Category: Uncategorized

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.

These are halcyon days for fans of Yes music. As well as the Steve Howe-led ‘original’ version – technically inactive at this moment, but still a going concern – there’s former singer Jon Anderson and his Band Geeks, singing as well as he ever has with a group who are as capable of capturing the spirit of 70s Yes as impressing with their new music.

And if those two weren’t enough, there’s Roine Stolt’s Flower Kings, who have been on a Yes-friendly creative roll since their 2018 relaunch. They’re a handy surrogate for anyone craving the feel of the prog pioneers’ glory days without directly replicating them.

Love (how on earth did Stolt beat his sometime collaborator Anderson to that title?) is the fifth Flower Kings album in less than six years, but it doesn’t sound like the band are running out of ideas. Instead, it’s an album of fully realised ambition, even if the music occasionally moors too close to their British forebears.

Opener We Claim The Moon sounds like the sort of song Yes might have written if Trevors Rabin and Horn had joined Yes in time for Relayer, and the climax of Considerations is a junior version of Yes’ Awaken. But there’s enough going on to ensure that the Flower Kings’ search for transcendence is truly illuminating.

Lyrics are frequently pulled from the encyclopaedia of new-age poppycock – but it’s forgivable because it’s sincere

The Elder is typical – it slowly unfurls over its 11-minute length, drifting from one section to the next, Stolt and Hasse Fröberg’s vocals augmented by twinkling, Disney-esque piano from Lalle Larsson.

How Can You Leave Us Now? keeps the mood gently euphoric, guitars lifting the song skyward as the end nears. Burning Both Edges is similarly relaxed, the spooky throat-sung introduction giving way to pastoral synths, a surprisingly soulful chorus and some magical flute.

The instrumental World Spinning sounds like it was piped in from 1970 without touching the sides, with a wobbling Moog to the fore. And the aforementioned Considerations is a true epic, rich in majesty and drama, kicking off in full-throttle celestial mode before gently winding its way towards that high point via synth flurries, spiralling guitar and a gospel choir.

Of course, the lyrics are frequently pulled from the encyclopaedia of new-age poppycock (The Phoenix includes the lines: ‘In stark white feathers a king is getting ready/Like a lighthouse in his eyes’), but it’s forgivable because it’s done with such sincerity.

And because, at the end of the day, a world in which Roine Stolt and his band of merry men spin their wondrous stories of love and life is much better than one in which they don’t.

Love is on sale now via InsideOut.

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.

Rewind 30 years and no-one on the planet, not even the man himself, would place bets on Dave Grohl becoming one of the most famous frontmen of his generation. It was May 1995, just over a year since the death of Grohl’s Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain and the subsequent dissolution of a band who had turned rock music inside out and changed everything. Grohl had been a big part of that, of course, his powerful, pugilistic drumming style key to what made Nirvana’s best songs so exhilaratingly impactful. Everyone assumed that’s where Grohl would stay, doing his thing behind the kit, totally unaware he was about to change lanes and launch a hugely triumphant second act.

There were some signs of what was about to come. Grohl had recorded the material that would make up Foo Fighters’ debut a few months before, in October, 1994, turning to music, as he has often done throughout his career, as a way of channelling grief. After a few club shows in early ’95, he’d hit the road with his new band throughout spring opening for punk veteran Mike Watt, but for the wider world, the news that one of the world’s best drummers was downing sticks and heading out front arrived with the release of Foo Fighters’ debut single This Is A Call in June 1995.

The track is about to turn 30 and remains a key song in both the Foo Fighters story and, more than that, Dave Grohl’s life. A few of the cuts that made up their self-titled debut (or his self-titled debut, given he played everything himself) had been banging around for a while but it was This Is A Call that provided the real spark.

“This Is A Call had a different feel,” Grohl told Apple Music a few years ago. “It was a bit more uplifting than the other stuff that I’d written before and, especially coming after Kurt’s death, This Is A Call was like a renewal or a reawakening where I actually found joy in playing and writing. It’s strange because when you’re in that moment and you’re in a period of loss or grief or mourning, it’s like you pick up an instrument and that just spills out.”

Up until that point, Grohl explained, his songwriting had been mired in mourning following Cobain’s death, everything rooted in grief. “I’d always come home from tours and recorded songs by myself, but that feeling was gone,” he said. “I didn’t really want to write or even listen to music.”

There were rumours in the press that Grohl was about to join Pearl Jam and he also got offered a permanent gig with Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, considering it before only playing with them for a one-off performance on Saturday Night Live. But he already had another idea in mind.

“I’d just started doing this thing,” he told Howard Stern a few years ago. “And I just felt weird about going back just to the drums, because it would just have reminded me of being back in Nirvana. It would have been sad, for me personally. It would have been an emotional thing to be behind the drums every night and not have Kurt there. So I was like, ‘Nah, fuck it. I’m going to try this other thing’.”

That “other thing” had received a big boon with This Is A Call, a song that felt like an artistic turning of the corner for its writer. “This Is A Call came from somewhere else. “Every time I picked up a pen or a guitar and I’d start writing something,” he continued, “it was just depressing. After a while, I’m like, ‘Is that all I’ve got?’. And then This Is A Call, something like that, it just felt OK.”

Rather than stay put and deal with the aftermath of Cobain’s death and the end of Nirvana on his doorstep, Grohl had gone travelling and it was during this period that This Is A Call came together. “I think I wrote it in Ireland,” he told Kerrang! – Grohl was in the Emerald Isle on his honeymoon.

As the song that cleared the way for a fresh start, it made sense for it to be Foo Fighters’ debut single. “You know, ‘This is a call to all my past resignations’, I felt like I had nothing to lose,” he explained. I didn’t necessarily want to be the drummer of Nirvana for the rest of my life without Nirvana. I thought I should try something I’d never done before and I’d never stood up in front of a band and been the lead singer, which was fucking horrifying and still is!”

He couldn’t have realised just how much that choice would pay off. This Is A Call unexpectedly became a huge hit, reaching the Top Five in the UK Singles Chart and getting within touching distance of the top of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the US. Its success paved the way for the next phase of his career and a band who would become the biggest rock band of the fast-approaching new millennium. “That opened up this new door to me where life could continue,” Grohl told American Songwriter magazine. “It really saved my life. I didn’t want it to feel like a solo project. I didn’t want it to feel like this is my backing band. I wanted that same feeling that I had in every band I’d been in, where it’s a collective, it’s a group, and we do this together.”

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.

Phil Kettner remembers the first time he saw Metallica live. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh wow, it’s punk rock with long hair,’” says Kettner, who was guitarist with San Francisco proto-thrashers Lääz Rockit at the time. Kettner’s own band were tipped as the Bay Area’s next big thing, but this was something completely new.

Metallica played their first show in San Francisco at The Stone in September 1982. Within a few months, they had relocated to the the city from their native LA, recruiting bass wunderkind Cliff Burton the process. A brand new scene quickly grew up around them, and the Bay Area became the epicentre of the fastest, loudest, heaviest music in the world: thrash metal.

“‘Thrash’ wasn’t used that much as a term in 1982,” says Ron Quintana, one of the architects of the Bay Area thrash scene. Quintana was the editor of the seminal Metal Mania fanzine, which exhaustively covered the San Francisco metal and punk scenes in a rage of caustic humour, slapdash cut-and-paste layouts, and inky newsprint. He was also a DJ at KUSF, a community-run radio station that operated out of the University of San Francisco. “I think it was more in 1984, with speedsters like Exodus, Slayer, Possessed, and Suicidal Tendencies, that we called them thrash and not just metal or punk.”

Regardless of what it was called in its infancy, the sound produced by these early San Francisco bands was like nothing ever heard before. Young, fleet-fingered savages like Metallica, Death Angel, Exodus, Lääz Rockit, Possessed, Blind Illusion and a handful of others were pushing musical boundaries, playing faster and with more intricacy then seemed humanly possible.

There were a myriad of places for these bands to play all over the city, at now-infamous clubs like Ruthie’s Inn, Kabuki Theatre, The Fillmore, The Keystone, The Stone and The Mabuhay Gardens, which was host to the equally envelope-pushing hardcore punk scene. There were record stores and hangouts, a healthy college radio scene and a smattering of enthusiastic fanzines covering it all. So how did this happen? Was it the work of perpetual schemer Lars Ulrich and his collection of Angelwitch imports, as is often reported in the annals of metal?

“[SF radio stations] KUSF and KALX were playing extreme metal in 1982, so NWOBHM was old hat by the time,” says Quintana. “Lars and company could play two Diamond Head and one Blitzkrieg song at any audience, but there were two amazing record import stores and tons of Tower LP stores supplying the maniac habits of fans.”

“The independent record stores were great,” says Rob Cavestany, guitarist and co-founder of Death Angel, one of the first and surely the youngest of the Bay Area thrash bands. “There was the Record Exchange and the Record Vault. These were the main shops, where all the metalheads would come down and find the latest new releases and hear about the latest bands. This was even before Metallica, when we were first hearing about bands like Tygers of Pan Tang, Loundness, Riot. Those were the bands we were tripping on.”

Things changed drastically, however, once Metallica came to town. “I don’t know exactly when they formed in relation to when we did,” says Cavestany, “but I do know they made a wave quicker than we did, we were way into them, and were very influenced by them. We saw them play at the Keystone in Berkeley, and it was an eye-opening evening, for sure.”

“The shows were always totally packed,” adds Kettner. “There were a lot of sold out shows back then. At the time, we had a manager who was very tenacious about getting out-of-town bands to play. We actually brought Metallica up to play their first show at the Old Waldorf. We did a famous show back in 1983 with Metallica headlining. We supported them, and Exodus opened up. That was at The Stone.”

“There were a lot of future musicians in those crowds,” recalls Quintana. “But there were lots of all types, even posers.”

“We played with Metallica for the first time at the Kabuki Theatre,” says Cavestany. “It was with Metallica and Armored Saint. But we’d been playing for years before that. We started playing out in 1982. I was about 13, 14 years old at the time. Andy [Galeon, Death Angel drummer] was about nine or ten. I mean, we were very young. But there were all-ages clubs going on, there were parties, things like that we played. And the other times, when there was some kind of age restriction, they basically just snuck us in. We played with Exodus, Legacy – who later became Testament – Slayer, Megadeth, Mercyful Fate, Lääz Rockit. And we played with all the punk bands as well.”

Punk Rock was alive and well in San Francisco in 1982, although not all of the metal bands in town embraced it. “It was pretty segregated,” says Kettner. “I’m sure there were people from both those scenes that went to different shows but we didn’t book any shows with, like, Black Flag or TSOL. We never booked shows with those guys, which I regret, because I think it would have opened people’s eyes. That’s where the thrash thing came from, it crossed over from the punk element. Consider the circle mosh and stage diving and stuff like that – that came directly from the punk scene.”

Unlike Lääz Rockit, Death Angel dived headfirst into the metal-punk crossover movement. “We played with a lot of punk bands,” says Cavestany. “That’s how the crossover thing came about, really. We played shows with Cro Mags, GBH, DRI, Verbal Abuse, Suicidal Tendencies, DR. Know – we played with those guys all the time.”

“Poor LA music fans had only hair bands or punk shows, there was no crossover,” says Quintana. “But punks up north went to metal shows, and vice versa. In LA, hardcore punk shows were extremely violent. Suicidal Tendencies couldn’t even play their hometown. They had to come up north to play. That crossover created lots of good, usually friendly competition in the Bay Area.”

By the mid 1980s, the punk influence on the San Francisco metal scene was embraced and championed. But the glam bands? Not so much. “We knew a lot of kids back then who were real adamant about the whole ‘Bang the head that does not bang’ thing,” says Kettner.

“There were glam bands in SF, and some of them were cool guys,” explains Cavestany. “You got Jetboy, Sea Hags, Vain. Davey Vain actually produced our album, Frolic Through The Park (1988). We played shows with some of them in the early days, until thrash got the ‘kill poseurs’ vibe, and then the lines of separations happened, where these kids wouldn’t be caught dead at one of our shows.”

“Like rats, glam was everywhere,” snarls infamous poseur-hater Quintana. “Van Halen was king and even clone bands had big followings, too.”

Exodus, arguably the most musically violent band in the Bay Area thrash movement, were also the most vocal in their hatred of fishnet-wearing glam-rockers, often calling for their fans to “Kill the poseurs”, wherever they may be found. As such, SF thrash shows often devolved into mayhem.

“There was violence going on in the audience, for sure,” says Kettner. “People were throwing each other around, but then you’d go out for a beer afterwards. I’m sure there were a few people that were pointed out for not fitting in within the scene, or for trying to act like something you’re not, and those people would most likely be ostracised and/or beaten in the alley. But I wasn’t witnessing that.”

“It was reality, though,” says Cavestany. “Poseurs did get their asses kicked. Don’t let [original Exodus singer Paul] Baloff catch one of them around.”

“We did get very wild and crazy at points,” says Kettner. “I’m not really sure how to look at all that because on the one hand, yeah, it was crazy and aggressive, but there was a lot of camaraderie at the same time. I just remember thinking, ‘Why aren’t we getting arrested?’”

By the late 1980s, when Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth had all graduated to arenas, SF thrash began to mutate into different, less punk-derived strains. Second-wave thrash bands like Testament and Machine Head added their own twists, from progressive elements to ‘groove’ into the mix. The original wave of bands were either millionaires, cult heroes, or on their last legs. And then the clubs started to go up in smoke.

“They closed the Kabuki Theatre,” sighs Kettner. “That place was amazing, this huge old theatre. I remember seeing Metallica supporting Raven there, Mercyful Fate… When you went to a show there, you realised just how big this thing was really becoming. I think that’s kinda what killed the scene, in the later 80s and early 90s. The Keystone Berkeley burned down, Wolfgang’s burned down, The Stone burned down…”

“Bands and scenes are cyclical, and being a rather small metro area, Bay Area thrash bands either got signed, moved on, broke up or mutated,” says Quintana. “And few could replace that original energy and power.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer Presents Metallica And Thrash Metal, July 2008

Classic Rock contributor since 2003. Twenty Five years in music industry (40 if you count teenage xerox fanzines). Bylines for Metal Hammer, Decibel. AOR, Hitlist, Carbon 14, The Noise, Boston Phoenix, and spurious publications of increasing obscurity. Award-winning television producer, radio host, and podcaster. Voted “Best Rock Critic” in Boston twice. Last time was 2002, but still. Has been in over four music videos. True story.