ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN EXPERIENCE HENDRIX MAGAZINE, WINTER 2000 By Steve Newton If you polled all the music fans in the world and asked them to name their fave party tune […]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, SEPT. 21, 2000 By Steve Newton Anyone who’s ever raised a frosty Molson Pilsner to the bluesy riff-rock of Free or Bad Company would […]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, AUG. 28, 1997 By Steve Newton Back in the late ’60s, British blues-rock crooner Paul Rodgers wrapped his gravel ’n’ honey vocals around a […]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, MAY 20, 1993 The first time I saw Paul Rodgers perform live was back in the ’70s, when Bad Company played the Pacific Coliseum […]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, MARCH 21, 1991 By Steve Newton Oh man—talk about going back in time! There was Ted Nugent riffing out “Cat Scratch Fever” and screeching […]
photo by Lucy Piller Legendary blues-rocker Paul Rodgers finally got to meet the son of Paul Kossoff, the former guitarist in his old band Free. In a tweet last week Rodgers mentioned […]
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, APRIL 6, 2006 By Steve Newton Chilliwack was the perfect place for a rock-crazed teenager to grow up during the ’70s. Not only could you crank […]
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, APRIL 20, 2006 What an awesome heavy-metal band Queen used to be. What, you didn’t know Queen used to be an awesome heavy-metal band? Maybe it’s […]
By Steve Newton I did my last Tragically Hip interview in June of 1997, a month after the band had released its concert album Live Between Us. Lead guitarist Rob […]
By Steve Newton I interviewed Pantera cofounder and drummer Vinnie Paul on February 20, 1992, five days before the release of the band’s sixth album, Vulgar Display of Power. The […]
By Steve Newton Gary Moore has been one of my fave guitarists ever since I heard him with Thin Lizzy back in the seventies. I then closely followed his hard-rock/metal […]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, FEB. 27, 1992 By Steve Newton Would you let somebody punch you in the face for 300 bucks? Considering that knuckle sandwiches sometimes come […]
By Steve Newton Tommy Emmanuel is one helluva guitarist; maybe the most amazing acoustic player I’ve ever seen live. I interviewed the Aussie picker back in May of 1994 when […]
By Steve Newton When I interviewed Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci back in June of 2010 his group was opening for Iron Maiden on it’s Final Frontier World Tour. So […]
By Steve Newton I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know much about Frank Zappa’s music. One day I need to sit down and absorb some of that guy’s massive […]
By Steve Newton I’m a huge Stevie Ray fan. Got a ton of his albums, seen him in concert a buncha times, interviewed him twice, got his autograph, shook his […]
By Steve Newton I haven’t interviewed that many drummers over the years–mainly because I like talking to guitarists more–but when Van Hagar was heading to Vancouver for a show in […]
By Steve Newton As a hardcore fan of electric guitar music, I’ve managed to interview some of the top practitioners of the trade, Eric Johnson being one of them. When […]
By Steve Newton If you were reading the top guitar magazines back in the early ’80s you may have heard the buzz about this phenomenal British player named Allan Holdsworth. […]
By Steve Newton Some concerts experiences are just seared into memory–if you’re lucky–and one of the most unforgettable for me was seeing Kiss at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom in January of […]
By Steve Newton I did my first interview with Steve Vai when he was touring with Whitesnake in May of 1990, but I was more interested in talking about his […]
By Steve Newton I was crazy about Kiss when their first album dropped back in the Year of Our Lord, 1974. I was 16 at the time, which is all […]
By Steve Newton I freakin’ love guitar solos, where some talented artist carefully chooses the perfect notes and uses vibrato and tremolo and all that other technical shit to come […]
By Steve Newton I did my first interview with David Lee Roth in June of 1994, when he was promoting his Nile Rodgers-produced album Your Filthy Little Mouth. He called me from […]
By Steve Newton Since I got “temporarily” laid off from work yesterday–after 35 years with the Georgia Straight newspaper in Vancouver–I’ve been wondering which of my hundreds of old interviews […]
By Steve Newton When I interviewed Stevie Ray Vaughan in July of 1990, six weeks before his death, I asked him what he’d been listening to in his spare time–if […]
By Steve Newton The first time I interviewed blues legend John Mayall was in December of 1988, shortly after he’d released his Chicago Line album, which featured smokin’ guitarists Walter […]
