BY MIKE METTLER — NOVEMBER 12, 2014
Bruce Hornsby could never be accused of being an artist who rests on his laurels. “I’m such a different musician in every way than I was 20 years ago,” he admits. Prime evidence of the master pianist’s ongoing creative evolution can be found all over the double-disc Solo Concerts […]
BY MIKE METTLER — OCTOBER 10, 2014
“Souls, having touched, are forever entwined.” It’s a lyric penned by Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan in honor of his dear friend and late bandmate Jon Lord, the original keyboardist for Deep Purple who pioneered merging rock music with classical themes when he composed the material played jointly by […]
BY MIKE METTLER — AUGUST 1, 2014
“This band is so efficient, it’s scary.” It was November 16, 2012, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were already hard at work on the follow-up to 2010’s muscular Mojo. Petty was calling from an office adjacent to the control room at The Clubhouse, the longtime Los Angeles rehearsal space […]
BY MIKE METTLER — JULY 23, 2014
“Our music has stood the test of time,” observes Toto guitarist/vocalist Steve Lukather. “We’ve had this long ride, and now it’s starting all over again.” Luke, as he’s known to his friends, has an excellent point. Toto, whose members past and present honed their impressive chops as studio musicians, have […]
BY MIKE METTLER — JULY 9, 2014
“We don’t want to shut the door, we want to open it.” John Hiatt has just described the up-close and personal vibe that’s spread all across his new album Terms of My Surrender, out July 15 on New West. Surrender was cut live with Hiatt and his bandmates ensconced around […]
BY MIKE METTLER
If knowledge is power, then Alan Paul is the chairman of The Allman Brothers board. His definitive inside history of The Allman Brothers Band, One Way Out (St. Martin’s Press), is one of the most thorough, in-depth, and best-researched rock biographies I’ve had the pleasure to read — and if you know […]
BY MIKE METTLER — APRIL 18, 2014
Never let it be said that Stewart Copeland has idle hands. The innovative Police percussionist and ace composer has been working tirelessly on composing a soundtrack to MGM’s 1925 silent film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which, in addition to being a legendary broad-sweeping and groundbreaking epic tale, is […]
BY MIKE METTLER — APRIL 17, 2014
The bottom end has never been quite the same since Jack Bruce picked up his first bass over 6 decades ago. The vaunted Cream bassist wrote the book on the art of the low-end hook, as his syncopated approach to playing bass helped shift pop music’s bottom-end emphasis away from […]
BY MIKE METTLER
Pink Floyd and music academia don’t usually mix. But that didn’t deter Gilad Cohen and Dave Molk from organizing the amazing “Pink Floyd: Sound, Sight, and Structure — Interdisciplinary Conference,” the first ever academic conference devoted to the mighty Floyd at Princeton University on April 10-13. In addition to scholarly discussions and live music, […]
BY MIKE METTLER
Call him The King of Retro Cool. You may have seen Nick Waterhouse wondering “where you think you’re gonna go/when your time’s all gone?” in the current Lexus CT Hybrid “Live a Full Life” commercial campaign, but his super-snazzy brand of modern jazzabilly rock extends well beyond that 30-second snippet. His second full-length […]
