Billy Corgan’s group was an unquestioned highlight of Friday night. The band — which is celebrating its 35th year in 2023 — tore through such classic songs as “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” “Today,” “Cherub Rock” and “Zero.” Smashing Pumpkins also delivered several songs from their recently released rock opera ATUM, the third act of which arrived earlier this month. Despite being scheduled opposite Post Malone, one of the weekend’s headliners, Smashing Pumpkins played to an energetic crowd, with thousands of fans enjoying the band’s mesmerizing set.
Watch Smashing Pumpkins Perform ‘Tonight, Tonight’ at BottleRock 2023
Saturday brought with it Nile Rodgers & Chic, who delivered a set mixed with their own hits – like “Everybody Dance” and “I Want Your Love” – as well as selections Rogers has written and produced for other artists. Highlights included renditions of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.”
One of the distinctive features of BottleRock is the culinary stage, a unique location where famous musicians and celebrity chefs come together to create delicious food and drinks in front of their fans. It was here that Sammy Hagar joined forces with Chef Jose Andres, making margaritas and cooking up a shrimp dish. The Red Rocker was in fine form, joking and having fun with the James Beard Award-winning chef, much to the audience’s delight.
“It’s the coolest thing ever on the planet of rock and roll and food,” Hagar noted of the experience to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Everyone loves food and chefs are superstars now. They’re just like rock stars, so it’s a really cool combination.”
Even at a time when every act seems to be reuniting, few expected actor Keanu Reeves to revive with Dogstar, his alt-rock band that released one EP and two albums between 1996 and 2000. Nevertheless, BottleRock proved the perfect place for the John Wick star to return to his rock group, as the band blazed through 12 songs during their Saturday set before later making an appearance on the culinary stage.
Watch Dogstar Reunite at BottleRock 2023
Saturday night belonged to Duran Duran, as the ‘80s titans dazzled with an incredible set list of greatest hits, along with selections from their 2021 album Future Past. Classics like “Rio” got the crowd dancing, while “Ordinary World” — dedicated to the people of Ukraine — offered a poignant moment within the fun-filled set. The performance marked the group’s first U.S. gig of 2023 and served as the launch of their North American tour.
Watch Duran Duran Perform ‘A View to a Kill’ at BottleRock 2023
On Sunday, the Struts brought a dose of glam rock swagger to BottleRock during their afternoon performance. Luke Spiller once again proved his prowess as a frontman, dancing, gyrating and posing all over the stage while also delivering emphatic vocals.
Sheryl Crow, fresh off being announced as a 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, delivered one of the best sets of the festival. The rock-pop singer sounded fantastic, providing pitch perfect vocals while backed by her talented band. Crow’s popularity was on full display, as thousands sang along to such memorable hits as “Everyday Is a Winding Road,” “If It Makes You Happy” and “Soak Up the Sun.” Crow’s audience notably spanned generations of music fans, as toddlers in headphones, teens, middle-aged couples and even some senior festival goers all danced along to her set.
Also on Sunday, the National delivered their usual brand of heart-on-your-sleeve indie rock. The band’s emphatic set was powered by frontman Matt Berninger and his distinctive baritone voice. Through such highlights as “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” “I Need My Girl” and “Mistaken For Strangers,” Berninger confidently strode across the stage, effortlessly engaging the throngs of fans glued to his every move.
Watch Red Hot Chili Peppers Perform ‘Give It Away’ at BottleRock 2023
Red Hot Chili Peppers were given closing honors, performing the final set of the weekend on the festival’s main stage. The funk rockers didn’t disappoint, playing many of their most beloved hits during a powerhouse 18-song set. The trio of “Around the World,” “Universally Speaking” and “Snow ((Hey Oh))” started things off, while the band later offered up newer material, like the Eddie Van Halen-inspired track, “Eddie.” The last two songs of the evening, “Under the Bridge” and “Give It Away,” put the final, triumphant punctuation on an amazing weekend of music.
BottleRock celebrated its tenth year in 2023 and has become an annual destination event for music lovers on Memorial Day weekend. Lizzo, Lil Nas X, Bastille, Lupe Fiasco, Wu Tang Clan, Phantogram, War and Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs were among this year’s other performers.
40 years ago today (May 29th, 1983), Van Halen, Scorpions, Triumph, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, and Quiet Riot appeared on one bill in front of nearly 500,000 people for “Heavy Metal Day” at the legendary US Festival, held at Glen Helen Regional Park near Devore, San Bernardino, California.
Spearheaded by Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, the US Festival was intended to be a celebration of technology and culture, with a temporary stage and open-air venue paid for by Wozniak himself just for the purposes of the festival.
In celebration of Memorial Day, SPIN.com has published an extensive article looking back at the festival. The following excerpt focuses on Day 2: “Heavy Metal Day”….
There was no momentum lost on Day 2 – appropriately dubbed “Heavy Metal Day,” because its lineup was pretty close to being a Reagan-era hesher’s wet dream.
The day kicked off at high noon, with Sunset Strip breakout stars Quiet Riot and Mötley Crüe performing back-to-back. They were followed by British metal icons Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest before more international heavy-hitters in Triumph (Canada) and Scorpions (Germany) took the stage. And Wozniak secured Van Halen, a band that was seemingly designed in a lab to host the biggest rock and roll party in SoCal history, to close out the day.
Gil Moore (drummer/co-vocalist, Triumph): “Any band on Heavy Metal Sunday could sell out an arena in California. When you add them all together, you went, ‘holy smokes.’ It was a powerful card.”
Building this lineup cost Wozniak a pretty penny. He shelled out a million bucks for Van Halen, which was busy working on its tide-shifting 1984 album, to headline Heavy Metal Day. That payday later ballooned to $1.5 million, though, thanks to the addition of David Bowie and a shrewd contractual move by Van Halen manager Noel Monk.
Michael Anthony (bassist, Van Halen): “We had a most favored nations clause in our contract, which meant we couldn’t make less than anybody else made.”
Barry Fey (Promoter): “David [Bowie] [told] me, ‘We’ll have to interrupt our tour and charter a [plane] to bring our equipment and get it right back again.’ So I went to Steve [Wozniak], ‘David’s gonna cost you a million and a half, but it’s gonna cost you an extra half a million for Van Halen.’ He just shrugged his shoulders: ‘So?’” (From The Forgotten Festival in OC Register, 2012.)
Noel Monk (Manager, Van Halen): “You don’t say no to that kind of offer. I mean, you can’t.” (From his 2017 book, Runnin’ With The Devil).
Anthony: “It was pretty crazy. But at that time, we loved playing to big crowds. And the outdoor festival thing was really big back then. So yeah, we were really excited to do it. Obviously, the financial part worked out. Just being on a show with all those acts – we always loved doing that kind of thing.”
Wozniak and Fey, meanwhile, were busy putting the finishing touches on Heavy Metal Day in the weeks – and in some cases, days – leading up to the festival.
Mike Levine (bassist/keyboardist, Triumph): “Wozniak flew up to Toronto and took us to dinner. We had a bit of an issue we were concerned about – our last play in Los Angeles had been a co-headliner with Journey at the Rose Bowl. And we were due for an indoor play in the L.A. area, so we also had the choice of playing a couple or three shows at the Long Beach Arena or doing the US Festival. And we’re like,’What the hell do we do with this festival thing? It’s going to be sensational because it’ll be a part of history. But we could end up blowing up the L.A. market for ourselves.’ But it was one of those things where we just felt that it’s better to be a part of history.”
Rudy Sarzo (bassist, Quiet Riot): “Quiet Riot was on tour with the Scorpions. We shared the same agency, and they were playing a three-week warmup tour for the US Festival. We did that little tour with them, and the last day of their tour was in Denver. And Barry Fey happened to be backstage, and after our set, he runs in and introduces himself. He says, ‘Listen, we have a spot available for the US Festival. Would you guys be interested?’ And we said, ‘What is that?’ [Laughs.]. He explained what it was, we looked at each other, and our manager happened to be there, and we accepted it right there on the spot. This is two days before the show. Logistically, we had to scramble to make it happen. It meant we had no road crew for the US Festival because our crew was driving our rented U-Haul truck to our gig the day after the US Festival in Detroit.”
Iggy Pop found himself at a loss following the dissolution of the Stooges in 1974.
A spiraling drug habit led to time spent in a mental-health facility in 1975, with the intent to clean up. Pop had few visitors, with the notable exception of David Bowie.
He’d co-produced the Stooges’ second album, 1973’s Raw Power, just as Pop’s substance abuse was ramping up. “Very few people recognized the quality of the Stooges’ songwriting,” Pop later recalled in the compact-disc liner notes for Raw Power. “It was really meticulous – and to his credit, the only person I’d ever known of in print to notice it among my peers of professional musicians was Bowie. He noticed it right off.”
Bowie seemed to re-appear at just the right moment. Pop joined him on 1976 dates in support of Bowie’s Station to Station, effectively introducing himself to the world of large-scale international touring.
Bowie wasn’t a perfect role model: Cocaine was his main drug of choice in the mid-’70s. That led the pair to Berlin, where Bowie and Pop would attempt to wean themselves off their respective substance addictions. “Well, both Iggy and I felt like it might be time to clean up, so — we were very smart about it — we went straight out of L.A., to the heroin capital of Europe: Berlin,” Bowie joked in a 1997 interview, “but you know something? We were totally unaware of that.”
Aware or not, Berlin was where Bowie and Pop felt a sense of anonymity and freedom that allowed them to focus in a way they hadn’t before. Bowie would describe the setting in 1996 as a “haven of creativity.” On any given day, Bowie initiated with some kind of musical landscape, followed by discussions about certain words, their definitions and implications. Pop would run with it from there. “I mean, it would take him maybe 10 minutes for Jim to put a really first-class lyric together,” Bowie said, referring to Pop’s legal name, James Newell Osterberg Jr.
Listen to Iggy Pop’s ‘China Girl’
A trilogy of Bowie albums eventually emerged, including Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. All of them were marked by a slightly grim yet somehow inspiring tone. Work was also done on Pop’s first two solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life, both released in 1977.
Bowie was undoubtedly the higher profile between the two, as both of Pop’s LPs only reached modest positions on the charts — No. 30 in the U.K. with The Idiot and No. 28 with Lust for Life. But they received a warm critical reception and proved Pop was not content to have his career end with the Stooges. He gave credit to Bowie’s diligence in a subsequent discussion with The New York Times.
“The friendship was basically that this guy salvaged me from certain professional and maybe personal annihilation — simple as that,” Pop said. “A lot of people were curious about me, but only he was the one who had enough truly in common with me – and who actually really liked what I did and could get on board with it, and who also had decent enough intentions to help me out. He did a good thing.”
It was a symbiotic relationship: Bowie played keyboards for several of Pop’s live performances around this era, and then, in return, Pop sang backing vocals on Low.
Watch Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’ Video
“Tempered by the fact that I worked with Jim so much subsequently,” Bowie said in 1996. “I appreciate that what, in fact, he is writing, is the great American late 20th-century novel, but he’s writing it in musical form. I got to appreciate him as being one of the great lyricists in America. I think that he’s ironic, moving, poignant, dangerous, hostile. He contains a wealth of expression in the way that he puts words together.”
Pop was nearly 30 years old when he went to Berlin with Bowie, with little idea that he still had decades of music ahead of him. “I learned things that I still use today,” he told The Times. “I met the Beatles and the [Rolling] Stones, and this one and that one, and this actress and this actor and all these powerful people through him. And I watched. And every once in a while, now at least, I’m a little less rustic when I have to deal with those people.”
Rockers With Hidden Talents
Each of these famous musical artists also does something else exceptionally well.
How an Old Beatles Song Connected David Bowie With John Lennon
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The Cramps – A Date With Elvis
(Image credit: Big Beat)
How Far Can Too Far Go? The Hot Pearl Snatch People Ain’t No Good What’s Inside a Girl? Can Your Pussy Do the Dog? Kizmiaz Cornfed Dames Chicken (Hot Pool Of) Womanneed Aloha from Hell It’s Just That Song
Released in 1986 – originally only in The UK – A Date With Elvis was the fourth studio album by The Cramps, and solidified their particular take on psychobilly, mixing the and’s usual influences from early rock’n’roll, rhythm and blues, surf music, horror movies and vintage Americana to frequently macabre effect.
Tracks like How Far Can Too Far Go?, People Ain’t No Good and Kizmiaz captured The Cramps’ untamed spirit, with trademark twangy guitar riffs and pounding drums providing a suitably gritty backing for Lux Interior’s distinctive, primal vocals.
A Date With Elvis maintained the band’s fascination with all things taboo and subversive, with songs exploring themes of lust, obsession, and the darker side of rock’n’roll culture, while the questioning Can Your Pussy Do the Dog? and What’s Inside A Girl? showcased the band’s irreverent and frequently unhinged approach to songwriting.
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
“Kizmiaz is unique in the band’s oeuvre, being a smarmy parody of 1960s hippie feel-good music; Ivy joins Interior on vocals here. Intonation is off in a few numbers (notably on Kizmiaz, The Hot Pearl Snatch, and Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?), but this is not enough to detract from the overall excellence. This rollicking and energetic platter in particular is the equal of any in their canon, and an essential listen.” (AllMusic)
“A Date With Elvis, originally released in 1986, opens with How Far Can Too Far Go?, as good a representation of psychobilly as you’ll find. Poison Ivy’s stinging guitar and Nick Knox’s steadfast drums work in simplistic tandem, there’s a wicked bassline for additional menace, and vocalist Lux Interior hogs the spotlight with manic glee.” (No Depression)
“The Cramps’ rampant gurning and soft-focus sleaze has been shaped into an institution of sorts. Transcending and fusing tribal instincts – goth’s dumb brooding and cheap mystery, punk’s phoney rebel stance and the ‘billy faithfuls’ love of the primal bellow and manic judders – they are a trans-Atlantic, 20th century medicine show.” (NME)
When Kirsty Wallace and Erick Purkhiser met and fell in love at college in Sacramento in 1972 they changed their names to Poison Ivy Rorschach and Lux Interior and moved to New York in 1975 to catch the start of the CBGB punk scene and welcomed into the dirty, steam-filled, night time streets, the screaming monster that was The Cramps.
You either get the 50s kitschy, B-movie, fetish-inspired aesthetic they created or you don’t, it’s that simple. Primitive rock’n’roll stripped back to its bare sexy voodoo bones with the addition of some X-rated sci-fi and horror imagery, and of course, a good risqué double-entendre lyric.
For some, the band and their music may have more in tune with The Rocky Horror Picture Show than Spinal Tap, and that’s fine, there is a connection. But a large number of metal heads and classic rockers do get it. However, it was the alternative kids, the punks and the goths, and the outsiders, that ran with it and were inspired to bring the Cramps influence into the bands they formed across numerous underground genres. Even the band themselves unintentionally created the ‘psychobilly’ scene by using the phrase from a Johnny Cash song on early fliers, simply to draw in an audience.
A line can even be drawn from The Cramps through the Gun Club, to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and The Sisters of Mercy. From punk to Alternative to Goth. Without Bryan Gregory, their founding guitarist, there may have been no original 80s Batcave goth image as we know it. And in turn, a lot of what gets called alternative rock music that followed.
Strictly speaking, this is not the Cramps best album. It is a great album, but it’s not their best. They have darker, rawer, and more dangerous sounding material. And were a more dangerous band before this album was released. Go and watch early videos. It is however their most accessible, and highest charting album. And it contains two of their more notorious and well know song titles in Can Your Pussy Do The Dog? and What’s Inside A girl? Well, at least they were until the inclusion of Goo Goo Muck on Wednesday. It’s not a perfect album, or without its faults, but it is definitely a fun album with a unique feel and a great fitting DIY production that still stands up today.
A lot of bands have covered Cramps tracks, which is ironic considering a lot of The Cramps material is covers of old rockabilly, blues, doo wop and chicken-fried country songs. Although this, their third album (or fourth if you count the early singles compilation Off The Bone) is where they started to release albums with more original songs than covers, all written by Lux and Ivy.
From Ivy’s squawky, twangy, more Scotty Moore than Chet Atkins, with a bit of Bo Diddley thrown in, rocking guitar, in conjunction with Lux’s best reverb soaked, Elvis stuttering hiccup, on the most salacious of lyrics, The Cramps did nothing new, but they made it sound new by reviving the original underground elements of rock’n’roll, which had a lot more in common with punk than people would like to admit.
Yes, there is a lot of humour and sex in the music and image, as there was in that original underground rock and roll sound, but the band couldn’t have done the music justice if they hadn’t been serious about it. And they were. All driven by Ivy, musically and business wise. The uncrowned queen of rock’nroll who had all the gum-chewing, ice queen, dominatrix outfit-wearing moves, and riffs, but watched as all the guys in the band got the credit for it.
There will never be another band like them.
Steve Pereira: I’ve heard of The Cramps, but to the best of my knowledge had not heard anything by them. So I thought this would be interesting. However, I’ve now played the album, and I want that part of my life back!
This is very poor stuff. I get it’s a joke, but it all feels so dated, and it’s so badly done, it remind me of sixties gimmick bands like Screaming Lord Such. Tedious stuff. Poor songs, poorly played, and poorly produced. Not even as good/bad as Lord Such!
A Date With Elvis is genuinely bad: dull gimmicky trivia devoid of talent. It did, however, get me to play the original A Date With Elvis, which is a compilation album of Elvis’s Sun recordings. Wow! What a great album that is!
Chris Elliott: This is an interesting choice. Probably not where I’d begin with The Cramps but equally its not quite as raw and the edges have been smoothed off a little compared to their first two albums. Not to be taken seriously – played loud and enjoy. Gloriously primitive surf/rockabilly played by punks. My reservation is they’re a band who pretty much nailed their “thing” on the first album and never really went anywhere better afterwards. Equally a Cramps record is a Cramps record – you won’t forget it – whether you get it is a seperate thing.
Mark Russell: Saw them on this tour. Brilliant album.
Mike Canoe: I loved the Cramps long before I heard them: the weird hip cadaver look of singer Lux Interior and original second guitarist Bryan Gregory, the flaming red hair and menacing stare of guitarist Poison Ivy, the plentiful B-movie references, their scandalous album covers and/or titles, their live performances which I really only knew from breathless descriptions by friends.
For me, A Date With Elvis is the Cramps’ most fun and consistent album and has them walking the fine line (in stiletto heels) between campy, vampy rock’nroll and novelty act. Conventional wisdom describes the Cramps sound as rockabilly infused with the energy and outrageousness of punk. But rockabilly was already pretty energetic and outrageous to begin with. The Cramps just took the music they loved and repackaged it for a modern (if niche) audience.
Singer Lux Interior is a howling, yowling, spitting feral cat with the occasional bad case of the hiccups. As I wrote when I suggested this album, he rants and raves like an evangelist who has stepped down from the pulpit to embrace a more worldly god. His delivery sells dozens of double entendres that would make Bon Scott blush. It’s not every singer that can pull off a question like Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?
I don’t speak guitar but I know I like the sounds that Poison Ivy wrings out of hers. Plenty of reverb and sustain, howling in the right places. In particular, I like the noisy breakdown in Cornfed Dames where she essentially squares off against herself on bass. She can rumble like Link Wray on (Hot Pool of) Womanneed or play slinky seductive lines on What’s Inside a Girl?
Drummer Nick Knox, their only other consistent member at this point, provides a solid backbeat for the loving couple to go crazy over. And it helped that Lux and Ivy were a couple. What could be irredeemably icky in another band’s hands became playful and fun.
I was admittedly surprised when I saw A Date With Elvis was this week’s pick. Even though I suggested the album, it was a little like waking up hungover in Vegas and realizing you got married the night before. Whoops! I guess, to quote Lux Interior, I was wondering how far can too far go? It’s an album I love and will continue to love. I hope it nets some fans, new or old, and those that don’t like it can hang on until next week.
Gary Claydon: Rollicking. That’s the best word I can think of to describe A Date With Elvis. It’s as if Lux and Ivy dropped a load of speed then sat down to write the album while watching a ‘Best of The Carry On Films’ reel. ” How do you take your double-entendres sir?” “In an Elvis-rockabilly stylee, if you please, my good man, with a side order of twangy guitar thrown in.” “Coming right up, sir. Hot Pearl Snatch?” Oo-er, matron, Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?” Fnar-Fnar. Maybe it veers a little too close to self-parody at times and maybe the rough edges have been rounded off a bit too much, plus I do miss the b-movie horror/sci-fi schtick but this is fun – rollickingly-good fun, even.
Greg Schwepe: In listening to The Cramps A Date With Elvis I kept coming back to two thoughts; “Too Much” and “Not Enough.” After going through a few of the 15 tracks I’d think “yeah, that’s too much…” and then a few songs later “darn, just not enough.” And in this case the “Too Much” is the “twang” in the song and the “Not Enough” is the distortion level in guitars. Let’s get down to the details…
I’m not what you’d call a rockabilly purist by any means, and I don’t think you’d call The Cramps pure rockabilly either. Yes, music of this genre is that crazy hybrid of rockabilly, country, blues, punk, rock, roots, Americana, and so on. A pretty tasty musical stew made by throwing a whole bunch of stuff in the pot and letting it boil.
Over the years I’ve seen and bought albums of bands with styles similar to The Cramps. Orange County, CA favourites Social Distortion, Reverend Horton Heat, The Stray Cats and solo Brian Setzer. MTV one hit wonders The Georgia Satellites and Jason and the Scorchers. Heck, even some of Robert Plant’s music with Alison Krauss sounds like some of the songs on this album.
But with a lot of these other bands, none really busted the dial on my “ATL” (Acceptable Twang Level) meter. Many times on A Date With Elvis I redlined on that ATL level. “Too twangy, need more distortion.” A lot of other bands might have had more of a punk edge and the same Cramps riff played with a cranked Marshall probably wouldn’t bother me so much. All a matter of perspective.
Now, a number of songs did stick with me; Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?, Chicken, and (Hot Pool Of) Womanneed. And to be fair, if The Cramps were playing at a small bar or early in the day at a roots/Americana/blues type festival, I’d listen to their set and give them a big round of applause after every song. I just don’t think I’ll be streaming anything else by them. Not enough to keep me interested. Was slightly disappointed I wasn’t that into them after learning several members hail from my home state of Ohio. “Awww, darn…fellow Buckeyes. Oh well.”
Colin Bonney: Since buying Songs The Lord Taught Us when it first came out I have loved The Cramps, their distinctive sound and style and of course the humour. Enjoyed every album they have released since including A Date With Elvis. Yes, the Songs album was their masterpiece, but all were good.
Peter Barron: Definitely a band that has grown on me over the years, and if every song was as good as Human Fly they’d be as good as the Stones or Zep or something. As it is, there’s always something great on all their albums, and on this one for me it’s What’s Inside A Girl?. You have to be in the mood, but when you are it’s killer.
John Davidson: I’ve given this a good old go but it’s just not for me. I’ve always felt that the B-movie, horror pastiche should appeal, but the rockabilly, swamp-punk music just leaves me cold.
Mark Herrington: Bands like the Cramps that inhabit this crazy, comic book, rock world have always appealed to me. The B52’s, the Rezillo’s, Talking Heads, Split Enz and newer bands like Wet Leg. As much a manic grin, and an attitude, as a shared musical groove. Fun, frantic and totally nuts, this is a good time album that doesn’t take itself too seriously. An easy 8/10 for me.
Final score: 6.30 (41 votes cast, total score 265)
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John Fogerty has paid onstage tribute to Tina Turner, who died on May 24. The former Creedence Clearwater Revival man dedicated his old band’s Proud Mary – a hit for Ike & Tina Turner in 1971, two years after the original topped the Billboard chart – to Turner at the end of his set late last week at the AO Arena in Manchester, England.
“We just have lost the Queen Of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner,” Fogerty told the crowd. “I toured with Tina way back about the year 2000. Of course, Tina recorded my song, Proud Mary, way back around 1971 and it was a breakthrough song for her, also a signature song.
“Man, I saw her on TV every week with that red dress on and the Ikette girls dancing in the background. She was amazing, and I’d like to dedicate doing Proud Mary – this is my first good song I ever wrote – I’d like to dedicate this to Tina Turner.”
Fogerty famously wrote the song immediately after receiving his discharge papers from the US army in 1968.
“I was so happy, I ran out into my little patch of lawn and turned cartwheels,” recalled Fogerty in Bad Moon Rising: The Unofficial History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Then I went into my house, picked up my guitar and started strumming. ‘Left a good job in the city’ and then several good lines came out of me immediately.
“I had the chord changes, the minor chord where it says, ‘Big wheel keep on turnin’/Proud Mary keep on burnin” (or ‘boinin’,’ using my funky pronunciation I got from Howling’ Wolf). By the time I hit ‘Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river,’ I knew I had written my best song.”
John Fogerty’s next show is at the O2 Arena in London on May 29. Full dates below.
John Fogerty 2023 tour dates
May 29: London The O2, UK May 31: Paris Boulogne-billancourt, France Jun 03: Ålesund Sparebanken Møre Arena, Norway Jun 05: Uppsala Botanical Garden, Sweden Jun 06: Malmö Arena, Sweden Jun 08: Antwerp Sportpaleis, Belgium Jun 09: Grolloo Holland International Blues Festival, Netherlands
Jun 30: Dauphin Countryfest, MB Jul 09: Highland Park Ravinia, IL Jul 14: Morrison Red Rocks Amphitheatre, CO Jul 25: Franklin FirstBank Amphitheater, TN Jul 26: Atlanta Cadence Bank Amphitheatre, GA Jul 28: St. Augustine Amphitheatre, FL Jul 29: Clearwater The Soud, FL Jul 30: Davie Hard Rock Live, FL Aug 04: Tulsa Margaritaville, OK Aug 05: Durant Choctaw Casino & Resort, OK Aug 11: Cuyahoga Falls Outlaw Music Festival, OH Aug 12: Burgettstown Outlaw Music Festival, PA Aug 13: Cincinnati Outlaw Music Festival, OH Aug 18: Atlantic City Circus Maximus Theater, NJ Aug 19: Vienna Filene Center at Wolf Trap, VA
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Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazinesince 2014. 37 years in music industry, online for 24. 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.
Los Angeles-born guitar hero and musical force of nature, Nita Strauss, will release her new album, The Call Of The Void, on July 7 via Sumerian Records. Pre-order here.
The video for “The Golden Trail”, featuring Anders Fridén of In Flames, can be viewed below.
Says Nita: “Truly proud and thankful for the team that knocked this one out across two continents and multiple time zones, in the middle of a tour no less. Orie McGinness, Patric Ullaeus, Steven Contreras, you absolutely RULE! Thank you to the dream team Josh Villalta and Eric German for making this moment a reality.”
About the new album, Strauss says, “Some pieces of music come into the world gracefully and easily. This album is not one of them! The Call Of The Void was born kicking and screaming, a labour of love for sure, but also of blood, sweat, and plenty of tears. I couldn’t be more proud of the end result. Making this album helped me learn and grow so much as a musician and songwriter and I’m excited to finally unleash it on the world.”
“I wanted the follow up to Controlled Chaos to be exciting, new, and fresh, to take listeners to a new place and take myself somewhere new as an artist too. We have some amazing collaborations on this album with incredible musicians, as well as the instrumental guitar music that first inspired me to play.”
Regarding the album’s title, Strauss continues, “Have you ever been at the top of a high building and had the fleeting thought, ‘… I could jump right now?’
“This feeling is sometimes called ‘The Call Of The Void,’ also known as ‘high place phenomenon.’ It’s not a suicidal impulse, rather the exact opposite — a subconscious decision to live your life, to step back from the ledge, and take control. As researcher April Smith aptly put it: ‘An urge to jump affirms the urge to live.'”
Tracklisting:
“Summer Storm “The Wolf You Feed” (feat. Alissa White-Gluz) “Digital Bullets” (feat. Chris Motionless) “Through The Noise” (feat. Lzzy Hale) “Consume The Fire” “Dead Inside” (feat. David Draiman) “Victorious” (feat. Dorothy) “Scorched” “Momentum” “The Golden Trail” (feat. Anders Fridén) “Winner Takes All” (feat. Alice Cooper) “Monster” (feat. Lilith Czar) “Kintsugi” “Surfacing” (feat. Marty Friedman)
“Winner Takes All”:
Strauss recently announced dates for her North American summer tour with support from Lions At The Gate. The Summer Storm tour will kick off on June 13 in Nashville, and is scheduled to wrap up on July 14 in New Orleans. Singer Kasey Karlsen will join her for the upcoming tour.
June 13 – Nashville, TN – Exit/ In 14 – Atlanta, GA – The Loft 15 – Greensboro, NC – The Hangar 1819 17 – New York, NY – The Meadows 18 – Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern 19 – Mechanicsburg, PA – Lovedrafts 21 – Harrison, OH – The Blue Note 22 – Flint, MI – The Machine Shop 23 – Angola, IN – The Eclectic Room 24 – Bloomington, IL – The Castle Theatre 25 – Madison, WI – The Majestic Theatre 26 – Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room 28 – Denver, CO – The Bluebird Theater 29 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge 30 – Boise, ID – Neurolux
July 1 – Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre 2 – Vancouver, BC – The Rickshaw Theatre 3 – Seattle, WA – El Corazon 5 – Sacramento, CA – Goldfield Trading Post 6 – Los Angeles, CA – Whisky A Go Go 8 – Las Vegas, NV – The Space 9 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom 11 – San Antonio, TX – The Rock Box 12 – Dallas, TX – Trees 13 – Houston, TX – Scout Bar 14 – New Orleans, LA – The Parish at House of Blues
Noel Gallagher dismisses The 1975’s Matty Healy as a “slack-jawed f***wit” for calling for an Oasis reunion, advises him to split up his own “sh*t” band instead
(Image credit: Noel Gallagher – Alex Livesey – Danehouse/Getty Images / Matty Healy – Jo Hale/Redferns)
Noel Gallagher has labelled The 1975‘s Matty Healy a “slack-jawed fuckwit” for calling for an Oasis reunion, and suggested that Healy should break up his own “shit” band.
Healy weighed in on the seemingly never-ending ‘will they/won’t they’ debate during a December TV interview on Canadian broadcasters CBC’s Q with Tim Power show, suggesting that warring siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher should “grow up”, bury the hatchet, and get their world-conquering BritPop band back together. In a recent interview with Spin, Gallagher Snr. was made aware of Healy’s unsolicited advice, seemingly for the first time, and it’s fair to say he didn’t respond terribly positively.
When Spin journalist Daniel Kohn enquired as to whether Gallagher had heard about Healy’s comments, the Mancunian musician replied, “Oh, that fucking slack-jawed fuckwit. What did he say?”
Informed that one comment was “Can you imagine being in potentially – right now, still – the coolest band in the world, and not doing it because you’re in a mard with your brother?”, Gallagher responded, “He would never be able to imagine it. He needs to go over how shit his band is and split up.”
“Definitely Maybe is great and Oasis were great,” Gallagher states later in the interview. “It was an amazing moment in everybody’s lives, but you’ve got one life. I don’t intend to fucking live it in the past. If Liam wants to do the show, great. He’s got to make a living and all of that. Keep the fucking flame alive. It’s not something I particularly would be able to put my heart and soul into.
“If Oasis hadn’t fulfilled its potential, I might have a different attitude towards it. But as Oasis did everything it set out to do and more. I don’t see the point. It was a moment in time and if you missed it, tough shit. I missed the Sex Pistols and I’ve managed to get over that. So, people should get over it.”
This point is, perhaps, marginally undermined by the fact that when the Sex Pistols reformed for their Filthy Lucre shows in 1996, Gallagher went to see them in London with Creation Records boss Alan McGee. So enthused was McGee by the punk band’s July 17 performance at the Shepherds Bush Empire that he paid for a full advertising page in NME so that he could get his review of the show published, and in said review McGee wrote, “I stood with Noel as he sang every song.”
“If he’s got a plan he should he get should get someone to call…” Gallagher said during a TalkSport radio interview. “He doesn’t have to speak to me, I know he won’t speak to me, he’s a coward. So he should get some of his people, his agent, to call my people and say, ‘Look, this is what we’re thinking.’ And then we’ll have a conversation about it. Until then, he’s being a little bit disingenuous…”
Ever-gracious, Liam Gallagher responded on Twitter, labelling Noel ” a bell end”.
Basically, don’t hold your breath, Oasis fans.
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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
Dave Lombardo recently released his new album, Rites Of Percussion. Order the release on CD, digital and three different vinyl variants here.
Revolver has issued an extensive feature on Lombardo, dubbed “My Life Story”, in which he speaks on his tumultuous childhood fleeing Cuba and growing up an outsider in Southern California, forming Slayer – then leaving Slayer, rejoining and leaving again – and his insatiable quest to never pigeonhole his creative identity. An excerpt follows…
Revolver: When was your first band?
Dave Lombardo: “1978 or ’79. I was 14. I was already jamming with guitar players, probably starting in seventh or eighth grade. I had a little $350 drum set that my dad bought me. Then I found other musicians at school, and we created a band called Escape – and changed our name to Sabotage when we got this other singer. Then my dad, being as hardworking as he was, said, ‘Hey man, you’re 15, bro. You need to get a job.’ They didn’t want me to go down a negative path. They wanted me to be productive and part of the workforce. I had to quit that band and get a job if I wanted to live at home. So, I did. The benefits of that were that he saw my work ethic – and I asked him to front me the money for the drum set that is pictured on the back of [Slayer’s] Show No Mercy.”
Revolver: Is it true you were a pizza delivery boy when Slayer formed?
Lombardo: “Yeah. When I met Kerry King, I was 16 years old delivering pizza, and I drove by Kerry’s house. Because people knew me as a drummer, friends told me that a guitar player lived [near] my house. He was on the corner of my street four or five blocks up, and then Tom [Araya] lived on the next street, but one block over.
Remember I told you about that Cuban club where rock bands would play? Well, Tom Araya played in one of those rock bands. He’s four years older than me, so he was 14 and I was 10. When I first met Tom, I asked him, ‘Did you play in this band called Tradewinds?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I saw you play.’ He said, ‘Oh, at that Cuban club?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I used to go there when I was a kid.'”
The recording process for Rites Of Percussion had a simple mantra: drums had to be drums. Mixed in early 2022 by Lombardo’s son, David A. Lombardo, the self-produced release features a large concert bass drum, a timpani, a grand piano, and a flock of shakers, maracas, Chinese and symphonic gongs, Native American drums, congas, timbales, bongos, batás, wood blocks, djembes, ibos, darbukas, octobans, cajóns, and cymbals.
Rites Of Percussion tracklist:
“Initiatory Madness” “Separation From The Sacred” “Inner Sanctum” “Journey Of The Host” “Maunder In Liminality” “Despojo” “Interfearium” “Blood Let” “Warpath” “Guerrero” “Vicissitude” “Omiero” “Animismo”
Album stream:
“Inner Sanctum” video:
Dave Lombardo was born in Havana, Cuba, relocating to Los Angeles when he was a mere two-years-old. He began playing drums as a teenager, and co-founded Slayer (and created the band’s logo) in 1981. Rolling Stone, in their list of the “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time,” dubbed him the “Cuban speed demon, “ Modern Drummer proclaimed him “The King,” and Drummerworld gave him the title of “The Godfather of double bass.” Lombardo’s eye-popping resume includes over 100 studio albums/recordings and includes both recorded and live stints with Grip Inc., Fantômas, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Cross, Mr. Bungle, The Misfits, DJ Spooky, John Zorn, Testament, and most recently creating the soulful duo Venamoris, with his wife Paula.
After more than 40 years, Duran Duran could easily rest on their laurels. While many bands of the era are content to play their expected hits, the Birmingham new wave icons prefer to keep things interesting onstage.
The band is preparing to begin the latest U.S. tour leg in support of 2021’s Future Past. As bassist John Taylor tells UCR, they’re pleased with the reception to their latest LP. “I think that the hardcore fans appreciated it. You know it’s not going to land the way our albums did in the ‘80s,” he says. “It’s going to take a while. But that’s the nice thing about doing lengthy tours like this is that you get to slowly unpack the newer songs, just a handful here and there.”
The current set list is a mix of necessary catalog staples along with more recent material. Duran Duran has always included some unexpected deep cuts for their most devoted fans. Last year they unearthed the first album-era B-side “Faster Than Light,” which hadn’t performed onstage since 1982.
In 2023, with the 40th anniversary of the band’s landmark Rio album still on everyone’s radar, “Last Chance on the Stairway” was added for the first time in more than a decade.
You’ve had the opportunity to play material from the new album in the past year. Are there still songs that you’re hoping to work up for the live set? Definitely. We were in rehearsals in London a couple of weeks ago and we started working up the title track, which we’ve yet to play on stage. But it’s a slow song and [those] are tough, because we’ve got a couple of big ballads that we always have to play. It’s a lot about real estate when you’re planning a show like this. There are cornerstone songs like “Ordinary World” and “Rio,” “Come Undone,” Hungry Like the Wolf,” you have to play those songs, you know? People are going to want their money back if you don’t play those songs, so you build the show around those cornerstones. What you’re left with, it’s like, “Well, what are the new songs we’re going to play?” If anything, we tend to argue more about what those songs are. I have my favorites, Simon [Le Bon] has his favorites, but the other aspect of that is that we can flip them from show to show. We don’t always have to play the same three new songs every night. We can move them around a little bit.
I’m always impressed by how much of the band’s history is represented in the set list. One rarity in the show recently has been “Last Chance on the Stairway.” Nick [Rhodes] said to me about two months ago, “I think we should have a go at ‘Last Chance on the Stairway.’ It’s the last song off of the Rio album that we haven’t played in many, many years.” I was like, oh, man, really? Really, you want to play that? I was really hoping that it would just get away. Then I had a listen to it and I was like, “Oh, God!” It’s so awful when you get so impressed by something that you did when you were young. But I was so impressed by the song and what we were all playing. We brought it up in rehearsals, and Roger [Taylor] and I started playing it with Dom [Brown], our guitar player, and it was like, “Wow, this is frickin’ amazing!” You know, as long as I can keep playing the notes – because it’s so many notes! But it’s so fun to play it in the new show. And again, whether we’ll be playing that every night? We don’t know. That’s a secondary pile, which it’s like, we could play it, it depends on the length of the show. That’s very much a “die-hards” song. But I don’t know, I think Rio, it’s probably the masterwork in the catalog, that you could almost play any song off that album and the audience would enjoy it.
Watch Duran Duran Perform ‘Last Chance on the Stairway’ in Dublin
“Faster Than Light” was played a couple of times last year. It seems pretty fearless to go back to a song like that. That’s another idea of his! I mean, Nick’s crazy. He comes up with these … they’re almost like challenges, you know? He throws them down: “What about that?” That was another one. I mean, how many notes do you want me to play, man? [Laughs] The funny thing, Roger and I joke about some of the early material, because we’re playing so fast. We’re essentially punk rockers that are trying to play funky disco. We’re like, “If we were mature, shouldn’t we be slowing these songs down?” Like, relaxing them, as I would call it? But that’s just not our style. We have to do it as it was recorded, and at the end of the day, it’s not a bad thing to do, because it keeps you in shape. It stops us from getting lazy and languid.
Fans have been pretty curious to know what your experience has been playing your new Rio Dream signature bass. It’s been so good. You know, I did the signature bass [with] Sheldon Dingwall, who makes the basses that I use. He asked me if I was interested in doing a signature bass. I kind of was like, “Yeah, sure.” He had this idea that he wanted to use the electronics that were used in the recording of the Rio album. So he went back to Neve, who are these English recording engineers. They build the EQs, recording desks and the [type of] mixing desk that we were using back in the ‘80s. [He] asked them if they would come up with this technology that we could then put into the instrument. So it was kind of radical. I had no idea what it was going to be like. I’m so happy to report that it sounds great in the studio and it sounds great on stage. You know, I was thinking, “Oh, maybe I’ll use it on a couple of songs.” I’m using it on almost everything. It’s a great piece of gear, I’m happy to say.
It’s not necessarily the norm for the bass to ride as high in the mix as yours does. It made me think of Chris Squire of Yes, who played very much the same way. Did you know him? I met him maybe twice, and that was just because his daughter was a fan of Duran for a moment. But I love Chris Squire’s bass playing. He’s like the square peg in that band. It’s like he’s the punk in Yes. I find that when he’s in the rhythm section, they’re always worth listening to. He’s like some weird hybrid of Paul McCartney and Sid Vicious. He’s highly musical. I miss him, actually. He was a great, great musician.
Duran Duran has accomplished so much as a band. What’s left on the bucket list? I think if you’re fortunate enough to make your name as an artist, whether you’re a musical artist or a writer or anything, you really just want to be able to just keep doing it and not just for yourself. We want to maintain a substantial enough audience that justifies our going back into the studio every couple of years and writing songs and finding things to write about. I don’t really need anything outside of that. Nick would give you a very different answer to that. He would have a long shopping list of conceptual projects he’d like to engage in. But I don’t really think like that, actually. I just want to be able to maintain my health, which kind of is equal to my playing ability in a way. I want to maintain my friendships and respect for the guys so I want to go back into the studio with them and just keep doing it, really. Even though there are other bands that have been before us when you start getting [older, things can change]. Everybody’s in their 60s now and obviously, it’s challenging. This was supposed to be a young person’s game, right? If you want to be something other than a legacy artist, you’ve got to really rise to the challenge, I think. So for me, it’s just about maintaining the friendship and the respect of the other band members. If I can keep that, then it keeps us working together, and then who knows what might happen.
Watch Duran Duran’s ‘Anniversary’ Video
Top 40 New Wave Albums
From the B-52’s to XTC, Blondie to Talking Heads, a look at the genre’s best LPs.
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What absolute fucking madness is this? Avenged Sevenfold’s last album, 2016’s surprise-dropped The Stage, was a slab of ambitious, prog-tinged modern metal that put clear water between them and their own past, even as it alienated the more dug-in sections of their fanbase.
Many bands would have either thought ‘job done’ and resumed normal service, or bottled it and scurried back to safer musical ground. Not Avenged. Their eighth album goes even further out. It’s a deranged psycho-metal musical with hardcore, hip hop, electronic music and jazz burned into its circuits and liquid LSD running through its veins. Kaleidoscopic, disorientating and fearless, it truly is the sound of a band who have stopped giving a single fuck about what people think of them.
Life Is But A Dream… at least begins like a metal album. Opening track Game Over kicks off with a delicately picked classical guitar intro, before a jagged riff and M. Shadows’s old-school vocal aggro bust the reverie. And so it goes for a couple of minutes, until everything suddenly folds in on itself and the noise gives way to a burst of primary-coloured psychedelia. ‘It strikes me that I don’t belong here anymore,’ sings Shadows, reading the minds of a chunk of people listening to it for the first time.
This is an album that’s defined by just that kind of refusal to conform to predetermined norms. There’s nothing so predictable as verse-chorus-verse here. Second track Mattel, named for the company behind the Barbie Doll and an arched-eyebrow look at the shallowness of modern life, mixes massive riffs, wailing synths, flailing guitars and a section that sounds like a child’s lullaby. Nobody starts with a noise like a klaxon being wrenched out of a guitar, which continues throughout the song, except for when it stops for a blast of vintage Queen harmonising.
Unlikely reference points come thick and fast. Beautiful Morning might wade in like a great lost Alice In Chains song, but it ends with a Billy Joel-esque piano coda, while the vocodered vocals of Easier are pure Kanye West circa 808s & Heartbreak, albeit with 80s arcade noises and a giant, grinding riff thrown in for good measure.
But the biggest influence of all is drugs, specifically drugs of the psychedelic variety (the fact that Shadows and guitarist Synyster consulted an actual shaman during the writing process is kind of a giveaway). Like any trip, good or bad, Life Is But A Dream… is simultaneously deep and baffling, and nowhere more so than on the three-song mini-suite near the end of the album. Between them, G, (O)rdinary and (D)eath (check those initials) ponder religion, artificial intelligence and the very meaning of life, channelling everyone from System Of A Down and Mr. Bungle to Daft Punk and, in the case of (D)eath’s unexpected detour into lounge jazz territory, even Frank Sinatra in the process.
Yes, Life Is But A Dream… is indulgent. Of course it is. A lot of people won’t want to come along for the ride, and how this stuff is going to fit alongside their older material live is anyone’s guess. But Avenged Sevenfold have scaled the mountain and looked out over all that surrounds them, then plunged headfirst into the void, not knowing where, when or even if they’ll land. What kind of madness is this? The very best kind.
Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.
