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Joan Armatrading

The singer-songwriter on her new album, inspirations, being a 'band', what her key was about, meeting Nelson Mandela...

Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)

It was the power ballad to end all power ballads, and 30 years later people still ponder what the it’ is that the singer wouldn't do.

Kris Kristofferson: June 22, 1936 - September 28, 2024

Kris Kristofferson, the iconic, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and actor who played a key role in advancing a strand of country music into a more raw and confessional direction now recognised as outlaw country, has died peacefully at his home in Maui, surrounded by family. He was 88 years old.

"I have come a very long way in the last two-and-a-bit years"

Back from the brink: the Thunder vocalist who survived major medical trauma returns.

EVER MEET LEMMY?

He's heard Lemmy's unreleased solo album, had dinner with Chris Holmes, told Paul McCartney to get a round in, been told gangster Reggie Kray wanted to have a word with him... He is Dogs D'Amour frontman Tyla 7 Pallas, and these are some of his stories.

"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"

With their ninth studio album In Murmuration, Finnish rockers Von Hertzen Brothers have replaced their erstwhile prog epics for a more honest approach to songwriting reflecting their personal lives.

IN THE BEGINNING

With previously unseen photographs from their early days as featured in the new Queen | Collector's Edition, Sir Brian May talks us through sights of the band in the early seventies.

BASS-IC INSTINCT

Plucked from obscurity in 1975 to be in David Bowie's band, then unceremoniously out of the picture five years later, bassist George Murray looks back on his time with the Thin White Duke.

High Rollers

When Ronnie Wood, the Stones and some A-list mates holed up at his house to help with his solo album, it sparked a days-long party, a Rolling Stones hit and the last album by arguably their finest line-up.

THE NAME OF THE GAM

When ABBA-mad Opeth leader Mikael Akerfeldt met one of their singers, he lost it”. She didn’t sing on their new concept album, but some other, perhaps unlikely, big names did.

YOU GOT TO ROLL WITH PUNCHES TO GET TO WHAT'S REAL

In an exclusive extract from his touching new autobiography Brothers - a tribute to Eddie (see p.88 for the review) - Alex Van Halen recalls the recording of 1984.

WHAT'S THAT SOUND?

Welcome to 1984: it was the album that would see Van Halen straddle the planet like a rock colossus, but it would also mark the end of the original line-up featuring charismatic talisman Dave Lee Roth. This is its story.

Dream Theater

With friends (and bandmates) reunited for the band's 40th anniversary, it'll be a special night for fans at Wembley Arena.

Royal Republic

Livewire, turbo-harmonised, disco-rocking Swedes get ready for upgraded UK and Europe dates.

GOTTA KEEP MOVIN'

In 1968 the MC5's Kick Out The Jams album was a grenade thrown into the music scene. In the decades since, Wayne Kramer acted as guardian of the band's legacy until he died earlier this year, after making one final album.

THE KILLING FLOOR

Now revered as a linchpin moment in the history of the blues, Howlin' Wolf's London sessions in 1970, with a superstar cast that included some of England's rock royalty, came out of a chance encounter several months earlier at a gig in San Francisco.

ROGUE TRADER

Recording almost everything on his latest album himself and putting it out on his own label, Tuk Smith followed the adage that if you want something doing properly, do it yourself.

BILL WYMAN

WW2 evacuee, RAF airman, Rolling Stone, hit solo artist, bandleader, author, restaurateur, archaeologist, cricketer... Even just his time in The Greatest Rock'N'Roll Band In The World is storied, but there's been much, much more to his life than that.

LIFE IS A JOURNEY

For some people, travelling life's road is easy. For lifelong worrier Myles Kennedy it's anything but. But with his brand new solo album The Art Of Letting Go he's learning just what that title says.

ALL ABOUT BEING LOUD

In an exclusive extract from his Fast Eddie biography Make My Day, long-time Motörhead associate Kris Needs looks back at the making of their game-changing Overkill album and the subsequent killing-it UK tour.

Nikki Sixx

The Mötley Crüe bassist on making new music, replacing Mick Mars, work-life balance, learning when to say no...

Bobbie Dazzle

Meet the West Midlands singer bringing back upbeat music, fun and fashion of the 70s.

Finger Eleven

They might have just achieved their goal of making an album that sounds like it's from both the past and the future.

The Southern River Band

Meet the Aussie rock'n'rollers with fire in their bellies and classic rock in their veins.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd

The US bluesman on the spark of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the creep of Al, and smoking with Bonamassa.

Iron Maiden Reach The Big Five-O

Band to celebrate with biggest ever UK headliner, and world tour in 2025/26.

"WE'RE STEPPING BACK FROM THE SOAP OPERA"

The Quireboys are now The Black Eyed Sons.

Bright Sparks - Undertakers, band managers and museum workers by day, pop-charged rockers by night, The Hot Damn! are a gang you'd want to join.

Gill Montgomery has come straight from the mortuary. Her mortuary, to be precise. Some rockers wait tables, others teach music or pick up temp work. The Hot Damn! frontwoman looks after dead people.“It’s interesting,” she muses, of her day job running a funeral home in South East London. “It’s very hands-on. I think you’re either for it or you’re not.”

Motörhead

“Once we'd cracked the formula of how to work together on Overkill,\" said Eddie Clarke, that's when we really started to take off.” And it was all thanks to Phil Taylor's new drum kit.

LET'S DANCE

Dialling back on the aggressive approach that has helped bring Idles this far, and putting swing to the stomp, their new album is intended to make you shake a leg rather than a fist