Before Heilung, God Of War, and the endless onslaught of Viking TV shows, Wardruna were the force reviving Nordic traditions for the modern age. Headed by Einar Selvik, the band adapt ancient themes and instruments for contemporary times, relaying lessons from history and championing nature.
With new album Birna emerging from the ethereal mists, Einar tells Hammer what he’s learned during a career that’s included soundtracking mainstream franchises and collaborating with the Norwegian government.
ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
“I presume that growing up in Osterøy is a big part of why I love nature and Norse history. It was a postcard Norwegian landscape, a picturesque place. But also, when you grow up in that kind of environment, it’s just something that’s naturally there. It’s not something you reflect much upon until you have the absence of nature. You’re never as close to home as you are when you’re far from it, touring the world.”
TRY TO DEVELOP A BROAD MUSICAL PALATE
“I grew up with siblings who were very much into metal, so that’s something I’ve had in me since I could walk, or perhaps before. But I had this exposure to other musical genres as well, like classical and traditional [Nordic] music. I enjoyed it all, and I can clearly see now how it influenced my vision for Wardruna.”
BLACK METAL’S CHURCH BURNINGS WERE HORRIBLE YET IMPORTANT
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“I was aware of what Norwegian black metal did in the early 90s… everyone in Norway was. I think the ‘Satanic’ part was a media-created thing. It was more a resistance towards the state church and that kind of oppression.
It’s hard to defend a lot of the stuff that happened in that period but, in retrospect, it moved some boundaries that needed to be moved, in terms of artistic and religious freedom. I think that was beneficial for more than just the people in the black metal scene.”
KNOW WHEN TO QUIT
“I started to think about Wardruna when I was 16 or 17. After playing a lot in the metal scene since my early teens, I was kind of done with it. I needed to do something more in line with my personal passions. That need became stronger and stronger until, in the early 2000s, I started materialising this vision I’d had for years.”
METAL HAS ITS LIMITS
“When I’ve said something, I don’t like to repeat myself. The need to speak in that way with metal sort of passed. I suck when there isn’t any energy supporting what I’m doing. That’s what I was feeling with metal. It became a professional thing, a bit mechanical. It wasn’t personal anymore, and it didn’t feel right.”
TEAMWORK REALLY DOES MAKE THE DREAM WORK
“Gaahl and I resonated very well and became very close friends. I think it was because of our shared passion for esoteric traditions, for history, for nature. We had a lot of common ground, and it’s also just a chemistry thing.
He was an important part of that period where I was shaping what became Wardruna. He was a consultant – a person I could throw my ideas and thoughts at. He was quite a central figure in the beginning.”
HUMANS ARE A PART OF NATURE, NOT IN CONTROL OF IT
“I’m tired of the fetishism of human centrality. We’re not the centre of the universe, and that is something I’m not a big fan of from Christianity. I’m very much opposed to this human ‘we are above the animals and the rulers of nature’ kind of thought.”
THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BELIEFS
“Animism can be many, many things. For me, it’s not a belief system at all. I can’t stand dogmas, and I’m not a big fan of putting labels on what I believe and don’t believe, but animism is what comes closest to how I live my life. It’s the idea that nature is sacred and that everything has life in it. Everyone agrees that trees have life, of course, but I view them as beings, as fellow earthlings. I would say it’s more of an attitude than a belief system.”
TECHNOLOGY ISN’T EVIL, BUT IT NEEDS TO BE UNDERSTOOD
“I think, in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to look back on what’s happening now with a lot of head-shaking. Technology developed a little bit too fast for us. Now, the hard facts are coming out, even though we’ve known for a long time that staying in front of screens isn’t good for us, isn’t good for our children. I’m very happy that I experienced something else growing up. I have kids myself and they say, on some levels, they wish they had the same things we had growing up. But I think things will change. They have to.”
NORSE HISTORY IS MORE THAN JUST VIKINGS…
“A lot of people think I’m into the Viking Age and that Wardruna is connected to the Viking Age, which it’s not. I never use that word. I think it misrepresents Norse history. You’re defining a whole culture using a word that describes what a small amount of people did for a very short amount of time.”
…AND VIKINGS AREN’T THAT INTERESTING TO ME
“The reason why the Viking Age doesn’t fascinate me that much is that it was a time of great change. It was the time where the deities that were connected to the earth became traded with ones that you could bring onto your warships. It was more about ego. It was more about war and expansion. It was a giant migration period where people were losing their ways. It was about money, power, trade. A very non-wholesome thing.”
“The TV show Vikings, like many other films and TV shows of that era, is entertainment. It’s not meant to please people like me, so watching things like that is quite painful, because of all the inaccuracies and simplification. Although the show mended some stereotypes, it created quite a few new ones. When I got involved in it [making the soundtrack for season two], it was a good opportunity to contribute to tipping the scale. Perhaps I could add things that were actually authentic.”
VIDEOGAMES CAN TEACH YOU THINGS
“Assassin’s Creed is a mix of fantasy and historical accuracy as well. What tipped the scale for me to be part of that project was having meetings with them, hearing their vision of what my part would be in that soundtrack. They wanted to give voice to something that I feel is always lacking. Whenever there is a TV show or a movie about the Viking Age, the oral tradition of the skalds [Scandinavian poets who wrote about kings and heroes] is never present, and the Assassin’s Creed team, that’s basically what they wanted.”
HAVING VIKINGS IN THE MAINSTREAM IS BOTH GOOD AND BAD
“All these Viking films and shows and games, they come with positives and negatives. Of course, there will be a lot of bullshit that has nothing to do with the tradition. There will be a lot of people jumping on the hype train, trying to make money. But I think there are positives because, after World War II and the Nazi misuse of ancient Nordic imagery, it was problematic. One of the positives is this new wave of healthy interest and pride in our culture. It’s been a huge part in reclaiming our history.”
FREE SPEECH MATTERS
“My initial reaction to being asked to do Skuggsjá [a musical piece commissioned by Norway’s government, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution] was, ‘I’m not sure.’ I said yes, but only if I could criticise the Constitution.
It has parts that, in my opinion, are quite problematic, especially the religious part. It’s really cool that the reaction was, ‘You should criticise the Constitution!’ Writing that piece in the name of freedom of speech is something I’m proud of.”
WARDRUNA ISN’T A ‘HISTORY’ PROJECT
“In Wardruna, we use something old to create something new. That’s the focus. We use instruments from the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the migration period, the Viking Age and mediaeval times in a modern soundscape. It’s always been about giving voice to parts of history that still carry relevance. Learning from our past, rather than copying it.”
“We had no commercial ambitions. This introverted Norwegian attitude is what enabled us to create something that no one else had done”: How Emperor made black metal masterpiece In The Nightside Eclipse and changed metal forever
(Image credit: Press)
Emperor’s 1994 full-length debut In The Nightside Eclipse was far from the first black metal album, but few had the same impact. In 2019, frontman Ihsahn and producer Eirik ‘Pytten’ Hundvin looked back on an album that blew the scene wide open.
The internet seems to think In The Nightside Eclipse came out on February 21, 1994, yet anyone who was there at the time will recall the agonising delays that pushed Emperor’s hotly anticipated debut LP back throughout that year. The record wasn’t unleashed until mid-December ’94 – 17 months after it was recorded, “under the seventh full moon anno 1993” (as specified in the liner notes) – at the end of a breathtakingly fertile year for the newly ascendant force of Norwegian black metal.
Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger, debuts from Gorgoroth and Dimmu Borgir, and the first two albums by Enslaved and Satyricon all emerged in the time it took for Nightside to get its act together. After setting the underground on fire with the Wrath Of The Tyrant demo in 1992 and an eponymous EP in ’93, the still-teenaged Emperor – guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Ihsahn, guitarist Samoth, bassist Tchort and drummer Faust – had a lot of ground to make up, and a hell of a lot to live up to.
The album’s producer, Eirik ‘Pytten’ Hundvin – already Norwegian BM’s go- to sound man after helming recordings by Immortal, Burzum and Mayhem at Grieghallen Studios in Bergen – checked his original notes to help us pin down the reasons for Nightside’s colossal delay. “I have been through my files from the production and can confirm that mixing was complicated,” Pytten declares. “We had a 16-track analogue multitrack, and linked to it by [timecode-reading device] SMPTE was an Atari computer with linked midi keyboards and sound modules, probably also an 8-track digital recorder. This is a very time-consuming set-up to work. In addition was everyone’s high expectations of the final result, and accordingly some remixes of the songs were adding time.”
(Image credit: Press)
Ihsahn remembers remixing The Majesty Of The Night Sky “17 times before we were satisfied”, and as Pytten points out, it was a laborious commute for the young band; Grieghallen lies more than 200 miles west of Emperor’s home town Notodden, in Norway’s Telemark region. Pytten confirms the final day of mastering as August 9, 1994, adding, “Approximately two weeks later all finances were settled. If my notes and memory is accurate, this is a highly acceptable time for settling an invoice!”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 323 (May 2019) (Image credit: Future)
Aside from painstaking studio niggles, there was another, more unorthodox reason for Nightside’s delay. Shortly after recording it, three- quarters of Emperor were imprisoned for a variety of crimes: Faust for murder, Samoth for arson and Tchort for assault.
This quartet of misanthropic souls were positioned at the dark heart of an alarming new phenomenon: the Norwegian black metal ‘Inner Circle’, a loose association of like-minded musicians whose turbulent antisocial oneupmanship quickly spiralled out of control. In the time between Nightside’s recording and release, Mayhem guitarist Euronymous had been murdered and Burzum’s Count Grishnackh imprisoned for the crime, and Norwegian black metal had grown from a freakishly cult regional micro-scene to a thriving movement of international infamy.
Yet under all this pressure, Nightside became arguably the crowning achievement of its era – a dizzying, haunting, tempestuous masterwork pushing boundaries of composition, melody and atmosphere to make it arguably the most far-reaching artefact from Norse BM’s early years. The band never had any doubt of their debut’s potency: “It will be a monument in black metal history,” Samoth promised in March ’94 to excellently titled Finnish zine Pure Fucking Hell.
This was a busy time for the guitarist; as well as Emperor, Samoth’s six- string bolstered releases by Arcturus, Satyricon and Gorgoroth, in addition to session bass-work for Burzum. “It’s Samoth who had all the connections, and I tagged along!” admits Ihsahn, recalling the incestuous nature of the Norwegian scene in these early days. “At the time extreme metal was dominated by Swedish and American bands, so maybe since we all hung out a lot, going to shows, a Norwegian identity was created. It fit better with our surroundings. In The Nightside Eclipse was very much influenced by descriptions of stuff that look very much like our Telemark nature.”
(Image credit: Press)
The LP’s dramatic evocation of place was signposted by its gatefold sleeve, Kristian ‘Necrolord’ Wåhlin’s moonlit panorama opening to reveal a glorious 24-inch photograph of a mountainous wooded fjord. MTV went to Ihsahn’s home for an interview in ’94, the black-clad youth filmed stalking around conifers, gazing pensively at waterfalls and ruminating on “the winds, the rains… the wastelands, the emptiness, the silence…” Far more than Satan, the unifying essence and motivational impetus of Nightside is the mysterious, rugged landscape of Emperor’s homeland – albeit populated by some deeply unnatural beings.
“We had a strong need for expression, so it was easy to channel that into fantasy-like images and larger-than-life sounds,” recalls Ihsahn. “We were just as inspired by soundtracks that went along with big fantasy movies. We started out with some epicness on the first Emperor EP, but it became very obvious that we wanted to do something that was just out of this world.”
Assisting in that regard was Pytten’s Nightside production, an oppressive cacophony of barbed guitars, blitzkrieg drums and triumphing synth flourishes, heaving with apocalyptic sound effects. Production polarised opinion from day one, some feeling alienated by the harsh, wayward blizzard of sound, others powerfully immersed in its cryptic embrace.
“Aahh, this is a tricky question,” remarks Pytten, when asked how his assessment of the finished product has changed over the years. “With such long times working on the production, so many hours in the studio, so many replays of the songs, so many tries to get the music right, I can go on… I have to admit my first feeling was relief! But the way I see the album after the fatigue left me is that I have never thought, ‘Oh if I only had done so and so instead…’ I think, whatever words are put on the production, this is a captured sound that has a lasting quality. I am quite proud of what we all achieved.”
Ihsahn’s own assessment is even more touching and heartfelt. “I think it’s the purity of it,” ponders the frontman, considering why Emperor’s debut has survived so timelessly. “We had no commercial ambitions; there were none to have. It sounds romantic, but all this music was made purely with artistic motivations, this total, introverted, Norwegian ‘keep it to ourselves’ attitude is what enabled us to create something that no one else had done.
“I always look back at albums and think, ‘Ah, I could have changed that’, but then you go beyond that, it becomes so old that you just appreciate it for being a representation of where you were at that point. And this wasn’t just 25 years ago, it’s almost like another life, being basically a kid. I look back and I think, ‘What an immense privilege, to be able to so deeply get to dedicate so much time and attention to this thing called music that I love so much.’ That whole time formed the basis of me being able to do this for 25 years. What a stroke of luck! It’s almost paradoxical to be so thankful for black metal, given the evilness of it all…”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 323, May 2019
Chris has been writing about heavy metal since 2000, specialising in true/cult/epic/power/trad/NWOBHM and doom metal at now-defunct extreme music magazine Terrorizer. Since joining the Metal Hammer famileh in 2010 he developed a parallel career in kids’ TV, winning a Writer’s Guild of Great Britain Award for BBC1 series Little Howard’s Big Question as well as writing episodes of Danger Mouse, Horrible Histories, Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed and The Furchester Hotel. His hobbies include drumming (slowly), exploring ancient woodland and watching ancient sitcoms.
Quirky prog metal trio Primus have shared their first new music for three years.
The quirky and surrealist Little Lord Fentanyl introduces new drummer John Hoffman and features a guest appearance. form Tool/A Perfect Circle/Puscifer vocalist Maynard James Keenan, and is the band’s first new music since 2022’s Conspiranoid EP.
“This fiery, cheerful, octopus-like drummer from Shreveport, Louisiana has breathed a very potent breath of freshness into this band we all call Primus,” said bassist and singer Les Claypool of the new incumbent. “Come see why this amazing fellow was able to rise above over 6,100 applicants to win the Interstellar Drum Derby and become the latest, and possibly the greatest, drummer to sit on the Primus drum throne.”
Primus are set to head out on the Sessanta Tour along with both A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, celebrating Keenan’s recent 61st birthday, before they head off on their Onward & Upward summer headline tour in America.
(Image credit: Press)
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“We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs”: The unhinged story of Aerosmith’s Draw The Line, the album that sent them crashing off the rails
(Image credit: Ron Pownall/Getty Images))
As 1977 rolled in, Aerosmith were flying high. In January, the band’s latest single Walk This Way, belatedly extracted from 1975 album Toys In The Attic, hit No.10 in the US. And in February, when they toured in Japan for the first time, they experienced a level of hysteria akin to Beatlemania.
There was no rock band on Earth bigger than Led Zeppelin, but Aerosmith were rising fast. As their producer Jack Douglas said: “Kiss was their only competition, at least among American rock bands.”
And yet, in the early summer of ’77, when Douglas started work on Aerosmith’s fifth album, Draw The Line, the problems within the group were plain to see. Hard drugs had taken a hold on the band’s two leading figures, singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. As the latter would put it: “The Beatles recorded The White Album, right? Well, Draw The Line was our Blackout Album.”
It was an album created out of chaos, and it marked a turning point in the life of America’s greatest rock’n’roll band. In its wake came two years of insanity – near-fatal car crashes, on-stage meltdowns, drug mania and fights between their wives and girlfriends, culminating in the shock exit of Joe Perry in 1979. And strangest of all, it was during these wild years, when the band was at its most dysfunctional, that some of Aerosmith’s greatest music was made.
The scene for the recording of Draw The Line was the Cenacle, a vast mansion set in 100 acres in a remote part of New York State near the village of Armonk. In 1977 the owner of the Cenacle was a psychiatrist who planned to turn the old place into a residential home for troubled adolescents. “Instead,” joked Aerosmith’s bassist Tom Hamilton, “he got us.”
This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock Presents Aerosmith (Image credit: Future)
By the time the band members arrived in June, Jack Douglas and his team had set up a mobile recording studio on the ground floor, with heavy cables running from room to room. For added natural ambience, Joey Kramer’s drums were recorded in the chapel, and Joe Perry’s rig was installed in a walk-in fireplace. The difficulty for Douglas was in getting the band into a working routine. As Perry later admitted, “We were drug addicts dabbling in music, rather than musicians dabbling in drugs.” Their hazardous recreational habits also extended to racing their sports cars, Ferraris and Porsches, on the surrounding country lanes, and messing around with firearms, Perry having recently added to his private arsenal a semiautomatic Thompson machine gun.
The days and nights passed in a blur. “We were out there at the Cenacle,” said Tyler, whose erratic mood swings were dictated by whatever he was on – snorting fat lines of cocaine one moment, then gulping downers, in particular the sedative-hypnotic Tuinal. During one dusk-till-dawn bender, he and Kramer set out at 5am to shoot beer cans with .22 rifles, only for Tyler to pass out with the gun in his hands before a shot was fired. Perry, meanwhile, was using heroin, breakfasting on White Russian cocktails, and wandering around the place “glassy-eyed”, as Douglas recalled.
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Aerosmith in 1977: (from left) Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, Brad Whitford, Joey Kramer, Tom Hamilton (Image credit: Ron Pownall/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
With Tyler and Perry zonked, shut away in their second-floor rooms for days at a time, the band was, in Hamilton’s words, “split in two”. Most evenings, it was just the trio of Hamilton, Kramer and guitarist Brad Whitford working on tracks. Tyler, holed up in his room, was struggling to write lyrics, and on the rare occasions when Perry did show, he was barely able to string a few notes together – in Douglas’ estimation, “totally wrecked”. Perry never denied it. By this stage, he said, “Steven and I had stopped giving a fuck.”
After six weeks at the Cenacle, with the album still unfinished and tour dates looming, the band headed home to Boston. But in the condition these guys were in, minds frazzled, two of them were lucky to make it back alive. Kramer reckoned he was doing over 130mph in his Ferrari when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a guardrail. He was hospitalized with a head injury but quickly discharged with seven stitches. The $19,000 Ferrari was a write-off. Perry was also driving at high speed when he lost control of his Corvette and hit an unmarked police car. He emerged unscathed, and as he later noted, with some amusement, the cop kindly took him to a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts.
Others might have seen this as a wake-up call, but not Perry. At home during a brief period of downtime, he got loaded on opium, rolled into a ball and swallowed whole, drank vintage wine like it was water, and rode his luck time and again in what he described as “a series of car accidents”. The madness continued unabated on tour, for which the road crew packed a chainsaw for Perry to dismantle hotel furniture.
What was officially named The Aerosmith Express Tour – but known among the band’s long-suffering crew as The Lick The Boots That Kick You Tour – ran from June to October, beginning and ending in the US, with European dates in between. Throughout this period, Jack Douglas was kept busy: taping shows for a live album and, during breaks in the tour, conducting the final sessions for Draw The Line at The Record Plant studios in New York City, where Tyler applied what little discipline he had to finishing his lyrics and vocals.
In Europe in August, a performance at the Lorelei Festival in Germany was cut short when Tyler collapsed after just three songs, but at the Reading Festival, the band turned it on, winning over a rain-soaked audience mired in mud. And it was during their time in the UK that Perry recorded his solos for the new album’s title track at AIR Studio in London, owned by The Beatles’ producer George Martin. On that occasion, Perry played with genuine conviction as his new friend, Queen guitarist Brian May, watched on.
Aerosmith – Draw The Line (Live Texxas Jam ’78) – YouTube
In October, back on home turf, there was another close call during a show at the Philadelphia Spectrum. With 17,000 fans in rowdy mood, an M-80 firecracker was thrown on stage, the deafening explosion leaving Tyler with a burned cornea and Perry with a burst artery in his right hand. As Whitford said: “Steven could have been blinded.” Later that month, as Tyler and Perry added the finishing touches to Draw The Line at The Record Plant, they had even more reason to count their blessings. On October 20, a plane carrying Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing six of the occupants, including singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines. This plane, a Convair CV-240, had been offered for Aerosmith’s use earlier that year, but had been declared unsafe by the band’s head of flight operations.
What happened to Lynyrd Skynyrd had a profound effect on the members of Aerosmith. As Joe Perry said: “It was a terrible tragedy, and we just considered ourselves incredibly lucky. To be that close to it, and knowing those guys, it was really a blow.” But in the immediate aftermath, just a few days after the disaster, Aerosmith hit the road again, and while the shows were selling out, the flagship single for the new album, its title track, bombed. “It didn’t make the Top 40,” Tyler said. “And this was supposed to be a huge album for us, a big follow-up to our best work.”
A turbulent year for the band ended with the album’s release on December 9. And just as Tyler knew how much was riding on it, so did Jack Douglas. As he explained: “It took us six months and half a million dollars to make that record.”
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler onstage in 1978 (Image credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
Demand for a new Aerosmith album was sky-high, and Draw The Line took off like a rocket. The bottom line was what mattered to Columbia Records, and according to Douglas, this was “the fastest selling record the label ever had”. But by January 1978, the album had peaked at Number 11 in the US – a major disappointment after the previous record, Rocks, had reached Number Three. And in Rolling Stone magazine, a review of Draw The Line was as stinging as it was perceptive: “Chaotic to the point of malfunction, with an impenetrably dense sound adding to the confusion… This album shows the band in a state of shock.”
Going for the jugular, that review pinned Draw The Line as “a truly horrendous record”. The truth of it was not quite so simple. Certainly, this album was no match for what came before, the twin peaks of Toys In The Attic and Rocks. But there was a powerful intensity, a cocaine-induced mania, in the title track and the Perry-sung Bright Light Fright, the latter inspired, so Perry claimed, by the “energy” of the Sex Pistols – evidence, albeit slight, that some outside influence could permeate his fazed consciousness. There was depth in Kings And Queens, a weird and heavy trip in which Tyler sang of ancient European history, guillotines and Vikings – Walk This Way this was not.
The album’s best track, I Wanna Know Why, proved that Aerosmith could still sound as cool as fuck, even if Tyler and Perry had stopped giving a fuck. And while their version of Milk Cow Blues – a 1930s song credited to American bluesman Kokomo Arnold and famously recorded by Elvis Presley in the 50s – was laid down because they were short on original material, it had a real swing to it, and carried a little poignancy following the death of Elvis on August 16, 1977.
What was lacking in Draw The Line was anything approaching the beauty in songs such as Uncle Salty and You See Me Crying from Toys In The Attic, and the ballad Home Tonight from Rocks. This album, born of excess, was all hard edges. The only lightness of touch was in the illustration on the cover, a portrait of the group by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
As Jack Douglas put it: “Draw The Line is a classic title that says it all, the coke lines, heroin lines, drawing symbolic lines and crossing them all – no matter what.”
By this stage, it was no secret that Aerosmith were into the hard stuff, Tyler and Perry most of all. “The press started referring to Joe and Steven as The Toxic Twins,” Tom Hamilton said. “We started hearing rumours that we were breaking up when word got out how crazy things were.” What was unknown, outside of the band’s inner circle, was the twisted little drama playing out in Tyler and Perry’s personal lives.
Perry and his wife Elyssa were tight with David Johansen, singer for the New York Dolls, and his wife Cyrinda Foxe, a model, actress and protégé of Andy Warhol. Johansen had even co-written the song Sight For Sore Eyes from Draw The Line. When it was discovered that Tyler and Cyrinda were having an affair, Elyssa was mortified. “I felt like an idiot,” she said. “David was good friend.” Her worst fears were confirmed when Cyrinda left Johansen for Tyler, and then revealed that she was pregnant.
With the relationship between singer and guitarist deteriorating, the tension heightened by non-stop drug use, Aerosmith manager David Krebs devised a simple strategy for 1978 in an effort to keep the band together. As he explained it: “We had reached the top, but the band was dying. I wanted to give them time to work out their problems. We came up with these giant events. That’s how they spent most of the year, headlining ten major festivals.”
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry in 1978 (Image credit: Ron Pownall/Corbis via Getty Images)
One such event came on March 18, California Jam II in Ontario, 30 miles from Los Angeles, where an audience of 350,000 saw Aerosmith topping a bill featuring Ted Nugent, Foreigner, Heart and Santana. And it was during this trip to California that this band of Beatles fans got to work with George Martin, the man known as ‘the fifth Beatle’.
Martin was producing the soundtrack album for the movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a musical comedy, loosely based on The Beatles’ most famous work, starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, and created by Robert Stigwood, the manager of the Bee Gees and the brains behind the box-office smashes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The Sgt. Pepper movie had Beatles songs sung by a diverse cast – the Gibb brothers and Frampton, Alice Cooper and the comedians Frankie Howerd and Steve Martin. And for Aerosmith, there was a cameo role in which they played to type as ‘The Future Villain Band’, performing a rocking version of the Fab Four’s funkiest number, Come Together. The track was recorded with Martin in just two takes, and while the movie and soundtrack album would bomb, Aerosmith would have a Top 30 hit with Come Together in September, the month in which Tyler and Cyrinda were married.
Through that summer, the band played more of those giant events. On July 4, American Independence Day, they top-billed at the Texxas World Music Festival at the 100,000-capacity Dallas Cottonbowl, with Ted Nugent and Heart again as support acts, along with Journey and Eddie Money. They also played a few low-key club shows, billed as Dr. J. Jones And The Interns, which were recorded by Jack Douglas for the live album that was released on October 27. They named it Live! Bootleg, and the titled implied, it was, by design, the antithesis of Peter Frampton’s sweet-sounding mega-hit Frampton Comes Alive!
The true measure of what Aerosmith delivered in Live! Bootleg was summed up by Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, who was just a kid of thirteen when the album came out. “That was the big one for me,” he said. “Live! Bootleg is one of the most underrated albums of all time, one of the best live rock’n’roll albums ever made. It started the trend for me to go out and discover new bands by buying their live albums, because that way I could get all the best songs and for me the whole live thing was the most exciting thing in the world. The way that Live! Bootleg starts with Back In The Saddle, that whole intro with the crowd going crazy and the flash-pots going off, that whole build-up, made it so exciting to me.”
Live! Bootleg was a triumph, but within a month of its release, with the band back out on tour, a shocking incident in a Chicago hotel pushed Tyler and Perry even closer to breaking point. An argument between Elyssa and Cyrinda, the latter eight months pregnant, escalated into a brawl, in which Elyssa was alleged to have kicked Cyrinda in the stomach. Brad Whitford’s wife Karen witnessed what happened, later recalled it as “a very ugly scene”, and noted, “Things between Steven and Joe went immediately downhill, as you can imagine.”
Fortunately, Cyrinda’s pregnancy was not affected. On December 22, she gave birth to a healthy daughter, whom they named Mia. But for the band, the writing was on the wall.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Come Together [Aerosmith] (HD) – YouTube
In January 1979, even as Live! Bootleg rose to No.13 on the Billboard chart, Rolling Stone stuck the knife in again. “Aerosmith is a dinosaur among bands, the last of a generation of rock’n’rollers being edged out by more streamlined competition like Boston, Foreigner and Fleetwood Mac,” proclaimed the magazine.
But it wasn’t this new breed of Adult Oriented Rock band that was hurting Aerosmith. Nor was it the advent of punk rock and new wave. The damage was coming from within. Aerosmith was a band self-destructing – with the drugs and the booze, and with the enmity between their women that was effectively a proxy war between the guys themselves. Tyler and Perry had always been the axis on which the band revolved, but in the summer of ’79, that bond was broken.
In the preceding months, the band was still functioning, to a point. They were still doing the big shows – headlining the California Music Festival at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles on April 7, with Nugent again on the undercard, alongside Van Halen and Cheap Trick, and 100,000 tickets sold. In May, work on a new Aerosmith album began. But on July 28, at another marquee event, the World Series Of Rock festival at Cleveland Stadium, the shit hit the fan.
The line-up that day was out of this world: below Aerosmith and, as usual, the Nuge, were Journey, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and Scorpions. But when Aerosmith got up on stage, it wasn’t pride, the desire to prove they were still top dogs, which had them fired up. It was hatred for each other. Moments before show time, in a backstage trailer, Elyssa Perry had traded insults with Tom Hamilton’s wife Terry, thrown a glass of milk at her, and in the ensuing scuffle, all five members of the band ended up throwing punches. All of that bad energy went into what Elyssa described, mischievously, as “the best show of the tour”. But once it was done, and they were all back in the trailer, Tyler and Perry went right at it. As Tyler recalled: “Joe goes, ‘Maybe I should leave the band.’ I said, ‘Yeah, maybe you fuckin’ should.’ Joe goes, ‘Oh yeah?’ And gets up. And I yell: ‘FUCK YOU, THEN! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!’ And he left.” Tyler concluded, funnily but somewhat simplistically: “Aerosmith literally broke up over spilt milk.”
Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry at the party for 1978’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie (Image credit: Brad Elterman/FilmMagic)
In the weeks that followed, as rumours of Perry’s exit circulated in the rock press, the rest of the band got back to work on the new album at Media Sound studios in New York, while also auditioning new guitarists. One of the candidates was Michael Schenker, the mercurial German genius who had walked out of two major bands, UFO and Scorpions. It was Schenker’s brusque manner – as Tyler quoted him, “Before I join your band I vant it clear I’m taking over right now!” – which turned them off. Schenker was similarly unimpressed. “Steven,” he said, “was not in a good shape.” In the end, it was a 23 year-old New Yorker, Jimmy Crespo, who replaced Perry.
Schenker’s gut feeling about Tyler was correct. The singer was so deep into drugs while Aerosmith were finishing the album Night In The Ruts that he later described the experience as “like a fuckin’ solar eclipse.” But even with Perry gone, and Tyler so far gone, this album, while jokingly named, turned out to be one of Aerosmith’s very best.
A press release dated October 10, 1979 had put an end to speculation: “Joe Perry and Aerosmith announced today Perry’s plans to depart the group to purse a solo career.” The statement concluded with a barefaced lie: “His departure is described as amicable.” And while the cover for Night In The Ruts featured Perry – in a photo of the band dressed as coal miners, shot in March 1978 – any talk of reconciliation was ended on November 16, the date of the album’s release. That night, with a sense of comic timing, the guitarist’s new group, The Joe Perry Project, played their debut show at Boston College.
Six songs on Night In The Ruts had been co-written by Perry, and five featured his playing: Chiquita, Cheese Cake and Three Mile Smile, all lean-and-mean rockers in the classic Aerosmith tradition; No Surprize, the ballsy opening track, in which Tyler told the story of the band’s salad days; and Bone To Bone (Coney Island White Fish Boy), a frantic number named by Tyler after slang for a used rubber.
But in Perry’s absence, Jimmy Crespo and another guitarist, Richie Supa, gelled pretty much seamlessly with Brad Whitford. And while the album was filled out with three cover versions, they all worked brilliantly: The Yardbirds’ Think About It played at maximum overdrive, the old blues song Reefer Head Woman pulling raw emotion out of Tyler, and Remember (Walking In The Sand), a hit for 60s girl group The Shangri-Las, handled with finger-clicking panache. But in the album’s final track, a beautiful ballad named Mia, there was, as Tyler later admitted, heavy significance. “It was a lullaby I wrote on the piano for my daughter,” he said. “But the tolling bell notes at the end of the song and the end of the album sounded more like the death knell of Aerosmith for people who knew what was going on.”
In January 1980, when Night In The Ruts reached No.14 on the US chart, it seemed that Aerosmith might pull through without Joe Perry. But in the same month, when the band headed out on tour, it was heavy going. Tyler got so drunk before a show in Portland, Maine that he keeled over midway through the set, and had to be carried offstage. And even when the band had a good night, fans were still calling out for Perry, whose debut album with the Project, released in March of that year, was titled, pointedly, Let The Music Do The Talking.
Night In The Ruts was a great record, but for Aerosmith there were hard times ahead. The rot had set in. The decline was inevitable. Steven Tyler was just too proud to admit it, and too messed up to do anything about it.
Aerosmith had it all and blew it, and they had nobody else to blame but themselves. As David Krebs said: “In 1978, Aerosmith represented the living spirit of American rock’n’roll. To see them destroy themselves through immense disregard for anything but self-indulgence was a tragedy.”
Originally published in Classic Rock Presents: Aerosmith
Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q. He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar. He lives in Bath – of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”
Cheap Trick vocalist Robin Zander offered a hint at what to expect from the band’s next studio album – and revealed its possible title.
The follow-up to 2021’s In Another World is currently reaching the end of the production process, cover artist John Johnson revealed in a blog post.
Confirming that the title under discussion is All Washed Up, Zander told Johnson: “I’ll have to send it to you. It’s pretty good. It’s Cheap trick. It sounds like us. It’s got some good, bad and ugly on it, just like our other records.”
Asked if the band were planning to perform any of their new songs at upcoming shows, Zander said: “We won’t be doing that. We’re going to wait…the cover’s not even finished yet, John – you know that.” He added that the group were operating with a new office team, saying: “I love the new management; they’re very cool.”
On its release, record label BMG said of the band’s 20th album: “In Another World sees Cheap Trick doing what they do better than anyone – crafting indelible rock ‘n’ roll with oversized hooks, mischievous lyrics and seemingly inexorable energy.”
Cheap Trick Prepare to Bid Farewell to Japan
The Rockford, Illinois natives are reported to be preparing a farewell tour of Japan later this year. While few details have been made available, the road trip would close a five-decade onstage relationship with the country that helped made the band’s name.
They’d launched three studio albums in the U.S. to little acclaim before 1978’s Cheap Trick at Bodukan – originally intended for a Japan-only release – secured their success in their home country.
Cheap Trick Albums Ranked
Hits and misses from one of rock’s most reliable bands.
But that’s exactly what happened when the guitarist/vocalist and his band received an invite to perform at a mysterious venue. While club owners can sometimes have certain demands, the circumstances with this particular show presented some challenges. “Do us a favor, don’t play loud,” the owner tells Van Halen. “Some of our customers are sensitive to loud noises.” There wiill be “no frickin’ solos,” he decrees. “You can play ballads. You know, something soft, nice.”
It’s just one humorous moment of many in the music video for “The End,” the latest single from Mammoth and the first offering from an eventual new album. Van Halen wrote the storyline with legendary director Robert Rodriguez, a dream opportunity which gave him a chance to pay tribute to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video and an intentional homage to Rodriguez’s 1996 action horror film, From Dusk till Dawn. Fans will also spot a number of cameos, including Slash and Van Halen’s mother, Valerie Bertinelli.
Watch Mammoth’s ‘The End’ Video
“I always had it in the back of my mind that if we ever did a video with Robert, I would want to do a light homage to From Dusk till Dawn,” he tells UCR. “That’s where the whole concept of a bar with zombies, vampires and stuff like that came from. Even Danny Trejo being the owner, there’s a little Easter egg there, since he’s the bartender and the titty twister in From Dusk till Dawn. It was Robert’s idea to tie the whole thing to the previous videos with the Wolfies who hate me. That was his idea, which is really, really funny to me. Gordy [De St. Jeor], who did the other videos with us, he was involved too. It was just a happy family working on this insane thing for two days.”
Rodriguez, as it turns out, is a fan of Van Halen and his band and met up with them after attending a concert in Austin. Having the Wolfies connecting the clip for “The End” back to the previous Mammoth videos for songs like “Don’t Back Down” and “Another Celebration at the End of the World,” is something that’s particularly pleasing to Wolfgang. “We’ve got our own Mammoth Cinematic Universe going on,” he laughs.
Watch Mammoth’s ‘Another Celebration at the End of the World’ Video
It’s Just Mammoth Now
Attentive fans will notice that with the arrival of “The End,” Van Halen has officially dropped the “WVH” from the band’s name and it’s simply “Mammoth,” moving forward. “We got the trademark eventually, which is what I wanted it to be from the beginning,” he explains. “I wanted it to be that direct homage to my dad, something that would be personal, but something that I can take in my own direction. We’ve been out there working and we’re finally able to do it. I liken it to how Ghost was Ghost B.C. for a bit before they became Ghost, with the copyright stuff. It’s fun to finally [have that]. You know, at every show, I say, ‘Hey, we’re Mammoth,’ so now it’s just fun to officially be living it.”
How ‘The End’ Came Together
When Van Halen started working on songs for the third Mammoth album, the concept for what became “The End” was something that had been hanging out in his memory banks for a good while. “It was actually an idea I had a while ago that I always just felt was too much for me, considering the centerpiece of it is the solo over the top tapping thing,” he explains. “I went back to it when I was going through old ideas and I was like, ‘What feels good that I haven’t really taken advantage of?’ Now that I’m a bit better from the last few years at writing, I wanted to see if there was anything I’d missed. I got back to that and was like ‘Wow, it would be really fun to try and palletize this idea and make it more comfortable instead of it being so jarring.”
“I think it’s important for me to evolve and take more chances,” he continues. “This time around, throughout the creative process, I think I’ve been uncomfortable and I found that to be a good thing in hindsight. If I’m unsure and a little uncomfortable doing it, it means I’m doing something that I wouldn’t normally do and I’m in a new area. I’ve been feeling that a lot.”
Mammoth will be on the road throughout the year, including more dates this summer with Creed, 3 Doors Down, Daughtry and Big Wreck. Additionally, the band just announced their own fall headlining tour. The End outing will feature support from longtime friend Myles Kennedy.
Fans who can’t make the trek to Las Vegas will now have the chance to livestream Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds concert from the comfort of their own home.
The Red Rocker’s May 16 performance will be live streamed via Veeps.com and will be available to watch anywhere in the world.
“We’re gonna rock the hell out of your house!” Hagar declared in a video announcing the livestream. “We’re gonna low your mind,” the singer continued, flanked by bandmates Michael Anthony (bass), Joe Satriani (guitar), Kenny Aronoff (drums) and Rai Thistlethwayte (keyboards).
The Best of All Worlds residency launched on April 30 at the Park MGM resort in Las Vegas. The opening night show included a surprise appearance by pop star Kesha, along with a rendition of Van Halen’s “Love Walks In,” which Hagar hadn’t performed live in 32 years.
Presale tickets for the Best of All Worlds May 16 livestream are available now. The residency concludes the following day, May 17.
Why Sammy Hagar Has Traded Tours for Residencies
Hagar toured the Best of All Worlds in 2024, delivering an assortment of Van Halen classics, along with material from his solo career. He’s since hinted that he may be done with extended treks.
In a conversation with UCR, the Red Rocker explained why he was trading in the tour bus in favor of residencies.
“I would never say I’m retiring, because I don’t know how to do that, number one, and I don’t want to do that, number two. I’d probably be lying if I said I was and did — and then I’d come back like everybody else,” he noted. “I don’t want to do all that. But I took the residency, which I’d been hesitant about playing the same place, same building, that many nights in a row, early on in my career. But now I love it.”
“I’m very nervous about repeating myself,” the singer continued. “So a residency sounded like a nightmare for that. I said, ‘Man, we’ve got to play different songs every night,’ but now I’m going, well, if I don’t have to travel, I’ll be fresher, I’ll be able to eat better, I’ll be able to sleep better and I’ll be fresher for the shows. I think maybe it’s time for me to do that and see if that works. If that works, I can continue on.”
Van Halen Lineup Changes
Three different singers and two different bassists joined the Van Halen brothers over the years.
Feature Photo: Daniel Mayer, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Chevelle formed in Grayslake, Illinois, in 1995 when brothers Pete Loeffler (vocals and guitar), Sam Loeffler (drums), and Joe Loeffler (bass) began jamming together in their parents’ garage. Influenced by bands like Tool and Helmet, the trio spent years refining their sound before releasing their debut album, Point #1, in 1999 on Squint Entertainment. The record didn’t gain mainstream traction but earned critical recognition, taking home two GMA Dove Awards — one for Hard Music Album of the Year and another for Hard Music Recorded Song. The band’s name was inspired by the Chevrolet Chevelle, a nod to their father’s love of classic cars, but from the start, their music was defined more by down-tuned riffs and emotional intensity than nostalgia.
Chevelle’s commercial breakthrough came with Wonder What’s Next, released by Epic Records in 2002. The album debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200 and was certified double platinum by the RIAA, driven by the success of singles like “The Red” and “Send the Pain Below.” The latter topped both the Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts, helping the band secure multiple Billboard Music Award nominations, including Top Rock Song and Modern Rock Artist of the Year. With a tighter, heavier sound and a strong melodic core, Chevelle carved out a space in the early 2000s alternative metal wave — without sacrificing their introspective approach to songwriting.
In 2004, the band followed up with This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In), which debuted at number eight on the Billboard 200 and was later certified gold. “Vitamin R (Leading Us Along)” became another number-one hit on the Mainstream Rock chart. But change came soon after when Joe Loeffler left the group in 2005. His departure brought in brother-in-law Dean Bernardini as bassist, completing a new phase for the band. Their fourth studio album, Vena Sera, dropped in 2007 and debuted at number 12, anchored by singles like “Well Enough Alone.” Despite lineup shifts, the band’s chemistry held firm — musically and personally — and their live show grew stronger.
By 2009, Chevelle pushed their sound further with Sci-Fi Crimes, which entered the Billboard 200 at number six. The album displayed more atmospheric and experimental touches while staying grounded in the heavy alternative style they’d perfected. Singles like “Jars” and “Letter from a Thief” proved the band was still hitting radio hard without chasing trends. Two years later, Hats Off to the Bull delivered one of their biggest modern rock hits, “Face to the Floor,” which topped the chart and reaffirmed their ability to tap into the anxieties of the time with relentless precision.
Their seventh studio album, La Gárgola, was released in 2014 and immediately debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, topping both the Top Rock Albums and Alternative Albums charts. It was another critical milestone, earning multiple Loudwire Music Award nominations including Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song for “Take Out the Gunman.” Known for its darker sonic textures and industrial undertones, the album proved that Chevelle wasn’t content to stay in one gear. They followed it with The North Corridor in 2016, which delivered their fifth number-one single on the Mainstream Rock chart with “Joyride (Omen)” and continued their streak of gold-standard rock radio dominance.
In 2018, they offered something different — a compilation album called 12 Bloody Spies, a collection of B-sides and rarities that pulled back the curtain on their creative process. That same year, they collaborated with Revolution Brewing to release a craft beer named after their 2014 album, La Gárgola, showing that their brand extended beyond music and into lifestyle. Their ninth studio album, NIRATIAS — an acronym for “Nothing Is Real and This Is a Simulation” — arrived in 2021 and embraced themes of space, science fiction, and artificial reality. The single “Self Destructor” became another major radio success, and the album was a bold sonic shift toward progressive and art rock textures.
Across nearly three decades, Chevelle has built a catalog defined by consistency, evolution, and intensity. As of 2022, the band has sold over six million records in the United States and racked up 15 Top 10 singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. They’ve maintained the loyalty of their fanbase through thick and thin, sidestepped trends in favor of artistic identity, and continued to explore new creative frontiers both musically and outside the studio. Whether through chart-topping singles, award-winning records, or ventures like their own beer, Chevelle has proven that authenticity, when paired with relentless drive, can endure far beyond the moment.
Complete List of Chevelle Songs From A to Z
A Miracle – The North Corridor – 2016
A New Momentum – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
An Evening with El Diablo – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
An Island – La Gárgola – 2014
Another Know It All – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Antisaint – Vena Sera – 2007
Anticipation – Point #1 – 1999
Arise – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Bend the Bracket – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Black Boys on Mopeds – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Blank Earth – Point #1 – 1999
Brainiac – Vena Sera – 2007
Breach Birth – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Choking Game – La Gárgola – 2014
Clones – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Closure – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Comfortable Liar – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Delivery – Vena Sera – 2007
Don’t Fake This – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Door to Door Cannibals – The North Corridor – 2016
Dos – Point #1 – 1999
Emotional Drought – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Endlessly – NIRATIAS – 2021
Enemies – The North Corridor – 2016
Envy – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Face to the Floor – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Family System – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Fell into Your Shoes – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Forfeit – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Get Some – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Ghost and Razor – NIRATIAS – 2021
Glimpse of the Con – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Got Burned – The North Corridor – 2016
Grab Thy Hand – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Hats Off to the Bull – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Highland’s Apparition – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
(High) Visibility – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Hunter Eats Hunter – La Gárgola – 2014
Humanoid – Vena Sera – 2007
I Get It – Vena Sera – 2007
In Debt to the Earth – Vena Sera – 2007
Indifference – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Interlewd – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
It’s No Good – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Jars – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Jawbreaker – La Gárgola – 2014
Joyride (Omen) – The North Corridor – 2016
Last Days – The North Corridor – 2016
Leto’s Headache – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Letter from a Thief – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Long – Point #1 – 1999
Lost in Digital Woods – NIRATIAS – 2021
Mars Simula – NIRATIAS – 2021
Mexican Sun – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Mia – Point #1 – 1999
Midnight to Midnight – Vena Sera – 2007
One Lonely Visitor – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
One Ocean – La Gárgola – 2014
Open – Point #1 – 1999
Ouija Board – La Gárgola – 2014
Paint the Seconds – Vena Sera – 2007
Panic Prone – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Peach – NIRATIAS – 2021
Peer – Point #1 – 1999
Piistol Star (Gravity Heals) – NIRATIAS – 2021
Piñata – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Point #1 – Point #1 – 1999
Prima Donna – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Prove to You – Point #1 – 1999
Punchline – The North Corridor – 2016
Remember When – NIRATIAS – 2021
Revenge – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Rivers – The North Corridor – 2016
Roswell’s Spell – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Ruse – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Saferwaters – Vena Sera – 2007
Same Old Trip – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Saturdays – Vena Sera – 2007
Self Destructor – NIRATIAS – 2021
Send the Pain Below – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Shameful Metaphors – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Shot from a Cannon – The North Corridor – 2016
Skeptic – Point #1 – 1999
Sleep Apnea – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Sleep Apnea (Acoustic) – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
Sleep the Deep – NIRATIAS – 2021
Sleep Walking Elite – Vena Sera – 2007
SMA – Point #1 – 1999
So Long, Mother Earth – NIRATIAS – 2021
Still Running – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Still Running (Live at the Metro) – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
Straight Jacket Fashion – Vena Sera – 2007
Take Out the Gunman – La Gárgola – 2014
Test Test…Enough – NIRATIAS – 2021
The Clincher – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
The Clincher (Version 103) – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
The Damned – La Gárgola – 2014
The Fad – Vena Sera – 2007
The Gist – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
The Meddler – Hats Off to the Bull – 2011
The Red – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
This Circus – Sci-Fi Crimes – 2009
To Return – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Tug-O-War – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
Twinge – La Gárgola – 2014
Under the Knife – La Gárgola – 2014
Until You’re Reformed – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Verruckt – NIRATIAS – 2021
Vitamin R (Leading Us Along) – This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) – 2004
VVurmhole – NIRATIAS – 2021
Warhol’s Showbiz – The North Corridor – 2016
Well Enough Alone – Vena Sera – 2007
Wonder What’s Next – Wonder What’s Next – 2002
Young Wicked – The North Corridor – 2016
Albums
Point #1 (1999): 11 songs
Wonder What’s Next (2002): 15 songs
This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) (2004): 12 songs
Vena Sera (2007): 14 songs
Sci-Fi Crimes (2009): 14 songs
Hats Off to the Bull (2011): 14 songs
La Gárgola (2014): 10 songs
The North Corridor (2016): 11 songs
NIRATIAS (2021): 13 songs
Check out our fantastic and entertaining Chevelle articles, detailing in-depth the band’s albums, songs, band members, and more…all on ClassicRockHistory.com
Feature Photo: Junta de Andalucía, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Karol G, born Carolina Giraldo Navarro on February 14, 1991, in Medellín, Colombia, has carved a formidable path in the Latin music industry. Her journey began in her teenage years when she appeared on the Colombian version of The X Factor. This early exposure laid the foundation for a career that would later see her become one of the most influential figures in reggaeton and Latin pop.
In the years following her television debut, Karol G released several singles, including “En La Playa” (2007), “Por Ti” (2008), and “Dime Que Si” (2009). These early works showcased her potential and helped her gain initial recognition in the Colombian music scene. Her collaboration with Reykon on the track “301” in 2012 marked a significant step forward, garnering attention beyond her home country.
A pivotal moment in her career came in 2014 when she moved to New York City to deepen her understanding of the music industry. This move led to her signing with Universal Music Latino, a major milestone that provided her with the platform to reach a broader audience. Her collaboration with Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny on the song “Ahora Me Llama” became a breakthrough hit, propelling her into the international spotlight.
Karol G’s debut studio album, Unstoppable, was released on October 27, 2017. The album, primarily rooted in reggaeton, featured collaborations with artists like Cosculluela, Ozuna, and Quavo. It was well-received and established her as a formidable presence in the Latin music scene.
Building on her success, she released her second studio album, Ocean, on May 3, 2019. This album marked a stylistic shift, incorporating elements of Latin pop and showcasing a more relaxed and introspective side of her artistry. Collaborations with artists such as Damian Marley, Anuel AA, and Maluma added depth and diversity to the project.
Her third studio album, KG0516, released on March 25, 2021, further solidified her status as a leading artist in the genre. The album featured a wide array of collaborations, including tracks with Nicki Minaj, J Balvin, and Camilo. The single “Tusa,” featuring Nicki Minaj, became a global hit, earning multiple platinum certifications and dominating charts across various countries.
In 2023, Karol G released her fourth studio album, Mañana Será Bonito. This album made history by becoming the first all-Spanish-language album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. The album featured collaborations with artists like Shakira, Romeo Santos, and Sean Paul, further demonstrating her versatility and broad appeal.
Throughout her career, Karol G has been recognized with numerous awards and accolades. She has won a Grammy Award, six Latin Grammy Awards, and five Billboard Music Awards, among others. Her contributions to music have also earned her the Woman of the Year and Rulebreaker awards at Billboard Women in Music events.
Beyond her musical achievements, Karol G has been involved in various philanthropic efforts and has used her platform to advocate for social causes. Her commitment to empowering women and promoting positive messages through her music has resonated with fans worldwide.
Karol G’s journey from a young aspiring singer in Medellín to an international music sensation is a testament to her talent, determination, and resilience. Her ability to evolve artistically while staying true to her roots has endeared her to a diverse and global fanbase, solidifying her place as a trailblazer in the Latin music industry.
Complete List Of Karol G Songs From A to Z
A Ella – Unstoppable – 2017
A Solas – Unstoppable – 2017
Ahora Me Llama (with Bad Bunny) – Unstoppable – 2017
Ahora Me Llama (Remix) (with Bad Bunny and Quavo) – Unstoppable – 2017
Amargura – Mañana Será Bonito – 2023
Amor No Hay – Unstoppable – 2017
Arranca Pal Carajo (with Juanka and Brray) – KG0516 – 2021
Ay, Dios Mío! – KG0516 – 2021
Baby – Ocean – 2019
Bajo Control – Super Single – 2013
Bebesita – Ocean – 2019
Beautiful Boy (with Ludacris and Emilee) – KG0516 – 2021
Besties – Mañana Será Bonito – 2023
Bichota – KG0516 – 2021
Bichota G – Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season) – 2023
Cairo (with Ovy on the Drums) – Mañana Será Bonito – 2023
Calypso (Remix) (with Luis Fonsi) – Vida – 2018
Carolina – Mañana Será Bonito – 2023
Casi Nada – Unstoppable – 2017
China (with Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Ozuna and J Balvin) – Emmanuel – 2019
Contigo (with Tiësto) – TBA – 2024
Contigo Voy a Muerte (featuring Camilo) – KG0516 – 2021
Créeme (with Maluma) – Ocean – 2019
Culpables (with Anuel AA) – Ocean – 2019
Dame Tu Cosita (with Pitbull and El Chombo featuring Cutty Ranks) – Non-album single – 2018
Super Single and other non-album/collaborative singles: 42 songs
Check out our fantastic and entertaining Karol G articles, detailing in-depth the band’s albums, songs, band members, and more…all on ClassicRockHistory.com
In 2011, before the split that tore Queensÿrche into two separate bands, singer Geoff Tate told Prog why their 1992 single Silent Lucidity became their only UK Top 20 on its second release.
Even if most people regard the 1988 concept albumOperation: Mindcrime as the apogee of Queensrÿche’s career, it was the follow-up, 1990’s Empire, that was their biggest commercial success. It also gave them their only Top 20 single in the UK when Silent Lucidity made it to Number 18 in August 1992.
Written by guitarist Chris DeGarmo (who left in 1997, returning briefly in 2003 and 2007), the song is assumed to be about lucid dreaming. “Well, that’s one of the sub-themes of it,” says vocalist Geoff Tate.
“It was really about being a parent and waking up in the middle of the night by your kid who’s had a bad dream. It’s trying to explain to a young child that dreams aren’t necessarily a bad thing or a good thing.”
Queensrÿche – Silent Lucidity (Official Music Video) – YouTube
Tate has his own theory about the track’s success. “I think it really connected with people at that time for a number of reasons. The Gulf War was going on and people were separated from their families and loved ones. That tends to put people’s emotional radar a little bit higher than normal. Also, that album came out at the height of popularity for rock music.”
On first release as a single in April 1991, Silent Lucidity only got to Number 34 in the UK charts. It was only when released for a second time that it took off, with EMI’s backing.
“We had a functioning record industry with millions of dollars to put behind the promotion of a record then,” Tate recalls. “People were really exposed to that song. There was a tremendous focus on rock music at that time, and Silent Lucidity had all the right ingredients.”
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Still, it didn’t fit what would be regarded as the usual parameters for a hit single; it stood apart from much that was popular at the time, partly because of its inner strength and substance.
“Most singles are about love in one way or another,” Tate says. “But there’s a simple reason why we put it out – it’s a beautiful song.”
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