Duff McKagan has exclusively revealed to Hot Press that Velvet Revolver are in pole position to support Led Zeppelin if they decide to go ahead with a full-blown reunion tour.
As Velvet Revolver prepare to play Dublin on January 12, Duff McKagan talks to Steve Cummins about the band's chart-topping success and his pancreas-exploding days of yore with Guns N' Roses.
He's barely recovered from Velvet Revolver but Duff McKagan is back with his Loaded side-project. He talks about Scott Weiland's departure from VR and his plane ride with a doomed Kurt Cobain
If anyone, up to and including those who receive special messages from Jesus during weather forecasts, gets anything at all about Revolver, I’d be terrifically surprised. Frankly, it’s the most godawful mess of this or any other year.
Regarded by many as The Beatles’ finest work, and coming a mere eight months after the superb Rubber Soul, their seventh album Revolver was light years further on in terms of musical innovation, paving the way for the acid- and meditation-fuelled psychedelia to come, and pioneering lyrical invention that thrashed the conventions of the pop song.
Having undergone a punishing regime of drink, drugs and debauchery during Guns N’ Roses’ heyday, few thought that iconic guitar-slinger Slash would ever again venture out into the mainstream rock arena. But having put together a motley crew of collaborators in Velvet Revolver, he’s now back at No. 1 in the album charts and rocking harder than ever.
Velvet Revolver are a formidable collection of important figures from 80’s and 90’s hard rock, and this strong mixture of personalities lends their music a certain charisma, even when it isn’t particularly accomplished.
The Download Festival mightn’t be coming to Ireland this year, but heavy metals can seek solace in the news that Velvet Revolver have been confirmed as special guests for The Who’s Marlay Park bash on June 29.
Velvet Revolver axe-man Slash, one of the most influential guitarists of all time, joins bandmate Duff McKagan in reflecting on Guns N' Roses' hellraising heyday.
Slash can go boil his silly hat, but Iggy Pop, The Rolling Stones and Kraftwerk are welcome to come and stay in Fagersta any time they want. Howlin’ Pelle and the boys talk heroes and zeros with Stuart Clark
Former Almighty man Ricky Warwick has just finished adding his special touch to Circus Diablo's debut album, which also features contributions from Velvet Revolver and The Cult members.
To mark the release of their 7th studio album Revolver Soul, the crazy chemical- country collective Alabama 3 will include a stop in Tripod, Dublin on November 21 on their Soul Revolver Tour.
Although their previous studio album Revolver is now the more acclaimed, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is arguably The Beatles' most famous work and the one that had most influence on the music and society of its time.
As Velvet Revolver prepare to play Dublin on January 12, Duff McKagan talks to Steve Cummins about the band's chart-topping success and his pancreas-exploding days of yore with Guns N' Roses.
If the mere mention of the word 'art' generally has you reaching for either the remote or the revolver, I'm with you all the way - and as movie premises go, it might seem that the tale of a bohemian New York photographer's struggle to retain her 'artistic integrity' is one best left to the poseurs.
Displaying more balls than Old Trafford on a Saturday afternoon, Velvet Revolver’s music is much more than the sum of its parts – and that’s saying something.
The Beach Boys, Beatles and – whisper it – Fleetwood Mac are all on the menu as Sunderland’s Field Music give emo, New Rave and whatever else is 'in' this week the cold shoulder.
Loaded vocalist and guitarist DUFF McKAGAN has one complaint, that nobody has yet invented a system that would make soundchecks unnecessary. Jackie Hayden interrupted the former Guns N’ Roses bassist at his band’s rehearsal cabin on the eve of their visit to Ireland.
Compositional genius, musical visionary, tormented genius – Brian Wilson is many things, but a garrulous interviewee is not one of them. Peter Murphy undergoes strenuous discourse with one of the true icons of ‘60s culture.
Grunge titans Alice in Chains are back after a 14 year hiatus. They talk about the tragic death of vocalist Layne Staley, working with Elton John and keeping the spirit of the early ‘90s alive.
As the RUC continues to undergo serious changes, STUART CLARK meets RICHARD LATHAM, a former officer who has a story of danger, death, politics and sex to tell
GEORGE MARTIN was intrinsic to much of The Beatles brilliance. Now he s coming to Dublin for a series of special concerts. GEORGE BYRNE sets the scene.
This month, the 2006 RTÉ Living Music Festival, sponsored by IMRO, celebrates Steve Reich, arguably America’s greatest living composer. Jackie Hayden meets the 70-year-old whose influences stretch beyond the contemporary classical world to rock and rap music.
She's worked with Keane, Razorlight and Bloc Party. But young video-maker Aoife McArdle's true inspiration are the elegantly gloomy movies of '40s Hollywood.
THE RUC shot a runaway cow in the streets of Ballymena recently. They didn't feel they had a choice, having received no training whatsoever in the control of country animals which get lost in a town.
Richard Fearless and Tim Holmes, from Death in Vegas, explain how they survived Big Beat, made one of the albums of the year and ended up working with their heroes.
Interview: EAMON SWEENEY.
Donegal rockers The Revs have been ensconced in Malmo’s prestigious Yellow Studios for the last three months working on the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Suck. Steve Cummins joins the group in Malmo for an exclusive listen to what many expect to be their breakthrough album.
Court cases! Vintage wines! Smack! Bad craziness! A burst pancreas! And a chart-topping album! It can only be the posthumous but never-ending saga of the defining rock band of the ’80s and ’90s. Stuart Clark gets the latest from Duff McKagan
The emergence of The Boomtown Rats inspired a new generation of in-your-face Irish bands who re-energised an Irish music scene that has become moribund and predictable.
JAMES HANRATTY, the son of Irish parents, was hanged for a notorious murder in England in 1961. Following the recent release of the Bridgewater Three, another miscarriage of justice now looks set to be overturned, posthumously clearing the name of a 25-year-old who was wrongfully sent to the gallows. Report: RICHARD BALLS.
20 years and the last seven days: U2 have gone through a whole heavenhell of a lot to get here. One can only guess at Bono’s state of mind, high on the euphoria of playing the most ecstatic shows of his band’s career, drained from the freeze-dried exhaustion of flying home to Dublin from all points around Europe to endure the dim purgatories every son goes through when his father is dying.
To mark the occasion of the release of a near definitive punk compilation, GEORGE BYRNE fondly recalls the days when pogo was go-go and gabba gabba was hey.
After two years of being that bloke who used to be in the Stone Roses, John Squire is back in the saddle with The Seahorses. On the eve of their Heineken Green Energy appearance at Dublin Castle, Madchester s answer to Jimmy Page talks to Stuart Clark about old friends, new challenges and his penchant for obscure Belfast punk bands.
30th Anniversary retrospective: From the murders of Tupac and Biggie to the bizarre implication of Marilyn Manson in the Columbine massacre; from Courtney, Axl and Spector’s falls from grace to the canonisation and demonisation of Peter Doherty... here’s a potted history of the most controversial events in the last 30 years of rock ‘n’ roll.
They've had their share of troubles but now arch Hollywood bad boy Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are back on the A-list - and fronting a movie together.
It is hardly a surprise to learn that the fifth Super Furry Animals’ album was due to be christened Text Messaging Is Killing The Pub Quiz As We Know It.
Their debut album Hopes And Fears launched a host of hit singles, going on to become one of the most successful British records of the past five years. But, their indie background notwithstanding, Keane have still been dismissed by some self-styled aficionados as just too nice to be considered real rock'n'rollers. "If only people knew," says lead singer Tom Chaplin.
30th Anniversary Retrospective: In a special interview, The Edge reminisces about the early days of Hotpress, explains Bill Graham’s role in U2’s development, and comes clean about what the band have been up to recently in Morocco.
It's head-scratching, nail-biting, on-the-tip-of-your-tongue time again, as GEORGE BYRNE presides over our renowned annual music quiz [this is for the year 2000]
You re the frontman with The Stunning, you make an innocent remark about farmers and acid house and you end up creating banner headlines in The Western People. Lorraine Freeney assures Steve Wall that this is the sort of stuff Hot Press never stoop to, and also hears about the new album, Deco in The Commitments and the art of bridging the rural-urban divide.
Softly spoken off stage and complete lunatics on it, Kila have torn up the rulebook with their wantonly eclectic mix of styles. music, inner anger, revolutions and, er, women who cure warts are all discussed, as the band’s Colm O Snodaigh talks to Peter Murphy.
Few bands have managed to divide
critical opinion quite so spectacularly as Kula Shaker. Mystic musical saviours to some, prog rock nightmares to others, the one thing that everybody s agreed on is that mainman Crispian Mills gives exceedingly good quote. Interview and
periodic bewilderment:
Stuart Clark
Helena Mulkerns catches up with the charming Dublin-based chanteuse on a tour of East Coast college campuses, and finds a wilfully free spirit at ease with her sexuality – if not with the industry’s categorisation of such guitar-wielding women.
Did you ever find yourself wondering ‘Where have I heard that song before?’ Well, Andy Darlington may be able to help as he trawls through the tangled undergrowth of that increasingly common phenomenon: The Cover Version
DAVID HOLMES is about to leave his native Belfast for New York City, where he will record his third album. STUART BAILIE took a final opportunity to speak to the artist also known as Homer. On the agenda: Hollywood soundtracks, rumours of brawling, past glories and future plans.
Pics: MICHAEL TAYLOR.
Bono, Adam and Larry. Not to mention the self-styled King Boogaloo himself, Mr B. P. Fallon, whose new book U2: Faraway So Close offers an intimate visual and verbal diary of the band’s world-record shattering ZOO TV tour. For good measure the, um, also self-styled Mr Ramalama talks about Jimi Hendrix and the Mafia connection, toting guns with Tone Loc, giving Little Richard a hard-on, and other little, um, side voyages into other territories, man. Er, tape recorder thingy: Joe Jackson.
It's time to lock up your sons, daughters, pet poodle and drinks cabinet, as eight of Ireland's top bands descend on the venue, london, for the first major Hot Press-sponsored musical event of the year.
A self-styled dandy, painter, writer and poseur, Sebastian Horsley seems to do everything to excess – whether that be drink, drugs, sex, sending shit to a critic or, literally, being crucified for his art. Olaf Tyaransen hears about his agony and ecstasy.
Andy Darlington travels to Manchester to meet the Stone Roses, an outfit who’ve progressed past the point of being just a band to become something altogether bigger...
Beatles-fixated guitar bands may not be exactly what the world is waiting for right now but local lads, Pugwash, carry it off with such aplomb that it’s hard not to succumb to their charms.
The cars are fast, the hero is video-game superhuman and the women are slutty. Indeed, everything right down to the shoes gets fetished in this splendidly trashy affair which sees Jason Statham’s unflappable driver embroiled in some nonsense about a child kidnapping.
The Magnetic Fields' Stephin (sic) Merritt was of course simply havin' a larf when he wrote those lines but he put his finger on something here all the same.
Blur axeman, Graham Coxon, releases his second solo LP and, like his 1998 debut, The Sky's Too High, The Golden D is a trip into the speed/trash/hardcore underbelly of America.
Thomas Vinterberg (Festen) directs this splendid displaced western from a script by madcap fellow Dane Lars von Trier, and on paper at least, Dear Wendy sounds suspiciously like a hipper, teenage Dogville.
Luke Kelly and Brendan Behan had much in common. They were both Dubliners to the marrow, sang a lot, drank a lot and caused more social unrest merely by strolling down Grafton Street than an entire army of Irish "rockers" would achieve in a decade.
"If rock 'n' roll was a religion, I'd be a preacher in need of a church."
AND YOU shall know him by his trail of dead.
Johnny Dowd is the middle aged co-owner of a New York-based haulage company.
Elevator is safer-sounding, less adventurous and less exciting than their last blast Make Up The Breakdown, an evolution possibly not unrelated to their being snapped up by a major label. The intimidating energy level remains undiminished, and there still isn’t a note out of place - all that’s missing is anything resembling a sharp edge. At its worst, the frantic cramming of hooks and harmony vocals can create a faintly twee, sugary effect, conjuring spectres of an amped-up They Might Be Giants. At its best, there’s more than enough bite and balls in the guitar work to render such objections irrelevant.
With Velvet Revolver in limbo until they find a singer to replace Scott Weiland, Duff McKagan brings his Loaded side-project to Ireland this September.
The final year of the millennium saw dance music reach to more creative, dizzying heights than before. Digital Beat was there every step of the way. Report: Richard Brophy.
There is no question about it. He may look as if he's been dipped in a bottle of red ink but it is Adam who stands there bollock naked before the camera and the world on the back sleeve of the latest, long playing opus from the band whose name begins with U and ends with 2. And is that Eve who hovers topless behind Bono on the front?
Though often overlooked, some of U2’s most exciting and challenging music through the years is to be found hidden away on the flip side of their singles. From U23 to Melon bill graham rides the wild horses of the U2 back catalogue and finds that there’s quite a few thoroughbreds among their many cover versions and experimental remixes.
As St Patrick’s Day approaches, what better time to celebrate all that’s great about Irish culture. From music and film to food and literature, Ireland has always punched far above its weight.
