On December 10, 2007, the O2 Arena became the center of the rock world. After 27 years of silence, Led Zeppelin stepped onto the stage one final time, not as a myth, but as four men determined to honor everything they had been. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and Jason Bonham performed before […]
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No one sensed the moment approaching. The music moved forward as expected, steady and familiar, until something in the air shifted. Not a pause of uncertainty, but one of recognition. Onstage, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr exchanged a glance that carried decades. The song slowed, not in tempo, but in meaning. Then the stage opened, […]
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When it came to Led Zeppelin’s live show, no one could say that John Paul Jones was the most magnetic performer in the world. He was the band’s secret weapon in many respects and came up with some of their iconic riffs, but with John Bonham looking like a madman behind the kit and Jimmy […]
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It’s a testament to Kurt Cobain’s stature in the alternative music world when an entire chapter in rock is felt to have closed upon his untimely death. As ever, the Nirvana frontman’s violent end has become wrapped up in an unfortunate mythos, irresponsible romanticism, and crass conspiracies that have shrouded Cobain’s death since his body […]
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When Led Zeppelin first formed, Jimmy Page was already the one steering the ship forward. He had the plan for what he wanted them to be, and by the time that Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham assumed their roles, they had everything that a superband could have ever wanted. And once they […]
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Queen axeman Brian May surely sits in the top ten of UK guitarists? There’s stiff competition, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and David Gilmour all likely to muscle their way to the front of any such list, but May’s melodic playing style and flair for grand harmonic wield proved an essential binding agent to Queen frontman […]
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Once the dust had settled on the age of ‘peace and love’ hippiedom, the rock and roll world was primed for another musical revolution, and that transformation arrived in the form of Led Zeppelin, paving the way for the hard rock domination of the 1970s. Led Zeppelin weren’t, of course, the sole voice of hard […]
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For all of his shock rock bona fides, Alice Cooper kept most of his influences to old-school rock and rollers. While theatricality was a major part of Cooper’s stage persona, his songwriting had its basis in the classic songs of the 1960s, the same ones that convinced Cooper to begin playing music. No band could […]
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On July 26, 1977, the roar inside the Oakland Coliseum was deafening. More than 15,000 fans filled the stadium, unaware that they were about to witness not just the final show of a North American tour, but the moment when the soul of a legendary band quietly fractured. On stage stood Robert Plant, delivering his […]
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January 1969 pressed heavily inside Abbey Road Studios. Hours passed without movement. Instruments waited where they had been left. Conversation stalled, then stopped. The Beatles sat together in a silence shaped by time, not by argument. It was the kind of quiet that arrives after too many unspoken things have learned how to live in […]
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