SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION
4 0 Y E A R S O N : A C E L E B R AT I O N
ISSUE 273
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AC/DC
“The whole Back In Black album was our dedication to Bon.”
APRIL 2020 ISSUE 273
Features 26 AC/DC
The death of their frontman Bon Scott in February 1980 looked like it might have dealt a fatal blow to the band as well. But they got a new singer, and made a career-rejuvenating record that became the biggest-selling rock album of all time: Back In Black.
38 Phil Carson
When he signed AC/DC to Atlantic Records for 25,000 dollars for the rights to 15 albums, he might well have made the deal of the century.
42 Joni Mitchell
Released 50 years ago, Ladies Of The Canyon marked the moment when she went from folk princess to pop star, while setting the pace for the entire singer-songwriter movement.
48 Steve Howe
He could have been known only as the guitarist with protopsychedelic Brit-rockers Tomorrow. Instead he joined Yes, and began a long career as a member of prog royalty. All this and more in the Classic Rock Interview.
56 Kiss
They broke out of the New York City clubs in 1974, determined to become huge. But it would be a long, hard slog before the rest of America paid attention.
62 Big Boy Bloater
R&B journeyman Big Boy Bloater reflects on the merits of dangerous music, breaking the speed limit in a hearse, and why having to deal with angry drunks can be a good thing.
64 When Goth Went Metal
In the second part of Classic Rock’s epic oral history of goth, we look at the rise of goth metal, which saw some early goths elbowed into the margins or disappearing completely, their thunder stolen by goth-leaning arrivals from the metal world.
72 Krokus
ROBERT ALFORD
Heading for glory in the 80s, they skidded out of the fast lane due to inflated ego, divisive management and white-line fever. Now, after 45 years, they’re parking the tour bus for good.
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Regulars 10 The Dirt
Kiss
Aerosmith ban their drummer from playing with the band… Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson thank fans for their Neil Peart love.… Soundgarden respond to Chris Cornell’s widow in a dispute… Speculation over a Genesis reunion rears its head – again… Welcome back Gotthard, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and Maria McKee… Say hello to Station and Naked Six… Say goodbye to Andy Gill, Ivan Král, Reed Mullin…
“When you’re immersed in success, it’s a new world with no rules.”
20 The Stories Behind The Songs Dio
Not just a good song, Rainbow In The Dark was part of an album that Ronnie Dio said was “one of the proudest things I’ve ever done”.
22 Q&A Steve Harley
The singer, songwriter, actor and more on folk clubs, never giving up, pop stardom and the problem with guitarists.
24 Six Things You Need To Know About… Blackwater Conspiracy Meet Northern Ireland’s maestros of southern-fried rock’n’roll – with one foot in their local roots.
81 Reviews
New albums from Ozzy Osbourne, Stone Temple Pilots, Biff Byford, Supersuckers, Wishbone Ash, Sepultura, Therapy?, Greg Dulli, Steve Harley… Reissues from Robert Plant, T.Rex, Status Quo, Dio, Bruce Springsteen, Bad Company, Jethro Tull, Rory Gallagher, Humble Pie… DVDs, films and books on 10cc, The Doors, 70s UK progressive rock, Monsters Of Rock festival, the Rolling Stones… Live reviews of Monster Magnet, Girlschool, The Hu, Tedeschi Trucks Band, John Cale, Blackberry Smoke…
98 Buyer’s Guide The Kinks
Which albums to go for if you’re looking to dip a toe into the catalogue of a band who wrote some of the most enduring songs of the 60s.
101 Live Previews
Must-see gigs from the Testament/Exodus/Death Angel package, Country To Country Festival, William DuVall, Fish and The Night Flight Orchestra. Plus full gig listings – find out who’s playing where and when.
122 The Soundtrack Of My Life Erik Grönwall
The H.e.a.t frontman on the special records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance to him.
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Thank you and good night. Reed Mullin
February 12, 1966 – January 27, 2020
A much-loved character in the metal community, Reed Mullin was the drummer with North Carolina-based band Corrosion Of Conformity. From their inception in the mid-1980s, the band played a variety of styles, beginning as a hardcore punk act and later developing southern rock strains. No cause of death has been confirmed. He was 53.
David Olney
March 23, 1948 – January 18, 2020
The worlds of folk and Americana have voiced shock and sadness after noted singer and songwriter David Olney, 71, passed away on stage during a gig in Florida. He had suffered a heart attack. Olney was cited as an influence by Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt and Emmylou Harris, all of whom covered his songs, as did Linda Ronstadt.
Marty Grebb
September 2, 1945 – January 1, 2020
Marty Grebb’s dexterity as a guitarist, keyboard player and saxophonist led him to the band The Buckinghams during the 60s, before he had a career as a producer, arranger and backing musician for artists including Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, JJ Cale and Chicago. Cause of death of the 74-year-old is as-yet unknown.
Sean Reinert
Chris Darrow July 30, 1944 – January 15, 2020 South Dakota-born multi-instrumentalist Chris Darrow was a member of the American country act the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (whose members over the years have included Jackson Browne and Bernie Leadon), also of The Corvettes who backed Linda Ronstadt. The 75-year-old died of complications following a stroke. Joe Payne Died January 24, 2020 Fear Factory’s Dino Cazares described his former Divine Heresy collaborator as “a great friend, a great band member and an incredible musician”, adding: “At 35 he is another one gone way too young.” Cause of death is still unknown. Wes Wilson July 15, 1937 – January 24, 2020 You may not know Wes Wilson’s name, but you’ll have seen some of the iconic gig posters that he designed for Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Beatles among others. The 82-year-old’s death was due to cancer.
Andy Gill
January 1, 1956 – February 1, 2020 Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers is one of many to pay tribute to the Gang Of Four guitarist and noted record producer who succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 64. Mancunian Gill co-founded Gang Of Four in 1976, and they released their seminal debut, Entertainment!, three years later. Gill’s slashing, volume-charged guitar was at the forefront of the group’s style as they spearheaded the movement known as post-punk. The group’s line-up changed often, but Gill was the sole original member throughout. Although GOF had just completed an extensive fortiethanniversary tour, Gill was already planning their next outing from his hospital bed. He also produced records for artists including the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the
Jesus Lizard, The Stranglers, Killing Joke, Therapy?, the Young Knives and former INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. The news of his passing, announced in a statement posted at the Gang Of Four’s official Twitter account, read: “Our great friend and Supreme Leader has died today. Andy’s final tour in November was the only way he was ever really going to bow out; with a Stratocaster around his neck, screaming with feedback and deafening the front row.” Flea wrote on Instagram that Gill “was one of my heroes”, while Gary Numan called him “a unique talent”, and Tom Morello singled out Gill as “one of my principal influences”, praising his “incendiary art and wry wit”. DL
May 27, 1971 – January 24, 2020
Best known as the drummer with progressive-metal band Cynic, Sean Reinert also played with death-metal band Death during the 1990s and more recently was a member of alternative rockers Æon Spoke. Mike Portnoy expressed his “absolute shock” at the loss of the 48-year-old. Cause of the death had not been given as this issue went to press.
Jack Scott
January 24, 1936 – December 12, 2019
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Ivan Král
May 12, 1948 – February 2, 2020 The former guitar player with the Patti Smith Group has lost his battle with cancer at the age of 71. Ivan Král played on Smith’s first four albums, helping to transform them from poetry-based to rock’n’roll, and co-wrote some of Smith’s best-known songs such as Dancing Barefoot, Ask The Angels, Pissing In A River and Birdland. He also played in the studio and on stage with Iggy Pop. His songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as Iggy, David Bowie, U2, Pearl Jam, John Waite, Simple Minds and French rockers Téléphone. Král was born in Prague in 1948. His
father, a translator for the United Nations, moved the family to New York in 1968, just before the Soviet Union closed the Czechoslovakian border. He taught himself English, which was helped by watching Daffy Duck cartoons. In 1976 Král co-directed The Blank Generation, a documentary about the emerging New York punk scene, which featured Blondie, Ramones, Talking Heads, the New York Dolls, Television and Jayne County. He also released a string of solo albums over a period of 26 years, from 1992’s Native to 2018’s Colors. DL
ANDY GILL: GETTY; BOB SHANE: SHUTTERSTOCK; IVAN KRÁL: ALAMY
Capping a career that lasted for more than half a century, Canadian-born Scott (real name Giovanni Domenico Scafone Jr) became known as “undeniably the greatest Canadian rock’n’roll singer of all time”. Robert Plant, for one, is said to have been a fan. The 83-year-old Scott, whose hits included My True Love, Goodbye Baby and What In The World’s Come Over You, died due to congestive heart failure.
Bob Shane February 1, 1934 – January 26, 2020 Born Robert Castle Schoen, Shane (pictured) sang and played guitar with Californian band the Kingston Trio, who helped plant the seeds of America’s folk scene. The group’s last surviving member, he was 85 when he died. No cause of death has been announced, although he had been suffering from pneumonia.
Blackwater Conspiracy Meet Northern Ireland’s maestros of southern-fried rock’n’roll – with one foot in their local roots. Interview: Grant Moon
If it’s tatted-up, fedora-topped rock’n’roll you’re after, then take a look at Blackwater Conspiracy. The five-piece from Northern Ireland make unreconstructed southern rock, with the spirits of the Faces, Black Crowes and Aerosmith wreathing their snake-hipped, good-time riffs. Things kicked off for the band with their 2017 debut album Shooting The Breeze, and the snappytitled follow-up Two Tails & The Dirty Truth Of Love & Revolution has just been released. We caught up with singer and rhythm guitarist Phil Conalane to hear a tale or six. ‘Blackwater’ isn’t just a cool-sounding word. The River Blackwater runs through the 24 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
countryside of County Tyrone, where the band members grew up. “We’ve all known each other since we were kids,” says Conalane. “Most of us live right by the river, and the others live nearby. Our name had to mean something, we wanted something authentic. The ‘Conspiracy’ part was made up, though. That was just a fun thing.” They’re a local supergroup, of sorts. Conalane, lead guitarist Brian Mallon and bassist Kie McMurray cut their teeth with local heroes Million Dollar Reload. Drummer Fionn O’ Hagain was previously with blues rockers Swanee River, while talented local keyboard player Kevin Brennan was soon drawn into BC’s formative line-up.
“When Million Dollar Reload came to an end in 2015, we all got together as Blackwater for a bit of fun. We wrote fifteen good songs, recorded and released them just to see what would happen, and things snowballed from there.” They were quickly embraced by festivals and other rock names. “Planet Rock Radio gave us a lot of early attention for Shooting The Breeze. Then we were supporting Blackberry Smoke across Europe, playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire with Joanne Shaw Taylor, and shows with Tyler Bryant and Kris Barras. We’ve been really lucky.” They’ve also played Download (twice), Ramblin’
Blackwater Conspiracy: proud to be part of the New Wave Of Classic Rock.
Man Fair and the Steelhouse Festival. “When you’re playing a festival, you’re thrown in at the deep end in front of a super-huge audience. They’re not going to hang around if you’re shit. You learn to get good at your craft – and quick.” There are some traditional Irish sounds on new album Two Tails. Along with the low-slung Les Paul slide guitar riffs, burbling Hammond organ and Conalane’s huge voice, the new record has some vibrant splashes of local colour – trad fiddle on She Gets Me High, uilleann pipes on Bird In A Coalmine. “It’s not a flagwaving exercise,” says the singer, “but we thought these Irish instruments brought something to
these songs, and we’re all about what works for the song.” Every Blackwater Conspiracy song tells a story. Recorded in their own rehearsal/studio space back home, Two Tails is packed with swaggering anthems such as In Another Lifetime and Tattooed And Blonde. “I did know somebody tattooed and blonde a long time ago,” Conalane says, with a mind-yourown-business chuckle. “In Another Lifetime’s been going down really fucking well on this tour – there aren’t many bands doing long, epic ballads like that any more. Every song has to tell a story in an authentic way, because then I know I’m going to be able to deliver the song with conviction.”
The band are all for the NWOCR tag. ‘The New Wave Of Classic Rock’ is a tag that has stuck for the current crop of present-day bands making an old-school noise. Some might baulk at being lumped in with a scene, but Blackwater Conspiracy are chuffed. “It’s a fucking great movement, man,” Conalane enthuses. “It’s probably the best thing that’s happened in the past five or ten years. It brings a lot of that type of band together and brings attention to them, and it’s doing us the world of good. It can only be a good thing, and we embrace it. Anyone who doesn’t is deluded.” Two Tails & The Dirty Truth Of Love & Revolution is out now. CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 25
The death of AC/DC’s frontman Bon Scott in February 1980 looked like it might have dealt a fatal blow to the band as well. But then they got a new singer, and made a careerrejuvenating record that became the biggest-selling rock album of all time: Back In Black. Words: Paul Elliott Photos: Robert Alford & Ross Halfin
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ROBERT ALFORD
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Released 50 years ago, Ladies Of The Canyon marked the moment when Joni Mitchell went from folk princess to pop star, while setting the pace for the entire singer-songwriter movement.
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Words: Bill DeMain
n the spring of 1970, Joni Mitchell was on top of was reading at the time: Dear Theo, Van Gogh’s letters to his the world. Her song Both Sides, Now, a hit for Judy brother, and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. Out front Collins, was fast becoming a standard, with the was her Mercedes 280 SE, which she nicknamed ‘Bluebird’, release of cover versions by Frank Sinatra, Neil purchased with her first big royalty check. The Laurel Diamond, Glen Campbell and others. Another of Canyon air smelled of eucalyptus and wildflowers. Mitchell her songs, The Circle Game, a hit for Tom Rush and Buffy lived there with her boyfriend Graham Nash and a tomcat Saint-Marie, was on its heels. She’d guested on US TV’s The called Hunter. The house was also, as her manager Elliott Johnny Cash Show alongside Bob Dylan. She’d just won her Roberts said, “the center of the scene”. On any given night, first Grammy, for her second album Clouds. Now she was you’d find her musician friends there, among them David about to release Ladies Of The Canyon, the record that would Crosby, Stephen Stills, Judee Sill, Richie Furay, Glenn Frey crystallise her sound and catapult her to stardom. and Cass Elliot, laughing, talking, passing guitars – and Appropriately, Mitchell’s joints – around, and there were redwood cottage on Lookout always lots of new songs wafting Mountain Avenue in Laurel through the air, along with the Canyon was a place that felt on smell of the aromatic pies that top of the world. Or at least on Mitchell loved to bake. top of Los Angeles. When she “Like Paris was to the moved to the city in 1968, at Impressionists and to the Posta flea market she’d found a book Impressionists, LA back then that stated: “Ask anyone in was the hotbed of all musical Los Angeles where the craziest activity,” she said. “The greatest Joni Mitchell people live and they’ll tell you musicians in the world either Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest live here or pass through here regularly. I think that a lot of people live and they’ll say Laurel Canyon. And ask anyone beautiful music came from it, and a lot of beautiful times in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they’ll came through that mutual understanding. A lot of pain say Lookout Mountain.” came from it too, because inevitably different relationships “So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain,” broke up and it gets complicated.” Mitchell said. It had been complicated for her and Nash. Beyond the The house – depicted in a beautiful watercolor by her friendly competition between the two of them to see who own hand on the cover of Ladies Of The Canyon – was filled could get to the piano first and finish their latest song, it with guitars, a piano, antiques and stained Tiffany was the beginning of Mitchell’s reckoning with whether she windows. There were lots of books, including the two she wanted to be, in the parlance of the time, someone’s ‘old
HENRY DILTZ/GETTY
“My records have been very kind of subjective. Subjective but hopefully universal.”
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He could have been known only as the guitarist who rode a White Bicycle with proto-psychedelic Brit-rockers Tomorrow. Instead he joined Yes, and with them, Asia, solo and more has enjoyed a hugely successful and acclaimed career as a member of prog royalty.
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Don’t mistake any of this for some sort of oldschool hippie-flakery, though. Howe was born in the post-war rubble of Holloway, norf-London, the youngest of four siblings. His parents, he says, were, “very strict”. But he always knew he “was going to find some other way of getting through my life, that didn’t involve a regular job”. He began playing guitar at 12, playing in school bands, joined his semi-pro group, The Syndicats at 17, released his first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s Maybellene, at 18, and joined The In-Crowd, who had just had a minor chart hit with a version of Otis Redding’s That’s How Strong My Love Is, just a few months later. When The In-Crowd transmogrified into Tomorrow – now recalled as one of the proto-psychedelic Brit-rockers of the acidrained Summer of Love – he glimpsed the future. “I was ready to really show the world, to improvise.” He has continued to
demonstrate that ability ever since, mainly through the prism of Yes, but also, unexpectedly at the time, via the power balladry of Asia, GTR, ABWH and any number of solo albums, one-off collaborations and attendant musical wizardry. Later this year he tours again with Yes, revisiting their 1974 album Relayer, although only Howe and drummer Alan White from the current line-up played on it. He also has solo shows planned for the autumn, a new book, All My Yesterdays, out in April, and a solo album, titled Love Is, “fifty-fifty instrumental and songs” released at the same time. Tomorrow, which you formed with singer Keith West, who was about to become famous in his own right as singer of Grocer Jack (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera), came along just when albums had become more important than singles. Experimentation, expanding the idea of pop music. It wasn’t just Tomorrow, it was Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Jimi Hendrix, all led by The Beatles. How self-conscious of that were you at the time? Yes, with Tomorrow we were in the center of it all, and we loved that. We were just having a great time. The UFO club, concerts at the Alexandra Palace, or at Earls Court, all the psychedelic things, we were part of it all. And the world was our
ALAMY
teve Howe is one of those people to whom photographs no longer do justice. Approaching his seventy-third birthday, the polite, engaging English gentleman Classic Rock meets today in the restaurant of a London hotel is far removed from the cadaverous, wispy-haired figure of his publicity shots. He’s still scarecrow-thin and ghostgrey-skinned, but alert and warm in person. A lifetime of being one of the (many) leading lights in Yes, a group whose music never knowingly stooped for the merely catchy when opulent melodrama and maze-like intricacies were always within reach, has left Howe sitting atop the mountain, in terms of reputation, fame and guitar-artistry. Although it’s the decades of first vegetarianism, then devotion to macrobiotics and long-form transcendental meditation, you feel, that has given him his ageless aura.
Interview: Mick Wall Portrait: Will Ireland
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“Nothing was going to stop Kiss from becoming the biggest band in the world. They wanted to make history.” Producer Richie Wise
…You got the best. That was the gospel according to Kiss as they broke out of the clubs of New York City in 1974. But it would be a long, hard slog before the rest of America paid attention. Words: Paul Elliott 56 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
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n November 1973, as Kiss began work on their debut album at Bell Sound studio in New York City, it was the band’s sheer will to win that left the biggest impression on the two guys who co-produced that album, Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise. As the latter recalled: “The desire to be huge, the desire to hit the grand slam right out of the box, was the foundation that Kiss was built on. Nothing was going to stop them from becoming the biggest band in the world. They wanted to make rock’n’roll history.” It was a dream that became a reality, but not without a long, hard struggle. For all the hype that the band generated with their larger than life image, and all the popularity they gained as an outrageous, take-no-prisoners live act, there was a period, the best part of two years, when they couldn’t buy a hit record. The debut album, titled simply Kiss, shifted just 75,000 copies. The second, Hotter Than Hell, sold more, but stalled at No.100 on the US chart. The third, Dressed To Kill, almost made the Top 30, although its big anthem, Rock And Roll All Nite, flopped as a single. It was only at the fourth time of asking that Kiss finally hit that grand slam, with their first million seller – the explosive double live album, Alive! And yet, through it all, what Richie Wise sensed in Kiss – the self-belief, and the burning desire for fame and glory – never wavered. As guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley said: “Doubt is poison. Obstacles are what you see when you lose sight of your goals. Ultimately you may lose some battles but you win the war. Other people may have thought we weren’t going to make it, but failure was unacceptable to us.” For bassist Gene Simmons, the success of Kiss was in essence a triumph over fear. “Most people are afraid of ridicule,” he said, “but I wanted it so much that ridicule meant nothing to me, so long as there was just a glimmer of hope that I’d be wildly loved and all the women would want to have my children. That’s what we all strive for, but there are few of us who are willing to scale the heights.”
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tanley The Parrot, it was called – the funny little tune by Gene Simmons which was magically transformed into the swaggering, sexually charged rock’n’roll song that introduced Kiss to the world. The title was not a joke from Simmons at the expense of Paul Stanley. The pair had not yet met when Gene wrote this strange song with a psychedelic sound and abstract words. But the first time they got together, in 1970, Stanley The Parrot was one of the numbers that Gene played for Paul, and there was something about it that stuck in Paul’s mind – a chord structure that was a perfect fit for a Kiss song in the style of the Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar. “We knew what kind of sound we wanted,” Paul said. For the lyrics, he looked to the glamour queens of New York’s rock scene and the mysteries in Bob Dylan’s Just Like A Woman. And it was this song, Strutter – a New York story with a New York groove – that was chosen as the opening track on the first Kiss album. In the summer of 1973, before Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise were enlisted as producers, the band had cut demos of Strutter and other key songs – Deuce, Firehouse and Black Diamond – with a guy who had worked on some of the biggest and most influential rock records of the late 60s and early 70s. Eddie Kramer, a South African expat, had served as recording engineer for The Beatles (on All You Need Is Love), the Rolling Stones (Their Satanic Majesties Request), the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland) and Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin II and Houses Of The Holy). Given this pedigree, the four members of Kiss were thrilled to work with Kramer. As Paul said: “I’d been an Anglophile since I was a young teen. All the bands that inspired me were British. And I worshipped The Beatles.” But while Kramer had the kudos, it was Kerner and Wise who had the connection that paid off – for them, and, in no small measure, for Kiss. Neil Bogart, a brash record company executive, had founded a new label in 1973 – christened Casablanca Records in reference to his famous namesake, CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 57
In the second part of Classic Rock’s epic oral history of goth, we look at the rise of goth metal, which saw some early goths elbowed into the margins or disappearing completely, their thunder stolen by the arrival of goth-leaning bands from the metal world. Words: Dave Everley
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oth was born in the 70s and came of age in the 80s, but the 1990s was the decade when it went from being a cult, Anglocentric concern to being a global movement. Along the way it splintered into dozens of different sub-genres and strands, each with its own tribal characteristics, from the grandiose gothic extremity metal of bands such as Paradise Lost and Cradle Of Filth to Marilyn Manson’s Mephistopholean industrial mash-up. The 80s goth scene peaked long before the decade that produced it ended. Prime movers such as The Mission and the Sisters Of Mercy were still regular visitors to the UK charts, while The Cure and The Cult had confounded expectations and become huge stars in the US. But its original spirit dissipated as bands began to mutate into something new.
many exciting new things going on. And it worked. For a while, anyway. Nik Fiend [Alien Sex Fiend]: People had moved on to whatever the next thing was. It was like we had leprosy. Nobody wanted to be near us. Wayne Hussey: By the mid-nineties, The Mission’s momentum had stalled and we were playing smaller venues. It felt like: “What’s the point?”
emerge from the shadows, bands who came from the metal world but whose sound was underpinned with distinctly gothic sensibilities. Among them were Halifax’s Paradise Lost. Gregor Mackintosh (guitarist, Paradise Lost): I grew up listening to goth. Paradise Lost was a mixture of death and doom metal at the start, but I had this alternative edge that came from the goth and punk scenes. We were constantly in goth clubs
“When we made Vision Thing, my head was obviously in a Def Leppard mode.”
Andrew Eldritch [the Sisters Of Mercy]: When we made [The Sisters’ guitar-heavy 1990 album] Vision Thing, my head was obviously in a Def Leppard mode. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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Jim Morris (Balaam And The Angel): We struggled from ninety-three, ninety-four onwards. We decided to go and do real-world things.
By the early 90s, goth’s old guard were either falling off or fading away. But a handful of disparate keepers of the flame began to
Gregor Mackintosh: A journalist said:, ‘You’re not metal, you’re not goth, what are you?’ We just said: ‘We’re gothic metal.’ That was in 1989. We’d never heard the term before. It wasn’t a thing. It didn’t actually become a thing until way later in the nineties.
Three thousand miles away from Britain, an equally unlikely group were plotting an
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Wayne Hussey [The Mission]: I couldn’t just write Wasteland over and over again. There were too
Andrew Eldritch, Sisters Of Mercy
Dani Filth (singer, Cradle Of Filth): Paradise Lost totally had goth sensibilities. I love the Gothic album [from 1991]. It’s so morose.
Marlyn Manson
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“Reaching the top is difficult, but staying there is much, much tougher.” Chris von Rohr
Heading for glory in the 80s, Krokus skidded out of the fast lane due to inflated ego, divisive management and white-line fever. Now, after 45 years, they’re parking the bus for good. 72 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
GETTY
Words: Dave Ling
9000
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