“It's quite a strange sounding song, in a way,” says Alexis Taylor, reflecting on his band’s 2008 single Ready For The Floor. “You wouldn't really write it down as an idea: Let's have gentle falsetto vocals referencing a Batman film, while singing about a kind of brotherly connectedness – and try to be inspired by UK garage music and Prince.”

It’s this eclectic and at times eccentric mix of reference points that makes Taylor’s band Hot Chip such an enduring force.

Operating at the intersection between dance music and indie pop, the London five-piece have taken something of a mix-and-match approach to songwriting over the years, blending synth lines and sequenced beats with live percussion, rhythmic guitar lines and an inventive approach to arrangement that often subverts the structures of traditional pop music.

Formed in 2000 by Taylor and schoolmate Joe Goddard, Hot Chip evolved into a five-piece by the time of their debut album Coming On Strong, adding Al Doyle, Owen Clarke, and Felix Martin to complete a fluid lineup that sees members regularly shifting roles both in the studio and onstage.

The band’s breakthrough came with Mercury-nominated second album The Warning in 2006, which was followed by 2008’s Made In The Dark and 2010’s One Life Stand.

This month sees Hot Chip reissuing all three albums. Ahead of the release, we sat down with Taylor, Goddard and Doyle in the band’s London studio to talk about the making of Ready For The Floor, the Grammy-nominated second single from Made In The Dark and – along with The Warning’s Over And Over and Boy From School – one of Hot Chip’s most popular tracks.

“I think Joe just played it in the middle of us working on something else in the studio,” Taylor recalls. “It was a bit of a surprise to hear all of these sounds that he'd been working on. We were midway through something else and took a pause, and then we heard these drum sounds and that main synth riff.”

That initial sketch was created by Goddard in his home studio, although as he explains, to call his setup at the time a ‘studio’ might be overselling it.

“The computer and a small amount of gear was just next to my bed,” he says. “There was a kind of spaghetti of black cables all over the floor, which traumatised my wife and still does.”

The core elements of Ready For The Floor were sounds sequenced from a Moog Modular, a synth the band would later buy in hardware form when the System 55 was reissued in 2015, although at the time Goddard had to settle for Arturia’s Modular V emulation.

“I’d just got this soft synth version of the Moog Modular,” he says. “I think I was very excited about that synth at the time, because I used that to make the beat and the main chord pattern in the song as well.

“I’d probably just learnt that you could use a synth to make drum sounds, which is something that we still love doing today. It kind of makes things feel a bit more unusual.”

The main body of the beat comes from rounded, bouncy synth kicks interspersed with stereo ‘laser’ tom sounds and noisy snares. The result is a very electro-sounding pattern, where the drums fall into the territory somewhere between beat and bassline. There’s a distinctive shuffle to the track’s rhythm too.

“We were all really into UK garage at the time,” Goddard explains, “so it's got a kind of off kilter feel a bit like that.”

That workflow was typical of Hot Chip’s creative process at the time, where Goddard would bring loose ideas to the band during rehearsal or studio sessions, and the remaining members would then work together to form them into a proper song.

“We have moments when all of us bring in ideas to the studio, but it's always been my passion to make drum tracks and bass lines as the beginnings of things,” Goddard tells us. “I often make beginnings and present them to everyone to be finished together.

“On this song, I definitely would have started just making that drum beat and then making bass and chords to kind of fit in the funkiest way I could with that drum rhythm.”

“It was inspirational,” Taylor continues. “It was just instantly exciting-sounding and interesting. I think the vocal ideas came very quickly. I’ve got quite vivid memories of us all hovering around the computer and thinking, ‘oh, I've got an idea’. Those are the most fun moments for me, in the studio, where you hear something new and you just can't get the recording done quickly enough. You're reacting to the music and to the atmosphere.”

That atmosphere, as the band recall, had a slight edge to it on the day Ready For The Floor was written.

“I think there was something a little bit tense, maybe from what we'd been working on previously,” Taylor explains. “I don't remember what song that was. But the words are partly about breaking that tension and communicating and speaking. And sort of getting stuff out in the open. That's part of what the song talks about. But being a typical Hot Chip song, it's also got these weird allusions to the Tim Burton Batman film for some reason.”

That allusion comes in the form of Taylor’s repeated mantra, ‘you’re my number one guy’, lifted from a scene in which Jack Nicholson’s Joker confronts a crime boss played by Jack Palance in the 1989 film. The line in the film is delivered with an aggressive undertone, although Taylor takes the phrase more at face value.

“In this case, it wasn't really meant to be a kind of threat or anything. It's more taking that phrase from pop culture and just using it in a different context. We’re singing positively about, you know, ‘Oh, this track sounds great. Joe, you're my number one guy. We can do this, we can make this brilliant bit of music all together.’”

The approach of all members chipping-in is evident when the band opens up the track’s stems for us in Cubase. While the beats and chords provide a backbone throughout the song, the rest of the arrangement is built out of a collage of often short ideas. Taylor’s simple vocal hook is fleshed out with harmonies from other members; percussive guitar parts start and stop; simple synth riffs create layers of counter melody.

“We have this thing that somehow happens where there's something on every album that sounds like the Coronation Street theme," Goddard says, soloing at meandering riff played on a Dave Smith Poly Evolver, which does have a passing resemblance to the trumpet motif that precedes ITV’s long-running soap opera.

It’s just one of numerous ear-worm synth motifs that make the song memorable. Another is a telephone-like melodic line, as well as another descriptively named ‘cow synth’ in the stem files – both of which potentially originate from a cheap Casio Tone Bank keyboard.

“There's sounds in there from a keyboard that I bought for Joe for two pounds at the car boot sale,” Taylor tells us.

Hot Chip’s studio resources have come a long way since the band recorded Made In The Dark. We meet them in their current studio, situated next door to the room Doyle was using as a studio at the time the album was made, but now stocked with an envy-inducing collection of music hardware, including the Moog Modular, a Yamaha CS-80 and racks of vintage drum machines and outboard.

On reflection though, the band admit that part of the success of tracks like Ready For The Floor and Over And Over might lie in the naivety of their songwriting and production at the time.

“There's a point to be made about how we didn't really know what we were doing,” Doyle says. “We were still learning our craft at the time. We were definitely very interested in production, and we were listening to lots of cool music and trying to replicate our heroes, but we had a pretty basic setup.

“There was nobody around us that was teaching us how to do this stuff, so we were having to figure it out ourselves. We probably made some quite weird decisions, or just did things that you wouldn't do if you were in a more professional studio or working with a producer.

“It's difficult to get back into that mindset,” he continues, “because it's difficult to unlearn what you already know. It's funny to think that these songs that were earlier in our career have made this tremendous connection with people.

“I think that is something to do with the directness between thought and expression. You're just thinking of an idea and getting it down in whatever way is available to you. People respond to that because there isn't a set of production layers between you and the listener. I think that is quite instructive.”

Watch the band break down Ready For The Floor in full at the video at the top of the page. Hot Chip’s reissues of The Warning, Made In The Dark and Coming On Strong are out now.

There aren't that many experimental artists that truly break through to receive mass appeal. A band who skilfully manoeuvred their ever-widening sonic universe into the ears and hearts of the general public is Pink Floyd.

Despite Floyd’s lack of interest with the singles market (at least when compared to their multi-million-selling albums), Money supplied them with that rarest of things - a popular chart hit.

It would be one of their most notable stabs at the single market - until Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2 came along several years later. Its writer, Roger Waters, would later tell Q Magazine that, “The only other significant single in my career was Money from Dark Side Of The Moon. That was the only one that made any impact at all.”

Written during the making of the band’s legendary The Dark Side of the Moon, Money lyrically found Waters wrestling with his own socialist principles in the face of being, by this point, quite a well-paid pop star. Perhaps this thematic tension is the reason why Waters chose to craft such a musically constricted, and precarious song.

Two key elements of which hit you from the outset…

The first thing we hear is the sound of a cash register - or at least that's what we tend to assume, but the reality is somewhat different.

Roger Waters had a demo studio in a converted garden shed, located at the bottom of the garden at his house in Islington, North London. Many of his songs and ideas during this period were formed here and notably this is where Waters created the demo and the original tape loop for the track’s intro.

The process of creating loops from analogue tape was nothing new; the concept, originally known as Musique concrète, required the recording of acoustic sounds to tape, then subsequent editing and splicing, in order to turn these sounds into new musical forms, often with avant-garde or experimental consequences. It was a practice made famous in the UK by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Waters ran with the idea of creating a lengthy tape loop to accompany a new song, a riff-based piece which adopted a wonky-feeling 7/4 time signature.

Developing the idea with legendary engineer Alan Parsons at Abbey Road Studios, Waters built out the loop sound by recording the sound of coins dropping into a mixing bowl, and then tearing a piece of paper. Only then did he move on to recording a cash register. As he wanted each sound to punctuate each of the seven beats per bar, he chopped the tape in the old-fashioned way, using a splicing block and razor blade, and then delicately sticking them together with editing tape.

To ensure note duration consistency, each small piece of tape would have been the exact same length, totalling a loop with seven individual pieces - all joined together.

"The only way to keep it in time was to take a piece of tape with the sound on it and measure it with a ruler. You would take the exact length of tape and then splice the next exact length of tape to it.,” Parsons told Goldmine. “We would make a circular loop that was supported with microphone stands around the machine, and we would roll the tape, and that was what the band played to."

Waters and Parsons then ran the loop through a Revox tape machine, with a microphone stand acting as a support for the tape. It’s the sort of thing we take for granted in today’s drag-and-drop DAW-based word, but back then was a laborious and time-consuming process.

It's worth noting that this would've been a relatively short tape loop, at least by tape loop standards (a mere 20 feet it has been reported…). Longer loops often employed additional machines, with the extra tape-machine-horsepower used to keep the loop running. There are many tales from the Radiophonic Workshop’s history, of loops being run along the entire length of corridors…

Without wishing to take anything away from the concept behind this tape loop, and indeed the track itself, we have to pay homage to Ronnie Hazlehurst - a prolific TV composer who was active during the 70s and 80s.

Ronnie was commissioned to write the music for a new BBC sitcom, called Are You Being Served? Having written the theme, he didn't have enough in the budget to hire a percussionist, so with the help of a BBC engineer called Larry Goodson, constructed a tape loop of a cash register in operation, to act as the percussion track.

Why do we mention this? Well, Are You Being Served? first aired in September 1972, while Money (and its parent album The Dark Side of the Moon), wasn't heard until its release on the 1st of March 1973. Was Roger subconsciously (or consciously?) influenced by this quirky sitcom soundtrack? The jury's out.

Moving away from the tape loops and to the structure of the song proper, Money certainly keeps us on our toes in terms of number of beats per bar.

To begin with, the song is planted in 7/4; this makes it a beat short of the more common 4-to-a-bar concept, that would occupy the space of 2 bars.

The 7/4 signature ties in beautifully with the main riff, which is rooted in the key of B minor, and doubled in octaves by a picked guitar and bass.

There are embellishments to this construct, notably from a Wurlitzer electric piano, which plays an octave higher than the riff, with a relatively funky placement of the chords Bm7 and E. It’s important to note that this acts as tantamount to the ‘icing on the cake’ - essentially an aside to the main harmony. A heavily tremolo-ed guitar also ‘twangs’ the note B at the beginning of every couple of bars.

Money has an incredibly bluesy feel, and isn’t built around what we typically regard as a more usual verse/chorus structure - we could easily regard verses as choruses, as if playing blues or jazz.

Even so - and despite this blues feel - Money doesn't quite conform to the 12-bar stereotype, but it’s certainly close!

Sticking to our blues-leaning idea of the song’s A-section as its ‘chorus’, the harmony remains relatively static. We stay with the implied chord of Bm for a full 8 bars of 7/4; given that we are only one beat adrift from a two-bar construct, it feels more like 16 bars, so the welcome shift up to F#m at the end of the the chorus is very welcome.

Just when we thought we had got our head around the 7/4 concept, the shift at the end of each chorus presents an interesting timing conundrum (dependent upon how pedantic you want to be.)

We stay on an implied chord of F#m for 8 beats, before dropping to a chord of Em7 for 6 beats. Now we could easily argue that these 14 beats add up to 2x bars of 7/4, but the placement of the harmony supplies the shift to the chord Em7, on the 2nd beat of a bar of 7/4 - that feels so wrong!

It either is wrong - or it’s total genius. Whichever way you choose to count it, the beats will add up to the same, it's just whether or not your head can play ball.

To be fair, if you are just playing the guitar/bass riff, then it slots seamlessly within this off-kilter timing and implied chord structure.

After two choruses - with lead vocals supplied by David Gilmour - we are treated to a tenor saxophone solo supplied by long time artistic collaborator, Dick Parry.

This is where the blues vibe really does rear its head, as the extended sequence adopts a double-length blues form. This means that we hear all of the usual blues chords, but as we remain in 7/4, it feels like each chord is twice as long, which of course it is… nearly (It’s one beat less than 2 bars of 4/4, of course!)

As if improvising in 7/4 isn't difficult enough, Money shifts to a 4/4 time signature for the searing guitar solo that forms the long middle section of the song. Supplied by David Gilmour (who else?), the section feels like a blues shuffle. Although there’s a change in the riff and a subtle deviation to the chords, this section still keeps a consistent feel with the rest of the song.

“Roger came in with the verses and lyrics for Money more or less completed,” Gilmour told Guitar World. “And we just made up middle sections, guitar solos and all that stuff. We also invented some new riffs - we created a 4/4 progression for the guitar solo and made the poor saxophone player play in 7/4. It was my idea to break down and become dry and empty for the second chorus of the solo.”

We close out with another vocal chorus, before the song fades into the next track on the album…

Despite being regarded as one of the most meticulously crafted studio albums of all time, there is a spontaneous, freeform quality to Money. The tempo ebbs and flows, right from the outset - perhaps this is a consequence of the difficulty of playing completely in time with the cash register tape loop.

By our reckoning, the song picks up by about 8bpm from its intro to just the beginning of the first chorus, with the rip-roaring guitar solo motivating the tempo still further. These kinds of tempo fluctuations were fairly usual for live recording at this time, when playing to a click track was not the norm. But Pink Floyd certainly had fun with the shifting rhythmic sands here.

When released as a single, 10 days after its parent album on May 7th 1973, Money became an unlikely hit for the group, peaking at number 13 on the US Billboard Chart.

“We were by no means rich at that time” Gilmour told Uncut magazine in 2003. “Money was the single that helped to really break us in America. It was the track that made us guilty of what it propounds, funnily enough.”

Some bands might let the fact they’ve got no label, no manager and no money get them down, but in 2001, when Jimmy Eat World were putting together the album that would change their lives, they just rolled with it and got down to work.

The Bleed American sessions of 2000 could be described as an exercise in financial brinksmanship and artistic freedom. Producer Mark Trombino, without whom there would have been no album, deferred payment. He believed so much in the band and their material that he could wait.

Frontman/guitarist Jim Adkins wasn’t sweating the money too much either.

“I think everyone is kind of flat on their ass in their early 20s,” he laughs, joining MusicRadar over Zoom alongside Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind. “You’re in the gathering stage of everything. You’re not really concerned about retirement money. Most of your paycheque is going toward your cost of living and having fun.

“I felt like… It was lean. That’s for sure! But the amount of adventure in it all cancelled out any real stress, I feel. I dunno, I might have been the only one who felt that.”

On this Zoom call, Adkins really is the only one who felt that. Lind was the guy in the band who had just got married. He had the very real fear that the bottom was falling out of his bottom line.

“My wife and I had been married since the fall of ’99, and she was bringing home the bacon. She had a college degree, and she worked in finance, and we had enough money to buy a little house,” he says. “Right before Bleed American, we decided she quit her job, and then we decided to put our house up for rent, and we moved in with my sister-in-law.”

The fact that both are speaking to us now, on the 25th anniversary of Bleed American, with the album to be played in its entirety in the biggest shows the Arizona rockers have ever played in the UK, tells us that it all worked out. DreamWorks ultimately picked up the album, and that first cheque from the label kept the Lind household in the black.

“We were totally broke,” admits Lind. “When we got a cheque from DreamWorks after we signed, it was just in the nick of time. If that hadn’t happened, we would have been trying to figure something out, like maybe sell the house, or Holly going back to work.”

They had seen peers fall by the wayside in similar circumstances, bands whose paycheque did not come in. Life got in the way and they did other things. “For us, it was literally by a hair that we made it through and God for that,” says Lind.

It was strange that Jimmy Eat World should find themselves in this situation. They had been on Capitol, and while there had been tensions with the label, the release of 1999’s Clarity had created a buzz around the band.

The critics liked them. They were punk but melodic. They were alternative. They got lumped in with the emo scene but they never displayed emo’s appetite for overheated pop melodrama. There were just Jimmy Eat World.

Was that the problem at Capitol? That they label just didn’t know what to do with them?

“I don’t know about that. I think it was just a situation where we got signed to Capitol, we were really young, and we were also really stubborn,” says Lind. “So any sort of marketing ideas they had, we didn’t wanna do any of it. And granted, they would come up with dumb ideas but—”

“—to be fair, most of them were lame as fuck,” interjects Adkin.

This stubborn streak might have cost them their deal with Capitol but it was the bedrock for more long-term success. Lind says the label was never really all that invested in the first place – certainly not financially.

He says their deal would have covered “the budget of a marketing meeting catering spread” and little else. When DreamWorks picked them up, they had a label that was all in. It was life-changing.

But in the meantime, Jimmy Eat World needed to put together a record.

They had the songs. When the Bleed American sessions began in October 2000, it was all written, all demoed. Sweetness had been written for Clarity, but with the uncertainty surrounding their Capitol deal, to the point where they were not even sure that they were going to release the album at all, the band held the song back.

“Most of the material we had been performing live,” says Akdins. “Leading up to recording, and during recording, we took a break between recording the drums and everything else to tour to raise money, to finish making it. So a lot of it was road tested, explored somewhat. The heavy lifting with the songs – the arrangement, lyrics, general idea, approach – all of that, I feel, there was a great, rough plan for it all. I feel like we went into recording pretty confident that we had the songs – the songs were ready. It was just about exploring the concepts to make it better.”

They had to use their studio time wisely, choose their moment. Even so, some of these concepts they explored were pretty ambitious for a band without a label or management. Cautioners was one of those tracks.

“On Cautioners, we had an idea to get different drum sounds so that every hit of the beat that would be there is just some extra form of ear candy as it’s going by,” says Adkins. “Like, you can perform it as a piece, but the idea was we wanted to get unique sounds for every hit, and just cut and paste and slam them next to each other so it becomes even more jarring that these are individual and unique.”

“We didn’t have a lot of time to block out, ‘Oh, hey, we’re just gonna spend a month and figure it out.’ We wouldn’t have been able to afford that,” adds Lind. “But, to Jim’s point, there was just the right amount of wiggle room in the time that we had based on what we booked to explore some things, some targeted [sounds].

A song like Praise Chorus was pretty much like, if you listen to the demo and you listen to the song, it’s just a newer, better version of that. My Sundown, Your House, and Cautioners were three songs that we really spent a little bit of extra wiggle room to invest in those songs.”

It helped that Lind tracked his drums with some time to spare. That freed up a few days. Whenever they reached an impasse there was always another idea that made the song better. That was the case on Praise Chorus when Adkins had written a bridge that was too long to be instrumental, too good to be cut, and he couldn’t think of any lyrics that would work for it. He knew someone who would.

“We decided to just send that song off to Davey von Bohlen, who played it in a band called The Promise Ring, just to see what he would do,” says Adkins. “He came back with what you hear on the record, which is basically I sing something, ‘Come on, Davey, sing me something that I know…’ And he just basically used that as a jumping off point to reference a bunch of lyrics that he thought I might know. [Laughs] Literally, he just went with that.”

Von Bohlen went on a tear, referencing Madness, Bad Company, the Promise Wrong of course, Mötley Crüe, even Tommy James and the Shondells’ Crimson And Clover, and sent in his vocal from Milwaukee. It was like a patched-denim vest featuring of all the kinds of songs Adkins would have been listening to.

“Well sure, everything he references, if you’re our age and were interested in music at all, all those lyric quotes are stuff that’s just there in your mind whether you own those albums or not,” says Adkins. “Maybe the They Might Be Giants one is a little stretch, but, for me, like, yeah! [Laughs]”

No one had the time or money to be messing around with gear. They had just enough options. Adkins would lean heavily on his American Standard Telecaster. It was this through a Fender Champ that you hear on the solo to The Middle.

Now, there’s a track. Every classic album needs a hit and The Middle was it. It has had a Sasquatch-sized pop-cultural footprint, having been covered by Prince and Taylor Swift, the band performing it with the latter. But it was just another song that they liked at the time. They never saw that coming.

“No! Are you kidding me? No!” laughs Adkins.

“When I played it for people, like my friends, it got an immediate reaction,” says Lind. “There’s a little bit of a dysmorphia that I think every band has about their own music.

“Sometimes, there are some songs that we think are bangers. ‘Oh, this is gonna be a single!’ and, ‘The label is gonna fucking love this one!’ Then when they hear it, it’s like, ‘No.’ But with that song, when I played it for friends of mine, just the demo, it got a big response.”

It has a killer guitar solo, too. Inspired by Doug Gillard’s playing on Guided By Voices’ I Am A Tree, it finds Adkins chasing down a theme and a form – “Theme, repeat, theme, repeat, escalation, closing with more intensity!” – and playing around until he found the right modulation of hammer-ons and pull-offs, and he kept at it until it landed perfectly, the power-up the song needed.

Rolling Stone duly gave Adkins his flowers, placing The Middle 76th in the greatest guitar solos of all time.

Adkins was once a student of jazz and classical guitar but admits those booksmarts were not brought to bear on The Middle.

“Yeah, for guitar solos in general, I’m not the kind of player – like John Mayer – that just instantly can connect the dots without even thinking of where I’m taking something over what scale,” says Adkins. “I stopped studying jazz before all that really clicked.”

But something had clicked. Bleed American was the sound of a different Jimmy Eat World. They still had the energy and forward motion of punk rock, only these songs were bringing more of those heartland influences to the fore and the appreciation that simplicity in songwriting can yield some surprising results.

“Bleed American is definitely an album in our musical development that, coming from the more chaotic punk kind of playing, we were just being inspired by simplicity. Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen to some degree. I don’t know if that was totally conscious. There’s definitely a little bit of [Tom Petty’s] You Wreck Me on the beat for The Middle but it just seemed like it fit.”

The Middle is just one example out of many where Bleed American has instances of repeated lyrics, verses repeated because Adkins felt it was the “ultimate subversive thing” to do at the time.

They all learned you can subvert songwriting orthodoxy when the songs are strong – and they were. Adkins learned he could play the most simple guitar part or hook and it will work, because under it you've got Rick Burch's bass guitar and Tom Linton's rhythm guitar there too. It all adds up

“There’s something really powerful in making something very simple,” says Adkins. “There’s a feeling, an almost slightly demented feeling, of how far you can push a very simple set of restrictions on yourself, like how far between these boundaries can you take it?

“Repetition is definitely a sort of hook. I don’t necessarily know if it was a conscious decision at the time. Sometimes you can’t even quantify with words what is inspiring; you just instantly turn it around and do your version of it. If something that is like, ‘Oh yeah, this is awesome!’ now that’s part of the menu. Tom Petty was definitely one of those. Zach’s always been a big Tom Petty fan, but for me, too, Wildflowers was really clicking in a way that maybe hadn’t before going in.”

This was a weird time for the world and its popular culture. How we listened to music was about to change. Peer-to-peer file sharing was coming online, paving the way for the streaming revolution to follow. Jimmy Eat World used P2P platforms to their advantage, sharing rough mixes over Napster to prime the pump.

It worked. When they would play those songs live the crowd’s reaction told them that they had downloaded it. They had to think like this. They didn’t have the “formal infrastructure” to support them.

How could they have foreseen The Middle becoming such a hit when they had no one to lobby radio DJs to play it?

“Luckily, we ended up hiring the best rock manager in the world, and signing a deal with DreamWorks, a label that really believed in us, and that solved that problem,” says Lind. “But at the time, when we were making the record, I don’t think you can really let yourself think about, ‘Oh, this is gonna have this reach…’ when you don’t even know what that reach is gonna be. You don’t even know what label it's coming out on – even if it’s gonna come out on a label.”

Finishing the record, hiring John Silva as manager, and shopping the record around labels remains Lind’s favourite memory of the whole Bleed American cycle. Like anything in life, the hard times feel too real, and the good times take on a surreal air, like it's all just too good to be true. Silva had put together meetings in New York City with various labels – Elektra, RCA, Atlantic, and Lind could – finally – see the light, a sign their lives were never going to be the same again.

“I remember just flying into New York City, seeing the Manhattan skyline, the sun setting, and thinking, ‘Holy shit, this is crazy! It’s wild that we’re being flown to a place just to talk to people who are all wanting to put out our album,’” he says. “It was just a wild thought. It was a moment of whiplash, and that moment always sticks out to me for some reason.”

“Doing our own headlining show at Brixton Academy was definitely a highlight,” says Adkins. “Going from playing the Garage to Brixton Academy within a year was a pretty wild ride.”

• The Bleed American 25th Anniversary Tour is underway. See Jimmy Eat World for dates and ticket details.

It was an off-the-cuff remark from guitarist Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro that gave Neil Young the title for one of his greatest songs.

When Young and his band The Restless were notified of the cancellation of a tour in the Soviet Union, Sampedro joked, “We’ll just have to keep on rockin’ in the free world.”

Young replied: “Well, Poncho, that’s a good line. I’m gonna use that if you don’t mind.”

Later, Young commented: “It was such a cliché. I knew I had to use it.”

Rockin’ In The Free World would be released in 1989, serving as the lead single for Young’s 17th studio album, Freedom. The song would also end up as one of Young’s most defining anthems.

In a 2018 interview with MOJO magazine, Sampedro said that Young had written a handful of tracks for this album when he realised he needed something harder-hitting, more up-tempo and direct.

The band were checking into a hotel room in Portland when Sampedro urged Young to look about the world around him for inspiration to help finish the track.

Sampedro remembered: “I said, ‘Look man, tonight, get in your room, think about all this stuff that’s going down – the Ayatollah, all the stuff in Afghanistan, all these wars breaking out, all the problems in America.’”

The following morning, as the members were preparing to leave on their bus, Young informed him that the song had now been completed, taking heavy influence from some of the political unrest across the globe at the tail-end of the ’80s.

Some of the ire was directed at the newly appointed George H. W. Bush administration, directly quoting lines about “a thousand points of light” and “a kinder, gentler nation” from his presidential campaign promises and inaugural address. Other political references in the song include the line “Don’t feel like Satan but I am to them” from the opening verse, which was born out of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s proclamation that the United States was the “Great Satan”. There’s also a nod to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign slogan “Keep hope alive” in the third and final verse.

Released in between the opening of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rockin’ In The Free World would become the anthem for the European liberation of its time.

In his 2013 memoir Waging Heavy Peace, Young reflected how this kind of social commentary was a “part of the process” for him.

He reasoned: “I just do what I do and keep my ears and eyes open. Things are happening all the time. You put it out there and shit happens.”

Interestingly, the main riff to the song has more in common with hard rock and early heavy metal than the folk scene Young had been part of. Palm-muting was used to deaden the strings and bring more of a staccato feel – a technique famously used by bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica. The palm-muting is abandoned during the verse and chorus sections, allowing the chords to vibrate and ring out naturally.

For his solo at 2:30, Sampedro uses the E minor pentatonic scale – though also chose to include a Bb blue note and a major second found on the 14th fret of his high E-string.

Rockin’ In The Free World has been performed regularly by Pearl Jam, who have also performed the track alongside Young – a man they’ve often described as their musical mentor. The members of Pearl Jam even served as Young’s backing band on his 1995 album Mirror Ball.

Given his strong political beliefs, Young has been notably particular about where his songs have been used. Rockin’ In The Free World was approved for the 2004 Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 – a harsh critique of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq the year prior – as well as 2015 film The Big Short, based on how reckless bankers, traders and advisors helped cause the 2008 recession.

When Donald Trump used the song in his announcement as the Republican candidate for the 2016 presidency, Young – who had sided with Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders – responded by saying its usage had not been authorised.

Trump’s staff then outlined how the campaign had obtained the legal right to use the recording through a licensing agreement with royalty collecting society ASCAP and agreed not to use Young’s music moving forwards. They also claimed: “Despite Neil’s differing political views, Mr. Trump likes him very much.”

However, Trump lashed out on Twitter later down the line, claiming Young had come “to my office looking for $$ on an audio deal” and “called me last week to go to his concert”. In his eyes, this made Young a “total hypocrite”.

Trump then went on to state that “Rockin' In The Free World was just one of 10 songs used as background music” and signed off with: “Didn’t love it anyway”.

Despite not performing particularly successfully as a single, the song would go on to become one of Young’s most iconic tracks, and covered by artists such as Suzi Quatro, Larkin Poe, Simple Minds and Bon Jovi, as well as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen on their 2003 G3 tour.

“They were so much better live than on record,” Gene Simmons says about the outrageous rock ’n’ roll band from New York City who were rivals to Kiss in the early ’70s.

In a new interview with Track Star podcast, Simmons and his Kiss bandmate Paul Stanley discuss a broad range of music – from their biggest influences such as The Beatles, Slade and The Who, to the stars of the New York rock scene from which Kiss emerged.

Some of their comments are bluntly dismissive. At one point, Stanley says of The Velvet Underground: “The music sucked!”

But both Stanley and Simmons have kinder words for the New York Dolls.

The Dolls’ self-titled debut album – produced by Todd Rundgren – was hugely influential, inspiring generations of rock ’n’ roll bands from the Ramones and the Sex Pistols to Guns N’ Roses and Poison.

The group’s classic line-up featured singer David Johansen, guitarists Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain, bassist Arthur Kane and drummer Jerry Nolan.

Referring to the Dolls’ debut album, Paul Stanley tells Track Star: “I hated the cover, because they looked like housewives on the cover. But live they just exuded this flamboyant glittery rock ’n’ roll.

“Look, they weren’t the best band in the world, but they really put it across. They were stars.

“We would see them [play] in New York. They would show up late. They were never on time. They’d tell jokes on stage.”

But he says admiringly: “There was a camaraderie about them and that’s what I think you look for in bands. ‘Boy, I wish I was a member of that club.’ The Dolls were the club that every other band and everybody in the audience wanted to be in.”

Simmons recalls: “We did some shows together but it didn’t last long. We opened for them. We did about three shows together and that was it. After that, we exploded and the Dolls did not.”

Stanley adds: “I remember being at the Crystal Room – which was at the Hotel Diplomat where everybody did shows off Times Square – and I ran into Sylv Sylvain. I said to him innocently, but I had ulterior motives, ‘We should do some shows, we should play together.’ And he said, ‘You’d kill us!’ So he was pretty sharp.”

As for why Kiss made it big and the Dolls ended up splitting in 1976 having failed to make a hit record, Stanley suggests: “The Dolls were very much a New York band and when you went into Ohio or Indiana it was completely lost. We were going for something more universal. It wasn’t designed for a small clique of an area.”

He explains: “I think what happened was so much of what these bands were doing had no relevance or connection to middle America. We were Anglophiles. We loved Slade, we loved the Stones, The Who. And I think what we were doing was much more universal.”

In April 1985, Wham! became the first western pop act to perform in China, winning over a people for whom the type of exuberant technicolor pop then dominating Western popular culture was entirely alien.

The ostensible objective for George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley's journey centred around two live dates at Beijing and Guangzhou (as part of their globe-trotting Big Tour). Interestingly though, the whole venture was actually a feat of promotional engineering.

Devised by the band’s Machiavellian manager Simon Napier-Bell, the China trip was envisioned as a means of generating the sort of unavoidable global headlines that would ultimately endear them to the US market - which, to some extent it did. The duo's Whamamerica! Tour followed just 4 months later.

Beyond the two shows, the near-constant parade of press conferences, banquets and formal events made for a hectic itinerary for the pair - with mutual resentment simmering between the band and a surrounding enlisted mob of journalists.

Crucially, a film crew, hired to document the trip, were also in tow, led by acclaimed director Lindsay Anderson.

Although Anderson’s film was never completed or released (a shorter, ‘pop video’ version dubbed Foreign Skies did eventually see the light of day), Anderson’s original film rushes have now been unearthed, restored and used as the foundation of a brand new film.

Wham! 10 Days in China shines the most revealing light yet on these ten seismic days, featuring brand new interviews with Andrew Ridgeley, Simon Napier-Bell and, most fascinatingly, many of the (now much older) Chinese fans themselves. The film highlights how some were so inspired by seeing Wham! back in the mid-'80s that it set their lives on a completely different course.

We spoke with director Mike Christie about the making of this film, touching on the intense time-consuming process of digging out and cleaning up Anderson’s original rushes, building the film’s narrative threads and why Wham! 10 Days in China is the definitive, 41-years-in-the-making, document of a moment when music transcended political and cultural divides.

MusicRadar: Firstly, what was it about this story that attracted you? Were you aware of the story prior to starting work on the film?

Mike Christie: “This is one of those kind of unicorn stories that's floated around in the music industry for decades. Everyone knew about the footage but no one had ever seen it. There are two patchy old films - which weren't really insightful. One of them never saw the light of day. The other one was kind of a pop video, which is what Wham! wanted it to be.

“So, it's one of those things that I've heard talked about many times. I think The George Michael Estate and George himself had been approached about this quite a bit, and they always just said no. For them, I don’t think China was a particularly pleasant experience. They weren't that interested in revisiting it.

“Then, obviously, after George passed and the Wham! anniversary project became a thing, it was very much in demand. Fans wanted to kind of reappraise it.

“Andrew has tried to live quite a private life and had sort of stepped into the shadows, but I knew him vaguely through a mutual friend. So we were talking about this as a project at the beginning of 2023. By that point I'd been to China quite a lot, so we got in touch with Andrew and floated it as an idea. What caught his imagination very quickly was the fact that I'd been there and he hadn't been back.

“I’d made a very definitive history about the art of China (called Art of China) so I’d been there a lot. I made some other films there as well. I was talking about China in a different kind of way, and the Chinese perspective was one of the critical perspectives that hadn't really ever been considered. We wrote a treatment which had that perspective in it, and then had to go through the process of getting approval from the George Michael Estate - which is complex because they understandably are very protective.”

MR: So Andrew and The George Michael Estate owned all of Lindsay Anderson’s original film reels of the China footage?

MC: “Yes but Andrew would never have done anything without their say-so. We had very good but very diligent conversations with George’s estate over the course of a year or so. After 9 or 10 months they had decided they wanted to do it. Then, there was another six months of discussing ‘how’ we were doing it.

“We always knew these cans of film existed in some classic artist archive warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Artists don’t get rid of anything - everything goes into an archive somewhere, so we knew those cans were in there.”

MR: And were you a Wham! fan, going into this project?

MC: “My sister was a massive Wham! fan. Which was quite good, because when Wham! [first appeared], she started ignoring the rest of her record collection - so I nicked it!

“There was David Bowie and Heaven 17 in there, quite cool music. So her getting distracted by Wham! expanded my music tastes, but I didn't really think about Wham! seriously. I liked some songs, I got it - but it was pop, it wasn’t really my cup of tea. But [watching the live performance footage] I was blown away. When we got the rushes, I was gobsmacked.”

MR: Before we talk in a little bit more detail about making the film, can we talk about the trip itself and the context of that time. Is it true that it was Wham!’s manager Simon Napier-Bell who engineered the trip to - somewhat cynically - increase press attention on the pair?

MC: “Yes, Andrew and George knew for a long time that Simon was going off to China negotiating. I think George was not particularly keen on doing it, but Simon talked him round, and Andrew was very cynical. It was talked about for a long time but seemed like a pipe dream. They kind of forgot about it. Suddenly it was happening.

“When I say suddenly, we looked at the timeline, and they got permission at the beginning of March and they went four weeks later.

“No one could possibly know what awaited them in China. I don't think the band necessarily understood the scale of the entourage that was going. It was well over 100 people, which is insane. They took their families, a documentary crew of 30 odd people, a tour crew, 11 band members, both managers, plus all the journalists.”

MR: An aspect of the film we particularly loved is just how tight and down to earth Andrew and George are with each other, despite all the intensity going on all around them.

MC: “They’d known each other for around ten years by then. I think at that age friendships are intense, rich and the bonds run deep. Those friendships matter more than anything else. So you can imagine the intensity in China. They were three years into this [pop] career. I just find it staggering.

“There’s a great unsaid in the film, and it didn’t belong in the film, but one of the scenes that I think is quite pivotal is like the quietest scene in the film, which is when George and Andrew are walking around Forbidden City. You can see George looking quite pensive - and there's some interviews at that that point to the fact that George knew what was coming.

“He had a sense of superstardom but he was also dealing with [his] sexuality, and rationalising his sexuality. Obviously he had come out to Andrew and Shirlie, which I think is important context, but [at this time] he could sense what could be escalatory global fame.

“Plus he’s in a foreign country with dozens and dozens of journalists. If you look back at what the newspapers were reporting back then and the way that headlines were because of AIDS and homophobia - it was a thousand times worse than it is now. I'm very aware of that from my work with Derek Jarman. We wrote a whole book touching on that subject. So, yes, I think that's a subconscious subtext for George's state of mind.”

MR: A major theme of the film is the impact and legacy of the trip on a generation of Chinese music fans, many of whom became musicians in their own right. You draw a clear line back to this moment as very much the year zero for the West and the East’s dialogue through music - how important was it to stress that point?

MC: “Documenting the impact was the whole point of the film. But we didn’t know. It was an exploration. We always knew the Chinese perspective needed telling because it had only been skimmed over.

“Early on I drew a kind of pyramid for the team - it was like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I always do bad drawings for all my films because there are always ‘organising concepts’. This film is a story about perspectives and people not understanding the perspectives. It’s also a story about pressure - there's mounting pressure throughout all of the film’s narrative layers. Except in the Chinese story. That’s where there’s a release of pressure. Culture gives them freedom.

“So, in my triangle the foundation was China - that was the base layer. The next layer was music. The next layer was the press, and the layer above that was the documentary and on top of it all was George and Andrew. So there were these five narrative layers. We were interested then in how this was going to play out [once we received the rushes]. Obviously China was going to be ever-present.

“Coming into the project, different people were saying ‘I think it’s going to be a story about the documentary’ and others were saying ‘I think it’s going to be a story about the press’ - But I think in the end it’s all of those things.

“But there’s only one real transformational story in the film - and that’s China. Wham! seeded a degree of cultural transformation in China. Yes, it boosted Wham!’s career - especially ahead of the America tour. But they were already pretty big. Did it transform them into something even bigger? Well, transform is a strong word.

“I think it catapulted them to a degree, but it didn't necessarily transform. Did it transform the press? No, none of that was transformational. But China went through a quiet transformation.

“I think there's a little bit of a butterfly effect going on in there. I think if you looked at the impact on the greater population of China, they were probably aware of this thing going on.

“Wham! arrived, they did their gigs, and they left. It’s not that it changed the country, but it seeded cultural change. It was the foundation for artistic, cultural and taste shifts that are still apparent now.

“The first friend I showed this film to was Brett Anderson from the band Suede. It was quite interesting because Suede are huge in China. When I finished the film you don't really know if people are going to like it because you're really close to it, and it's quite a weird film - so unusual. Brett was over for dinner one night and I said, ‘I’ll show you a bit of the China film’ and I put it on. And he went, ‘Can we watch it all?’ He was absorbed and watched the entire thing. He remembered the mood from playing in China in the 1990s. It was familiar to him. It echoed.

“The origin story was in there - if Wham! hadn’t gone, could anyone else have? Someone had to be first.”

MR: Going back to the making of the film itself, the first job was to process what was in the archive, and sift through the many cans of film shot for the original film?

MC: “The first month of production was the first time that these cans had come out of storage. There was a very long process of restoring this quite old footage physically, then capturing it digitally and remastering it.

“When we set out to make the film we had Foreign Skies (the 1986 film that was eventually made out of Lindsay’s footage after he was fired from the production) and we had If You Were There, which was Lindsay Anderson’s supposed original film - but that’s a rough cut really - it’s very ambient. It’s interesting but it’s not a finished documentary.

“So we didn't know what was in the cans. We thought that the worst case scenario was that we were making a film out of these two films. As it worked out Wham! 10 Days in China is made completely from the unseen rushes. There are no clips from the previous two films in it at all. So it's a brand new film. In the interviews we covered off the build-up story and the aftermath, but we didn’t actually have need for footage from the other films.

“The rushes were an absolute mess - it took seven months from start to finish to transfer, restore and sync all the rushes. One of the technical guys suggested that every minute of footage was an hour's work. So, if you think there are a lot of hours of footage… We were slightly worried.

“We went to China [to film the interviews] without having seen much, while we were there they were still arriving - drip, drip, drip. The edit started in February, In May we were kind of getting closer to the rough cut, and we were still getting rushes.

“It was so random - because the footage in these tins was chopped up. They’d literally cut bits of the film out. There was so much stuff that was great, so it was stuck back together with tape, restored and cleaned - then digitised. Then the digital footage has to be polished and restored. So yes, we didn’t use any of the first two documentaries, but the key to it was that it was a proper, in depth, editorial documentary process.

“The best story really is that ’10 days in China’ framework - it’s like an itinerary; rest day, show day…etc.

“Lindsay Anderson went to China and, as you can tell in the film, he didn’t like them. His diaries are incredibly revealing. He [talks about] not liking them, them not liking him, him not being interested in China. He calls his accident [Anderson became wheelchair-bound throughout the production due to a leg injury] his ‘happy accident’.

MR: So, what happened to him on the trip, how did he get injured?

MC: “Of course, no one really knows. It was a bit of an overstated kind of twisted ankle, maybe? I think it gave him another reason to sit detached in the background. The crew were largely undirected. Martin, the producer, did some direction, but partly out of a panic to capture scenes. They’d spent a fortune taking all these cameras. Lindsay slagged off the cameramen by the way - he said they weren't very good, but they were good!

“It’s not structured, it's not directed - they just start filming stuff. So basically, for a long time at the beginning of the project I was asking myself ‘What's my job? - Am I finishing someone else's film? What am I doing?’

“It’s quite nerve-wracking in a way but quite rapidly, I realised that actually, in reality, they weren't his rushes, and there was no film. So I was making my film, which was going to be the film.”

MR: Was there anything that you had to cut out - or couldn’t include - that you’d rather have kept in the film?

MC: “In the film we stay pretty true to the [tour itinerary] timeline, but there was a lot of stuff that we left out. There were about four or five banquets. You just need one. There was more than one press conference - and another one that's quite fiery. But with the one in the film, we let it just breathe. The discomfort - you’re kind of watching a lot of this film through your fingers.

“I think it’s important to say that Wham! had two managers - Simon Napier-Bell and Jazz Summers, who worked with him. Jazz is a musical industry legend, and is really critical to the story and Wham!'s success. Unfortunately, he died far too young, but he's in the footage.

“Sadly we couldn't find any fitting interviews with him - so you see him but his story's untold, which is a shame. So I'd say that's the only regret in terms of what we couldn't do.”

MR: Your film certainly has a mood, and it’s amazingly consistent - even when you cut between contemporary interviewees and the archive footage

MC: “I wanted the film to feel like it was a complete film made in one time. Now we can't travel back in time but when I saw the rushes and I saw how loose they were shot, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to find [interview] locations that don't jar, so they they don't look necessarily like China, but they feel like they belong in the environment.’ So, Andrew's in an old theatre. Someone's in a stadium that looks a bit like a stadium that one of the gigs was at. Someone's in a crappy backstage office. Someone's in a crappy dressing room. You know, there’s an aesthetic.

“There’s 27 interviewees - it's a lot of crappy locations to find!

“I’ve not told this to anyone else, but Andrew Ridgeley was strapped with hot water bottles because we shot his interviews in December 2024 when it was freezing cold. It was like minus-6 outside. So, there's also the way I wanted to edit it, so it looked like it was happening. It was like ‘live’.

“So you've got this world now where the interviews look like they belong in an environment that could be in the film. The camera in the interviews walks in and out - not just the camera in the footage. What that does is it swallows you into that world.”

MR: And those Chinese interviewees, how hard was it to get hold of them?

MC: “It was not easy getting in touch. We had a Chinese producer who I've worked with for a long time in China, and she had a team of three people. We had the London side of the team.

“We got Simon Napier-Bell to do interviews in China with Chinese newspapers, so that it would appear in Chinese in order to flush people out. We then had a shortlist of 12 brilliant concert attendees. Amongst them, we discovered Cui Jian. I just captioned him as ‘rock star’ but he is effectively the Chinese equivalent of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan. He’s huge - and was hard to get.”

Cheng Fangyuan was always going to be in there but she recorded the covers on the Chinese version of their cassette. Then there were people like Wang Di. It’s unusual to have that many people in a film - a lot of voices.”

MR: Aside from the positive impact that the shows ultimately had on those Chinese fans, the film also gives insight into the tension and darkness surrounding the trip. Without giving too much away, a series of negative (and, in one case, outright horrible) events certainly cast an enlarging shadow across George and Andrew as the film progresses. There’s an interesting duality there. After the first Beijing show George seems crestfallen at the lack of energy from the crowd…

MC: “That footage of George getting pissed off is footage that nobody has ever seen. I do work to an act structure, so in terms of where you're at in the film by then, that is [George’s] first total understanding of the Chinese perspective. They are backstage going ‘It’s f***ing horrible’ and ‘Don’t ask what we think’, while we intercut with [positive interviews] from some of the Chinese audience, asking them what they think - the juxtaposition of perspectives is so extraordinary.

“Every time you start off with a bit of footage, and every time you go through it, you're halving it, and so you're distilling it. Then the body language emerges.

“So the story isn't obvious when you watch an hour's footage from one place, it's not obvious because you're not noticing quite so many of the micro-gestures and the discomfort and the weird looks. But as you start to cut it down, the body language begins to speak more loudly. I think that’s why you're aware of the discomfort and the pressure much more because we were able to really focus it.

“It's hard to explain how complex this process of this film was. It was working on so many different levels and narratives. Technically, emotionally - just because of George's absence.

“Tracking down George talking about China was really hard. There’s not a lot of him talking about the trip. Some of the best interview quotes came from an interview we found in the US Library of Congress. It's in the public domain and is a very wide-ranging interview, and some of the best sound bites about China came from that interview. I think we had about five or six interviews where he talked about it pretty clearly, plus stuff in China. But you worry about the fact that you don't know at the outset whether your biggest character is going to have a presence or a voice.

“Andrew Ridgeley came with us to shoot the China stuff. He actually wanted to come. But I didn't want to make one of those films where it's ‘Andrew Ridgeley goes back to the venue’ etc. It’s not that film, but he came. Andrew came [back to China] because he actually wanted to see and hear for himself.

“Often he’d come to the Chinese interviews and hide. He’d listen to the interview, and then meet the person afterwards, so his presence wouldn’t affect them. He’d literally creep in and hide behind a bit of the set!

“The whole film’s aspect ratio is the same as the original film footage. It’s this very weird box. There’s a moment at the end where we film Andrew on the Great Wall of China, and then it goes full widescreen. It’s the moment where we break out of the world of the film. It’s the moment where it moves to the ‘now’. Up until that moment, everything's been in the past.”

MR: One of our favourite scenes is where George is filmed receiving a massage, and uses that moment to speak to the film crew quite candidly about this perspective on China. Again, it’s a fantastic juxtaposition.

MC: “It's a good job George gave us permission to use the footage in the footage, because that would have been a debate otherwise! [George’s backside is partially visible during this scene, Ed]

“The making of this film was kept secret. It’s so different, it’s such a different story. It’s so honest. What was really refreshing was how authentic the George Michael Estate and Andrew allowed us [to be] in making the film. Allowing us to keep a lot of the stuff of George mucking around. [In the massage scene] we had long debates about how long we should keep George's bum on screen. And is it okay that he's playing with cough sweets and doing silly voices? But both were like, ‘That's George.’”

MR: Towards the end of the film, there’s an absolutely beautiful live performance of Careless Whisper, taken from the second show in Guangzhou. Was it important to have this song in there - and retain that lengthy sax solo introduction?

MC: “The film’s brilliant producer Alice Popplewell - who I loved working with - would sit with me in my flat brainstorming for the first three months. We would sit there and suddenly go; ‘We should try and have a number one single off the back of this film - but what would it be? What's our song?’

“We ultimately always said it's going to be Careless Whisper. It was always going to end with Careless Whisper.

“You end up with quite a committee [when making a film]. I do remember during one of those discussions about cuts, someone saying, ‘Do we need that sax solo? It’s very long’. And we were like, "Don't kill the sax solo!’

“[For the live audio] Andrew and Chris Porter remixed the 24-tracks. Chris did the original recording but again these 24-tracks took restoration. So Chris and Andrew went back into the studio and remixed it for surround. The music was less problematic than the visuals because the cameras aren't actually directed; they're just running. Not all the songs had footage because they're filming on film and they have to change the magazines, and the magazines only run for so many minutes - then sometimes the camera men are changing magazines on different cameras at the same time!

“So, some songs only had footage from one camera, others had three cameras but with exactly the same shot from slightly different angles. So you know, it was sort of weird because you’d think it’s obvious which songs you had to put in, but it wasn’t so straightforward.”

MR: It’s an uplifting finale after what seems to have been something of a cursed trip in some respects…

MC: “It’s interesting you say about the trip being cursed, I honestly wondered when I came in, will I finish this film? Is it cursed?

“Beyond the trip itself, there were competing agendas and different concerns. Is it going to be commercial enough for Sony? Is it going to be too revealing for the George Michael Estate? Are the press going to hate it because it's negative towards the press? Will the cinephiles hate it because it seems the truth about Lindsay's role is that he didn't care, which is a shame.

“To give him his dues, I’d argue that it was necessary to wait. In hindsight, I don't think you could have understood the story that was going on at the time. We had to make sense of the story, and what I like to say is, it's a film that was 41 years in the making. Lindsay didn't finish his film. Foreign Skies is kind of a pop video version of the whole thing, but it doesn't answer any questions. This is the finished film, and it took 41 years to make.”

MR: So the film is landing on cinema screens from Tuesday 28th July - did you always know this was going to be more than just a TV documentary?

MC: “When we were making it I deliberately shot a style that would work on a big screen because it's shot on film. I didn’t want it to be a TV doc - I wanted to keep it cinematic.

“Then we were saying to Sony, ‘We should put this into film festivals and stuff’. The business people were a bit skeptical. Before we know it, it’s opening worldwide. Some cinemas are playing it for a night, some for a few days and some for a couple of weeks. The worldwide TV premiere is on the BBC late summer.

“We were making our film before the 2023 Netflix documentary came out. We didn’t see it in advance, so we were really scared about how they were going to handle China. I was quite relieved when I watched it and they’d only used a few minutes, I thought ‘Oh thank God for that.’ Then we were making the film when the Last Christmas film was being made. But we were focusing on just those 10 days. That’s the point. There’s a pre-story and an aftermath but that’s just context, it was about those 10 days. What’s interesting is that there’s a trilogy of Wham! films now.

“All the way along, Andrew, Alice, and I all knew that this film was completely different. I knew it was stylistically as well but not everyone understands what a director is doing when you're making a film. You're doing style things, people won't get it. But I knew that we were making a really different film. So did Andrew.”

Wham! 10 Days in China is released on Tuesday 28th July at selected cinemas and will have its broadcast premiere on BBC Two in the UK later in the summer

TLC’s 1999 classic No Scrubs adopts an interesting position in the history of commercial music. Apart from being a classic in its own right, it was released in early 1999 in two forms; the radio friendly hit version, complete with its repeat-to-fade chorus, and the rap version, which includes a full rap section at the end of the song, supplied by the late, great TLC figurehead, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes.

Part of the song's enduring appeal emanates from its contentious title and lyrical thrust.

The very term ‘scrub’ was popularised by the song, drawn from the street vernacular of Atlanta, Georgia. It effectively refers to a man who lacks finances and has no purpose or prospects.

We have to remember that the song came at the tail end of the 90s, and at a time when pop music was increasingly serving as a vehicle for women to express their truths, but No Scrubs raised the temperature considerably.

Some would later dub its lyric as akin to ‘poverty-shaming’, but it wasn't the only time that it would cause debate…

A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly
And is also known as a busta
Always talking about what he wants
And just sits on his broke ass

No Scrubs was originally composed by former Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka ‘Tiny’ Cottle alongside producer Kevin ‘She’kspere’ Briggs. The rap was self-penned by Lopes.

The track was originally intended for a different project, linked with its original writers in the wake of Xscape splitting, but was offered to the three TLC girls - Tionne ’T-Boz’ Watkins, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, and Rozonda ‘Chilli’ Thomas - albeit with some subtle changes to make it more appropriate for the trio.

The song’s contentious theme originated when Burruss and Cottle were discussing potential concepts;

“Me and Kandi were coming together to do a project for ourselves. We were sitting down, coming up with ideas, and when we wrote, we would always come up with a concept first,” Tameka told Rolling Stone. “She had a concept ’cause she had been, like, ‘I wanna talk about a screw-up, a guy that’s a screw-up that doesn’t have their own business in order’. It came from a previous relationship that she was in. And we took that and wrote about what we call a ‘scrub.'”

Tameka and Kandi recorded a version themselves, before She’kspere’ played the demo for TLC’s management. They were amazed - to their ears, it was an unmistakable hit.

“We were kind of like, ‘This is a hit for us. Like, we really feel like we can make it off this song.’ Because at this time, Xscape just broke up, and we were really trying to find our way,” Tameka told Rolling Stone. “So it was probably the best thing we probably could have ever ever did by giving TLC that No Scrubs record.”

Just as well, because it became their biggest hit by quite a margin. No Scrubs became the group’s third No.1 single with well over half-a-million in sales, and streams reaching into the tens of millions. It also secured two Grammys, for RnB performance, and best song, with the latter awarded to the writing team. Its space-age video too was ubiquitous across music television at the time.

Going back to that questionable theme, and in an interview with TMF, TLC shared their meaning of the term ‘scrub’ - giving a more rounded definition beyond the superficial ‘poor’ label; “A scrub is lazy, doesn’t take care of his kids, he doesn’t have a job and doesn’t want a job. He’s comfortable being at home living with his mother,” said Rozonda, while Tionne explained that, “People of my mother’s generation - so like 1945 - used it. It comes back.”

“[It’s] a girl’s anthem” said Rozonda when asked why the single was the first one chosen for release from their album FanMail. “We thought it was the song that [the audience] would get the quickest, it’s probably the catchiest,” Said Lisa, who sadly passed away in tragic circumstances in 2002. “You listen to it one time and you know what it is.”

Given the popularity of the song and its continuing stature as an outright classic, it won't come as a surprise to learn that it has been sampled within other tracks. Artists Sleepy Hollow and Le Youth have both used direct samples from the track within their own work, but it has also attracted a turbulent association within the realms of copyright infringement.

Ed Sheeran was forced to share writing credits with the No Scrubs writing team, on his song Shape of You, due to apparent copyright infringement. It was a similar tale for Avicii's single SOS, with credits applied posthumously.

However, perhaps the reason for its winning ingredients being so easily pilfered is that the song is pretty simple in harmonic make-up, making good use of a very basic chord structure. So, it’s hardly a surprise that there might be other songs that sound similar.

No Scrubs employs the same chord structure for both verses and chorus. The elements which dictate the difference between the two sections relate to instrumental arrangement and melodic line.

The choice of key for the song might not be regarded as the most keyboard or guitar-friendly (although, surprisingly, there are no guitars on the track) We can think of the key as either Ab minor or G# minor; we are going to work on the basis of the latter, with a key signature that contains 5 sharps, as opposed to the former, which would use 7 flats.

The opening begins with chord IV - C#m7 - performed by Briggs on an acoustic guitar sound supplied by a Kurzweil keyboard, and played using arpeggiated chords. Some think that it adopts a Spanish feel, but this possibly has more to do with the chosen sound than the music itself. With each chord occupying two beats (half a bar), the second chord reverts to the home chord of G#m. We then shift to the dominant - D#7 - before returning to G#m.

The sequence is performed in a very stylised way, with the first of each pair of chords employing a sustained bass note, while the second of each pairing is played very staccato or short. The sequence also repeats, and upon the repeat, Briggs performs a flourish at the end of the sequence, implying the use of the chord G#7, with the presence of the note F#.

In essence then, the chords cycle through a IV, I, V, I sequence, which is very pleasing to the ear, incredibly common, and used in many songs in music history, hence the ease with which copyright infringement could become an issue (even though harmony is not supposed to be copyrightable element).

Being RnB from the late 90s, the song makes exclusive use of electronic instrumentation, albeit with a view of sounding vaguely acoustic. As previously mentioned, the acoustic guitar sound is quite identifiable; this was a popular timbral choice throughout the 90s for many dance tracks, with Korg synths often being the keyboard sources of choice.

Briggs employs some very tight and clipped drum sounds, which are generated over MIDI, along with a barely-audible synth sub-bass. This might explain the importance of the acoustic guitar’s bass element.

No Scrubs is rich with vocal harmonies, particularly in the chorus section, although these elements were predominantly supplied by the female writers on the team, along with session singer Debra Killings.

Another element which is laid quite a way back in the mix, is a gated/tremolo electric piano. We can hear the chords, with an applied 16th note tremolo gate, using some form of Rhodes sound, presumably also supplied by Kurzweil.

Finally, the identifiable string arrangement was also put together by Briggs, which helps to define the chord structure, particularly in the chorus section. Despite the extensive use of a two bar sequence for the vast majority of the song, the bridge section sees a considerable departure from this construct.

The bridge begins with the chords Emaj7, D#7 and F#/G# (or G#11 if preferred), all played for a whole bar. We then hear a really interesting descending sequence, with each chord playing for one beat each - G#m7, G7, F#m7, Fmaj7 - before reverting back to a chord per bar for Emaj7(9), where the guitar sound adds the 9th, before heading to D#7 for a bar.

To finish the bridge, we hear G#m7, C#7, E/F# and D#7, all played for two beats at a time. The last chord, of D#7 adopts a bass note of G (better described as F double-sharp in this harmonic context) which would lead perfectly into our key of G#m, but instead, we revert back to the previous two bar sequence, as used in the verse and chorus sections.

This concludes a pretty complicated bridge section, and one that is heavily influenced by jazz traditions, through the use of a number of chord extensions, and particularly the use of major 7ths, which always add an element of sweetness to harmony. It's the perfect juxtaposition, given the nature of the harmony in the rest of the song.

We can't leave this song without mentioning the incredible strength of the lead vocal, provided by Rozonda. This was the first time that she had taken a lead vocal in a TLC song, and by our reckoning, is a pretty strong debut.

Wayne Charvel, the legendary luthier who kick-started the hot-rodded electric guitar movement, has died, aged 85.

He leaves behind a formidable legacy. In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Charvel made guitars for Deep Purple, ZZ Top, the Who, Dave Murray of Iron Maiden, Warren De Martini of Ratt, and a young man by the name of Eddie Van Halen. It was Wayne Charvel who built EVH the original yellow-and-black Bumblebee guitar from the cover of 1979’s Van Halen II.

In a statement, Charvel Guitars described its founder as a “visionary whose creativity and craftsmanship helped shape the sound of modern guitar culture”. And that’s no understatement.

Charvel might have long left the company that bears his name but his design aesthetic is writ large across its contemporary catalogue. And his hot-rodding of the Fender Stratocaster – retooling it as a high-performance instrument spec’d for hard rock, heavy metal and the burgeoning shred scene – gave birth to the Superstrat.

Guitar was in the blood. Charvel started playing them when he was five years old. He got his start at the Fender factory in the mid ‘60s.

“After I got married, I quit playing in bands,” said Charvel, speaking to NAMM in 2010. “A couple of my good friends at Fender knew that I was painting guitars, so they hired me to do all the auto warranty repairs. They didn’t want to take guys off the line when a guitar came in, scratched up, and take them off and stop production to refinish and sand them down.”

This was the perfect grounding for Charvel, refretting guitars, repainting and refinishing them. There he got the idea that these production line Fender guitars could be improved upon. With their bolt-on construction, swapping out the neck would be easy.

Fender didn’t just use him for guitars. He could recover guitar amps, a skill that came in handy when a Rhodes piano came in “all scratched up” for repair.

“It was great for me,” said Charvel. “I was swamped, and I’d go down to Fender at least twice a week.” Back then, Charvel had been using nitrocellulose lacquer. The Fender plant was using “easy buff” poly from Dunn-Edwards. It was an education.

“They used overhead pin routers. Everything was made by hand. They didn’t have CNC machines in those days,” said Charvel. “And it was just great to see all those guitars. It was just so exciting, so motivating.”

By 1974, Charvel was ready to go into business, opening the doors to Charvel’s Guitar Repair in Azusa, California. The Valley was about to become the epicentre of a guitar revolution. The shop was set up to repair Fender guitars that were out of warranty but its brief soon evolved.

Modding, hot-rodding, custom appointments? Charvel was your man. He was making up custom builds using replacement bodies and necks made by his old friend Lynn Ellsworth up at Boogie Bodies, based out of Puyallup, Washington. And it wasn't just Strats. He's soup up your Telecaster, too. This would be the Charvel Type 2 body shape.

The word spread. The late Alan Rogan – legendary guitar tech for the Who – was a client. Deep Purple dropped by. They started sending their friends, too. Charvel was making these rock guys something that no one had ever seen before, putting humbuckers in a Strat-style body, flattening out the radius of the fingerboard and installing jumbo frets. “In those days, you couldn't buy a Fender guitar other than just completely stock,” said Charvel.

He learned how to make the bodies himself from working with David Schecter. Over the course of one weekend, the pair made a hundred bodies at Schecter’s shop in Reseda, California. Charvel was acquiring new skills every day.

He also had an eye for a good luthier. Charvel Guitar Repair was an incubator for talent. Hiring Grover Jackson was one of Charvel’s masterstrokes, introducing another maverick builder. Jackson took over the Charvel company after it went bust in 1978.

That didn’t stop Wayne Charvel. Some of his builds just got wilder, such as the custom electric and bass guitars he made for Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons for ZZ Top’s 1983 Eliminator Tour. They had onboard pyro.

“Billy turned us onto a lot of people, and we just got busy and busy and busier,” said Charvel. “It was a lot of fun work with a lot of nice people.”

He would go on to work with his friend Bernie Rico at B.C. Rich, working on artist relations, building guitars and helping them modernise production. “My job was to set up routers so they could just whiz around those guitars. And we did that,” he said.

He even designed a guitar for Gibson, the WRC, a mid ‘80s HSS S-style with a string-through double-locking vibrato and a configuration of switches. That kind of thing was pure Charvel, totally on-brand. The guitar he made for Michael Angelo-Batio? Not so much.

When Steve Vai appeared on the scene with his triple-necked Heart Guitar (made by Ibanez’s Ibanez Mace Bailey), MAB’s label was pushing him to duel Vai, like some live-action scene in Crossroads. He wasn’t into that but the thought of Vai with his triple-neck inspired him to ante up and get a four-necked guitar. He knew just the man to make it.

“As it happened, Wayne Charvel was building all my guitars,” Angelo-Batio told Guitar World. “I said to him, ‘Can you do this?’ I have a good engineering mind for guitar design, so I designed the Quad. I told him how I thought it should be four separate guitars, and that was that. It was the wildest thing. There was no limit to what we were trying to do.”

No limits was the spirit in which Wayne Charvel approached guitar design. A guitar could always play faster, play better. He later built them under his own name, Wayne Guitar. The history page on its site reads like a who’s who of guitar greats, all of whom have reached out to Charvel to make them a guitar over the years.

Charvel Guitars was right. Wayne Charvel was a visionary.

“Wayne’s ideas sparked a movement that influenced countless players and builders, and his passion for innovation set a foundation that still guides the industry today,” reads Charvel Guitars’ tribute. “Those who knew him remember his kindness, his curiosity, and the way he inspired others to push their craft further. His impact lives on in every guitar that carries his name, and his legacy will continue to resonate with musicians around the world. Our hearts are with his family, loved ones, and every player who keeps his influence alive.”

Every musician has a moment in their young life when they connect with music in such a powerful way that they know this is what they were born to do. For Dan Hawkins, guitarist in The Darkness, it happened at the age of seven when he heard a Queen album for the very first time.

Hawkins recalls to MusicRadar: “My dad had gone to buy an MG sports car and I went with him. The car was a wreck but it had this amazing top-of-the-range Blaupunkt stereo – and on the journey back home, my dad played a cassette of A Night At The Opera and it blew my mind.”

He adds: “At that point, even at that early age, I decided pursue a career and a life rocking!”

More than four decades later, Hawkins is still living that dream. In addition, since 2015 he’s had Rufus Tiger Taylor, son of Queen legend Roger Taylor, alongside him as the drummer in The Darkness.

And the Queen connections don’t end there. The Darkness’s second album, 2005’s One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back, was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, who worked with Queen on A Night At The Opera and four other albums – Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack and Jazz.

Hawkins says of A Night At The Opera: “It’s the best album ever made! It’s so diverse, it transcends any sort of rock boundaries – even within the first two songs, from Death On Two Legs, an awesome rocking romp, to Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon, which is like a 1930s ode to boating! You’re thrown straight into the unknown.”

Hawkins picks two songs written by guitarist Brian May as highlights from this album.

“The Prophet’s Song is amazing,” he says. “Knowing a fair bit about production and having been friends with Roy Thomas Baker, I realise that the work that was put into that one song was more than most bands put into their whole albums.

“Obviously Bohemian Rhapsody is on there too, and it’s nice when a band’s biggest hit is on their best album, but I don’t think of A Night At The Opera as the album with Bohemian Rhapsody on it, I think of it as the album with 39 on it, which is my favourite Queen song.

“39 is one of those songs that grabs me emotionally, although for years I didn’t realise it was about travelling through time in deep space – quite obviously a song written by Brian May!

“When The Darkness were planning to play at Hyde Park with Queen and Paul Rodgers, just before the 7/7 London bombings [in 2005], I was going to play 39 with Brian. That would have been a dream, because that song, and the whole album, means so much to me.”

However, Hawkins did eventually get to jam with his hero. In 2011 May joined The Darkness on stage at London’s Hammersmith Apollo to perform a three-song encore of two Darkness songs, Bareback and I Believe In A Thing Called Love, plus Queen’s Tie Your Mother Down.

If someone would have told Sammy Duet in 1993 that Acid Bath would be stepping onstage to play in front of more than 60,000 people at a stadium show he would have told them they were tripping. Or he would have thought that he was the one who was tripping.

More often than not he would have been. When the Louisiana sludge pioneers were workshopping their sound, jamming wherever anyone would have them, they were often “chemically enhanced”. Sure you’ll see frontman Dax Riggs wearing a Roky Erickson T-shirt onstage but Duet says the psychedelic influences you are hearing on record were more literal.

“The psychedelic thing just came out, because we were, uh, how can I say this? We were on a lot of psychedelics at that period of time in our lives,” he says with a chuckle. “We were, literally, nine times out of 10 on psychedelics.”

But Acid Bath’s triumphant second act is no trip, no flashback. They got back together in 2024, played a string of festival shows, then booked some headlining dates and found themselves playing the biggest gigs of their lives. They were hand-picked by System Of A Down to open their stadium tour with Queens Of The Stone Age. This comeback is very much real even if it is one of the most unlikely stories in underground metal.

Acid Bath recorded just two albums before splitting in tragic circumstances when bassist and co-founder Audie Pitre was killed by a drunk driver in 1997. Pitre and Duet were friends since childhood.

Pitre’s bass guitar was integral to Acid Bath’s volatile sound, the mercurial complement to Duet and Mike Sanchez’s guitars, alternating between fuzzed out (Cheap Vodka) or with that bright tri-chorus modulation (Scream Of The Butterfly). They hired Pitre’s friend Joseph Fontenot on bass and tried to continue but soon called it quits and went their separate ways.

Riggs and Sanchez formed Agents of Oblivion. Duet formed New Orleans black metal stalwarts Goatwhore and joined up with Crowbar for a trio of albums. And that was it for Acid Bath, until 2024, and the death of keyboard player Tomas Viator brought home that they had to do this now or never. Former Crowbar bassist and longtime Acid Bath fan Shane Wesley stepped into the fold. Goatwhore’s Zack Simmons took Jimmy Kyle’s spot on drums. And it was all systems go.

“Yeah, it started because we just realised that we’d better do it sooner than later because we’re not getting any younger,” says Duet. “So while we’re still physically able to do this, that was the catalyst for doing this. Because there was always talk about us doing it, but other things came up, all that stuff, so I guess the timing was right this time.”

Acid Bath’s audience had grown in absentia. Thirty-two years since their seminal debut LP, When The Kite String Pops, their notoriety and influence grew over the years to the point where we have to raise the question as to why they weren’t swept up in the major label boom of the ‘90s, when grunge broke the glass ceiling for ugly guitar sounds, when somehow the Melvins ended up on Atlantic for three LPs – and as Duet notes, Morbid Angel were on a major, Cannibal Corpse were in the movies.

Maybe the suits were spooked because Acid Bath were so hard to categorise, or because they had an illustration of serial killer John Wayne Gacy in his killer clown suit on their debut album’s cover. For its follow-up, 1996’s Paegan Terrorism Tactics, they used artwork by Jack Kevorkian.

They were too raw for the mainstream. Still, Paegan Terrorism Tactics proved that When The Kite String Pops was no fluke. It was heavier, and yet Acid Bath retained the capacity for surprise, opening the record with a salvo of low-end sludge, closing it out with the aggro riot of 13 Fingers and New Corpse then the acoustic closer, Dead Girl.

Acid Bath could change styles on a dime. Duet names Tom G Warrior, Tony Iommi and KK Downing on his Mount Rushmore of players but he says they would listen to all kinds of styles, and it all seeped in.

“Yeah, man, it’s like, at the time, there were no bands like us at all, anywhere,” says Duet. “I hate to make this comparison but the only thing that even came remotely close to what we were doing was some of the more experimental death metal.

“We were listening to a lot of different stuff. We were listening to death metal, doom metal, any sort of psychedelic music, all kinds of goth music. At the time, I was listening to a lot of death metal, and a lot of black metal, a lot of doom. The first Cathedral album was on repeat for a very long time on my stereo. Anything that was dark, we were into. It didn’t matter if it was metal or whatever as long as the music was dark.”

Of course, some things are not a mystery; we know why Acid Bath didn’t end up on Roadrunner. The label’s legendary A&R Monte Conner couldn’t hold his drink.

“Monte came to see us,” says Duet. “I guess he had been drinking with the Exhorder guys before the show, and he fell asleep during our set, so that’s why we didn’t get signed to Roadrunner. So that blew that fucking idea right there, you know? It’s like, well, the head of the record company fell asleep during your set, you’re probably not impressing him much. That’s what happened.”

That gig became something of an underground legend, that the fans tore the place up, that the staff at the venue were injured. It was like a hurricane blew through it. This was par for the course with Acid Bath; they were born in the post-storm devastation of a Cat 5 hurricane that devastated the state.

Where better to inhale everything that was being passed around underground – proto-sludge, hardcore punk, death metal, doom and gothic rock – then set nihilistic poetry to riffs to come out with a sound that was totally unique? Houma, Morgan City, the whole of Louisiana was in a mess. Acid Bath played around in the wreckage.

“Oh, man, we never really had a set practice room. Every time we jammed, it was always in a different place,” says Duet. “Hurricane Andrew hit Louisiana and devastated the state, and there were these bikers that lived in a trailer park. So they got their money from the hurricane and they had one nice trailer.

“All the rest of the trailers were just fucking fucked up! One of the trailers had electricity in it. They would let us practise in this abandoned trailer. It was falling apart but it had power, so we practised there for a while.”

That’s where their sound came together, on the trailer park, in whatever practice space was available, and some of these locations were pretty gnarly, or just plain weird. That had to have had some effect on their aesthetic disposition.

“It was just wherever we could find a spot,” says Duet. “In Morgan City, there was an old abandoned porno theatre, and we would practise in there. I think one time we practised in a church. Wherever anybody would let us practise, that’s where we would go.”

Acid Bath cut a pair of demos in ’93 before heading into the studio to track their debut with Greg Troyner at his studio, and Spike Cassidy of crossover champs DRI.

For a band with two guitarists, both of whom were maximalists with gain, tuned down to C standard or lower, When The Kite String Pops is a miracle of sound engineering. There is space between the instruments. It’s wide open and dynamic.

“It was a combination between Greg and Spike, because Greg had the studio, and he had put out a bunch of records from some New Orleans bands,” says Duet. “But we didn’t want it to sound like that, we wanted to have our own identity as far as the production goes, and that’s where Spike came in and helped out, and kind of made it sound – like you said – not squashed and just big and open.”

They knew the material inside and out. They had played these songs for years. In the time between recording the demos and the album sessions, the songs had evolved onstage. “It was just like they took on a life of their own,” says Duet.

But then these songs had come straight off the floor in the rehearsal space. What we are hearing came together on the trailer park, in the derelict porno theatre, the church, from minds addled by all that subtropical swamp air and humidity, LSD and pot. They just played until they found something.

“It was all accidents!” says Duet. “No one ever really came into the rehearsal room and said, ‘I have this song, or I have this idea for this song.’ It was always a spontaneous jamming. Very seldom, somebody would come in with a riff or something and we’d build a song around that. But the majority of the time we would just be getting stoned and jamming. The music just came out of us. That’s just the way we wrote.

“When the five of us got in a room together to write, the music just came out. There was no pre-planning or anything. We were just jamming and having fun and writing music that we liked to hear. We were just going with the flow, letting the music flow out of us.”

These days, Duet plays his ESP/LTD SD-2 signature guitar through a Lichtlaerm Audio Prometheus head, with “too many pedals” but always his MWK Audio Dybbuk signature overdrive in the mix, plus chorus, reverb, wah.

Back when Acid Bath were cutting their teeth, Duet’s rig was more rudimentary. He used his Ibanez Rocket Roll II V-style for the Kite String sessions, modded with EMG humbuckers and running through a Marshall JCM800. Duet recalls a Randall RG100ES solid-state head in the mix, too. Sanchez was playing through a Peavey Butcher. They didn’t have the money for anything better.

“We just played whatever we could get our hands on, whatever worked, and whatever we could afford,” says Duet. “We wanted nice stuff – don’t get me wrong – but we couldn’t afford the nice stuff. We had to play what we could find at a pawn shop for 50 bucks.”

And that never really changed while they were together. Acid Bath never made it rain during their first act. They would pack them in on home soil. They would do well below the Mason-Dixon, but the rest of the US – the rest of the world – wasn’t quite ready for them.

Their influence travelled after they split. Those two records had a second life. System Of A Down were fans. Slipknot’s Corey Taylor was a fan. You can hear how all that whipsawing from sludge riot to hypnotic down-tempo reveries might influence both.

Now it’s time to collect some dues and give these songs an airing again. Acid Bath is taking this chaos to stadiums and Festivals across Europe, and has just extended its US headlining tour, with Neurosis just announced as support for its Asheville, NC, date. Two great bands, two great comeback stories, both on one bill. Duet says there’s no question Pitre would give his blessing to all this.

“Absolutely, I mean, wherever he is right now, he’s probably smiling at us,” says Duet. “And it’s more of a tribute to him. Me and Audie grew up together, since we were kids, and I know how he was. He would probably be pissed if we didn’t do it.”

• See Acid Bath for dates and ticket details.

“I’m really nervous this time about the release of my new album,” Catherine Anne Davies - aka Welsh artist, producer and music-maker, The Anchoress - tells us.

“Partly because the industry is so different, it’s hard to not feel like a content creator at times. At the end of the day, I like making records, not videos.”

The cultural landscape that Catherine’s new album, As We Once Were, will be released into this August has significantly changed since her debut Confessions of a Romance Novelist came out more than ten years ago.

Since then, life has progressed for Catherine too, now navigating the challenges of modern music distribution and the unquenchable thirst for content that comes from social media while also becoming a parent.

Although initially unsure how to process these life changes within her music, it was the discovery of a cassette with her grandmother’s voice that lit the creative sparks under what became this new album.

“This was the key that unlocked the record, I suddenly realised that the thing I’d been resisting - writing about being a mother - actually informed this album,” Catherine explains. “I realised I was actually exploring connections between the generations and many of the songs ended up being a conversation between my gran, mum, me and my daughter.”

When Catherine initially talks about gearing up to construct her new record, it’s clear it was something she’d initially been avoiding rather than relishing. Having her daughter meant that Catherine’s previously full-on workflow had to be replaced by an approach where she could only spend a limited amount of time in the studio. This was different to the more immersive recording sessions that powered her 2021 album, The Art of Losing.

“Versions [an album of reinterpretations of other artist’s music] was a release that came in 2023 and was something I could dip in and out of as the songs were already written,” she says. “It was quite daunting to approach a new studio album, figuring out my process and how my working hours were curtailed in ways they’d never been before. I was also concerned about finding the time for ideas to percolate and ingest enough of the world outside of being a parent that was worth exploring in my music.”

Catherine might have not known the direction of a potential collection of new songs but she was clear that writing a record about motherhood was something she was keen to avoid.

“I always start my records not knowing how they are going to take shape, I just try things out, then halfway through you get an epiphany and that’s what happened here,” she says. “I came across a tape at my mum’s house with my grandmother’s voice on it that we’d been looking for for years.”

“I got it back to the studio, the tape was chewed up and I spent a week working on trying to recover the audio. At first, it was something I was doing for my mum but then it also helped give shape to the album too.”

Sonically, the new record represents an evolution for Catherine. While there are nods to her previous output, she’s experimented more with synths and unexpected musical styles.

“There’s a song on the album called Hand to the Tide, it has a math rock solo on it, which people might not be expecting,” she states. “I’ve leaned deeply into the corners of the world I’m known for within my sonic palette.”

Elsewhere, there are field recordings and synth textures alongside her grandmother’s voice too. At the heart of As We Once Were is a desire to share personal experiences that resonate with others.

“It’s very important that this record didn’t just mean something to me, that it could speak to others and the album’s title rests on this,” says Catherine.

“We have to accept that we are constantly changing and evolving, it’s something that is relevant to us all. This is what interests me as an artist; having these conversations that are bigger than me.”

Alongside discovering the tape, Catherine also managed to gain access to The Townshend Studio at the University of West London in Ealing. This studio harbours synths belonging to The Who’s Pete Townshend who decided that he’d prefer his collection to be accessible to a new generation of music-makers rather than being stored away in a dusty museum.

“His synths are now housed in this purpose-built space and I was really lucky to have the chance to go and play with this kit, it was living the dream for me and unlocked the record,” Catherine explains.

“There’s always a technical aspect to my music and I wanted to explore what I could with these synths. Yes, they’ve been owned and used by a genius but I wanted to move beyond that and try and find something new with them.”

Catherine has her own collection of vintage synths but rarely had the opportunity to work with a modular setup. She cites the ARP Model 2500, a modular synth designed to rival Moog systems as an important piece of kit.

“I spent hours trying to get a great sound out of it,” Catherine says. “The synths I have from the seventies and eighties have pre-built in patches so they are plug and play to a certain extent. With Townshend’s synths, you have to really work to get anything usable which is challenging but also means you can come up with something completely unique.”

The Moog System 35 also features on album single, Throw Over Your Man, providing a unique texture to the track which Catherine believes she’d never be able to replicate.

“This is something we’ve lost, this idea of one-off moments in the studio,” she states. “Now everything is recordable and can be rediscovered but there was so much serendipity in the process. It put me in a playful mindset and reminded me of how I started production - it allowed me to rediscover my love of the recording process.”

As a guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend has been behind some of rock music’s most memorable moments from performing at Woodstock with The Who to the bombastic ambitions of rock operas including Tommy. Unsurprisingly, his work has left a huge impression on Catherine.

“It was a playground to delve into although the first time I walked in, I cried as I was so overwhelmed,” she says. “Partly by the beauty of the instruments but also the weight of history, Quadrophenia is one of my favourite pieces of music. To have my hands on the same gear that he used was almost a little bit much at times.”

As We Once Were features four guest vocalists, the most an Anchoress record has ever had. Having happened upon a playful creative process, Catherine was happy to invite composer Hannah Peel, long-term creative sparring partner James Dean Bradfield from the Manic Street Preachers alongside artists Eaves Wilder and Gwenno to work with her.

“Hannah has become a great friend and James almost has to be on every record I make,” Catherine says. “Eaves is a young artist whose voice fitted perfectly for the track Damsels, and she’s the daughter of Caitlin Moran so the intergenerational theme fit there. I became friends with Gwenno after asking her for advice on balancing touring and motherhood.”

Rather than completely opening up the creative process, Catherine is still keen to pursue the singular vision of The Anchoress. She sees these guests as “The cherry on top of a cake that is already baked”.

“I still enjoy being totally autonomous and in control, so this felt more like bringing someone to the party to join in,” she says. “Collaborating for the sake of it doesn’t always push you further forward - sometimes it can lead to compromising which isn’t creatively satisfying. But I’m also no longer apologising for being a bit of a control freak. Success these days is now hard to gauge, you have to enjoy as much of the process as you can.”

As We Once Were took shape at various studios alongside the Townshend base in Ealing. Catherine spent time at Door to the River, a studio owned by the Manic Street Preachers alongside her own Black Lodge studio base, a space designed around sound.

“I’ve been really lucky to be able to build a bespoke space and make it as multi-purpose as possible,” she states. “The only thing I can’t do here is live drums but I have a huge desk with all my outboard gear on it with my synths racked up. As a parent, my working hours are nine until three so I go in and get on with it. I’m amazed at how much time I’ve wasted in the past.”

Previously, Catherine joined the Scottish rock band Simple Minds as a touring member of their live group, a role that put her in a position where she could afford to kit out the space. Named due to the colour of its outside (as well as nodding to David Lynch and Twin Peaks) the studio is an ongoing work in process.

“My dear friend Chris York [a legendary live music promoter] donated some of his gear to me just before he passed away too,” she says. “It was really difficult, I didn’t want to touch it or rack it up as it felt like I was acknowledging he wasn’t here any more, so that was hard.

“Chris was a really important part of my journey, encouraging me to carry on. The same with the Manics, they always know when I need a bit of a boost and they’ve helped me create this amazing space.”

As Catherine gears up to release the album, she’s also busy with other projects, producing and mixing for others alongside launching a new podcast exploring motherhood in today’s music industry and lecturing at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. This latter side to her work means she feels plugged into sounds and artists outside her usual sphere of influence.

“Lecturing takes me into a space where I’m constantly bombarded with new inspiration and work I wouldn’t have come across otherwise,” she says. “My students might not realise they’re inspiring me, I feel excited by new sounds as opposed to being stuck in my comfort zone.”

While the industry has matured, so has Catherine’s career and it’s now made up of various strands. Still, there has been one constant - her infatuation with great sound.

“I’m obsessed with making the best possible sonic sounding record I can,” she says. “I’m not interested in compromising the quality of my output, which means I don’t make cheap records and it takes me a long time too - because to make a record as layered and as complex as what I want to do, there is an inherent cost.

“I keep ploughing through as I believe it’s important to make art of a certain quality and hope that enough people agree with me. It’s been really heartening to hear that people appreciate this, the effort has been noticed.”

The history of music is riddled with happy accidents, idle noodlings and sonic misadventures that have helped inspire massive hits.

One that springs to mind is the drum groove that Jeff Beck started playing when Stevie Wonder left the room for a few moments at Electric Lady Studios in 1972, a groove that immediately inspired the returning Wonder to write Superstition.

Then there was The Doors’ Riders Of The Storm, which came into being when Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger were jamming on the Western tune Ghost Riders In The Sky, before slowing it down and adding some jazz elements.

Another song that was inspired by chance was Easy Lover, the 1984 hit for Philip Bailey and Phil Collins, which came into being when legendary bassist Nathan East was noodling around on the piano at Townhouse Studios in London and came up with the song’s defining riff.

A jam ensued between Bailey, Collins and East and their spontaneous collaboration produced the basis of Easy Lover.

It is a flawless slice of high energy pop-rock, featuring Bailey’s dynamic falsetto, Collins’ gritty, driving vocals and his massive gated reverb drum sound.

The song reached No 2 in the US and No 1 in the UK, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands. Over 40 years since its release it stands as an abiding classic of the MTV era.

Easy Lover was the last song written and recorded for Chinese Wall, the debut solo album by Bailey, who along with Maurice White was one of the two lead singers with Earth, Wind & Fire, a defining soul/funk band of the ’70s and ’80s.

Bailey was noted for his dynamic four-octave range and distinctive falsetto register, which prompted Columbia Records to offer him a solo deal in 1982.

That same year, Bailey met Collins, who was by then a major solo star in his own right and was on tour in the US to promote his second solo album, Hello, I Must Be Going!

Bailey was impressed by Collins’ talents as a drummer and a singer/songwriter, and when their paths crossed the following summer in Los Angeles – when Collins was playing drums for Robert Plant on the Principle Of Moments tour – Bailey asked Collins to produce his Chinese Wall album.

Townhouse Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, London was the primary studio chosen by Collins to record Bailey’s album.

Recording began in spring 1984, after Collins had finished work on Eric Clapton’s album Behind The Sun. In an interview posted on the Cream of Clapton Band Facebook page, Nathan East recalled how the song came into being.

“That was another of those life-changing moments,” East said. “Philip Bailey called me and asked me to go to London to record his Chinese Wall album, which Phil Collins was producing. I went over there to record for two weeks. It was a great studio, right there in central London. We stayed out in the country [near] Guildford and Phil would drive us into the studio every day at about a hundred miles an hour.”

After two weeks of recording, Bailey and Collins were conscious that they had not actually co-written any songs.

“We’d gone through the whole record and we hadn’t done anything together,” recalled Collins in an interview with Drumeo.com. “So literally the last couple of days Philip said we should try to do something together. We’d done most of the hard work already so I said, ‘Sure’.”

It was East who reportedly then came up with the riff that kickstarted the jam between himself, Collins and Bailey.

“After two weeks of recording, we had the album Chinese Wall, and there were some really great songs, some were a little bit esoteric, but very cool songs, and Phil one day in the studio said, ‘Man, we still don’t have that undeniable single that the record label would instantly pick, and that’s what we need’.

“So literally I just went over to the piano and started fooling around with the riff and surprisingly, in about 20 minutes, came up with this song that almost wrote itself. I was playing the main riff on the piano, and Philip Bailey started singing the verse that he sings, and we’re fooling around with some chords and Phil Collins starts chiming in with these melodies, and we said, ‘Man, let’s put this thing down’.”

“And in about 20 minutes, we kinda came up with this tune, and we started playing it. So we said, ‘Let's make a demo tonight and then come back tomorrow and record it.’”

They quickly improvised the track, with Collins providing the signature drumbeat and vocals. As Collins and East improvised on piano, Bailey was walking around singing.

“Phil and Nathan were playing around with a riff on the piano and I was walking around singing ‘Choosey Lover’ over the piano chords,” said Bailey in an interview with Musician magazine. “We worked on it all day and put a rough version of it down on tape.”

They recorded this demo of what they had done so they wouldn’t forget it. The plan was to return the following day to record it properly.

“We literally just picked a few things out of the blue and then I went home that night and wrote the words,” said Collins in an interview with Drumeo.com.

But when they arrived back at the studio the following morning, it was clear that the demo had something special about it.

“What we ended up using was that, because it had an energy and a sound,” said Collins.

“We came back the next day to listen to the demo, and everybody liked what they heard,” recalled East.

Bailey also highlighted how good the demo they had recorded was. “We tried doing it again, but we kept the original,” he said.

“It went down really quickly,” East told AllMusic. “One of the things was because we were at the end of the session [and] I had a plane to catch on Sunday… we got the track, and the next thing was the lyrics, which Phil wrote really quickly, and the next day they went in and put their parts down, and we were all just dancing around the studio and loving what we were hearing.”

Collins recalls the recording of the album as an upbeat experience.

“It was a good album that [I have] happy memories. We used to have curries most evenings and [pints] of lager. Philip Bailey was not used to that at all.”

Easy Lover is a powerful, upbeat slice of ’80s pop that blends soul, funk and rock and on which Bailey’s soaring, nimble falsetto blends seamlessly with Collins’ grittier, driving timbre.

It’s a thrilling vocal chemistry with nifty interplay and makes for an intoxicating sound. The song is brimming with hooks and it escalates as more elements are added to the mix.

There is an infectiously catchy synth riff and underpinning it all is Collins’ powerful, driving drums, a stunningly impactful groove which powers the whole thing along and gives it real momentum and excitement.

Lyrically, it’s fairly banal, charting the perils of falling for a femme fatale, a common theme amidst ’80s pop and rock music.

“She will play around and leave you/Leave you and deceive you/ Better forget it/Oh, you’ll regret it”

But in many ways the words barely matter. It’s the sound that grabs you and at its core this is an impeccably-crafted composition, with heaps of solid hooks and strong distinct sections that keep the momentum going.

Chinese Wall was released on 18 October 1984 and received some good reviews. In a three out of five star review in Rolling Stone magazine, James Henke concluded: “This is not as funky as Earth, Wind & Fire, but it’s a hundred times more appealing.”

But as the lead single, Easy Lover, released on 6 November 1984, received overwhelmingly strong responses from critics.

It’s a massive track, driven by the stellar rhythm section of Collins and East, punchy horns, the searing guitar of Daryl Stuermer and the stunning keyboard work of Lesette Wilson.

The song just flies along, with its massive, thumping 130 bpm tempo, crashing cymbals, pristine synths and infectious bridge.

There was little surprise when Easy Lover took home the 1985 MTV Video Music Award for Best Overall Performance.

The song elevated Philip Bailey’s profile but his success was arguably overshadowed by the fact that he had allied himself to Collins, who was by then a massive international star.

On Chinese Wall, Bailey’s vocal range shines across a mix of ballads and techno-dance tracks, but the success of Easy Lover arguably overshadowed his position as a solo artist.

As William Ruhlmann of All Music put it: “It's hard to shine yourself in such a glare, and although Bailey’s name was on the gold-selling hit single Easy Lover, a duet with Collins that helped the album take off, it’s Collins’ singing and drumming that one remembers.”

The review points out that while Collins’ heavy involvement gave the record commercial viability, it turned into a “gold-selling standoff” that tied Bailey’s solo success directly to his collaborator’s stardom rather than establishing Bailey independently.

For Nathan East, the song was an important chapter in an already stellar career. He would go on to join Collins’ touring band in the early ’90s, singing Bailey’s falsetto parts for Easy Lover on stage in front of huge audiences.

Over 40 years on from its release, Easy Lover remains a high energy composition, a seamless fusion of R&B, rock and dance that still sounds incredibly fresh. And it is a song whose infectious groove and top-notch songwriting quality still endear it to legions of listeners around the globe.

In 1984 a funny thing happened to INXS when they were performing in LA – and it led to their greatest success.

By that time the Australian band had started to make an impression in the US. The single Original Sin, produced by Nile Rodgers, was a minor hit, as was the parent album The Swing.

But the big breakthrough would come with the following album, Listen Like Thieves. And the producer of that album introduced himself to the band in a most surprising way.

Former INXS keyboard player and main songwriter Andrew Farriss recalls to MusicRadar: “In 1984 we played at the Palladium in Los Angeles. It was a good gig. There were 4000 people there. And right in the middle of the gig I see this bloke walking around on the stage as we’re playing.

“I’m looking around at our crew guys, like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And all the while this bloke is walking around all over the stage, behind our gear, looking at the amps, everything.”

Eventually, Farriss says, the man disappeared from the stage and the gig finished without further incident.

Then, backstage after the performance, the man introduced himself to the band. This was Chris Thomas, the English record producer famed for working on a host of high profile albums by Roxy Music, Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols, the Pretenders, Wings, Pete Townshend and Elton John.

Farriss recalls: “When Chris introduced himself to us I said, ‘Why were you walking around on stage?’ He said, ‘I don’t think anyone’s actually ever recorded your band properly.’

“Now we were on our fourth album by then. I told him, ‘We’re not exactly on a tricycle here, mate! You know, we’ve done a bit of recording.’

“But Chris said, ‘When I come and see your band live I’m overwhelmed by what you sound like. You sound just great live. But when I listen to your records there’s something missing. It’s not your songs – it’s the way they’re recorded.’

“So Chris told me what he’d done that night. He walked around on stage while we were playing live and he was listening to what we were all doing and looking at what gear we were using, even the monitor speakers.

“I thought that was a pretty weird thing to do, but that’s part of what makes Chris Thomas so clever. He said to himself, ‘I’m gonna find out what these guys actually sound like.’”

Thomas was promptly hired to produce the Listen Like Thieves album.

The location was Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney. But when the sessions began in August 1985, there was a problem.

Farriss explains: “When we got in the studio, Chris goes, ‘Where’s the gear that you were using in Los Angeles?’ We said, ‘Well, it’s in Los Angeles.’ And he goes, ‘I want to get that gear here.’

“So in the end we just tried to replicate exactly the kind of gear that we would have used in one of those concerts.”

Thomas found another way to replace the live sound he’d heard in LA.

“Most recording studios try to isolate all the musicians from each other,” Farriss says. “But instead of that he got us all to play together, exactly like we play live.

“So in a really weird way, Listen Like Thieves is one of the greatest live albums that wasn’t played live. We just set up our gear with the wedges, like we were playing live, and we recorded everything live as much as possible.”

Chris Thomas was proven right when Listen Like Thieves became a major hit around the world, establishing INXS as a truly international act. The album peaked at No 11 on the US Billboard 200 and also reached the top 50 in the UK.

“That record for INXS was really milestone for the band,” Farriss says.

Four singles were lifted from the album: What You Need, This Time, Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down The Mountain) and the title track. What You Need was the big hit, rising to No 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The album also had a huge impact on one famous fan.

As Farriss proudly states: “Giles Martin, George Martin’s son, said that Listen Like Thieves is his favourite album of all time.”

Billy Joel is the personification of a superb musician and songwriter, who nailed his performance style to the mast very early in his career with the 1973 signature hit Piano Man.

His dominance during the early 70s was built on a deep gift for music, both lyrically and technically, with the acoustic piano taking a central role in the vast majority of his recorded and live work.

But after seven studio albums, Joel confessed that by the early '80s, he was having real problems with writers block. That’s no disgrace in the wake of his considerable output of the 70s, and far from unusual for prolific composers.

Bizarrely, it was a relatively flippant and throw-away comment from his assistant that ended the curse…

“The pressure I was writing about in this song wasn't necessarily music business pressure, it was writing pressure,” Billy Joel told MTV’S Night School.

“At the time, I was saying, ‘Well, I gotta write some more stuff for the album’; I was about halfway through, and I said, ‘Well, what am I gonna do? I don't have any ideas, it's gone, it's dead, I have nothing, nothing, nothing. There's nothing.’ And then the woman who is my secretary came into the house at that point and said, ‘Wow, you look like you're under a lot of pressure. I bet you that'd be a good idea for a song.’ And I went, ‘Thank you!’”

The song Pressure is taken from Joel’s 1982 eighth studio album The Nylon Curtain. Apart from adopting a slightly harder narrative - evidenced on songs such as Allentown - the album also made extensive use of some of the new and emerging production technologies.

While the piano still had a central role, it was often accompanied or replaced by electric keyboards. Joel had been known to use a Minimoog and Rhodes electric piano, but the timing of the album was ripe for the use of the first Emulator, which allowed Joel to begin incorporating samples into his tracks, alongside the use of other synths and sequencers.

The track Allentown is a case in point, with its percussive accompaniment created using industrial sounds. Similarly, album producer Phil Ramone encouraged more experimentation, leading to Joel sampling his voice for the slightly unnerving electronic vocal interlude that we hear towards the end of Pressure.

We can also hear the heavy layering of synth brass textures alongside the piano, which forges the iconic hook of the song.

Billy Joel makes no secret of his love of piano music and his respect for the classical masters. When he was forced to do piano practice by his mother, he would often improvise in the style of Beethoven to make it sound like he was practising a specific work, when really he was just mucking about at a genius level.

This longstanding ability to channel the greats has served him well, and it’s in evidence on Pressure through the symphonic nature of the main riff. We hear it after the more subdued introduction (which uses chords from the verse - we’ll come back to that!).

So, let’s lift the lid on the underlying theory of this oddly constructed Joel beauty…

Pressure switches between major and minor tonality, with an introduction and verse structure which is in D major, but a chorus which is in D minor.

It's the chorus section where we hear the signature synth brass and piano riff, which is also used as a precursor to verse one.

In typically pianistic style, the chords of this riff play out over a device known as a tonic pedal; this is where the bass note remains stationary, which in this case is the note D.

Meanwhile, over the top, the synth brass and piano do a complicated dance in 3rds, which would sound just at home within Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

The chords themselves change relatively quickly - we hear - Dm for 2 beats, C#dim/D for 4 beats, and Dm for 2 beats.

Rather than repeat the sequence exactly, Joel pivots things slightly on the next time around, with - Bmb5/D, Gm/D, A7/D and Dm, each for 2 beats at a time.

We also need to add that these are the simplified versions of the chords. As the riff is highly melodic, played in 3rds, with moments when the notes act as passing notes or resolving chords, which don't conform entirely to the 2-beat-per-chord narrative.

Digging in to that detail would require notating the sequence directly which could be a lengthy challenge, should you feel so inclined.

With a perfect sense of yin and yang, the verse structure is altogether centred around D major.

The verse (and very opening of the song) begin by using a chord of Gsus2 for 2 bars, before switching to D major. The prominent interrupting stabs on chords C/D and D, repeat while Joel sings ‘Presh-arr’ with a degree of phonetic forcefulness!

The sequence then repeats, before switching to a sequence which takes us on a journey toward the chorus. The section gathers pace, by switching chords more quickly.

Here we start with Gm for a bar, C and A for 2-beats, and Dm for 2 bars. Finishing the romp toward the chorus, we hear Bb, F, and G7, all for a bar each, before Asus(4) and A for 2 beats each.

It's also really interesting to note that this song almost exclusively makes use of a halftime feel. This is directed by the drummer, who places the snare on beat 3, rather than the more usual 2 and 4.

With the gathering of pace in the bars leading up to the chorus section, the drummer switches to conventional time, with the snare’s placement on 2 and 4 acting as a form of tempo-based crescendo in line with the ethos of the song.

Adding to the experimental flavour of Pressure, Joel’s sampled vocals now put in an appearance, adopting a similar voicing structure to the synth brass riff, but this time over the verse chords.

“On Pressure, the noise that sounds like the horn of a French taxicab - that strange, breathless staccato beep - is actually a tape of me singing every note in my repertoire,” Joel revealed in Phil Ramone’s book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music.

“We recorded me singing the notes, and then loaded the tape into an effects gadget called an Emulator. Then, we overdubbed me hollering, 'PRESH-AR!' with the same inflection that a Royal Air Force captain might use to bark out a command like 'TEN-HUT!'”

This sampled vocal has got a slightly unnerving quality, and to our ears sounds ever so slightly out of tune with the rest of the track. This of course could also be down to the nature of analogue recording - and a possible edit that was placed in one of the final versions - but it all adds together to create a slightly unsettled feel, perfect for the intense subject matter.

During the recording process, Joel was experimenting with various exclamations of the word ‘pressure’, and in one such moment, toward the end of the song, frantically pressed random buttons on the tape machine during playback of the master tape in a surge of inspiration.

“While the master tape was running, I impulsively hit all the buttons on the tape machine to punch out everything but the section with the yelling,” Joel recalled in Ramone’s book. “Phil was dumbstruck. 'God! What did you do? You erased part of the song!' Phil was right: for that one segment everything stops dead but my voice, but it was just what the track needed.”

The resulting erasure of all of the tracks did indeed become a significant moment in the song, where the backing stops, in order to make way for ‘Presh-aaarrrrr’, which both Joel and Ramone (eventually) agreed brought something extra to the song.

Just as well really - if only all studio mistakes were this beneficial!

In 2020, Pressure’s appearance in the second season premiere of superhero drama The Boys would introduce a new generation to this often overlooked Billy Joel gem. A product of circumstance, happy accidents and of course, its composer's mountainous talent.

A capella hit singles are a rarity in pop. In fact, you can probably count them on the fingers of one hand: The Flying Pickets’ versions of Only You and When You’re Young And In Love and The Housemartins’ Caravan Of Love.

And Tom’s Diner, an oddity that somehow became Suzanne Vega’s biggest song, as well as playing a crucial role in the development of the MP3.

More of that later, but the song dates from the early 1980s when Vega was starting as a singer-songwriter. You surely know it: based around a simple ‘do-do do do da-do do do’ refrain, Vega recites an observational tale of sitting in the titular New York cafe reading a paper and watching life go by around her. Heard the first time, it’s a striking piece that seems to freeze time.

Vega first wrote the words sometime in late 1981. Tom’s Diner is, of course, a real place. Situated on the corner of 112^th Street and Broadway on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, it’s actually Tom’s Restaurant, though ‘diner ’, as Vega has pointed out before, scans much better.

“It was really written from the point of view of my friend Brian, who is a photographer,” she explained on a 1987 interview LP, Portrait Of An Artist. “He had made a comment to me one day that he felt that as a photographer, he saw his life through a pane of glass, and always felt like he was the witness to a lot of things, but was never really involved in them.”

“So I was sitting at Tom’s Restaurant one morning, and suddenly I guess I got this weird feeling. It came over me, and I thought ‘well, if I were Brian today, how would I be perceiving these different things?’ And in a way it was supposed to be slightly humorous and not entirely to be taken seriously. And also I thought of it from a male point of view.”

“The line about the actor ‘who had died while he was drinking’ was true: William Holden’s obituary had been in that morning’s paper,” Vega told the Guardian in 2016, dating the day inspiration struck her as Wednesday 18 November 1981. “The ‘bells of the cathedral’ were those of St John the Divine up the street, though I made up the bit about the woman ‘fixing her stockings'.”.

The melody came to Vega as she was walking down Broadway. “I wanted something jaunty,” she wrote in a New York Times essay in 2008. “I remember liking the near rhymes of ‘diner’ and ‘corner’, ‘sitting’ and ‘waiting’. I was imagining it as a kind of French film soundtrack, something vaudevillian on piano, like a background to a Truffaut film.

"But I didn’t play piano and didn’t know anybody who did. So I kept it a cappella, and began to sing it this way in my live show. This detail, singing the song alone with no accompaniment, affected everything to come.”

At her live shows, Vega noticed that if she started singing the song unaccompanied, people would immediately stop talking and pay attention. “So I used it as an opening song. I can’t think of a single time that this didn’t work. Even at the Prince’s Trust concert in 1986, in front of 10,000 people, I went onstage as the opening act and began the entire concert with that song - and it worked!”

By that point, Tom’s Diner had already been released once, in the January 1984 edition of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a kind of audio mag that showcased the best of up-and-coming singer-songwriters of the folk/ acoustic persuasion. The exposure led to her being signed by A&M later that year.

Vega released her self-titled debut album in 1985. Both a critical and word-of-mouth success, it spawned a pair of UK hit singles – Marlene On The Wall and Left Of Center. Tom’s Diner eventually emerged on the following album, 1987’s Solitude Standing. Indeed, it appears twice, once as the opener and again in reprised form at the end. There was enough interest in the track for it to be chosen as the second single, though it was only a minor hit, reaching Number 58 in the UK charts in the summer of 1987.

And there the track might have remained, as a curio from a well-regarded album, were it not for Nick Batt and Neal Slateford. The Bath-based pair were at that point just another team of bedroom producers exploring the possibilities opened up by the then-new sampling technologies. Speaking to the Guardian in 2016, Batt remembers the genesis of their idea.

“Neal brought in Suzanne’s song and said: ‘I reckon we can stick a beat under this.’ I came up with a bassline, strings, a bit of piano. In those days, it was impossible to get a whole song into a sampler, so we spent evenings and weekends cutting Suzanne’s vocals into little bits.”

“We sent it to a mate who was a rep in London, and he took it around the shops. I went away for the weekend and came back to a phone full of messages. Everyone was talking about the track. Radio 1 even broke its policy of not playing bootlegs, which is all it was at that point.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, Vega was promoting her third album Days Of Open Hand. It wasn’t going well. Reviews had been mixed and audiences had visibly dwindled. Writing in the NYT, she remembers: “We were backstage at the Arsenio Hall show when my manager told me that some boys calling themselves DNA, in England - Bath, to be specific - had taken Tom’s Diner and put a dance track to it. They had ‘re-mixed’ it.

My manager, Ron Fierstein, told me that A&M and Polygram were considering taking legal action against them for copyright violation.”

But Vega listened to the bootleg, which at that stage still had the title of ‘Oh Susanne’ and found, to her surprise, she rather liked it. “It made me laugh. It wasn’t a parody, which is what I was afraid of. The song is the same, my voice is still my voice, the story still the story, even though they left out the very end (they told me later they thought it sounded weird, musically, to keep the ending).”

“It was so obvious that these boys were not slick hi-fi wizards, as the sound was boomy and the arrangement repetitive, but the raw energy of the idea jumped out right away. These were not boys with means and money, and I liked it that I had kindled their imagination.”

Vega and her management arranged a meeting with DNA, where she discovered – again, to her surprise - that they were white middle-class boys rather than the cool urban dudes she was expecting. A deal was worked out whereby Vega retained the rights in return for DNA being paid a flat fee. The track was released as ‘Tom’s Diner by DNA featuring Suzanne Vega’.

Both parties assumed that the track would be an underground hit at best. But bolstered by daytime Radio 1 play, the new version of Tom’s Diner reached Number Two in the UK, was a Top Ten hit all over Europe and even reached Number Five on Billboard, a rare feat for the British dance record in 1990.

But the success of the DNA remix didn’t seem to assuage appetite for the track. The number of covers, versions and interpolations of Tom’s Diner began multiplying exponentially from then on. Vega even compiled them onto an album called, inevitably, Tom’s Album, in 1991. “It was a logistical nightmare to administrate,” she admitted in 2008. “I had to go back to all the people who had taken the song without permission, and ask their permission... to use their version of my song!”

Since then it’s been covered by Giorgio Moroder and Britney Spears and REM and been sampled or interpolated by acts as varied as Public Enemy, Fallout Boy, Tupac Shakur and Lil’ Kim. According to Spotify, as of 2023, there have been over 50 different versions of the song. It’s probably an underestimate.

But this song’s shaggy dog tale doesn’t even end there. Tom’s Diner played a not-insignificant role in the development of the MP3. In the early 1990s, the German electrical engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg was working on the design of the file, especially the tricky problem of compressing an unaccompanied human voice. “I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm," Brandenburg told Business 2.0 Magazine in 2000. “Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing Tom's Diner. I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice.”

Indeed, when compressed, Vega’s voice sounded hopelessly distorted. Brandenburg decided that going forward he’d use the track as a measure of how much progress he was making to perfect the compression process.

He calculated that he’d listened to Tom’s Diner “thousands” of times before he was satisfied that he’d cracked the problem. Among audio engineers, and later by sheer repetition, Vega has ended up being dubbed ‘the mother of the MP3’.

It’s a title she clearly looks on with wry amusement. In 2007 Vega met Brandenburg and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen, Germany, a meeting that was flagged up by the press as ‘the mother of the MP3 comes to the home of the MP3’.

Writing in 2008, she recalled: “We had a press conference at which they played me the original version of Tom’s Diner, then the various distortions of the MP3 as it had been, which sounded monstrous and weird. Then, finally, the ‘clean’ version of Tom’s Diner.”

“The panel beamed at me. ‘See?’ one man said. ‘Now the MP3 recreates it perfectly. Exactly the same!’”

When she suggested that the original has more warmth and bottom end, “The man looked shocked. ‘No, Miss Vega, it is exactly the same.’”

She held her ground. “’Everybody knows that an MP3 compresses the sound and therefore loses some of the warmth,’ I persisted. ‘That’s why some people collect vinyl…’ I suddenly caught myself, realising who I was speaking to in front of a roomful of German media.”

The man insisted. “’No, Miss Vega. Consider the Black Box theory!’”

Vega stared back blankly.

“’What goes into the Black Box remains unchanged! Whatever goes in comes out the same way! Nothing is left behind and nothing is added!’”

At which point, the woman who started it all, who on a cold autumn Manhattan day all those years ago wrote down those words that have led to so many different versions and interpretations and indeed shaped how we listen to music today, politely backed down.

Clearly, on this occasion, discretion was the better part of valour.

There’s music that paints a picture in your mind, and then there’s the vivid hyper-neon futurism of The Midnight. Oft-cited as the purveyors of perfect night-drive music (particularly if you live on the outskirts of a Blade Runner-esque metropolis… well, you might), the band’s core duo - vocalist/guitarist Tyler Lyle and producer/keys and percussionist Tim McEwan have been dropping their brand of synth and guitar-driven future-pop for well over a decade now - and have amassed a sizeable audience as a result.

Slap bang in the middle of their globe-trotting Time Machines tour - and in the wake of their blinding sixth studio album Syndicate’s recently expanded re-release, we caught up with the pair to discuss how they’ve managed to maintain their obsessive future-nostalgia-loving crowd, how they keep fresh ideas coming, the zoo hypothesis (why not?) and also, why they’ve decided to - MusicRadar can exclusively reveal - team up with cassette player brand We Are Rewind to bring out their own Midnight-branded player!

MusicRadar: Firstly, let’s talk about this upcoming The Midnight-branded cassette player you’ve made with We Are Rewind. Obviously you guys are known for the 80s-leaning synthwave aesthetic, so was this wholehearted embrace of a classic analogue format a no-brainer?

Tyler Lyle: “Absolutely yeah. When we were on our recent Time Machines tour, we were also thinking of other bits of ephemera. Kind of what sparked it was Analogue Pocket - it’s like a new type of Nintendo Game Boy. It’s a company that’s doing things [with a very] high bar. So we started thinking about watches and cassette players and video games.

“There's something called an M8 tracker [from Dirtywave, Ed]. It looks like a little Game Boy, but it's a synthesizer. There are people who will put a whole record out as a file to be played on the tracker.

“Thinking about these bits of kind of ephemera from childhood that have grown up over the past 30 or 40 years, and have become a little higher fidelity was something us synth dads can get behind

“So yeah, the [We Are Rewind] cassette player is awesome. They have a boombox that I first saw a couple of years ago and it’s just awesome. They're keeping the dream alive in a way that's not dissimilar from what we're trying to do."

Tim McEwan: “It’s a really good idea to partner up with brands or artists and blend those things. It seems like an obvious thing to do, but they're doing in the right way. I think.”

MR: Are you guys fans of the cassette format, did you grow up with them?

TM: “Totally, I made my own mixtapes. I had one of those boomboxes with double tape cassette players, and I would record from the radio and then I would record from other tapes and make my own mixtapes from one tape to the other. That was what I was doing in the ‘80s, for sure.”

TL: “Hard same!”

MR: Do you think that today, with the constant deluge of music everywhere via streaming platforms, that old-school cassette format kind of adds something more tactile and ‘living’ back to the listening experience for young listeners especially?

TM: “Yeah, I certainly think we're missing something tactile, I think that's why the younger generation that didn't necessarily grow up with cassette tapes [love them]. If you were born in you know the late '90s, perhaps or the 2000s even - you find that it’s that generation that is seeking out vinyl and cassette tapes, and I think there's a reason for that.”

TL: “The ‘tech’ part of music was what really led the format shift. When there was no recorded music, you just printed the notes on a sheet. That was music publishing 100 years ago. The format has driven the form of the music for so long, and now files are streamable. They're downloadable. You can put them on a vinyl record or a cassette tape or whatever. Really the question is, ‘How do you prefer to listen to it?’

“We're kind of at the end of music technology, in this evolutionary ladder kind of way. We’ve kind of reached the end of history for musical formats.”

MR: Last year you released the epic Syndicate, which you’ve referred to as being the denouement of your well-regarded Kids/Monsters/Heroes trilogy - what aspects of the record did you think made it feel a denouement?

TL: “Thematically, I feel like we answered the question of self-becoming, if you want to call it that, from like a psychological way. A child becomes an adolescent, then becomes an adult.

“The leaps that are happening [in that transition] - self-discovery as a child becomes self-love as an adolescent, and hopefully, if you do it right, it becomes empathy as an adult. I feel like for me, writing into this sort of like dialectical evolution, the ‘hero’ dissolves. You know, the narrator - who was one single individual - kind of dissolves, and it becomes everybody's story.

“Everybody is a hero trying to kind of cross their own personal threshold and slay their own personal dragon. I feel like in a thematic way that [the album Heroes] answered the hero's loop for me.

“But my wife was diagnosed with cancer right after that album came out. In Hindu, the struggle of life and death is called samsara. The question being; ‘How do you break the endless loop of eternal return to reach nirvana and go to another plane?’ - that’s what this record is about. We solved the problem of identity, now how do you solve the problem of samsara and eternal returning to the same problems and cravings that you always had? How do you actually learn? How do you break through? How do you transcend that story?

“So yeah, that seemed like the denouement for that [theme]. I'm tired of writing songs about life and death, I think it's time to put on our our boat shoes and sunglasses and enjoy like a little departure from these big heavy themes that I felt like I needed to struggle through.”

MR: Was that big thematic resolution an objective from the outset of the writing process or did it manifest as you were making the record?

TL: “Tim came up with the the video game reference early on, and then [we discussed] the ‘zoo hypothesis’, which is this kind of like seed of a lot of like mid-century science fiction. The idea of it is that all universes have solved the problems of existence and [have become] this one unified being. They create this one planet as kind of a zoo to see if we can start these humans with the necessary means to transcend, and then watch them - like [they’re in] a zoo and see if they do.

“That was an interesting place to be thinking about when the cancer diagnosis came. Really our answer to that was, how do you cross over the threshold when you've lived a thousand lives and you've got one more. You have to take the moment. And you have to you have to kind of embrace the time as it's passing. And there there is no other sort of metaphysical answer out there. The answer is here and now.”

MR: Tim, you produced the record across a range of different studios. Would you say your production approach has changed over the course of making these last few albums?

TM: “It hasn’t actually, I think the studios are just usually where we recorded the vocals, or [we did some of the songwriting] but that’s normally not where I do my production. [The studio] is usually where we throw stuff at the wall and record sometimes final vocals or just demos.

“Where my work comes in is after the fact - I sit with it. I can kind of zoom out and shape the songs and mould the production around the songs.

“I have to chip away at it in my own little world for a while - and that process remains the same.

“But if you compare it to our previous album Heroes - which was me leaning into a lot more into vintage analogue synthesizers and trying to go for a bigger anthemic feel - Syndicate was a return to form in terms of how I approached it. It was a return to the first 3 or 4 records - the Days of Thunder (EP), Endless Summer, Nocturnal, and Kids.

“I realised early on once I got into production of this album that I’d found a lane that just felt very much like familiar territory. It was like looking at a similar thing but from a different angle.

“We've both been through a bunch of life stuff in the last kind of five to six years, as the whole world has, but also personally, and so you grow and you’re able to approach things from a broader perspective.

“It felt in a way of going back to the early days of The Midnight where I sat up until the early hours of the morning, nerding out over a synth solo or something. It felt like I was right in lane between Endless Summer and Nocturnal.

“So, for me, it was very much like letting go of the oars and just creating with complete bliss, which was just so fun. I’ve had so much fun making Syndicate - it has been an absolute blissful experience.

“Tyler's always been the sort of guy that focuses on thematics and story and that kind of bigger picture. Where he goes granular on the lyrics and the text, I'll go granular on the elements for the production and the colours and that stuff. It’s a broader story but it harkens back to the earlier days of The Midnight. We’ve come full circle in a sense, it felt very much like home to me.”

MR: Which tracks are key on the record - and which are your favourites?

TM: “Oh my God, I have so many favourites, without sounding too conceited! Usually it's the ones that I feel like I did what I set out to do on the production front. A song like Afterglow (Parts One and Two) Digital Dreams, Sanctuary and Quiet Earth, even though they have slightly different textures and colours than maybe the earlier [production approach] of The Midnight which was a bit more naive maybe and more young in approach, it still feels like it’s same brush I'm painting with.

“We can't forget to mention NEST Acoustics [the pseudonym of sound designer and producer Jack Dangers], who did a lot of additional production and co-production on Syndicate. He’s a huge part of providing the additional textures that he was able to imbue my tracks with.”

MR: We’re particularly keen on Runaways, especially that astounding sax section and Bonnie McKee’s impactful vocals - how was the process of working with her?

TL: “I’ve known about Bonnie for many, many years. We shared studio space at Pulse Recording back in Silver Lake when she was in her Katy Perry-A-list-songwriter-pop era. When the opportunity came to get in the same room with her, I think we both jumped at it. It was really wonderful working with a songwriter whose strengths are not my strengths. It was a great education for me. Yeah, we love Bonnie. We'd love to make more with her.

TM: “I’ve been aware of Bonnie since Katy Perry's album Teenage Dream, she basically co-wrote all those huge hits. We’ve been following each other on Instagram for a number of years. I remember seeing her at a Christmas party for our old label Ninja Tune that we were signed to back in 2019. I went up to her and just introduced myself. I knew that she followed us on Instagram, but I didn't know how aware of us she was. It kind of came together there or four years later, kind of organically. She had a manager that used to work with me back almost 15 years ago, so we knew each other peripherally. It was just one of those like, ‘Hey, we should do a session together’ conversations and that led to Runaways.”

MR Was that track something that was developed in that session with Bonnie?

TM: “Oh, that was way later. We wrote that song then I went away and tried a million different things on the track. That was really probably the one that had the longest journey. I was in a period of my life and of my career where I was trying to ‘reinvent’ producing The Midnight a little bit. I wanted to try new things - rather than going with the obvious rolling bass and the four to the floor [beat]. Then you get to a point where you try all the other things, and you realise. ‘It kind of just calls for this’.

“That’s what I mean when I talk about letting go of the oars and letting the stream carry you. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And, it feels good.

“Once I got my head out of my behind, so to speak, it was so obvious to me, and I had so much fun.

“Tyler had the brilliant idea of having not a sax solo - but a sax duel. That was an obvious YES for me. We were able to bring back Thomas Edinger, who's the fantastic saxophone player who played on a lot of our early stuff, alongside our sax player that tours with us, Justin Klunk, who's just an immense talent as well. Having them play together - that was just pure joy for me.

“It was a really fun opportunity to go balls to the wall with the aesthetic. The song is called Runaways, so you want something that feels like running away, into a kind of fantasy world, as it were.”

MR: Recently you released the deluxe version of Syndicate which featured the Chromeo remix of Love Is an Ocean and Last Night in Paris with Carpenter Brut. Did these additional tracks come after the album sessions or during?

TM: The Carpenter Brut one had a long journey as well. We came up with the initial bassline - I threw that bassline at the wall in a session with Tyler, and that whole rap and vocal version was initially going to be the main version. It was really just a last minute pivot from us, choosing to make it an instrumental. We put out the vocal version as a sort additional version. It’s nice that the world gets to experience both versions of that song.

“We’ve toured with Chromeo and they’ve been collaborators, they're just lovely guys. And we've obviously been aware of them for many years because they came on the scene way before we did, so that was also a really fun collaboration and experience.

MR: You’re regarded as key players in the synthwave genre - is this still the main domain that you guys want to operate in the future? Or would you become a ‘different band’ if you kind of deviated too much?

TM: “I think we have [deviated]. We've always dipped in and out. I think that's the beauty of The Midnight - that weird kind of chemistry. Tyler and I come from such disparate worlds and different cultures. I grew up in Scandinavia, Tyler came from the South and from America. There's always this been this sort of ‘one foot in and one foot out’ dimension because it's fun to venture out, but then it's fun to come back and cement the genre we came out of.

“I can't speak for Tyler, but for me, it's always been part of the journey - exploring things that are a little bit on the fringes and and a little bit outside, whether that’s [where we record] but also collaborations like the Magik*Magik Orchestra, where we did the symphony versions of the songs during the pandemic. There's always been a little bit of a foot planted in the synthwave world, but the other is venturing out and seeing what else you can experience, for me at least.”

TL: “Tim is the producer, so he's kind of the filter at the end to make sure it sounds like The Midnight. My sort of creative aperture is always open, I don't know what a Midnight song is in terms of lyric writing. It's a ton of different things - in my mind it's all rock and roll! But the thing that makes it sound the way that it does is on Tim.

“I would love to take a summer vacation and just remix a record with my own kind of loud, angry, noisy proclivities and see how that turns out. But no, Tim is our secret sauce that is kind of like the lense before before production.”

MR: You mentioned that you used a lot of analogue hardware on Heroes. What's the current arsenal in terms of gear? Do you have a set roster of Midnight-tech that you call upon?

TM: “I have my go-to synths that I like to work in, then there’s always the extra additional things that you discover on the way. I love - as many producers in the electronic and pop space love - Serum and Serum 2. I just did a Serum pack for Splice and I’m working on another preset pack for Serum 2. Other than that it’s like Spire, U-He’s Diva and I love TAL-U-No-62 - a Juno emulation - by TAL Software.

“I’ve used some of the Roland Cloud emulations. Sometimes I prefer to keep it in the box because there's more control, and you can do more with plugins than you can with outboard analogue synths in general.

“That being said, you do get a superior sound quality from analogue synths, but I think it also depends on how you treat those synths and how you mix it. It’s all in the sound choices and being able to blend them.

“I’m not the most technical guy, especially when compared to NEST Acoustics. Ben is an absolute mad scientist, and that's what I love. I'm not built like that, that’s why I enjoy working with people that can bring that side of it when I can just focus on the composition-based music-making, rather than all sound design.”

MR: Beyond the We Are Rewind collaboration, you’ve also released the graphic novel The Midnight: Shadows and recently, you soundtracked the Neon Odyssey D&D expansion. You guys obviously have a big expanded universe beyond your music, do you think that kind of world-building is a recommended practice for artists to maintain an engaged audience in this day and age?

TL: “Well it’s been a slow build. It really took a long time for us to flesh out this imaginary world that we lived in. When Tim and I started writing I came from the kind of folk/Americana world, so this was a departure for me. The Midnight is not Tim's name or my name. It's kind of this third thing, so we get to wear it like a mask. It. can become a little bit more theatrical, and it can become a little bit more of an experiment. I think the world-building kind of came from that. Like, well, if this is make believe, let's make believe!”

MR: Your fanbase is pretty massive, and they obviously all buy into the wider world of The Midnight, how important was audience development to you in the early days - did you pore over stats and sales figures, or did the fanbase just grow organically?

TM: “Stats and sales figures are not our strong side! That's why we have people that do that for us. I don't know. I just think we followed what felt fun to us in general.”

TL: “Yeah, we keep doing this because people keep filling our gas tanks, and that's true. [At the start] Tim was living in L.A. I was living in New York, and it was like, ‘Well, do we continue doing this?’ And when we put out Endless Summer, there was enough response to go, ‘Oh yeah, we're gonna keep doing this.’”

TM: “It's been amazing to have a fanbase that's been cultivated over such a long period of time. It's grown and grown, and it feels very organic and very sincere in the way people connect to our music. That is something you cannot plan for. It has grown way beyond what I could have ever imagined when I sat in a little studio in North Hollywood in 2013, messing around with these little 80s tracks that I was just kind of dipping my foot into, It’s just an amazing place to be at this point.

MR: How different is what you do on record vs The Midnight’s live experience? Do you kind of have to adjust the arrangements to make them work in a live context?

TL: “It was an interesting question early on. We didn't know quite how we would skin the live project. I come from playing in a rock band and playing solo on stage, whereas Tim has always been primarily in the production chair, so he kind of let me build a little band - so that it didn't feel like I was singing Midnight karaoke to a DJ set!

“It’s been lovely to build that story out over the past eight years, I think that we proved that as a form. When we started working with Syndicate we realised it can become a little more electronic. The question was ‘How do we take the best moments from the rock band and also figure out how to build in this like very electronic heart that has a lot of DNA in the dance music world?’. It has a lot in the MPC and the turntables. I feel like it was only after that eight years of trying and failing to get the experiment off the ground that it's was like ‘I think we can return to a few things that I was afraid to try in the beginning.’”

MR: Where do you guys prefer to be, in the studio or the stage?

TM: “Well I no longer tour so I’m a studio man. It was stretching me too thin. It’s not my natural habitat. I don't find as much joy in the execution of the thing live, but I had to do it to learn that. You never know until you do it.

“Being a producer and a songwriter - that's what I derived my joy from. And so, touring was an added strain at a certain point. I just got to a point where I realised I had to step back because it ultimately wasn't serving me or the projects. I’m a studio cat for sure, and always will be. That’s always where I find my bliss. It’s been a huge gift that Tyler could keep on touring with our band and keep the thing going, because that is a huge part of it.”

TL: “I like writing songs a lot, but I’m a hermit by nature. I think Tim is too a little bit. I love the feeling of when an idea just fits. It just lights up my brain, Tim. I think is very project-oriented. He sees the details and the fine tweaks. I write every day, all the time, in all sorts of different ways. I'm writing prose. I'm working on a DJ set - I'm just very creatively curious, which is probably why I haven't got better at a lot of these things!

"[Time pressure] can be a good thing, you know the tour’s coming up in a couple months, or the record deadline is coming up. So, I think both are necessary for me to kind of not take it too seriously and enjoy the process, knowing that it'l be something else soon.”

MR: What’s next on the agenda for you guys?

TM: “Well, we're working on the next record right now and I'm working on a couple of tracks for us. There’s an upcoming collab with a metal band….

“There's lots of stuff that I've been tinkering with, and as I said, I'm doing a Serum pack that will be out at some point, whether it's later this year or next. I don't know yet. For now, the main focus is the next Midnight record, and obviously we have the full tour happening as well. So you know we're staying busy. There's always something!”

TL: “Oh and we’ve also contributed to a Smashing Pumpkins tribute album -[Sending Hearts To All My Dearies] we’ve covered Tonight, Tonight. That’s out on August 4th!

“We also toured China for this first time this year, we played in India. We went back to Australia. Hopefully next year in the summer we'll get back to that side of the pond, and breathe a little easier. We're halfway through our Time Machines tour [which restarts again on September 9th in New Orleans]. Tim's brother Oliver has been our musical director, and we toured with a big video projector and have a ton of video content for the first time to accompany our rock band show. We’ve been very proud of that, and the next leg of that will kick off in less than two months.”

Head over to The Midnight’s official website for more info on tour dates and upcoming releases, and keep your eyes peeled on We Are Rewind for further news of The Midnight’s officially branded cassette player, which will be dropping soon…

Few singer-songwriters have been quite so respected and revered by their peers as Joni Mitchell.

David Crosby called Mitchell “unquestionably the best of us” and recalled that during their brief relationship during the ’60s, he would sometimes play her one of his new songs only for Mitchell to come back with three of her own she had written the night before that were infinitely superior to his.

“She is arguably the best singer-songwriter of our time,” he told Howard Stern in an interview in 2021.

Like all the greatest artists, Mitchell has always been a restless creative spirit, perpetually moving forward creatively and searching for something new, challenging and innovative.

Such was the case in early 1976, when she embarked on her eighth studio album Hejira, a graceful and supple masterpiece and her most jazz-orientated album up to that point, which also encompassed elements of folk, rock and ambient music.

It’s an intoxicating mix, as exemplified on Coyote, the opening track and the sole single from album, which features the seductive rhythms and stunning interplay between Mitchell’s percussive acoustic guitar and the mesmerising fretless bass lines and ringing harmonics of Jaco Pastorius.

Above it all, Mitchell’s voice soars, with brilliantly skewed phrasing, complex rhythmic syncopation and rapid-fire half-spoken delivery that all meld into one glorious unique whole.

Inspired by Mitchell’s whirlwind relationship with playwright and actor Sam Shepard, Coyote is exhilarating, cathartic, seductive and intense.

50 years on from its release, the song stands as one of the high points of Mitchell’s rich back catalogue.

She wrote Coyote soon after joining Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in late 1975, a hedonistic and often chaotic two-leg 57-date concert tour featuring numerous musicians, artists and collaborators. Mitchell played 19 performances in total across 16 cities in the US and Canada.

“Everybody took all of their vices to the nth degree and came out of it born again or into AA,” she said in Timothy White’s 1990 book Rock Lives.

Dylan had hired playwright and actor Sam Shepard as screenwriter for a proposed film of the tour, which was released as Renaldo And Clara in 1978.

Shepard was a relatively obscure cult figure at the time, but was closely associated with several figures within Dylan’s circle.

In biographer David Yaffe’s 2017 book Reckless Daughter, Mitchell notes that she “had a flirtation” with Shepard.

“It was like we were twins,” said Mitchell, who said she was drawn to Shepard’s multi-talented abilities and used elements of his creative approach to help create the song Coyote. “I was forming sentences like he would’ve,” Mitchell explained. “Everything was creating an aversion. But for me, on coke, I found him very attractive.”

The relationship was made more tempestuous by the fact that Shepard was already married and was also in a relationship with his tour manager Chris O’Dell. “Now he’s got a woman at home,” sings Mitchell, “He’s got another woman down the hall/He seems to want me anyway.”

In her 2009 fly-on-the-wall memoir Miss O’Dell, co-authored with Katherine Ketcham, O’Dell referenced the song Coyote and Mitchell’s lyrics about Shepard.

“I loved the lines Joni wrote about how we licked our wounds and took temporary lovers, using ‘pills and powders’ to get us through the drama,” wrote O’Dell.
Mitchell found the intense, freewheeling environment of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour exhilarating and hit a real creative peak.

In the 2019 documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, there is a clip of Mitchell performing Coyote in the living room of Gordon Lightfoot’s house in Toronto on 1 December 1975, while Roger McGuinn and Bob Dylan accompany her on acoustics.

“Joni wrote this song about this tour and on this tour and for this tour,” says McGuinn excitedly as he leans over in front of Mitchell to speak into the recording mic.

Mitchell looks urbane and sophisticated, wearing a black beret, droopy silver earrings, black jacket and a blue silk shirt. Dylan sits strumming, looking at the deft chords Mitchell is playing. He is wearing a big fur hat. His face is impassive.

Mitchell, by contrast, is clearly enthused and excited. As she settles into the pacy percussive guitar rhythm of the intro to Coyote, she looks at Dylan and mouths the chords, just before she lurches into the first verse.

“No regrets coyote/We just come from such different sets of circumstance/I'm up all night in the studios/And you're up early on your ranch…”

There’s a compelling intensity and urgency to Mitchell’s tearaway rhythms, complex rapid-fire lyrical phrasings and the stream-of-consciousness lyrics. It’s as if the words and ideas are flowing out so profoundly that she can barely capture them in time.

The scenario in Lightfoot’s living room is an intriguing one. Mitchell tears through the brilliant new composition while Dylan sits there, essentially reduced to playing rhythm guitar.

“The look in Dylan’s eyes confirms what we all knew,” wrote Jenn Pelly in a review of Hejira in Pitchfork in 2022, “that at this moment Mitchell is the towering genius.”

Shepard of course is the titular coyote in the song, portrayed as a womanising cowboy, pursuing Mitchell, “a prisoner of the white lines on the freeway”.

The speed of the narrative echoes the brevity and intensity of the relationship between Mitchell and Shepard. Mitchell described it as a flirtation, but the lyrics are salacious. In her 2019 book Joni Mitchell: New Critical Readings, author Ruth Charnock describes the song as “either the most flirtatious song about fucking or the most graphic song about flirting ever written”.

In her piece on Hejira in Pitchfork, Jenn Pelly describes Mitchell as an avant-gardist among rock’n’roll people. It’s an astute observation. “Mitchell,” wrote Pelly, “inhabited that slippery space unique to those ahead of the times.”

Mitchell recorded Coyote in 1976 during the sessions for Hejira at A&M Studios in Hollywood. But the song would soon undergo a profound change.

Ever since Mitchell recorded her album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (1975) she had grown increasingly frustrated by the limitations of rock-based session players.

“There were grace notes and subtleties and things that I thought were getting kind of buried,” she said in Sheila Weller’s 2008 book Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon – And The Journey Of A Generation.

She was reportedly dissatisfied with what she called the “dead, distant bass sound” of the ‘60s and early ’70s and found it frustrating that bass players she worked with always had to play the root note on ‘the one’, emphasising the first beat of every bar.

Session musicians advised her to seek out jazz players instead, and in late 1975 guitarist Robben Ford played her an advance copy of the debut album by bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius, a prodigious 24-yr-old bass player from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who had recently joined seminal jazz fusion band Weather Report.

Pastorius was everything Mitchell was looking for in a bass player and much more. Fluid, fearless, mercurial, tempestuous and – crucially – he rarely played on the ‘one’.

Like Mitchell, Pastorius considered himself a painter first and a musician second. But that didn’t stop him introducing himself as “the best bass player in the world”.

Impressed, Mitchell asked Pastorius to overdub the bass parts on four tracks on Hejira, including Coyote.

The impact was immediate and transformative. Pastorius completely redefined the role of the bass in Coyote, adding what is essentially a second melodic voice. Long glissandos, subtle vibrato and vocal-like phrasing imbued the song with a whole new depth and texture.

His fluid fretless bass lines and harmonics elevated the song, creating a unique interplay with Mitchell’s driving, percussive acoustic guitar.

While Pastorius introduced counter melodies he also instinctively recognised the need to simplify when Mitchell’s playing became rhythmically complex and dense.

Along with percussionist Bobbye Hall, Pastorius’s playing introduced a mesmerising groove that became a signature of the Hejira album. Mitchell called Pastorius the bassist of her dreams and his playing helped liberate her music.

In 1987 Mitchell recalled to Musician magazine: “There was a time when Jaco and I first worked together when there was nobody I’d rather hang with than him. There was an appreciation, a joie de vivre, a spontaneity.”

Coyote was released as the lead single off Hejira in February 1977 on Asylum Records. When she returned to touring it would become a staple of her live set.

On 25 November 1976, Mitchell performed the song with The Band at their Last Waltz farewell concert at the Winter Ballroom in San Francisco, an event immortalised in Martin Scorsese’s landmark film of the event, which was released along with the triple album soundtrack in April 1978.

The Band had very little time to rehearse for the show and Mitchell famously uses complex non-standard guitar tunings. The Band’s musical director for the concert, John Simon, recalled that they had to stare intently at her left hand shapes during the rehearsals to try and work out exactly what chords she was playing.

The Band were still largely winging it when Mitchell strode onto the stage, kissed a rather startled Robbie Robertson on the cheek, tuned her Martin D-28 guitar and launched into the propulsive acoustic intro for Coyote.

Bassist Rick Danko’s style was light years away from Pastorius’s but the instinctive playing of Danko, Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson ensured that the rendition of Coyote had a feel and intensity all its own.

In his 2016 memoir, Testimony, Robbie Robertson recalled being deeply impressed by Mitchell’s stage presence and her performance of Coyote that Thanksgiving Day evening, back in 1976.

“Joni’s songs might have been the most challenging of the night, with their syncopation and chord structures that kept you on your toes,” remembered Robertson. “but we sailed through that one like a cool breeze”.

It's Friday, and that can only mean one thing - it's Quiz of the Week time again!

With the week drawing to a close, we take a look back and pluck out our 10 favourite stories, then put you to the test to see if you've been paying attention (or not)…

This week we've got outrageous quotes, unlikely collabs and the end of music as we know it… So have you got what it takes to get that top ten?

Hit it!

It was in 1975 that Kiss finally got their big breakthrough when Alive! – the band’s explosive double live album – climbed to No 9 in the US Billboard 200, and the extracted single Rock And Roll All Nite reached No 12.

After their first three studio records had bombed, this was the sweetest of victories. And it was followed by arguably the most powerful artistic statement of their career – their magnum opus, Destroyer.

In a 2021 interview for the launch of the 45th anniversary deluxe edition reissue of this landmark album, the band’s co-founders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley spoke in depth about the making of Destroyer.

“It was a cinematic album,” Stanley said. “It was atmospheric, and visual when you heard that music.”

Simmons added with uncharacteristic understatement: “It’s one of our better records, for sure.”

Destroyer was originally released on 25 March 1976 and included songs that would become Kiss anthems – Detroit Rock City, God Of Thunder, Shout It Out Loud and Do You Love Me. It also included the hit ballad Beth.

Destroyer was recorded by the original and definitive Kiss line-up – with Stanley on guitar and vocals, Simmons on bass and vocals, Ace Frehley on lead guitar and backing vocals, and Peter Criss on drums and vocals.

Uncredited, guitarist Dick Wagner played on three tracks. The New York Philharmonic featured on Beth; the Brooklyn Boys Chorus on Great Expectations.

The producer, Bob Ezrin, had made his name working with Alice Cooper on the hit albums School’s Out (1972), Billion Dollar Babies (1973) and Welcome To My Nightmare (1975), as well as Lou Reed’s art rock cult classic Berlin (1973).

Destroyer was recorded in New York City, the band’s hometown, at two studios, Electric Lady and The Record Plant. The initial sessions were in September 1975, with final sessions in January and February 1976.

In 2021, when Stanley and Simmons discussed the creation of Destroyer, they began by explaining the commercial failure of the band’s first three studio albums – the debut Kiss (1974), Hotter Than Hell (also 1974) and Dressed To Kill (1975).

“I’ve heard that the first Led Zeppelin record was done in eighteen hours,” Simmons said, “but in hindsight, we never spent enough time in the studio. The great bands – The Beatles and so on – even though they could record fast, there was still a lot of rehearsal. We barely did that, because we were always touring, and it was tough to say no to another show. ‘They want us to play? Where? Let’s go!’

“And in those early days we were doing two records of new material a year – and touring the whole year. We just didn’t have time to stay in the studio more than two or three weeks.

“You’re touring, you write some songs, you get together, and just do a record. So with the first three records there was barely any production, hardly any overdubbing, it was just sort of bang it out. We didn’t spend enough time getting decent sounds.”

Stanley concurred: “I was quite frustrated with all of our early studio albums because frankly they didn’t come close to capturing what we were like live, and I wasn’t astute enough in the studio to know how to capture that. Live, we were bombastic, like a runaway freight train, and those studio albums were kind of like a garage band.”

Stanley paid tribute to Kiss manager Bill Aucoin for the success of Alive!

“Alive! was a turning point in that it really captured sonically the experience of being at a Kiss show and immersing the listener in the crowd,” he said. “Much to Bill Aucoin’s credit, that album became a mega success and a game changer for us as an international band.”

Stanley also said that it was Aucoin who set a high bar for Destroyer.

“Bill Aucoin was smart enough to say, ‘You’re going to have to follow Alive! with something amazing and credible, or you will go back to where you were before.’ That was pretty good foresight. And with that in mind we got in touch with the producer Bob Ezrin.

“Bob was a super talent. You only have to listen to the pre-Bob Ezrin Alice Cooper records versus the post-Bob Ezrin Alice records to hear what he did. And as we worked with him it became that much clearer how much he had to do with the parts and the orchestration in Alice’s songs.

“So we were on board to work with him, certainly. But we had no idea how – I don’t want to say regimented because it was a very creative process – but how structured and demanding Bob was.”

Simmons added: “We were lucky that Bob Ezrin was producing that record, because there was so much material and so many different ideas. With our previous records, either Paul or myself would come in with a finished song – Paul would show me one of songs and I might say, ‘How about this riff?’ In two or three hours it would be done and you’d record it.

“But Destroyer was the first one where we took a little more time. We started recording, then went out on tour, and then came back and finished the record. It was a new way of recording for us. And with Bob it was definitely a learning process. He actually taught us how to tune [guitars] a different way!”

Simmons said of the writing sessions: “We were at a small demos studio, a four track. Paul and I were there constantly. Ace and Peter didn’t participate. Sometimes they’d come down and help play a little bit, but other than that they never showed up. But Paul and I were constantly writing all kinds of stuff.”

As the primary songwriters in Kiss, Stanley and Simmons took the lead on Destroyer. Bob Ezrin had a share in the writing credits for seven of the album’s tracks. Ace Frehley co-wrote Flaming Youth with Stanley, Simmons and Ezrin. The ballad Beth was written by Peter Criss and Stan Penridge, the guitarist in Criss’s previous band Chelsea, with Bob Ezrin also credited as co-writer.

Criss sang the lead vocal on Beth, which became the album’s hit single by luck more than judgement. The lead single from Destroyer was Shout It Loud. The second single was Flaming Youth. The third was Detroit Rock City, with Beth as the B-side, but after DJs picked up on Beth it was released as an A-side in August 1976 and eventually peaked at No 7 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Simmons recalled: “There’s an interesting story about Beth. In the fall of ’75 we went to Cadillac, Michigan, where the whole town dressed like Kiss and it became ‘Kiss Day’ and all that stuff. And on our way over there, Peter and I were in a car and he started humming this melody. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Oh, that’s a song I wrote.’

“I mean, Peter never wrote a song in his life! But, he says, ’It’s a song called Beck.’ He sings, ‘Beck, I hear you calling…’

“I said, ‘Yeah, that’s pretty good, but why don’t you sing it to Bob Ezrin and see if we can come up with an arrangement?’ ‘Okay.’ And I said, ‘Before you play it for him, change it to Beth, because with Beck, first they’ll think it’s about Jeff Beck!’

“Also, Beck was supposed to stand for Becky, but that that ‘ck’ sound stopped the fluency. ‘Beth I hear you calling…’ – you can sing right through that. Beck didn’t move as easily. So that’s how Beth was born.”

As a result of Beth hitting the US top 10, Destroyer became the first Kiss album to be certified platinum.

“Beth was the key,” Simmons said. “Detroit Rock City was released as a single and the B-side was Beth, but then Beth became the big hit.”

Paul Stanley acknowledged Bob Ezrin as a key influence on Detroit Rock City.

“That was initially written as an homage and tribute celebrating Detroit,” he said, “but the direction that the verses took, although not specifically directed by Bob, was led by his idea to get away from the ‘fuck me, suck me’ lyrics and go for something deeper. So Detroit Rock City kind of became a contrast between the verses, which are about somebody trying to get to a concert and not making it, and equally celebrating Detroit as a rock ’n’ roll Mecca.”

However, Stanley admitted that he was distraught when Ezrin insisted that the song God Of Thunder – written by Stanley alone – should be sung instead by Simmons.

“Let me preface this,” Stanley stated. “We had understood and agreed that the role of the producer was to have final say and make decisions. And when I played God Of Thunder, Bob immediately said, ‘Oh, that’s great, that’s for Gene!’

“I knew Detroit Rock City was my song, but I also thought that God Of Thunder was going to be my song. I envisioned it almost like the son of Zeus and Apollo.”

Stanley said of Ezrin’s decision: “Let’s put it mildly – it was crushing and devastating! But I will say that Bob was absolutely right. It’s so much a Gene song.

“I also have the satisfaction or the joy of knowing that the song that personifies Gene is mine! And it would never have been as great a song if I had sung it. Never. It’s truly a highlight of who Gene is. Bob was right and Gene did a great job.”

Stanley claimed he never held a grudge with Ezrin over God Of Thunder.

“I was never fuming,” he said. “I was just so devastated. The idea of a song so quickly being passed off from me to someone else, it was difficult, and it remained a sore spot, although even when I heard it finished it was undoubtedly a song for Gene. It was just that initial deflating of this anticipation I had of singing this great song.

“I think part of it had to do with the feeling of powerlessness, of not having a vote or any room for discussion. Because that was the way we set things up, and again, it was the right thing to do, and it proved itself quickly. Ultimately, that song continued to be a staple in the show, and if I had sung it, I don’t think it would have had the gravitas or the longevity that it has.”

Simmons also sang lead on his own song, Great Expectations, a highly unorthodox track for a hard rock band such as Kiss.

“At the time, within the band, the verdict on that song was not unanimous,” Simmons admitted. “It was like, ‘Gee, it’s not really rock, is it?’ You’ve got a children’s choir singing, ‘You’ve got great expectations!’. There were keyboards and string quartet. It was certainly a leap – I don’t know if it was forwards or sideways or whatever.”

One notable cut from the album was the song Ain’t None Of Your Business, written by two country songwriters, Becky Hobbs and Lew Anderson. This was later recorded by the band Detective.

“We took a whack at recording that song with Peter Criss on vocals,” Simmons said. “But we just didn’t think it measured up.”

Stanley said he experienced a worrying moment shortly after Destroyer was completed.

“When the album was done and I played it for some people who were big fans, they weren’t initially crazy about it,” he said. “They didn’t find it heavy enough – and coming on the heels of Kiss Alive!, which really captured the rawness of the band, I understand. But we did what we needed to do.”

In the end, Destroyer was everything that Kiss set out to achieve. In the short term it was the hit the band needed to sustain the momentum from Alive! And in the long term, Destroyer has been widely acclaimed as the greatest and most ambitious album Kiss ever made.

Gene Simmons reflected: “It was a Kiss record but there were new elements in it. Because it had Beth, which appealed to a greater female audience, it was by some distance a more sophisticated record, instead of the straight meat and potatoes – or meat and two veg, as you say – stuff that we did before.”

Paul Stanley reckoned that Bob Ezrin brought out something deeper as well as bigger in Kiss music.

“Although Destroyer didn’t – sonically – have the power of Kiss Alive!, it expanded musically who we were,” he said. “It was musically and lyrically challenging.

“When we were making that record, it was thrilling because we were pushing the boundaries and Bob was really leading the charge into uncharted waters. It was very exciting to see what we were capable of doing. It was pivotal, in that it opened our eyes – certainly it opened my eyes – to what was possible.”

Emerging from the DIY underground with little more than a few vintage synths, a relentless determination and Samuel T. Herring's unmistakable voice (and those unmistakable moves, Ed) indie electronic band Future Islands built their reputation slowly and surely before exploding into the wider public consciousness with the 2014 single Seasons (Waiting on You) and that performance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Seasons was widely hailed as one of the defining songs of the year, propelled by Herring's meme-invoking performance - while their fourth album, Singles, would later become the breakthrough they'd spent nearly a decade trying to earn. From that moment, Future Islands were transformed from cult favourites into an internationally recognised force as the world finally started to play catch-up.

Two decades on, rather than celebrate their longevity with a conventional greatest-hits package, they’ve assembled From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth - a collection of rarities, B-sides and overlooked gems that fill the spaces between the milestones. We speak to keyboard player Gerrit Welmers and bassist/guitarist William Cashion about Future Islands' two-decade journey that, remarkably, continues to build momentum.

MusicRadar: When the group got together initially, you were more into hip-hop, punk and metal. How did that mutate into an affinity for electronic pop?

Gerrit Welmers: “It was just about what we were able to do with the instruments that we had, which were all new to us at the time. I was a guitarist who had an interest in heavier music, but I didn't know how to play keyboards unless it was two fingers here, three fingers there. The idea to make something simple didn’t just come from the influence of certain ‘80s bands, but from learning what we were able to do with these things.”

William Cashion: “When I first met Sam he really wanted to start a hip-hop project. In high school, I was more into this weird electronic music that was influenced by Aphex Twin… but way harder. I was like, ‘Could you rap to this?’ And Sam would say, ‘I can't, but let's do something similar’.

“We met in the middle liking hiphop artists like Afrika Bambaataa who sampled Kraftwerk. That led me to bring keyboards into the band, so when Gerrit first came to play his guitar we said, ‘No, try this toy keyboard’. I wanted to play keyboards too, but there was a bass at the house so I ended up playing that on a song or two and everyone said, ‘That's the sound!’ The three of us really learnt our language together.”

MR: Do you feel it's quite reductive to refer to Future Islands as a synth-pop band?

WC: “We've always referred to ourselves as a post-wave band. On the early stuff, we leaned heavily on backing tracks using programmed drums, but over the last 12 or 13 years Mike has been playing with us live and there has been more of a punk spirit to what we do.

“It's a lot more noisy and intense, and a lot more screaming than most synth-pop bands. Don't get me wrong, I love synth-pop, I just don't know if I would put us in that section at the record store.”

MR: Future Islands didn't really come to public awareness until the fourth album, Singles. What kept you so committed when there were no obvious signs of success?

WC: “We were definitely seeing a gradual growth. Around the time of On the Water (2011) we’d started making enough money from touring to be able to quit our jobs, and at that point it really felt like we’d made it. When Singles hit, everybody thought we were a new band, but it felt like we'd already hit the jackpot.

“Our whole career has been a series of magic wand moments and little boosts that have kept pushing us along the path, from getting signed to Upset the Rhythm for our first album Wave Like Home to signing with Thrill Jockey, which gave us a much larger platform for our music to exist. Every time, we found a larger and more diverse audience.”

MR: Seasons (Waiting on You) was a defining record that seemed to ignite your success. Did you know you had something special when you wrote the song?

GW: “When we wrote it, Sam felt that we’d stumbled upon something great and it would be a hit, but I personally thought we hadn't [laughs]. I don't know about William, but I typically choose songs that other people don’t love as much. Like many of the songs that we’ve written, Seasons just felt very strange.”

WC: “We came up with it in the practice space one day and Sam took the cassette home, wrote the lyrics and came back saying “I think this is the best song we've ever written”. I know it's gonna sound weird, but to me it has a country vibe in the same way that Fleetwood Mac’s Time sounds country. Like Gerrit said, I thought it was a good song, but didn't think it was the best we'd ever written.”

MR: The bassline is almost as memorable as the vocal melody…

WC: “I appreciate that, thank you. I just try to keep the basslines interesting and moving rather than playing the root note. On Seasons, I was just playing around with the harmonics, but when we first tested the song live, the chorus wasn’t as big and distorted. We realised that we needed to step it up and make it sound bigger, but it's also about me trying to find new ways to draw lines through and around the keyboards that Gerrit's playing.”

MR: Many artists have a breakthrough song that ends up overshadowing the rest of their catalogue. Have you found ways to embrace the success of Seasons without being resentful of it?

WC: “We're very grateful for the impact that song’s had, so we'll definitely continue to play it live. It's given us so much, but at the same time we're not trying to write songs like Seasons if that's what you're asking. We try to approach songwriting in all kinds of different ways. On the next record, we're coming at it from all angles and trying to push different perspectives through the prism of Future Islands.”

MR: A lot has been said about Sam's eccentric performance on Letterman, and he seemed to struggle for a while with the mixed reaction. For the rest of the band, was it Sam just being Sam?

GW: “To us, it wasn’t anything unusual at all - if anything, it was tamed down. We found the reaction to be over the top because he wasn't at 100% - that was maybe 60%. It was also during an interesting time with the whole meme culture and Sam becoming a meme. Things got out of hand in that new world of whatever the internet was, but it took us up a couple of levels really quickly.

“The part that got out of hand was the touring. Playing so many shows really burnt us out and was a hard thing to come back from when it came to making the next record. We were on cloud nine for a long time and had to come down from that and refocus.”

MR: We loved the performance, but do you think we live in an age of conformity where artists want to be people pleasers rather than have a sense of uniqueness?

WC: “I feel like we're in an era where there are a lot of really interesting performers and the visuals are front and centre. There’s a band from Quebec that’s everywhere right now called Angine de Poitrine who have a really unique performance style and we often used to play with bands that would dress up and wear crazy outfits.

“There was one called Nuclear Power Pants who had these pyramid-shaped heads that were black light reactive and the singer was a two-headed man, which was actually two brothers wearing an oversized sports coat.

“I don't want to say anything about the state of the music industry because it’s all confusing and fickle to me. When we had our moment with Seasons, I remember a journalist told Sam that we weren’t supposed to have a moment that year. In other words, Future Islands were not what the people who decided these things had intended to focus on. They weren’t saying it in a negative way; it was more like ‘you broke the system’”.

MR: Can you remember the first piece of equipment that felt genuinely transformative or opened up musical possibilities?

WC: “In the late ‘90s/early ‘00s we were in a band called Art Lord & The Self-Portraits and had a Yamaha DJX keyboard that was like the brain of all of our early drum break programming. It was marketed as a ‘you can do everything a DJ does’ - type keyboard and was pretty special for us at that time.”

GW: “Back then, we used various keyboards that were lying around. I ended up with my dad's cheap Yamaha practice keyboard from Radio Shack, but then Korg had just released the microKORG, which was my affordable intro to synthesisers. That really opened up a lot of doors and was very influential to Future Islands’ synth sounds at the beginning.

“I don’t know if it's considered an actual instrument, but I also got a cracked version of Reason from Sam's brother and I’m still using the same software today. Suddenly, I could layer things and it became a tool that allowed us to programme drums and play them live. It definitely changed our sound, but we were careful not to go over the top because we still wanted to sound like a band.”

MR: When writing material, does one of you bring demos to the table or do you jam together in a space?

WC: “For the first couple of albums we’d basically have a drum machine beat that would play forever and Gerrit and I would jam on top of it looking for chords, bass lines and melodies. Sam would just sit there with a notebook, find something that resonated and say, ‘Go back and do that thing again’.

“Like Gerrit said, after our drummer left, programming drums became a part of the songwriting process. At that point, it kind of shifted to Sam and me sitting on the floor with Gerrit at his computer, and that was the vibe for writing In Evening Air.

“We don't really go into that hypnotic, long-form writing style these days, but we still get together when we can to jam in a room because it's important to our process. We'll often share ideas back and forth or write a demo of an idea, and if anyone's feeling it Sam will write to that and we’ll take it to the rehearsal space, but we're always down to explore different ways to approach what we do without abandoning the old ways.”

MR: Future Islands have always combined upbeat music with a sense of melancholy. Do you write songs with Sam’s unique presentation of them in mind?

WC: “That aspect of our music is something that we struck upon quite early and has been part of how we work together when we're writing. Sometimes we'll have an instrumental that we like and Sam will hear it but can't write to it, and sometimes he chooses a song and I’m like, ‘Really, this is the one?’

“The songs that resonate with Sam still surprise me. Sometimes, he'll say that he found some old demo from seven years ago that's been sitting in the background and he finally wrote to it. About the melancholy… that's just something that’s always been there. It's not just in Sam’s vocal melody, there's a melancholy quality to the music too, but we don’t really talk about it when we’re making a record; it’s just understood.”

MR: Most bands will mark a milestone anniversary with a Greatest Hits collection, so why was it important for you to celebrate 20 years through a collection of rarities, B-sides and alternate tracks?

WC: “We've been meaning to release a collection of non-album B-sides, rarities and seven-inch songs for over 10 years, but our management would always say ‘Now's not the time’. This year, the stars finally aligned and we're super-excited about how it’s turned out. We all love the artwork our friend Nolan came up with and only had to leave out a couple of songs, but I guess those will come out on the deluxe versions of whatever album era they came from.”

MR: You once said that you won't give an album a chance if you don't like the artwork. Looking back, can you think of LPs that rewarded you by studying the artwork?

WC: “I don't remember saying that, but I believe you if you read it. I'm definitely very adventurous and what I like about shooting down to a physical store is that you’re not just being shown what the algorithm thinks I should listen to.”

GW: “Sometimes I’ll buy a record that has an interesting cover and find that I almost have to love the music because of that, but I do like quite a few of the covers to old Krautrock records produced by Conny Plank. Actually, I bought a Heaven 17 album a few months ago that I liked the look of. I think it’s a comp, but the music’s really over the top in an amazing kind of way. Their songwriting is so interesting.”

WC “When I was a kid in the ‘90s there was this minor league baseball team close to where I grew up called the Carolina Mudcats. For whatever reason, they held a local radio thing at the stadium and were giving away free cassettes. I guess they were old promotional copies, but I picked up Kraftwerk’s The Mix because I thought the robot mannequin on the cover looked cool. I had no idea who Kraftwerk were at that time, but that was my introduction and I was stoked... It's a great record!”

MR: Has assembling the songs for From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth given you the chance to step back and reassess your history as a band?

WC: “When I first listened back to the vinyl test pressing, I was really proud of what we’d created. The tracks are mostly in chronological order and you can really hear the evolution of the band right up to where we are now. It's kind of crazy, because to us these were songs that we dropped along the path, but the cumulative effect of hearing them all together has certainly made me think about the passage of time.”

GW: “Listening back, I don’t think we made a mistake by not putting any of them on records. Sometimes, they just didn't fit the entirety of a record, but they shine now that they’re all together and finally have a home. Pinnochio is the one that’s really grown on me. We just did a tour celebrating 20 years and that went over better than any of the other songs - I think it was the last one we wrote with the Yamaha DJX.”

MR: You mentioned that the next album is on the way. What elements of Future Islands’ sound do you typically look to progress from album to album?

WC: “We’d all answer that question differently. I'm thinking a lot about texture and atmosphere, but I'm not sure what that's going to end up sounding like in practice. We have way more than an album's worth of songs written, but we're just trying to figure out where, when and who we're going to record with.

“We co-produced our last two records and we’re curious about what the right producer might bring in terms of finding our blind spots and what could be better, although at this point in our career we feel really confident in what we want to sound like.”

Future Islands’ From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth is out now on 4AD. For more information, click here.

Is your guitar drifting out of tune too often? Does your playing suddenly feel random and loose? Plagued with mis-hit notes and poor lifeless tone? Then it could be time to treat your guitar (and your ears) to a new set of strings.

Get ready for seven simple steps to guitar-playing greatness.

When should you change your strings

There’s a whole bunch of tell-tale signs that let you know when it’s time for new strings.

1. Broken strings

Oops. You broke a string. It might be that you knowingly picked it or bent that particular string too far, a bit of over-zealous tuning peg-turning, or it could be a sign of invasive wear and tear all across your guitar.

Either way, you need to replace it and only you will know if it’s a simple matter of swapping out that single string or if it’s high time for an entirely new fresh set.

If you’ve been playing regularly and it’s been six months since you last replaced your strings, take that broken string as an indicator that it’s time to change all six. ‘Upgrade’ one string and chances are you won’t feel or hear the difference. Change ALL your strings and you’re certain to feel (and hear) the benefit.

2. Worn or discoloured strings

Compare the strings on your guitar with a new set (or new-er set on another guitar). If you can SEE a difference then it’s time to change your strings. You may see such symptoms as visible rust, discolouration or corrosion.

Alternatively the strings may feel rough or gritty under your fingers rather than smooth. Putting up with rough strings will not only have a detrimental effect on your ability to play but will produce a dull and lifeless sound.

Also, watch out for a build up of dark gunk under your strings, particularly around the frets. Be under no illusion. This is dead skin and oil from your fingers and it’s a real tone killer (and hygiene turn-off)…

And – believe it or not – you can smell when your strings are worn. If your old strings have a smell then they’re on their way out. New strings smell clean and new because they are exactly that. Let your nose judge!

Smelly, dull, rough strings? Time for a restringing (and a good clean up too).

3. You can hear the difference

New strings will help your guitar sing again. If your guitar is sounding less bright and less ‘lively’ then it’s time for a replacement. Fresh strings have a brighter sound and will sustain notes longer.

Also they will stay in tune for longer (once they’re past their initial wearing-in phase). So if your guitar won’t stay in tune or goes out of tune quickly after tuning it might be that your strings can no longer take the strain.

Alternatively if individual notes sound slightly off even when the open strings are in tune, then your intonation is starting to drift. Tuned up but fretted notes are out of tune? Time for new strings.

4. Maybe it’s just time…

If you want to make sure your guitar is always firing on all cylinders then it could simply be a matter of marking when you last changed your strings on the calendar and then strictly sticking to a string ‘time limit’. I.e. Don’t wait until the signs above start to surface and ruin your performance. Take the pro-active approach instead.

Professional players will consider a new set of strings before every performance or recording session. Regular players should get a new set every three months minimum. While casual players should replace their strings every six months.

Don’t wait to sound bad. Do something about it.

You will need…

A guitar multi-tool will be handy for getting the broken string parts out of the machinehead posts. Such things are available for a few dollars/pounds from your favourite online retailer or trusty local store.

A good guitar multi-tool will combine various sized hex and Allen keys for adjusting the truss rod and bridge saddles, screwdrivers for pickup height adjustment, tightening strap buttons, and turning tuning machine screws

You might even get a string action gauge for measuring the height of strings above the fretboard. And a string winder (either solo or as part of a multi-tool) and a string cutter will come in very handy as well.

You'll also need new guitar strings too, of course.

Picking strings can be quite bewildering for newcomers, but don't worry - your friendly local guitar store will be delighted to serve you with the correct strings. They come in different gauges (thicknesses), which will affect how the guitar sounds and how the strings feel to play.

Generally speaking, most electric guitars will be strung with .009 or .010 gauge strings, which is the thickness of the top (thinnest) E string. The more you play, the more you'll understand string gauges and get a feel for which gauge works for your fingers.

Once you've got all your bits and pieces together, you can get on with the business of re-stringing.

How to restring a guitar: Seven simple steps

Of course, it looks hard but then, with so many moving and delicate mechanical, physical parts, it was always going to. But the good news is that it’s easier than you think and – as discussed above – the benefits are well worth the expense and hassle.

Let’s get started.

Step One: Remove the old strings

Start by loosening your first string using the tuning pegs until it’s completely slack. Once a string is slack you’ll be able to unwind it fully and remove it. Do this one string at a time rather than slackening and then removing all six at once as gently and methodically relieving the tension on the neck is better for your guitar.

On an acoustic guitar, you'll also need to remove the bridge pins (the small pegs holding the strings at the bridge end). If you have a string winder they often have a notch specifically designed for this. Pull them out carefully and don’t lose them as they can be fiddly to keep track of.

On an electric guitar, the strings either feed through the bridge from the back of the body or sit in individual saddles. Have a look at how the old string is attached before you remove it so you know what to do with the new one.

If in doubt, take photos on your phone before you begin, and refer back to them when putting in the new string. If your new string sits in the same place as the old string then you’re on the right track.

Step Two: Clean your fretboard

With the strings off, you’re afforded unfettered access to your guitar’s fretboard. Thus it’s a perfect opportunity to give it a much needed clean.

First, wipe down the fretboard with a slightly damp cloth then focus in on the frets and give each a good rub either with that cloth or brush with an old toothbrush to help dislodge any long-term ‘gunk’.

Maple fretboards should only ever be polished with that slightly damp microfiber cloth, but unfinished woods like Rosewood or Ebony, can come up like-new with a little Naphtha (aka lighter fluid) to remove grime, followed up with a specialized conditioner.

There are all kinds of cleaners and potions to try here and, again, your local guitar shop will be happy to take a look and give you tips and products here.

Step Three: Attach the new string(s) at the bridge

Feed the new string through the bridge in the same way that the old one was attached. On an acoustic, this means inserting the ball end of the string into the hole and replacing the bridge pin firmly on top to hold it in place. Give the string a gentle tug to make sure that it's seated properly.

On an electric, feed the string through the bridge or tailpiece according to your guitar's design.

Step Four: Thread the string through the tuning peg

Pull the string up the neck and thread it through the hole in the appropriate tuning peg. Leave a little slack — about five to eight centimetres of extra string beyond the peg. This gives you enough to wind around the peg several times, which helps keep the string stable and in tune.

Bend the string slightly at the peg to stop it slipping while you start winding.

Step Five: Wind the string

Turn the tuning peg to wind the string on, making sure the string winds neatly onto the peg. Each successive wrap should sit below the previous one. This isn't just for show, having a neat wrap all in a line will help keep the string in tune too.

You’ll find that a string winder makes this process much faster and easier. Wind until the string is roughly in tune.

Step Six: Trim away the excess

Once the string is wound on and roughly up to pitch, use your string cutters to snip off the excess wire close to the tuning peg. Leave just a small amount – about five millimetres. Loose ends left too long can scratch your hand or rattle against the headstock as you play, ruining your recording sessions.

Step Seven: Repeat and tune up

Repeat the process for each string, then tune the whole guitar using your tuner. We’ve an entire article on how to tune your guitar right here.

New strings stretch considerably in the first few days, so don’t be surprised when you have to retune a few days later. You can speed up this settling process by gently stretching each string as you’re placing it on the guitar. Grip it in the middle and pull it away from the fretboard a few times to stretch it, then retune.

And enjoy…

Remember, the first time you restring your guitar will be the hardest. It’s a process that gets easier with practice. And if it’s been a few years before you’ve changed your strings, perhaps don’t leave it so long next time?

Your guitar and your playing will only ever thank you for it!

First time around it flopped, but when The Police’s single Roxanne was re-released in 1979 it was the hit that set the band on the road to superstardom.

The song was written by singer/bassist Sting after walking around the Parisian red-light district close to the band’s hotel in October 1977, when they were performing at the nearby Nashville Club. An old poster of the play Cyrano De Bergerac was hanging in the hotel foyer and the song’s name was inspired by one of its main characters.

The play was written by Edmond Rostand in 1897 and was based on the life of 17-century novelist Cyrano De Bergerac. As the story goes, Bergerac falls in love with his distant cousin Roxanne but feels his oversized nose would prevent her from loving him.

Sting recalled to The Sun in 2019: “We were staying in a seedy fleapit of a hotel behind the Gare Du Nord, where I conflated the object of Cyrano De Bergerac’s romantic love with the working girls in the street below. The cadence in the bass began to tell me a story that would change my life for ever.”

In another interview for his YouTube channel, he revealed how the group had only one room between them, which they also shared with “les belles de nuit”.

“The song was inspired by the demimondes,” he explained. “But it’s a romantic song in a not very romantic setting. I’m very grateful for Roxanne, who I invented, but she changed my life.”

In 2023, Sting told People magazine how “those two conflicting ideas – of this beautiful name and this very, very elegant, courtly romance and what was going on in the hotel – just lit a torch under me”. He added: “I went to my room, picked up the guitar and imagined this woman into life.”

Lyrics like “Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light, those days are over, you don’t have to sell your body to the night” tell the story of a man who has fallen in love with a prostitute, in which he begs her not to “wear that dress tonight” and “walk the streets for money”.

This resulted in a ban from the BBC airwaves, with the broadcaster deeming it too explicit. This angered Sting who once stated that “there was no talk about fucking in it, it wasn’t a smutty song in any sense of the word” and argued that “it was a real song with a real, felt lyric, and they wouldn’t play it on the grounds that it was about a prostitute.”

The recording sessions for Roxanne took place intermittently at Surrey Sound Studios in Leatherhead over the course of six months with a meagre budget of £1500 – fronted by drummer Stewart Copeland’s brother and band manager Miles.

The song begins with Copeland’s hi-hat and guitarist Andy Summers’ Gmin triads on his heavily modded Sunburst Telecaster Custom.

During the recording session, Sting accidentally sat on the keys of a piano thinking the lid was closed, which resulted in the atonal chord heard four seconds in, followed by a burst of laughter.

“It’s a piano chord, but I played it with my arse,” Sting explained in 2016. “There was an upright piano right next to me, and I was singing, and I just wanted a rest, and the piano lid was open. So I sat, and I played that chord… it just made me laugh, so it’s on the record. Yeah, it was real.”

The song is in the key of G Minor and performed at 132 beats per minute. During the verses the guitar chords are played staccato in quarter notes and during the chorus sections Summers switches to eighth note power chords that are left to ring.

The track was originally conceived by Sting as a bossa nova, but it was Copeland who suggested turning it into more of a tango, thereby chancing upon one of The Police’s defining rhythmic trademarks.

“I believe the first song that had a taste of that was probably Roxanne,” the drummer told Drumeo in 2024. “He [Sting] had this bossa nova. We’re a fucking punk band, what the fuck? So I fucked that all up. He had a nice ballad, a poignant ballad about a prostitute. It was a real simple matter. Let’s play the rhythm backwards.”

Finishing up in top 20s and top 40s around the world upon release, Roxanne helped seal The Police’s stature as future stars in the making.

The song has been covered by an array of artists including George Michael, Lacey Sturm, David Garfield and Fall Out Boy – which shows just how many types of musician it’s gone on to inspire.

“I sing Roxanne every night,” Sting told Daniel Rachel for his 2013 book The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters. “There’s always a little inflection that is new or a possibility that opens it out.”

In reference to performing the track as a solo artist he added: “It’s not my job to reproduce a record that was made thirty years ago. I use that and I respect that, but it’s only a template. It’s that jazz mentality. You use the head of the song just as a starting point.”

Remember when the internet was a brave new world, full of promise, and felt like a wild frontier where anything was possible? That’s all changed, of course, thanks to the overwhelming dominance (both negative and positive) of social media, but there’s one corner of the web that still entices: music production.

Thanks to developments in APIs involving audio and MIDI, among other things, it’s now possible to use your basic browser as a hub to make music. This isn’t a novelty any more - browser-based DAWs are packed with sophisticated tools and internal applications that often stand up to the equivalent you might have used on your desktop or as a plugin in your DAW.

Let’s explore some of the most useful and intriguing options available in your browser, from classic synthesizer emulations and modular sequencing environments to full-on DAWs.

Bet you never thought you’d be whipping up complete tracks in Chrome, did you?

André Michelle knows a thing or two about making music with web pages. As the founder of OpenDAW, a free digital audio workstation that runs in your browser, he’s fully committed to the idea of non-desktop music production.

“The web is the ideal platform for software,” he says when asked why he’d make a DAW that runs within an internet browser. “It's inherently built to be platform-independent.”

Although web-based music applications have been around for a few years now, André, explains that because of recent breakthroughs, browsers are now a much more viable way to make music. “The web now has enough APIs to cover what music tools need: audio, MIDI, WebGL (for graphics), storage,” he explains. “Developers finally started recognising the potential.”

Additionally, he identifies the ‘Wild West’ nature of the internet as to why it’s the ideal place to pioneer this new avenue for music production. “The web has also always been a place to experiment,” he enthuses. “Users are more open to new ideas, and updates ship far quicker than a desktop app allows.”

Thanks to protocols like Web MIDI - which lets you play a browser-based instrument with a controller just as you would any other piece of software - it’s more viable than ever.

We’ve always thought of DAWs as applications downloaded to a piece of computing hardware, like a laptop or a tablet, but they can also exist on the internet. Browser-based DAWs are very much a thing now, with a number of different ones available, including André’s OpenDAW.

A complete (and free!) music-making platform, OpenDAW offers bespoke instruments like a synthesizer and drum machine, audio recording and effects, and even a way for you to build your own music applications on top of the OpenDAW SDK via scripting. It’s also been made with the concept of democratisation, and education, in mind.

“Sharing is the browser's own territory, so it's effortless,” André says about what a browser-based DAW offers that an offline app doesn’t. “Our Classroom feature lets people work in the same session at the same time through an invitation link, directly between their machines, with no login. It's the most accessible place to start.”

It also takes privacy seriously: “No signup, no tracking, no paywalls, no subscriptions, just create,” André says.

An online DAW like OpenDAW also makes sense if you’re often on the move and need to use a variety of different devices and machines. “Moving across platforms and computers,” is André’s response when asked why some would want to produce in a browser. “Your work isn't tied to one machine or one operating system. It runs on whatever's in front of you, a Chromebook, a borrowed laptop, your own machine.”Freedom, in other words.”

Other online DAWs include Audiotool, which supports third-party VST3s and, as of version 3.0, offers an open-source SDK that allows users to build their own instruments, plugins, and AI-connected music creation tools; BandLab Studio; and Smol Sequencer , a modular sequencing environment.

Of course, there’s more to music-making than DAWs. Sometimes you just want to kick back and have a play with a synth, sampler or drum machine without worrying about all the things that come with launching a DAW. In the same way that you might open a standalone instrument app on your desktop, you can navigate to a webpage and play a browser-based one. And, thanks to the Web MIDI protocol, you can even do it via your regular MIDI controller (although many offer QWERTY keyboard note input too).

Quirky musical gadget manufacturer Playtronica https://shop.playtronica.com/ and Chromatone, a web-based source for musical education, have curated a page called Web Synths Collection with more than 60 instruments available to jam on.

Some of the ones worth trying out include Steve Goldberg’s Juno-106, an emulation of the famous analog icon from Roland; a recreation of Yamaha’s DX7 by Matt Montag loaded with sounds like the famous (or should that be infamous?) E. Piano 1; and Matthew Cieplak’s ER-99, a recreation of the TR-909 drum machine with audio synthesized using the WebAudio API.

WebSynths is billed as ‘a free resource for any musician with internet access.’ This is a running theme with online music-making. Although browser-based instruments and tools don’t have to be free, many often are, retaining that foundational web ethos of democratisation and open-source sharing.

WebSynths currently has two instruments to play with. They are WebSynths Grooves, a booming virtual analog drum machine with some serious sound quality, and WebSynths Microtonal, a beautiful VA synthesizer with a focus on Aphex Twin-like tunings. Helpfully, both provide a way to capture audio so you can capture your sonic creations to use as you see fit later.

One of the great things about web-based music is the variety of instruments you can come across, many of them made by enthusiastic programmers who just like to code and see their ideas come to life.

One such instrument is Mezcla, an SP-404-style sampler. Says developer Capelo on Reddit;

“As a longtime beatmaker, I wanted a way to chop samples and test loops when I'm away from my gear. I built Mezcla to be a fast, distraction-free sampler that runs right in the browser.”

Interestingly, plugin developers are starting to use the browser as a way to allow prospective customers to demo instruments before buying. One such case is Jun Murakami’s Synth-80, an emulation of the Roland MKS-80 that runs right on a web page. It’s the entire instrument, complete with MIDI functionality and a QWERTY keyboard-enabled interface.

While browser-based instruments are undoubtedly not as convenient as plugins, you can still use them in your DAW with a few workarounds. Just as you would with a standalone instrument app, you can route system audio into your DAW with a client like BlackHole for Mac or VB-CABLE for PC.

With Web MIDI now very much a thing, it makes sense that hardware synthesizer editors and librarians would start migrating into browsers. You’re working from your computer or tablet anyway; why not put the editor into the internet rather than on the desktop?

Vintage synth owners know that old gear can sometimes be frustrating to work with. Having all of the menus only accessible through a single-line LCD screen can lead to many a hair getting yanked out.

Thankfully, programmers and patch librarians have long existed on computers to bring all of that arcane programming onto a big screen. As long as the instrument has good MIDI implementation, you can do your programming work from your computer. And now, thanks to Web MIDI, that editor can live on the internet too.

Knob.Monster is a new all-purpose editor. A ‘browser-native cloud SysEx librarian and patch manager,’ it connects to vintage synthesizers via a USB-to-MIDI handshake.

Knob.Monster currently supports the Yamaha DX7 and other FM-era instruments, Roland Juno-106 and Jupiter-6, Korg M1, and Casio CZ synths. The site isn’t free but it does promise an alternative to aging software librarians.

There’s a growing number of web-based editors helpfully targeting specific instruments as well. This is particularly helpful for old samplers like the Akai S5000 and Roland S-330, whose operating systems can be cryptic, to say the least.

New instruments are getting some love too, such as Behringer’s Mini series of synthesizers like the Pro VS Mini and JT Mini thanks to this lineup of free browser editors from Digital Sunset Studios. These are also available as desktop apps, but it’s nice to see the browser version as an option as well.

In the same way that browsers make excellent sense for editors, they’re also ideal host locations for tool and utility applications. No need to clutter up your hard drive when apps can live online. Here are three recently utility programs that handle useful but not necessarily bandwidth-heavy aspects of music production, such as sample slicing and wavetable creation.

Sample chopping is one of those aspects of beatmaking that can sometimes be a faff. Finding the right workflow can be tricky.

Chppr is a free online sample slicer designed to make sample loop preparation fast and easy before you take it to the DAW stage. It lets you upload or record audio, chop it, turn slices into playable pads like a hardware sampler, program patterns, arrange sketches, and export wav files from the browser. It works extremely well and is intuitive and fun to use.

Another sample-related browser utility is WavedStudio. If you work with wavetable-based synthesizers like Serum, Vital or Phase Plant, you have probably thought about making your own wavetables.

While there are standalone apps that let you do this, WavedStudio is surprisingly deep. It’s fairly complex so it’s worth looking at the documentation, especially when it comes to working with the 3D Topology functions and FM operators, but getting to grips with the main wavetable drawing parameters isn’t too difficult. WavedStudio outputs at 64 frames x 2048 samples per frame, which is the standard format for most modern wavetable synthesizers like Serum. Although WavedStudio is currently free, the developer is considering optional paid Pro features after the beta period ends.

Of course, if you want wavetables for Ableton Wavetable or some other synth with a different format, you’re going to need a converter.

You’re in luck, as the internet has you covered here too. Batch Wavetable Converter from Kimura Taro does what it says on the tin: it lets you change wavetables from one frame size to another, with control over frame number, sample rate, bit depth, and even sharpness of the output audio.

And yes, it can do more than one at a time (as you might guess from the name). Kimura also has a single-cycle waveform converter called SCW Resynthesizer and his own additive wavetable creator as well. His whole site is well worth a perusal.

Browser-based music creation is having a bit of a moment then, with so many cost-effective, slick ways to develop your music on any desktop or mobile device with internet access. Just make sure you remember to bookmark your project!

Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Zoltan Bathory is 100% certain that Wrong Side Of Heaven is the band’s most important song.

He tells MusicRadar: “It’s our biggest song, our most watched video. It had a huge impact on our career.”

Released in 2013 as the title track from the band’s fourth album, Wrong Side Of Heaven has achieved more than half a billion streams on Spotify, while the video has the same number of views on YouTube.

For all its significance, this song was also a long, long time in the making.

Bathory recalls: “Wrong Side Of Heaven started out as this little riff that I had for probably two decades. It was this nugget of gold. I knew that I got something special, but I had to wait until the time was right to record it.

“Other artists can associate and understand what I’m saying. When you have something really good, you tend to sit on that, you tend to not release it, because you don’t want to screw up a brilliant idea. You want to make sure that you’ve got the best possible treatment it can get.

“So for almost two decades I was sitting on that song and just playing around with it, and until finally it felt right and it became the title song of the fourth record.”

The songwriting credits for Wrong Side Of Heaven are shared by Bathory with singer Ivan Moody, guitarist Jason Hook, drummer Jeremy Spencer and producer Kevin Churko.

Bathory admits he was still unsure that the track was ready for release until he read Moody’s lyrics and heard his lead vocal.

He explains: “When you have a piece that you know can be brilliant, everything matters – the right melodies, the right vocals, the right mix. If you nail it all, this is a legacy piece. This is something that might change your entire career.

“I had the music, and once we were in the studio we played around with arrangement a little bit. But when it came to the recording, I said to the producer Kevin Churko, ‘This piece is very special to me, so let’s just see where it goes. And if it’s not what I think it should be, then I’m going to pull it, because it’s too important to me to just squander it. It’s a very important piece, and it needs to be what I think it can be.’

“So you have this protective feeling over the track, and I wasn’t really relaxed about it until Ivan came back with the lyrics and those vocal melodies. Once I heard the vocals, I was like, ‘Ah, okay.’ I mean, it was incredible. So Ivan did justice to the song.”

Back in the late ’80s, Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose famously said that if his ballad November Rain was not recorded to his satisfaction he would quit the music business.

Zoltan Bathory knows where Axl was coming from.

“I one hundred per cent understand that feeling,” he says. “The pressure is self-inflicted, but it’s my own expectations that I put on myself, so it doesn't necessarily affect me in a bad way. I’m not freaking out. I’m just very protective over the song.

“And I told that to the other guys. I said, ‘If it’s not perfect, we’ll hold it. If it’s not what it can be, we’ll hold it and work on it for another ten years or whatever. But this has to be right.’

“So yeah, I understand Axl Rose one hundred per cent. I understand that feeling. And once Ivan’s vocals were on it and Kevin start mixing it, we all knew, like, ‘Holy shit – this really is something!’”

The video for Wrong Side Of Heaven gave a new level of meaning to the song. It was directed by Nick Peterson and based on Bathory’s original concept.

“Another interesting thing about that song is that it wasn’t planned to be a single,” Bathory says. “But I went to the label and I said, ‘I have an idea. This song is very important to me, and also the lyrics. I think we can use it to support a serious cause.’

“So the video is about veterans, and how many homeless veterans there are. The idea was, ‘Let’s expose the facts, let’s put all the data on the screen of how many homeless people there are – especially veterans.’

He continues: “The words ‘veterans’ and ‘homeless’ should never be in the same sentence. These guys sacrifice too much.

“So in the end this becomes the most watched video we’ve ever done, and it had such an impact that serious politicians had to address this issue, serious newspapers had to address it, because we exposed data about homelessness and PTSD [Post-traumatic stress disorder]. And we also put our money where our mouth is, because we raised a quarter of a million dollars for these causes.”

He says in conclusion: “I’m proud that we gave this kind of support to veterans, and I’m proud that this song had such a huge impact on our career.”

One of the most frequently shared clips to emerge from last year’s headline-grabbing Oasis reunion was that of a young fan Shazam-ing the indomitable Bitter Sweet Symphony, being performed live on stage - with characteristic swagger - by Richard Ashcroft during his solo support slot.

While some of the more belligerent Britpop aficionados mocked the girl for not recognising a song that has, across the decades, become something of an indie institution, the song’s writer himself was delighted that new ears were being pricked up.

“If you don’t know it Shazam it, all new fans welcome!” wrote a gleeful Richard Ashcroft on Instagram.

The unyielding power of the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, driven by its strident violin motif, has demanded attention almost from the moment it was first written. Its fusion of stately strings and propulsive beat herald the message loud and clear; ‘This is an important song.’

Clearly, it retains that call-to-attention power even now, nigh on 30 years after its birth.

Although for many of us older music nerds, the contentious background of the song - and the fierce wrangle to control the song’s rights - has been an oft-discussed talking point. Yet many newcomers who discovered the song via Ashcroft’s Oasis stint are perhaps wholly unaware of the anguish that its writer has had to endure before the situation was finally (for the most part…) resolved in 2019.

The Bitter Sweet story began back in 1996, and the staggered making of The Verve’s mainstream breakthrough third album, Urban Hymns.

Prior to its recording, the Wigan-hailing four-piece indie rock troupe had all-but called it quits after the turbulent recording of their second album A Northern Soul.

With entirely different attitudes when it came to approaching making an album and building a career as serious musicians (namely, the attitude of whether heavy ecstasy use was a good idea or not…) Ashcroft found himself increasingly at loggerheads with guitarist Nick McCabe, who had taken to operating under a different working schedule in the studio.

It was clear to everyone that this tension couldn’t go on and, during the post-launch promo phase for A Northern Soul, the Verve disbanded.

“Looking back, something clearly had to give," Hut Records’ founder Dave Boyd said in an interview with Select. "They'd been together since they were 18. They were young men with lives of their own, and they needed time alone to find out who they were."

But, after just a few weeks isolating himself in his new home in Bath, Somerset, Ashcroft realised that he’d made a terrible mistake…

Quietly reconvening with bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury a few weeks after the split, Ashcroft set to work on rebuilding his band. More cynically-minded people assumed that Ashcroft had shrewdly used the pretence of a band break-up simply as means to extricate himself of McCabe.

Absence, however, made their respective hearts grow fonder, and a bit of distance clearly did the business. Unbeknownst to the other Verve players, Richard eventually picked up the phone to Nick, inviting him back into the fold in January of 1997. McCabe accepted.

It wasn’t just the time away that underlined Nick’s centrality to The Verve though. During the preceding McCabe-less months, the band had attempted to replace him with former Verve rhythm guitarist Simon Tong and ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, neither of which panned out - news that would put a bit of wind in McCabe’s sails upon his return.

“It was gratifying when I came back that they had tried to replace me with two guys, and they couldn’t. I am the guitarist they couldn’t replace,” Nick told XS Noise. “It did work in my favour, allowing myself to feel a bit of pride because when I went back into the studio, that obviously informed my mentality that I had been brought in as a problem solver.”

With the band now fully back together, attention turned squarely to the making of album three. Thankfully, Ashcroft hadn't been wasting time. On the contrary, he'd rustled up a veritable feast of outright gems during the downtime.

Future Verve staples Sonnet, The Drugs Don’t Work and Lucky Man had all-but poured out of him.

King amongst all though, was the grand Bitter Sweet Symphony.

Ashcroft had written Bitter Sweet Symphony the previous year, amid that post-split flurry of creative urgency.

The starting point came following the purchase of one of The Andrew Oldham Orchestra’s LPs which consisted of David Whitaker-arranged string interpretations of Rolling Stones tracks (The Rolling Stones Songbook, to be precise, assembled by their infamous manager, Andrew Loog Oldham).

Ashcroft was captivated by the arrangement of The Last Time in particular, and the swelling four-chord harmony that underpinned it.

Adopting the DIY sampling ethos of hip-hop, Ashcroft looped the sequence from the track with a hardware sampler, feeling that with a bit of fairy dust, this radiant foundation could be built out into something even more spectacular.

“[It’s] essentially hip-hop because it was written by me sampling a piece of music and building on that sample. It’s a way of writing that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for hip-hop and the process they go through making records,” Ashcroft told Sirius XM.

Richard kept pushing, driven by the idea that this track could become bigger than just another song. In his own words, Ashcroft wanted it to grow into something ‘outrageous’;

“I wanted something that opened up into a prairie-music kind of sound, a modern-day Ennio Morricone kind of thing,” Ashcroft told Rolling Stone. “Then after a while, the song started morphing into this wall of sound, a concise piece of incredible pop music.”

With Salisbury laying down a propulsive live drum beat underneath, the nature of Bitter Sweet Symphony pivoted from the romantic bucolicism of its starting point to a resilient march.

With this feel of tenacity running through the music, Ashcroft’s verse lyrics channeled the semi-hopeless feeling he felt during the band’s downtime into a defiant square-up to the very notion of a life of drudgery

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life
Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die

For the jubilant chorus, Ashcroft alluded to freeing himself from this resigned and self-defeating mindset. It was an idea borne of the idea that circumstance (and class) can prevent great people from rising up.

“Lyrically, it touches most people on the planet,” Ashcroft reflected in a 2025 Virgin Radio interview. “Purely because of its sentiment. Often through circumstance and what we’re born into, we can become trapped within ourselves, whether that’s financially [or] in our jobs. Yet we do have so much to give.”

I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mold
And I'm a million different people
From one day to the next
I can't change my mold

After initially laying down some demos for Urban Hymns with debut album (A Storm in Heaven) producer John Leckie at Real World Studios in Bath - and trialling Oasis (and A Northern Soul) producer Owen Morris for a few sessions, Ashcroft finally gelled with Killing Joke co-founder and Orb collaborator Martin ‘Youth’ Glover, who pushed Ashcroft to lean further into the new vein of pure songwriting classicism that was plainly evident across the latest batch of work.

Decamping to Olympic Studios in London, a future staple of most British teenager's CD collections in the late 1990s was crafted.

Despite the obvious brilliance of Ashcroft’s clutch of new songs, the demos that had been tracked prior to McCabe’s rejoining (in the midst of the Olympic sessions) were somewhat lacklustre.

At McCabe’s suggestion, the album’s engineer Chris Potter rented-in a then innovative new technology: Pro Tools. Together, they were able to cut even deeper into the arrangements.

“Some of the stuff [on the demos] was born out of loops, and the problem with using loops which is a well-known syndrome with working with computers and stuff these days, is things can get locked into four-bar segments without having any developmental interest happening in them. I had been experimenting with hard disk recorders in my time off, so I had developed a new way of working, which was liberating for me in that I could do the thing that I always did,” Nick told XS Noise.

“[Chris and I] got our hands dirty with Pro Tools on that session which wasn’t a thing back then, but it was the perfect toolset for a band like us that was semi-improvisational. Previously we had had to get it right on the spot.”

As Bitter Sweet Symphony grew, a high register string line (which had shades of Elgar and Tchaikovsky) was scored by Will Malone, who extrapolated an idea that was semi-hinted in the original sample.

He gave instructions to a 24-strong group of string players to perform the music with adjectives like ‘tough’ and ‘determined’ - in conjunction with the forthright energy of the beat. Ironically, people would later incorrectly assume that it was this original repeating violin ostinato that was the contested part of the song.

But, on one track of the mix there was indeed The Andrew Oldham Orchestra's original swelling string harmony, while the band filled a further 47 tracks with instrumental colour.

“We’ve got our own string players, our own percussion on it. Guitars,” Ashcroft told Rolling Stone. “We’re talking about a four-bar sample turning into Bitter Sweet Symphony.”

When married to Ashcroft’s world-weary lyric, the contrasting tension of the triumphant-sounding strings elevated both the urgency of the down-beaten lyric, and eased any sense of the lavish string section being pretentious. It was a perfect balance.

With its collision of high-brow pomp and Ashcroft's lyrical prognosis of the lives of the countless listeners who never had the chance to achieve their full potential - the song sounded almost revolutionary.

When released as Urban Hymns’ lead single on June 16th 1997, Bitter Sweet Symphony's frank-but-optimistic spirit jibed with a renewed sense of hope in Britain, Many were revelling in the wake of the victory of Tony Blair's New Labour after a decade of Conservative rule the previous month. Things were seemingly getting better as their official campaign anthem had promised,

Now, ‘Cool Britannia’ had its very own Land of Hope and Glory.

Bitter Sweet Symphony soared to The Verve’s highest ever chart placement of number 2 in the UK charts (frustratingly kept from the top spot by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans’ colossal Notorious B.I.G. tribute, I’ll Be Missing You). It remained in its upper echelons for a staggering three months. Even in the US, it gathered serious momentum, landing at a not too shabby number 12 on the Billboard Top 100.

The song’s iconic video, directed by Walter Stern, focused on Ashcroft striding down Hoxton Street in London, thoughtlessly barging into people and delivering the song straight down the lens of the camera, before being joined by his gang of bandmates for the song’s conclusion. It was an unforgettable visual amplifier of the song’s defiance-in-spite of obstacles theme.

The video also asserted that Ashcroft was a natural inheritor of Oasis’s prideful northern swagger.

“It was an inspired idea and look how it worked. It was amazing,” Ashcroft told Hot Press.

The Verve had come back from the brink, and were now buzzing with self-belief.

“Would any other rock band in the world make a track like this?” Ashcroft boasted to the Toronto Star. “We want to stand head and shoulders with the giants. We want to look at them in the clouds (and say) ‘Yeah it is nice up here Bob Dylan, John Lennon because I'm Richard Ashcroft. I'm Simon Jones. We're The Verve.’’

But this confidence was soon punctured by those aforementioned legal developments, which came from the representatives of a couple of other 1960s' giants…

To be fair to them, The Verve’s label (Virgin) had done due diligence and acquired the permission (the recording rights, that is) to keep the particular Last Time string swell sample in the released track. However, the Rolling Stones’ former manager - and head of ABKCO Records - Allen Klein was notoriously sniffy about samples. He gave the track a closer listen.

As Klein still held the compositional rights to the original song, Klein felt he was due some of the proceeds, as were its original writers, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Despite being a sampling-skeptic on principle, Klein’s case was built not so much on the lifted string section, but the actual vocal melody that Ashcroft employed in the song.

Klein, and a budding team of musicologists, believed it to be a half-time interpolation of the Last Time melody. A melody line that was, legally speaking, his property.

“It’s not really the sample that’s the issue,” McCabe relayed to XS Noise. “It is credited to Jagger/Richards because of the melody line, so the sample is by the by.”

After a heated legal back-and-forth, ABKCO won a lawsuit prior to the single’s release. Initially, this meant that The Verve and ABKCO would split the proceeds of the still unreleased song.

When Bitter Sweet Symphony became a generational mega-seller however, things changed.

“We were told it was going to be a 50/50 split, and then they saw how well the record was doing,'' bassist Simon Jones told the Toronto Star. “They rung up and said 'We want 100 per cent or take it out of the shops', you don't have much choice.”

With bigger financial and legal clout behind ABKCO, Ashcroft and the band had no option but to relent to their demands.

And so, from that moment on, all the publishing royalties for Bitter Sweet Symphony would flow straight to Klein. The full songwriting credit - and subsequent financial rewards for Ashcroft's most inspired piece of work - would go straight to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The Stones' figureheads themselves remaining quiet throughout proceedings.

For Ashcroft, who insultingly only received a paltry $1,000 as part of the settlement agreement, having the vast rewards for what fast became regarded as his signature song taken away was soul-crushing.

“Songwriters often talk about their songs as if they are their children and to have one of your children taken away from you has been brutal for Richard,” Ashcroft’s co-manager John Kennedy told Billboard. “He has endured it, not always patiently or in silence, but it has been terrible for him.”

There was a happy ending to the tale however, as in 2019, after multiple successive appeals to ABKCO (now in the hands of Klein’s son, Jody following his father's death in 2009) Jagger and Richards were finally contacted and immediately agreed to relinquish their songwriting credits and future share in the track’s success.

Ashcroft was delighted, still holding the Stones’ legends in high regard despite the drawn-out affair; “[It’s] a remarkable and life-affirming turn of events… made possible by a kind and magnanimous gesture from Mick and Keith,” Ashcroft said at the time.

“I never had a personal beef with the Stones,” Ashcroft told the BBC. “They've always been the greatest rock and roll band in the world. It's been a fantastic development. It's life-affirming in a way.”

It’s no surprise then, that when Richard Ashcroft now witnesses young newcomers discovering his most important song fresh, and fully oblivious to the years of turmoil it caused its maker, he’s absolutely thrilled.

“I think Bitter Sweet Symphony will resonate long after I’m gone,” Ashcroft told Virgin Radio. “I’m very lucky to have created something that genuinely is timeless. Subsequent generations are going to enjoy this thing because it’s tapped into something that’s difficult to describe.”

Yes - the 1995 debut hit single by McAlmont & Butler remains one of the decade’s most life-affirming songs. The duo, formed by ex-Suede guitarist, Bernard Butler, and powerhouse ex-Thieves vocalist David McAlmont still holds up as a joyful assertion of independence.

With thunderous drums, soaring strings and epic, Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound'-style production, Yes was the musical equivalent of a rush of euphoria.

Riding that wave is McAlmont’s sass-imbued lyric which serves as, ostensibly, a middle finger-raise to an ex. To quote David himself, Yes is very much a 1990s update of Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive.

During the towering chorus, McAlmont's defiance reaches its pinnacle;

Yes, I do feel better
Yes, I do, I feel alright
I feel well enough to tell you what you can do with what you got to offer…

So how did these two displaced figures find each other, and summon the musical chemistry to conjure such a totemic anthem?

We need to rewind the clock back to early July 1994. Guitar hero and then-regular NME cover star Bernard Butler had dramatically left Britpop-pioneers Suede in a storm of words during the recording of their ambitious (and extraordinarily brilliant, we might add) second album, Dog Man Star, which was released later that autumn.

In the wake of his exit, Bernard was living in a basement flat in Highgate, North London.

“I was lonely, pretty depressed and very lost,” Butler tells us. “Contrary to popular belief, [leaving Suede] wasn’t something that I wanted to happen, and it became such a fuss - the whole thing with the music press. If you’re in a band, and you’ve got a manager or a record company, you’ve got people handling everything for you, but because I was the black sheep and I’d gone, I was totally on my own and I had no idea how to handle anything. All I wanted to do was to make music, but I thought I would probably be back doing a day job by Christmas because I just didn’t see any way forward.”

Staving off these anxieties, Butler decided to just immerse himself in his passion. But first, he needed to kit himself out with the right equipment.

“As I was on my own, I didn’t have any gear, so, the first thing I did was to buy a load of stuff from Loot magazine, which, at the time, was a treasure trove for musicians who were buying gear - it was amazing,” Bernard recalls.

“I bought a Tascam 16-track [recorder], a Seck mixer with 12 channels, an Akai S950 sampler and some cables. The reason I bought a sampler was not because I wanted to make trip-hop - I wanted a way of playing back sounds, particularly strings and keyboards.

“There was a guy in Loot who advertised himself as selling sounds on floppy discs. He lived in Hampstead and I phoned him up and said, ‘Have you got these sounds?’ He said, ‘Yeah - come over and I’ll run them off for you’”.

Bernard continues the tale, "So, I gave him 50 quid or something, and I can remember sitting in his flat for a whole evening - it took about three hours. He clocked who I was and he said, ‘Are you supposed to be doing this?’ I tried to avoid answering the question, and it was really awkward.

“What he gave me was a Mellotron string sample - that was the thing I really wanted. When I got home, I started playing with that and that’s what I used for Yes. As soon as I heard it, I was like, ‘Wow - this is brilliant’. I had a drum machine that I’d used for Suede, and a sample of strings, so I could play stuff on a keyboard.”

At the same time, Bernard had begun getting to know ex-Orange Juice frontman-turned-solo-artist-and-producer, Edwyn Collins. It transpires that Collins was also integral to the creation and sound of Yes.

“I phoned him up and he was super-nice. He came over to my flat with a bottle of wine and brought all this stuff - beautiful microphones, like the incredibly revered AKG C12A, and compressors,” Butler tells us. “I said, ‘I don’t know how to use it’, but I can remember him saying, ‘Don’t worry - just plug it in and make something’. That’s what I used for pissing around and coming up with the parts for Yes for the demo.”

Butler wrote the chord sequence for Yes on his signature Gibson 355 guitar, influenced by glorious and lush pop songs like Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want To Be With You, You On My Mind by Swing Out Sister and The First Picture of You by ‘80s English new wave band The Lotus Eaters.

“I loved all those records,” he says. “It was a bit of a dark and lonely time, but I can remember that it was a hot summer. I lived on Hampstead Lane, which is the road that goes down to Kenwood [House], it’s a lovely spot, I wish I lived there now, to be honest. I was going to the Heath every day, wandering around. It was sunny and I just wanted to make music that was [also] a bit sunny and uplifting. A lot of the music I’d made for Dog Man Star was the opposite of that - it was quite exhausting mentally. I really wanted to make music that had major sevenths. I used to call it ‘the Postcard chord’, because you’d always get it on Aztec Camera and Orange Juice records.”

He adds: “Everything we did in Suede was what I used to call ‘block chords’, with hard, basic roots - there was no nuance. It was in your face. I wanted to write a song with major sevenths and a key change. Don’t forget - I had no vocalist either, so I was just pootling with music and having fun.”

Butler channeled that idea into the first instrumental version of what would ultimately become Yes. He then asked Julianne Regan of goth-folk-rockers, All About Eve, to pen a melody and a lyric, but the results weren’t quite what Bernard had in mind.

Producer Mike Hedges, who’d worked with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Marc Almond and Everything But the Girl amongst others, invited Butler to his studio, Chateau de la Rouge Motte situated in the Normandy countryside in France, to work on some new music.

“He got on the phone and was like, ‘Come over here and we’ll make a record’,” says Butler. “Mike’s like that - he’s a gambler. He’s one of those people who would crash a car and buy another one.

“He said, ‘Who are you working with?’ I told him I knew this lady called Julianne, and he said, ‘Bring her - it will be great’. So, I sent him some music we’d been writing. He just wanted people to come to France because, at the time, no one was going there.

“I liked the idea of working with Mike because he’d made records with Marc Almond, and I was a big fan of the Marc and the Mambas album, Torment and Toreros - that record was a big inspiration for me [when making] Dog Man Star.”

So, Butler packed his gear into his car and headed off to Hedges’ chateau.

“It was like a wonderland - it was a proper chateau, like you see in pictures,” Bernard recalls. “Mike’s front room led into a ballroom, where he had a mixing desk and a piano. There was a swimming pool downstairs and a wine cellar made of thick stone, which is where we did the drums. The sound was amazing and we sat up and drank wine and ate cheese.”

Regan left the sessions after a couple of days, leaving Butler to record a second instrumental demo of what would grow into Yes on his own.

“We went and got some drums from this guy in the village and Mike said, ‘Oh, you can play them’. I said, ‘I really can’t’, and he said, ‘No - you can do it, it’s fine’.

“So, we recorded the drums, we just had a laugh, and we made the demo with string samples. I loved working with Mike and being around him - I felt free and he was really encouraging towards me. He was so experienced - he’d done it all. He would say to me, ‘I’m going to sit on the sofa and have my sandwich, and you can go over there to the mixing desk, press anything you want and find out what happens.’ That was important because during Suede I was told the opposite: ‘Stop touching that,’ or ‘You don’t want to know how to do that’, and ‘Stay away from that’.

“Edwyn and Mike both came into the picture at that time, and they were both just like, 'Go and have fun, f**k everyone, be punk - just press some buttons and see what happens.’ So, that's what I did.”

With the lush-sounding demo in the can, Bernard returned to London that summer with the instrumental track in his pocket, keeping his ear out for any vocalists that might be interested in taking it on.

Things then took a very strange turn…

One Friday afternoon, Morrissey phoned the offices of record label Rough Trade, ran by Geoff Travis (who knew Butler) and asked him if he’d got any new music he could listen to.

“Geoff phoned me and said, ‘Morrissey’s round the corner in a phone box. Can I play him that piece of music?’” says Butler. “I said, ‘Yeah - whatever you want’… And then about an hour later, Morrissey phones me - he was gushing about it. He wanted to meet me. It was a sunny Friday night, and we went to the Edinboro Castle pub [in Camden], which had a big beer garden. It was packed, but nobody knew who he was, and I remember thinking how odd that was. We just chatted about stuff for a couple of hours, and he was everything that you thought he would be.

“I didn’t hear from him, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, God, what’s going on with this song?’ And then four or five days later, he sent me one of his famous letters through the post, which I’ve still got - it’s framed and on the wall. It just read, ‘Dear Bernard, I’m sorry - I can’t.’ So, that was the end of that.”

If that wasn’t odd enough, things then got even weirder… Butler’s publisher sent the demo to Kirsty MacColl, who called Bernard a couple of weeks after Morrissey’s letter hit the doormat.

“Again, she was gushing and said, ‘I love the tune’. This must’ve been August ’94, so I went round to Kirsty’s on a Sunday afternoon, but when I got there, she was totally different. I knew she was going through a divorce, I’d met her at a bad time, and she was very upset and not easy to be around. She said, ‘Right - this song… I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s quite good, but we need to do a lot of work to change it.’

“I don’t want to be arrogant about it - a collaboration is a collaboration - but it didn’t feel right and I didn’t want to do all the stuff that she wanted to change,” reflects Butler.

“While I was there, Morrissey turned up! I was in the garden with Kirsty and she was drinking wine. The doorbell went and Morrissey came in. He said, ‘We meet again…’ It was so Morrissey - it was like he was Byron or someone.

“I was thinking, ‘What’s going on here? Does he know that I’ve brought this song to her or not?’ Of course he does - they were mates. So, eventually, I got myself out of that, and I went home. I turned to my missus and said, ‘This is all a bit mad’. And then we went out for a bit and when we came back there was an answering machine message from Johnny Marr! I was like, ‘What the f**k is going on?’ That’s another story. Johnny knew I’d been with Kirsty and Morrissey - he was very nice.”

A few weeks after one of the strangest afternoons of Butler’s life, Travis suggested he should go and see singer David McAlmont perform at the Jazz Café in London.

“I didn’t know him, but I’d met him once before. His music wasn’t what I was aiming to do at that point - it was very ethereal and synthy - but I went to see him, and I remember this Japanese fella, Mako [Sakamoto], getting behind the drum kit and the whole room was like an avalanche,” remembers Butler.

“If I’m being honest, I was drawn straight to the drummer - I heard the thundering drum sound, and that was a big thing. I was like, ‘Oh, my God - this guy - I’ve got to get him’, and then David was a no-brainer, because he was pretty good as well. So, David came up to me after the show and I had a cassette of what would become Yes. I gave it to him and said, ‘If you want this piece of music, you can have it - see what you think.’ To be honest, at that point, after all the other things and the people I’d gone through, I’d have given it to the bus driver!”

Speaking to David McAlmont today, we ask him if Butler had told him that he’d already tried to work on the song with Regan, Morrissey and MacColl.

“Yeah, and that fuelled my ambition for it,” McAlmont tells us. “I didn’t want it to go anywhere else, so I just got my head down and worked really hard on it.”

David’s lyrical inspiration soon followed…

“The first thing I came up with was kind of T.Rexy - I was listening to a lot of T.Rex at the time, but luckily, I was living with someone who said it sounded a bit one-dimensional.

“Bernard said he was listening to loads of Dusty Springfield and those were the magic words for me. Also, just before I started working on Yes, Channel 4 had spent a month hyping a new print of [the 1954 film] A Star Is Born with Judy Garland and James Mason. I had never seen it, so I made sure I watched it. There was a song called The Man That Got Away, which was just electrifying. I’d never heard anything like it, so I went and bought the soundtrack.

“After my friend said the T.Rex thing was a bit one-dimensional, I went to my record collection and pulled out an album - it was A Star Is Born,” David remembers. “So, Yes became ‘What would Judy do?’ Yes is where Dusty Springfield and Judy Garland meet - Dusty via Bernard and Judy via me.”

Although Yes's music is uplifting and joyful, the lyric, which was inspired by a real-life situation in which McAlmont was ghosted by someone he was dating, is nothing short of vitriolic.

“Absolutely - ‘vitriolic’ is the word I always use,” he agrees. “People have Yes played at their wedding, and I’m like, ‘Why?’

“At the time, I described Yes as an 'I Will Survive for the ‘90s’ - I heard euphoria, release and escape,” David tells us. “I once heard Bernard say he was trying to create the happiest song and that’s certainly something people respond to, but I think because the lyric is so edgy, it’s kind of elevating.”

Interestingly, Yes only has one verse - the second verse is simply a repeat of the first one. McAlmont explains why; “We agreed that the first verse said everything that needs to be said, so why write another one.”

“David came round to my flat and he sang what he’d written,” Butler picks up. “When he got as far as the first chorus, he stopped. I was like, ‘Why have you stopped? This is great.’ He said, ‘That’s all I’ve written,’ and I said, ‘Just sing it again and we’ll worry about it later…’

A six-piece string section was recorded at Konk Studios in North London and, in December 1994, Butler headed back to Hedges’ studio in Normandy, this time accompanied by McAlmont and drummer Sakamoto.

“Mike said straightaway that Yes was a hit record - we did a weird thing; we couldn’t afford to pay to do the strings in France, so we did them at Konk, which is in Crouch End, but, before we went to France, we recorded the rest of the song to a click track,” says Butler. “We were only in France for four or five days - we recorded one day and mixed the next.”

Sakamoto, who sadly passed away in 2018, recorded his booming drums in the stone cellar of the chateau: “He didn’t speak much English, so he didn’t know where he was going. He was this guy from Japan who was being taken off to the French countryside in a van,” Bernard reflects.

“I was downstairs with him when he was playing the drums - I was standing in front of him and jumping up and down. He just played his heart out and made this incredible sound. There was no holding back - it was just like, ‘record it and do everything’.

“We put everything in the mix, and it all came together to make a beautiful sound. It’s a terrible mix - if somebody mixed it now, it would be a totally different thing, but it just sounds like it has energy. It was a little bit of a reaction to being in the studio with Suede and sanitising stuff. When the first Suede album was mixed, we weren’t allowed to go; we just got sent mixes. And then with the second record, obviously I wasn’t there to see it being mixed because I’d gone.”

McAlmont looks back on some of his memories of recording Yes: “It was in an amazing old chateau - I sang under a chandelier that had a covering. It was real ‘method’ musicianship, and I remember Bernard saying to the engineer [Ian Grimble]: ‘Don’t make it sound modern’”.

On working with Hedges, McAlmont says: “This is easy to say, because he’s a big, jolly bearded guy, but it was like being hosted by a king. He was in his chateau, and he sat at a long table for dinner, over which he would preside. He had a big fireplace, and he liked to throw Calvados into it - he was pretty relaxed really.”

Talking about recording in the chateau, Butler recollects; “Mike’s place was basically a house - there was no soundproofing. There was no attempt to make it a sterile studio, which is what I loved about it.

“The [mixing] desk was an EMI TG, which Mike had bought from EMI when they were throwing it out - Alan Parsons had mixed Dark Side of the Moon on it. Mike had all this gear from Abbey Road - loads of mics and three or four of the EMI desks were just sitting there… He had a greenhouse and he had one desk in there, sitting in the corner, with some plants in it, and he had the bell that was used on Yellow Submarine. He got it all super-cheap when they were being thrown out.”

When Yes was eventually released in May 1995, it entered the UK singles chart at number 10, peaking at 8 the following week. David and Bernard’s new partnership had smashed its way into the pop mainstream.

“It was difficult for me - I’m happy to sell records, go on TV and do interviews, but becoming public property? That’s another matter entirely and I wasn’t very good at it,” McAlmont reflects.

“I was absolutely delighted that the record did what it did… I can remember once posting on Facebook about What a Fool Believes by The Doobie Brothers and saying: ‘I wish I could write a song like that’. Somebody commented: ‘I think you already have.’”

Butler still says Yes, which would be just the first taste of McAlmont & Butler's hailed debut album, is his favourite thing that he’s ever done in his career.

“It’s not because it’s my favourite song or recording or playing, it’s really because of what it means to people and how it sits on an island of its own. That’s what I love about it. I was very young - 23 or 24 - and incredibly ambitious and idealistic… I was an arrogant little prick, quite frankly, and because of what had happened to me, I felt like, ‘F**k it - everything’s going wrong and I’m about to be blown off the planet and going to have to go and get a job.’ Nothing mattered anymore.”

He adds: “The [original] idea for Yes was that it would be what they used to call a ‘disco sleeve’, where you just had a hole in the middle with a name [on the record] that no one would know. It was enigmatic. That’s what I envisaged Northern Soul was - but I'd never heard Northern Soul. There would be no video accompanying it and no tour, or t-shirt - you just have a song, and that song exists on its own planet.

“It would just come out, and that would be the great mystery of it,” Bernard continues. “There was just a sound and nothing else, and you either dig it or you don’t. I was attracted to that as a reaction against Suede, where there was a distinct aesthetic and masses of music press. I was thinking, ‘Imagine if you could make music when nobody knew anything about the artist and you didn't do anything else after that’ - there was one piece of music that would just lift you off your feet and make you feel great. That was all I wanted to do.”

The Sound of McAlmont & Butler anniversary edition, featuring Yes, is out on September 18 on Demon Records as a 2LP vinyl set or 2CD version.

Van Halen’s sixth album, 1984, is a hard rock masterpiece and a multi-million selling smash hit. It is also the last album the band recorded during their golden era with singer David Lee Roth. And it was the climax of a battle for creative control between guitarist Eddie Van Halen and the band’s producer Ted Templeman.

After 1981’s Fair Warning, Van Halen’s heaviest album, produced no hit singles, Templeman pushed for covers on 1982 follow-up Diver Down.

The policy worked – to a point. The band had a top 20 US hit with their version of Roy Orbison’s (Oh) Pretty Woman and a minor hit with a cover of the Motown classic Dancing In The Street by Martha And The Vandellas.

But Eddie Van Halen was unhappy.

“I would rather bomb with my own music than make it with other people’s music,” Eddie told Guitar World in 2014. “Ted felt that if you re-do a proven hit, you’re already halfway there.”

To wrest control from Templeman, Eddie and engineer Donn Landee converted a racquetball court at Van Halen’s house into a studio. They named it 5150, and the 1984 album was its first project.

Ironically, the album made entirely on Eddie’s terms became Van Halen’s most commercially successful effort.

Templeman resisted recording at 5150, but relented after he heard the song Jump.

“He didn’t care much about the rest of the record,” said Eddie. “He just wanted that one hit.”

With Eddie, a classically trained pianist, playing the main riff on synthesizer, Jump put a new twist on Van Halen’s sound.

Speaking to Total Guitar in 2022, virtuoso guitarist Joe Satriani explained why 1984 was a game-changer and why it stands tall as an all-time hard rock classic.

“Jump sounded really fresh,” Satriani said. “The simple major chords that we’ve heard a million times just for some reason sound new.

“I would say that’s like Mozart. There’s a history of amazing classical music before him, so what did he do? He used the same chords as everybody else, but the way he did it made you go, ‘Oh! I like the way he goes I-IV-V.’ Jump has that same thing. It’s just I-IV-V, but it sounds great.”

During the sessions for 1984, limited space at 5150 made for an unusual working environment. The Marshall Plexi sat in one corner behind isolation panels, and Eddie sat on a stool in front of brother Alex’s drumkit and did not even wear headphones.

There wasn’t space for cymbals, which were overdubbed later. Only the snare was live. Alex used electronic Simmons drums for everything else.

“Can you imagine what it sounded like in the room?” Satriani mused. “This is insane. He’d do a drum fill and where there should be a crash at the end, there’s nothing. How did they work that out? Just the monitoring, so that they could do something like Hot For Teacher and make it sound so perfect?”

The visual connection between the Van Halen brothers was essential. As Eddie recalled of Hot For Teacher: “I distinctly remember sitting in front of Al on a wooden stool and playing that part during my solo where it climbs. Well, I can’t count, so Al needs to follow me. I’d sit right in front of him, and then he’d look at me like, ‘Now!’”

Satriani was thrilled by this story. “No wonder it sounds like so much fun!” he enthused. “They were sort of autonomous and yet they were totally linked together.”

As Satriani saw it, the sound of the brothers playing live was essential to the Van Halen sound.

“That sound of Alex’s snare drum, I just hear that as something that pulls the whole album together,” he said. “There are a couple of drummers out there that do that.

“Watching the Get Back documentary, I realised The Beatles were not The Beatles until Ringo started playing. When he was off having a cup of tea, it just sounded like John, Paul, and George as individuals. It didn’t sound like The Beatles. Ringo starts to play and it’s this gigantic thing.

“Van Halen is the same way. We’ve all heard Eddie jamming with other people and it’s nowhere near the same.”

Satriani discussed the recording of 1984 with Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony when they worked together in the supergroup Chickenfoot.

Since 5150’s live room only had space for Eddie and Alex, Anthony overdubbed his bass later.

As Satriani recalled it: “Mike told me every song you’d have to find out where Eddie was tuned, because you never knew what take they used and whether anything was tuned at the time. What makes this album so interesting is the fact that there are guitars that are not totally in tune – but good luck trying to get a take as good as that!”

Eddie Van Halen’s 1984 tone is distinct from his early sound, but it used largely the same gear. The Frankenstrat was largely retired for this album in favour of the banana-headstocked Kramer 5150, but the magic Marshall Plexi was still his only amp.

Eddie did use his Eventide harmoniser on every song, but it was not as prominent as it would become on later albums. “I used it mostly to split my guitar signal so it came out of both sides,” he commented.

The guitars are still single-tracked with few overdubs, making it unique among rock albums of the time.

“There’s not like rhythm guitar left and right,” Satriani said. “I’m always adding a Tele and a Strat and a Les Paul, but because David Lee Roth’s voice was so charismatic in Van Halen, they didn’t really have to. They’re just leaving space for each other.”

Ted Templeman’s lack of concern for album tracks left Eddie and Alex free to stretch themselves creatively. One such deep cut, House Of Pain, was originally demoed in the late ’70s, and it is a favourite of Satriani’s.

He explained: “When you make albums, there are songs that the band likes, but from the production point of view it doesn’t have commercial potential, suddenly people start to work on it differently. Everyone plays differently. They say, ‘Well, it’s not gonna be a single so we can do this instead of having to edit that part.’

“I love House Of Pain so much. It’s not as complete as Jump or Panama, where you can tell they worked on it because it had single potential. The verses are so out there. When I try to imagine one of the four parts not being there, it doesn’t work. I remember just listening to that over and over again, thinking ‘This is a moment.’”

He continued: “What I really like about that first version of Van Halen was that they all seem to be playing separate parts with separate accents, yet they came together so well. Eddie never really went for that triple-tracked, all playing the same thing, the drums and bass are doing the same thing. It’s a different kind of music altogether. It’s both whimsical and deadly serious, and you just have to be so good to pull that off.”

Satriani recalled Van Halen’s seismic impact on America’s guitarists.

“When Eddie came on the scene it scared the shit out of so many guitar players,” he said. “I saw it as a total vindication of what I liked to play and what I liked to listen to, whereas people in other styles were feeling, ‘This is bad competition. I don’t want to have to deal with someone who can play that good.’

“I always thought Eddie is going to be great for guitar. I was keen not to copy something that Eddie had done. Like, ‘I’m not going to get in his territory. What’s my contribution?’

“When I wrote the two-handed piece Midnight for [1987 album] Surfing With The Alien I was thinking, ‘Guys like Eddie and other two-handed players—what did they not do?’”

For Joe Satriani, 1984 exemplifies great music.

“The music we listen to decade after decade is the stuff with character and love in it,” he said. “You can’t get that just by sitting down with the metronome and trying to get one click faster.

“The thing we should be practising is not called practising. It’s called playing music. Eddie and Alex jammed for hours and hours, day after day, week after week until they hit upon something so unique that is so perfectly natural. It jumps out of the album.”

In 1979, few rock bands were hotter than Cheap Trick and AC/DC – and when they toured together in the US they got on like a house on fire.

It was tour that Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen remembered with great affection in an interview with Classic Rock in 2021.

“Cheap Trick did theatre shows with AC/DC all over the place,” he said. “East Coast, West Coast. We flip-flopped as headliners, because we were both on the way up at that time.

“When you’re on tour together, you’re birds of a feather, and there was a camaraderie between us. We loved their band and, well, they tolerated us, you know?”

Cheap Trick, from Rockford, Illinois, played hard rock with a strong pop sensibility inspired by The Beatles. Their 1978 live album At Budokan had been their commercial breakthrough, yielding a huge hit single with I Want You To Want Me.

AC/DC, from Sydney, Australia, played hard rock, full stop. No fancy stuff. And their 1979 album Highway To Hell would be their first million seller.

Nielsen recalled: “We toured with so many bands, but AC/DC was the only band I watched every night, every show, because they were so good. I liked everything about them. They were totally unique.

“I know I’m pretentious,” he admitted, “but there was nothing pretentious about AC/DC. They were straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll. Sure, they did [blues song] The Jack, but that was about the campiest thing they did. Otherwise it was just straight rock from start to end. There was no baloney.”

Nielsen remembered one occasion when Cheap Trick were joined on stage for their encore by AC/DC’s guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young and singer Bon Scott.

“We closed that show and Angus and Malcolm and Bon got up with us and we did Johnny B. Goode together.”

The roles were reversed some time later. “I got up with those guys in Germany when we were both opening for The Who,” Nielsen said. “They played Highway To Hell and there was me – jumping around with my checkerboard guitar! That was a real thrill.”

Nielsen had great admiration for Bon Scott, and enjoyed time with him away from the stage.

“I thought Bon was the ultimate frontman. He was like a rock ’n’ roll pirate. He seemed like he was ready to swab the deck!

“And he was the sweetest guy. I remember taking him to a Mexican restaurant one night. He’d never eaten Mexican food before, and he was the only guy I ever saw have a taco with a Scotch!

“I was a drinker too, I’d have a case of beer a day, but I never got into a competition with anyone, and Bon wasn’t the kind of guy to do that either.”

Tragically, on 19 February 1980 – just three weeks after AC/DC had played the last UK date on the Highway To Hell tour – Bon Scott died in London after a night of heavy drinking.

When news of Scott’s death reached Rick Nielsen, Cheap Trick were on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, working on the album All Shook Up with the legendary ‘fifth Beatle’ George Martin in the producer’s chair.

“I was so shocked and sad when Bon died,” he said. “We were in Montserrat with George Martin, and I had my wife and kids with me out there.

“I got a call about my house back in Rockford, Illinois. It was being renovated and there had been an electrical fire and the house had burned down. And it was the very same day that I got the call telling me that Bon had died. When that hit me, I couldn’t have cared less about my house.

“That night, I wrote some lyrics about Bon, which became the song Love Comes A-Tumblin’ Down.”

This song was featured on the All Shook album.

Nielsen said of the song’s lyrics: “All that stuff about Johnny B. Goode and ‘the highway to hell’, I wrote it in memory of Bon.”

He added: “As a rock ’n’ roll singer and as a person, he was one of the best.”

On 22 May 2017, UK-based filmmaker Max Weiland visited Elton John’s spectacular 1920s villa known as the ‘Yellow Palace’, perched high on the lush, forested hill of Mont Boron overlooking Nice, which has been the singer-songwriter’s main home on the French Riviera since the ’90s.

Weiland had been invited by John and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin to show them the video he had created for their 1971 song Tiny Dancer, which was due to receive its world premiere at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Weiland was one of three filmmakers selected to create videos for a YouTube-supported competition called The Cut, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of John and Taupin’s songwriting partnership.

Weiland’s video for Tiny Dancer captures the free-spirited characters of LA and is a sun-soaked homage to the Golden State. It also evokes that city’s bohemian spirit at the time.

In a short film about the making of the video, John and Taupin can be seen sitting on a sun-dappled balcony at John’s villa, watching the video on a laptop as Weiland looks on.

“Love, it, love it,” beams Taupin as he turns to face Weiland when the video ends. “The humour and the pathos you’ve got going there is just fabulous.”

“It’s so brilliant, because it sums up the LA you were writing about,” says John to Taupin. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” he tells Weiland. “It’s cinematic, it tells a story… it’s just got the essence of the song.”

For all its status as a classic song from the rich vein of Elton John’s early ’70s back catalogue, the song Tiny Dancer was actually something of a slow burner.

Released as a single in February 1972, it was the opening song on John’s fourth album Madman Across The Water (1971) but reached only No 41 in the US and wasn’t even released in the UK.

The disappointing chart performance was partly due to its epic running time of 6:12. The radio edit for the single stripped the song of its subtleties, its slow, graceful build, Elton John’s inspired arrangement and his stellar performance in the studio.

But in the years that followed Tiny Dancer grew to become one of John’s best-loved songs, appreciated in its epic entirety when embraced by FM radio’s emerging AOR format in the mid- to late-’70s.

With its stunning melody, sweeping strings and country-pop tinges, Tiny Dancer would slowly sear itself into the public consciousness.

It was late 1970 when Bernie Taupin made his first trip to the US, an experience that inspired the lyrics for Tiny Dancer.

Taupin wanted to capture the feel and the vibrancy of California at the time. In particular, he was struck by the young women around the Sunset Strip, who appeared freer, more expressive, and very different from the women he had known growing up in England.

“We came to California in the fall of 1970 and it seemed like sunshine just radiated from the populace,” Taupin told Rolling Stone magazine. “I guess I was trying to capture the spirit of that time, encapsulated by the women we met, especially at the clothes stores and restaurants and bars all up and down the Sunset Strip. They were these free spirits, sexy, all hip-huggers and lacy blouses, very ethereal in the way they moved.”

He continued: “They were just so different from what I’d been used to in England. They had this thing about embroidering your clothes. They wanted to sew patches on your jeans. They mothered you and slept with you. It was the perfect Oedipal complex.”

In the interview, Taupin stated that the song was also inspired by his girlfriend at the time and future wife, Maxine Feibelman, referred to in the song as “seamstress for the band”.

Taupin weaved elements of the people he met into the emerging song, conjuring up the freewheeling essence, bohemian style and the optimism of early 1970s Los Angeles.

In a 1971 interview featured in the US TV series Our American Stories, Elton John explained how he transformed Taupin’s lyrics into the song Tiny Dancer. John is seen seated at a white upright piano, wearing an orange satin jacket with huge yellow polka dots. He is holding sheets of paper on which Taupin’s lyrics are written.

“These are all lyrics here and I just sift through them,” says John. “There’s one that I’ve sort of done the other day called Tiny Dancer… that was the one that I fancied writing, mainly because I knew Bernie would like me to do this one because it’s about his girlfriend.”

John then takes the lyric sheet and places it on the music rack in front of him.

“I mean, you look at it and the words ‘Blue-jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band/Pretty-eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man’. ‘Ballerina…’ as soon as you get to the word ballerina you know it’s not going to be fast, it’s got to be kind of gentle and quite slow.”

“The way it’s written here,” says John, pointing at the lyric sheet in front of him, “is a verse, a middle eight and a chorus, then another verse, and I just ran it through and put two verses together, then a middle eight then a chorus and then back to the verse sort of thing. It happens very quickly. It sounds long but it sort of starts off…”

And then John proceeds to play the new song, going straight in on the first verse. It’s a beautifully natural rendition.

At its core, Tiny Dancer is a love song, a heartfelt tribute from Taupin to his future wife. But what is striking is John’s stunning melodic prowess in imbuing Taupin’s words with such achingly beautiful and graceful melodies. The speed at which he works is also impressive.

“Reg has to write very fast,” said Taupin in the same Our American Stories programme, still referring to John by his real name, Reginald Dwight, “because he hasn’t got the patience to spend hours or days on something, you know.”

Tiny Dancer is written in the key of C major and is anchored by John’s iconic, arpeggiated piano riff, which carries the rhythm. Much of the power of Tiny Dancer stems from its slow build. The chorus doesn’t actually arrive until two-and-a-half minutes in.

Up until that point, the song meanders through a verse and a lengthy pre-chorus before looping back, while instruments are steadily added to the mix.

Trident Studios in the heart of Soho in London was the facility chosen to record Tiny Dancer and the Madman Across The Water album from which it came. Ever since The Beatles recorded Hey Jude there on 31 July and 1 August 1968, Trident had become the studio of choice for artists such as David Bowie, drawn by Trident’s relaxed creative ethos, its Ampex eight-track recorder and its 24-hour opening times.

John had recorded his eponymous second album (1970) and its follow-up Tumbleweed Connection (1970) at Trident, and on Tiny Dancer he would once again be playing Trident’s house piano, a handmade 1898 Bechstein grand which has since attained legendary status for its bright, distinctive sound.

“I have heard many pianos in my time but I have never heard a better ‘rock’ piano than that one,” wrote Ken Scott, in-house engineer at EMI Abbey Road Studios who joined Trident Studios in 1969.

Tiny Dancer was recorded on 9 August 1971 and was produced by Gus Dudgeon.

The song features English pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole. Cole’s pedal steel glides into the mix at 0:53, just before the final line of the first verse “And now she’s in me, always with me/Tiny dancer in my hand”, before the backing choir, acoustic rhythm guitar and the rest of the rhythm section fully join in.

Another notable feature of the recording is Paul Buckmaster’s sweeping, soaring string arrangements, which first really make their presence felt at 2:45 on the chorus and remain a lush, strident force throughout the rest of the epic track.

Then there is the choir of ten backing vocalists – including prolific session musician Tony Burrows, bassist Dee Murray and John’s touring drummer at the time, Nigel Olsson.

It’s a masterful arrangement from John, beginning with an intimate piano accompaniment, then each verse slowly building the emotional intensity right up to the chorus. John’s playing anchors everything. It is both elegant and tasteful yet gutsy as the track opens up and the melody ascends.

The strings soar but never overwhelm, while the backing vocals bring a communal feel to the song. Throughout it all, the emotional impact builds.

Tiny Dancer is a song that could so easily have sounded schmaltzy but John hits just the right tone vocally. There’s a wonderfully rich quality to his vocal take and he steers clear of oversinging, delivering instead a wholly natural and emotive performance.

Despite its disappointing chart placing in the US, the song would resonate across the subsequent decades, sometimes in the most unlikely of environs.

In 1990, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed his first impromptu performance of Tiny Dancer at the Pinkpop Festival in Holland and he has since performed the song at least 50 times during Red Hot Chili Peppers shows.

In 2000, Tiny Dancer received a significant renaissance when Cameron Crowe used it in his film Almost Famous, a semi-autobiographical comedy drama based on Crowe's experiences as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.

John was pleasantly surprised by its inclusion and the subsequent renewed popularity of the track, as he recalled to Rolling Stone in 2011. “Jeffrey Katzenberg [film producer and media proprietor] called me and said, ‘There’s a scene in this film which is going to make Tiny Dancer a hit all over again.’ When I saw it, I said, ‘Oh my God!'. I used to play Tiny Dancer in England and it would go down like a lead zeppelin. Cameron resurrected that song.”

From that point on, Tiny Dancer was reinstated in John’s live setlist. In 2018, he performed the song with Miley Cyrus at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards and the following year, it was featured in the trailer for the film Rocketman, starring Taron Egerton. A few days after the trailer was released, John and Egerton performed the song live at John’s annual Oscars party.

For Maxine Feibelman, who inspired the song, hearing Tiny Dancer for the first time was a revelatory experience. In a 2019 interview with the New York Post, Feibelman recalled listening to the song for the first time in the control room at Trident Studios back in 1971.

“I knew it was about me. I had been into ballet as a little girl and sewed patches on Elton’s jackets and jeans. I had goosebumps.

“Elton was on one side of me and Bernie was on the other. That song was like having your really good friends give you the best gift you could ever receive.”

It's a steaming-hot Friday once again, and that can only mean one thing… It's time for our weekly run-down of music happenings in 10-question quiz form!

Each week, we jam in the stories and test whether you – our loyal readers – have been paying attention or not.

Don't wanna miss a thing? Our quick musical quiz recap will soon have you back up to speed as to who's rocking what, where and why.

Here's this week's playlist of on-site highlights.

In 2008, Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson received a prestigious award from Queen Elizabeth II. He was made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for services to the music industry. But as he revealed two years later, he very nearly turned it down.

He wouldn’t have been the first rock star to snub an honour from royalty. Keith Richards did so, as did David Bowie, George Harrison and Brian Eno.

But in the end, Anderson accepted the MBE, albeit with reservations.

As he told Classic Rock in 2010: “I came very close to saying I couldn’t accept it. My problem was that I was very much opposed to some of the policies of [then UK Prime Minster] Tony Blair during his regime, and my award had been decided under a Blair government.”

He added: “I’d like to think that the MBE was awarded for my efforts in having musicians’ copyright recognised, rather than for making rather too much money out of playing the flute for many years.”

Anderson is of course the most famous flautist in the entire history of rock, and equally famous for playing the instrument while standing on one leg.

In that 2010 interview he explained why he chose to play the flute in the first place.

“I started off with the guitar,” he said, “but I decided to give it up when I heard Eric Clapton, the way people are put off playing tennis when they watch Roger Federer. I found the flute gave me something very interesting melodically.”

Asked what else he could do on one leg, he replied: “I can hover in a rather interesting way!”

More seriously, he said: “Playing on one leg is a very stilling and focusing way of achieving balance, physically and mentally. And of course it’s a visual trademark, a bit of a moment for the audience.”

In the 1990s, Anderson played flute as a guest musician on albums by two similarly idiosyncratic artists – former Deep Purple and Rainbow guitar hero Ritchie Blackmore, and Led Zeppelin-endorsed folk singer Roy Harper.

In a radical departure from the heavy rock music he pioneered, Blackmore created the group Blackmore’s Night with his singing wife Candice Night to perform what is broadly described as “neo-medieval folk rock”. Anderson featured on the song Play, Minstrel, Play from the 1997 debut album Shadow Of The Moon.

Much was made of Blackmore’s eccentricities, but Anderson stated: “I don’t know Ritchie terribly well, but he’s far from dotty. He’s always had an interest in medieval music, and has cited Jethro Tull circa 1974 as being very illuminating.

“Ritchie certainly has a fondness for dressing up in what I believe they call ‘garb’. It’s a bit Men In Tights – he looks like Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. But it’s slightly tongue-in-cheek.

“Ritchie is not someone who is palpably comedic. His sense of humour, it has to be said, can be cruel. But he’s definitely not mad.”

Anderson’s collaboration with Roy Harper was on the latter’s 1998 album The Dream Society.

Anderson said that the folk influences in Jethro Tull were in part derived from Harper.

“I first became aware of folk music when I was at grammar school,” he said. “When I first heard Bob Dylan, I didn’t really take to him at all, but I was aware of this thing that was called the folk revival. It was called modern folk in the UK to separate it from traditional folk, be it Irish, English, whatever.”

He continued: “People from the folk tradition were now writing their own songs, people like Roy Harper and Bert Jansch. This was contemporary folk. That caught my attention, and Roy Harper was someone we bumped into here and there.”

As for what drew him to folk music, Anderson explained in a roundabout way: “I was immediately immersed in the world of European realities in the early days of the EU, learning that we Brits were really part of Europe – we had more to do with Europe than we had to do with the Americans, who were only third or fourth generation Europeans anyway, apart from the tribal nation conquests.

“So I always felt very connected to Europe from the early ’70s onwards. And that I think reinforced my musical inclinations. I was fond of the great composers – German, Italian, Austrian. And by extension, European folk music was something I felt more akin to than American blues.

“I still revere blues music to this day. I play things by Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson just to remind myself of where my musical voyage began as an aspiring professional musician. But I think really it’s the European stuff that always got to me.”

Few songs merit the term ‘power ballad’ quite as emphatically as Total Eclipse Of The Heart, the 1983 hit for singer Bonnie Tyler, who died on 8 July 2026 at the age of 75.

Tyler, born Gaynor Hopkins in the village of Skewen in Neath, Wales, had a long career in which she had a number of hits, but none bigger than Total Eclipse Of The Heart, which shot to No 1 in the UK, US and all across the world, and which, on 26 January 2026, surpassed one billion streams on Spotify.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart has everything a great power ballad needs – melodrama, bombast, massive hooks, a blistering build-up and a voice and lyrics that inspire and excite.

Admittedly, it’s all subtle as a flying mallet at times, but that’s the whole point. This is emotion writ large and it’s all delivered with straight-for-the-jugular emotional impact.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart was written and produced by Jim Steinman, who was best known for writing Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album (1977).

Steinman had been a student at Amherst College, Massachusetts in 1969 when he wrote an experimental musical called The Dream Engine. The musical featured nudity. It also featured the line “turn around bright eyes”, which became a pivotal lyric in Total Eclipse Of The Heart.

The song had dark origins, as Steinman told Playbill magazine in 2002.

“I was trying to come up with a love song… its original title was Vampires In Love because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu… if anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark."

Reportedly written during a lunar eclipse, the song remained unfinished when the musical was shelved. Steinman next revisited it when Bonnie Tyler contacted him 13 years later.

By 1982, Tyler had racked up four albums and come a long way from her humble beginnings in the village of Skewen, South Wales.

Born Gaynor Hopkins, she was the daughter of a coal miner and grew up with five siblings in a four-bedroomed council house. She started out as a backing singer and changed her name to Sherene Davis to avoid being confused with the singer Mary Hopkin.

In 1975, she was spotted singing in a Swansea club by a talent scout, which led to RCA Records offering her a record deal. When RCA requested another name change, she hit on Bonnie Tyler.

Her first single flopped but the follow-up Lost In France (1977) reached No.9 in the UK, No.2 in South Africa and charted in Europe and Australia.

Then, in the spring of 1977, an event occurred that gave her the distinct vocal sound for which she would become known. Tyler underwent surgery to remove vocal cord nodules and was advised to rest her voice for six weeks. One day, she screamed with frustration, which resulted in a permanent raspy tone.

“After I got my voice back, I went into the studio for the first time and started singing,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2009. “The band said, ‘Woah, your voice sounds great’. My voice was huskier than before, and had more of an edge… I had my first hit in America with my new husky voice on It's A Heartache.”

Released in 1977, It’s A Heartache reached No.1 in Spain, Sweden, Norway, France, Brazil, Canada, Argentina and Australia and went top five in the UK, US and seven other countries.

Her second studio album Natural Force went platinum but follow-up albums Diamond Cut and Goodbye To The Island fared less well, with the latter only charting in Norway.

By 1982, her career was floundering. RCA offered to extend her contract for another five years, but Tyler declined. Instead, she signed with another label and began looking for a whole new sound.

“I’d just signed to Sony and wanted to change from country rock to rock,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. “I’d seen Meat Loaf on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test doing Bat Out Of Hell, so I told [A&R man] Muff Winwood that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman. Muff looked at me like I was barmy and told me that Jim would never do it. ‘I just want you to ask him,’ I said.”

For her next album, Tyler wanted the production to emulate Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound. As Spector had all but retired, she felt Steinman was the only producer capable of achieving such a sound.

Steinman initially declined Tyler’s request, but after hearing demos of her singing he was swayed, explaining that she had “the perfect voice” for the sound he was striving to achieve.

In April 1982, Tyler and her manager visited Steinman in his New York apartment, where he played her two of his favourite songs – Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Have You Ever Seen the Rain? and Blue Öyster Cult’s Goin’ Through the Motions.

Steinman wanted to gauge her reaction to these songs. Tyler’s response was overwhelmingly positive and Steinman agreed to produce her next album, Faster Than The Speed Of Night. Tyler would cover both songs on the album.

Steinman told People magazine that he wrote Total Eclipse Of The Heart as a showcase for Tyler’s voice. “It sounds ravaged,” he said, “like it's been through a lot. It's what rock 'n' roll is all about.”

He said the song was like “an aria to me, a Wagnerian-like onslaught of sound and emotion”.

A few weeks after their first meeting, Tyler returned to Steinman’s apartment, where he and Canadian vocalist Rory Dodd performed the newly-written Total Eclipse Of The Heart. The song was written as a duet and it was Dodd who would sing the line “Turn around bright eyes”.

Tyler was transfixed by what she heard. “I just had shivers right up my spine,” she told The Times, “I couldn't wait to actually get in and record it.”

Power Station in midtown Manhattan was one of three New York studios chosen by Steinman for the album, and the song was recorded and mixed in the summer of 1982.

When it came to selecting musicians, Steinman recruited some real heavyweights.

On drums was Max Weinberg from Bruce Springteen’s E-Street Band while his equally revered bandmate Roy Bittan played the iconic piano part.

Rick Derringer handled guitar duties and the line-up also included veteran Meat Loaf bassist Steve Buslowe. Larry Fast and Steve Margoshes were on synths while Jimmy Maelen handled percussion.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart is an epic emotional journey and everything about the song is maxed out. As Craig Marks of Time magazine noted in 2024, “Steinman didn’t do understated”.

Steinman built his mixes like Broadway productions and he honoured Tyler’s desire for the symphonic, reverb-laden Spector-style Wall Of Sound. Steinman and engineers Neil Dorfsman and John Jansen fully exploited Power Station's echoey stairwells for optimum reverb, while Steinman’s musical theatre background and Wagnerian strains came to the fore.

“It makes you feel like you're a Norseman in a blizzard,” observed Dr Freya Jarman, from the University of Liverpool's department of music, in an interview with BBC Culture.

In 1983, Tyler told North Carolina newspaper Times-News that the song was "a challenge [to sing]”, adding, “I like songs that need a lot of energy. It’s such a passionate song and it builds all the time… it’s incredible.”

Total Eclipse Of The Heart was recorded at Power Station while backing vocals were recorded at the nearby Right Track Studios.

In an interview with Mix magazine in 2024, engineer Neil Dorfsman says the track was cut live in studio A of Power Station with drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Steve Buslowe in the rhythm room, Roy Bittan in the piano booth and Tyler singing live with Rory Dodd in separate isolation booths. Rick Derringer’s guitar part and Larry Fast’s synth parts were overdubs.

Dorfsman told Mix magazine that Tyler and the band laid down about 20 takes of the track, which included the live lead vocals. He remembers that during the mixing in Studio B at Power Station, they literally ran out of reverb, as every reverb send on every fader on the desk was as far up as it could go, on everything but the kick drum and bass guitar.

Producer and engineer Frank Filipetti was in charge of recording the majority of the background vocals at Right Track Studios.

A “vocal tour de force” is how Filipetti described Total Eclipse Of The Heart. “Jim wasn’t as interested in adhering to traditional ways of doing things. He was always looking for something a little different. He was more interested in the emotional arc that the song was taking rather than going by the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge formula. In doing so, his music took you on a journey.”

The multiple recording and stacking of backing vocals was arduous, recalled Filipetti, but the results were worth it. “Jim really treated everyone first class, so it made all the hard work something you wanted to do.”

The track was mixed on the evening of 4 July 1982 during a 12-hour session at the Power Station’s studio B.

“You can tell from the final mix that Jim wanted the biggest drum sound to ever have been recorded,” Dorfsman told Mix magazine. “In the ’80s there was a competition to see who could have the loudest snare drum… I just remember all the faders just creeping, creeping, creeping, creeping.”

Everything about Total Eclipse Of The Heart is grandiose and it builds and builds, with dramatic shifting keys fuelling the intensity.

A plaintive piano melody intros the song, before Dodd’s sweet, haunting tenor on opening refrain “Turn around” is followed by Tyler’s soulful, gravelly vocal on the first line: “Every now and then I get a little bit lonely/And you're never coming 'round”.

After the first chorus, at 1:50, the whole walloping track powers upwards – “Together we can take it to the end of the line/Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time” sings Tyler in powerful gravelly tones.

Even from a distance of over four decades, Max Weinberg’s snare still sounds all-encompassingly massive in the mix.

There’s a depth and richness to Tyler’s voice as the song develops. It’s powerful, heartrending and defiant, and the call-and-response of Tyler’s and Dodd’s voices creates a compelling contrast.

Total Eclipse Of The Heart was released on 11 February 1983. Steinman’s theatricality made him an easy target for critics. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Trevor Dann denounced the song’s lack of subtlety, suggesting that “Bonnie should be taken to see a Joni Mitchell concert”. The Guardian, meanwhile deemed it an “amusing, mildly camp curiosity”.

But Steinman’s theatrical impulses are precisely what make the song so thrilling and audacious.

Legendary songwriter Diane Warren – a doyenne of the power ballad who wrote or co-wrote classics such as Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time – has nothing but praise for Steinman and Tyler’s achievement.

“It’s a perfect song,” Warren told Time magazine in 2024. “And Bonnie really conveys the drama. That voice brought Jim’s song to life.”

People often speak about left and right-hand technique but for Carlos Santana playing the guitar is an act of mind, body and soul.

He made his bones in the San Francisco music scene of the late ’60s, his cresting genius consecrated with a legendary afternoon performance at Woodstock, whereupon he leaned into the psychedelic dimensions of an ill-timed acid trip to deliver a jaw-dropping set, bejewelled by a helter-skelter jam during Soul Sacrifice that opened up rock’s third eye to musical possibilities beyond blues-inspired sounds.

You can spot his guitar playing within seconds – the warm, quasi-horn tones of saturated overdrive, the conversational phrasing and instinctive modulation between major and minor. And yet it it somehow accommodates all who collaborate with him – a trick he pulled off to brilliant effect back in 1999 with the star-studded, multi-million selling Supernatural.

African rhythms, Spanish guitar, Miles Davis and John McLaughlin, Hendrix and Beethoven – for Carlos, it is all one continuum.

A true artist, he says, takes inspiration from it all. “As a musician, you have the nutrients and ingredients of many things in one note. In one note, you hear infinity’s breath.”

He might speak in spiritual allegories but the inference is clear. If you can put your heart and soul into one note you can do it with all of them.

In a 2021 interview with Total Guitar, he discussed his singular approach to music and life.

Collaboration is a spiritual thing

“When I was in the studio, in 1972, with John McLaughlin doing Love Devotion Surrender, it dawned on me that he trusted me, and he saw something in me that I was trying to see in myself. He saw something in me that Miles Davis saw in him.

“So there is a spirit in you that can complement anything that gets in front of you. It seems that the intangible becomes the tangible around me.”

Learn to take inspiration from all art, not just music

“Some people might scratch their heads and say, ‘What the hell’s he talking about!?’ But the best music that I ever heard is outside of time. Whether it is Beethoven or whether it is Jimi Hendrix or John Coltrane, time and gravity disappear when you hear that frequency, sound and vibration from those musicians.

“And you can’t practise that. You can only get out of the way and let the spirit take over your fingers and your mind, and articulate a language of light.”

Look beyond the guitar

“While everybody was experimenting with pedals I was getting closer to Aretha Franklin. I was playing my guitar to [Aretha’s classic album] Lady Soul, or Mahalia Jackson, or Billie Holiday, or Dionne Warwick. I wanted it to sound like a female. I wanted my guitar to sound like the voice of my favourite singers – Nina Simone, Etta James, or Tina Turner.”

Do what Miles Davis tells you

“One day, I was in an elevator with Miles Davis, and he said, ‘Hey, do you got a wah wah yet?’ ‘No, I don’t play a wah wah.’ He says, ‘I got one!’ I say, ‘You’ve got a wah wah pedal?’ ‘That’s right! You gotta get a fuckin’ wah wah!’ Miles is the one who told me to get a wah wah pedal.”

Chase melodies if you want to your music to last

“That comes from following and learning African music, call and response – y’know, like church music. ‘Somebody say Amen… Amen! Hallelujah!’

“So, yes, I learned to respect the singer, never to step on the phrasing of the vocals. While some people practise what they want to practise, which is either chords or theory, or harmony, I practise making melody become eternal, because when you go home after a concert, what you are going to remember is how that melody made you feel.”

Talent borrows, genius steals

“There are times when I hear my brother Sting quote Spartacus: ‘Do-dee-do/do-dee-do/do-dee-do-dee-do-dee…’ And that’s because the theme from Spartacus is very, very haunting. Great musicians quote other melodies that make time stand still.”

Free your mind and the rest will follow

“I grew up in San Francisco around ground zero for consciousness revolution! Which was Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and a lot of bands like that.

“Me being a teenager growing up in San Francisco, I also discovered Mongo Santamarìa, Miles Davis, Bola Sete. The way that Michael Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia articulated East-West by Paul Butterfield, this was like hippie music, like The Doors. It was like discovering Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and blending it with John Lee Hooker.

“And so I thought, this is fascinating! This is like alchemy – combining John Lee Hooker with John Coltrane? What a concept!

“Discovering Spanish music, or discovering Segovia, Paco de Lucìa, and many more of course, there is something very masculine about Spanish music. It is very masculine! Which, for me, is a perfect blend because I grew up listening to Aretha and Dionne Warwick, and so the perfect blend of feminine and masculine is very sexy!”

Find a guitar that works for you

“Paul Reed Smith convinced me that he was on the crest of creating something. At that time, there was only two, maybe three guitars that I liked – Gibson, Fender, and I never, with all respect, got into the Gretsch guitar sound. I didn’t feel like I wanted to create melodies with that, but it was easier for me to articulate with Gibson and Fender.

“Paul convinced me that he was creating another element, that it was a different voice, and God bless his tenacity to pursue something with such passion because he became, right there, in the middle of those three – Gibson, Fender, Paul Reed Smith, Gretsch. There are other guitars, such as Yamahas, but the top three are Gibson, Fender and Paul Reed Smith.”

Bruce Lee was right – you’ve got to be like water

“The more you focus on your spirituality, the easier it is for you to complement anything that gets in front of you. I don’t want to be anything but water, like [martial artist and actor] Bruce Lee said, because water quenches the thirst and it goes with everything.

“Sooner or later, you’ve got to drink water. You can drink whisky, bourbon, Scotch, tequila, but sooner or later you’ve gotta drink water. Water is pure and is life.

“Living water is spirituality, so with John McLaughlin we both focused on spiritual discipline. It is more exciting to become happy and forever young – like Bob Dylan says! – with purity and innocence, pursuing The Doors, and pursuing John Coltrane, and pursuing John Lee Hooker. If you stay like that then you will achieve your goal to be eternally relevant.”

Not everyone can play at high volume

“I was looking for a sustain like Peter Green on Supernatural. I was looking for a voice. It always comes down to a voice.

“I have only heard one person outside of Jimi Hendrix that could play with that volume with Marshalls. Cream was there. Led Zeppelin was there. Jeff Beck was there. But with respect to all my brothers, only Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray [Vaughan] found another way of articulating with this galactic sound!

“It’s not easy to sculpt beauty at that volume. It’s kind of like John Coltrane, when he starts scaring people, with sheets of sounds. Sometimes, it’s almost like it’s too much for your brain to take in. That’s why they say, ‘It blew your mind.’ That’s where that came from. Jimi Hendrix blew everybody’s mind.”

Use the energy in the room

“Tension is always a good thing, especially when you create vibrant energy. Vibrant energy gets rid of boringness, and predictability.

“Only boring people are bored. All the people who are bored are boring people. People I know are never bored because they are always striving and searching for a new way to enter the unknown and unpredictability.”

To thine own self be true

“What I have learned is that I am always teaching what I need to learn, and what I need to learn is always honesty. Be truthful, be sincere, be authentic, be individual, and play music to bring hope and courage.

“Anybody can learn from books, scales and chords and all kinds of things, but the thing you cannot teach is something that you have already but you have to learn how to bring it out. It’s like John Lee Hooker said, ‘It’s in you and it has to come out!’”

A good example of what Carlos Santana means when he alludes to Bruce Lee and being like water is the ability to inhabit different musical styles at the same time, taking a magical mystery tour through electric blues, through Latin and jazz styles. One way he does that is augmenting traditional blues and rock pentatonic scales with the Dorian mode, and using this to inform his chord progressions and solos.

You can hear how he uses this in action on his signature cover of Tito Puente’s Oye Como Va and Evil Ways.

Santana will often use a I-IV minor to major chord progression; for instance, in A minor, he might play an Amin7 then follow it with a D major.

Indeed, grab your guitar and alternate between those two chords and you’ll start to make sense. Or as Carlos says, the spirit will take over your fingers, and will hopefully do the rest.

Santana’s rig is pretty simple and yet pretty much impossible to replicate. Even if we had the money, there’s no guarantee we could find the amplifiers, because he runs his signature PRS into some bona-fide unicorn amps – a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, Bludotone Universal Tone heads, not to mention his original Mesa/Boogie.

Typically, there’s not much on his pedalboard, maybe a Real McCoy Custom RMC4 wah pedal – in case Miles is checking in on him on from on high – and a custom line driver from Pete Cornish.

It’s all about the sustain. How can we replicate this?

Well, the guitar is not too much of a problem. The PRS SE Carlos Santana is widely available for around 700 bucks, and it is superb.

Amp-wise, we’d say get an affordable tube amp such as a Laney Cub-Super12 (we’re talking £399 street) and stick a boost or overdrive pedal such as a Fender Santa Ana (£149) in front of it until you have just enough saturation for that warm, trombone-like sustain.

Don’t forget a decent tuner. Santana is meticulous about his, and uses Peterson Strobe tuners.

For most of us, the idea of having a global smash hit is a pretty alien concept, let alone the accompanying fame and fortune that goes with it. For Kylie Minogue, it’s almost as though she has never known any different.

Her formidable rise from 17-year-old Australian soap star to global pop sensation was nothing short of stratospheric, in part thanks to her success with the production outfit PWL (A.K.A Stock, Aitken and Waterman) during the late 80s.

The pure-pop sensibilities of I Should Be So Lucky defined the hooky calling cards of her early career. Those cards were ultimately trumped during a writing session/collaboration between Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis.

This brisk creative surge resulted in the extraordinary Can’t Get You Out of My Head – the song that ultimately would became the biggest selling of her career, with over 6 million sales.

Even more bizarre, the pre-Kylie demo of the song was originally pitched to pop act S Club 7’s management and Sophie Ellis-Bexter, with both acts turning it down.

While we should always admire the creative force of such fine musicians, The song's quick gestation also underlines the straightforward simplicity at the heart of the song’s arrangement, which was later bolstered in the studio.

“I always feel that Can’t Get You Out of My Head shouldn’t have been the hit that it was - it was written in about two-and-a-half hours,” Dennis recalled in an interview with Music Week. “There have been lots of songs that have been easy to write over the years, but it was probably one of the quickest, if not the quickest, sessions I’ve ever done in my life.”

With influences such as Bronksi Beat and Kraftwerk ringing in their ears, the pair set about creating a basic foundation, which involved a minimal amount of equipment.

At the very heart of the track - and generating the vast majority of the sounds employed - is the Korg Triton. The drums, shaker and bass organ sounds were all supplied by the Triton, as were the strings and Wurly sounds too. Backup support was provided by an Akai sampler, which was used for a basic drum/percussion loop, while a Roland Alpha Juno-1 provided a secondary bass part.

“The whole Kylie record was done on the Triton,” he confirmed in an interview with Sound on Sound. “The hi-hats, bass drum, snare, that's all off the Triton. There's another hi-hat off the Triton, a loop which was out of the Akai [sampler], and I think the shaker was off the Triton too.”

Despite the lack of overt guitar presence on the track, guitarist Rob Davis still managed to employ some guitar-like philosophy when constructing the chords used in the song. There are plenty of extensions used throughout, albeit played on keyboards.

With the music in place, the lyrics came quickly. Following a quick loo break…

“I remember going for a wee, and it was quite an inspirational one!” Cathy told Music Week. “I came back and a lot of lyrics fell into place quite quickly. Then we worked on the second verse together and then I came up with the, ‘la, la, la’ thing just before I was leaving and that was it.”

Cathy explained to PRS for Music that the ‘la, la, la’ motif came out of a need to pepper up the developing arrangement with more hooks; “We had the “Can’t get you out of my head” bit and we had the bridge, but it needed another hook and that was the ‘la-la’s. We knew it didn’t need another lyric, so I just went ‘la, la, la…’”

Let's take a closer look at the winning combination of harmony and melody that Dennis and Davis concocted then. The introduction and verse both make use of the most simplistic form, employing just two chords.

Centred around the key of D Minor, the song begins with a chord of Dm, for 2 bars, before the dominant chord Am is used, also for two bars.

The set-up in the voicing is particularly interesting, and largely down to the dominance and use of the bass organ sound. This sound places a particular emphasis on the 5th of the chord - in a chord of Dm this is the note A, and in a chord of Am, the note E. It's a similar technique used by Kraftwerk in their song The Model, but created using synths, instead of the bass organ sound.

Given this 5th-heavy construct, you could be forgiven for thinking that the chords employed are just open chords, but it is the additional riffs and voicings around this riff that provide the extended harmony by way of arpeggiation.

These additional notes change the character of the chord, ostensibly turning them both into minor 7ths - Dm7 and Am7.

The use of extensions becomes even more exaggerated once we hit the second verse, with the entry of the Wurly. The Am7 is pivoted into an Am9, also in an arpeggiated form, which continues to be employed as the song develops.

At the end of the second verse, we hear the pre-chorus bridge for the first time, which reveals a curious collection of chords, which similarly demonstrate Davis’s guitarist tendencies.

Relying on a chord per bar, we hear a flow of Bbmaj7, A, G#dim and A.

The use of Bbmaj7 adds a degree of sweetness to proceedings, while G# diminished is well-regarded as a perfect linking chord - engineering a degree of uncertainty ahead of the chorus.

To finish this section, we hear a chord of Gm7 for 2 bars, finishing with Asus(4) which resolves to A, before heading back to the original Dm and Am sequence. Neat.

The Triton-generated rhythm is suitably four-square; the kick plays 4-to-the-floor, with the occasional dramatic stop. The snare plays on beats 2 and 4, and is emphasised further by claps on beat 4. The hi-hats and shaker subdivide in 8th notes, which is about as simplistic as a drum pattern can be!

The rhythmic side of the track also relies heavily on influences from house music - the relentless presence of the offbeat bass part is the key example. The coupling of the bass organ sound with synth bass stress that club-leaning flavour.

Subtler elements of the mix add much to to the track's glacial, otherworldly feel.

We hear both synth and Wurly arpeggiations, while a high string line glides slowly over the top. There is also the iconic resonant synth sweep, which appears in the chorus. Unlike all the other instrumentation, it does so with a quaver push. This means that it is placed an 8th note ahead of beats 1 & 3.

Those vocal ‘la, la, la’s’ act as a linking section in the introduction and also between verses one and two. The recurring motif also makes several appearances later in the song.

The ‘la’ emphasises the minor 3rd of the Dm chord, endorsing the minor tonality, but in a slight mirror image of the bass/organ arrangement, the ‘la’s’ are also performed a 5th higher, meaning that as as well as as the note F (the 3rd of Dm) we also have the note C, which enforces the 7th of Dm7.

When listening to the track, the upper part sounds very slightly behind the lower part, which suggests to us that some form of pitch-shifter may have been used to create this effect. Having said that, Dennis has mentioned in interviews, that they also sampled one of Kylie’s ‘la’s’, which was then triggered over MIDI.

“None of the sections in the song conform to the typical verse-chorus structure,” Cathy said about the arrangement to PRS. “They’re misplaced sections that somehow work together, and that’s because we didn’t try to force any structure after the event. The seeds were watered and they very quickly sprouted into something bigger than any of us.”

For the first time in many years, there was an incredible buzz around Kylie Minogue following the release of the song in September 2001. Imbued with both a greater sense of sensuality but also a more musically-conscious maturity, the track - and its iconic, futuristic video - reignited Minogue's career. It reached No 1 in upwards of 40 countries.

Kylie’s star is still burning bright to this day, with 2023’s monster hit Padam Padam and a recent spotlight Netflix documentary keeping Kylie firmly in the public eye.

Examined as a song on its own merits, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is a fine example of what can be done with a basic amount of equipment, a simple set of chords and, well, a wealth of creative talent from Dennis, Davis and Minogue.

“I have never written a song that quickly and stopped myself interfering with it later,” Cathy told The Gentlewoman. “Normally, when something comes out, you have to pick it to pieces, and… I don’t know why, but that day I just didn’t feel like pulling it apart.”

There are guitar players, and then there is Joe Satriani, a man for whom the epithet ‘virtuoso’ is something of an understatement. Satch – or as he is more ridiculously known, Professor Satchafunkilus – is the guitar player’s guitar player.

In a varied career, he has made 18 solo albums, performed with singer Sammy Hagar in and out of rock supergroup Chickenfoot, played as a touring guitarist with Mick Jagger and Deep Purple and worked as a tutor for a number of famous rock guitarists, most notably Steve Vai and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett.

In a 2010 interview with Classic Rock, Satriani told some of the funnier stories from his life in music, and began by discussing his attitude towards vintage guitars.

He laughed: “Don’t you hate that, when someone starts telling you they’ve got the original screws for a ’62 Esquire? Actually I keep pretty tight-lipped about all that stuff. I just want to play. I’m more concerned about writing a good song.

“Having said that, I do appreciate the idea that only a special tool will work for a special job, and sometimes you do need that ’66 electric Fender 12-string! If you’re reading an article about Jimmy Page and he happens to let slip the guitar he used on a song that you think is the Holy Grail, you have to play that thing!”

Satriani recalled the guitar lessons he gave to Kirk Hammett – first, when Hammett was a raw and undiscovered teenager, and later when he was an established star with Metallica.

He explained: “In the beginning, Kirk knew exactly what he liked, which is so important. He was into Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hendrix, Uli Jon Roth, Michael Schenker.

“I taught him music theory and it was up to him to decide what to use – that was the key to my lessons.”

Asked why Hammett was still taking lessons from him in 1988, four albums into Metallica’s career, Satriani replied: “Kirk is a very smart individual. He always acted on what he felt he needed to do.”

He talked about the importance of finding your own identity as a guitarist.

“Really, personality has so much to do with what you play,” he said. “The one thing I can do that nobody else can is be myself, and write those weird songs that I write. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

Satriani also confessed to two of the most embarrassing moments in his career.

He recalled – in detail – the worst review he ever had.

“I remember this so vividly,” he said. “It was 1987, and Surfing With The Alien [his second solo album] had just come out. Every morning I’d go for a cappuccino at this little café, and I read a review of my album in a magazine.”

He elaborated: “This guy did not like me, did not like my guitar playing, and did not like the music. He said it was the worst record he’d ever heard, and finished by saying that if you’re one of those people that likes to fill up the back of a pickup truck with a case of cheap beer, drive into a parking lot alone, turn up the music and get drunk, then this is the record for you. When I read that I peered over the top of the magazine to see if anyone knew that I was the culprit!”

He also admitted to one major artistic failure during the sessions for his classic 1989 album Flying In A Blue Dream.

“There was a song I wrote for the Flying In A Blue Dream record,” he said. “I spent hours in the studio, went through three bass players, pummelled it to death! I just couldn’t make this song work until finally I realised it was the worst piece of crap ever.

“I probably spent $10,000 trying to get it to work. That’s a lot of money!”

In the summer of 1987, Ian Astbury, singer of British rock group The Cult, saw a hot young band from LA playing at the famous Marquee club in London. That band was Guns N’ Roses, and what Astbury witnessed that night convinced him that this was the perfect opening act for The Cult’s US tour later that year.

At that time The Cult were flying high with their third album Electric, a kick-ass hard rock record produced by Rick Rubin.

Electric was a radical departure from the goth rock style of previous album Love. Moreover, The Cult’s new music, typified by riff-based singles Love Removal Machine and Li’l Devil, was very much in tune with what Guns N’ Roses had created with their debut album Appetite for Destruction.

The gig that Astbury saw at the Marquee was in June. Appetite for Destruction was released in July. Guns N’ Roses toured with The Cult in August and September.

Looking back on that tour, The Cult’s guitarist Billy Duffy tells MusicRadar that once the two bands got out on the road together they bonded immediately and partied heavily.

“Oh, we very much hung out,” Duffy says. “We became very enmeshed. There were lots of shenanigans. It was like you can imagine, you know? Whatever you can imagine, it was pretty much like that!”

Duffy points out that while said shenanigans aren’t exactly the type of things he’d get into now, it was all in good fun.

“Nothing evil,” he says. “Just a lot of high jinks. I mean, if you put two bands like that together who get along, let’s just say you’re always trying to outdo each other’s stupidity.”

Duffy acknowledges Ian Astbury’s role in bringing The Cult and Guns N’ Roses together.

“Ian was the guy who found them,” he says. “He called me up in London when we were living there in ’87 and said, ‘There’s this band from America called Guns N’ Roses. They’re really good. You should go check them out. I think we should take them out on tour with us.’

“And Ian is like that. He’s always looking for new bands and finding them. He’s very passionate and has great ears for that kind of thing.”

Duffy tends not to focus on such things.

“I’m nowhere near as good as Ian at that,” he shrugs. “But I remember going to the Marquee club, and Guns N’ Roses were doing three nights, and they sold them out. But I couldn’t get in. The guy at the door was like, ‘I don’t care who you are, you ain’t getting in.’ But that was very typical of London.”

Once he heard Appetite for Destruction, Duffy agreed with Astbury’s assessment of Guns N’ Roses.

“They were really good,” he says. “When they were on tour with us, Appetite had just come out. It hadn’t really clicked yet. But the needle soon moved for them.”

He adds: “Guns N’ Roses were great then – and they’re great now. They were just the real deal, you know?”

He smiles: “Back then they were crazy – but who wants rock stars to be normal anyway?”

In the summer of 1988, New York-based rock band White Lion were flying high.

Their second album, Pride, had sold a million copies, and they were on a huge US tour opening for AC/DC.

Fronted by Danish singer Mike Tramp, White Lion had been on the road for a whirlwind 10 months.

They had also opened for Kiss – whose bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons had told Tramp he had “the coolest name in rock ’n’ roll” – and then Aerosmith, whose singer Steven Tyler would greet Tramp each night by singing White Lion’s breakthrough hit Wait.

Wait reached number 8 on the US chart and was followed by an even bigger hit.

When The Children Cry – a gentle acoustic song with a pacifist message – went all the way to number three.

As Tramp would recall in an interview with Classic Rock: “The rise of White Lion was like climbing a ladder with a rocket up your ass!”

But as it turned out, the band’s decline was equally swift.

The death of White Lion was the result of various factors – bad decisions, record company politics and the onset of grunge, the biggest revolution in rock music since punk.

But what ultimately destroyed White Lion was the very thing that made them great – the strange relationship between Mike Tramp and the band’s extravagantly gifted guitarist, Vito Bratta.

As Tramp said: “Vito and I had no connection whatsoever except through music. It’s sad, but true.”

Mike Tramp and Vito Bratta first met in New York City in 1982, when Bratta’s group Dreamer were headlining a show at the famous rock club L’Amour in Brooklyn, supported by Tramp’s band Lion, who had recently relocated to New York from their native Denmark.

Backstage that night, Tramp was amazed when he watched Bratta warming up by playing a note-perfect version of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar showpiece Eruption. “My jaw just dropped,” Tramp said.

By then, Tramp, at 21, was already a veteran of the music business. He made his recording debut at 13 when he and his elder brother, billed as Dennis & Michael, cut a single for EMI.

At 15, Mike joined Danish teenybopper act Mabel after seeing them open for The Bay City Rollers in Copenhagen. Mabel represented Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1978 with the song Boom Boom (they finished 16th out of 20 entries, with just 13 points).

Later, Tramp restyled Mabel as a hard rock band with a new and suitably macho name: Studs. The name was changed to Lion when the band moved to New York.

They lasted just six months until they ran out of money and returned to Denmark shortly after that gig with Vito Bratta’s band Dreamer.

But Tramp had the determination and the air fare — borrowed from his mother — to get back to New York. In early 1983, he and Bratta began writing songs and finding musicians for a new version of Lion, soon to be renamed.

“There was a band in New York called White Tiger,” Tramp recalled, “so Vito said: ‘Why don’t we call ourselves White Lion?’ I wanted something more original, but White Lion just stuck.”

With a solid line-up – featuring drummer Nicki Capozzi and bassist Felix Robinson, the latter formerly of pomp rock cult heroes Angel – the newly christened White Lion cut a debut album with German producer Peter Hauke.

The album was titled Fight To Survive, and featured the very first song that Tramp and Bratta wrote together – a brilliant melodic hard rock anthem called Broken Heart.

On the strength of that album, White Lion promptly signed to major label Elektra. But the band’s euphoria was short-lived.

As Tramp explained: “Two months after we signed to Elektra, our management told us: ‘We got good news and we got bad news. The bad news is: Elektra has dropped you. The good news is: we get to keep the money.’ We were devastated.”

Tramp believed that Elektra had a change of heart about White Lion because the label already had two successful hard rock acts in Mötley Crüe and Dokken.

Fight To Survive was eventually released in 1985 by the Victor label in Japan, followed by a US release via tiny independent Grand Slamm.

The band was strengthened by the acquisition of a new drummer, Greg D’Angelo, and a new bassist, James LoMenzo. But still no major labels were interested in White Lion.

The new-look band earned a little extra cash with an appearance in hit movie The Money Pit, produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks.

When a second album was recorded in 1986, again with Peter Hauke producing, the results were underwhelming. But just when it seemed that White Lion would never catch a break, a saviour appeared in the shape of another German producer, Michael Wagener.

An expat based in California, Wagener was enjoying a hot streak during the mid-’80s as producer and mixer of hit albums for Mötley Crüe, Metallica, Dokken and German band Accept, for whom he’d played guitar in his teens.

As Tramp recalled: “Somehow, Michael Wagener heard this unreleased White Lion music, and instantly he called our management and said he wanted to re-record the album in California.”

At the same time, the band found another supporter in Jason Flom, an A&R man for Atlantic Records.

In early 1987, White Lion decamped to LA to remake the album with Wagener.

“Michael was great for us,” Tramp said. “He just let the band be the band, and he knew exactly what we wanted – something like the first Van Halen album or Journey’s Escape, but in our own style.”

The album was named Pride, and it captured what Tramp calls “the 100 per cent purity of White Lion”.

When the album was released in June 1987, Kerrang! declared it a classic.

Pride would eventually sell over two million copies, and for Tramp the success of When The Children Cry was especially important.

“It wasn’t Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison,” he said. “This was the era of Ronald Reagan, and I was singing: ‘No more presidents, and all the wars will end…’ That was pretty gutsy.”

This song was also influenced by events in Tramp’s childhood. “I was around five or six when my father left us,” he explained. “My mom was left with three boys. So without a doubt my own story is in that song.”

When The Children Cry proved that White Lion were that most unlikely of things – the thinking person’s hair metal band.

“I had a pretty loud image that went against me in many ways,” Tramp said. “As much as White Lion were affiliated with that hair metal scene, we found it very embarrassing to see women being degraded. I never wanted to engage in alcohol and drugs and that kind of lifestyle.”

What Tramp did become was a very rich man. He revealed: “At the end of the Pride tour in 1989, Vito and I, as the songwriters, were at that point of passing a million dollars each.”

But even then, at the height of White Lion’s success, Tramp and Bratta were already drifting apart.

The band recorded their third album, Big Game, with Michael Wagener at Amigo Studios in Hollywood, where they had cut Pride. But as Tramp admitted: “Outside of the studio, Vito and I were not spending any time together.”

Picking up where he left off with When The Children Cry, Tramp explored socio-political themes in new songs such as Little Fighter and Cry For Freedom.

But if the reaction from key players at Atlantic Records was positive, Tramp later discovered that he was being misled.

“We played Cry For Freedom to Jason Flom and [Atlantic president] Doug Morris and they were comparing it to Led Zeppelin,” Tramp said. “But many years later, we found out that Doug Morris had said to Jason Flom: ‘Why are you letting them do this?’”

During the recording of Big Game, White Lion were also working to a tight deadline: a tour with Ozzy Osbourne had already been booked, with a juicy fee of $25,000 a night.

Big Game was released in June 1989 when Tramp felt it “unfinished”. The album shipped gold on its release, selling 500,000 copies. But after this strong start, sales quickly dropped off as the album’s four singles all bombed.

“The record company didn’t know what to do,” Tramp said. “And we never had a discussion about it, because there wasn’t much we could change.”

White Lion mustered one more album, Mane Attraction. But by the time it was released in 1991, alternative rock was in the ascendancy.

“The major impact came when MTV changed its concept,” Tramp says. “In the ’80s, MTV buttered our bread, but after Kurt Cobain wore his grandfather’s sweater in the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, there was no place on MTV for bands like White Lion and Mötley Crüe.”

A long-running dispute over money led to James LoMenzo and Greg D’Angelo quitting the band.

“The money was split 25 per cent equally on live performance, but also 25 per cent equal on expenses,” Tramp explained. “So Vito and I, as the songwriters, were making all the money. James and Greg weren’t asking for a lot, but the split happened.”

With new bassist Tommy ‘T-Bone’ Caradonna and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso, White Lion embarked on a 16-date club tour in the US. But when the tour reached New York, the band’s hometown, Tramp discovered that Atlantic Records had given up on White Lion.

“Nobody from the record company showed up at the gig,” he says. “I knew the song: there’s a new kid in town.”

The final date of the tour was in Boston. Tramp took Bratta aside and told him: “This is our last show.” Bratta offered a one word reply: “Okay.”

“We never, ever talked about why it was so easy to break up the band,” Tramp said. “And the phone call never came from the record company or the managers or the merchandising company that had once given us a million dollars in advance.

“We had a great band. We had two songwriters that knew how to work together. But nobody fought for White Lion.”

In the years since White Lion broke up, Bratta’s public profile has been virtually nonexistent, while Tramp has toured and recorded as a solo artist and with the bands Freak Of Nature and Mike Tramp And The Rock’N’Roll Circuz.

The singer continues to tour billed as Mike Tramp’s White Lion.

As he told Classic Rock: “I’m proud of what Vito and I did with White Lion. And for that, I still love him.”

It sounded like a song from a bygone era – and that was exactly how the band had planned it.

I Believe In A Thing Called Love was the breakout hit for The Darkness in 2003, and as rhythm guitarist Dan Hawkins recalled: “We just tried to write the most ’80s song we could.”

This was the third single lifted from the band’s debut album Permission To Land, and it rose all the way to No 2 on the UK chart. It was also a top 10 hit in Sweden, New Zealand and Ireland, and achieved heavy airplay in the US.

I Believe In A Thing Called Love was written by all four members of the band’s early line-up: Hawkins and brother Justin (lead vocals and lead guitar), Frankie Poullain (bass) and Ed Graham (drums).

Speaking to Total Guitar in 2020, Dan Hawkins described the making of this classic rock anthem.

“I Believe In A Thing Called Love was such an important song for The Darkness, but when we wrote it I really wasn’t sure about it,” Hawkins admitted. “The chorus is so stupidly catchy, I thought people were just gonna take it as a complete joke!

“Right from the start, this song stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s at the Def Leppard/Queen end of what we did, whereas 90% of our stuff was inspired by 1970s AC/DC. And Aerosmith. And Thin Lizzy. Oh, I could go on!

“Writing it was a real collaborative effort. Me and Frankie shared a top-floor flat in Primrose Hill in London, which sounds posh, but trust me, it was a shithole! Justin would come over and the three of us would write in this flat, jamming on an acoustic, because we couldn’t afford to write in a rehearsal room.

“We started with the riff, which Justin came up with. It sounded really great right away. But when he sang the chorus for the first time, I just said, ‘No, you can’t do that – it sounds ridiculous!’

“I really thought people would just laugh at us when they heard it. So for the rest of the song, I tried to make it sound cool, more ‘rock’. The rest of the song is all in minor key.”

He continued: “Back in 2003 when I Believe In A Thing Called Love was released as a single, you never heard a guitar solo on the radio. But this song was designed to have guitar breaks in it. It was built towards the solos as much as the chorus.

“I was so unsure that we debated about playing the song live. But as soon as we did, people loved it. It’s party music, and it just gets people going.”

As a perfect pair of guitar-toting siblings, much like their heroes Angus and Malcolm Young were in AC/DC, Justin and Dan Hawkins have very different personalities both in person and on guitar. I Believe In A Thing Called Love saw them go head-to-head over the song’s two main solo sections.

It’s younger brother Dan who first steps up to the challenge after the second chorus, running through some E major pentatonic ideas around the bottom of the neck before heading up higher for some octave bends and bluesy ideas around the ninth fret – which would be the relative minor pentatonic three frets down from the major position found at the 12th fret.

Dan is typically known as the less flamboyant persona out of the pair, and his contributions are more country-leaning and laidback than Justin’s solo, which begins after the final chorus and lives in more of a bluesy world.

Justin starts his solo with a minor seventh to octave bend up at the 15th fret, also harmonised up a major third before some minor pentatonic lines around the twelfth fret. Then there’s a climbing run on the high E, fretting notes from the E major scale while pedalling against the open string, starting down at the fourth fret and eventually ending at the very top of his black Les Paul Standard’s neck on the 22nd fret where there’s one final whole tone bend up to the root.

This kind of single string idea can also be heard on rock classics like AC/DC’s Thunderstruck and Iron Maiden’s Wasted Years, and is an effective tool for making something sound a lot more complicated than it actually is, allowing guitarists to incorporate some wide intervallic leaps against what often tends to be the key centre.

For the outro of I Believe In A Thing Called Love, the band head back into the main riff – which is built off the first six notes of the E major scale, also known as the Ionian scale, and then there’s one final flurry of notes from Justin using hammer-ons and pull-offs before its closing stab.

In this song, neither solo would sound quite as good without the other, which is what makes it such an enduring celebration of their contrasting yet perfectly complimentary personalities as musicians.

As Justin Hawkins told Total Guitar: “I enjoy listening to Dan’s lead work because he does things that I’d never think of. He probably likes my stuff for the same reason.

“We know how to enjoy each other’s playing and not see it as a competition. It’s all about whatever’s best for the song – and it takes a while to learn that, but it’s the most important thing. Make sure the song works, otherwise nobody will listen and it might be totally pointless.”

Picking up a guitar pick (or plectrum, depending on where in the world you are) probably seems like second nature. You pick it up… You hold it… And you’re done.

And while it's perfectly possible to embark on your musical journey from this most basic of introductions, it’s probably a good idea to learn a few pick skills before you develop any bad habits.

Get it wrong from the start and you’ll forever limit your playing speed, tone and stamina without even realising it.

The first step is to – literally – get a grip.

The standard grip

Let’s start with the basics and probably the most natural way that you’re going to be holding your pick.

Rest the pick on the side of your index finger, roughly at the first joint. Bring your thumb down on top of it to hold it in place. The pick should point away from your hand at roughly a right angle to your index finger, with only a small amount of the tip exposed – around 5 to 10mm is plenty.

Your remaining fingers can either curl loosely, relaxed into your palm or extended slightly. What you’re actively trying to avoid here is any unnecessary tension anywhere in the hand or wrist. Keep your hand loose and relaxed.

Angle matters

One thing non-pro players often overlook is the angle of the pick relative to the strings. Holding the pick perfectly parallel to the strings produces a bright, even tone but can feel resistant when you’re seeking to play at higher speeds. Rotating the pick very slightly – so it strikes the string at a subtle angle – reduces friction and allows for smoother, faster playing.

Experiment to find what works for your style.

How tight should you hold it?

The simple answer is ‘tighter than you think’ but ‘not as tight as you probably are’… It goes without saying that a pick that flies out of your hand mid-solo is too loose, while acute hand-ache after ten minutes means that you’re holding it too tight.

Aim for firm but relaxed. If you're ever tensing your forearm muscles noticeably, ease off.

Wrist position and movement

Your grip on your pick should be considered as being part of how your whole picking hand moves – an extension of your own hand and fingers – so for most playing, the motion should come primarily from the wrist rather than the elbow or fingers. A loose, fluid wrist produces better tone and is far less tiring over a long session than using a stiff arm to ‘drive’ the pick through the strings.

Try anchoring your picking hand lightly against the body of the guitar by either resting the heel of your palm on the bridge or letting your little finger touch the guitar body. This gives you a stable reference point without locking your wrist up and helps ‘take the weight off’ your hand.

Some players prefer to float the hand entirely, which works well for strumming but can feel less controlled for precise single note work and will ultimately become more tiresome.

Pick thickness

The best grip and the thickness of your pick are closely related. Thinner picks are more forgiving and suit strumming while thicker picks offer more control for single note lines and lead playing. If your current pick thickness feels like it's working against you, trying a different gauge is often a simple fix.

Most players gravitate toward a medium thickness of around 0.73mm as a good all-rounder, while skilled players swear by very thin picks. Meanwhile others use heavy jazz picks for everything. The motto here is to try different picks for yourself and don’t be afraid to experiment.

Alternative grips

Of course, as with everything, there’s THE way to do it… And then there’s another way…

If you’re playing jazz or undertaking some fingerstyle hybrid picking you may want to try holding the pick between the thumb and middle finger instead. This frees up your all-important index finger for fingerpicking.

Alternatively you may want to try using a three finger grip – pressing the pick between index and middle fingers and thumb for extra picking power and control at high speeds.

And if you're really scraping or sliding, obviously you'll have to change your grip appropriately.

Basically, if you find yourself consistently fighting your current grip, it's worth trying alternatives rather than going with the flow and assuming the standard approach is right for you.

Try it. You might like it

Try to play a fast picking passage and then immediately stop. If your hand feels tense or cramped, something in your grip needs adjusting. Good technique should feel almost effortless with the pick doing the work, not your muscles.

And try playing slowly and paying close attention to what your picking hand is actually doing. It's much easier to gauge what degree of effort and strain you’re introducing to your technique when you slow things right down.

Remember: If it feels natural and easy and you can keep the pace without discomfort then you’re doing things right.

And don't panic!

At this stage, the most important thing is simply to get comfortable. Your grip will naturally refine itself over time as you play more.. Pick up your guitar, try the grips described above, and start playing. You'll find what works for you soon enough.

Above all, have fun and keep on playing!

Stockhausen. Silver Apples. Forbidden Planet. Before the development of what we think of as synthesizers, there was test and measurement equipment. Raw oscillators, filters and amplifiers intended for not musical but industrial purposes. At some point, experimental musicians realised that if you amplified the electric signals they put out, you could generate, process, and control audio signals.

It was Bob Moog and Don Buchla who took these raw building blocks and added musical control, and the rest is history. But for a certain subset of musicians, this original equipment is very much not history; it still holds plenty of potential for sonic experimentation.

Curious about how to incorporate test equipment into your own studio and productions? Grab some ear protection, sign this waiver, and get ready to hear the most beautiful sine wave you’ve ever heard in your life.

“Test equipment has very little to do with traditional synthesizers in terms of workflow and signal chain,” says musician Andrea Taeggi, who often works with the gear. “With a standard synth, you typically think in terms of oscillators, filters, envelopes, VCAs and a defined signal path. With test and measurement gear, that structure often doesn’t really exist in the same way.”

Keyboard synthesizers - and even modular setups, to an extent - present a structured and interconnected whole, a finished product built upon components that started life as scientific equipment. Early pioneers in electronic music discovered that with a little coaxing, they could make sound with it, and by recording it and manipulating the tape, create music.

This equipment is generally referred to as test and measurement equipment. Rikkert Brok, the studio manager at Willem Twee Studios in the Netherlands, which has one of the world’s most sophisticated examples of such a setup, explains.

“Test equipment was used, for instance, in radio and telecommunication to measure signals, but also for acoustic measurements,” he says. “For instance, a sine wave oscillator could be used in radio to test a transmitter.”

Some gear didn’t make sound on its own but could still be used as part of a music production system, like lock-in amplifiers and boxcar integrators. “They don't make sounds themselves,” says Rikkert, “but you can more or less see them as really complex kinds of filters.”

Housed inside a 1960s nuclear bunker somewhere near the Welsh border is Cold War Synths. Run by producer and archaeologist Matt Thomas (King Unique), Cold War Synths is the culmination of Matt’s interests in a number of different facets of music production. “It is a decision to do something with a load of equipment and a load of interest, and bring it together in a physical place,” he explains.

Although you can find some pretty amazing synthesizers there, including a Yamaha CS-80, Roland Jupiter-4 and EMS VCS3, the special focus is on test and measurement equipment.

“The earliest piece I've got is [from] 1948, which is within a year of the phrase ‘Cold War’ being coined,” Matt explains as to why test equipment. “That's basically an LFO. It's a 0.1 Hertz to 1K sine oscillator. Looks like it's been taken out of a Lancaster bomber. (And the) sound of these things. There shouldn't be better sine waves because it's a sine wave. These are better sine waves. They just are. Tonally, they just sound lovely.”

Matt continues to list the appeal of this old and esoteric gear. Aside from the pure sonics, there’s the relative affordability. “Financially, while they're not cheap cheap, they are compared to the levels that synthesizer collecting has driven things to now,” he says. “It's a chance to get really unaffordable, unavailable ‘50s and ‘60s tones into the work I do. (With) 1960s Moog modules, there aren’t enough kidneys to even buy one.”

The gear also allows Matt to experiment in a way that traditional synthesizers no longer do. “I'm very familiar with making electronic music,” he says. “I know what's going to happen. Playing with this gear, I'm much more likely to do the wrong thing. Infinitely more likely.”

The gear itself encourages this, he stresses: “The interfaces are, by their very nature, going to deliver different outcomes. The impenetrability of some of this equipment, which was never meant to be used for sound in the majority of the cases, means you're going to bump into wrong outcomes for which you go, ‘God, that's amazing’.”

Willem Twee Studios is a four-room studio complex in The Netherlands. For fans of test and measurement equipment, however, it’s Studio One that is the real Mecca. Packed floor to ceiling with rare and unusual pieces, it’s the kind of place that experimental electronic musicians dream of visiting. Much of it was originally sourced by musician Hans Kulk, who started collecting it in the 1990s when institutions were letting it all go as part of a move towards digital technologies.

Uniquely, Studio One has been organised with a specific workflow inspired by the WDR studio in Cologne in the early 1950s, the place where Karlheinz Stockhausen made some of his most famous electronic works.

“Those instruments weren't used in the, let's say, more traditional electronic music studios, which started popping up in the mid-‘50s,” says manager Rikkert Brok. “We try to keep that intact, that workflow of setting up a certain patch with a certain technique, using the mixing desk as a part of your instruments, using some basic treatments like filtering, echo, reverb, ring modulation, and then creating a sound.”

Although it may look like a modular system from a distance, just with larger pieces, it is in fact quite different. There’s no MIDI or even CV control, for starters.

“We call it the manual studio,” says Rikkert. “All modulations you have to do by hand. There are some function generators that have voltage control, but they're from a later area. Really early stuff like the equipment from the ‘50s doesn't have any CV or input usually.”

There are also certain techniques when working with test and measurement equipment that don’t apply to modern modular systems - and that can be daunting for first-time visitors. “Studio One can be intimidating for people when you first get in,” notes Rikkert. To help visitors to the studio overcome this, there’s an engineer always on staff to make sure that you understand techniques and how to make a patch.

One of Willem Twee’s most unusual pieces of equipment - and possibly the ultimate example of this kind of music production - is its Hitachi 240 analog computer. Unlike digital computers, which process computations with ones and zeroes, analog computers use physical processes like electricity to solve mathematical equations. And when you amplify that electricity, you get - you guessed it - sound.

“It's a bit between a breadboard and a modular (system) of test and measurement equipment,” explains Rikkert of the Hitachi 240. “There are many more patch possibilities in an analog computer than in a regular modular system.”

One artist who has done extensive work at Willem Twee is Andrea Taeggi, a trained jazz pianist who has found inspiration in making music with this unusual gear. “In many cases, the flexibility you get from a dedicated studio with test equipment is actually greater than what you’d achieve with a self-built Eurorack or standalone modular setup,” Andrea says on why someone might want to take this approach, “because the tools are infinitely more flexible and designed for high-precision signal manipulation rather than strictly musical needs.”

Like Matt Thomas of Cold War Synths, Andrea also prizes this ancient equipment for its sound quality. “Signal generators in particular can be extremely raw and harmonically rich,” Andrea explains. “High-precision oscillators are capable of producing sine waves with a level of purity that is difficult to replicate with almost any other type of gear. Some units are designed specifically just to output a highly accurate sine tone, and that level of beauty, precision and clarity can be very inspiring.”

Although Andrea has worked with all manner of test equipment, he declares Willem Twee’s analog computer the most unique. “These machines were originally used as flight simulators, by NASA and even the military to model and predict complex systems, things like the stability or instability of a structure, for example. When translated into a musical context, this opens up the possibility of generating functions with extremely unusual shapes, as well as unusual control sources.”

Andrea also identifies the open-ended and experimental nature of the Hitachi 240 as a key creative aspect: “Unlike a conventional synthesizer, it doesn’t come with predefined functions. You can patch it to behave like a filter, an oscillator, or many other signal-processing blocks depending on your configuration.”

You can hear Andrea’s work on the analog computer in his albums Zimní Král and Nattdett.

“It does help to recognise that part of this journey is getting your head a bit around electricity,” answers Matt Thomas when asked if he has any advice for people wanting to try working with test equipment.

“Most gear has an output which is in volts. Try and keep it under one if you want to be absolutely within your mixer spec.” To make sure you’re not going to blow anything up, Matt recommends, “Always remember: it's not spitting out sound, it's spitting out voltage.” One way to make sure you don’t destroy any of your regular gear by running test equipment through it is to put it through a burner mixer first, or better yet, a passive (non-powered) mixer to act as a voltage attenuator.

Finding the gear probably won’t be difficult. Pieces are available on online auction sites like eBay, as well as at car boot sales. Also, try second-hand fairs for radio enthusiasts. If you’re really serious, you can try calling universities or government institutions to see if they have any old gear lying around that they don’t need anymore, like the filter that came off a nuclear submarine from the 1960s in the Cold War Synths studio.

As for pieces to start with, Rikkert at Willem Twee suggests function generators. “They’re basically oscillators with multiple waveforms,” he says. “They’re pretty versatile and depending on the brands, you can find them. They're still available for a reasonable price.”

When you’re ready for more, you can expand. “Definitely your oscillators, a filter, a noise generator, and some kind of pulse generator, which you already have inside your function generator,” continues Rikkert, listing other pieces that beginners should be on the look out for. “There you have the basic core elements, which in the ‘50s you would use to create electronic music. Of course, don't forget an analog mixing desk, which is a big part of your instrumentation.”

As for working with a vintage analog computer, your best bet is to contact Willem Twee Studios about using theirs.

“Another accessible entry point,” says Andrea Taeggi, “is hardware like Bernd Ullmann's THAT (The Analog Thing), which is an affordable and portable analog computer. It allows you to begin learning how these systems function and how they can be applied creatively in a musical context.” Andrea also recommends exploring Eurorack modules like Make Noise Music’s Maths module, which, “like analog computers, does not rely on traditional ADSR envelopes, but works through attenuators. It is a powerful control signal generator as well, definitely in line with what one can achieve with an analog computer.”

Lastly, there is also software that emulates test and measurement equipment available. Musician and YouTuber Hainbach has made a variety of plugins in collaboration with AudioThing that recreate devices like a passive bandpass filter, the Hewlett-Packard Word Generator 8006A, and much more.

When the US Army was forced to withdraw from Vietnam in 1975 — also departing northern Thailand, a key strategic area packed with US military bases — they left a complex and troubling legacy behind.

They also left behind an array of equipment, from vehicles and communications infrastructure to Cobreflex horn loudspeakers that later found new life as village public-address systems.

First introduced in 1963, then adopted by Psychological Operations Soldiers (PSYOP) across Vietnam and Thailand over the following decade, aerial loudspeakers were crucial to the war effort, disseminating messages to local populations, urging enemy forces to surrender, pumping in sound effects and spreading eerie propaganda sequences in an attempt to weaken pro-Viet Cong sentiment.

Decades later, musicians from the remote Phetchabun Mountains in north-central Thailand reclaimed these US army loudspeakers and developed a local sound known as phin prayukt, which centred around the traditional Thai stringed instrument, the phin.

Electrifying this lute-like instrument, hooking it up to an ad-hoc, transportable sound system and adding bass drums, cymbals, and keys, the band that emerged — now known as Khun Narin Electric Phin Band and building an international following after high-profile radio plays, an electric US tour and collaborations with artists like ex-Amy Winehouse producer Tommy Breneck and Khruangbin guitarist Mark Speer — created a uniquely hypnotic and psychedelic sound.

"We use the three-stringed lute that is traditional to our region, but we run it through effects pedals: distortion, delay, things like that," says Khun Narin, the father of the band, who today plays the cymbal alongside a rotating cast of younger recruits from his village, Lom Sak, many of whom he trained.

"It's unlike the Western rock band — we are a community band," he explains, joining me on a call with a cold can of Leo Lager in hand, and the dark blue Thai night sky behind him. "We gather in the village, we come together to perform at weddings, at temple fairs, at ordination ceremonies [where adolescent Buddhist boys celebrate reaching manhood]. In the band, the older musicians carry the tradition and the younger ones can bring the energy; everybody has a role."

Currently, the other members of Khun Narin Electrified Phin Band are bassist Boss, percussionist Wallop Sangaroon (or Pao), drummer Oat, and phin player Bas. "The phin player usually plays two kinds of melody, the fast (called sut sanaen) and the slow (called lam phu thai)," Boss explains. "This is traditional music that spans the northern central part of Thailand."

The band's interpretation of this genre is incredibly pioneering. Years ago, fuelled by a simple desire to amplify their sound during performances, Khun Narin and his cohorts gathered a range of loudspeakers typically used to announce news in the village. They purchased amps from friends and acquaintances and constructed a DIY sound system fixed to the back of a cart.

The band members were never massive gearheads; they simply wanted to see where they could take this traditional musical form. "It was not very professional, we just wanted to make it loud and fun," says Khun Narin. "People at temples in Thailand usually own lots of sound equipment, so there was a DIY network to help build the sound system. We found whatever we could in our village… it was really organic."

The reclamation and repurposing of ex-US Army loudspeakers — USC Cobreflex horn projectors that were previously strung up along the village's electrical cables and used to announce local news — has given a fascinating edge to this DIY story, and the sound they've created has resonated with fans all over the globe.

After footage emerged online of their performances in the fields of north-central Thailand in 2014, momentum started to gather. US-based producer Josh Marcy headed to Lom Sak to meet the group and record their first two albums in a local field, an ambient setting that lent a naturalistic sense of place to the project.

At a US tour in late 2024, crowds flocked to see the band breeze through Austin, LA, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and more. This period Stateside also allowed the band to head into a professional studio for the first time, the result being III, their first new record in a decade.

The album is a continuation of the sprawling psychedelic sound they've created, full of jagged strings and groovy percussion sequences. It's a heady and evocative concoction, a transcendental collision between American prog rock and Thai folk charm lifted from the baking tropical jungles of Phetchabun.

The remarkable trajectory this humble village band has been on in recent years has its grounding in the local community that Khun Narin remains firmly attached to. They're committed to playing "at almost every village ceremony", which ensures that the chemistry between instrumentalists is second to none; this fact played a decisive role in catapulting them to global fame.

The recording of Khun Narin's new album III took place in a more professional studio setting — the Pasadena-based Diamond West studio of renowned producer Tommy Brenneck, who has previously worked with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Nile Rodgers, and CeeLo Green — marking an interesting new chapter for the collective.

"We'd never done a professional recording before, so when we first got into a proper studio, it took us a bit of time to get to know the equipment," says Bas. It helped that Brenneck had a clear understanding of the group's sonic intentions.

"Making the music together, he did not try to control us, but there were times when he recommended new ideas to add into the music," Bas reflects. "It's always a discussion, and he tried to keep the energy of our music, not making it too clean in the studio setting. The equipment at the studio is kind of old-school, and it limited the time, so we could only play for three or four minutes," explains Bas. "When we recorded in Thailand, they used modern digital equipment that allowed us to do a long take."

According to producer Josh Marcy, "the recording was done direct to tape, so that did limit the amount of time they could play… and the guys were playing a lot! We were throwing on new tape to keep up, and you can hear the new tape winding up to speed at the beginning of [album opener] Sut Sanaen."

"In the previous album, [Thai and Laos folk genre] molam and rock come together, you can still feel the traditional part of our music," says Bas. "But in this new album, the music is more like molam with an international melody vibe, so it's more pop and it's more global."

Despite this shift, there's absolutely no intention for Khun Narin to veer away from their roots and cash in on their rising popularity. Performances at local ceremonies and parties remain their mainstay, and there are no current plans for a new Europe or North America tour.

In fact, with the rainy season now underway in Thailand and local temple policy restricting festivities during this time, the band has a solid period of relaxation on the horizon. Still, the prospect of interacting with their burgeoning global audience remains an exciting one.

"The feedback comes when we are on stage, and it's always the same: people having fun," says Khun Narin. "From 10 years ago until now, they still have the same fun at the shows. I just hope Khun Narin can continue to make people happy."

“I work on music all the time, even when I’m not in the studio,” says Grammy Award-winning producer Tyler Spry on his creative approach.

“I recently got this sampler app on my phone so I can chop up ideas when walking around the neighbourhood or at the beach,” Spry continues. “I have a journal full of song ideas, I take walks where I listen to music and make notes of inspiring sounds or chords - I’m either always making or thinking about music.”

Tyler is speaking to us from his home studio at the top of the Silverlake Hills in Los Angeles, and our conversation comes in the wake of some staggering success.

His recent credits include Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos , a Grammy Award–winning record from 2025 where Tyler co-produced and co-wrote album highlights DTMF and Kloufrens.

Other production work has been with Tate McRae, OneRepublic, Karol G, Rauw Alejandro, Omar Apollo, and Latin Mafia alongside lead single, Swim, for BTS’ 2026 comeback album, Arirang.

While Tyler is guiding some of the world’s biggest stars on their journeys to the top of the Billboard charts, his outlook on the mechanics of music-making is pragmatic and contemporary.

“Half the time I’m working from home as I prefer being creative here to anywhere else,” says Tyler on his process. “But I like being outside a traditional recording space too. I’m one of those producers who would rather write a song in a hotel room on headphones than in an old studio with a huge console.”

Tyler began his career as a musician and engineer, initially hooking up with producers, songwriters and OneRepublic bandmates Ryan Tedder and Brent Kutzle. Via their partnership, Tyler found himself increasingly embedded in the mechanics of music-making, contributing songwriting and production to nine tracks on the 2021 OneRepublic album, Human.

“I stumbled into music production out of necessity,” Tyler laughs. “I had a MacBook with Logic on it, a couple of SM7s that I was using to record my band’s rehearsals, and I pretty quickly realised that I could make songs on my laptop.”

Tyler was playing guitar with different groups before meeting Brent. Before long, he had started to work as his assistant engineer.

“My first projects that people heard were songs with OneRepublic and I just began by supporting studio sessions, this was more dog sitting and getting coffees than recording,” Tyler explains. “But it was a foot in the door, we went on to make this album together and that is how I won OneRepublic’s creative trust. It gave me a real shot at making more opportunities happen.”

Establishing a rapport with artists is a key part of the producer’s role and something Tyler has always kept in mind when crafting music. Since those first projects, he’s focused on establishing a safe and comfortable space for his collaborators to feel creative within.

“I’m fortunate to work with a lot of people who I’m friends with, we have a great rapport and mutual respect for each other and everyday, we’re trying to meet in the middle and make the best song possible,” he says. “Everyone has different takes, opinions and of course creative people are bound to come at an idea from their own angle. But when this happens, it’s one of the most exciting moments and can lead to special ideas.

“When everyone in the studio, whether it’s an artist, songwriter or co-producer, is able to get their ideas out, that’s when you’re able to make the song that no one else could make.”

The home studio is an important space for Tyler and he’s poured energy into its development and refinement. There are some essential items in his workflow, including the Eventide H3000.

“A few years ago I picked one up and it’s probably been on every song I’ve made since,” he says. “There’s something about an outboard chorus reverb or flanger that sounds perfectly imperfect. Sending a vocal or drum loop through metal or electricity always degrades sound but in a way that can work well for me and my music.”

New software and gear are an ongoing preoccupation but Tyler has reached a point where he wants to ensure he knows the potential of what he already has before investigating anything else.

“Like every other producer in Los Angeles, I am constantly downloading new plugins that I forget I have,” Tyler laughs. “But lately I’ve been trying to master the things that are here, and not have a wandering eye for new tech or gear. I have a vintage synth collection, I just got this Jupiter-8 a few months ago, and it’s hands down the most inspiring keyboard I’ve ever owned. I’m trying to excel at sound designing on it before I pick up something new and flashy.”

It’s an apt purchase, as Tyler’s first synth was a Roland Juno-6 - a piece of kit he spent hours searching for on Craigslist. He’s now had it for more than a decade and has influenced his love for the Jupiter.

“I paid $200 for a Roland Juno-106 with broken voice chips, and I know it really well,” he says. “The Jupiter has a really similar design and approach in terms of how you programme a sound on it. It just feels like the big brother of the Roland Juno-6.”

Tyler is unable to talk about his contribution to Bad Bunny’s album - what we do know is he worked on stand-out tracks, DTMF and Kloufrens. However, he can share more about becoming involved with South Korean megastars, BTS. The group, featuring Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook, have been on hiatus due to solo projects and their mandatory military service but have since come back with a bang in 2026.

“We ended up working with the band at Conway Studios in Los Angeles,” says Tyler. “I spent a few weeks with them writing and workshopping ideas, they were the nicest guys with great taste and they assembled some inspiring rooms for us to work in. One of those was the room that Swim was born in with James Essian, Sean Foreman and my co-producer Leclair.”

Tyler would prepare for a session by building a template with any song ingredients he might require from drum loops to chords and soft synth sounds. The aim was to ensure that he was ready to respond to whatever direction flows through the room.

“You never know what someone is going to be inspired by,” Tyler explains. “There might be a day when I walk in thinking we need to do an uptempo radio song or someone is really going through it and they want to pour their heart out on a Wurlitzer. I have to be prepared for anything.”

Alongside Swim, Tyler was also credited on the album track, Please. Although there are different songwriting and production teams involved in the making of the BTS album, the only thing that matters among the army of contributors is the song itself.

“In the initial moment of a creative spark, you have to believe what you’re doing is the best thing in the world and you have to encourage everyone who is in the room with you to dive in headfirst,” he says. “Then you can assess afterwards - with both Swim and Please, after the initial hour or two of writing, I took a step outside, listened to them and they felt special - not every song feels like that.”

Another part of the production process is to ensure the foundations of the song work as hard as possible. So if the production isn’t cutting it, Tyler is always will to clean the slate and start an idea from scratch.

“I’m happy to reimagine something, drop the vocals into a new session and start from there,” he says. “I’ll do this as many times as I need to find what works for the song. It’s my responsibility as producer to leave no stone uncovered in the search for the best version.”

Tate McRae is a Canadian pop star who has worked with Tyler and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. The pair helped write and produce major hits on her albums, including the 2023 smash single Exes and 2025's Just Keep Watching.

“Tate has a clear and distinct vision so I always leave a session with her feeling like a better producer and songwriter,” Tyler states. “Ryan knows when something feels right and when it doesn’t, we will rework the drums, the arrangements, the vocal parts, the sound design, we could end up with 47 versions of a song.”

I Don’t Wanna Wait was a collaboration between OneRepublic and producer David Guetta, a dance music crossover that became a global hit. For Tyler, the challenge was to anchor the song, which was based on the melody of Dragostea Din Tei by the Moldovan Eurodance group O-Zone, within the OneRepublic universe.

“Ryan came on and really put more of his sound and story in the verses and pre-choruses, we did a lot of sound design, guitars and textures to try and bring it more into the world that people know OneRepublic for,” Tyler says.

“It’s always interesting to rework an existing song or new interpolation, to find a way to contextualise it in a new sound setting and for a new audience.”

Tyler has achieved remarkable success within the music industry during the last few years. He cites finding his people and team alongside an ongoing love for discovering new sounds as the reasons for his rise to the top.

“Aspiring producers need to surround themselves with people that inspire them, challenge them but are also those you want to spend eight hours a day in the studio with,” Tyler states.

“I’ve also never stopped listening to new music or at least music that is new to me. Your output is a fraction of what you put in - if you’re not staying inspired then the well will eventually run dry, so I listen to music every day, I go for walks with my dog, I spend time with friends, all those things matter, not just for your mental health but also because they make you a more prolific songwriter.”

Growing up, Tyler was a fan of bands like The Smiths, Radiohead and The Cure and had no time for pop music. Now, he’s front and centre of this musical universe, working with some of the world’s biggest stars in what could be seen as an unlikely destination from where he started.

“You have to stay open-minded,” Tyler says. “You might find a creative home where you least expect it and most artists are coming to you to shape them. One of the most exciting aspects of what we do is bringing our influences into the projects we work on.”

In 2026, musically anything is possible with creative boundaries blurred and genres being pulled into myriad new and exciting shapes. Tyler is among those producers whose music is helping to push the global pop universe forward.

“I think I just have to keep showing up and making music,” Tyler explains. “There is a unique kind of feeling when a song you made or a guitar part you created is out and being heard by people all around the world, affecting culture. I’m really happy to be part of this musical world.”

Five Finger Death Punch celebrate their 20th anniversary this year with new album Legacy. But as guitarist Zoltan Bathory admits, the band would never have reached this milestone if singer Ivan Moody had continued the self-destructive behaviour that very nearly killed him.

Bathory tells MusicRadar: “I’m so proud of the history of this band. 20 years of getting bigger and bigger, with millions of fans all over the world. And what’s crazy is it’s still getting bigger. We’re not done.

“But we’ve had to work really hard for this. Hard rock and metal is not the centre of the universe like it used to be. So for every territory, you have to work hard. You can be huge in America but no one knows you in England, no one knows you in Germany.

“For us there was never a one big global explosion. We did this territory by territory. And there’s a lifestyle that goes with that, and it’s not always healthy.”

The founder and leading figure in Five Finger Death Punch, Bathory clarifies: “I’m the sober one, right? I was the one at the steering wheel, dealing with the business and keeping it on the rails as much as possible. But there came moments when we could no longer hide what was going on in this band, and then you start to have the meltdowns.

“Everybody looked at Ivan. They said that he was the culprit, because he’s the singer, so when he falls down on stage and couldn’t continue a show, or he was so drunk that he could just barely be able to walk out on stage, that’s what everybody sees.

“People don’t realise that the rest of the guys in the band were just as bad. It wasn’t just Ivan, but because he’s the singer everybody focused on him.”

Bathory sighs and and shakes his head at the memory.

“All of them were out of control,” he says. “At every show we played they were doubling the security. They knew that this is going to be crazy, right?

“So there were moments when I’m like, ‘This is a lot to deal with.’ You have to be the psychologist, you have to be the general, and sometimes the dictator.”

Bathory says that Moody tried to get sober on various occasions, without success.

“He went to rehab several times, and he went back to the party life. When you’re on the road, when that’s your life, it’s very difficult to stay away from that stuff. Every day somebody will be like, ‘Hey, let’s party!’ They don’t realise we were in another town yesterday and another one before. They don’t really see that. Most people would say, ‘I can’t do this for ten days in a row’ – let alone two years in a row or twenty years in a row.”

Bathory says it was tough love from himself and a number of other metal musicians that eventually got through to Moody in 2017.

“Ivan and me, we’re like brothers,” he says. “There were times when we wanted to kill each other, but he’s like my little brother, right? And it got so bad with him that I was watching him and thinking like, ‘Man, he’s gonna die on my watch – and that can’t happen.’”

He pauses and adds: “I think he actually did die for a few moments. He flatlined. So I had to do something drastic.

“I thought, he’s a singer, he’s a performer, that’s what he's good at, that’s what he can’t live without. That’s what he loves and who he is. And the only threat I could make to him is that I’m gonna take this away from him.

“That was the hardest thing, because you know it was a bluff in some way. I wanted it to be a bluff, course. But if I don’t do something then you’re gonna die, because it’s getting to the point where you’re going to.”

Among the fellow musicians who supported Moody in this time were Pantera singer Phil Anselmo and the members of Korn.

At the point when Moody’s intervention was staged, Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington was instrumental in making it happen.

Bathory recalls: “In that moment, when Ivan got really serious about getting sober, the support that we got from other musicians was unbelievable. The first person to step up was Chester Bennington. We were on tour with Linkin Park in South America and Chester got hold of Ivan and told him, ‘Bro, you’re going to rehab – like right now. Get it together. You can do it. I did it. You can do it.’”

Bathory says that he warned Moody: “If you don’t stay in that rehab facility for 30 days, you’re out of the band.”

The tough love worked.

“Ivan got sober,” Bathory says, “and that changed everything.”

If there’s one man who understands the current state of the music industry ecosystem, it’s John Dahlbäck. A DJ and production legend in his own right, Dahlbäck has weathered the changes of over two decades facing both the crowd and the execs.

Amassing over 664 million streams across numerous platforms, The Swedish house heavyweight has had high profile collaborations with the likes of Kaskade and the late, great Avicii - before the success of Levels launched him stratospheric.

Having signed songs to majors in Sweden - and a label owner himself - John has now pivoted away from the big leagues to help a whole new generation of music-makers build their careers without signing their rights away, and compromising on their just financial rewards.

We spoke to John about his role at artist and label partner Amuse - as well as digging a little more into his past - and those days he spent with a young Avicii…

MusicRadar: Hi there John, let’s begin by talking about your role as Head of A&R at Amuse. I’m fascinated by its artist-first ethos, and how you’re able to help artists navigate around the traditional route…

John Dahlbäck: “What I really like about Amuse is that we are 100% independent, so we're not under any sort of umbrella to anyone, we handle everything directly to the DSPs. It's all very transparent, which I think is important these days.

“Amuse is also two different businesses. The core is obviously the distribution side of things, where anyone can just self-release and upload their songs - and they get 100% of the shares. There are a bunch of add-on features that they can adapt to.

“My part is on the licensing bit and the partnerships-side. We partner up with people that we believe that we can do good business with, whether that is to help monetisation grow or just taking care of someone's back catalog. We help with the back-end. They [artists] can manage it themselves, but sometimes an artist just needs to be in the studio making music.”

MusicRadar: Do you think that rushing to sign-up to a major label is often a mistake that new artists make?

JD: “Well it depends on which stage you're in as an artist. If you're starting out, it can be very helpful to be attached to some sort of established brand or label. I have so many records with so many different labels in the past that felt right at that time. I might regret that now but starting out, I think that could be very helpful - to be part of something bigger.

“But then there are also stages where you manage [wider reach] already. You might have an active audience on socials, or whatever you have, but you have a base. So then it might not make any sense to sign off your rights.

“Then again, then there’s those in the top 30 or 20% on the verge of absolute stardom, when you need a major label to push that through. We try to focus on the mid-section when it comes to partnerships.”

MR: So in your role John, what are your main responsibilities, and how much are you able to get hands-on with artists themselves?

JD: “I'm very attached when we initiate conversations about a potential license agreement or a partnership, and then it's about where that person goes. That person might just end up having help with their catalog, which is then [given to] a certain team, and they have a point of contact at that team. Or, it's about frontline music, and then that person lands in our artist marketing team.

“I’m always here though. I have all the artists I've signed, or labels I've signed, on my WhatsApp, so they can freely talk to me whenever they want. I don't have any expertise when it comes to catalog management or a marketing effort in that sense, so it makes sense for me to not be that looped in.”

MR: What are the biggest issues that artists face in today’s music ecosystem would you say - is it primarily that 'time' thing of being an artist and managing everything else?

JD: “Yeah, I think that's always been the case. That's why artists turn to management or to labels. For independent artists, we try to just be there for sort of the day-to-day distribution side of things, and make sure that runs smoothly, so that you can focus 100% on being creative, whether that is on socials or actively making music.

“I personally prefer to leave artists be, but they need to trust that whoever is handling their back-end is still doing a proper job.”

MR: It sounds like Amuse has got lots of facets, how would you like to see it grow and evolve in the future?

JD: “Well, we have a very exciting product that we're launching after the summer, that is more of a label and management tool that gives a nice dashboard with fantastic insights that we're providing.

“I think a natural step for us would be to involve more labels or management companies and help them see what's bubbling somewhere in the world at some DSP, giving them that insight and providing a good service. But the core, for my team, has always been directly working with independent artists.”

MR: That’s interesting, and that dashboard and those metrics you mentioned, will they be using AI-driven insights into streaming data?

JD: “Not so much AI, more just total transparency of where the stream comes from - and why that stream happens in the first place. I think all the artists should know why people are streaming their stuff, and where - I think that's very crucial.

“People can say, ‘I have so many streams’, but then I see that it’s all editorial - meaning that Spotify added it to a playlist. That can be withdrawn from that playlist at any time - and what happens then? This is why I always speak for organic growth - talk to your audience and build it up to develop organic streaming. You can turn organic streaming into algorithmic streaming”

MR: Pivoting slightly from your role at Amuse John, I know you've recently become an adopter of using AI in a musical context, how do you use it?

JD: “I tend to make music on a daily basis - when the family and kids are asleep. I release heavily still. I tend to turn to AI for inspiration mainly. I use it more of an instrument - just as I would Splice or a synthesiser. Just as you’re tweaking things on a synth that eventually leads to something, I do the same with AI. I can feed [it] that beat that I’m doing, and it gives me ideas of where to develop it.

“[When I was younger] I was heavily into sampling. The way I would use samples is that I would try to re-create it rather than just include it in the final product. The same goes for AI in my case. I’m also a firm believer in voice-changing tools with AI. I sing something in the microphone with my horrible singing voice, and I change that into a beautiful singing voice.

“I’m very excited by AI if the person using it is also creative and not just lazy.

“My brother is a very old-school music producer, he records a lot of bands traditionally. Anyway, I used to be scared of AI in music, and he told me it was fantastic, he’d tell me that he had a singer who came in to do a full vocal, but then she left the studio, and he realised he didn’t have backing vocals. So, he just loads in her acapella, and he gets great stems and just backing vocals by using AI. It made the vocals more full. I just thought that was a brilliant use of it.

“I spoke to the producer of quite a famous Swedish singer (I can’t mention her name) she had discovered tapes from when she was singing at five years of age. and they are planning on doing a project by teaching AI on her singing voice at five years old, so that she can duet herself being her age now versus five years - it's kind of incredible.

“I’m all for that, and like I said, I don't like when it's just anyone sloppy using AI to just [generate] a pop song, then export and then upload Spotify. That doesn't make any sense.”

MR: It does feel that culturally, there’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the merest mention of AI, but like you say - there’s creative potential in it…

JD: “One of my favourite synths that I use regularly is called Synplant. It’s fantastic - it’s shaped like a seed, and you can just do whatever you want with it. But they also introduced an AI function, where you would just describe what you would like to do with the sound. I love that.”

MR: It’s still that fundamental joy of discovery isn’t it. Speaking of which - how did you first discover music and how did it become your passion, John?

JD: “My father is a drummer - everyone seems to be a drummer in my family - but he played in a bunch of progressive rock bands in the 60s and 70s. I grew up on that music, and I've always enjoyed making music.

“He had an old Atari computer with the first version of Cubase. I started using that when I was 10, just making music.

“I discovered electronic music through my cousin Jesper (who is sort of a pioneer within the electronic scene here) So I started liking that music and started making that type of music.

“I think what was always different with me was that I didn't discover it through clubbing - I discovered it by listening to it. So I made house music before I’d even heard it in a club. It’s usually the opposite. You go out, you listen, you hear a Prodigy song and you want to make that. I just heard it on CDs,

“So I was already making music when I discovered electronic music. When I was 17, I had to start DJing. The request came and I was like, ‘well, maybe I should’, because I needed to get my music more out there. I released songs for about two years before my first show, and then I got booked into some weird club in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, and then, yeah, then I continued on that path for a long time.”

MR: Of course one of the most notable moments of your career was when you collaborated with the late, great Avicii on Don’t Hold Back (under the name Jovicii) What do you remember about making that track with him? At that point I guess he wasn’t quite the global superstar that he’d inevitably become.

JD: “It was right on the verge for him to become that. We spent a lot of time in the studio right at the point when he started getting requests for DJ shows - like his first ones. He was just extremely talented musically. We spent a few weeks in the studio making a bunch of songs, and that was the only thing that we finished, before he released a track called Bromance [later re-released in vocal form under the title Seek Bromance] and then right after that came Levels. I only met him at airports after that.

“It was a good few weeks for sure. I wish the other songs we did were better, but we did a few songs, and there’s a reason why we never put any of those out. But yeah, he was phenomenal with melodies, and just linking everything together.”

MR: Did you have an inkling at that point that this guy was going to end up going to the places that he went to?

JD: “Yeah, yeah, of course. He moulded himself. There were a bunch of things going on in Sweden at that time, where blogs were breaking artists, and Avicii was just one of those guys who was bubbling on these forums and blogs.

“I would go to these forums on a daily basis because if they wrote about a song you knew it was going to be big. They were writing about Avicii all the time, so you could sort of sense where things were going.”

MR: As someone who has been on both the artist and label/distribution side, how has the industry changed - it must be quite different now to that early 2010s period, right?

JD: “I was firmly against streaming at first - because I came from vinyl. I just wanted to continue with this vinyl thing. and then streaming happened, and you can't just [ignore] that and leave it be. So I adapted to that.

“What was interesting about that time was that there was a big label focus. I would go to the record shop and the records were structured under labels. The categories were all these labels, and not artists. That was very interesting to me, because I had so many projects - I've had 15 aliases!

“The fun thing with that was that I could [put out a track] with another name, and then release it on this label, because I knew that it was going to get picked up by someone. It was quite a fun time running all these different sorts of genre-based names at the same time.

“Then when streaming came, it became a lot more difficult, obviously. Now it’s much more artist-driven - and even song driven.

“Today, there are artists where I’ll listen to one song by them. I have no idea what their discography looks like. But back in the day, for example, I was a big fan of Cassius [French house duo]. I would listen to everything they put out. But now I can listen to one song from an artist - and that's it. So it's gone from a label focus to artist focus to song focus almost. That's a fairly interesting thing.”

MR: Do you think that’s a positive development?

JD: “It’s a different thing. It sounds bad when I say it, but I’m not against it necessarily. Spotify feeds us new artists, and I listen but sometimes I don’t even bother to follow them. I listen to one of their songs and move on to the next one.

“It’s good for the listener. I’m perhaps not the best advocate for it, but I should follow these artists that it sends me to, which I hope other people are doing better than I am! But music discovery these days is fantastic in that sense.

“I wouldn't have done the same thing browsing records in that record store, you know, 20 years ago, I would just be like, what's this label, I don't know, I'm not even going to listen to it. Now it’s much more open.”

MR: So what would you recommend that new artists starting today prioritise?

JD: “If I was 25 years younger, I would 100% start independently, but I would just do so much content as possible to build that fan base. I cannot do that these days. I'm horrible with content, but I think if I was younger, I would not have seen it as ‘cringy’ as I do today.

“Building a fan base is crucial - and talking to your fans is so important. I hate my own ways of doing it, because I'm not doing what I think is the best key to success. You need to promote all the time - not just the first couple of weeks before or after [a release]. You make this music, you put it out there. And then what.

“There used to be a hype around releasing something, oh, this guy or this girl is, they're promoting their singles, can release it in six months from now on. People were hyped. Now those same artists are releasing two double albums in a month. There’s so much music.

Axwell from Swedish House Mafia is known for being very detailed. He almost overworks a song because he wants it to be completely perfect when it comes out. Most people these days, they do something sort of quick, and then put out, and then they move on to the next single, which is going to be released in a week's time after that. I don’t think it’s wrong - I think you need to to keep your audience entertained. Look at Skrillex, he’s always delivering albums. He wouldn’t do that 10 years ago. But you need to do that now.

“I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it is what it is.”

At the outset of Eminem’s Lose Yourself, a question is posed which would stir millions of listeners around the globe to contemplate whether they - if given the chance - could be brave enough to reach upwards and fight for something better…

If you had one shot or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?

Here was worldwide rap superstar Eminem, then held in notoriety by some for his incendiary, parental advisory-emblazoned brand of rap, delivering something less likely to trigger outrage.

Even the skeptical middle class parents of his legions of of young fans could, on some level, relate to Marshall’s question.

They probably wouldn’t have liked to admit it though…

And the rock faction - formerly dismissive of Eminem back in those mono-cultural days when competition for alternative dominance was high - had their ears pricked by the track too.

Led by a tension-stoking, palm-muted electric guitar motif and launching into a headrush of energy, fans of nu-metal were transfixed by Lose Yourself. This wasn't like any Eminem track they had ever heard before.

Lose Yourself would become a global mega-hit for Eminem in 2002, and the key track from the soundtrack to the rapper’s acting debut, 8 Mile.

The track served as a window on the inner mental state of its central character, Jimmy ‘B-Rabbit’ Smith Jr (who Eminem portrayed in the film). It caches him preparing himself for the live rap battle that could change his fortunes forever.

It’s a narrative that was easy for Eminem to relate to, being largely sketched on his own lived experiences of making a name for himself in his native Detroit, back when he was still just Marshall Mathers.

“I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic,” Eminem told the BBC at the time of release. “I don't read much, but as soon as I got this script and started reading a few pages, I went: ‘This is something I want to do’.”

Rabbit’s drive to escape from a depressing life in poverty via gaining respect in the local rap scene was analogous to young Marshall’s own ambitions. The titular 8 Mile being a reference to a stretch of road that marked the divide between working class white families and working class black families in both Rabbit and Eminem’s home city of Detroit.

“Really both sides had the same income but when I was coming up, it was literally black on one side and white on the other side and me growing up on both sides. It was interesting to see,” Eminem relayed to the BBC. “This movie literally took me back to that time and to that place, stripped me of all ego, before I was Eminem, before I was anybody.”

As the star (and inspiration) of the Curtis Hansen-directed film, Eminem was expected to bring a number of tracks to the table for the soundtrack.

Nobody though, could have expected Eminem to rustle up something that not only bottled the essence of the film so perfectly, but would soon be regarded as his most important, and most universally-known, track.

Working with longtime producer (and one half of the team that first discovered the young Marshall) Jeff Bass, the bones of the track were worked on for quite a while within Eminem’s studio mainstay of 54 Sound in Detroit, long before the film’s script had been delivered.

“We started Lose Yourself in September of ‘01, and it came out in ‘02. So it took about a year, back-and-forth, to complete,” Jeff told Billboard. “A lot of the music was completed but the vocals and the words weren’t 100 percent completed by that time. I’d say it took about a year to really develop that song.”

Opening with a slightly spooky piano part, the majority of the track is built around the coiled spring-like momentum of a palm-muted D power chord, played by Jeff on his Fender Stratocaster.

The rhythmic movement of the second note of the chord (from A to A# then to C and back) creates a dissonant tension in the three-part motif. This voice leading approach is a time-worn trick for psychologically creating an uncertain harmonic space, delaying the feeling of resolution. It's something Led Zeppelin also applied to the not entirely dissimilar Kashmir.

How does that feel? It's the musical equivalent of peering over a precipice or, in this case, preparing to stride out on stage and face the baying crowd…

Wedding this scratchy guitar motif to a 808-style pulse-like beat (likely programmed by Eminem on an Akai MPC3000) Lose Yourself grew into a powerhouse.

“The chunky guitar in the song, I think it goes really well with the drums that were done. It rolls in a way that’s very motivating,” Bass said to Billboard. “It’s not that it’s so difficult; it’s just two, three chords that just kind of grab your soul and don’t let go.”

Further instrumentation, including synthesised piano, choral parts and strings imparted a cinematic scope, and a feeling of importance, to proceedings.

On earlier iterations of the track Jeff also had heavier distorted guitars during the choruses. Eminem wasn’t a fan though, and they were ultimately taken out.

Despite being a pretty awesome piece of music even before the lyric was applied, Eminem was initially stumped when it came to getting the bars down. It would take the words of the Scott Silver-penned script for 8-Mile for it to eventually crystallise.

During the production of the film, Eminem - now fully enmeshed with the character of Rabbit - could be frequently found scribbling down lyrical fragments between takes.

To assist the rapper in channeling his inspired ideas straight to tape, his then production company manager Joel Martin had a mobile studio established. The mission: make Eminem’s notes into gold.

“We couldn’t get the analog machine [from 54 Sound] in the trailer, so we went full digital,” Martin told The Ringer. “Marshall would pop in and write and do lyrics and he would lay the s**t down in the trailer.”

Lose Yourself’s first verse illuminated the apprehensive headspace of Rabbit. It would end up being regarded as one the sharpest lyrical depictions of how it actually feels to be nervous.

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface, he looks calm and ready

By dint of the fact that he was ‘in character’ Eminem allowed himself to be vulnerable, revealing the self-doubting human underneath the superstar pomp. But beyond the autobiographical nature, it was a cogent and affecting expression of the physiology of anxiety that many fans would invariably relate to it.

As his lyric continued, the building intensity reached fever pitch before surging outwards. Eminem underlines why Rabbit is so fixated on this moment.

This could be it. The salvation that could finally lift him from a life of misery.

But he has to believe in himself…

Ope, there goes Rabbit, he choked, he's so mad
But he won't give up that easy, no, he won't have it
He knows his whole back's to these ropes, it don't matter
He's dope, he knows that, but he's broke, he's so stagnant

“The positive aspect of the movie is that no matter where you come from, you can break out of that. If your mentality is right, if your drive is right, you can break out of that cycle,” Eminem explained to the BBC. “The whole point of the movie is that it doesn't matter where you come from, you can break out of that.”

The infectious chorus spelled out the now-or-never objective of the song - and the core theme of the whole 8 Mile project.

Rabbit needs to grapple up the rope, and lift himself out from his current lot, metamorphosing into the champion that he knows he can be. But what if it goes wrong?

You better lose yourself in the music
The moment, you own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime

The second verse then diverges. With perhaps a bit more lived self-reflection, Eminem accelerates forward in the narrative to find a very different version of Rabbit - and illustrates that age-old adage of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

Having now achieved the fame and adoration he craved, Rabbit finds that he’s grown distant from the things that once meant everything to him - most importantly, his daughter who he ‘barely knows’.

Fame then, is another trap - an inversion of the despair of poverty.

He realises too late that the adulation and ecstasy of fame is only an ephemeral thing. As sales (and female attention) begin to dwindle, this post-success Rabbit reflects on what he’s lost. Charles Dickens would have loved it.

The third verse balances the scales of both preceding verses. Regardless of the pitfalls, he is now committed to his course. The practical reality is, that things can’t go on the way they are:

All the pain inside amplified by the
Fact that I can't get by with my nine-to-
Five and I can't provide the right type of life for my family
Cause, man, these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers

It’s a captivating lyric, delivered with authentic passion - and perfect rhythmic punctuation. It's a lyric Eminem invites you to feel.

It's essentially Eminem revealing his own origin story. From timid, beaten-down underdog to hyper-famous rap titan. Rap served as the exit door from the brutal hardships of real life.

"The vocal that ended up being the final vocal was the first take," mixer and engineer Steve King told Tape Op. "He tried to sing it a few other times, but just couldn't beat it because he had some kind of other energy. The emotion he put into that particular performance was awesome - we were all like, 'Oh my God!' That guy is super talented, brilliant."

Hearing the demo, Martin was similarly gobsmacked, “It was a combination of the script and Marshall’s actual tale,” Martin told The Ringer. “I was like, ‘What the f**k, are you kidding? How did you put that together?’

“It’s one of those moments - and it doesn’t happen very often, even though I was in the music business - where the hair stands up on the back of your neck,” 8 Mile’s executive producer Carol Fenelon recalled in The Ringer, remembering her feeling when she first heard the finished track;

“You just know that this is going to be a huge song.”

Fenelon was bang on the money. Lose Yourself fast became a global phenomenon when released on October 28th 2002.

With the film following closely on its heels the following month, the 8 Mile period saw Eminem extend his audience tenfold. The film's themes of class mobility and dogged perseverance underlined the cultural, liberating value of rap.

Some, who'd previously not paid any heed to Eminem, suddenly started listening.

Lose Yourself topped the US Billboard Charts for 12 weeks, and also reached number 1 in the UK and eighteen other countries. Being ostensibly a soundtrack song, the track was nominated and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003 - it was the first rap song to do so. It also bagged Grammys for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Solo Performance the same year. Quite a haul.

24 years later, and Lose Yourself remains the motivational banger, and is frequently deployed at sporting events, for competitive feats of endurance, for geeing up a crowd before a keynote speech, or just as a backing for big night out preparations.

It’s one of those tracks that, despite its autobiographical nature, has now become bigger than Eminem himself.

The perennial pump-up tune, mark our words; people will still be psyching themselves up to Lose Yourself in decades to come.

The young American guitarist had no idea what he was getting into when he went to audition for an Irish rock band. But he was desperate – and this gig was offering decent money.

It was 1974, and Scott Gorham, from Glendale, California, was in London trying to make it as a pro musician.

It was hard going. With his band Fast Buck he was playing in tiny venues and earning next to nothing. So when a friend tipped him off about this Irish band looking for a guitarist, he jumped at the chance.

As Gorham recalled in a previously unpublished interview from 2010: “I was broke. Playing in the pubs I was making £11 a week. And then this guy told me about the audition and said, ‘I think they’re gonna pay £30 a week.’ I said, ‘I’m in!’”

This was all the information he had when he walked into the band’s rehearsal space.

“I was thinking, ‘Irish rock?! What the hell is that?’ I wasn’t even really aware of Irish music at that point. I’m half Irish, my mother’s full Irish, but we never had any of that playing in the house.

“So I’m expecting a red-haired white guy, and I get a tap on the shoulder from this big black guy with a massive afro and a little moustache and an Irish accent. ‘Hey, I’m Phil!’ I thought, ‘Shit, this is gonna be interesting…’”

Phil Lynott was the charismatic bassist, lead vocalist and primary songwriter in Thin Lizzy.

The band had previously been a trio with Lynott alongside drummer Brian Downey and guitarist Eric Bell. When Gorham and a young Scottish guitarist named Brian Robertson both impressed at audition, Lynott chose to expand the band’s line-up to a quartet – and as a result, a new signature twin lead guitar sound was created.

In 1972, as a trio, Thin Lizzy had scored a hit in with their version of the traditional Irish song Whiskey In The Jar.

But they had failed to build on that success, and by 1974 the situation was dire.

Gorham explained: “The band was seriously in debt, which I didn’t know. I was blissfully naïve about the whole thing. I was just thinking, ‘Isn’t it great to be in a band?’

“Unknown to me, when we played at [London club] the Marquee the feeling was, ‘We’d better get a record deal from that show or it’s done.’ So thank God we did.”

Thin Lizzy’s first album with Gorham and Robertson was Nightlife, released on 8 November 1974. The album’s opening track, She Knows, was co-written by Gorham and Lynott. On the following album, 1975’s Fighting, Gorham had two co-writes with Lynott (King’s Vengeance and Freedom Song) and one solo credit for Ballad Of A Hard Man.

Looking back in 2010, Gorham remained highly critical of those albums. “We didn’t have a clue,” he said. “We were so fucking green we didn’t have a hope in hell.”

But with the album that followed, everything changed. That album was Jailbreak, released in 1976. Gorham co-wrote two tracks on the album, Warriors and Emerald. But it was Lynott alone who wrote the game-changer track. The Boys Are Back In Town was Thin Lizzy’s breakthrough hit, No 1 in Ireland, No 8 in the UK and No 12 in the US. It lives on as a classic rock anthem.

“The crazy thing is, that song wasn’t even planned to be on the album,” Gorham said. “Before it was a single the album was doing nothing in England at this point – or the same amount as the last two. But one day the manager said, ’It looks like we’re starting to get big radio play on The Boys Are Back In Town.’ We got this domino effect, a ton of radio stations picked it up, and then it just took off like a rocket.”

As Thin Lizzy’s profile rose, there were various benefits.

“The hotels got better,” Gorham said. “You got your own room. I didn’t have to look at Phil’s naked ass any more! Every so often I’d say to him, ‘I want you to take this party down the road, to somebody else’s room.’ He was the original 24-hour guy.

“And we actually started to see women at the shows! We’d written love songs. It wasn’t all thrash and leather and heavy riffs and all that. We went out of our way to write love songs and more lyrical, medium-tempo kind of things. We started to see a lot of women at the shows, which was nice. It had its perks.

“And Phil was in his element. He had a real charming thing about him. He loved women, absolutely loved them. And he really respected them, so he treated them well.”

There was, however, a tougher side to Phil Lynott.

“We were that kind of band that didn’t go out looking for trouble but we always got it,” Gorham shrugged. “And it would always end up in a huge fucking mess, fighting like you wouldn’t believe.

“If you fucked with Phil, he’d go for you. He wouldn’t back down. There were a fair few occasions when somebody would be fucking with me and Phil would go, ‘Let me take care of this guy for you.’ Boom! ‘Thanks, Phil!’

“Being around a guy like Phil, you toughen up real quick. I never hung around with someone like that before. Back home all my buddies were like surf guys, stoned on weed, just, ‘Cool, man!’

“But not Phil – not even if he was stoned. He could be real aggressive if you fucked with him, especially if you fucked with his country – he was so nationalistic – or if you fucked with his women. And if you fucked with Thin Lizzy, he was really gonna go for you!”

Ultimately, drugs were Phil Lynott’s undoing, and it was on the Jailbreak tour that the first signs of trouble became evident. Lynott was hospitalised with hepatitis, forcing the cancellation of shows in the US.

The band had another album out by the end of 1976 – Johnny The Fox, featuring the classic track Don’t Believe A Word.

But on the 1977 album Bad Reputation, Brian Robertson played on only three tracks and was not featured in the band photo on the cover. Robertson had missed a US tour after sustaining an injury to his hand in a brawl in a London club. His replacement on that tour was Gary Moore.

Robertson was reinstated for the Bad Reputation tour, and in 1978 the band’s live album Live And Dangerous reached No 2 in the UK chart, held off the top spot by the Grease movie soundtrack.

Live And Dangerous is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest live albums of all time.

Robertson quit Thin Lizzy during the 1978 tour, with Gary Moore again stepping in to replace him. Moore remained as a full band member for the recording of the 1979 album Black Rose. But it was during the sessions for that album in Paris that Lynott and Gorham fell into the heroin addiction that would eventually contribute to Lynott’s death.

As Gorham recalled in 2010: “In the beginning it was booze and weed. The class A stuff started to come in after a few years. Whether it was mental inspiration or physical inspiration, you were looking for help. It was a sign of the times. You wanted to get loaded.

“But going to Paris to make Black Rose was a big mistake. At that point, we’d done morphine in New York City. No big deal. But in Paris – and I’m still not sure to this day why or how it happened – all of a sudden we were just inundated with dealers.

“It was like an open door. You’d get to the studio and every other night there’d be a new dealer chopping out a line of smack or whatever.

“The first night I remember it happening, Phil gave me a call at my hotel room. ‘Hey, why don’t you come down to my room, I got something I wanna show you.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. I go in, he whips open some packets and says, ‘Hey, man, you ever seen any of that?’ I knew exactly what it was. I’d already tried it out in LA. He says, ‘You wanna try some?’ ‘Uh, yeah!’ And that was me and him gone for the next six years.”

On the Black Rose album, one song was sung by Lynott as a kind of confessional. Its title: Got To Give It Up.

As Scott Gorham sadly recalled: “Nobody thought we were gonna get strung out. This was not gonna last forever. You are going to give it up after a while – we will come to our senses. But of course we never did.”

Eric Clapton was on a mission from the start and there was no time to waste. He joined the Yardbirds in ’63, left in ’65 to join up with John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers, and within 12 months he had co-founded Cream to establish a new paradigm for blues-rock, the power trio.

He had reconfigured guitar in just three years. Little wonder it would go to his head. When some oik spray-painted “CLAPTON IS GOD” on a wall in North London the list of suspects was long but most definitely included Clapton himself. “I thought it was quite justified to be honest with you,” he told Guitarist in 1994. “I suppose I felt I deserved it for the amount of seriousness that I’d put into it.”

Clapton was serious.

His mission was to spread the gospel of blues guitar. He had been weaned on early rock ’n’ roll just as his peers were. That’s what made him aware of the electric guitar as an instrument, seeding its potential in his mind. He found his calling after hearing Freddie King for the first time.

“Listening to him had an effect on me similar to what I might feel if I were to meet an alien from outer space,” said Clapton, in his 2007 autobiography. “It simply blew my mind.”

The record in question was the 7” for Hideaway. The B-side, I Love The Woman, contained an “earth-shattering” moment, a guitar solo in which King demonstrated just how rich and wide and musically literate the blues could be. Clapton said it took his breath away.

“It was like listening to modern jazz, expressive and melodic, a unique kind of playing in which he bent the strings and produced sounds that gave me the shivers,” he said.

Eureka! The electric guitar could be the lead instrument, on an even keel with the vocals.

There were other formative influences. George Barnes’ playing on Connie Francis’ Lipstick On Your Collar made an impression. James Burton’s countrified styled jived with Clapton’s sensibility, too, and it fit in with this recognition that it was all interconnected, and the blues held it all together.

Not that the world was paying attention. A four-piece modern beat combo out of Liverpool was having much success. They were making the weather. Clapton thought this was “despicable”. Seeing all these young people succumbing to Beatlemania was a ‘hello, sheeple!’ moment. How could the music buying public at large confer godlike status upon them when Clapton’s heroes went to their graves unsung?

We shall allow ourselves a wry smile at Clapton taking umbrage at people deifying another artist then move on.

This pique played its part in refocusing a young teenaged Clapton when he got back in the rehearsal room with the Roosters, talking about the blues, honing his chops alongside fellow guitarist Tom McGuinness – who can take the credit for introducing Clapton to King.

“I was interested in the white rock ’n’ rollers until I heard Freddie King – and then I was over the moon,” Clapton told Guitarist. “I knew that was where I belonged – finally. That was serious, proper guitar playing and I haven’t changed my mind ever since. I still listen to it and I get the same boost now that I did then.”

Back then the gigs came easy. Clapton made his bones playing clubs, “his spiritual stomping ground”. They all did. There were not enough bands to go around. If you were good enough, you got a gig, and those who could really play could make a bit of money. As a student of the blues, Clapton operated as though he had secret knowledge, a deeper cultural wellspring to draw from.

He says it was the only education he got, falling down the rabbit hole, learning these cats’ names and their stories, and how blues and soul, R&B and jazz all fit together, knotted with the histories of those who created the sounds.

“I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music,” Clapton told Guitarist. “But for some reason it did something to me – it resonated.

“Then I found out later that they were black and they were from the Deep South, and that started my education. In fact the only education I ever really had was finding out about blues. I took a kind of elementary fundamental education in art, but it didn’t rivet my attention in the same way blues did.”

As any teacher will tell you, a motivated student is a good student. Clapton applied himself. This education went hand in hand with learning to play the guitar, developing a musical vocabulary and playing style that would soon be turned lose on the Yardbirds, that great mid ‘60s petrie dish of percolating guitar genius from which Jeff Bech, Jimmy Page and Clapton all emerged.

“I wanted to know everything,” Clapton continued. “I spent all of my mid to late teens and early twenties studying this music; studying the geography of it, the chronology of it, the roots, the different regional influences, how everybody inter-related, how long people lived, how quickly they learnt things, how many songs they had of their own and what songs were shared around…”

Clapton found a place to put this knowledge in the autumn of 1963. The Yardbirds would be the perfect vehicle for his obsession with Chicago blues. It was a band who took this stuff seriously. They would play Willie Dixon, Billy Boy Arnold and Sonny Boy Williamson tracks, Clapton taking over on lead vocals for Williamson’s Good Morning, School Girl. They would jam out Bo Diddley’s I’m A Man, “rave-ups” as they called it then.

This was when Clapton acquired the sobriquet Slowhand. He’d break a string onstage and change it right there and then, and the crowd would treat it like a tennis pro challenging a line call, a slow hand clap would ripple through the audience.

Unfazed, Clapton got straight back at it. But he had itchy feet. When people actually started to really like the Yardbirds (the Graham Gouldman-written For Your Love went Top Ten) it was time to leave. The self-styled “anarchist” wanted to back underground, there he would find John Mayall waiting for him.

And more often than not, wait for Clapton is what Mayall did.

“I was so unreliable, so irresponsible,” recalled Clapton. “I would sometimes just not show up at gigs and that’s how Peter Green was asked to play with John – because I wasn’t there.”

Clapton was just 20 years old when he joined the Bluesbreakers. His Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amp sound was making waves all the way over the Atlantic.

The similarly minded Billy Gibbons’ ears pricked up. The Texan was moved by ‘the Beano Album’, and this being the pre-internet era he did what everyone else did at the time and scanned the back of the album sleeve to for idea on how Clapton got this thrilling tone.

“The sound was just so fierce and so attractive,” said Gibbons, speaking to Guitarist in 2021. “The appeal drew everyone’s curiosity to attempt to suss out where this sound was coming from. The photograph of Eric on the back cover was a clue. We said, ‘Ah, look in the background, there’s a Marshall, but it’s not very big, and ah, look at that. They don’t make those any more – but it’s one of those Les Pauls!’”

The Beano ‘Burst Les Paul became infamous. It helped establish the sound that everyone was chasing. Clapton had been searching for something to compete with Freddie King’s tone and had eventually found it in a cranked Marshall 2x12.

That alchemical combination was broken up after the Beano went AWOL, stolen from a church hall in ’66. Gibson only made these sunburst Les Pauls from 1958 to 1960.

There were not that many of them, making each and everyone precious in its own right. And yet this one, which had acquired mythical status in Clapton’s hands, was gone. That’s the thing when people think that you’re God, they all want a piece of you.

Speaking to Classic Rock, the Beano album’s producer, Mike Vernon, remembers Clapton as Clapton himself did; he was difficult. He was particularly uncompromising over how they would record. It had to be live, but at the volume he played at the guitar would bleed into mix.

“It took a while to get a sound that everybody was happy with, especially Eric,” said Vernon. “But everybody had to take on board that we were going into an unknown era, nobody had ever witnessed in the Decca studios somebody coming into the studio, set up their guitar and amp and play at that volume.

“People in the canteen behind the studio were complaining about the noise. Normally they would never hear it, but it was travelling round the studio complex. People were coming down to the studio to see what was going on.”

What was going on was a miracle. Mayall had called the tunes. He was the leader. Clapton applied is magic, heaving the blues into popular culture, inspiring generations of players. Nothing would be the same again. His successor in the Bluesbreakers, Peter Green, had a few ideas also how to take it further. The British blues boom had officially started.

For the record, Vernon believes Lonely Years, the seven-inch that Clapton and Mayall cut in ’65 for he and his brother’s imprint, Purdah, was Slowhand’s definitive recording.

“Lonely Years was the finest effort Eric ever put on record,” he told Classic Rock. “It just sums up exactly what Eric was about at that time – that real down-home feel. That record was the closest I came to a real Chicago sound.”

That was exactly was what Clapton was chasing. And if that made him an elitist with a god complex, so be it. At least it was with the best intentions.

“I thought everyone else was either in it just to be on Top Of The Pops or Ready Steady Go, or to score girls or for some dodgy reason,” he said. “I was in it to save the world. I wanted to tell the world about blues and to get it right. Even then I thought that I was on some kind of mission, so in a way I thought, ‘Yes, I am God; quite right‘.

“My head was huge. I was unbearably arrogant and not a fun person to be around most of the time because I was so superior and very judgmental. I didn’t have time for anything that didn’t fit into my scheme of things.”

Keep in mind his next project saw him team up with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce for a project he envisaged as a straight-up blues trio but was anything but.

Cream was another miracle, musically and existentially. How did they manage to hold it together for three long years?

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

After years trying to decide just what kind of act they wanted to be, the Pet Shop Boys eventually settled on a formula that would yield some the 1980s' most enduring hits.

Following the unsuccessful release of their first single West End Girls in 1984 the track was re-recorded and reissued the following year, rushing straight to number one in the UK chart with similar success in other territories. Pop fans were besotted by a winning combo of sharp lyricism, clubby energy, and vocalist Neil Tennant's charismatic presence.

This was just the beginning of what would soon grow into a truly exceptional career, which is still in rude health over 40 years later.

Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe were quick to embrace new gear and sampling techniques, utilising the most innovative electronic instruments of the day to create a slew of timeless pop anthems; Rent, What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Domino Dancing, Always on My Mind, the list goes on.

Their biggest tracks would have enormous audience appeal yet were imbued with an intelligence that outclassed their chart contemporaries.

A former music journalist, Tennant explored class, sexuality, politics and the intricacies of the human heart.

Their extensive use of the Emulator II (and accompanying library), Fairlight CMI, Linn Drum, with Roland Super Jupiter synth meant that their sounds too, were truly cutting edge for their day. But, the Pet Shop Boys weren’t just twiddling knobs for the fun of it.

They were transmitting the sounds of the most hyper-intense clubs into the living rooms of Thatcher's Britain.

We could pick any number of PSB’s top tier to examine musically, but their enormous and iconic hit It’s a Sin from 1987 is a particularly fascinating one to look closer at. It draws upon some well-known musical techniques, extending back hundreds of years.

When Neil and Chris started working together in 1982, Neil made use of some redundancy money to rent a small demo studio in Camden, where the two would work on Fridays and Saturdays.

This was the demo location for all of the songs on their critically-acclaimed first album, Please (1986) and many of the songs for the equally acclaimed second album, Actually (1987).

Tennant would man a four track mixer (presumably some form of Tascam PortaStudio) while Lowe would play synth and electric piano. Tennant would also play the odd bit of acoustic piano when required. But mainly, Neil's job was to create the toplines and the lyrics.

Studio owner, Ray Roberts, was very impressed with PSB's early demos, offering them use of the main studio, in return for a percentage of the publishing on the songs. This seemed like a fair deal - particularly given the duo’s lack of financial stability at the time.

Between the ages of 11 and 18, Neil Tennant had attended a Catholic school. In line with the orthodoxy that was instilled in all students, he was taught that sex (outside of marriage) was a sin.

This particularly draconian teaching resurfaced in Tennant’s head when he heard Lowe play a hymn-like chord progression. Suddenly, the basis of It’s a Sin's lyrical theme crystallised in his mind. Although its lyric was an honest admittance of the shame he felt for having absconded from his school's teachings, the music told another story. It was a bombastic rebuttal to the judgmental nature of such prudish restriction.

When I look back upon my life
It's always with a sense of shame
I've always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who

A demo of the first version of the song was recorded with New York’s hi-NRG producer Bobby Orlando, but this version was ultimately shelved.

However, there was a sense that with the right hands and ears on the mix, It’s a Sin had the potential to be something special.

Working alongside producers Julian Mendelsohn and Stephen Hague, Tennant and Lowe transformed the song into a show-stopping pop epic. The re-worked mix was suitably dense, incorporating recordings of ambient sounds captured while visiting the Brompton Oratory, and even included elements of a sung Mass, which was recorded at Westminster Cathedral.

Strangely, they also included samples from an Apollo rocket launch - from the original commentary provided by NASA. Was there something slightly Freudian about that choice, we wonder?

The song sprawled out into a monster of considerable heft, maximising the hi-NRG feel of the original demo whilst daubing it in a dramatic gothic cowl.

“It’s a Sin at its heart is a heavy metal record,” Tennant told the Financial Times. “There is a huge link between hi-NRG music and heavy metal: the urgency, the chords, the slightly histrionic melody. You could do a medley of It’s a Sin with The Final Countdown by Europe; in fact, I don’t know why we haven’t done that.”

Upon release as Actually’s lead single on June 15th 1987, It’s a Sin became the band’s second UK number one after West End Girls. By the end of the year, it’d be the country’s eighth biggest-selling single.

Let's look under the hood at just how It’s a Sin works.

Set in the keyboardist’s favoured key of C minor, the main verse structure is pretty much entirely dependent upon a musical tool which relates back to the late 1600s…

The application of the circle of fifths is clearly evident in the song. This approach is based on the principle of one chord naturally leading to the next, with the distance between these natural shifts always being a 5th.

You can count an interval of a 5th by simply counting in a step-wise movement, with the notes you start and end on being notes one and five respectively. For example, if you are on a chord of C, count 5 notes upward and you reach the chord of G, and so on.

In the case of It’s a Sin, PSB use a descending circle of 5ths for each verse, so our chords follow a downward cycle with the sequence - Cm, Fm, Bb, Eb, and Ab - before breaking out of the cycle to use Fm and G, before repeating the sequence again.

It's worth noting that this song is not alone in its adoption of this musical device. You will hear it used in songs as diverse as the jazz standard Fly Me To The Moon and Gloria Gaynor's disco classic I Will Survive, alongside Basket Case by Green Day and Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix.

That's quite a legacy for a theoretical trick first established in the 17th century!

Above and beyond its basic musical employment, the reason we continue to love this sequence is pure physics.

The ‘perfect 5th’ slots beautifully into the naturally occurring set of frequencies, which are described as the harmonic series. When these harmonics and overtones are used in a musical context, there is something very organic and ultimately pleasing from a listener’s perspective.

When blasted at volume into our ears - as they are in the context of It's a Sin's energetic arrangement - that feeling of inevitability is maximised. It's as if the song were always meant to be.

The chorus section is heralded by the arrival of trumpeting synth brass, which relates back to our home key of Cm, alternating with a chord of Ab/C.

We also hear alternating chords between Fm and G, which are slightly unnatural bedfellows, but add a beautiful sense of discordance, as a reaction to the verse.

Once we reach the bridge section, there is still a heavy reliance upon the key chord of Cm, which is held for two bars, before shifting to a chord of Ebm. This could be regarded as an unrelated chord, thanks to the presence of the note Gb, which is a tritone away from the note C. Its presence here adds angst and fury, before moving to Gm and back to Cm, and a turnaround using a chord of Bb.

Beyond this effective musicology, It’s a Sin’s true power comes from the impact of Tennant’s immaculate and distinctive voice - and, of course, the bravery of his religiously inspired theme.

Contending with this type of repressive, religiously-sanctioned prudishness in a pop context at a time of hyper-tension (and hyper-conservatism) wasn't something to be done lightly. It was a positively incendiary move.

It's a Sin's underlying rejection of imposed restraint had particular resonance due to the ongoing global Aids crisis, where once again the idea of sex - particularly gay sex - being shameful was asserted daily across sections of the British media.

The song’s righteous fire was perfectly visually articulated by the Derek Jarman-directed video, which featured Tennant facing the judgement of a church inquisition. It’d be the first of many collaborations between Jarman and the pair.

However, not everybody was a fan. Several newspapers were critical of the song’s seemingly anti-religious undercurrent, and the very school that had inspired Tennant's words - St. Cuthbert's Grammar School - criticised Tennant’s oft-repeated press mentions of the school’s strict orthodoxy as the basis for the song.

“It is very unfortunate that Neil has painted this distorted picture of his school days and the things he was taught,” the school said in a statement, published in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. “It is very hurtful. It is a long time since he has been here and there have been a lot of changes since then in the Church."

Years later, in a 2009 interview with The Atlantic. Neil reflected on a song that had grown into, for a certain generation, a more meaningful hymn than anything they’d had to learn in school

“When we brought out It’s a Sin, it was quite interesting, because people took it really seriously,” Neil said. “The song was written in about 15 minutes, and was intended as a camp joke and it wasn’t something I consciously took very seriously. Sometimes I wonder if there was more to it than I thought at the time, but the local parish priest in Newcastle delivered a sermon on it, and reflected on how the Church changed from the promise of a ghastly hell to the message of love.”

If you feel like your self-confidence is being undermined by ads and social media posts calling attention to supposed weak points in your music production, you’re not alone. Here’s why this kind of negative marketing can be damaging to your creativity.

Musicians and producers don’t have it easy in the 21st century. Not in the sense that making music is more difficult now than it used to be: in fact, the opposite is almost certainly true. What is challenging, though, is the number of different roles artists are asked to take on when making a song. Once upon a time, an artist merely wrote and performed the song: then there was the producer, the engineer, and of course the mixing and mastering engineers on hand to create a finished product.

Nowadays, of course, many of us choose to do all of this ourselves – and without the benefit of formal training, most amateur producers will turn to the internet for guidance. But here, all too often we’re assaulted with a veritable waterfall of negative marketing, with both companies and influencers telling us repeatedly that our skills aren't up to scratch and our music is terrible.

Just run a quick search on YouTube for the term “your mix sucks”, and you’ll see just how many negative videos are targeted at producers learning their craft. This constant inundation of anxiety-inducing content — much of it also offering contradictory advice — can have a serious impact on our wellbeing, our creativity and our ability to make music.

Music-making has been proven to be beneficial to our health; it can also assist in things like addiction recovery and psychotherapy. But on the flip side of this is the relentlessly negative messaging that many of us face on a daily basis, threatening to undermine the very thing that’s supposed to give us joy. Here’s what’s really going on – and how you can learn to avoid it.

The science behind negative marketing

When asked why influencers take such a critical and negative approach, content creator and soundtrack composer Dave Hilowitz answers succinctly: “because it works.”

“As artists, we all have our insecurities,” he continues. “For most people, producing music is an incremental process: you have an idea, you record it, you take a break, etc. At some point in that process, it’s common to feel self-doubt. And it’s at moments like these that seeing a YouTube video that says something like, ‘Your song sucks. Here’s why!’ is going to seem like an omen.”

Dave is right – it does work. Humans have been advertising and marketing for more than a hundred years, so there’s a vast amount of data available from psychological studies that shows what happens psychologically when we engage with this kind of content, and the reason why it’s so effective is because it plays on our emotions.

Advertisers use a broad arsenal of tactics to convince us to buy products and services, many of these relying on fear-based marketing and emotional manipulation, and social media has taken this to an even more damaging level.

“Algorithms designed to maximize engagement often prioritize content that elicits strong emotional responses, whether positive or negative,” psychologist Howard J. Rankin says in Psychology Today. “This can create echo chambers where users are continuously exposed to content… making it difficult to escape the cycle of manipulation.”

“I can’t stand it,” Dave says. “It feels like a cheap psychological trick. Tactics like that are, in a very real way, making people’s online experience worse.”

The more that music-makers are exposed to these tactics, the more they're processed at a subconscious level. “The Low Attention Processing Model argues that because we are very accustomed to seeing adverts on a daily basis, our minds stop processing them consciously and leave them to the subconscious to deal with,” explains Adfree Cities, an organization pushing for public spaces free of advertisements.

“I’ll almost never click on a video that has a negative title or thumbnail, and even seeing them pop up in my feed makes me feel worse,” agrees Dave. “The message from the thumbnail gets internalized even if I never watch the video, and it’s frustrating because the videos that do this often have really great advice that could just have been packaged a little bit differently.“

The parasocial nature of our interaction – where as consumers of content we begin to feel an emotional attachment with social media influencers – compounds this. “According to parasocial interaction theory, [influencers] foster a sense of intimacy with their followers by mimicking real-life relationships, creating emotional connections,” one study notes. We grow to trust them, which makes their words more powerful, more persuasive and even more damaging to our creativity.

“Fear can be a powerful motivator”

One of the most pernicious ways that negative marketing can elicit anxiety and self-doubt is by convincing us to work in some arbitrary “right” way: if a mix or song isn’t hitting perfectly, the message implies, it must be because it’s "wrong".

“There's a genuine fear among music production beginners of doing things wrong, and I've seen that come up time and again through my own audience surveys,” says Sara Carter, the mixing engineer and content creator behind Simply Mixing. “On YouTube, channel success comes down to getting someone to actually click, based on your title and thumbnail, and a problem-focused angle can feel more urgent and immediate than a solution-based one. Fear can be a powerful motivator.”

Further issues may arise over confusion around the term “mixing engineer”. “There's something about the word ‘engineering’ that makes people think it's all fixed rules and correct answers,” continues Sara, “but audio engineering is also very much a creative endeavor, and that changes things significantly. There are a handful of technical principles worth taking seriously – gain-staging being the obvious one – but beyond that, the so-called rules are really just starting points or guardrails.”

Another trap that’s easy to fall into is being convinced that you need the right gear — and that if you don’t have it, your music won’t be worth listening to.

“On today’s internet,” says Dave, “there are many people who will tell you that your music will never sound good unless you are using some special mic preamp or a professional-grade audio interface with a high-quality DAC. As a person who tried a lot of different stuff, I know that many of the upgrades that are being recommended have had very little impact on the sound of my music.”

Compounding the problem is the sheer amount of conflicting information available. It’s hard to do the right thing when what’s “right” seems to change whoever you ask. One so-called expert may tell you to never put delay after reverb in an effects chain, while another will swear that that’s what all the pros do. Knowing which route to take then becomes impossible, which can lead to anxiety and frustration.

“YouTube is a great resource, but it's fragmented,” says Sara. “Choose one or two people to follow and stick with them long enough to actually apply what they teach, rather than constantly chasing the next tip. That consistency helps build confidence and makes the whole process more satisfying.”

Something else to keep in mind is that just because someone is giving advice, that doesn’t mean their advice is correct. Influencers often don't become popular because of their knowledge or expertise, but because of their ability to build audiences by creating relationships with viewers.

“By establishing intimate parasocial relationships with their followers, [influencers] can alchemize into powerful thought leaders,” the aforementioned study notes. “However, they are not necessarily better informed than anyone else. Nor do they command greater expertise than experts. This chasm between influence and credibility can breed misinformation and disinformation.”

How can we avoid this trap?

The fundamental problem is a double-edged sword: we turn to sites like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to gain skills and increase our confidence, but the marketing tactics we’re faced with on those platforms often have the opposite effect. Many of us are reduced to states of crippling doubt, and our music and creativity suffer as a result.

How can we avoid this trap? It’s tempting to say to “turn off your phone” but this, as we all have likely experienced, is easier said than done – and it’s not always practical.

“One of the best things you can do to cut through the noise is stick to one or two mentors rather than trying to absorb everything from everywhere,” advises Sara. When in doubt, look beyond influencer advice and trust your own ears. “A good reference track also helps here,” she adds. “It gives you a fixed point of comparison so you're not making decisions in a vacuum.”

You can also try rejigging your algorithm. If your feed is dominated by videos pushing negativity, stop engaging with them. The reason they’re popping up is that the algorithm noticed you were watching them and pushed similar content in your direction.

Spend a few days pruning your feed, engaging with content that has a positive spin, and this will tell the app what you don’t want to see. Without the onslaught of negativity, you may find your confidence rising; and remember, even professionals — the ones that you’re watching for information — have moments of self-doubt.

“Early in my professional career I had very little self-confidence and spent a lot of time comparing myself to the people around me,” says Sara. “It took me a long time to recognize it as impostor syndrome. So when I'm teaching, I want people to feel like they can do this, because most of the time they're already doing better than they think. A home studio producer who's passionate and willing to put in the work absolutely can achieve professional-sounding results.”

Dave recommends going easy on yourself when evaluating your own work, and keeping in mind that a song doesn’t have to be perfect. “Be kind to yourself,” he advises. “So much of writing and recording music is about learning to manage your own emotions. It’s very important to learn to be critical of your work without hurting your own feelings.

“If you feel like you’ve written a lousy song, it doesn’t mean you are bad at writing music in general, it just means this particular song isn’t working – which is fine! You have to make some bad music in order to make good music.”

A plea to brands and influencers

Advertisers and influencers, you have a choice. You can contribute to the anxiety and self-doubt of the music production community by appealing to their deepest fears, or you can take a less self-serving approach and strive to create confidence in your audience and your customers.

This kind of messaging may even benefit both parties in the long run. Aside from the fact that fear-inducing content can lead to heightened anxiety and stress, studies have shown that though it's initially effective, it can ultimately lead to "defensive avoidance", where consumers ignore the content to protect their mental wellbeing. In other words, short-term gains achieved by scaring your audience into engagement may eventually backfire.

This positive and encouraging approach worked for Sara and for Simply Mixing. “I've experimented with more problem-focused content and it's never landed as well with my particular audience as the solution-based stuff. Honestly, that suits me fine, because those videos felt a bit jarring to make.

“I’m naturally a glass-half-full person and I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt,” she concludes. “I genuinely want to help people overcome problems – that's what makes the difference for them long-term.”

It happened 40 years ago, but Andrew Farriss, keyboard player and founding member of INXS, can still remember the moment when he and singer Michael Hutchence began working together on the most emotive hit song the band ever recorded.

Farriss tells MusicRadar: “I wrote the music for it on a piano at home, and some time later Michael heard me playing on it on someone else’s piano at a friend’s house. He said, ‘I like that. When we get home to Sydney let’s finish that.’

“So originally it was just a piano song with a vocal. A very simple song, really, in that sense. And Michael came up with a lyric and called it Never Tear Us Apart.”

There is, however, a third person whom Farriss acknowledges as a key collaborator on this song.

English producer Chris Thomas had begun working with INXS on the 1985 album Listen Like Thieves.

That album gave the band a major international profile outside of Australia, so Thomas was retained for the follow-up, Kick, which would yield five hit singles – Need You Tonight, New Sensation, Mystify, Devil Inside and Never Tear Us Apart.

Farriss recalls: “Chris Thomas and I had a conversation. We had a lot of them, actually, because we made three studio albums with Chris as a producer.

“But with that song in particular, Never Tear Us Apart, I’ll give a lot of credit to Chris Thomas, because we had recorded it first in a traditional rock style with mainly guitars. But Chris said to me, ‘Can you play what you’re playing on the keyboard with a string sound?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ So I experimented a bit with different sounds and things, and the sound that I came up with is what you can hear on the record.

“So it was really Chris’s suggestion as a record producer, and it was absolutely genius. Very clever.”

Farriss admits that he wasn’t entirely sure of this new arrangement of the song when they had finished the recording.

“It sounded like it was from outer space compared to what most bands were doing around that time,” he says. “I told Chris, ‘This song sounds nothing like the rest of our album.’ The rest of Kick was quite funky, which I really liked. We all liked all that.

“I said, ‘Never Tear Us Apart sounds like an old 1950s ballad with strings in the background. It really doesn’t sound contemporary.’ And Chris said, ‘Yeah, but that’s what makes it sound so great, mate!’”

The drama in this arrangement was matched by the emotional depth in Hutchence’s lyrics and lead vocal.

In 2019 – 22 years after Hutchence’s suicide – the documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence included an audio interview, the date unspecified, in which the singer discussed the words he sang in Never Tear Us Apart and confirmed the identity of the song’s subject.

“It’s kinda personal,” Hutchence said. “I don't make up love songs, so… That’s definitely a song for a girl called Michele.”

Referring to the title of the song, he added with a laugh: “She knows, but we’re not together anymore, so it doesn’t work, does it?”

The woman in question was Michele Bennett, an Australian film producer, with whom Hutchence was in a relationship from 1982 to 1987.

It was reported after Hutchence’s death on 22 November 1997 that his last phone call had been to Bennett. Hutchence’s sister Tina believed that had her brother lived, he and Bennett would eventually have married.

Reflecting on all of this, Andrew Farriss tells MusicRadar: “I think it was a very important lyric for Michael.”

He recalls: “When we first met as school kids, Michael was much more interested in lyrics and poetry than in singing. I don’t think he was that interested at all in singing, but he was very interested in writing lyrics and poetry.

“At that time I was already in school bands. I was writing songs, I was writing lyrics. But I began to recognise with Michael that he really was passionate about writing lyrics. And he got so good at it as he went along.”

Never Tear Us Apart was released as a single on 13 June 1988. Surprisingly it only reached No 24 in the UK, but it was a top 10 hit in Canada, Netherlands, Belgium and the US. The song has been streamed more than half a billion times on Spotify alone.

On 27 November 1997, Hutchence’s funeral at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney ended with Never Tear Us Apart playing as the coffin was carried away by Farriss and the other members of INXS along with the singer’s brother Rhett.

Farriss says now: “One thing about Michael’s lyric writing, one of the things I think that really stood the test of time with a lot of INXS songs, is that his lyrics were very poignant. He didn’t have to say very much, but you knew exactly what he was talking about.”