ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JUNE 17, 1988 By Steve Newton Most successful recording bands like to put an album out every year. Sometimes they’ll skip a year, to vacation in the Bahamas or release a live or best-of LP. After three years their fans start to get a bit worried, not to mention the band’s record … Continue reading Def Leppard’s Steve Clark on the long wait for Hysteria and the legacy of Pyromania
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, OCT. 3, 2002 By Steve Newton Buddy Guy spent a good portion of his concert at the Commodore last Friday (September 27) paying tribute to the legends of the blues, performing in the various styles of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It was … Continue reading Buddy Guy brings me down when he forgets to just be Buddy
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, OCT. 31, 2002 By Steve Newton For more than 10 years I rented a dumpy old house near 58th and Main that was known as the Rock Palace because of the all-night rock-’n’-roll parties held there. The best thing about those cop-attended bashes was when these pot-lovin’, hard-rock musicians … Continue reading Reviewing Nickelback in honour of pot-lovin’, hard-rock musicians from Alberta
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEB. 20, 2003 By Steve Newton Every once in a while, when my wee home office gets too cramped from all the free CDs this job incurs, I take a deep breath and begin studying my stacks of record albums. Vinyl, baby—that’s where it used to be at. Now I scour those … Continue reading Andy Powell says the Flying V has become a symbol of Wishbone Ash
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 6, 1990 By Steve Newton Legend has it that B-movie mogul Samuel Z. Arkoff took an ass-backwards (but ultimately effective) approach to producing his low-budget films. First off he’d come up with a catchy title; then he’d build an advertising campaign around that title; and only then would he start shooting … Continue reading The Cramps’ Poison Ivy says that what passes for rock ‘n’ roll isn’t
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON AUG. 8, 2002 By Steve Newton A while back I made one of my regular visits to Zulu Records and noticed that they were giving stuff away. Not great stuff—there were no limited-edition Hellecasters CDs or Jeff Beck bootlegs—but in the box of vinyl castoffs and local cassettes was Win This Record, … Continue reading David Lindley says its serious time for the oud
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MAY 29, 2003 By Steve Newton Pearl Jam is one of those hugely influential, multiplatinum rock acts that’s notorious for refusing to talk to the press, often for extended periods of time. So when PJ guitarist Mike McCready calls from the “lovely offices” of Vandenberg Public Relations in Seattle, my first question … Continue reading Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready on Ticketmaster, Neil Young, Nickelback, and the new Riot Act
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, SEPT. 4, 2003 By Steve Newton Toronto-based music writer Martin Popoff is Canada’s top expert on heavy metal. Senior editor of metal mag Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles and author of The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal, the Trail, B.C.–raised Popoff certainly knows his stuff when it comes to … Continue reading Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” chosen as the top heavy-metal song of all time
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SEPT. 18, 2003 By Steve Newton A lot of bands that were big in the ’80s are now having trouble getting booked into bowling alleys, but Def Leppard’s not one of them. The British melodic-rock quintet—which hit its commercial peak in 1987 with Hysteria, which has sold 16 million units worldwide—is still … Continue reading Joe Elliott says that Def Leppard were never a “big-hair” band, just longhairs like Sabbath and Zeppelin
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MARCH 23, 1990 By Steve Newton Boy, the nerve of those Aerosmith guys! They stay in our city for months on end, tie up our world-class studios, use our best producers and engineers, hog all the seats in our strip bars, and then deny the city’s top entertainment rag a crummy phone … Continue reading Steven Tyler screeches like a budgie from hell as Aerosmith rocks Vancouver on the Pump tour
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, NOV. 21, 2002 By Steve Newton On their latest CD, Southern Rock Opera, alt-country reprobates the Drive-By Truckers combine sociology, history, and musicology to deliver a concept album about southern rock, and the band they focus on to get their ideas across is Lynyrd Skynyrd. For the uninitiated, … Continue reading Gene Odom’s Lynyrd Skynyrd book lacks literary grace and gory details
Judas Priest released its 17th studio album, Redeemer of Souls, today, and I’ve been giving it a listen. All in all, I’ve gotta say that the British metal legends deliver the goods on the 13-track CD–which includes an extra five tunes on a bonus disc if you’re lucky enough to get Sony Music to send you the … Continue reading Judas Priest rips off Iron Maiden on Redeemer of Souls (but just a little)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 25, 1990 By Steve Newton You don’t have to be a riff-hungry young metal-head to know who Judas Priest is these days—all you’ve got to do is read the papers. The British band received world-wide publicity recently during its trial in Reno, Nevada, which questioned whether subliminal messages on the group’s … Continue reading Rob Halford forced to defend Judas Priest’s name against suicide lawsuit
