rock/metal rewind
Not Forgotten: The Band – Music From Big Pink
The Band are an acts whose heavyweight reputation promises far more than it actually delivers. For all the revisionist history since, in truth they only released two truly world class albums, Music From Big Pink and their eponymous second. That said, those two albums are probably responsible for influencing more Americana acts than anyone else …
Classic Album: Elton John – Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player
By the time of Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player, Elton John was one of the biggest musical stars on the planet, his writing partnership with Bernie Taupin being one of the most fertile on the early 70s. They were adaptable too, being able to run the gamut from simple pop, ballads and …
Not Forgotten: Supertramp – Breakfast in America
Breakfast in America is an album that simply shouldn’t have happened. Slightly smug, self satisfied prog-flecked radio-friendly rock by earnest men with beards should have been felled with the double blow of disco and punk, yet there Supertramp were in 1979, knee deep in gold records, releasing a string of hit singles that had conquered …
Not Forgotten: Roger Chapman – Chappo
Former Family man Roger Chapman didn’t exactly pick a prime time to start his solo career. Following his Family days, he formed a new band, Streetwalkers, who enjoyed modest success, but they didn’t experience the same level of success as Family had. By 1979 the Punk flame, although guttering, was at least still lit and …
A buyers’ guide to Queen
It’s often said that it’s always the quiet ones that you have to watch. Apparently no one ever told Freddie Mercury this, as for the best part of two decades he preened and strutted across the music industry as frontman of Queen, connecting with live audiences in a way that no one in rock music …
Not Forgotten – Deep Purple – Machine Head
The sixth studio album of their career, and the third by their much celebrated Mk2 line up, Deep Purple were very much in the ascendant when they set out to record Machine Head. While there had certainly been distractions in the form of a major line up change and Jon Lord’s much celebrated Concerto for …
A buyers’ guide to AC/DC 1975 – 1981
There is a school of thought that you don’t actually need to know what an individual AC/DC album sounds like, you just need to know if it’s any good… If there is one band that stuck to a formula throughout their career, then it’s AC/DC. Hell, even Status Quo transitioned from their Carnaby Street phase …
Not Forgotten: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Damn the Torpedoes
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are one of the great rock and roll bands of the American Heartland. Every bit as accessible as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, they’re huge in the USA, yet they have always had oddly inconsistent commercial success in the UK. This is really rather odd, as Tom Petty …
Not Forgotten – Mick Ronson – Slaughter on 10th Avenue
I will always argue that Mick Ronson is always massively short changed in any assessment of the career of David Bowie. Without Ronson’s arrangement acumen, iconic guitar heroics and unerring sense for what made for great rock and roll dynamics, Bowie would have been little more than a cult artist, rather than the international mega …
Not Forgotten: Robert Wyatt – Rock Bottom
Rock Bottom is an album that many have attempted to emulate over the years, but few have succeeded. The genesis of the album’s creation, delayed by Wyatt’s accident that led him to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair and its subsequent reputation as an avant-garde classic, is well documented and this album …