Monday January 08, 2007 Rob Halford by John 5
I loved going to concerts when I was about 13, and one of the bands I used to see was Judas Priest. One time, I remember I was waiting outside their hotel in the rain after a show – and I saw Rob Halford coming towards me. So I was like [hysterical fanboy...
Sunday January 07, 2007 Eddie Van Halen by Herman Li
With all the finger-tapping stuff he did on the first Van Halen album [self-titled and released in 1978], Edward Van Halen changed the face of rock music. Everyone knows that. But Van Halen were never just a band for musos; I first got into them through...
Saturday January 06, 2007 Eddie Vedder by Chris Carrabba
In high school a friend named John and I got into music and started to play guitar together. We were both 16, loathed what we heard on the radio, and were mad about punk rock. When we saw on MTV that Pearl Jam were about to release an album called Ten we...
Friday January 05, 2007 Frank Zappa by Mike Portnoy
He’s my master, my all-time hero. I have his moustache tattooed on my leg. Seriously, my leg is a shrine to my five favourite artists: the Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Zappa. A bit different to wearing your influences on your sleeve, eh?
I...
Thursday January 04, 2007 John Mayall by Trevor Bolder
After leaving school I began playing the blues, as opposed to pop music. Because my father was a musician, my brother and I got into The Yardbirds. But then in 1966 John Mayall released Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton and everything changed. That guitar sound...
Wednesday January 03, 2007 Elvis Presley by Ian Gillan
I lost interest in Elvis Presley after he made the Blue Hawaii film [in 1961] and went to Las Vegas, but in his prime nobody could touch him. Michael Parkinson once asked the famous New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa about the greatest voice she’d ever heard,...
Tuesday January 02, 2007 John Lennon by Brian May
I wasn't allowed to go to see The Beatles in concert when I was a kid. My parents thought pop concerts were attended by the wrong sort of people. So I never got to see the 20th century’s biggest phenomenon live. But from the moment I heard Love Me Do on the...
Monday January 01, 2007 Iggy Pop by Juliette Lewis
I only became an Iggy fan in the last few years, but he’s a very important person to me. He’s the heart of rock’n’roll. I always end up going back to those Iggy & The Stooges records because they’re timeless.
If you look at his face, you know that he’s earned...
Sunday December 31, 2006 Jimi Hendrix by Phil Collen
I was obviously very aware of Jimi Hendrix in the early 1970s. My cousin had got me into rock music, and he was like: “Hendrix is fucking great!” And I did like him, but it wasn’t until much later – until way after I’d started playing the guitar – that I...
Saturday December 30, 2006 James Hetfield by Jerry Cantrell
Earlier this year, me and Sean [Kinney, Alice In Chains drummer] got together with James Hetfield and Robert Trujillo [Metallica bassist] to do this benefit show in Los Angeles. James actually asked to sing Them Bones and Would? and I was thinking: “Right on!”...
Friday December 29, 2006 Jack Bruce by Leslie West
Cream are the reason I play guitar the way I do. This is the honest truth; from Fresh Cream [1966] onwards, I wore out about six copies of each of their albums. As a composer Jack Bruce has written some of rock’s most famous songs, but his voice and bass...
Thursday December 28, 2006 Joey Ramone by Jesse Malin
The first time I saw the Ramones was in a magazine called Rock Scene. Here were these four guys in ripped jeans and leather jackets, and to me, a little kid living in Queens, the same place they were from, they were like a gang. I bought the first record after...
Tuesday December 26, 2006 David Bowie by Rick Wakeman
I was very fortunate to have worked as a session musician during four of the most productive years of music, 1968-1972. In that time I worked with some of the all time greats such as Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, T. Rex, Elton John, John Williams and Cat Stevens to...
Monday December 25, 2006 Johnny Cash by Chris Cornell
What I think of as a true rock icon is someone who’s living it all the time. It’s not just the way they are onstage and it’s not just the way they are offstage. Even though to a lot of people he isn’t necessarily part of the rock genre, Johnny Cash had every...
Sunday December 24, 2006 Miles Davis by Carl Palmer
Perhaps it seems odd for someone known as a rock drummer to pick a jazz trumpeter. Well, Miles Davis fascinated me from the stuff he did with in the early 1950s with John Coltrane onwards. Davis was an absolute leader. Besides his playing having an...
