What I've Published Lately

The last month of the year is typically a quiet one in the music biz — bands are off the road, save for the odd one-off gig or benefit show and the magazines try to push the January issue over the line by November, leaving the tail end of the year quiet and restive. Lemmy's death injected a feverish shot of adrenaline into wind down mode however, followed by the death of David Bowie. So 2015 ended and 2016 began on a hectic and unexpectedly tragic note. Between Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and my old friends at The Weeklings, I published quite a few bits in the past couple of months, which I gather for your edification, entertainment and vitriolic snark.I reviewed the new Prong album for Metal Hammer. I believe that Prong are one of the groups who have been accurately rated by fans and critics. They've got an interesting, identifiable sound with just enough hits to establish the level of enduring vitality you see only in the truly classic bands. I thought their new album was perfectly heavy and refreshingly ambitious.Wolfmother were one of the first bands to transcend the retro vibe by managing to sound both modern and unique, while religiously following the early-70s electric blues formula of Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the MC5. Those who found them too derivative appeared wholly prescient after Wolfmother's sophomore effort withered, with subsequent years seeming to confirm that by narrowly confining their sound — and by rifling through more lineup changes than a rush hour subway car — their fifteen minutes were fast approaching an end. But I think their new album is pretty damned good, as I wrote here.At Rock on the Range last year, I saw Scott Weiland flame out in a rainy, mid-afternoon set, quite obviously impaired by one or more chemicals. I found the whole set uncomfortable to watch, particularly when the boos began, because I've always rooted for the guy, hoping against all hope that he'd figure out what he needed to learn and move forward. But he never did. Backstage in our compound after his set, Metal Hammer Editor-in-Chief Alex Milas interviewed Weiland on the couch while only a few feet away, our TV crew interviewed Babymetal in a surreal conflagration of genres and cultures. Weiland hardly noticed the circus around him. In the picture below, you can see the entire spectacle as it unfolded. I'm on the lower right in a black t-shirt and ski cap, sitting with my back to Stephanie Cabral, the photographer. I sat next to his wife during the interview and showed her a few pictures I had taken of the set. She returned the favour by showing me some candid shots she'd taken of Scott with her cell phone — photos of the singer smiling easily, goofing around in a diner and prancing around at the beach. It was, as Westerberg once wrote, sadly beautiful. These pictures captured a wholly different person than the spaced-out castaway sitting a couple feet away from me. Classic Rock asked me to pen this postmortem after he passed away last December.  The Weeklings put together a wonderful retrospective on David Bowie and asked a gang of us to tell the stories behind our favourite Bowie songs. Mine is, and likely always will be, Heroes.Finally, for the issue commemorating Lemmy's death, Metal Hammer asked me to write about Lemmy as an outlaw. Lemmy counted some of Britain's most hardened bikers among his close friends — he lived with one of them back in the day — and the magazine had arranged for me to speak with one of them to glean some stories of the old days. However, the subject is still a member of an outlaw MC and as such, wasn't too keen to speak with a journalist about past exploits over the phone. Instead, it was arranged that the excellent Malcom Dome would meet him in person for a few beers and they'd plug his bits into a different part of the issue. I also wrote a separate feature about Lemmy's many hobbies, some of which proved decidedly more metal than others, but the sum of his passions painted the picture a true renaissance man and and genuinely down-to-earth guy, entirely comfortable in his own skin. His loss and the shadow he cast, will continue to grow as each year passes.