, he found himself, alongside Williams, laying down tracks for Davis’ seminal work In A Silent Way. Part of the trumpeter’s mercurial genius was an antennae for truly talented musicians, and he immediately offered the guitarist a permanent job.

Shakti was very special because it was a real playing band. There’s no room for sitting back and coasting

Although he would play on groundbreaking albums such as Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson, McLaughlin knew he would have more freedom in Lifetime with Williams. If you want to know where jazz-rock begins, their 1969 double-album Emergency! is a good place to start. Completed by organist Larry Young, the trio unleashed an elemental storm that forced the brash dynamics of rock and the virtuosity of jazz together in ways that are still startling and daringly original.

Against the backdrop of Young’s ethereal organ and the constantly sizzling ride-cymbal of Williams, McLaughlin’s savage guitar runs gnawed and roared like a beast uncaged. Ceded within Emergency! and 1970’s Turn It Over were themes McLaughlin would revisit and refine in his next project, the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

If Lifetime had been a seismic explosion, The Mahavishnu Orchestra was a precision-guided missile. Powered by Billy Cobham’s high-octane drumming, McLaughlin was joined by Jan Hammer’s effusive keyboards and Jerry Goodman’s racing violin. Signed by CBS without the label having heard a note, the band not only wowed the critics but became a huge commercial success.

Given the complexity of their nuanced jazz-rock, how does he account for the way in which the record-buying public snapped up albums such as 1973’s Birds Of Fire, and – pausing briefly to change line-ups – 1975’s Visions Of The Emerald Beyond? “Maybe because we were the loudest, fastest band in the world? I don’t know!” laughs McLaughlin.

At a time when most guitar legends sported shaggy lion-like manes, his trademark white suit and short-back-and-sides haircut made him stand out. His sartorial choices reflected his very public spiritual quest and interest in Eastern philosophy and religion. “The Eastern influence started with me a long time before I left the UK. I stopped dropping acid around 1967, joined a meditation group and started doing yoga – and of course Indian music followed, because the philosophy and music are intertwined and inclusive.

“I saw the whole of the 60s: Coltrane, Miles, The Beatles, the psychedelic era and the social revolution. It was a phenomenal decade for me in the sense that a lot of dreams that came to fruition in the 70s were born in the 60s. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was just one of them – but Shakti was another.”

You can never get to the end. The whole point of music is to be who you are, and really that’s the whole point of life, isn’t it?

Although there’d always been an East-meets-West presence within his work, Shakti brought it to the fore in a thrilling and joyous fusion. McLaughlin abandoned the iconic double-necked guitar in favour of a distinctive acoustic setting, alongside virtuoso Indian musicians including tabla player Zakir Hussain and the violinist L Shankar. “Shakti was very special because it was a real playing band. There’s no room for sitting back and coasting – but who wants to coast when you’ve got players like Zakir and Shankar?

“I got a lot of flak from the record company, from my manager and my agent for forming Shakti, because I was giving up Mahavishnu Orchestra, you know, a very, very successful band. They said: ‘Whaddya mean, yer gonna sit on a carpet and play with these Indian guys? What’s that all about?’ But I wanted to do it, so I accepted the consequences and I lost a lot of sales. But as time goes by, Shakti is a group that people love all over the world. In the end, as long as we stay true to ourselves then we’re okay.”

Musicians and politics can be a fraught combination, but McLaughlin’s belief that music is a common currency and a positive force in the world is unshakable. The Wall Will Fall (recorded several years before the Berlin Wall was dismantled) and Blues For LW (composed when Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałesa was under arrest) illustrate his interest in humanitarian issues.

When the reformed Shakti attempted to play a concert in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the troubled West Bank region of the Middle East, it proved to be a controversial decision that took three years of complex negotiations before the concert finally happened in 2012. “I’ve been following the situation between Israel and Palestine for a long time, and of course there are some radicals and militants on both sides,” McLaughlin says. “We finally got through with an association in Ramallah who use music for traumatised children. It was a thrill to play for the most lovely people.”

When I go to a concert I want to be taken to the world where that musician lives; I want him or her to bring me into their world

He cites the conductor Daniel Barenboim and his celebrated West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – which unites Arab and Israeli musicians as a motivating force – in making the event happen. “I saw Daniel recently. He was playing a programme of Beethoven’s music. I saw him afterwards and thanked him for the inspiration to get to Palestine.”

Aside from plans to return to Ramallah with Shakti, McLaughlin has a constant stream of projects that he’s involved in, one of which includes reuniting with Carlos Santana for a series of concerts commemorating their epic 1973 collaboration, Love Devotion Surrender. Meanwhile he’s prepping for a world tour with the 4th Dimension Band, and has no inclination to slow down his ongoing musical and spiritual quest.

“You can never get to the end. The whole point of music is to be who you are, and really that’s the whole point of life, isn’t it? The spiritual search is wrapped up in one question: ‘Who am I?’ If you improvise, what are you going to say? The only thing a musician can talk about when he’s soloing is how he loves his instrument and the affection he has for the musicians around him. He can only tell the story of his life.

“When I go to a concert I want to be taken to the world where that musician lives; I want him or her to bring me into their world. They can only do it if the music is strong enough. Whatever it may be, whether it’s melancholy or joy or just laughter, then the door is opened.”

What’s been the greatest obstacle he’s encountered to entering that open door over the course of his career? He pauses a moment, then smiles. “My own ignorance, primarily. That’s been the great barrier.” His words are now punctuated by great gulps of laughter. “The minute we think we know something, then we’re even more stupid than we thought. It’s taken me 70 years to realise that I know almost nothing!”

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.

Since they started raising hell in 1981, Slayer’s name has become synonymous with outrageous, intense and pants-wetting speed. Such legendary ragers as Angel Of Death, War Ensemble and Chemical Warfare helped the L.A. rabble gain their reputation as one of the ugliest and most aggressive forces to ever scratch its way out of thrash metal’s womb. But the band aren’t always like that.

In between the speed-limit-shattering rampages, Slayer aren’t afraid of the odd slow-paced detour. In fact, most of their albums contain one or two trudges that let the listener catch their breath, and today we’re celebrating the best of the best. These are the essential times Slayer dared to lift their foot off of the accelerator.

South Of Heaven (South Of Heaven, 1988)

On their landmark laceration Reign In Blood, Slayer sprinted for 28 minutes and offered no give in their thrash metal onslaught. Rather than trying to outdo what quickly became their most successful album, the band chose to side-step, proving they can also bring the groove on follow-up South Of Heaven. The opening title track laid the gauntlet, favouring ominous atmosphere over breakneck aggression while still sounding scary as fuck.

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Mandatory Suicide (South Of Heaven, 1988)

Where South Of Heaven opened its titular album on a woozy note, Mandatory Suicide kept the same speed but tightened things up. It felt like the Slayer of old, just with the metronome slightly slower, beginning with tightly constructed riffs that gave way to needle-pointed lead guitar. The fierce, chugging verses and screeching solo offered more evidence that, despite experimenting with different tempos, Slayer were still in full control of themselves.

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Dead Skin Mask (Seasons In The Abyss, 1990)

The most complete album of Slayer’s career, Seasons In The Abyss combined the ferocity of Reign… and the groove of South… into a dynamic whole. The foreboding crawl of Dead Skin Mask perfectly suited the dread conveyed in its lyrics, as a serial killer’s victim is lured into his domain and awaits what will be a very painful death. The haunting riff and twisted yet catchy chorus have made this an enduring setlist regular.

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Seasons In The Abyss (Seasons In The Abyss, 1990)

No list about Slayer at their most sluggish would be complete without Seasons In The Abyss’ title track. Inspired by a spiritual concept from legendary occultist Aleister Crowley, the song found the band at their most cerebral (“Step outside yourself and let your mind go”) and melodic. Everything from its thudding riff to the music video, filmed in front of the Pyramids Of Giza, has become iconic for longtime fans.

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Bloodline (Dracula 2000: Music From The Dimension Motion Picture, 2000 / God Hates Us All, 2001)

When the producers of Dracula 2000 asked Slayer to contribute to the blockbuster’s soundtrack, the band understood the assignment. No strangers to writing about nosferatu (the vampiric At Dawn They Sleep was frontman Tom Araya’s first-ever lyrical contribution), they penned a creeping anthem about sucking life to sustain life. The movie was dogshit in the end, but the song was so good it earned a place on 2001 album God Hates Us All.

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When The Stillness Comes (Repentless, 2015)

Initially, Repentless went down like a fart in a Satanic church, but later years have been kinder to what will likely be Slayer’s final album. In the case of When The Stillness Comes, that re-examination is well-deserved, as the song pushed the boat out while retaining the band’s fear factor. After those early, unsettling arpeggios, Tom Araya slowly worked his way from a whisper to full-throated bellows. Arresting and refreshing in equal measure.

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.

In 1987, guitarist Dave ‘Snake’ Sabo, bassist Rachel Bolan and drummer Rob Affuso waited anxiously in the kitchen of the New Jersey house owned by the Sabo family. Guitarist Scotti Hill had been sent to the airport to meet an important arrival.

Also soaking up the atmosphere of expectation was Sabo’s mum, affectionately known to all as Mrs Snake. There was an acute awareness that the guy whose arrival they so nervously anticipated had to be the one. Frustrated by futile auditions and unsuitable appointments, the time had come for them to shit or get off the pot.

Finally, the door swung open, and the lead singer whom Skid Row had pooled their cash to fly in from Canada ducked his head and entered the room. Six feet three of cheekbones, vanity and profanity, hair and attitude, Sebastian Bach broke the silence by gleefully introducing himself to all present: “Du-u-u-u-u-u-des! I’ve got a ten-inch dick!”

The blue touch paper had been well and truly lit, and for the next nine years Skid Row would achieve most of their rock’n’roll ambitions – although the triumph wasn’t to be without its share of agony. Sebastian Bach was the X-factor that transformed them into a world-class act. But the singer’s infantile hedonism was a constant source of irritation to the other reluctant occupants of his live-in bubble. Depending upon which day of the week it was, Skid Row would be adored, banned, sued, lauded for entering the Billboard album chart at No.1 or lambasted by their rivals. One thing, though, was for sure: they were rarely ignored.

Like all comets, Skid Row burned brightly for a relatively short time. And when their star eventually faded, its plummet back to Earth was seemingly unstoppable. Incredibly, however, the band exist again, and in 2003 gigged around the UK for the first time since a spot on the bill at 1995’s Castle Donington festival – but this time minus Bach, and much the happier for it.

The Skid Row story began in 1986, with a chance meeting between Dave Sabo and Rachel Bolan (real name James Southworth) in the New Jersey guitar shop where the former worked.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” Sabo recalls fondly. “This guy walked in wearing a red beret and a pink leather jacket. He looked like a freakin’ star. I just had to strike up a conversation.

“When it came to writing we very quickly realised that while we both came from different musical backgrounds – me from Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, while Rachel’s roots are in The Ramones – our styles complemented each other. It also helped that Kiss and Van Halen were a common denominator.”

Bolan proposed Scotti Hill (born Scotti Mulvehill) from a previous group he’d been in, and when their original choice as drummer was jailed for a stabbing, Sabo brought in Affuso from one of his own earlier bands. Bolan had played gigs since he was 16, sometimes having to be sneaked into bars in a flight case because he was underage, and there was never in any doubt in his mind that he would make the grade.

“Being an entertainer is something you’re born with, not something you can go to school for,” he maintains. “Whether you’re an artist, athlete or musician, it’s there inside you and you can’t shake it off.”

Sabo, too, had decided his own destiny at an early age. He and school pal Jon Bongiovi (who you may have heard of) had made a pact as seven-year-olds to become rock stars, swearing that whoever made it first would use their influence to help the other.

“It was obvious that Jon was gonna get there first, but he said that when our band was right he would go out on a limb for us,” Sabo relates. “And he was true to his word. Jon came to see us live, critiqued us and provided the benefit of his experience, which was invaluable.”

Right until the day Skid Row signed their first recording contract, the band rehearsed in the Bolan family’s garage in Toms River, NJ, using kerosene heaters to keep them warm in the winter – and with the TV in the house turned to full volume to drown out the racket. The patronage of Jon and his guitarist Richie Sambora was guaranteed to bring them a degree of expectation, and Doc McGhee (then Bon Jovi’s manager) signed them up.

Bolan says the group “pounded the New Jersey, New York and Connecticut scenes till people got sick of us”. But original singer Matt Fallon, who had also briefly been with Anthrax, lacked the rest of Skid Row’s drive. John Corabi, later of Mötley Crüe, was offered the job. Atlantic, Geffen and A&M had all expressed an interest in signing the band, but made it plain that the line-up had to be right.

A phone call came. Various industry people had seen a young singer jamming with Zakk Wylde, members of Twisted Sister and Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot at the wedding reception of photographer Mark Weiss. A mutual acquaintance put the newcomer, 19-year-old Sebastian Bach (born Sebastian Phillip Bierk, the Bahamas-born singer had cut his teeth with Kid Wikked, who recorded an album for Attic Records, then replaced Bret Kaiser in Madam X), in contact with Skid Row, and an audition quickly followed.

“He sang the songs so high that we had to reign him in, but after some work on his voice it all fell into place,” Bolan recalls. “Sebastian was very obnoxious and loud, but we needed a singer. The good thing was that he also had drive – and then some. But frontmen were supposed to have spirit, right?”

However, it didn’t take long for people to realise that as well as bringing along enormous positives, Bach also brought along pitfalls. There was an altercation in a bar on the very night of his arrival. Bolan now reveals that he had been warned of the singer’s volatility: “Somebody who’d been in the business for a while told me they foresaw lots of trouble down the road,” he relates. “But I wanted to make it, and none of us could stand the thought of seven more months looking for someone else.”

“That first night, we hung out at this local bar and ended up jamming on 18 And Life and a few other songs,” Sabo continues. “It was really, really awful. But Rachel announced from the stage that we had found our new singer. Later on Sebastian got really drunk and threw a punch at this guy, missing him by about a foot.”

The new-look band spent a year fine-tuning their act. A deal with JBJ and Sambora’s publishing company, Underground, was duly struck – an arrangement that they later regretted, as it allegedly diverted the lion’s share of the group’s royalties to the Bon Jovi pair. After a bidding war, Skid Row signed to Atlantic Records. However, it almost didn’t happen that way. The band had also played a “miserable” (Sabo’s word) showcase for Geffen, at which Tom Zutaut, the A&R man who signed Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, had displayed some alarming snobbery.

“One day Doc called and informed me we had signed to Geffen,” Sabo explains. “It was the day I’d been waiting for my whole life, but I was dismayed. This was the label that had told us we had maybe two or three songs good enough for an album. Tom had asked us where we rehearsed, and when I told him he said: ‘Well you won’t be seeing me in that garage’. I was amazed by his arrogance. It was like Geffen were doing Doc a favour.”

Having performed the songs countless times, recording the Skid Row album for Atlantic (who had later put in a better bid than Geffen’s) with Dokken/Alice Cooper producer Michael Wagener was a fairly painless experience. From the bombastic opening of Big Guns and the war-cry of Youth Gone Wild, to the more melodic 18 And Life and I Remember You, their debut was an album of maturity and quality.

Just a year later, after accepting a six-month tour offer to open for Bon Jovi as they promoted the New Jersey album, it had sold a million copies in the US alone. And as well as playing at the biggest venues the Unites States had to offer (New Jersey’s Giant’s Stadium, for example, held 72,000 people), Skid Row showed their hunger by also playing their own club shows on nights off.

As singles, 18 And Life and I Remember You both made the US Top 10. Skid Row were soon moving in heavyweight circles, and appeared at the Moscow Music Peace Festival, a show organized by Doc McGhee as penance for being busted for drug smuggling. Others that played for McGhee’s Make A Difference Foundation, conceived to combat drug and alcohol abuse, included Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe and The Scorpions. Bolan’s most enduring memory was not playing the actual concert, but the pre-show press conference.

“A member from each band was picked, and I sat with Nikki [Sixx, of the Crüe], Klaus [Meine, Scorpions singer] and Ozzy,” he smiles. “The Scorpions were the only ones who’d played Russia before, and Klaus was asked what it felt like to be back. He gave this bonehead answer that The Scorpions had come to Moscow and were going to rock it like a hurricane. Ozzy said: ‘Oh, what a fucking wanker’, and Nikki and I almost died with laughter.”

In August 1989 Skids Row finally made their UK debut at Milton Keynes Bowl, opening a bill that included Vixen, Europe and headliners Bon Jovi. It was the start of a whirlwind love affair that saw them headline London’s Hammersmith Odeon just two months later.

“Looking out on all those faces at Milton Keynes was incredible,” Bolan says. “All my life I’d just wanted to go to England because my favourite bands – The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and The Rolling Stones – were from there. We’d become big in the States and we were confident enough to think we could repeat that anywhere. Scotti and I tried to go out into the crowd to watch Bon Jovi, but we got mobbed.”

During a show at London’s Marquee, Bach had famously invited the entire audience back to the Columbia Hotel for a drink. A sizeable crowd duly gathered in Lancaster Gate, only to be turned away at the door. Bach was incensed when he heard the fans were not being allowed in.

“I was gonna party with the people who’d taken the time to turn up,” he later said. “So when no one was looking I grabbed a bottle from the bar and few joints and went out the back exit. I sat in Hyde Park and chatted with 50 or 60 fans. That kind of thing goes to show who’s addicted to rock’n’roll and who’s addicted to their own ego.”

The group’s streetwise approach certainly helped word to spread like wildfire, and soon they had leapfrogged from the Marquee straight to the Odeon, where they were joined on stage by Lemmy for a version of Train Kept A-Rollin’ and Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain for Iron Maiden’s Wrathchild. Robert Plant was reportedly backstage and at an after-show party; The Sweet’s ex-singer Brian Connolly also arrived to express his admiration.

Bach had studied well for his role as a frontman, learning his trade at the Dee Snider School Of Abuse. At Hammersmith, possibly taking his cue from a bootleg of Twisted Sister that I’d given him, he used Snider’s ploy of abusing pop stars.

While Snider had launched verbal tirades against Boy George, Bach’s ire was aimed at pop stars of the era like Jason Donovan, Milli Vanilli and Bros. At the Odeon party, Bach had grabbed me in a headlock and admitted: “You must fucking hate me, man. I ripped off every last word from your tape.” Sure enough, his charisma sometimes enabled him to win over audiences almost single-handedly, yet his raps weren’t always equally well-received.

“It used to bug the hell out of me when he said things that Dee Snider, David Lee Roth and even Paul Stanley had used before,” Bolan says now. “It was so obvious. As our career progressed, pretty much all the shit that Sebastian said on stage became irritating. He’d tell an audience what a song was about, but it had nothing to do with the lyrics I’d written. Unless I ignored it, I’d have walked off.”

However, Bach’s personality and songs like Youth Gone Wild and 18 And Life were having an almost Pied Piper effect on fans on both sides of the Atlantic. A UK tour with Mötley Crüe saw Skid Row stepping up to bigger stages still. According to Bolan, Bach’s ego problems only really became an issue as the band’s initial flush of success began. Up until then, Sabo insists that each of the five members would have “taken a bullet” for a colleague.

“It was absolutely true,” he now acknowledges. “Everything was so new, and the excitement of achieving our early goals was a real bonding experience. We were like a clenched fist.”

With sales snowballing, by 1989 Skid Row were firmly on target for huge stardom. “We’re still the same slobs we were before,” Bolan insisted at the time. sometimes our songs had something more than that, and it really helped us to connect with people.”

But Bach seemed hell-bent on self-destruction. When Skid Row supported Aerosmith in Springfield, he was struck by a glass bottle thrown from the audience. In front of MTV cameras, he proceeded to hurl it back, resulting in 14-year-old Elizabeth Myers needing 125 stitches.

In later years Bach told Classic Rock that he was filled with regret for the consequences of that knee-jerk reaction, although he mused: “My sensible side tells me I wouldn’t do the same thing again, but when you get a glass bottle in your face and you’re dripping with blood… I can’t promise I wouldn’t kick somebody’s ass. I’m a human being, not a target.”

Bach himself paid half of the six-figure damages that ensued from the incident, the remainder coming from the pockets of his band-mates. The ensuing fallout was a significant milestone in Skid Row’s worsening personal relationships.

“Splitting that little girl’s head open…” Bolan sighs, almost lost for words. “Well, it was awful, and it put a huge wedge right in the centre of the band. That and the ‘Aids Kills Faggots’ T-shirt that he wore. Some kid had given it to him up in Winnipeg, and he put it on when we were in Los Angeles. I distinctly remember telling him: ‘I wouldn’t wear that if I were you’. But he did it anyway. By that point the stupid shit he was doing was almost becoming sociopathic. He seemed to feel that he was above all rules and regulations.”

The remainder of 1990 and start of 1991 was spent recording the Slave To The Grind album, again with Michael Wagener producing. It flew straight to the top of the Billboard chart – the first hard rock album to ever do so. It helped that the record was released the week before Van Halen’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

Bolan agrees that the heaviness of Slave… alienated some fans, but by then the notoriety of Skid Row – or, more specifically, Bach – had reached new heights. The volatile singer made headlines when he rang me to express his indignation at a cover story in which Jon Bon Jovi had claimed: “I punched the shit out of Sebastian, decked him on his fat little ass and I’d do so again. I knocked him out and I’d do it again.”

A fracas had ensued on the penultimate night of the band’s US tour with Bon Jovi, with Jon believing that Bach had dissed the headliners from the stage. With end-of-tour pranks going on, Bach had been covered in milk and eggs by Bon Jovi’s crew before the show, and on stage launched into a semi-comic rant inviting Jon up to “have a piece of me-e-e-e-e!” As he went down the ramp afterwards, Bon Jovi and an entourage of heavies were waiting for him.

“Jon took a swing and missed, so I punched him on the chin,” Bach seethed, almost apoplectic with rage as he vented his version of events down the phone line. “Suddenly I’m pinned against the wall by four bodyguards; even my own tour manager was holding me back. Look, I’m a 22-year-old fucking Metallica freak on speed. I’m psychotic. I can drink four bottles of whiskey before I go on stage. Jon is a 31-year-old Bruce Springsteen fan with a fax machine. He gets pissed on one drink. Who do you think is gonna win a fight?”

He then rubbed salt into the wound by sneering: “Rock’n’roll is about coming together as one with an audience, not worrying about how to turn a sixty-nine-million-dollar fortune into a seventy-one-million one.” For his sheer audacity, Bach claimed to have received congratulatory calls from Axl Rose and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, but it put Sabo in an impossible position.

“Jon had freaked out because he thought Sebastian had called him a pussy,” Sabo says . “But the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and because my singer hadn’t done anything wrong I had to defend him amid all this mud-slinging.”

Sabo eventually made his peace with Jon almost three years later at the funeral of a mutual friend. “The guy who’d died hated the fact that Jon and I were estranged,” he says. “He and I ended up hugging at the wake, and he invited me to his house that night where he, [his wife] Dorothea and I shared few bottles of wine.”

One positive to result from Bach’s outburst was that Jon and Sambora relaxed Skid Row’s contract with Underground, with the proviso that Bach signed a gagging order. Bolan now reveals that although royalties were never backdated, the band did at least start to receive regular payments. “I wouldn’t have minded a couple of the cheques they made out of us,” Bolan says, surprisingly flippantly.

To Bolan’s frustration, drug use had also begun to creep into Skid Row, especially on Bach’s part, although for the record the singer insists he hasn’t taken cocaine since 1993. “We had everything in front of us,” Bolan sighs. “It became a sore point. To this day I tell people never to do drugs, they’ll end up destroying themselves or what they’re working towards.”

On the following tour saw Skid Row headlining all over the world, with Soundgarden and Pantera among the bands supporting them. At a show at London’s Docklands Arena, Bach stunned fans by dropping his silver strides to his ankles and ceremoniously wiping his arse on a copy of the Daily Star.

Skid Row also supported Guns N’ Roses at Wembley Stadium, where they defied a warning from Brent Council not to play the song Get The Fuck Out. Risking jail and a lifetime ban from the London borough, Bach once again infuriated Bolan by reading out the council’s letter to 80,000 fans.

“That type of posed toughness was so dumb,” Bolan now admits, adding sarcastically: “How did a kid that went to prep school end up such a rebel?”

The appearance of the B-Sides Ourselves mini-album in 1993 served as testament to the record label’s hunger for Skid Row product . A collection of songs by Kiss, The Ramones, Judas Priest, Jimi Hendrix and Rush, it summed up the diversity of the band’s record collections and brought them another gold record.

However, two years away from the spotlight had done the group no favours, and by the time of the Subhuman Race album in March 1995 the Seattle revolution was still giving the industry a spring clean. Worse still, the group’s relationship with Bach was nearing breaking point, and they were being forced to address various issues publicly. During their lay-off, the band had even attempted mediation, with – of all people – the aforementioned Dee Snider doing his best to advise both sides.

Sabo had also been suffering from writer’s block: “When I came off tour I couldn’t write a fucking song to save my life.” Bach now maintains that he hears in the record more of Metallica/Bon Jovi/The Cult producer Bob Rock than the musicians. Bolan calls working with Rock a “horrible” experience, and was equally concerned that Bach was demanding a bigger role in the songwriting.

“I could understand his desire to write songs,” Sabo reasons. “Rachel and I had been learning our craft for eleven years. Sebastian could sing 18 And Life way better than I ever could, but writing a song like that isn’t something you can just snap your fingers and learn. When that distinction got lost, that’s when the real troubles began. The most interesting thing about Sebastian’s ego was that it grew more and more out of control the smaller the band became.”

Reviews of the album were less than glowing: a “disappointed” Kerrang! admitted that several days were required for it to make sense; RAW magazine hedged its bets by saying: ‘Skid Row still have it in them to produce a classic rock album. This isn’t it.’

When in an interview I pointed out that the UK’s media had been underwhelmed by the third Skid Row album, Bach lost his rag, and stormed from the room, spitting back: “The press can write their goofy fuckin’ articles, and I’ll make my fuckin’ records. We’ll see who’s still doing it in ten years’ time. You’ve really hurt my feelings.” Sabo later summed up the group’s disillusionment: “We could’ve released Back In Black and it wouldn’t have mattered. It just wasn’t our time any more.”

Sure enough, Skid Row struggled through some US shows with Van Halen, but their death knell was sounded by agreeing to play some South American dates with Iron Maiden, Motörhead and Helloween. Not only were Skid Row stylistically out of place, but the bickering with Bach was also tearing them apart.

“I knew when I got off the plane at JFK Airport that I’d never step on stage with Skid Row again,” Bolan reflects sadly (and now, of course, we know he was wrong). “By then we were viewed as a cartoon band, and the genre we were lumped into had been swallowed up and laughed at.”

In Bach’s defence, Skid Row wrote songs about youth going wild and whom they claimed to represent, saying ‘fuck you’ to anyone who deserved it. So wasn’t it churlish to complain when somebody walked it like they talked it?

“If Sebastian had really meant it, then maybe so,” Bolan responds carefully. “But I know him and how he grew up. He hadn’t had to work. He was always kinda playing a role. We saw how he would cower and cry when we yelled at him. It was like standing up to a bully – they always eventually back down.”

Sabo, too, had reached the point of no return in South America, and finally sacked the singer by phone on December 23, 1996. There had been an offer to support Kiss, but Bach’s continued vetoing of the band’s material opened up what Sabo calls “an abyss of hatred”.

“I was eating a meal with my family when Sebastian left a vile answerphone message,” Sabo relates. “It was along the lines of: ‘You piece of shit, spineless cocksucker’. I’m gritting my teeth, my mother’s hearing all of this. When they’d all gone home I left a message on Sebastian’s phone telling him I’d received all his hate faxes and that I would never, ever play in a band with him again. When I called Doc to explain, he said he couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to do.”

The ensuing years saw Bolan form his own band called Prunella Scales (named after the comedienne who played Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers). Bach joined The Last Hard Men, before touring under his own name. Sabo, Bolan, Hill and Affuso then brought in New Jersey singer Shawn McCabe for a project called Ozone Monday. In ’98 Affuso bailed out, although the group got as far as opening for Kiss and Mötley Crüe, and even recorded an album before McCabe quit the following summer.

“The 80s were hanging around our necks, but we almost didn’t want to say we’d been in Skid Row,” Bolan chuckles. “Although people assumed Ozone Monday was Skid Row with a different singer, we never did any of those songs and the whole thing really only served as a release.”

As a new millennium dawned, so did the realisation that they still had unfinished business. Affuso now has a career in marketing, so his place was taken by ex-Saigon Kick/Prunella Scales drummer Phil Varone. Nobody wanted to reopen the Pandora’s box that was Sebastian Bach, so they set about finding a new singer. After six people had auditioned unsuccessfully, the core trio of Sabo, Bolan and Hill began to get twitchy. Enter Dallas-born Johnny Solinger, discovered by Bolan via the internet. Thirty-five years old and with three studio albums with his own group Solinger under his belt, Solinger was invited to a jam.

Bolan: “His voice blew us away. And we knew right away we were gonna take him, but we didn’t actually tell him for three days. Six weeks later we were on the road with Kiss.”

“The band had balls of steel to take on a frontman like me,” Solinger maintains. “I don’t look or sing anything like Sebastian, and I don’t swing my head around half as much – do that these days and you’ll get laughed off a stage.”

A change of name was discussed, but ultimately the group were defiant. “We worked hard to build this band,” Bolan insists. “If people don’t believe there can be a Skid Row without Sebastian, that’s just their problem. We play old Skid Row songs and new ones, and just about everyone so far has accepted Johnny.”

The band’s determination to carry on led them to entitle their comeback album Thickskin. Aware of its importance, after they recorded it they scrapped it and then rebuilt it again almost from the ground up. Managing their own affairs and signed to their own label in America (although Thickskin has been released in Europe through SPV), their expectations are now considerably more modest than in the band’s multimillion-selling heyday.

The knowledge that that Skid Row are highly unlikely to sell five million copies of any new record is compensated by the new levels of camaraderie. In 2003 they even travel with a mobile bar.

“Yeah, it’s called Benders,” Bolan says. “The guys from Pantera gave it to us when they opened for us – it’s a gigantic, spotlit bar on wheels, part refrigerator and part stereo. It contains forty bottles of liquor. We took it out with us when we toured with Poison, and the thing needed restocking every two nights.”

Since 1996 there have been several lucrative offers to reunite with Bach, who himself told Classic Rock last year that he didn’t rule out singing with Skid Row in the future, but that if it happened “it’d all depend on the music”.

“Sebastian is delusional as always,” Bolan sighs. “He’s out of Skid Row and he’ll never rejoin. You might as well say Paul Di’Anno would go back to Iron Maiden. As much as he claims to hate singing our songs, his live record [1998’s Bring ’Em Bach Alive] is full of songs that he had very little to do with the writing of.”

Now fronting his latest band Bach Tight 5, Bach has spent much of recent years appearing in musicals, first a production of Jekyll & Hyde and then, even more fittingly, Jesus Christ Superstar. Bolan is keen to play down any suggestion of competition, despite Sebastian telling Classic Rock last year that he suspected Thickskin would never be released, while he had given the world “two fucking albums, three fucking musicals, and five tours”.

“It’s amusing that he has to recite his résumé to justify himself,” Bolan laughs hysterically. “When I buy a car I don’t say: ‘Hi, I’m the guy that played bass on the first heavy metal record to top the Billboard chart’. I don’t always need to be Rachel from Skid Row, sometimes it’s just nice to be Rachel the guy at the bar.”

This article originally appeared in Classic Rock 62 (January 2004). More than two decades later, Sebastian Bach and Skid Row have still not reunited.

Dave Ling was a co-founder of Classic Rock magazine. His words have appeared in a variety of music publications, including RAW, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Prog, Rock Candy, Fireworks and Sounds. Dave’s life was shaped in 1974 through the purchase of a copy of Sweet’s album ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’, along with early gig experiences from Status Quo, Rush, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Yes and Queen. As a lifelong season ticket holder of Crystal Palace FC, he is completely incapable of uttering the word ‘Br***ton’.

John Fogerty has rerecorded an album’s worth of Creedence Clearwater Revival classics for an upcoming collection, Legacy: the Creedence Clearwater Revival Years, which will be released on August 22 via Concord.

In a clear reference to pop icon Taylor Swift, who has released “Taylor’s Version” remakes of four of her albums after being unable to purchase the rights to the original recordings, Fogerty is calling his remakes “John’s Versions”, although, unlike Swift, he does own his own masters.

“For most of my life I did not own the songs I had written,” says Fogerty. “Getting them back changes everything. Legacy is my way of celebrating that – of playing these songs on my terms, with the people I love.”

Those people include Fogerty’s sons Shane and Tyler – both guitarists – as well as drummer Matt Chamberlain, keyboardist Bob Malone, bassist Bob Glaub and saxophonist Rob Stone. Shane also co-produced the album with his father, while executive producer duties were carried out by Fogerty Sr.’s wife Julie.

“I knew first-hand how much it meant for John to get his publishing back,” says Julie. “It has been so joyful and beautiful since this happened for him. This is a celebration of his life’s work. It is the biggest party for the good guy/artist winning.”

The first fruits of Fogerty’s labours are now available, with new versions of Creedence’s Up Around The Bend and Have You Ever Seen The Rain on streaming platforms now, as well as a John’s Version remake of Porterville, originally recorded by Creedence under their original name of The Golliwogs in 1967. All three tracks are below, as well as the album’s tracklisting.

In early 2023, Fogerty won control over his back catalogue after a legal battle that’d taken five decades to reach its conclusion.

“This is something I thought would never be a possibility,” said Fogerty at the time. “After 50 years, I am finally reunited with my songs. I also have a say in where and how my songs are used. Up until this year, that is something I have never been able to do.”

Legacy: the Creedence Clearwater Revival Years is available to pre-order now. Fogerty plays the second of two shows to mark his 80th birthday this evening (May 29) at New York’s Beacon Theatre and will play the UK’s Glastonbury Festival in June. Full dates below.

John Fogerty: Legacy – The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years tracklist

01. Up Around The Bend
02. Who’ll Stop The Rain
03. Proud Mary
04. Have You Ever Seen The Rain
05. Lookin’ Out My Back Door
06. Born On The Bayou
07. Run Through The Jungle
08. Someday Never Comes
09. Porterville
10. Hey Tonight
11. Lodi
12. Wrote A Song For Everyone
13. Bootleg
14. Don’t Look Now
15. Long As I Can See The Light
16. Down On The Corner
17. Bad Moon Rising
18. Travelin’ Band
19. Green River
20. Fortunate Son

John Fogerty tour dates 2025

May 29: New York Beacon Theatre, NY

Jun 20: Vitoria-Gasteiz Azkena Rock Festival, Spain
Jun 23: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands
Jun 25: Antwerp Sportpaleis Antwerpen, Belgium
Jun 26: Paris Zenith Paris, France
Jun 28: Pilton Glastonbury Festival, UK

Jul 16: Los Angeles Hollywood Bowl, CA
Jul 17: Battle Creek Firekeepers Casino, MI
Aug 01: Doswell SERVPRO Pavilion at The Meadow Event Park, VA
Aug 02: Selbyville Freeman Arts Pavilion, DE|
Aug 03: Quincy Veterans Memorial Stadium, MA

Get John Fogerty tickets.

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.

Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and current touring member of Pearl Jam Josh Klinghoffer has avoided a possible jail sentence after entering a plea deal in the vehicular manslaughter case that was brought against him last year.

Klinghoffer attended court in Alhambra, California, yesterday, and entered a no-contest plea in the case, which was brought after a vehicle Klinghoffer was driving struck a 47-year-old pedestrian, Israel Sanchez, in March 2024. Sanchez subsequently died from his injuries.

The no-contest plea means that Klinghoffer accepts conviction but does not plead or admit guilt. He’ll serve 60 hours of community service and a year of probation, and will also undertake a driver safety class.

At the time of Kilnghoffer’s arraignment, Sanchez’s family lawyer, Nick Rowley, claimed to be in possession of “a video of him on his cell phone at the time he hit and killed Israel Sanchez.”

During court proceedings, the prosecutor warned Klinghoffer about his future conduct, saying, “If you continue to drive while distracted, and as a result of your driving someone is killed, you can be charged with murder.”

Klinghoffer played guitar for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for 12 years, appearing on 2011’s I’m With You and 2016’s The Getaway. Since John Frusciante’s return to the RHCP, Klinghoffer has played with Iggy Pop and Redd Kross in addition to Pearl Jam, and on Elton John and Brandi Carlile’s collaborative album Who Believes in Angels?

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.