“If you’re in your 50s, guess what? It’s now our responsibility to step up and make sure that this country is handed to our children and our grandchildren in a condition that’s better than the way that we found it.”
The post Staind’s Aaron Lewis On Being Vocal About His Right-Wing Political Beliefs: “It’s My Responsibility At My Age To Now Be The Steward Of This Country” appeared first on Theprp.com.
Doug Goldstein, the former manager of Guns N’ Roses, has died, aged 65.
Goldstein began working with the Los Angeles hard rock legends as a tour manager, during the Appetite For Destruction touring cycle, before being promoted to the position of co-manager alongside Alan Niven. After Niven parted company with the band, when Axl Rose reportedly refused to continue working on the Use Your Illusion albums while he remained manager, Goldstein took over the role, steering the group through the Use Your Illusion era, and the original group’s splintering.
In 2001, Iron Maiden’s former management company Sanctuary purchased Doug Goldstein’s Big FD Entertainment, and Merck Mercuriadis took after the group’s management. A statement at the time declared that while Axl Rose has not fired Doug Goldstein, the pair were “taking a break from each other.”
Goldstein’s LinkedIn profile reads: “As a veteran in the music industry, Doug has learned that much of one’s success depends on equal parts talent, great management, and building core relationships.”
Alan Niven has paid tribute to his former friend, saying “It’s very sad. 65 is not old. I will be lighting a candle for him tonight.”
Last year, Alan Niven filed a lawsuit against Guns N’ Roses, claiming that they’ve made “repeated threats” against him in order to halt the publication of his memoir, Sound N’ Fury: Rock’N’Roll Stories.
The biography, which Classic Rock described as “like Mickey Spillane stubbing cigarettes out on the hard-boiled corpse of James Ellroy,” was originally scheduled to be published in July 2025 but has yet to emerge, amid rumours that lawyers for Axl Rose are trying to block publication.
The book is still available to pre-order on Amazon, now with a publishing date of October 29.
Yesterday Noah Kahan asked his fans to stop stealing his hometown’s road sign, and now he’s asking them to not shit their seats at his shows. Whereas Olivia Rodrigo recently made headlines after discussing concertgoers wearing adult diapers at her concerts in general admission, it seems Kahan’s fans are somehow even worse.
The post Noah Kahan Asks Concertgoers Not To Shit In Their Seats appeared first on Stereogum.
With the release of 72 Seasons, Metallica issued a blunt proclamation that they have absolutely no intention of slowing down – certainly not in their work ethic and especially not in regard to the speed of their music. From the machine gun burst of the title track to the screeching velocity of Lux Æterna and Room Of Mirrors, Metallica gleefully flaunted their ability to unleash sharp, tightly-focused riffs at blazing speeds. That electrifying combination of speed and precision is the very essence of thrash – the genre that they pioneered along with the other members of the Big 4 and bands like Exodus, Testament and Death Angel. With that in mind, we set out to compile Metallica’s ten fastest songs. Which was no simple task.
One of the main issues is that the quality of speed in music is both subjective and objective. Some songs feel supersonic due to the blistering speed of a guitarist churning out triplets with every drum beat, as with the verse section of Spit Out The Bone (starting at 1:09). That song feels like you’re standing in front of a turbofan jet engine right before takeoff. Objectively, however, Spit Out The Bone is fast but its tempo – measured in Beats Per Minute (BPM) – falls well short of other Metallica tracks. Conversely, The Four Horsemen, which can feel like a bit of a mid-temp chugger, is actually one of their empirically fastest songs, clocking in at a breathless 204 BPM. On average, Metallica’s fastest album is Kill ‘Em All, with a median BPM of 159.5, with Master Of Puppets coming a close second at 158.
Compounding the challenge is that there are many sites that provide BPM for most songs but they rarely seem to agree – sometimes the sites differ by a few BPM, while in other cases, the difference is dramatic. Some sites have Master Of Puppets down at a modest 105 BPM when it’s much, much faster. We decided to simply go with a single source – the BPM identified on the sheet music on Songsterr – a user-curated archive of tablature for guitar, bass and drums that includes the tempo for every measure of a song.
Finally, because Metallica songs often include multiple parts with very different tempos, in some cases, we went with an average tempo or with a song’s predominant tempo. This is why relying on a single BPM site doesn’t give the whole story.
Incidentally, the world record for BPM by a drummer is held by Tom Grosset, who earned the title of world’s fastest drummer by hand-drumming at a brain-freezing 1,208 beats in 60 seconds. He beat the former record-holder – Dream Theater’s Mike Mangini – by five strokes.
Here, then, in descending order, are Metallica’s ten fastest tracks:
Metallica opened 2016’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct with an absolute belter. Gone was the lurching jock rock posturing of the Black Album and the sonic experimentalism of St. Anger; Metallica had well and truly returned to the biting aggression of their 80s output. Right out of the gate comes the title track, humming in at 185 BPM and holding fast for three breathtaking minutes. In Metal Hammer’s review of Hardwired.., Dom Lawson referred to the track as, “a vicious burst of prime thrash with an irresistible chorus and enough spirit and venom to silence anyone who thought Metallica were too old to nail this stuff anymore.” Years later, it still sounds as good as anything they’ve ever done.
The closing track of the 2011 EP Beyond Magnetic has only been played live once — at the band’s four-night thirtieth anniversary residency at The Fillmore, in San Francisco. Though it didn’t make the cut for Death Magnetic, it’s a fist-pumping romp with tempos exceeding 200 BPM during some of the verses, while slowing down in several interludes. But even during the solo, the track maintains a feverish tempo, beginning at 176 BPM and getting progressively faster. A deep cut well worth revisiting.
Spoiler alert: nothing from Lulu makes this list. But from Metallica’s next-most-maligned album comes this absolute scorcher. At 2:37, the band swing into a pummeling cadence that, after ten seconds, enters a whole new temporal realm. This occurs throughout the song — after a couple of interludes for vocals and a breakdown at 3:41, the band push the pedal all the way down. Look beyond the tin can rattle of the snare and you’ve got some of the band’s quickest work to date.
One of the band’s fastest tracks is also one of its most complex. Certain sites list the BPM as just under 130, which is baffling, considering that out of the song’s nineteen tempo changes, only two fall below 185 BPM. The majority of the track is played in double time, averaging a skin-peeling 192 BPM. Then there are the track’s multiple time signatures, which flutter between 4/4, 3/4, 5/4 and 7/4 throughout the track. You practically need the janitor from Good Will Hunting to put all of this together. Ironically, though bassist Jason Newsted’s contributions are all but inaudible on the original track (on pretty much the whole album), this is the only song on …And Justice For All on which he receives a writing credit — for composing the main riff.
…And Justice For All closes with a venomous screed penned by Hetfield against his parents for leaving him woefully unprepared for the hostile world that awaited him. With its otherworldly, double-bass-driven tempo, it’s hardly surprising that the band didn’t attempt playing the full track live until 2004. Tempos shift at an outrageous pace – at some points hitting 218 BPM – then slowing down into the low-90s before ratcheting back to 195. The majority of the measures hover between 190 and 197. Since then, Dyers Eve has made infrequent appearances in their setlists and when they do play it, Lars leaves out the marauding double bass section, reportedly admitting that it’s ‘too difficult to pull off live. In our recent chat with drummer Jon Dette (ex-Slayer, ex-Testament), he cites the track as the hardest one to play in the entire Metallica catalogue for this very reason. Still, for the listener, it’s pure thrash heaven. Side effects include elevated heart rates, annoyed neighbours and speeding tickets.
The closer to Death Magnetic didn’t just push the band to the limits of endurance with its mach 5 tempo; it also notched the lads a 2009 Grammy award for Best Metal Performance. Not too shabby for the shortest track on the album. This is an example of an already-speedy tempo seemingly revved up faster by the blinding triplets of the rhythm guitar.
As a matter of taste, metal fans remain split between Metallica’s The Four Horsemen, off of Kill ‘Em All and former Metallica shredder Dave Mustaine’s version, Mechanix, released on Megadeth’s Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good! (1985). But there’s no doubting that both versions cook and Metallica’s version remains among their fastest, with the majority of the song requiring 204 paint-stripping BPM – obviously not including the Lynyrd Skynyrd-inspired breakdown.
Presumably there aren’t many funeral doom songs about the rush of adrenaline from driving fast, although we’d love to hear one. This track, from Reload, remains a live show mainstay, appearing over five hundred times since its live debut in 1997- and for obvious reasons. Unlike other Metallica tracks, it has a single, searing tempo that never lets up. Unsurprisingly, NASCAR used the track as their official theme song for a few seasons, starting in 2001.
A tie! Though Metallica are known for kicking off their albums with a show of force, they closed St. Anger with this speed-drenched banger. There are a couple of slower interludes but the vast majority of this track clocks in at a neck-snapping 212 BPM, which is good enough to earn a tie for first place. While the track isn’t exactly their catchiest song, Metallica used its name for their non-profit, which has delivered millions of dollars to various causes across the globe.
What? Master Of Puppets? With that slow, melodic breakdown in the middle? Yes! Though some BPM sites list its tempo at a glacial 105 BPM, the sheet music fixes the tempo at 212 for most of the track, while some estimates run as high as 220 BPM. One of only two tracks from Master Of Puppets credited to all four band members (James Hetfield, Cliff Burton, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett), it is the cornerstone of the Metallica canon and recently found a whole new generation of fans when it appeared in a climactic scene in the latest season of Stranger Things. Its nine-minute runtime nearly doubled most of the mainstream rock songs at that time, leading to scarce radio play and yet it remains one of the most beloved and enduring songs in metal history.
Metallica’s latest album 72 Seasons is out now. The band headline two nights of Download 2023 next week.
In Piccadilly, London, in 1972, cocky new art-rock types Roxy Music were about to record an album that would become the blueprint for 70s glam. In 2011, guitarist Phil Manzanera told Prog what happened next.
Bryan Ferry nervously brushes back the quiff of hair from his face. Behind him, he hears a preparatory swirl of notes from the sax, and the climactic build of a showbiz-style roll on the snare drum. The guitarist, now finished tuning up, gets everyone’s attention and, after the briefest of pauses, there’s a count-in and it begins.
As the controlled frenzy of the drums erupt and both sax and guitar become demonically entwined, Ferry inches nearer the mic, eyes closed, taking a breath just ahead of his cue. ‘Concrete cold face cased in steel. Stark sharp glass-eyed crack and peel’ he trills over heavy slab-like minor chords. ‘Bright light scream beam brake and squeal. Red white green white neon wheeeeeel.’ The stentorian vibrato in the vocal makes those around take notice. But as the number scrambles to a truncated crescendo, it’s clear that nobody – including Ferry – is especially pleased with the results.
The session is over. The guitarist thanks the singer for his time. His voice was fine but ultimately not right for King Crimson. However, before Ferry leaves the band’s basement rehearsal room, Robert Fripp gives him the telephone number of EG Management, suggesting if Ferry gets his own band together, he should give them a call. Although he doesn’t know it yet, as Ferry steps out onto the Fulham Palace Road, the failed audition will turn out to be the biggest break of his entire career.
For most groups trying to make good the starry-eyed dream of getting signed to a label and eventually recording and releasing an album, you had to get your hands – and much else besides – dirty. Driving the length and breadth of the country’s B roads, humping bass bins into inaccessible venues, playing to indifferent audiences whose only glimmer of enthusiasm is the moment when you announce it’s your last number; all of this, and more, were part of the time-honoured system of paying your dues.
Signing to EG Management (who looked after T-Rex and ELP as well as Crimson), Roxy Music bypassed all that irksome stuff, sweeping onto the scene, apparently fully formed in a haze of pop, pastiche, synthesisers, sequins and Brylcreem in 1972, with only half a dozen gigs under their belt and a debut album that remains a remarkable tour-de-force.
One man who had no doubts whatsoever about Roxy’s future prospects was guitarist Phil Manzanera. “I just knew they were going to be absolutely huge when I first heard them. They were special people. They were all quite stylish and intelligent. I was only about 20 or so and here were these 25-year-olds who all looked so grown up. They’d been to university, they had bank accounts; two of them were teachers; they had a car; they’d got a bank loan to buy a PA! They were really cool people.”
Manzanera famously lost out the first time he auditioned for Roxy in the summer of 1971 to David O’ List, previously a member of The Nice. “If it had been any old Tom, Dick or Harry, I’d have been upset. I’d seen Davey with The Nice at the Royal Albert Hall so I thought, ‘Fair enough.’” Yet when O’ List departed in February 1972 , Manzanera – by then notionally mixing sound for the group – picked up where he left off.
As Roxy Music was released in June 1972 on Island, TRecstasy had vast portions of the nation’s teenage population swooning, and David Bowie was busy unleashing Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. A cursory glance in the direction of Roxy might have suggested they were simply hitching a ride on the coattails of glam rock. Yet both record and band pulled off a how’d-they-do-that conjuring, trick scooping up pop culture references from the past, present, and possible futures, into one unified package that demanded attention and captured the imagination of fans on both sides of the divide between the pop market and progressive scene.
Nobody sounds like Bryan… it couldn’t be any one else in the whole world with this voice. So we were starting with an advantage
If opening number Re-Make/Re-Model was, as Melody Maker journalist Richard Williams astutely observed, Roxy’s musical manifesto, it was proclaiming that rock’n’roll as we knew it was undergoing a strange and irrevocable transformation.
There’s the knowing post-modern wink that has backing singers intoning a car registration number (‘CPL593A’) in the place where a girl’s name might normally be crooned. Then there’s the hurly-burly blur of continually morphing sax and guitar lines swirling above and below the vocals. Moving quickly, it sounds all above board and ship-shape. Yet listen closely and you might be receiving a transmission from the free-jazz climes of Albert Ayler and Sonny Sharrock.
The track’s coup de grâce was a series of solo statements. Book-ended by Paul Thompson’s thunderous John Bonham-like run-in, in order of appearance we hear Graham Simpson bending the bass into a soulful, jazzy pose; Brian Eno’s outré, atonal caterwauling synth squeal; Andy Mackay’s leery account of Earl Bostic meeting Wagner; Manzanera’s steady-Eddie Cochrane Velvets vamp, and finally, Ferry’s atonal singalong-a-Stockhausen piano party-piece. At the end, this pop culture parade is sucked down the black hole of Eno’s VCS3.
Recorded at Command Studios in Piccadilly in March 1972, the album was produced by Peter Sinfield, himself just recently divorced from King Crimson. Still managed by EG, and having had experience at the mixing desk from In The Court Of The Crimson King (1969) through to Islands (1971), he was viewed as a safe pair of hands to take Roxy out on their first spin.
A former BBC studio, beneath which London’s underground trains could occasionally be heard rumbling, Command’s principal advantage was its cheapness. Accordingly, the album went in the can for £5,000. Given that he’s subsequently recorded in some of the world’s top-flight studios, Manzanera retains a surprising affection for the venue. “It was a big old-fashioned space where orchestras would’ve played. It was very atmospheric and was absolutely perfect for us.”
With Sinfield and engineer Andy Hendriksen ensconced in the control room up a flight of stairs, and the band in the cavernous depths below, the team worked on a set of songs composed largely the previous year by Ferry. Prior to entering the studio, Sinfield and the band had spent three weeks working on the album’s final shape.
Curiously, the songs have a habit of starting off as one thing and then undergoing a startling transformation into something else entirely. Ladytron begins as a languid sci-fi dreamscape, but ends as an exercise in power-chord slash and burn. The country lilt opening If There Is Something rapidly falls away when Mackay’s processed sax solo takes centre stage, and we know we’re not in Kansas anymore. The solo, like all the others on the record, isn’t about instrumental prowess. It’s about the seductive qualities and possibilities of the sound itself, manipulated and mediated by Eno.
Through his electronic alchemy, the sax hovers listlessly over Thompson’s jackhammer beat and mechanistic piano chords. When Ferry’s vocals burst in on the last third of the song with ‘Shake your hair, girl with your ponytail/takes me right back…’ it’s freakish, unsettling, and utterly magnificent. That distinctive warble, which caused heads to turn in Crimson’s rehearsal rooms and far beyond, was never quite as powerful or as singular as here, captured by Sinfield.
Manzanera readily acknowledges that Ferry’s unusual vocal style was something they understood and exploited. “Nobody sounds like Bryan. It’s very distinctive and it comes from nowhere. It couldn’t be any one else in the whole world with this voice. So we were starting with an advantage.”
Though he’d be fired following a drug related breakdown, Graham Simpson’s bass work is frequently adventurous and unorthodox. On tracks like 2HB and Chance Meeting, every part of the fretboard is up for grabs. “He was probably the most accomplished musician among us all at that time,” says Manzanera.
Chance Meeting also contains some of the album’s most haunting guitar. Although his instrument was usually filtered by Eno’s synthesiser, here the space-age sounds are created by more traditional means. “I had a wonderful Gibson 335, which had a hollow body. It just fed back beautifully, and then you could manipulate the note with the tremolo arm and a bit of echo. That’s actually all it is. Now Ladytron; that’s the classic Eno-treated guitar. Terrific stuff.”
We always said we were inspired amateurs learning how to make a record, so I listen with nostalgia and fondness rather than a critical ear
The sonic properties of Roxy Music still polarise opinion. Ferry has said he didn’t care for the sound of the vocals. But Manzanera is philosophical about the album’s production values: “On the first one we always said we were inspired amateurs learning how to make a record, so I listen with nostalgia and fondness rather than a critical ear. It was a moment in time captured and I’m very happy to have been part of it. Pete Sinfield did the best job he could, really. But obviously, once you get to For Your Pleasure and Chris Thomas – who’d trained with George Martin – it’s in a different league.”
Yet the exotic, multifaceted soundworlds conjured are due at least in part to Sinfield’s quixotic recording and intuitive response to what was coming into Command’s control room. “It was just the summation of all different individuals putting in their little bits and pieces which then added up to Roxy,” says Manzanera. “You couldn’t have planned it. You couldn’t make it up.”
Reaching Number 10 on its release, Roxy Music catapulted the group from being cultish outsiders and into the mainstream. Though future albums would outsell it, when it came to a forward-thinking, truly progressive fusion of diverse ideas, eclectic style and unnerving bravado, the band would rarely be as challenging or inventive.