the best of britain’s best rock magazine
the ANNUAL Rock’n’Roll 12 months of
high-voltage
Starring
Slash, Thin Lizzy, Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Iron Maiden, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Def Leppard, T.Rex, Queen, Judas Priest, The Damned, Rainbow, Saxon, The Yardbirds, The Who
Volume 2
Digital Edition
& More!
Rejoining Guns N’ Roses; Lemmy’s last days; the #MeToo minefield; the difficulty of being Slash; talking to your kids about drugs… For someone who is “not a good speaker in general”, he has a lot to say – and he talks exclusively to Classic Rock.
Y
ou know where you are? You’re in Bordeaux, baby – and it’s fuck-all like the jungle. “These have got to be the happiest, most chilled-out French people I’ve ever met,” says Slash, looking out of the window of the hotel. “There were people out drinking in the streets until four in the morning. It’s like no one’s got work to go to.” It’s midweek in the wine capital of the world, and in the bars of Bordeaux the French are cheering as Germany get knocked out of a World Cup that France will later win. This is the latest stop-over for what is literally the biggest show on earth: Guns N’ Roses’ Not In This Lifetime tour. Back in April, Billboard revealed that the band’s reunion tour was the fourth-biggest tour of all time – grossing $480 million so far. That was before they played 19 shows across Europe this summer. It’s been a while since we caught up with him – four years, in fact – and we’re here to find out what’s going on in the world of Slash. Because so much has happened in the intervening years. In 18 months between 201416 he played more than 150 gigs all over the world. His former Velvet Revolver bandmate Scott Weiland died. Chris Cornell, who sang on Slash’s debut album, killed himself. David Bowie, who Slash
Words: Scott Rowley Portraits: Ross Halfin
first met aged eight, died. Lemmy, a long-time close friend, passed away after a long battle. In his personal life, Slash got divorced from his wife of 13 years, Perla, and rekindled a relationship with a woman he went out with when he was 25. Oh, and somewhere along the way Guns N’ fuckin Roses got back together. Slash, the master of understatement, Mr LaidBack himself shrugs. “I’ve been busy,” he says.
T
here are people who are worried about our conversation. Before I can speak to Slash I have to sign a contract that says that if anything goes wrong – if some kind of shit hits the fan because of what I write – and GN’R lose money, then Classic Rock carries the can. This is no small thing when you’re dealing with the fourthbiggest-earning tour of all time. There is paranoia around. The Not In This Lifetime tour took a lifetime to put together, and no one wants to be the one to fuck it up. You might not have noticed, but Guns N’ Roses haven’t really talked to anyone since they re-formed. They haven’t done an interview. Now Slash has a solo album coming, and so the burden has fallen to him. What will be said? What if I ask the tough questions? What if I make things awkward, open old GN’R wounds?
And then there’s Slash. By his own admission, he’s not much of a talker. “I’m definitely not any kind of orator,” he says. “I don’t, er, I don’t want to be somebody… I can’t. I’m just not a good speaker in general, as far as like being someone who has a lot to communicate verbally. It’s just not my thing.” Does that frustrate him? “I don’t know, maybe,” he says. Then, fuck it, he changes his mind: “No, I don’t give a shit.” Does he take that frustration and channel it into his guitar playing? “Yeah, I mean, guitar playing is that for me; it’s an extension of myself, it’s a way to express myself that I can’t do in any other sort of arena. The guitar is a release for me. “I just love the fact that I can go and play every day. I do have frustrations in the fact that I cannot fucking put up a good fucking verbal argument with anybody for any length of time, but I just don’t have it in me,” he says, and his lips go into a sneer. “But I could knock you about with a guitar for a little bit.” In conversation, Slash can seem cagey, maybe even distrustful – a guy who keeps his cards close to his chest. With his reckless years behind him – and his were far more reckless than most – you might even think that sober Slash is a bit of a control freak; a private guy who doesn’t give up much of himself.
“Having an opportunity to go out and play… the fact that I’m able to do what it is that I love to do, that’s living the dream.”
classicrockmagazine.com 7
Features
84 Thin Lizzy
6 Slash
90 Girlschool
On rejoining Guns N’ Roses, Lemmy’s last days, the #MeToo minefield, the difficulty of being Slash and so much more.
They rocked hard on record, and caused mayhem with Motörhead. This is their story.
17 Mark Tremonti
94 Tony Iommi
Alter Bridge guitar slinger Mark Tremonti on crap jobs, obsessed fans, losing an appendage and having an extra one.
Never give up. Ghosts exist. The 90s weren’t fun… The Black Sabbath guitarist on what his eventful life has taught him.
18 Scorpions
97 The BellRays
They thought it was all over. Then the ‘farewell tour’ turned out to be rather fun, so they’ve carried on a bit…
22 Fleetwood Mac
They were just another rock band, then they released Jailbreak and joined the A-listers. Now they had to stay there.
Lisa Kekaula on pain relief and making grown men cry.
98 David Bowie
Mick Fleetwood takes us through his band’s early blues years.
The making of Pin Ups, Bowie’s album of covers. “People say it was just a stopgap album, but it was a genius idea.”
28 Foo Fighters
102 The Damned
Dave Grohl was supposed to spend 2017 taking some time out. He didn’t. Instead he ended up with a new Foos album.
The punk icons have returned with a commanding new album. But there’s a lot more to The Damned than you might think…
32 Saxon
105 Stewart Copeland
38 Queen
106 Debbie Harry
Doctor Brian May on his “just out of this world” life and times.
After more than 40 years in the industry she’s still a rock role model – and a champion of young female talent.
42 Tom Petty
108 Judas Priest
How with grit, determination, great songs and classic albums, in the 80s they became the flag-carrying kings of heavy metal.
Jaan Uhelszki looks back at the life, times and music of one of the great American songwriters of the past 40 years.
48 The Wildhearts
A bunch of dysfunctional no-hopers fighting grunge, whose debut Earth Vs The Wildhearts was a masterpiece.
54 Joan Jett
How a teenage Runaway turned into a grown-up luminary for music with attitude.
59 Michael Schenker
“Embrace everything,” says the guitar icon. Although that doesn’t include his Scorpions guitarist brother Rudolf.
The former Police man on Policemania, his new band Gizmodrome, punk, polo and crying at TV ads.
“We are the most relevant metal band in the world today,” says frontman Rob Halford.
112 T.Rex
Producer Tony Visconti recalls his time in the studio with Marc Bolan and co. recording the classic Tanx and The Slider albums.
116 The Yardbirds
They had Eric Clapton. They had Jeff Beck. They had Jimmy Page. Without The Yardbirds there would be no Led Zeppelin…
125 Nils Lofgren
The veteran sideman on back-flips and the meaning of life.
60 Bruce Dickinson
126 Def Leppard
As he published his autobiography, the Iron Maiden frontman sat down for the Classic Rock interrogation.
The first forty years of Sheffield’s finest. By Joe Elliott, Rick Savage, Rick Allen, Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell.
64 Wishbone Ash
138 The Who
They conquered both sides of the Atlantic. The band’s members recall the highs, and reflect on where it all went wrong.
“I just wanted to be louder than anyone else.” Remembering John Entwistle, The Who’s not so quiet Quiet One.
72 Bruce Springsteen
146 Soundgarden
We trace the road to the Boss’s glory days.
79 Derek Smalls
The Spinal Tap bass player answers life’s big questions
getty images
80 Queens Of The Stone Age
We look back on Josh Homme and co. and their trail of nudity, narcotics, pyromania and madness. And some great music.
From superunknowns to grunge godfathers, from their acrimonious split to their imperious re-formation, to their sudden, tragic end, this is the inside story of a band apart.
156 Rainbow & Dio
One of Deep Purple’s greatest offshoots brought one of rock’s greatest singers to our attention.
159 Beth Hart
The singer on Jeff Beck, death and the “miracle” of life.
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers in 1979: (l-r) Ron Blair, Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Stan Lynch.
what he could do if they just applied some hard While seemingly affable, he was a little more “But I hate being misunderstood. I hate it when work. Like he had. complicated than that. For one, he didn’t suffer people get things wrong. I’ve seen people get lyrics When he was inducted into the Songwriters fools gladly. I once had the temerity to ask if his wrong and that drives me nuts. I’ve seen them Hall Of Fame in 2016, along with Nile Rodgers, current album were a colour, what it would be. read their own meanings into things that are such Lionel Richie, Elvis Costello and Wild Thing He narrowed his icy blue eyes and said more than nonsense. I shouldn’t care about that, but I do.” composer Chip Taylor, he looked bemused, a little impatiently. “I don’t think it’d be one. It’d Excessive drinkers were also on his hit list. telling the audience, “I’m sort be a whole bunch of colours. “I can’t stand drunks. I really have a distaste for of the rock’n’roll white trash Each song is a different people who are drunk. I don’t like drinking, section of this show.” colour and different shades. which has probably not been the best thing in While all the other There would be a lot of silver the world for me.” recipients went on about in it though.” Back in 2006, he said: “I can’t say I don’t take how they wrote songs, why I should have left it there. drugs. That’s really a good place to get to, and I’m they wrote songs, peppering I didn’t. “Because it’s sleek trying to get there. I’ve been such a nut I wonder their stories with slightly and it’s a vehicle?” sometimes how long I’m gonna live. My kids call inappropriate admissions and “Maybe. I don’t know. Now me the pirate. I’ve lived hard and gotten a lot out self-aggrandising jokes, Petty my bullshit meter is going of life. I sure took an adult portion.” Tom Petty kept his speech at a lean two really high,” he said flatly, Some might say it was self-medication. And minutes, telling the audience that the world really a clear indicator that it was time to back off. he had every right to it, given his tumultuous doesn’t need any more songs. But to his great credit, he never claimed to be childhood. “I haven’t had a life like other people “If no one ever wrote another song, we’d be fine, perfect. “What bugs me? Waiting on people drives have. I never felt safe as a child. I grew up in you know? There are plenty of songs. But I still do me insane. I didn’t [just] write that song. I am very a redneck household and I always hated it,” he it, because I love it and it’s a gift. It’s not something punctual,” he laughed. everybody can do. Well, everybody can do it, but He had very little sense of they can’t do it good.” humour when, for example, Which is as close as he’d come to admitting there people thought the key line of was something extraordinary about what he did. Into The Great Wide Open was ‘a rebel without shampoo’. “It’s nice here was something endearing in Petty’s if people get the songs,” he said. humility. He always took great pains to show his humanity, confiding that he couldn’t fall asleep without the TV on, that the only thing that could ever really calm him down was a walk along the Pacific Ocean, or that he really Mudcrutch in 1974: (l-r) would love to fish again – all things that Mike Campbell, Tom Petty, Randall Marsh, Tom Leadon. would soothe his forever‑restless spirit.
“I’ve lived hard and gotten a lot out of life. I sure took an adult portion.”
44 classicrockmagazine.com
main: Adrian Boot; inset: getty
T
tom petty The Stars Pay Tribute This is shocking, crushing news. I thought the world of Tom. He was great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.
Bob Dylan
So sad about Tom Petty, he made some great music. Thoughts are with his family.
Mick Jagger
I’m crushed over the loss of one of my great influences.
Jon Bon Jovi
Petty being inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame, June 9, 2016, New York City.
Tom was an honest renegade, a rebel and a true original. I read that he only really felt himself in the studio or on the road, and to that I can only relate.
Alice Cooper
I feel like today, the music truly died. This is unbearable. A great music hero has passed. Tom brought us so much joy.
Mutual admiration: Petty and Bob Dylan in 1986.
revealed in 2012. “If you’re in an Sheryl Crow abusive situation – my dad was very verbally abusive – you need Such a wonderful talent a safe place. I took refuge in music. and super guy. David Coverdale Rock’n’roll was my safe place.” What he never could say to Earl Tom Petty I can’t believe we have lost Petty he funnelled into his songs, Tom Petty. My love to his wife and children and the entire he next year, he convinced creating a world where if he didn’t Although that mission really Heartbreaker family. his mother to buy him feel safe, he certainly felt in control. started back in 1961, when at the Peter Frampton his first guitar, and then on February I Won’t Back Down, Don’t Do Me age of 11, he met Elvis on the set of Through his work with the 9, 1964, like countless other teenagers, he saw Like That, Into The Great Wide Open Follow That Dream in Crystal River, Heartbreakers and the Traveling The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and began and I Need To Know speak volumes Florida. That encounter set his preWilburys he’s left us with an making his own plans. “That was my way out. about the necessity of living life teen aspirations on fire (revisited in incredible legacy to enjoy forever. It’s such a shame he has left us There was a way to do it,” he said to Paul Zollo on his own terms, even if he was his own Running Down A Dream). way before his time. in Conversations With Tom Petty. inventing it along the way. “To be truthful, I didn’t really Joe Elliott He did it in not-so-gradual stages, beginning his “You think I don’t know meet Elvis, but I did stand really career in the Epics with high school friend Tom I’m a control freak?” he asked close to him,” he confessed later. Thank you for giving so much, a lifetime of inspiration and Leadon. With the inclusion of Mike Campbell, in 2012, raising a speculative “I had an uncle who was in the love. Your music has changed his roommate Randall Marsh and the three-yearseyebrow. “I admit it. I’m film business locally – he would this world for the better. younger Benmont Tench, they became Mudcrutch, a ridiculous control freak.” shoot and develop film. My aunt Ryan Adams a band Petty said were “The Beatles of Gainesville.” What do you need to control asked me, ‘How would you like to Dear Tom, so sad to hear of But even that wasn’t enough. In 1974, Tom more than anything? “Myself,” he go see Elvis Presley?’ I said, ‘Wow, his passing. What a lovely, Leadon’s elder brother Bernie (Eagles, Flying said. “The hardest thing to control Elvis Presley!’ but then I would have intelligent and talented man he was. Love to his family. Burrito Brothers) convinced them that the is myself, and I’m working on that.” gone to see anyone famous who Paul McCartney streets of LA were paved with recording Despite appearing to be one was a big deal. contracts, so they sent out a scouting party of the more balanced celebrities, “It was everything you thought We are heartbroken beyond words. Tom’s music has been to check out whether he was right. there was something about Petty it would be: this huge ordeal on the a huge part of our lives. Within days of arriving, Petty was that was unknowable. street, with hundreds of people and Nickelback pumping fistfuls of change into a pay “Okay, I’m not really all screaming girls and police holding Tom Petty gone? phone at the corner of La that balanced,” he explained. them back. We were taken in the That’s just so wrong. Brea and Sunset in LA, cold“People see me as normal. I’m back where there were all these Stephen King calling record companies not, really. I think I’m very trailers, which now is very normal from a list of phone numbers complicated. I mean, what to me, but at the time it looked Hearing the news of Tom Petty leaving us was like a knife found propitiously on the does it say about me that I feel very strange. We just stood there, shooting straight through my floor of the phone booth. By more comfortable onstage and this line of white Cadillacs heart. I can’t believe he’s gone. the time they were ready to than I do off? Life is much more pulled in. These guys were getting Nancy Wilson return to Gainesville, they had complicated than a rock’n’roll set.” out. Most of them had those shiny I’m sure going to miss you. not one but two offers from Even from the earliest mohair suits and pompadours. As Ringo Starr labels, eventually resulting in photographs, you always had the each one got out I would ask my their self-titled debut on Shelter Records sense that Petty thought he was aunt, ‘Is that him?’ And she would and a gradual rise to the top echelon of getting away with something, daring you to call say, ‘No that’s not him.’ Eventually he pulled up American rock bands. him out. You can see it in the photo on the cover in his Cadillac and got out. I didn’t have to ask. There was something uniquely of Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, his 1976 debut There was no doubt about it. He was about the real about Tom Petty And The album. The knowing half-smirk, half-sullen stare best-looking thing I’d ever seen. He walked up and Heartbreakers. They held up a fractured mirror for from his pale eyes, Dressed in a new black leather my uncle said, ‘Hey, Elvis, this is my nephew and the rest of us, a mirror that actually reflected back jacket, a string of bullets slung across one shoulder my niece.’ He looked at us and kind of smiled and some less-favourable angles. You believed that he like Pancho Villa, a penumbra of smoke encasing nodded and went in his trailer. It was so, so cool. actually suffered some of the same indignities and his blond head, the Florida native was on a mission, “After that day I never thought about much frustrations as everyone else, and had to think and it was clear he had just got started. else but rock’n’roll. It certainly changed my life.”
“I’m told I’m running too fast. But I always will, probably.”
getty x2
T
classicrockmagazine.com 45
Taking a break from the sound-check at the Electric Ballroom, Atlanta, Georgia, August 22, 1975.
Part One:
Jersey Boy
“All I saw when I was a kid was showmen. The doo-wop guys, Sam & Dave – these people who believed the show was a tool of communication. It was a joy, and part of the fun was getting dressed up in your suit, going on and doing some clowning, some preaching, making the band so tight and knocking the songs into one another with such a furious pace that the audience couldn’t catch their breath. You left them exhausted and exhilarated.” – Bruce Springsteen to me, April 2009 The first time Springsteen played to a paying audience was in 1964, at the Freehold Elks Club. He was not yet 16 and, armed with the electric guitar and amp he’d sold his pool table to buy, had joined a group of other fresh-faced kids from the neighbourhood in a fledgling band they called The Rogues. That debut at Elks was a Sunday matinee show for local teenagers. The Rogues played for free, and Springsteen sang their centrepiece song Twist And Shout that he’d just heard The Beatles doing. Born into a blue-collar family and raised in
“I was considered toxic at the microphone.”
74 classicrockmagazine.com
getty
the room feels uneasy. That’s my responsibility… I am in and out of myself for a while in a most unpleasant way. I can feel myself caring too much, thinking too much. “At the time I found the evening so disconcerting that I never viewed the concert film until 2004. When I did, I found out… it was a great document of the band performing in all its disco-suited, leather-jacketed, knit-hatted mid-70s glory.” On the night, almost everyone else had an altogether different view of this wired, wiry visitor from Freehold. And in time Springsteen would himself settle more comfortably into the new, larger-than-life character that he would have to become. Also, hard-won experience would give him a firmer grip on the mighty forces he was able to command on stage. For now, though, and for all the miles he had already then travelled, he was still just fitting into his own skin, shaking the dust from off his shoes and getting ready for the last-chance power drive he was about to take to a distant horizon, to where greatness and even possible immortality might lie.
the then economically impoverished borough of Freehold, Springsteen had first got the rock’n’roll bug after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. Right then he’d begged his mum to get him a guitar, an acoustic. He got one. Eight years later The Beatles arrived in America like beings from outer space. “In 1964, there were no more magical words in the English language [than The] Beatles,” Springsteen wrote. “It didn’t take me long to figure out. I didn’t want to meet The Beatles. I wanted to BE The Beatles.” It wouldn’t be through The Rogues. The others kicked him out of the band soon after their Elks turn. Unbowed, Springsteen holed up in his bedroom for the next several months and taught himself to play lead guitar. He got good enough to sail through an audition for another, more proficient local group, The Castilles. A typical three-chord garage group of the period, they fashioned their covers set around The Beatles, Stones and other British Invasion bands such as The Who and The Kinks, with a smattering of Motown and R&B standards thrown in. The Castilles played at high-school dances, ice-rinks, cook-outs, basically anywhere and to anyone that would have them. It was their other guitarist, a strikingly good-looking lad called George Theiss, who sang lead vocals. Springsteen noted later: “I was considered toxic at the microphone.” Through various line-up changes, The Castilles soldiered on until August 1968. By then they were going in ever diminishing circles, and anyway a new musical wind had begun to blow in from across the Atlantic. A tougher, stranger brew, this soon supplanted the beat-group sound, and was summoned up by emerging guitar heroes such as Jimi Hendrix and his Experience, Eric Clapton in Cream, and Jeff Beck. Springsteen got himself a second-hand Gibson and bent with the times. “When I plugged it into my Danelectro amp, MAGIC!” he wrote. “The thick, chunky sound of Clapton’s psychedelic-painted SG came ripping out of me… and I was transported into another league.” Earlier on in that spring of 1968, a new club had opened up above a shoe shop just 15 miles east of Freehold in downtown Asbury Park, right out on the Shore. The Upstage Club was equipped with a full-throttle PA and stayed open after hours for ad-hoc jam sessions. It very quickly became a haven for the Shore’s emerging community of young musicians. Among the regulars were a wildlooking drummer called Vini Lopez and three other teenagers who would become inexorably tied to Springsteen: Danny Federici, Garry Tallent and an extrovert, motor-mouthed character in the habit of sporting an outsized polka-dot tie that stretched from his neck to the floor, named Steven Van Zandt. As an out-of-towner, Springsteen arrived at the Upstage as an unknown quantity, but he soon made an impression demonstrating his ability to nail Clapton and Beck’s licks. Following the demise of The Castilles and fresh out of high school, he formed a new band, Earth. A power trio along with two more Upstage regulars, bassist John Graham and drummer Michael Burke, they played around the clubs and bars, doing Hendrix and Cream tunes, until February 1969. At which point Springsteen brought together Lopez, organist Federici and former Castilles bassist Vinny Roslin (later to be replaced by Van Zandt) in a new outfit, initially named Child and then, when they discovered
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Part Two:
Blinded By The Light
Getty x2
The young troubadour, Bruce in 1973.
another band had taken that name, Steel Mill. In this latest incarnation, Springsteen started to write his first songs, which were of a crunching, sprawling, Allman Brothers-inspired type. Steel Mill also acquired a manager of sorts, Carl West. A transplanted Californian, West otherwise designed surfboards and was commonly known as ‘Tinker’ on account of his ability to fix anything mechanical. Tinker had the vision at least to extend his new charges’ boundaries from New Jersey south into nearby Virginia. By the end of ’69, and in spite of not having a record to their name, Steel Mill had built up enough of a following in their adopted state to draw 3,000 people to their semiregular concerts in Richmond, while back in Jersey they’d opened up for such heavyweights as Grand Funk Railroad and Iron Butterfly. At this point, Springsteen’s parents had moved cross-country to America’s West Coast so his father might find work. Bruce had had to move out of the family home and into West’s surfboard factory to skimp on rent. During the intervening period he had also grown up. From being a shy, pimpled adolescent, he now had long hair, a streaky frame and a hawkish handsomeness As Steel Mill burgeoned, he became a more overt performer too. From having stood stock-still, eyes trained often as not on the floor, now he came out of himself and took centre stage. Recalling a transformative show at the University of Richmond on November 20, 1969, West’s lieutenant, Billy Alexander, told Springsteen biographer Peter Ames Carlin: “The crowd was berserk, and Bruce just beaming. It was like he knew. He’d taken a massive step.” Steel Mill were getting paid up to 500 dollars a night on their stints around Virginia’s college auditoriums and gymnasiums, and they were home-town heroes too. But they were big fish in a small pool. They could play three, four times a year in each state, but no more for risk of exhausting demand. West told them he had connections on the psych-rock scene in San Francisco. So, convinced, and on the cusp of a new decade, they crammed into his Ford flatbed and
“I used to collect hotel room keys. Back in the day when we stayed in little Holiday Inns and they had plastic room keys. I stuck them on a piece of leather and occasionally I’d look through them to see where I’d been.” – Bruce Springsteen to me, April 2009 Back in Jersey in January 1971, Springsteen disbanded Steel Mill. He next moved quickly to assemble for himself the sort of multifaceted band that Morrison had and that Leon Russell had put together for Cocker. Out also went any pretence Springsteen might have had towards democracy. The Bruce Springsteen Band incorporated the talents of Van Zandt, Lopez and Tallent, plus David Sancious, a prodigiously gifted 16-yearold pianist whom Springsteen had happened across at the Upstage. Bulked out to a 10-piece by a horn section and a pair of girl backing singers, they debuted at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey on July 10, 1971. The very next night the played a gig opening for Humble Pie at the Shoreline. Altogether, this was Springsteen planting the seeds for his future music and the E Street Band. “Everybody talks now about the Jersey sound,” Lopez told writer Dave Marsh in 2006. Federici’s station wagon and made the three-day, “Well, that’s the beginning of it – the change non-stop drive to California in search of fresh from Steel Mill to that band, with the horns. pastures. When they got there they slept on the Nobody did that before – maybe they had living room floor of Springsteen’s parents’ small a sax player, but not a horn section.” San Mateo apartment and auditioned for gigs. “I wanted to incorporate the values of those old In part they were successful. They scored showmen,” Springsteen told a Tuesday night slot at me. “From the beginning, we venerable promoter Bill were a rock and soul band.” Graham’s starred Fillmore The disadvantage of West in downtown San this unwieldy set-up Francisco. Graham also quickly became apparent. funded a demo session, but That autumn, the Bruce ultimately nothing came of Springsteen Band returned it. But such was the plethora to Steel Mill’s old Richmond of bands fighting for a slice stomping grounds. But the of the Haight-Asbury action, cost of transport, meals and Steel Mill weren’t able to additional hotel rooms for make ends meet. Back East their extra numbers made they went, tails between it all but impossible for legs. More significantly, them to make the kind of and having sized up the money they’d made before. competition, Springsteen Springsteen decided to trim resolved that from now the group back to the core on he would need to do five-piece for their club and things differently. bar gigs, and save the horns “I was fast but, like the and backing singers for old gunslingers knew, showpiece events. there’s always somebody In September, the faster,” he wrote. “I would quintet began a residency have to push myself harder, at Asbury Park club the work with more intensity Student Prince that ended than the next guy just to up stretching to the end of survive untended in the ’71. On the first night the world I lived in.” place was near-empty, with For Steel Mill, the clock just 15 paying punters at was running down. most. But in another early Springsteen made another Performing at the Electric indicator of Springsteen’s visit out West to see his Ballroom, August 22, 1975. career trajectory, the gig parents for Christmas 1970 mushroomed through and into the New Year. On word of mouth. “The second week, we played to the local FM station, he heard Joe Cocker’s big30 music lovers,” Springsteen recalled in his book. band live album Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and Van “The week after that it was 80, then 125. We started Morrison’s similarly ordained His Band And The playing Fridays and Saturdays, then Wednesdays Street Choir. Obsessing over these twin melanges too – five 55-minute sets from 9pm to 3am and we of robust horns, slick R&B grooves and folk-rock were drawing 150 people, the club maximum. roots, he had found his way forward.
“I would have to push myself harder than the next guy just to survive untended in the world I lived in.”
classicrockmagazine.com 75
Twiggy and Bowie on the cover of Pin Ups. The photo was originally shot for Vogue magazine
After killing Ziggy and breaking up the band, David Bowie holed up in a French castle to record an album of fan-pleasing, critic-baiting 60s covers. This is the inside story of Pin Ups’ creation.
getty
I
Words: Bill DeMain
n July 1973, a week after announcing Ziggy Stardust’s retirement, haired androgynous alien). If the Rock ’N’ Roll Suicide finale at Hammersmith David Bowie flew to France to record an album of 60s-era cover didn’t make it clear enough, Bowie famously announced: “This is not only the versions. Although the resulting Pin Ups remains the dark horse of his last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do.” 1970s catalogue, it captures Bowie at his most relaxed, and his Explaining himself to the NME that summer, Bowie said of Ziggy: “The star right‑hand man Mick Ronson at the height of his powers. Even was created; he worked, and that’s all I wanted him to do. Anything he did Starmen need to come down to earth now and then. now would just be repetition, carrying it on to the death. Now he’s up there, Consider David Bowie’s gravity-defying release schedule of the early 1970s: there would be very little point in doing anything else with him.” Hunky Dory, December 1971. Ziggy Stardust, June 1972. Aladdin Sane, April 1973. If fans were shocked, imagine how the Spiders From Mars felt. Bowie’s Even by the standards of the era, that’s prolific. Then consider that all three are manager Tony Defries informed guitarist Mick Ronson and pianist Mike classics, two of them regulars on Greatest Albums round-ups. Then throw in Garson that they would be joining Bowie and producer Ken Scott the following constant touring, press and the day-to-day of trying to live up to lofty week for recording sessions in France. Drummer Woody Woodmansey was accolades such as “brilliant songwriter”, “darkling prophet” and “TS Eliot with fired – on the day of his wedding, in fact – and replaced by Aynsley Dunbar. a beat”. Bowie may not have been ready to ‘kick it in the “I was officiating at Woody’s wedding and had to tell head when he was twenty-five” (he was 26), but he sure him he was let go,” Bowie’s long-time pianist Mike needed a breather to recharge his creative batteries. Garson tells Classic Rock. “I felt terrible. He was my His idea of a break was a walk down Memory friend. They were all my friends. But it wasn’t a Lane – in this case Wardour Street in personal thing with David – it was his musical London’s Soho – to a time when he restlessness. He had to stretch his wings, just like when was a mod teen at the Marquee Diana Ross left The Supremes. These people have to go club, soaking up sounds by his on and do other things. Of course, we all take it favourite bands, such as The personally. Every album of David’s I didn’t play on, Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, I wish I played on. I took personally. But it was just him Them, The Yardbirds and saying: ‘This is the direction I’m going in now, The Who. Bowie planned what I’m hearing next.’” Mike Garson to repay the debt of “It was a dreadful way to let the band go,” Suzi inspiration with an Ronson tells Classic Rock. “David was so cold to have album of cover done it like that. It took Woody a long time to come versions. And really, he’d already been around, and I understand that completely. The Spiders were a fantastic band. indulging his fanboy tendencies with They didn’t deserve that.” homage songs to Warhol, Dylan and the Reportedly, an invitation was extended to Cream’s Jack Bruce to replace Velvets. There was also Let’s Spend The Night Trevor Bolder on bass, but Bruce declined and so Bolder stayed on. But it would Together on Aladdin Sane. Even the Ziggy be the final album for both him and Mick Ronson. On July 9, Bowie took the Stardust character was a kind of mash-up boat and train from London to Paris, then a limo to the Château d’Hérouville, tribute to Iggy Pop and Vince Taylor. an 18th-century castle outside the city that had been converted into a 16-track The vacation began on a dramatic note. On recording studio. “A studio where you could sleep, be fed, record on your own July 3, 1973, Bowie closed out an 18-month world schedule and never leave the premises?” says Garson. “That was an tour at Hammersmith Odeon. There had been unprecedented, amazing thing at the time. I loved it. It was a magical place.” triumphs along the way (two sold-out nights at n the outside world in July 1973, US President Richard Nixon’s Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, later turned Watergate scandal was deepening by the day, the Soviet Mars 5 space into a live album) and disappointments (more probe launched, and three separate commercial jets crashed in the than a few venues in America’s heartland were space of a month. Almost symbolically, legendary actress Veronica Lake, half-empty, audiences lukewarm to a flame-
“Those string parts that Mick Ronson wrote were magical. He was a terrific natural string writer.”
I
classicrockmagazine.com 99
john entwistle
142 classicrockmagazine.com
Tommy boys: Entwistle, Keith Moon and Pete Townshend with Tina Turner, Elton John and Ann-Margret, March 18, 1975.
unhinged and dysfunctional of bands, the very fact that he appeared to be relatively normal made him unique. Back home in England, Entwistle married Alison that summer. He had proposed on his twenty-first birthday. Entwistle’s dad was his best man, and afterwards the newlyweds went to live in the Ealing semi-detached – a marked contrast to the 400-year-old Berkshire country cottage and Georgian pile in leafy Twickenham that Daltrey and Townshend respectively had
“We didn’t have any money and then all of a sudden we had a lot, and it went to John’s head a little bit.” Alison Entwistle recently acquired for themselves. In this regard, Entwistle’s excesses came later. “In the downstairs cloakroom we had a twoway mirror and John liked black ceilings,” Alison Entwistle explains. “Apart from that we had a very traditional home, really. It would be horrible when he would have to go off on tour. We used to write letters to each other. He was a very romantic man.” Until the end of the 60s, The Who toured relentlessly, and when they weren’t on the road they were in the studio. Their next album, 1967’s The Who Sell Out, was made on the run and was a building block towards Townshend pulling off a full-blown concept album. The individual tracks were broken up by spoof radio jingles for products such as Medac acne cream and gleefully recorded by both Entwistle and Moon. Entwistle’s song for the record, Silas Stingy was as creepy as a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, and on the cover he appeared as his own comic book creation,
Tarzan-like in leopard-print furs, a Teddy Bear clutched in one hand, a blonde ‘Jane’ on the other. When next time around Townshend did deliver his grand rock opera, Tommy, Entwistle was able to immerse himself in that too, even though he confessed to having had “absolutely no idea” what the story of the deaf, dumb and blind kid was all about. When Townshend needed two songs to go with two of his most unpleasant characters, Tommy’s abusive ‘Uncle’ Ernie and bullying cousin Kevin, he turned to Entwistle for help. He got from him two tunes as jaunty-sounding as old-time music-hall standards, but stuffed full of lyrical horrors. “Pete felt he couldn’t write nearly as nasty as me,” Entwistle said of them. “So I wrote Fiddle About that evening, and Cousin Kevin I based on an old school chum of mine.” To great acclaim, The Who took Tommy out on tour, their soaring status symbolised by them graduating to playing sports arenas in America and later on opera houses in Europe and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The two principal gigs of the tour took place in a farmer’s field in upstate New York, and then in the poky refectory at Leeds University. The Woodstock Music & Art Fair went ahead on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm on the weekend of August 15-17, 1969. Having 400,000 people invade the site and with the provision of primitive facilities to sustain them, Yasgur’s land was turned into something as hellish as a combat zone. The Who took to the Woodstock stage in the pre-dawn hours of the third day, and followed a ragged set from Janis Joplin, and one of febrile, narcotic funk from Sly And The Family Stone that lifted the spirits of the by now exhausted mass of people. The Who proceeded to play like men possessed, which in a sense they were, since someone had spiked the backstage drinking water with acid. Daltrey later said it the worst show they ever played. Townshend had got Bob Pridden to record every date of the American tour for a planned live album, but then couldn’t be bothered to wade through the tapes. Instead, when they returned to England
getty
Since Townshend and Moon’s destructive tendencies towards their instruments – and in the case of Moon, inanimate objects in general – was proving so ruinously expensive, Kit Lambert was made to try to find a way to ease The Who’s financial burdens. One upshot of this was a publishing deal that he signed the four members to and that required each to write two songs for the band’s second album, A Quick One. Neither Daltrey nor Moon made too much of an effort, but Entwistle took this new challenge seriously. He wrote and recorded his first song, Whiskey Man, in the makeshift studio he had installed into the box bedroom of the house he’d bought in Ealing. A cautionary tale about the demon drink, it was a decent stab at the kind of gently psychedelic pop that was then in the ether. The other song Entwistle contributed to the album was something else entirely. “I still had one more number to write, so I went out and got drunk down the Scotch Club with Bill Wyman,” he said of its genesis. “We started talking about spiders and the way they frighten people, and that gave me the idea.” Boris The Spider emerged from the recesses of Entwistle’s mind as a freak show version of a basic four-four rocker. Against his own booming bass, he contemplated the titular spider climbing his bedroom wall, singing the choruses in a bronchial grunt that mimicked Spike Milligan’s Goon Show character Throat, and ended the song with poor Boris squashed with a hardback book. It proved to be the album’s most diverting moment, as sinister as it was hilarious. With A Quick One completed, Stamp and Lambert turned their attention to America, where there was real money to be made. The Who made their first trip across the Atlantic in the spring of 1967. They were to play a 10-day run of shows, five 30-minute slots daily at the RKO Theatre in New York City, on a bill that also included Mitch Ryder and another British band on their first US visit, Cream. Checking in to the Drake Hotel, roommates Entwistle and Moon giddily adapted to their new surroundings, ordering up bottles of vintage champagne and brandy, and platters of lobster and caviar, running up a massive roomservice bill. But that barely registered as The Who began to cut a swathe across the US. The New York residency won them rave reviews from the American rock press, and over on the opposite coast that June they vied with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin as the breakout stars at the first of the era’s defining open-air festivals, Monterey Pop. Out West they also made their US TV debut, on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a good-natured variety show hosted by a pair of genial folk satirists. At the finale of My Generation, Moon dynamited his drum kit, the explosion sending cymbal shrapnel slicing through his arm and causing bedlam in the TV studio. The senior Smothers, Tommy, attempting to restore calm and order, walked onto the stage set with his acoustic guitar, only to have Townshend snatch it from him, hurl it to the floor and put a foot through it for good measure. In the midst of the carnage, Entwistle alone seemed utterly nonplussed, standing apart from the others with a stoic, maybe even bored expression on his face. In the context of this most
Love, reign o’er me: John and Alison’s wedding on June 1, 1967.
rex/getty
9000
Entwistle’s band for his third solo album, 1973’s Rigor Mortis Sets In: (l-r) Graham Deakin, Tony Ashton, Entwistle, Eddie Jones.
two smaller-scale shows were hastily arranged for the purpose, at the universities of Hull and Leeds. When technical problems marred the former, it all fell to the latter to deliver. Rush released in May 1970, Live At Leeds captured The Who in full flight. Entwistle drove them from the front seat, his bass so imposing it made The Who sound heavy metal even before the term had begun to be widely used.
“They always called him the Quiet One, but he wasn’t. He could do far worse things than Keith.”
hile Townshend laboured over a follow-up to Tommy, Entwistle went off and made his first solo album, with Keith Moon tagging along to play drums. Smash Your Head Against The Wall – complete with a garish cover photo of Entwistle wearing a death mask transposed over an X-ray photo that showed the lungs of a terminally ill patient that he had somehow obtained from his doctor – was solid, straight-ahead rock with a side order of the bizarre. Included were songs titled Pick Me Up (Big Chicken) and Ted End. Back with The Who, he added the bawdy My Wife to what eventually became their most complete album, 1971’s Who’s Next, singing in a carefree manner: ‘I ain’t been home since Friday night, and now my wife’s coming after me/Give me police protection…’ Who’s Next and the tour for it were both huge successes, and at last riches poured into the band’s coffers. Entwistle indulged himself now, moving with Alison into a bigger house in Ealing and starting to collect cars – even though he didn’t have a driver’s licence – and other paraphernalia. They had a son, Christopher, whom he doted on, though he bemoaned the state of domesticity on songs such as Apron Strings and The Window Shopper on his so-so second solo album, 1972’s Whistle Rhymes. “We didn’t have any money and then all of a sudden we had a lot, and it went to John’s
head a little bit,” says Alison Entwistle. “He was absolutely reckless with money, would spend it like water. He wouldn’t go out and buy one pair of boots, but half a dozen at a time. When we first had Christopher, we had a nanny and there were times that I didn’t know where her wages were coming from. It was quite worrying. “They always called him the Quiet One, but he wasn’t. He could do far worse things than Keith, he really could, and depending upon how much he’d had to drink.” His music kept Entwistle focused and gave him a reason for being, but the reassuring routine and momentum of The Who’s early years began to wane, the gaps between albums and tours getting longer. He made two more solo albums in quick succession: Rigor Mortis Sets In in 1973 and Mad Dog, released in 1975, both knockabout pastiches of 50s rock’n’roll, neither of which was a hit. At the same time, the state of the band became more fractious, with distance and suspicion dividing them. Daltrey had their accounts audited and subsequently engineered the firing of managers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, both of whose approach to such things had long been haphazard. The more businesslike Bill Curbishley took over the reins, and gave Townshend scope to mount a second rock-opera, Quadrophenia, for which Entwistle spent weeks arranging horn parts.
Alison Entwistle
Touring that album in 1974, Townshend cut a wayward, antagonistic figure. The Who were trying out on-stage backing tapes, but the technology was new and liable to malfunction, which infuriated Townshend. Raging at one stop on the UK leg, he swung a hopeless punch at Daltrey, who responded with a single blow that knocked him out cold. Even Entwistle’s nerves got frayed. Frustrated one night by Daltrey’s compulsion to explain to audiences between songs the intricacies of the album’s plot, he snapped at the singer: “Fuck it, let’s play.” Following another show in Paris, he and Alison were enjoying a candlelit meal in their hotel suite when Moon burst in. The over-refreshed drummer helped himself to Entwistle’s steak and a bottle of vintage claret, reeled around the room, relieved himself on the carpet and then left. “John was so angry that he followed Keith back to his room and smashed it up,” Alison Entwistle remembers. Moon had passed out by then. When he came round the next morning and assumed he must have been responsible for the rampage, he meekly paid the bill for damages. Entwistle worked right alongside Townshend on The Who’s next project, the soundtrack for Ken Russell’s overblown film adaptation of Tommy, but neither he nor Moon were required much on set. “Dad always wanted to be on stage,” reflects Chris Entwistle. “That’s when he felt truly alive, and he lived for those times. He didn’t like the periods of inactivity. He loved to play and to show off.” n 1978, flush from the tour that followed the release of The Who By Numbers, Entwistle made his most extravagant purchase when he bought Quarwood, a 55-room hunting lodge set in 40 acres of Cotswolds countryside. Intended as a weekend retreat, he set about furnishing it to his own particular taste. Suits of armour lined the corridors and many of the rooms, and in one a skeleton reclined on a Regency chair. In the cavernous kitchen were three bird cages filled with squawking parrots, and an effigy of Quasimodo hung from a bell rope in the hall. “We went round the Cotswolds looking for houses together,” Alison Entwistle says. “John had wanted a country cottage, so you can see what I meant about him being reckless. Quarwood was a lovely house, but unmanageable at times. It classicrockmagazine.com 143