Patti Smith has announced a fourth memoir, Bread of Angels, to be published on November 4.
The publication date is described as “especially meaningful” to Smith, as it is both the birthday of her late partner Robert Mapplethorpe, and the anniversary of her late husband Fred ‘Sonic Smith’s death.
The synopsis for Bread of Angels reads: “The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years when the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role models as Smith starts to write poetry, then lyrics, merging both into the iconic recordings and songs such as Horses and Easter, Dancing Barefoot and Because the Night.
“As Smith suffers profound losses, grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life, and, finally, writing again – the one constant on a path driven by artistic freedom and the power of the imagination to transform the mundane into the beautiful, the commonplace into the magical, and pain into hope. In the final pages, we meet Patti Smith on the road again, the vagabond who travels to commune with herself, who lives to write and writes to live.”
Alexis Kirschbaum, head of Bloomsbury Trade, the book’s UK publisher, says, “Patti Smith is a living legend. While her lyrics and music have inspired generations of listeners, her books have made her one of the most cherished and influential writers of the last 50 years.”
Smith’s previous memoirs were titled Kids, M Train, and Year Of The Monkey. She describes her forthcoming book as “a bright and dark dance of life.”
Bruce Springsteen, Michael Stipe, Johnny Depp, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O were among the stars who gathered in New York’s iconic Carnegie Hall last month to pay tribute to Smith’s music and poetry.
People Have The Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith was staged on March 26, with 100% of net proceeds being donated to support youth music and writing education programs.
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Other artists performing on the night included Kim Gordon, Sharon Von Etten, Ben Harper, Courtney Barnett, The Kills’ Alison Mosshart and The National’s Matt Berninger, with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea playing in the house band, alongside The Rolling Stones’ drummer Steve Jordan, and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
“They still call it Sepultura, but everybody knows that it’s not the same.” Max Cavalera isn’t getting sentimental over the end of Sepultura, says fans feel that he and his brother Iggor carry the true spirit of the band
(Image credit: Press)
Sepultura may be on their farewell tour, but former frontman Max Cavalera isn’t feeling particularly sentimental about the curtain dropping on the band that he and his brother Iggor formed in Belo Horizonte in 1984.
Max Cavalera left Sepultura in 1996, and Iggor departed the band in 2006. The current incarnation of the band – Derrick Green, Andreas Kisser, Pauklo Jr. and Greyson Nekrutman – announced their farewell tour in 2023, and Kisser says that the group will play their very last show back in Belo Horizonte before the end of 2026.
In a new interview with Full Metal Jackie’s show on FMJ Radio, Max Cavalera says, “They still call it Sepultura, but everybody knows that it’s not the same” and says that he believes that, for many fans, it is he and his brother who still carry the true spirit of the band.
“I feel – and I’m not saying that just for myself – I think a lot of fans feel that me and Iggor kind of carry the spirit of Sepultura with us on everything that we do,” he states, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. “They still call it Sepultura but everybody knows that it’s not the same and it’s never gonna be the same. And I don’t have nothing to do with what they’re doing, with the disbanding of the band.”
The Cavalera brothers have annoyed Andreas Kisser in recent years, by re-recording Sepultura’s earliest records. with the guitarist stating, “It’s really very disrespectful… the artistic value is zero.”
Max Cavalera is untroubled by the criticism.
“Me and Iggor, we have our own path, we are on our own thing, we are revisiting those old material on our own time,” he tells Full Metal Jackie. “The way we did them was the way we always did – it was from our heart. For us, it’s really special to preserve that. I think it’s kind of like that young heart, the teenage heart that lives inside of you. I kind of like keep that really sacred. And no matter what happens in in the business or the politics of music, I try not to let that affect my young mind and soul that I carry with me all the time.
“So I feel like that when talk about Sepultura. It was a special band of a special time and we celebrate that: I get a chance to celebrate that with Iggor, regardless of what the other guys are doing.”
Listen to the full interview below:
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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. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
When you’ve known someone like Ozzy Osbourne for over 30 years, it’s safe to say you’ve probably got a few stories to tell. Longtime Ozz solo guitarist and metal icon in his own right Zakk Wylde certainly had a thing or two to say when asked by Metal Hammer readers what his favourite wholesome moment with The Prince Of Darkness was for this month’s People Vs feature in the new issue of Metal Hammer.
“I remember we played the Budokan [Arena] in Tokyo. I’d always have a bag of beer with me, just in case anywhere we were going didn’t have beer,” Zakk recalls. “So, Oz comes in the room after the gig. He goes ‘Zakky, Zakky… you got any beers?’ I go, ‘Yeah, but I’m not giving you one here. You’re going to get us fired! Mom’s [Sharon Osbourne] right across the hall – she’s going to come and see the two of us drinking, is that going to be good?’”
“He goes, ‘Alright, tell you what, I’ll meet you in the bathroom.’ So I go in the bathroom, I’m waiting. All of a sudden, I hear the door open. He comes in the stall right next to me, and I push a Kirin or Asahi under there. I hear the ‘psssst’ of the can, then ‘glug, glug, glug!’ He downs it in one, puts the can down, pushes it back under and goes, ‘Thanks, Zakk. I’ll see you at dinner.’”
Granted, we’re not sure that sneaking beers on tour counts as wholesome, but it certainly shows the tight-knit camaraderie Ozzy and Zakk have had over the years. When that’s pointed out to him, Zakk laughs.
“We were like a couple of naughty schoolkids! It was hilarious!”
Later this summer, Zakk will join Ozzy – and a huge guestlist of stars and bands including Metallica, Slayer, Alice In Chains, Jason Momoa and more – to participate in a massive farewell gig for Ozzy and Black Sabbath at the band’s hometown in Aston, Birmingham.
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(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Staff writer for Metal Hammer, Rich has never met a feature he didn’t fancy, which is just as well when it comes to covering everything rock, punk and metal for both print and online, be it legendary events like Rock In Rio or Clash Of The Titans or seeking out exciting new bands like Nine Treasures, Jinjer and Sleep Token.
(Image credit: David Bowie: Brian Rasic/Getty Images / Skin: Rob O’Connor / Lemmy: Mick Hutson/Redferns (via Getty))
Skunk Anansie vocalist Skin knows a thing or two about stardom. Her band’s first two albums gatecrashed the UK Top 10 on release and in 1999, she became the first Black woman to headline the massive Glastonbury festival in the UK. By that point the band had crossed over from Britrock into the pop-star sphere, and in a new interview in the latest issue of Metal Hammershe discusses what it was like suddenly coming face to face with some of the biggest names in music.
“We played a lot with David Bowie,” she says. “He was the ultimate inspiration. I loved him. I was nervous meeting him, because there are certain people who’re elevated beyond everybody else. But he was just a down-to-earth dude. And his wife Iman is as hugely iconic as he is, and she was a delight as well.”
Bowie wasn’t the only rock icon Skin was close to, however. Early in their careers, Skunk Anansie found themselves adopted by fellow Brits Motorhead, becoming close friends with frontman Lemmy.
“He was very gentle,” Skin recalls when asked what the rock’n’roll legend was like. “He was the most authentic person I’ve met. He was who he was, and he wasn’t going to hide it. Also, he had absolutely the most perfect skin you’d ever imagine on a man, good baby skin. He was such a gentleman. We were writing music together whenever I was in LA, and I had the sweetest messages from him. I remember one time I was supposed to write with him, and I couldn’t, because I’d had a break-up, and he just left me the loveliest, kindest thing: ‘I’m here for you. Come over to LA and we’ll hang out.’ He was a sweetheart.”
Skin admits she wasn’t keen on everybody she met in the 90s, however. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a band who were staunchly outspoken and had songs like Yes It’s Fucking Political, she has some choice words about the phenomenon of 90s boybands.
“The only people that I didn’t like were boybands,” she admits. “Five were fucking horrible. I think it’s because they didn’t have control, they didn’t write their songs, they were just puppets.”
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Skunk Anansie’s new album The Painful Truth is set for release on May 23 via FLG. The band are on tour now and play UK shows with The Smashing Pumpkins later this year. For the full list of dates, visit their official website.
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Staff writer for Metal Hammer, Rich has never met a feature he didn’t fancy, which is just as well when it comes to covering everything rock, punk and metal for both print and online, be it legendary events like Rock In Rio or Clash Of The Titans or seeking out exciting new bands like Nine Treasures, Jinjer and Sleep Token.
The woman in silver is a thousand light years from home. Like a regal visitor from ancient Themyscira, Tatiana Shmayluk shimmers beneath the bright lights of a small Los Angeles photography studio. She is the Ukrainian-born singer for Jinjer, and one of metal’s most dynamic, fastest-rising figures, clad in a gown of metallic fabric, arms smothered in tattoos, with a feathered serpent inked onto her throat.
She is quiet in front of the camera as the room is filled with a tuneful stream of alt rock hits from the 80s and 90s: The Cult, Nirvana, Social Distortion, all of it edgy and emotionally raw, but far removed from the intricate prog metal storm and precise math rock impulses of Jinjer. Asked if she would prefer a different soundtrack for this session, maybe something louder and more aggro, Tatiana says she is absolutely fine with it. “I listen to Tchaikovsky when I’m not onstage,” she adds with a smile.
Like the rest of Jinjer, she has settled into a new home outside of Ukraine, while her home country is at war with Russia. It’s an unsettling contrast, as the band continues its steady rise, with new album Duél powered by Tatiana’s superhuman range, shifting effortlessly from clean to screaming vocals, from the purely melodic to the purely enraged. On the album cover is the image of two bullets, abstract splashes of blood and what appears to be a gunshot wound – a sign of the times she’s living in.
A few steps outside is the fabulous Sunset Strip, playground to generations of heavy movers, from Led Zeppelin and Motörhead to Guns N’ Roses and Jane’s Addiction, but Tati’s spent little time on this glamorous stretch of boulevard, preferring the domestic bliss of Southern California with her husband, drummer Alex Lopez (formerly of Suicide Silence), out in the Orange County suburbs.
While Tatiana now lives safely in the US, the rest of her band remain scattered in Europe: guitarist Roman Ibramkhalilov and drummer Vladislav ‘Vladi’ Ulasevich live in Warsaw, Poland, and bassist Eugene Abdukhanov is in Bulgaria. Their crew is based in Germany. But in 2024, all of them reconvened in Poland to record Duél, creating another fiery collision of genres: metalcore, djent, prog, nu metal, groove, even reggae.
Later, Tatiana sits on the outdoor patio as the afternoon turns cold. She’s bundled up in a fuzzy grey jacket as she lights up a cigarette. The singer speaks excellent English, a student of the language for 10 years in school. This interview will end up being her longest to date. Offstage, Tati is softly spoken and refers to herself as an introvert, but live she is in total command: strolling and stomping across the stage, leaning over the edge to preside over a frantic circle-pit, falling to her knees and bouncing back up to wail, swinging her hair back and forth.
“I’m a hermit. I like to be unseen, but somehow I do this,” she says of her career with a laugh.
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On Duél, she is refining her approach, layering guttural and melodic vocals in more sophisticated arrangements. In part, the title refers to rebirth, letting go of your old flawed self in order to find a new, improved version. It is about the ‘duel’ with one’s self, and the casting off of bad habits. Some of the new songs reflect her decision to quit drinking. On the swirling Green Serpent, she alternates between her most raging and most delicate: ‘Please add some sober water / into heady wine. Don’t turn into a raging storm / This peaceful night.’
“It wasn’t a serious problem,” Tati says of her drinking issues on the road. “The thing is, our people, like Ukrainians and Russians, we have to deal with that by ourselves. There’s no such thing as going to rehab for that.”
Even so, as the singer typically refuelled and loosened up for her stunning performances, she felt herself slipping into an unhealthy pattern.
“I tour all the time, so that means that I drink all the time, like almost every day. Right before the show, after the show,” she adds. “And then I started getting aggressive at my bandmates. I got into a fight, and then the next morning I felt so bad, like mentally, so I said, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore.’ I’m uncontrollable when I drink, so I don’t know what happens next. I stopped and it was pretty easy. I still like to be around people who drink, because I still enjoy that vibe of people getting drunk and getting all funny and happy and everything.”
Tatiana stayed sober for two years, then celebrated the milestone with her husband by having a drop of Prosecco.
“I learned how to control myself, and I learned a lot,” she says, choosing moderation over abstinence, though she’ll no longer drink on the road. “I never gave a promise to myself that I will never drink again. I just wanted to control it, you know?”
JINJER – Green Serpent (Official Video) | Napalm Records – YouTube
Tatiana’s story begins in eastern Ukraine. Between drags on her cigarette, she begins to discuss her musical evolution: “I started listening to Russian rock music when I was nine because of my elder brother and…”
She stops as an ominous rumbling fills the air, and laughs. “What can it be?” she wonders, as the sound grows louder and closer. Finally, the noise is above and she looks up to see a quartet of US military Osprey aircraft – part aeroplane, part helicopter, and loud as fuck. “Oh, shit…”
It’s a weird show of military muscle right above the Strip, heading east in formation as if they’re preparing to attack the Hollywood Bowl. If the moment is a reminder of her war-ravaged home country, she does not say. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the peaceful coexistence between border nations, where the locals once seemed close and neighbourly, has been shattered by conflict and civilian death. Things are now impossibly delicate and complicated. It clearly weighs on Tati, but she says she simply cannot discuss the war in Ukraine.
The subject has been the source of threats, attacks and nasty rumours online directed at her and the rest of Jinjer. But she grew up in the Donbas region, which is now mostly under Russian occupation. This may or may not have inspired the new song Tumbleweed, and the anguished lyrics: ‘Have you heard of the storm / That uprooted my home? / A shower crushed down / On my beautiful town.’
“It’s a song about refugees,” she says. “That is because of war or whatever is going on in your country. You have to leave, you have to roam around the world, finding your own place, but you cannot find it.”
For Tatiana, her small town in Ukraine was where she discovered her love for music. As a girl, she’d been a fanatic for The Offspring. Her evolution as a listener took her young ears from pop-punk to grunge to nu metal to groove metal and much more. That range of musical obsessions would prepare her well for the career ahead of her.
“I watched a lot of MTV when I was a kid,” she says with a laugh. “Even when I was, like, four years old, I sang and I screamed so loud that my mom said that I had a hernia because of that.”
She also drew pictures of herself onstage, singing and playing guitar, performing with other girls in an all-female group. By the age of 14, she was singing in a band. Her first concert as a fan was Soulfly, requiring several hours on the train to Kyiv with her boyfriend, smoking and partying along the way. Her first tattoo – of a bumble bee – appeared on her back at age 17. After that, she got one of Clown from Slipknot (which she got to show him backstage years later).
The direction Tati’s life was heading in was confounding to her parents. Her father worked in a mercury plant, and her mother was an accountant. All this loud music, and the tattoos, didn’t seem like a path towards a career and marriage.
“They didn’t like it at first, ’cause they are old-school people,” the singer says. “They wanted me to get a good education, find a job, get married, have kids. Nothing of this happened. I mean, I got married, but my job is far from what they wanted me to do. But now they are supportive.”
“I’m really shy and I followed their instructions. But at some point I went against their will – quietly. I didn’t make scenes or anything. I was cutting classes and going to rehearsals.”
She first tried out a guttural vocal sound in a local deathcore band in 2004. “That’s when I realised that I can do it,” she says. “I trained. I really wanted to, and it was really hard for me to train myself.”
Tati took some inspiration from Melissa Cross, master screamer and heavy metal vocal coach, known for proselytising her ‘Zen of Screaming’. But she mostly learned by the example of Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe and other male screamers. Her goal was to reach a level where gender was not an issue.
“I wanted to be as good as them, so that you even cannot tell that it’s a girl singing,” she says.
At the same time, she kept a more traditionally feminine, emotional, melodic vocal ability as part of her repertoire. In time, it would become a key element in her singing style: “I felt like it was so tough to be that person who can do both – and to do it not as a garage band, but bring it to the new level, to have really technical, really good-quality vocals.”
In Ukraine, Tati was friendly with a year-old metal band called Jinjer. She was invited to step in for one small local show, since the founding singer, Maksym Fatullaiev, was leaving for the US. In the Donbas, there weren’t many screamers available, and since Tati’s own deathcore band had recently disintegrated, she agreed. Things went well enough that she continued with the band, and rearranged the vocal parts of their existing songs to suit her tastes (Maks now sings in the band Evermorphing, who sometimes share stages with Jinjer).
Jinjer self-released the EP Inhale, Do Not Breathe in 2012, and the album Cloud Factory in 2014. That year, conflict in eastern Ukraine led the band to pack up and relocate west. They signed to Napalm Records in time to release their second album, King Of Everything, in 2016, and then moved to the relative safety of the capital, Kyiv, in 2017.
“Little by little, I turned it into mine,” she says of Jinjer with a laugh. “And that’s when I started liking it.”
(Image credit: Jen Rosenstein)
The real turning point for Tatiana and Jinjer was the song Pisces, from King Of Everything. The track begins with a delicate and graceful vocal, before shifting into the depths of guttural despair, the singer’s wide-ranging vocal abilities front and centre. It went viral, spawning numerous reaction videos. The lyrics, written by Tatiana and bassist Eugene, move from the cosmic to the earthbound.
“I started believing that this kind of music… it still has a chance to be played at big festivals, big tours in other countries, all around the world,” the singer says now. “That was our ticket to bigger stages.”
After King Of Everything, the band’s sound shifted again, with the arrival of drummer Vladislav Ulasevich, who also began writing material for Jinjer. That first showed itself on 2019’s Macro.
“It was a starting point of us going in a different direction,” Tatiana explains, “being less understandable, more complicated, but mixing different genres as well.”
Not every fan approved, but Tatiana was happy to go deeper. “We don’t care if people like it. That’s the thing – you cannot be a people-pleaser all the time,” she says with a smile. “We are being ourselves, and music is the vessel for that. And if you don’t like it, that’s why they’re called followers. You are following, you’re not dictating to us what to do. So if you don’t like it, don’t follow. It’s that simple. We don’t owe anyone. We just owe it to ourselves to stay true… We’ve never been a commercial project.”
By the time Wallflowers landed in 2021, Jinjer’s popularity had exploded well beyond their Ukrainian roots, with slots on major festival stages. That success came with new opportunities to tour and spread their messages.
“To see the world, to know a lot of cultures, to communicate with other people, it helped me grow as a personality, to expand my vision,” says Tati.
Wallflowers came after Covid-19 upturned the music world, and the band-members left Ukraine and scattered around the world. Tati had already begun her relationship with Alex Lopez in 2019, and got married during the first pandemic year of 2020. But with her work visa about to expire, she had to leave for Ukraine two weeks after her marriage. She waited an entire year there as Covid got under control and visas were available again.
Her new husband would visit for a month at a time, then have to return to the US. By 2021, she was finally settled in Southern California. She was already obsessed with Latino-American ‘cholo’ culture, drawn to the aesthetics and attire of Chicano gang life, from bouncing low rider cars to ornate black-and-white tatts. Early on, she also followed the lead of singer Sandra Nasi´c from the German band Guano Apes, and likewise wore baggy jeans, boots and tank-tops. That look faded as her many influences coalesced into a recognisable style that fit with the music of Jinjer.
“Little by little, as we made progressive music, I wanted to wear progressive clothing, since we sing about the cosmos and space and stuff,” Tati says of her personal style choices. “So it eventually turned into something futuristic. I started wearing futuristic stuff – and glowy make-up – to be out of this world.”
Making the new album while living in different countries wasn’t ideal. Before Covid and the war, they had always lived near one another, ready to practise and record together at will. For Duél, the band-members reconvened in Warsaw for months of work, and Tatiana rented an apartment for the long haul. They built a small vocal booth in their practice space and plugged into a laptop. Scattered or not, Jinjer have found a way not only to continue, but to keep pushing their music forward, even as their homeland is under a cloud.
The words on Duél travel meaningfully from the internal struggles of depression (Dark Bile) to larger crises of war and societal oppression (Rogue) that remain out of anyone’s control. As ever, Tatiana sings almost everything in English, which is how it’s been since the band started with Maks (aside from an occasional Russian-language verse here and there). For the singer, the reason is obvious. “We wanted to be known all around the world,” says Tatiana. “And I had a message to bring.”
Duél is out now via Napalm. Jinjer play Download Festival on June 15.
Steve Appleford is a Los Angeles music journalist who has also written for Rolling Stone, Revolver and the Los Angeles Times. Over the years he’s interviewed major artists across multiple genres – including Black Sabbath, Slayer, Queens of the Stone Age, System of a Down, KISS, Lemmy, the Who, Neil Young, Beastie Boys, Beyonce, Tom Jones, and a couple of Beatles.
You’d worked with producer Bob Ezrin prior to meeting Peter Gabriel. Was he responsible for introducing you?
For sure. Bob had used me on a lot of his Alice Cooper records. When Peter left Genesis, Bob was producing his first solo album and brought me up to Toronto in the summer of ’76. And on that same day – how lucky am I? – I met both Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp. It turned out to be seminal for my career.
Did you hit it off with Peter immediately?
Absolutely. He was young and enthusiastic, as we all were in those days. For instance, when I suggested the barbershop quartet introduction to one of his pieces [1977’s Excuse Me], he said, “Oh yeah!” I quickly learned that he’s a guy who thinks outside of the box. When he asked if I’d like to go on the road with him, I said yes immediately. That hasn’t changed since ’76. I’ll drop everything and go on the road with Peter.
What’s the secret of that relationship?
There’s mutual respect, musically. I admire him; he’s a brilliant performer. And obviously he thinks well of my bass-playing, because I’ve been there all these years. We do a lot of what you’d call passive-aggressive joking between us. Many times he’s introduced me to the audience as “the emperor of the bottom end” – and yes, he is being facetious, and kind of giving it to me a little bit.
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If you look carefully at the videos, you see us clowning around onstage. I’ve always taken photos on the road with Peter, and with everybody else really, during shows. Peter doesn’t love it, but he very kindly allows me to do it. On one tour he was riding a bicycle around in a circle onstage. I had my camera on a tripod and, gee, what a coincidence that almost every night he would knock it over! A lot of stuff like that goes on.
You weren’t really familiar with Genesis when you first met Peter.
I didn’t know the band at all. And let me add that I didn’t know King Crimson when I joined with Robert Fripp, and we called ourselves Discipline. In the rehearsal/audition, when I met Bill Bruford and Adrian Belew, they asked to play the song Red, which I’d never heard. So I had to learn it right there and then.
Was King Crimson your entry into progressive music?
I learned a lot about the daunting aspect of King Crimson… I was pretty immune during my time in the band
Exactly. I was suddenly introduced to this genre that I’d never paid much attention to. I’ve never really put this into words before, but in some ways the complexity of progressive rock harked back to my classical training. I found that I could throw in classical licks and a classical sensibility, and it worked in that style. One example is Peter Gabriel’s On The Air. Live, at the end, I threw in a line that I absolutely knew was from Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. And it became part of the piece.
The 1981 version of King Crimson signalled a whole new chapter for the band, one intent on making a complete break from its past.
Yeah, that group had nothing in common with the King Crimson from before. From what I understand, Robert didn’t think of it as King Crimson at all. It was just a new group. We were going to call it Discipline; it was only later, when we were touring Europe and breaking in new material, that he decided this was a King Crimson thing.
It’s almost impossible, but I think it did. It’s a very deep band. When I saw the documentary, I learned a lot about the daunting aspect of its history and the conflicts and drama. I was pretty immune during my time in the band, so I was blissfully ignorant of most of it.
We don’t present any humour in a King Crimson show, unlike some other bands that I’m in, including Peter Gabriel. But there was always a lot of humour backstage and in rehearsal, just being with each other. And that’s necessary to get through years of playing music that intense.
To that effect, I think the public has now learned about that side of Robert Fripp. He’s very funny, very loose and surprising. Whereas before, I think they thought of him as the stern schoolteacher.
“Eventually you run out of steam because you have no money and you’re eating Pot Noodles on Christmas Day.” Dr Who and The Thick Of It star Peter Capaldi shares his memories of his David Bowie and Cramps-influenced punk band, The Dreamboys
(Image credit: umka2002 YouTube)
Unless you have a fanatical interest in, and encyclopedic knowledge of, unsigned British punk bands from 1977, chances are you’ve never heard of Bastards From Hell, the Glasgow quartet who later evolved into art-punks The Dreamboys. But there’s every chance that you’ll have heard of at least one of their members, for their line-up included two now-famous faces, Dr Who/The Thick Of It star Peter Capaldi, and comedian/actor-turned-talk show host Craig Ferguson.
In a new interview with The Guardian,. Capaldi looks back upon his punk rock past. recalling that The Dreamboys, formed while he was a student at the Glasgow School of Art, were influenced by David Bowie, Talking Heads and The Cramps.
“This was around 1977,” he recalls, “and back then you could take a tape to a venue and get a gig. The art school had a very staid student body that looked after entertainment. They tended to bring in hippie bands, jazz acts and George Melly. We wanted more aggressive music, so we ended up providing it ourselves. But our shows weren’t full of people spitting. There was quite a schism between London and the rest of the country – I think the people of Glasgow frowned on all the spitting and that kind of nonsense.
“At the time I thought I just loved showing off,” the 66-year-old actor continues, “but really what I loved was being able to create a whole world on stage and presenting our ideas to people. We kept at it. We tried and tried but we weren’t getting anywhere. Eventually you run out of steam because you have no money and you’re eating Pot Noodles on Christmas Day. It seemed like everybody else in Glasgow was getting signed or doing a Peel Session and we weren’t. I would get the coach down to London and go round all the record labels but nothing ever happened.”
Capaldi’s punk career ended soon after he landed his first acting jobs. His big break occurred when film-maker Bill Forsyth, who had directed Altered Images vocalist Clare Grogan in Gregory’s Girl, offered him a part in his 1983 film Local Hero, perhaps best known for its Mark Knopfler score.
“It felt like fate was pushing me towards acting and away from music,” Capaldi recalls, “so I embraced that.”
The actor didn’t totally abandon his musical dreams however, and released his debut solo album, St Christopher, in 2021. His new solo album, Sweet Illusions, is out now.
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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. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
The cover artwork for Crosby, Stills and Nash’s 1969 debut ranks among the most recognizable of its era. So why did the band initially want the image reshot?
“One day, (photographer) Henry Diltz came into the studio. He’s a dear friend of ours. And we realized that, you know, we were halfway through this CSN record and we realized that we didn’t have a cover,” the singer recalled. “So we told Bill Halvorsen, our engineer, I said, ‘Look, do me a favor, figure something out to do for an hour. We’re going to take a walk.’”
The trio, accompanied by Diltz, strolled over to Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
“We saw this old house and we said, ‘You know what, let’s just sit on this couch, take a picture,’” Nash remembered. A day later, they saw the prints, but there was a problem. “We saw the ones that we loved, but we’re sitting in the wrong order. We’re sitting as Nash, Stills, Crosby. And we decided to call ourselves Crosby, Stills and Nash because that’s how it comes off the tongue.”
Initially, it seemed like an easy issue to fix. Diltz agreed to go back to the same house with the band the next day to take a new round of pictures.
“So we go back. There’s no house. It’s gone. It’s just a pile of lumber in the back,” Nash recalled. “It had been bulldozed the same day.”
CSN had no choice but to go with the original photo, even though the musicians were not seated in the correct order. While it created a little confusion among the band’s fans – Nash noted some “people think I wrote ‘Guinnevere’” – the artwork nevertheless became one of the era’s timeless images.
If there is one place ZZ Top feels the most at home, it’s the stage.
The band has been touring more or less nonstop since 1969, though they’ve also somehow managed to find time to record 15 studio albums. At the time of this writing, ZZ Top is on tour, with dates scheduled literally all over the world.
“Going back to the early days, playing live for us, that was the warm-up fields,” Billy Gibbons said to MusicRadar in 2016. “Not only did it get warm, we aimed for it to get hot.”
We’d argue that get hot they did. For over 50 years, ZZ Top has been burning up live stages and attracting rock fans of all ages to their shows. Using data from setlist.fm, we’ve crunched the numbers and figured out the most and least-played song live from every one of their studio albums. Of course, there are some songs that have never seen a set list, but for those that have, here’s how it breaks down.
Album: ZZ Top’s First Album (1971) Most-played: “Brown Sugar” Least-played: “Old Man”
When ZZ Top stepped into Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas in the fall of 1970, they genuinely did not know what their future held. “We weren’t certain if we’d get another chance in the studio, but we had high hopes,” Gibbons explained to MusicRadar in 2013. Obviously, they got many more chances, but they gave an impressive first-time effort here. “Brown Sugar” is the clear winner for most-played with 480 performances. On the low end, two songs from the aptly-titled ZZ Top’s First Album have never been played live — “Squank” and “Bedroom Thang” — making “Old Man” the next least-played with one performance in 1974.
Album: Rio Grande Mud (1972) Most-played: “Just Got Paid” Least-played: “Mushmouth Shoutin'”
Just two tracks from this album, 1972’s Rio Grande Mud, have been neglected set list-wise, “Apologies to Pearly” and “Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell,” but the former is an instrumental, so we’ll let it slide. In the meantime, “Mushmouth Shoutin’” got exactly one play in July of 1974 and hasn’t been heard since, while “Just Got Paid” has racked up 1,049 plays. “We were gigging 350-odd days a year with some really wicked headliners,” Gibbons recalled in his 2020 book Rock + Roll Gearhead. “By ’72 our onstage skills were getting good and sharp.”
Album: Tres Hombres (1973) Most-played: “La Grange” Least-played: Tie Between “Have You Heard?” and “Hot, Blue and Righteous”
It’s easily one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock, the one from ZZ Top’s “La Grange,” which is not only the most-played song from Tres Hombres, but also from the band’s entire catalog. “The simplicity of that song was part of the magic — only two chords,” Gibbons said to Rolling Stone in 2015. “And the break coming out of the solo — those notes are straight Robert Johnson. He did it as a shuffle. I just dissected the notes.” The only song from this album that hasn’t been played is “Shiek,” which makes for a tie for the next least-played between “Have You Heard?” and “Hot, Blue and Righteous.”
Here’s the thing: if you’re looking at the setlist.fm data, you’ll see that John Lee Hooker’s “Long Distance Boogie” is the least-played song from Fandango! But we’re not entirely certain how the numbers stack up considering that song is technically part of “Backdoor Medley,” which ZZ Top has performed 30 times. So, we’re giving the official title of least-played to “Balinese” with 25 performances. At the top is none other than “Tush,” a No. 20 hit for the band.
Album: Tejas (1976) Most-played: “Arrested for Driving While Blind” Least-played: Tie Between “Asleep in the Desert” and “Avalon Hideaway”
“Asleep in the Desert” may be an instrumental, but it did manage to squeeze in one play in September of 1980. That track is tied with “Avalon Hideaway” for least-played, which got its one shot in October of 1981. (“Snappy Kakkie” is the only song from Tejas to not yet see a set list.) And then there’s “Arrested for Driving While Blind” at No. 1 with 177 plays — not bad, but nothing compared to other ZZ tracks. “It’s fair to say that this is a transitional record,” Gibbons would later recall, “although I’m not really sure what we were transitioning from and what we were becoming.”
Album: Deguello (1979) Most-played: “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” Least-played: “Lowdown in the Street”
We have to assume ZZ Top isn’t doing this on purpose but yet again, here’s an album where only one song has never been played live, this time in the form of “Esther Be the One” from 1979’s Deguello. With 20 plays to its name, “Lowdown in the Street” takes the title then for least-played, while “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” has racked up a hefty 1,320 performances. That phrase popped into Gibbons’ head many years ago while leaving a gig with a friend. “He and I stumbled out of the Vulcan Gas Company, a nightclub in Austin. We’d just seen Freddie King,” Gibbons explained to Guitar World in 2008. “And we were searching for a phrase that would sum it up. He said, ‘Man he’s bad.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, he’s nationwide.'”
Album: El Loco (1981) Most-played: “Tube Snake Boogie” Least-played: Tie Between “Don’t Tease Me” and “I Wanna Drive You Home”
El Loco is where ZZ Top started dipping their toes into using synthesizers in their music. “Linden [Hudson, who plays synths on the album but was left uncredited] had no fear and was eager to experiment in ways that would frighten most bands,” Gibbons recalled. “For us, there was no turning back.” Unfortunately, the lovely ballad “Leila” has not been played live, and neither has “It’s So Hard,” but there’s a tie for next least-played between “Don’t Tease Me” and “I Wanna Drive You Home,” each of which have been played nine times. “Tube Snake Boogie” has gathered up 864 plays — tube snake is, apparently, lingo for a surfboard.
Out of all of ZZ Top’s albums, 1983’s Eliminator is the most commercially successful — it’s got not just one or two hit singles, but four of them. Three songs from this release have never been played live, “Thug,” “Dirty Dog” and “If I Could Only Flag Her Down,” making “Bad Girl” the next least-played with three performances. At the top of the list is “Sharp Dressed Man” with 1,706 plays, which means it’s the fourth most-played song of ZZ Top’s entire catalog.
Fans of “Woke Up with Wood,” “I Got the Message” and “Dipping Low (In the Lap of Luxury)” from 1985’s Afterburner have never gotten to hear those songs live. “Delirious” is the least-played then with 17 performances, most of them in 2011 for some reason. Then you have “Rough Boy” at the No. 1 spot with 295 plays. “‘Rough Boy’ is a pretty li’l song,” Dusty Hill said to The Oklahoman in 2007. “We’re doin’ it this tour. We pulled it back out. I like that song so much, I had it played at my wedding.”
Recycler is where ZZ Top started shifting back toward a looser feel, away from polished synthesizers — Gibbons would later refer toRecycler as “our Tres Hombres/Eliminator album.” “Penthouse Eyes” only has three plays to its name, which is still more than the zero “Decision or Collision” has. The clear winner here for most-played is “My Head’s in Mississippi,” which has been played a whopping 965 times, a track that Gibbons called “a great example of how we mixed the new with the old.”
Album: Antenna (1994) Most-played: “Pincushion” Least-played: “Cover Your Rig”
Four songs from 1994’s Antenna have never been played live, but most of them hover around 50 plays a piece. The exceptions are “Cover Your Rig,” which managed to squeak in two plays, both in 1994, and “Pincushion,” which has accumulated 945 plays. Interestingly, “Cover Your Rig” was more or less the catalyst for the whole album, with the band hitting on it early in the sessions — “after we did that we saw the direction to take,” Gibbons told Mojo back then.
Album: Rhythmeen (1996) Most-played: “Vincent Price Blues” Least-played: Tie Between “Black Fly,” “Hairdresser” and “Zipper Job”
Rhythmeen marks the last album ZZ Top would make with their longtime producer Bill Ham. Interestingly, it’s the last four tracks of the album that have never seen a set list: “My Mind Is Gone,” “Loaded,” “Prettyhead” and “Hummbucking, Pt. 2.” Meanwhile, there’s a three-way tie for next least-played between “Black Fly,” “Hairdresser” and “Zipper Job,” each of which have been played once. Even the album’s most-played song, “Vincent Price Blues,” only has 129 performances under its belt — small potatoes compared to others on this list.
Album: XXX (1999) Most-played: “Fearless Boogie” Least-played: “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear” by Elvis Presley
Back in 2015, UCR wrote about ZZ Top’s 1999 release XXX, describing it as “a wrongly overlooked, dirty little comet of an album.” Generally speaking, the album didn’t wildly impress or wildly disappoint. As The Austin Chronicle put it: “This is the 1999 model: millennium blues — slick, steely, modern.” Not many songs from this album have been played. At the bottom of the list with 9 plays is a cover of Elvis Presley‘s “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear.” The most-played is “Fearless Boogie,” which has gotten a small but mighty 37 performances.
This will sound crazy but only two songs from 2003’s Mescalero have been played live: “Buck Nekkid” and “Piece.” In other words, those are also the most and least-played songs from the album, respectively. If you like ZZ Top songs with Hill on lead vocals, you’ll dig “Piece.”
Album: La Futura (2012) Most-played: “I Gotsta Get Paid” Least-played: “Heartache in Blue”
It’s almost like a rock ‘n’ roll rite of passage to make at least one album with Rick Rubin. ZZ Top’s was 2012’s La Futura. “When we got together with Rick Rubin, he said, ‘My idea of ZZ Top is three guys playing together at the same time with the red light turned on,'” Gibbons recalled to MusicRadar that year. “That sounded just right to us.” Only four of the album’s 10 tracks have been played live: “I Gotsta Get Paid” (865 plays), “Chartreuse” (406), “Flyin’ High” (227) and “Heartache in Blue” (42).
Ranking Every ZZ Top Album
From the first album to ‘La Futura,’ we check out the Little ‘ol Band From Texas’ studio records.
Sixx:A.M. have merged songs from their 2016 albums Prayers for the Damned and Prayers for the Blessed into a collector’s edition, which arrives on Jun. 6.
Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx, former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ashba and singer-producer James Michael have included new versions of their songs “Maybe It’s Time” and “Prayers for the Damned” and an alternative mix of “We Will Not Go Quietly” to the collection.
Titled Prayers for the Damned & Blessed, a limited-edition option is presented in a smoke-colored 3LP set, and the set will also be available via streaming platforms.
“Over the years, the trio toured the globe and released six studio albums, a live album, multiple hit singles, including ‘Life Is Beautiful,’ ‘Stars,’ ‘Lies of the Beautiful People’ and from ‘Maybe It’s Time,’” Endurance Music Group said in a press release.
“SIXX:A.M. announced their hiatus in 2021, marking the end of an era for the band. With over 500 million streams across digital platforms, their music continues to resonate with fans worldwide. As the first time both original albums have been available on vinyl in years, this is a must-have for collectors of rock history and fans alike.”
