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Pop-Up Awards RockGodz Inducts Dee Snider
April 2022, RockGodz Hall of Fame surprise induction of Dee Snider, singer, songwriter, radio personality, and actor.
Best known as the Lead singer and songwriter of the heavy metal legend Twisted Sister!
What an honor to have Dee as part of our elite group of inductees.
Photo Credit: Jill Jarrett
Pop-Up Awards RockGodz Inducts Martin Barre
RockGodz Hall of Fame surprise introduction to Martin Barre, long time guitarist for Jethro Tull (43 years) at the BL Dance Hall and Saloon on Friday, February 25, 2022. Read More
Exclusive Feature w/ Steven Rosen
RockGodz Member Interview with Doug Aldrich
Originally released January 19, 2014
Interview by Steven Rosen
Heaven Gets Me By (Acoustic) by Burning Rain – Free Download
Doug Aldrich's career can be traced all the way back to Lion, the '80s hard rock band. He recorded albums with Hurricane and House of Lords before forming Bad Moon Rising with Lion vocalist Kal Swan. His next project was Burning Rain, which was formed with vocalist Keith St. John. Burning Rain released two albums: The self-titled Burning Rain in 1999 and Pleasure to Burn in 2000. Aldrich later joined the late Ronnie James Dio band in 2001 before finally joining Whitesnake and becoming a songwriting partner with David Coverdale. While Aldrich had joined Whitesnake in 2003, he and St. John signed a recording contract with Frontiers Records in 2004 for a third Burning Rain album.
With Whitesnake's resurgence in popularity and a relentless tour schedule that soon led to releasing two studio albums, subsequent releases of live albums and DVDs, Burning Rain was put on hold – until now. So after a nine-year hiatus, St. John and Aldrich have returned with their third studio album Epic Obsession. The album contains 12 new blistering hard rock songs and two bonus tracks. Co-produced by Aldrich and St. John, the duo has rounded out the band with bassist Sean McNabb (Dokken, Quiet Riot) and Matt Star (Ace Frehley).
Burning Rain delivers music that is a product of the bygone 1970s. The songs and arrangements are infused with the '80s arena-style hooks, which are elevated by today's advanced recording technologies. Led by Aldrich's sure-handed fret work and St. John's grit-infused-bluesy vocal swagger, they hold their own when compared to their peers, including going head to head with Aldrich's other band, Whitesnake. There also is a comparison to be drawn; Aldrich grew up on British rock, and Coverdale's Whitesnake was an influence for him way before he joined the band.
With that said, Aldrich is his own man. He has developed his style over the years, working in many bands and projects. He is the foundation of Burning Rain, just as he is with Whitesnake, Lion or Bad Moon Rising. His fret-work is exhilarating, energetic, sure-handed, aggressive and elegant. Whether it's Keith St. John or Coverdale, the music always tells the tale and gives quality singers a canvas on which to paint their vocals.
As a hard rock, heavy blues rock fan, which you surely are if like Burning Rain, well, the band brings it. And while it has been awhile since we had fresh music to enjoy, maybe it's bitter sweet to have waited so long. Because the final product is everything you want and more. Keith St. John sounds amazing here and hasn't skipped a beat. Aldrich brings forth up-tempo rockers that carry the torch of rock, and for good measure, delivers a ballad or two. Fourteen tracks, 74-minutes in the hands of lesser musicians would be tiresome, but Epic Obsession begs to be listened to, and the time goes by in the blink of an eye.
1. Sweet Little Baby Thing
2. The Cure
3. Till You Die
4. Heaven Gets Me By
5. Pray Out Loud
6. Our Time Is Gonna Come
7. Too Hard To Break
8. My Lust Your Fate
9. Made For Your Heart
10. Ride The Monkey
11. Out In The Cold Again
12. When Can I Believe In Love
13. Kashmir*;
14. Heaven Gets Me By (Acoustic)*
Label: Frontiers Records
Album Review by Hardrock Haven
Download your free copy of "Heaven Gets Me By (Acoustic)"
WHITESNAKE, DOUG ALDRICH AND MORE
Depending who you ask, Whitesnake singer David Coverdale is either almost single-handedly responsible for keeping bluesy hard rock alive in the British charts during the late '70s and early '80s, or is merely a Robert Plant clone who hit it big in the U.S. later in the '80s as an "MTV band" — by merging familiar Led Zeppelin sounds with pop metal/power ballads, and sexed-up videos. Born on September 22, 1951, in the British town of Saltburn-on-Sea, Yorkshire, Coverdale was born into a family of avid music fans, which resulted in an early interest in the guitar, before switching over to vocals. He soon began fronting local rock outfits, including Denver Mule, the Government, River's Invitation, and the Fabulosa Brothers (from the late '60s through the early '70s). Looking for a new gig in 1973, Coverdale one day picked up the popular British music mag Melody Maker, and answered an ad for a group looking for a vocalist. Little did he know that the group in question was Deep Purple.
Purple had become one of the world's top hard rock/heavy metal bands by 1973 (thanks largely to their massive hit single "Smoke on the Water" and such classic albums as Machine Head and Made in Japan), but when singer Ian Gillan was ousted from the group, a vacancy developed. On the strength of his singing and songwriting talents, Coverdale was welcomed into the group immediately, resembling a true-life "rags to riches" story. The Coverdale-led version of Purple got off to a solid start with another hit album, 1974's Burn, but by the time of its follow-up (and second band release of the year), Stormbringer, cracks began to appear in the Purple armor. Guitarist/bandleader Ritchie Blackmore's interest in the group began to wane around this time — due to the other member's desire to incorporate funk into their style — resulting in his exit (Blackmore would go on to form the progressive metal outfit Rainbow).
Instead of packing it in, Coverdale remembered the name of a guitarist he heard a few years back on Billy Cobham's landmark jazz-fusion release, Spectrum, and figured he'd make a good replacement for Blackmore. The guitarist in question was Tommy Bolin, who accepted the invite to fill Blackmore's large shoes. Despite an underrated album, 1975's Come Taste the Band, this would prove to be Purple's last hurrah, as they split up a year later. It didn't take long before Coverdale re-emerged as a solo artist however, sticking to his blues-rock/rock & roll roots in the face of the era's burgeoning punk movement, as evidenced by such releases as 1977's Whitesnake and 1978's Northwinds. In the process of recording and touring behind these releases, Coverdale had assembled quite a backing band, especially evident in the twin guitar attack of Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody. As a result, Coverdale opted to issue albums under the name of Whitesnake — although it gave the public a sense that it was a true band, Coverdale was the undisputed leader, as he'd be the only constant member throughout its many subsequent lineups.
Whitesnake built a rabid European following on the strength of such albums as 1978's Snakebite and Trouble, and 1979's Love Hunter, and also benefited by changing musical tastes, especially the uprising of new U.K.-based hard rock/heavy metal bands — a movement dubbed "The New Wave of British Heavy Metal." The '80s saw Whitesnake become even bigger in their native land, as they scored a major hit single with "Fool for Your Loving" (which even managed to scrape the middle of the U.S. singles charts), and offered further hard-rocking albums as 1980's Ready an' Willing and Live in the Heart of the City, 1981's Come an' Get It, and 1982's Saints and Sinners. But despite their success back home, Coverdale had his sights set on breaking the U.S. market.
Coverdale enlisted former Tygers of Pan Tang/Thin Lizzy guitarist John Sykes into the Whitesnake ranks, a move that paid off immediately, as 1984's Slide It In became the group's biggest success yet in the U.S., just barely missing the Top 40. Although worldwide breakthrough success was just around the corner, Coverdale's singing career was put into jeopardy when he developed a serious sinus illness, which doctors thought may prevent him from ever singing again. This proved not to be the case, but as a result, not much was heard from the Whitesnake camp for over two years. Some feared that the break in action had killed off any buzz surrounding the band, and it certainly didn't help matters when it became known that Coverdale had dismissed Sykes from the band (even though he had penned and played on the majority of Whitesnake's upcoming album).
1987 finally saw the release of the highly anticipated follow up to Slide It In, simply titled Whitesnake. The album signaled a new path for Whitesnake, as they honed in directly on Led Zeppelin (both musically and in Coverdale's close vocal resemblance to Robert Plant), especially evident in the leadoff single/video "Still of the Night." The video also starred Coverdale's girlfriend (and soon to be wife), B movie actress Tawny Kitaen, setting a trend in which the group would play second fiddle to Coverdale and Kitaen acting out steamy scenes in Whitesnake's videos. But it did pay off wildly for Coverdale, as Whitesnake finally broke the band big time in the States — almost topping the album charts and spawning such further hit singles as "Here I Go Again" (a number one) and "Is This Love" — making them a bona fide arena headliner.
Whitesnake's massive commercial success wasn't long lasting, however, as the group basically repeated the same formula (with less than stellar results) on 1989's Slip of the Tongue. By the time the ensuing tour wrapped up in 1990, Coverdale's marriage was over, as was the group, and it appeared as though he'd completely disappeared for the next few years. With all of the Led Zeppelin comparisons still fresh in fans' minds, Coverdale provided more fuel for the fire, as he re-emerged in 1993 alongside guitarist Jimmy Page, as part of the super group Coverdale/Page. Despite a single album, Coverdale/Page, and handful of gigs in Japan, the union was incredibly short-lived (in fact, many feel that the unsuccessful partnership helped convince Page to hook up once more with Robert Plant a year later).
Coverdale pulled a disappearing act once more, eventually resurfacing with a new Whitesnake lineup in 1998, and a pair of releases, Restless Heart and the "unplugged" set, Starkers in Tokyo. With interest in '80s hair metal still at a lull, both albums failed to even see a proper release in the States, but an audience still existed for the group in other parts of the world. It was also around this time that a rumor began to circulate that Coverdale was to become Van Halen's next frontman, which ultimately proved to be false. By the dawn of the 21st century, nostalgia for '80s pop metal bands had emerged, and there was suddenly a demand once more for groups like Whitesnake. Sensing this, Coverdale put together another new Whitesnake lineup, and launched a co-headlining U.S. tour with the Scorpions in early 2003. Later in the year, Coverdale made plans to issue his first true solo album since the late '70s.
Jake E. Lee
Mixing it up Guitar-wise With Ozzy
By Steven Rosen-Source: Steven Rosen Archives First Published here: January 7, 2014
Virginia-born Jake E. Lee stands virtually alone in the arena of electric players. The lanky guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne is one of the very few guitar gladiators confronting the beast of heavy metal without the weapon of a vibrato bar.A listen to Bark At The Moon or The Ultimate Sin reveals his unique use of finger vibrato, neck-bending and beyond-bridge tweaking.
He first took up guitar at age 13 when he picked up his sister's cheap acoustic. The first song he learned was The Guess Who's "No Time" and in no time he was fronting his own original bands in San Diego, California [his family moved there early on]. He joined Ratt for a brief period – "Stephen Pearcy was mainly why I quit" – toyed with Rough Cutt and then auditioned for Ozzy. He was 45 minutes late for that date, late for his first American appearance with Ozzy in concert, and over an hour late for this interview.
But he was worth waiting for. His responses are to the point, honest, and poignant. Here, then, Jake E. Lee: the man who hates time and tremolos …
'You had far more input on The Ultimate Sin album than you did with Bark At The Moon. Did you want to become more involved in the writing and recording process or was this just a natural progression of knowing Ozzy better?
It was thrust upon me, more or less. I wanted more input. Every band I've ever been in I had almost complete control over. Except for Ratt, which was almost a partnership between me and Stephen [Pearcy, vocalist], but I had control over the music. It was like a Van Halen/Roth thing. Steve had control over the clothing and the show and I had control over the music. So I was used to being in control of the music in a band. And I wanted it that way.
What was your role on Bark At The Moon?
Most of the music was mine: "Rock 'N' Roll Rebel,' "Bark At The Moon," "Now You See It (Now You Don't)," "Waiting For Darkness" and "Slow Down" were mine. How easy or difficult was it work with Ozzy in regards to presenting him with material? On Bark At The Moon I approached it really cautiously because I was the new guy and I could be out at any second. So I just played him riffs and if he liked the riff then the whole band would work on it. When I write a riff, I don't just write a riff – I write a verse and a chorus and everything around it. And Bob Daisley [bassist on BATM] might change a part here or there and Ozzy might change a part and that was it really. I didn't argue too much if I didn't like the way something was coming out. I'd go, 'I don't really like this' and they'd go, 'Well, what do you know?' And I'd go [in sheepish voice], 'I don't know anything, let's change it.' The strings on 'Bark At The Moon' I hated; 'So Tired' I hated. Actually, I didn't mind that when it was done as a four-piece band but then they schmalatzed it up with all the strings and I hated it. So I'd present some thing and they'd fight, debate, say it sucked or whatever.
Everybody contributed a little bit and it didn't necessarily come out the way I imagined it would. On The Ultimate Sin, while Ozzy was in the Betty Ford Clinic, I got a drum machine. One of those mini-studios, a bass from Charvel – a really shitty one – and I more or less wrote entire songs. I didn't write melodies or lyrics because Ozzy is bound to do a lot of changing if I was to do that. I just write the music. I write the riff and I'll come up with a chorus, verse, bridge4 and solo section, and I'll write the drum and bass parts I had in mind. I put about 12 songs like that down on tape and when he got out of the Betty Ford clinic it was, 'Here ya go, here's what I've got so far.' And I'd say half of it ended up on the album.
Does Ozzy hear what you're trying to put across musically? Or does he make drastic changes in your riffs and arrangements?
He almost always does something different than what I expect him to. He sang a lot bluesier on this record [The Ultimate Sin] than I thought he was going to. Sometimes I'll write something weird that I think he'll like and he'll say, 'That's too weird, are you on acid or something? This isn't Frank Zappa.' And I'll write something simple that I think he might like and he'll go, 'That's pop, what is it?' So it's a weird little area – it can't be too commercial-sounding and it can't be too weird. I think it can be pretty weird-sounding, but in Ozzy Osbourne you can get away with a lot. But he doesn't want it getting too weird. Especially on this record, we almost played it safe. We didn't go out on a limb. We didn't try to make it commercial but we kept what we thought Ozzy could get away with without raising too many eyebrows. And that's what a song like 'Shot In The Dark' was a surprise because it borders on FM pop. Yeah, we had our doubts about that. I write a lot of songs like that – most of the songs I've kept have been really commercial or really weird – and I wasn't so sure of that when Phil [Soussan, bassist/write of 'Shot In The Dark'] first presented it. It was getting kind of commercial and Ozzy wasn't too sure of it either. But [producer] Ron Nevison gunned for that one and it worked out alright.
Ron Nevison is a veteran producer who has worked with everyone from Heart to Bad Company. What was that experience like?
(Takes a moment, grins) I'll be diplomatic – he was hard to work with. He doesn't have a very open mind; he hears things his way and he thinks that's the way it should be done. And I heard things my way and I think that's the way it should be done. And there wasn't a whole lot of compromise. It was mostly who felt the strongest about something and argued the longest won out. There were parts on the album where I said, Definitely not, I don't want it that way, this is the way it has to be.'
And he'd argue, but I'd win if I felt strongly enough about it. And then there were parts where we'd argue and if I didn't feel that strongly about it, I'd say, 'Okay, have it your way.' It wasn't like trying something in the middle; we were buttin' heads through the whole record.
Did the problems like in the songs themselves or the sounds you were presenting?
Everything, really. Not so much song structure, really; it was more the production and the sounds. Because he liked the way we had written most of the songs. There were some songs where he halved a verse and had a chorus come in quicker, but it was mainly the production. What type of guitar sound were you going for on these albums? It depends on the song. I got the same guitar sounds more or less through the whole record, which I didn't want to do. I brought in 16 heads and 12 cabinets loaded with different things: EV's, Celestions, JBL's, everything, so I could get a good sound.And so I could get a different sound if I wanted.And I finally got a good basic sound aafter a long time. We cut the stuff that I wanted to use that sound with and when it came to the other songs, I said, 'Okay, I'd like a different sound here.' And Ron said, 'Why?' And I said, 'Because I don't think it should all sound the same.' I had just talked to Phil Collen of Def Leppard and he said they try different guitars and different sounds and mix and match. And he [Nevison] said, 'What? You want to sound like Def Leppard?' And I said, 'No, but I don't want it to sound like one single sound for the whole album.' And he said, 'Well, it's a good sound and I don't think we should mess with it.' And we argued about that for quite a bit and I finally said, 'Fuck it, I want to play guitar.' I wanted a lot more variety in the guitar tone. That can't be a healthy environment to work in.
I didn't go in the studio with the attitude of, 'Oh, boy, I get to play today, let's see what we can put down!' I went in there thinking, ' Oh, shit, what are we going to argue about today?' What is your guitar and amplifier situation with Ozzy? My main guitar is a 1974 [or 1975] Fender Stratocaster which has been Charvelized with Gotoh tuners, brass bridge and Gibson frets. The headstock is carved down and the neck has been shaved [it is now thinner and narrower]. It has a maple neck with rosewood fretboard and the body allows the strings to run entirely through it.
There are two single-coil DiMarzio SDS-1 pickups that have been slanted in the opposite position so the pole pieces for the bass strings are closer to the bridge producing more bite and less mushiness. The bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan Allan Holdsworth prototype. I use a 1977 Marshall 100-watt head [stock] powering a Marshall 4×12 cabinet with EV speakers. I couple this with a Marshall 50-watt top [circa 1964]. I do use pedals: a Boss CE-3 Chorus; BF-2 Flanger; DM-2 Delay [for rhythm]; (2) DD- 2 Digital Delays [for lead]; a GE-7 Equalizer [7-band]; an SCC-700 computerized pedalboard; and a Variac [set between 90 and 100]. I set the digital units so one is for slow leads and a lot of delay and the other one set normal for leads with just a touch of delay.
How was Nevison different than Max Norman [producer of Bark At The Moon]?
Max doesn't have as much control over Ozzy's stuff as he does with other people's stuff. Because Max more or less got his start with Ozzy and worked on the first couple of records. Max was basically an engineer and because of the sounds he got he became a producer and other bands started using him as a producer. I hear that he's strict and has a lot of control in the studio, but when he works with Ozzy he's back to being an engineer. So there was a lot of difference between Max and Ron.
Max made me try harder to get the doubled rhythm tracks [Jake doubles and triple all backing tracks] more in sync with each other than Ron did. Max wanted them almost perfect whereas Ron liked just a little bit of difference. He thought it sounded cool that way. With Max there were times when I thought it was good enough and he'd make me do it again' with Ron there were times when I didn't think it was good enough and he's say it was fine.
It seems a bit funny that you would double triple-track rhythm parts because, at heart, you seem to be such a purist: no whammy bar, no pedals …
A purist? Probably more of a masochist is a better way to put it.I thought bands were cheating because you could tune the guitar down and do all that other sort of stuff that I do so you don't need a bar. And you could do fake echoes like I do so echoes were cheating. Flanging was covering up something that was boring that you should have made more interesting in the beginning. And that's the way I felt before joining Ozzy but I still feel like I'm cheating. I know Warren [DeMartini, guitarist for Ratt] has gone back to the same thing that I used to do; he's only got an equalizer now. I saw that when they were opening for us in England and I said, 'That's a nice set-up you've got, Warren,' and he goes, 'Yeah, I got it from this one guy I used to go sell all the time. He got a real cool sound but he's pedal-mad now' [referring to Lee]. He made me feel guilty about it. You have to play a lot cleaner and pay more attention to what you're ding. If you screw up there's no echo to cover you and flange to cover up your sloppiness. That's the way a real guitar player should play. In this era of whammy-crazy players, the fact that you don't use one singles you out. How did that develop …. or not develop? Oooooh, everybody who uses a bar is going to hate me [laughs] and everybody uses a bar. What Brad Gillis does with a bar is pretty innovative; some of what Eddie has done with a bar is fairly innovative.I don't think a lot of what he has done with a bar is innovative, but he has brought it back. It had been done before and it is a cool sound but he doesn't rely on it like some people do. It's real easy to hit a harmonic at the 5th fret of the G string to start a solo and when you're done with the solo to hit the E strong and hit the bar. That's easy. I'm nt saying that Eddie relies on that because obviously he's a great player. But a lot 9f people do use the bar when their brain or their heart quits thinking about the music.They need to have a filler and that's why I think a bar is cheating. I think young guys should learn how to play without the bar and then once they're pretty happening they can start incorporating the bar. That's what I always planned on doing, but then I've never gotten around to it yet.
Did Ozzy ever make mention of the fact that you don't use a tremolo bar?
Yeah, the first thing he said was, 'Do you know how to play a guitar with a wang bar on it?' And I said, 'Of course, anybody can play a guitar with a want bar but I don't like it.'And he said, 'Well, why don't you think about using one?Because I don't think you can play some of these songs without one.' And I said, 'I can, I'll show ya' and after rehearsal he said, 'Yeah, fine, it sounds like you've got one. I don't care. As long as it sounds good, you don't need to use one.'
Playing guitar with Ozzy Osbourne is probably the best and worst gig in the world – there's all the attention but on the other side you may be seen as just a sideman at times.If anything, I think I get more attention than I deserve as a guitar player. If somebody comes up to me and goes, 'Man, you're Number One, you're the best guitar player in the world,' I start feeling stupid. I go, 'Nah, there are guys better than me.' But if somebody comes up and says, 'You really suck, you're nothing compared to Randy,' then I go, 'Hey, fuck you, I'm good, I'm probably 10 times better than you'll ever be. No, I never feel obscured at all."
Steven Rosen
GUNS N' CARS N' GUITARS
BY STEVEN ROSEN
In this exclusive interview with Izzy Stradlin, Steven Talks with the former Gun N' Roses guitarist about his years in Guns, what happened, and what's on the horizon.
Source: Steven Rosen Archives, February 1998
"Izzy Stradlin did for Slash what Brad Whitford provided for Joe Perry, what Keith Richards gave to Brian Jones – a backbone, a rhythmic spine upon which the lead guitarist could build his riffs. Izzy was very good at what he did. From 1985 through 1991, he was a mainstay of Guns N' Roses, providing the rhythmic pulse of the band and also contributing in a major way to the songwriting process. He left the band in November of 1991 and began working on his own band and career. With the Ju Ju Hounds, he mixed the blues of the Rolling Stones with the angst of Alice Cooper. In 1998, he recorded 117 Degrees. Here, he talks a bit about that record but mainly addresses his work with them.
Izzy had been away from GN'R for several years at the time we did this interview About six years earlier, he'd released Izzy Stradlin & The Ju Ju Hounds and received sort of mixed reviews. It seems, that no one was going to let him get away from the music he'd made with Slash and Axl. So, he'd have kind of a hard time of it in terms of a solo career.
We met at a restaurant somewhere near the beach. I don't remember which beach much less which restaurant. But I do know you could hear waves breaking and that he had a pretty hearty appetite. There may have even been a drink or two involved.
'You said you got a little burned by the business. What were your feelings after leaving Guns N' Roses?
That was okay. Between '91, when I left, and '94, those 3 years, I went right into recording with Ju Ju Hounds. We did a world tour. It wasn't all that long by touring standards, but it was like continuous travel. We played Japan twice, Europe twice, Australia. We kept doing laps. So that tired me out a little bit, I suppose. I was working with Alan Niven, who was the original Guns N' Roses manager, and that kind of grew old. I had signed a really, what I thought was a pretty bad deal. It was like a 5-year deal. Then in the interim, between '91 and '94, I had to hire a law firm, and Guns N' Roses had their law firm. We were going through this like…What's it called? When you leave a business…All this red tape. Like when you leave it says, "Okay, well, here's what's going to happen from here." So I had attorneys draw this shit out. It was like just watching tons of money go for no reason. It's just kind of depressing.
When you look back at the whole Guns N' Roses experience, how does it play out now?
It was a trip, man.
What happened with it? Why couldn't it go on?
You look at the five personalities that were in it. Everybody was living…it was just five knuckleheads. The shit hit the fan in a big way for us. That's all. I mean, some of the stupid stuff that went on, it's hilarious when I look back on it. It's all pretty miraculous that everybody lived through it. There was a lot of drug use – well, it's the same with all bands. I mean, Aerosmith, Zeppelin. They've all gone through that stuff. But it was kind of like that monkey-in-the-cage thing. You're on the tour, you're living out of hotel rooms all the time. Our first tour lasted, I want to say, 14 months from day 1. The first week everybody was just hammering yourself as far as you could go. After 2 weeks, you go, "God, we've got to conserve a little bit of energy if we're going to last out here." After 12 months, you don't even know your name. You're just on this circus ride. So it was pretty wacky. In that sense, it was pretty wild. When the dust settled, it was like today. There's nothing left of it. I mean, I'm still friends with Duff and Slash. I don't think there is any animosity amongst everybody, probably not even with Axl. But the actual band is pretty much…it's just him now.
Guns could have said so much more musically, too.
Yeah. I think it would still be easy to do a record with those guys. When I left in '91, I always left the door open. I told them, I said, "Look, man. I'm out of this stuff, you know? This is a fucking out-of-control setup." I managed to get sober in '88. God, has it been that long? So I remember when I was in the band, I was like the only sober guy for over a year. I mean, I'm living with these guys who were good friends and we used to hang out on the streets together and were always, always hanging out together.
You were one of the first to stop drinking?
After a year of being sober in the band, I was just watching these guys killing themselves. I finally got to the point where it was like, I had to get out of that whole thing. I just said, "Either I follow them down or I step out and hopefully they'll wake up and say, 'Hey, what's going on?'" I look at Duff now, and he's completely together and sober. He's healthy. He works out. It's just incredible because when I left he was bloated and he was drinking a giant thing of vodka. I mean, he had it by his bed stand. I was just as bad with everything else.
So it was more that reason than a musical problem?
Yeah, the music at that point had kind of taken a backseat, and I think it does with a lot of bands. You start out and it's just the music. This is how it worked for us. The music was like the center. That was the thing. That was everything. As it became TV and video and national stardom and all this shit, it became, "Well, now you're famous and you've got to put another record out." I mean, that's how it seemed like when we were doing the Illusion stuff. I read a book once by Alice Cooper. It's called Me, Alice. It's so great. It was written in the '70's. I remember reading the book and he said, "There's no way you could ever prepare yourself for massive, international stardom." I remember reading this and I was like – well, I was 18 or whatever – but I was living out in Pasadena in this guy's basement. I remember reading that quote and I thought, "Wow, so if we ever make it, maybe that's how it will be." He said, "You've just got to hang on to it and kind of ride the rocket." And I remember that. As soon as we had like the big top-10 videos, I was like, "This is the rocket ride that I read about." It was pretty trippy. It was funny, too, because when we left Hollywood, it was like "Least Likely To Succeed: They suck. They're junkies. They're going to fail." Then we came back and everybody loved us. I was like, "Wait a minute! They hate us!" Even the label was ready to drop us. They were like, "What you mean you don't have a manager? What you mean there's no fucking record?" We couldn't get a manager to save our lives. They'd come and they'd take one look at us and leave. We met them all! I remember one night, me and Slash had just come back from Tijuana. We had tequila. We had an apartment off of Sunset there. We had tequila and heroin was my thing of choice back then whenever we could get it. We were dabbling in it at that time, too.
We didn't have serious habits. But I remember we were just sitting on the couch and one of the guys came in to meet us. He was there 10 minutes and he must have known. I guess when you're that stoned you think nobody else knows. We're all sitting there, thinking we're cool! Then Alan Niven came along, and thank God he came along. He took us on. He probably looked at us and said, "Ah, they're a mess" – but I think he had been there maybe himself and saw potential. He worked with us and he kind of, whether anybody says it or
not, he became like the 6th silent member. He was like a major factor in getting Guns N' Roses out of this town and into wherever. He was really important.
Were you involved with the Guns writing process heavily?
Oh, yeah. I would say about half of that was put together in my apartment, over there on Orchard next to Holiday Inn (in Hollywood near the famed Sunset Strip). But we used to hang in the apartment there. We wrote "Nightrain." We worked on arrangements and stuff.
When you left Guns, did you have a batch of songs that you knew you wanted to put together?
I kind of started fresh again because I had always been writing, all through Guns N' Roses. I always had a 4-track or something, a cassette player or whatever. I would always be constantly writing. I still do it to this day. I've always got a tape deck laying around, just like a little pocket thing. And if I get an idea, I'll like hum it on the tape. I'll play acoustic guitar and I just leave it with ideas. Sometimes it will just be a clip of like 10 seconds, 15 seconds. It will be maybe a full tape of that kind of thing. If I get to the tape and play it back and I hear something specific, I'll work on it and kind of build it up into a song. But yeah, I was always writing with them, especially once we started getting out on the road. I'd get a lot of ideas. It would keep me busy.
Are you one of these people who believes that without the drugs Guns N' Roses might not have had the same kind of fame?
I don't know. At the time, we sure thought! At the time, we thought, "That's the way it goes. That's how you do it." Because look who we're looking at. I mean, I learned from guys like Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Stones. "All of these guys did it! They're cool!"
Getting back to the music for a moment, how do you build a track in the studio?
I almost always come in with at least half of the stuff already. It always starts with acoustic guitar and usually either some melody or some lyrics. Then on most of the stuff, I just take in the song as I thought it would go. Then we kind of hash through it and maybe take a little bit out here and there, or maybe add a little bit here and there. Everybody kind of chips in with ideas until we feel it's like finished.
You were playing Telecasters and Gibsons back in the day, right?
Yeah, although lately I've started getting into some Gretsch guitars the past few years. On most of this album, I use this Gretsch Country Gentleman, like a 70's with the fake f-holes that were painted on. Don't ask me why. I think I went to buy this guitar and I thought it was something else. I got it home and it worked really great. It stayed in tune with the whammy bar on it. I got a hold of this Country Gentleman, and I ended up using it on almost all this stuff. I ran it through one of those Fender reissue amps that looks like an old vintage amp, 10-inch speaker. It's got 4 knobs: volume, bass, treble, and maybe one other. But once you get it set, that's it. It's great. I think I did use a Tele, though, on "Ain't It A Bitch." It's got a real Stones-y kind of sound. That's the only one where I used the Tele.
Describe your rhythm guitar sound.
On this record, it just ended up being that Gretsch through that Fender. Mainly, I can throw it in the back of my car and just take it anywhere, plug it in, and it always sounds the same. It's just real easy to set up.
Is it a high end-y kind of a thing you're looking for?
No, not so much that. With the Gibsons, I always play on tour. Touring, I don't know if I'll end up using a Gretsch. On touring I always used the 335 Gibsons, like a Chuck Berry guitar, through a Mesa Boogie cabinet with old Fender Bassman heads. You get this big, gravelly, meaty sound. I don't know if the Gretsch will be able to cut it live with the touring stuff. We'll just have to try it. I've always used those Bassman heads, though, and like Gibsons. So the Gretsch, it will be an experiment. We don't have any big live plans right now. We'll try it out. I think the whammy bar thing, I started to fall into that groove. I was getting into doing that vibrato stuff, like western surf kind of thing. I just started to dig on that for a change because I never had a guitar with a whammy bar. I always thought that was for Eddie Van Halen. I just never really had one and I started getting in to it. I was like, "Yeah, this is cool."
Were you always a singer?
Photo by Eddie Malluk – AtlasIcons.com
I'll put it this way, I always thought it would be cool to be a singer originally. But you know, it's a lot of fucking work to sing and play drums because I started on drums. Not many guys do that. In all the Guns N' Roses rehearsals, 9 out of 10 times, Axl was never there at the rehearsals. So 9 out of 10 times, we needed somebody to sing the songs. I would do a shitty version of "Welcome To The Jungle"! My range is about three notes, whereas his goes to all that high stuff. But I was always the guy singing all the Guns N' Roses songs at rehearsals. So when it came time to do it myself, I was like, "Well, this is just the next step because it's just like soundcheck or something, without the singer." Eventually I thought, "Well, shit. This isn't so bad. Actually, you don't have to worry about another guy being on time." It worked. I was always a fan of Dylan, Tom Petty. I figured those guys, those guys aren't like great singers, but they're great to listen to. So why not?
Are you harsh on your own performance?
No, in fact usually it's the producer Eddie (Ashworth) that says, "Are you sure you guys don't want to do that again?" "Nah, fuck it! That sounds good!" He's like, "Uh, come back in here then." No, I'm pretty lax on that stuff. After you get going, you can feel the ones that seem pretty good. It's good not to be too critical, I think, with that kind of stuff. You can really start going backwards with it all.
Are you a better songwriter now than you were doing the Guns' days?
Geez, I wouldn't know. I don't know. I wouldn't have any ideas.
Do you think the songs are better realized?
I don't know. I'm not sure because sometimes I hear a great song on the radio and I'll be like, "Damn, that's a fucking great song." I listen to everything, the arrangement, the instrumentation, and the whole song. I soak it up. Then with my stuff or the stuff that we do on this record, even in Guns N' Roses, as soon as it was recorded, I hardly ever listened back to it at all. It's weird because I guess once we get it to the point where I think it's finished, I just consider it done. I never really go back and analyze it, which maybe I should. I don't know. With Guns N' Roses, between Axl and I, it was a lot of intense criticism on each other, like when it came down to songwriting. Like half of the songs I would play to him he would go, "Ah, man, that's fucking Black Sabbath. That's Led Zeppelin, blah, blah, blah." I would go, "What the fuck are you talking about? This is something completely different." We would argue back and forth about it. He was a real nasty critic. So sometimes there was a lot of nitpicking in the music, trying to get stuff finished. I guess in the end it came out okay. People really dig it, so. But with my stuff, the stuff I've been doing since I've been solo, we don't get nasty about it really. We take a little bit more laid-back approach, I think, for better or worse.'"
Duff McKagan Exclusive Interview
BEING LOADED AND UNLOADED
BY STEVEN ROSEN- First published here January 6, 2014
How sobriety raised his guitar playing to a higher level.
Source: Steven Rosen Archives, March 2011
There was a point in time during the Guns N' Roses days when it seemed like a pretty sure thing that Duff McKagan was headed for a fall. He and bandmate Slash were a disaster waiting to happen. But they pulled it together and cleaned themselves up and rose to the occasion of becoming some truly inspired musicians.
On Sick, Duff's newest album with band Loaded, he shows off that sobriety by bringing in musical influences as far a field as the Rolling Stones and horns and punk and straight up rock. Behind the microphone, Duff sounds confident and angry and passionate. And on guitar, he is bashing out some very innovative rhythm phrases
There is much more to Duff McKagan than most people might know. Here he lets us inside his head for a little while.
'How much is Loaded different in comparison with Velvet Revolver or Guns N' Roses? I'm referring to the emotional aspects rather than the actual music. Does it feed your soul in bigger ways than the other projects?
Maybe it does, in that amazing way you just put it. It's healthier for my soul. I'm not saying that Slash isn't healthy for my soul, but it is a thing that happened during the journey thus far. There was just a ton of drama, things I couldn't contain or put my finger on. So you become a little lost. For me, being a sober guy, it's either me sober or me six-feet underground. I become lost and I start swimming around, and that's not healthy for me. This is something that, number one, is containable. Number two, there is a lot of humor in this band. VR is very serious. When things started getting heavy with Scott, things became more serious. There was no joking. We would get on tour buses and it would be silent. So I really needed this to happen. I didn't try to make Loaded happen – it just did happen again. We would play a couple times every year during the whole VR time anyhow, and we always knew we were going to make a second record after Dark Days. We didn't think it was going to take eight years, but things happen for a reason. I think last summer we started writing new songs for this record and just kept hanging out together back home in Seattle. We would come up here every summer, and if I'm on tour then my family is here anyhow. That makes me feel better. I think it's a better place for my daughter. I feel more secure up here in Seattle. I feel smarter in Seattle. It's a more intellectual and cultural town than Los Angeles by far. In a coffee shop here, people are talking about books. They read, for example. It's just being with these guys. It's funny all the time. Mike Squires, the guitar player, he has an IQ of something like 160. He's an extremely smart guy. We talk about politics and the economy and discovery and esoteric things, and it's great. We do crossword puzzles. We're nerds, man! But I like being a nerd, and it's really who I've always sort of been. I think maybe I'm kind of a cool nerd. I grew up in punk rock being here in Seattle, and that really nurtured forward thinking. It's okay to think differently, and you don't have to do what everybody else is doing. You don't have to play Journey songs in a bar. You can write your own songs.
Does Loaded have the same kind of energy that Guns N' Roses did in the early days – without the drugs and alcohol? Is there still an organic type of feel to it, in that you don't have to push to make the music happen?
Well, it started it with that, and then we decided to make our second record. "Let's do it." That was two Christmases ago when we played that charity show in Seattle. By Spring of '08, I knew that the VR tour was going to come to an end. So last summer, we simply got into a room to start hashing out some songs. Out of nowhere, out of left field, inspiration happened within the band. It became really exciting and really great. We wrote melodies and these really hard songs and really heartfelt songs like "Mothers Day" and "Wasted Heart," and kick-ass rock songs like "I See Through You," "Sleaze Factory," and "Flatline." It was just like, "Wow, all this stuff is happening and it's really great." We did a little record deal, and we just thought we would make a little record and go to the UK and play some gigs in the States and go back to Japan. Loaded is actually big in Japan. We were big in Japan from the Dark Days record. We've gone over to play there a bunch of times. It got up to where we were selling out every place we played. It was great. So we really thought small, though. We did a little record deal. We made this record for 20 grand. We didn't need anything more to make it. We were ready to go and went into the studio. We just went in. The record sounds more urgent, I think, as a result. We don't got time to fuck around. We don't even have time to have lunch. We don't! We've got to get this drum track and everything down that day. I think that the record is healthier because of that limited budget. We decided to put out the EP in Europe and go tour there last fall. The tour was just amazing. We sold out and did our own club tour and small theater tour in the UK. I wanted to go to the UK because that's where Guns broke first and where Velvet broke first. I thought, "Well, if they like those two things, then they'll like this thing. We can get solid ground underneath us." It's hard to break in the States as your first thing, simply because you've got to travel so far between cities, number one. Radio here – well, you know the politics of radio. It's so tough. So we decided to start over there, and we went back to Japan in October. It was great. The record is coming out now, and it seems like things are picking up. There's really, really, really good reviews on the record. It's like, "Wow, no shit? Q Magazine likes it? They hate everything in rock." It's pretty great. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, but we're playing Download. We're playing Rock-am-Ring and Rock-im-Park. We're playing some great radio festivals here in the States. The things we have booked so far have been really great. People want us on their festivals, and it's so cool.
Did most of the musical ideas form in the studio? Did you have anything ready to go from past projects?
YWell, no, no, no. "Sick" was a song we wrote back in 2002. "Wasted Heart" was a song I wrote in 2006 or '07. I wrote the whole song. "Forgive Me" was something I had written outside of the band. I brought it into the band. I wrote it on acoustic guitar. Once we started talking about making this record two winters ago was when we started. The great thing about GarageBand and MP3 is you can have this riff. Then you send it to everybody. So everybody starts going, "Well, okay. Shit." Then Jeff Rouse will send me something back. "Well, I like that riff, but what if you changed it to this?" All of the sudden, you can write a record by doing this. I was in L.A., and these guys were up here. Or I was on the road, and one of those guys would be on the road. You can still contact them. So by the time we got into the rehearsal space The Brewery here in town, it's a crappy little room that smells like rat poo. We got in there, and we kind of had an idea of where we were going. GarageBand has been a killer, killer tool.
"Wasted Heart" is one of the ballads on the record, and I sense that it has almost a Stones type of feel. Is that accurate or did the influence come from somewhere else?
know I'm influenced by everything I've heard. Whenever I've written a song, it's not because I've been listening to the Stones for two weeks solid. "Wasted Heart" just happened. I try a lot of different tunings. Some of the tunings I don't know if they're legitimate or not! I'll just tune a guitar to G Sharp Minor with a suspended something and write a song. Tunings, to me, lend to opening up a guitar. "Wow, what's this? If I lay my finger over here and put my pinky here, listen to that." "Wasted Heart" was one of those songs. I forgot what I tune the guitar to. Open A or something? The melody of the verse came right away. It does sound like a Stones thing. I wrote it about a kind of difficult time. The riff dictated what the melody was. The melody dictated to me what the song was going to be about. That's how it always happens.
"Flatline" is the first single off the record. Was that how you wanted to introduce Loaded 2009 to an audience again? Would you say that particular song best represents the band at this point? Was it because it's a good radio song?
I think it's because it's a good radio song. I don't know. You would think I would know what good radio is, but I don't know what it is anymore. I don't know what anything means. I do songwriting for other artists. In the past couple years, I've gone to Nashville a couple times with some guys. People request me to come and write. This guy, Brian Howes, he's from
Vancouver, B.C. He wrote the whole Hinder record and produced it. They're bands that I don't know much about like Nickelback and stuff like that. He's like the godfather up there in Vancouver. He had asked if I'd be interested in coming up there and writing for some artists he had. I went up, and sometimes you can sit down with a guy and it's not going to work. Sometimes it will. We wrote a couple songs, and then I heard him play this riff. I'm like, "Whoa, what's that riff, dude?" "What riff? I was just fucking around." "No, that riff." He goes, "This?" We started writing, and it was the only song on there that I wrote with somebody else outside of the band. I wrote it after the record was done. I'm like, "Dude, this song has got to be a Loaded song." I brought the song down and asked the guys in the band if it was cool. "Great. Let's record and cut it." Wewent back into the studio and cut it, and it was like, "Well, this could be our first single." It kind of worked like that. My manager heard it and was like, "Yeah, this is definitely good for radio." Then it will get somebody's ears trained to sort of the minor-ness that is Loaded. It's kind of off of left of center. Maybe they'll open themselves up to "I See Through You" or "Sleaze Factory."
Are there horns on "Blind Date Girl"?
There is, yeah.
Does that come from your Stax influences?
There is a band from Australia called The Saints. Yeah, I love the Stax shit, by the way. There was this punk rock band from Australia in 1977 that were called The Saints. They influenced a lot of bands. They were an influence of Guns. There was this song called "Move To The City" on our first EP. My brother played the horns on it. Guns would always have horn stuff on "Live Or Let Die" or something. My brother always played the horn stuff. So we were up here in Seattle, and that song "Blind Date Girl," I heard horns in it. It all comes from The Saints, man. It stems from The Saints. My brother wasn't up here in Seattle. He lives down in L.A. He came into the studio, and I couldn't pay him much! Those horns turned out great.
Did you know from the beginning that you would be playing the guitar rather than the bass?
Every song I've ever written was on guitar, whether for Guns or VR or punk rock bands. I used to play guitar and sing in bands. I used to play drums in bands, too. I made a record on my own in '93 and I played everything. I was playing drums and I played bass and guitar. Then I went and toured that record right after. I went to Europe, and I played rhythm guitar then. The Neurotic Outsiders was my first band in 1995 after sobriety. I was playing rhythm guitar, and Steve Jones was the lead guitar player. I sang a bunch in that band, and it's way easier for me to sing and play rhythm guitar than it is to play bass. It's like a million times easier. Then the idea of Loaded started. It was like, "Okay, I'm going to sing and play guitar." So Jeff Rouse, the bass player for Loaded, I think is a better bass player than me. He's really creative and really solid. I lucked out there, finding one of the best rock bass players who is unknown – until maybe now, hopefully. It's just easier for me to play rhythm guitar. I have a rhythm guitar style that I think lends itself to the band.
Did you know there was going to be a second guitar player? I mean, did you know that you wouldn't be taking on the lead guitar duties?
Mike Squires has been the lead guitar since 2001.
Did you learn how to get a good rhythm guitar sound from watching Slash or learn how to step up to a mic watching Scott? Did any of that rub off or was it more subliminal?
I think anybody would be lying if they said they weren't influenced by the people they played with. In saying that, I certainly haven't tried to mimic anything. I probably have learned the most about rhythm guitar playing from Izzy. He was probably the ultimate rhythm guitar player. I probably learned most of my guitar playing from my earliest influences. My style is more Steve Jones from The Pistols and Johnny Thunder. That's what I gravitate towards. I don't even know what Slash does on the guitar. He and I warm up together before gigs. We'll play the different songs or whatever. We'll play riffs. So I've seen him play for years and I know how he plays, but it's all what comes from his brain. God knows what goes on in there. Slash, when I met him we were 19 years old. He already had this old soul to playing guitar. He's a freak of nature, that dude. He's so talented. He's one of those guys that is good at anything he does. If he decided to play basketball tomorrow, he'd be good. I don't know. Squires is definitely a different guitar player than Slash, but Squires is 36. He grew up playing to Slash and George Lynch. Those were his idols. So he comes from a different place than I do. I'm like, "Really? George Lynch was your idol?" I mean, I get it.
Do you have any specific equipment that you use to get that perfect rhythm guitar sound?
I go straight. I don't have any effects. I don't want to play any effects in the studio because I don't want to use any effects when I play live. I don't want to have to think about hitting pedals. So right there, I know where my box is. I have this Marshall head that I bought in '92. It was modded by Bogner, hot-rodded by Bogner. I guess it's comparable to when I go to Europe, where I rent the JCM 2000. It's comparable to that, but nothing is like this head that I have up here in Seattle. I use an old, beat-up Marshall cabinet that I've had since 1990 or something. I think it was Slash's that he used on Appetite. So that's my sound. I have a couple Les Pauls that I use in the studio. I have two Bernie guitars. I got them in Japan. It's a Les Paul, but in Japan they can copy this stuff like exactly. These Bernies, you can't get them here because they're illegal. But I swear, they sound better. I have this…I don't want to say this. These Bernies accomplish my sound better than any other guitar. So I used the same guitar for the whole record. I only messed with the volume knob on my guitar.
In a perfect world, what happens now? What happens if the record takes off and they're clamoring for you to fill stadiums?
I don't know. One thing that I've learned is that I don't know what is going to happen. I know in the next three months, I've got dates booked that I'll be playing. Where am I going to be at six months from now? I couldn't tell you. I don't try to figure it out anymore. I'm secure enough in my own skin now that I can let things happen. I know I have to take care of my daughters and my wife. Other than that, musically I let it happen. I'm really, really happy now musically. I'm having one of the best times that I've had in a long time with my music in Loaded. I don't want to wait another eight years to make a record. I want us to make a record every couple years now. I hope this is a band that I go into my 60's or 70's with. You can't say that's too old anymore because you've got the Stones and Iggy leading the way.
Do you keep in contact with Slash and the guys in VR?
Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We haven't made our best record yet. We wrote a bunch of new material last summer, and it's far and above our best material. I think because we were back in that place, up again the wall. That's when we perform the best. So we're actively looking for a singer. The guy has got to be not just good, but great and have greatness. That will happen when it's meant to happen. I'm not sweating it, but we haven't made our best record yet. We all know we have to do that.
Have you heard Chinese Democracy? Do you have any comments on it?
I heard it. Axl's voice sounds great. The rest of it, people have asked me, "Is it weird for you to have a Guns N' Roses come out?" It's not that at all. Maybe if I would have gotten kicked out of the band and then this record came out, then I probably would have felt hurt. But you've got to remember, I left in 1995. I left because the thing that we created in '85 was over, and it had been over probably since 1989. We were just kind of chasing out tails trying to get that back. It wasn't meant to be. So for this record to come out now some 21 years after we made Appetite, for it to have any sort of effect like "Oh shit," it's not like. It's been Axl's thing, and it always has. That will never change. As far as the band or the songs, they're completely unfamiliar to me. There are some good songs that I really like, and there are some songs that I don't. That could be any record we're talking about.
I'm really glad to see that you're not a casualty of rock and that some guys are able to pull back from the edge to lead a good life.
I really appreciate you saying that.
Photo credit: Photo by Neil Zlozower
2018 Awards Show Highlights
Join Cynthia Landeen and her team as they celebrate Rock n Roll at the 2018 Rock Godz Hall of Fame Awards at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills.
2018 Rock Godz Hall of Fame from Parry-Riposte Films on Vimeo.
2018 Awards-Heavy Metal Hill
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ROCKGODZ Hall of Fame Awards The Canyon Club Agoura 11/18/2018
The RockGodz Hall of Fame Award show, red carpet and benefit concert took place as planned on Sunday, November 18th, 2018 at the Canyon Club, Agoura Hills to bring recognition to the musicians who built the legacy of rock music, honoring incredible artists as well as to raise money for those affected by the recent events in the area.
The RockGodz Hall of Fame and the Canyon Club acknowledged those touched by the recent tragic events and those who risked their lives to serve and save lives during this time. All firefighters, emergency responders and volunteers were invited to attend the show free of charge, and a portion of the proceeds from the show will be donated to benefit the victims of the recent fires and shootings in the area.
Read More here from Heavy Metal Hill and THE 6th ANNUAL ROCKGODZ HALL OF FAME AWARDS 2018
Hype Magazine 2018
Exclusive Q&A With 3 2018 RockGodz Hall Of Fame Inductees
The 6th Annual RockGodz Hall Of Fame Awards will take place on Sunday, November 18th at The Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, California. The ceremony celebrates the unsung heroes behind rock & roll's most legendary musicians and most famous instrumentation on chart-topping albums. In turn, rock & roll legends will honor their own during a celebration of music with passion and talent at its core, bringing recognition to the lesser-known musicians who built the legacy of rock music.
All RockGodz Hall Of Fame inductees are selected by inductee alumni, their peers, which continues to make the organization highly respected by the music community. This year's awards show will be opened with live musical performances and throughout the evening inductees will perform tributes to their biggest hits. The evening will also feature appearances from current alumni, special guests, surprise performances, and a one-of-a-kind all-star jam of past and present inductees.
Noted co-founder Cindy Landeen says: "Our mission is to acknowledge the contributions of a group of stunningly gifted musicians and professionals who flew under the radar while delivering to the world music that has orchestrated the soundtrack of many lives. We believe that these virtuosos, maestros and those working in the trenches behind the scenes need not wait any longer to be recognized and acknowledged for their part. In the day they may have been relatively unknown to the music world and fans at large, but the RockGodz Hall Of Fame has purposely taken on the challenge and goal of celebrating their achievements." Read More
ROCK GODZ HALL OF FAME AWARDS OCT 26TH @ THE HARD ROCK CAFE HOLLYWOOD CA
ROCK STARS INDUCT THEIR OWN IN THIS ANNUAL AWARD SHOW
Rock's biggest stars come out to honor their own that don't normally get the recognition they deserve"
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LOS ANGELES , CA, USA, October 5, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THE 5TH ANNUAL ROCKGODZ HALL OF FAME AWARDS 2017
@ THE HARD ROCK CAFÉ HOLLYWOOD, CA
ROCK'S BIGGEST STARS HONOR THEIR OWN
LITA FORD, CARMINE APPICE, CHRIS CHANEY, RORY KAPLAN, PHIL SOUSSAN
AMONG OTHERS TO BE INDUCTED
BOSE PROFESSIONAL SERVES AS ONE OF THE SPONSORS
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Michael Curry Joins Rock Godz
Mr. Curry has over 27 years of experience as a leader and executive with various publicly-traded and privately-held enterprise software and technology companies. Currently, he is Chief Marketing Officer and Board Member of eCasinoHost a cloud based guest service platform for gamming hospitality organizations. Prior, he was the Chief Marketing Officer of Conexion One, the leader in contact center outsourcing solution and technology. He previously managed both national and international channels for AltiGen Communications, a leading provider of enterprise unified communications solutions. Mr. Curry also held senior positions at Avaya, Lucent Technologies and AT&T. Mr. Curry holds a BS in Computer Science from Texas Technical College.
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text:
Q: How to conditionally enable launchScript() inside bootJar? I'm trying to setup a conditional build process.
The following code works, but I need to specify the parameter on the command line, while It should be good to define two separate task to do that.
bootJar {
    if (project.hasProperty("exec")) {
      launchScript()
    }
}

Is there a way to execute the bootJar or another custom task to enable/disable the launchScript()?
For example, how i can define the task bootJarExecutable that acts as the standard bootJar but with the launchScript ?

A: You can create another task that just configures your bootJar task when executed:
task bootJarExecutable {
    finalizedBy bootJar
    doFirst {
        bootJar.launchScript()
    }
}

However, this only works if you need either the one .jar or the other in one invocation, but not both. In this case, you would need to create another BootJar task and configure it on your own.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


If you had driven more carefully, you would not have had an accident.
If we had played a little better, we could have won the game.
If it had snowed, we could have gone skiing.
With the third conditional we talk about the past. We talk about a condition in the past that did not happen. That is why there is no possibility for this condition. The third conditional is also like a dream, but with no possibility of the dream coming true.
Criticism: You had an accident because you didn't drive carefully enough.
Regret:We didn't play well, so we lost the game.
Regret:It didn't snow, so we couldn't go skiing.


text:
import System.Environment (getArgs)
import Data.Char (digitToInt)

nthp    :: Int -> Int -> Int
nthp e i = i ^ e

sumofnthp  :: String -> String
sumofnthp i = show . sum . map (nthp e) $ map digitToInt i
            where e = floor (logBase 10 (read i::Double)) + 1

armstrong  :: String -> String
armstrong i | sumofnthp i == i = "True"
            | otherwise        = "False"

main :: IO ()
main = do
    [inpFile] <- getArgs
    input <- readFile inpFile
    putStr . unlines . map armstrong $ lines input

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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The owner of Blackjack Cove Marina in Tennessee is being sued by his insurance company, which said he took advantage of a 2009 storm to hook the insurer into millions of dollars worth of renovation costs.
However, owner Barton Bagsby said he had invested millions more than the insurer paid out in order to improve the facility and that he is trying to get reimbursed based on the "replacement value" policy he purchased, the Nashville Business Journal reports.
New Hampshire Insurance Co., which is part of AIG, filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court.
At stake is nearly $2.6 million that the insurer has already paid out for marina repairs, as well as another $1.1 million in additional claims.
The marina on Old Hickory Lake was heavily damaged by an April 3, 2009 storm, just days after Bagsby bought it for $2.5 million. Bagsby said that while he wanted to buy a "cash value" policy for the marina, New Hampshire Insurance Co. wouldn't write a policy unless it was for replacement value, according to the report. Bagsby said he did not have time to find another insurance carrier before closing on the purchase.
Bagsby reportedly spent nearly $5 million improving the marina, in addition to the money he received from New Hampshire Insurance Co.
In its suit, the insurer describes the overall facility as having been in poor condition prior to the storm.
But Bagsby told the Nashville Business Journal that portions the insurer described as being in "above average" condition made up 90 percent of the insurance claim. Much of the facility was closed during the 2009 boating season because of the storm damage.
Blackjack Cove MarinaNew Hampshire Insurance Co.


Since his arrival at Norton Hare, L.L.C. in 2012, David W. Fairbanks has fought tirelessly for family law clients in need of a voice. Mr. Fairbanks has earned his reputation as an accomplished trial attorney with a unique and engaging approach to problem solving both in the courtroom and at the negotiation table.
As a husband and father himself, Mr. Fairbanks knows every client has a story to tell. By truly listening to his clients, Mr. Fairbanks creates impassioned and effective trial strategies so that each of his client's stories may be heard.


text:
Marc Wasterlain (* 29. Juni 1946 in Erquelinnes) ist ein belgischer Comicautor und -zeichner.

Künstlerischer Werdegang
Nachdem Wasterlain eine zweijährige Ausbildung zum Comic- und Trickfilmzeichner am Centre des Arts Décoratifs in Brüssel abgeschlossen hatte, trat er ca. 1965 dem Studio von Dino Attanasio bei. Dort assistierte er Attanasio insbesondere bei dessen Serien Johnny Goodbye und Gianni Flash. Auch schrieb er mit Alerte soucoupe ein Szenario für die Serie Mausi und Paul.1967 wurde Wasterlain Mitarbeiter von Peyo und assistierte ihm bis 1972 bei dessen Serien Die Schlümpfe, Johann und Pfiffikus und Benni Bärenstark. Parallel hierzu zeichnete er 1971 mit La Patrouille de l'Espace eine Kurzgeschichte für das Magazin Samedi Jeunesse. Im selben Jahr zeichnete er für Spirou nach einem Szenario von Jacques Devos das Mini-récit Capitaine Plouf et Pample le mousse.

1971 erschien mit Bob Moon et Titania Wasterlains erste eigene Serie in Tintin. Bob Moon und Titania sind zwei Kinder, die unter anderem auf dem Mond und auf dem Mars Abenteuer erleben. 1973 schuf Wasterlain außerdem für Tintin die Serie Monsieur Bonhomme. Da man Wasterlain zu verstehen gab, dass man nicht daran interessiert sei, seine Serien als Alben herauszugeben, wechselte er 1975 zum Magazin Spirou, für das er nach verschiedenen kleineren Arbeiten 1976 die Serie Docteur Poche entwickelte. Docteur Poche ist, wie bereits der Name der Serie besagt, Arzt, aber gleichzeitig auch Zauberer. Zusammen mit der Lehrerin Mademoiselle Zoé erlebt er fantasievolle Abenteuer, die ihn bis in den Weltraum hinaus führen (in dem Zweiteiler La planète des chats und Le géant qui posait des questions). Docteur Poche wurde bis 1989 in Spirou veröffentlicht.  Das Material wurde von Dupuis in neun Alben gesammelt. Danach wechselte Wasterlain mit seiner Serie zu Casterman. Dort entstanden fünf weitere albenlange Geschichten. Da Casterman mit der Serie ein jüngeres Publikum erreichen wollte, stellte Wasterlain in den fünf neuen Geschichten der Hauptfigur die Kinder Mimi und Nicolas zur Seite.

Parallel zu Docteur Poche textete und zeichnete Wasterlain ab 1982 für Spirou außerdem die Abenteuer um die Reporterin Jeannette Pointu. In diesem neben Docteur Poche zweiten großen Hauptwerk Wasterlains verschlägt es die Hauptfigur im Laufe der Serie in nahezu alle Krisengebiete der Erde. Außerdem werden in insgesamt 12 Kurzgeschichten (gesammelt in den Alben Femmes Massaïs und Les Amazones) Frauen verschiedenster Völker und Kulturen porträtiert. Die Serie erschien bis 2005 in Spirou.

Ab 1985 war Wasterlain auf Bitte von Jean-Claude Forest außerdem für das Magazin Okapi tätig. Für dieses Magazin zeichnete er die Serie Gil et Georges. Bis 1991 entstanden hier fünf albenlange Geschichten, von denen allerdings nur die ersten drei als Alben verlegt wurden. Von 1990 bis 1992 gestaltete Wasterlain für Marsu Productions weiterhin die Gagserie Ratapoil um einen sportbegeisterten anthropomorphen Hund. Für das Magazin Astrapi zeichnete er von 1994 bis 1995 des Weiteren die kurzlebige Serie Yvan et Wanda um zwei Zirkuskinder. Wasterlains neueste eigene Serie ist Les Pixels.

Marc Wasterlain als Szenarist
Gelegentlich ist Wasterlain auch als Szenarist für andere Autoren tätig. Für Arthur Piroton textete er 1987 mit Silicium Valley eine Geschichte der Serie Jess Long. Für MiTacq schrieb er 1988–1990 zwei Szenarien für dessen Serie Die blauen Panther (Le calvaire du mort pendu und Torrents sur mesin). Für François Walthéry textete er unter anderem L'île d'outre-monde (1983) und Natacha et les dinosaures (1998) für dessen Serie Natascha.

Ab 1991 verfasste Wasterlain außerdem die Szenarien für mehr als 150 meist vier- und achtseitige Kurzgeschichten mit den Schlümpfen, die dann durch das Studio Peyo zeichnerisch umgesetzt wurden.

Deutschsprachige Veröffentlichungen
1988–1989 veröffentlichte Carlsen die ersten vier Bände von Jeannette Pointu unter dem Titel Monika Morell. Der fünfte Band wurde 2009 von Epsilon herausgegeben. 1989 publizierte comicplus+ die ersten beiden Bände von Gil et Georges unter dem Titel Das Kleeblatt. Die ersten beiden Bände von Docteur Poche veröffentlichte der Feest Verlag 1990–1991 unter dem Titel Doktor Poche.

Wasterlains in den 1990er Jahren geschriebenen Geschichten mit den Schlümpfen wurden von Bastei in dem Magazin Die Schlümpfe herausgegeben.

Einzelnachweise

Weblinks
 Gilles Ratier: Marc Wasterlain, auf BDZoom (französisch)
 Lambiek: Marc Wasterlain (englisch)

Comic-Zeichner (Belgien)
Belgier
Geboren 1946
Mann
Comic-Szenarist

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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text:
Details: F2009B00108
Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991 - Declaration under section 9(5)
- F2009B00108
Declarations/Other as made
This Declarations states members of the Air Training Corps, Australian Cadet Corps and Naval Reserve Corps shall be taken to be employed by the Commonwealth for the purposes of the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991.
Administered by: Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
Registered 30 Jan 2009
Tabled HR 15-Feb-2000
Tabled Senate 15-Feb-2000
Gazetted 15 Dec 1999
Date of repeal 01 Jan 2012
Repealed by Repeal of the enabling legislation by Work Health and Safety (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Act 2011
Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991
PERSONS TAKEN TO BE EMPLOYED BY THE COMMONWEALTH
I, PETER KEASTON REITH, Minister of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, under subsection 9(5) of the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991 (the Act) declare that:
· the class of persons mentioned in column 1 of the Schedule is taken to be employed by the Commonwealth for the purposes of the Act, and
· the employment of that class of persons for those purposes is taken to be constituted by the performance of the class of acts mentioned in column 2 of the Schedule.
Dated 25th November 1999
Peter Reith
Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business
Class of persons
Class of Acts
Members of the Air Training Corps established under section 8 of the Air Force Act 1923
Acts performed in connection with the activities of the Corps
Members of the Australian Cadet Corps established under section 62 of the Defence Force Act 1903
Members of the Navel Reserve Cadets established under section 38 of the Naval Defence Act 1910
Acts performed in connection with the activities of the Cadets

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Why Do Radiant Cut Diamonds Look Bigger Than Other Diamonds of the Same Weight?
To begin a product comparison, please select 2-4 products to compare.
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text:
Q: The boundary between polycrystalline and crystalline My current understanding of solid crystalline-like materials (please correct me if I'm wrong!) is that it is a continuum in terms of crystallinity, from amorphous (basically no periodicity) to single crystals (complete periodicity), with "polycrystalline" pretty much covering everything in the middle, like the wiki article shows.
So my question is, what should you expect from a polycrystal in terms of properties you know about a single crystal of the same material, such as dispersion relation, band structure, etc?
Obviously, it's a continuum, so you should expect a polycrystal that's almost a single crystal (maybe like, a single crystal split in two, and put back together the tiniest bit off) to behave pretty damn similar to a single crystal. It seems like each single crystallite in a polycrystal should act as a tiny crystal with the band structure of a perfect crystal.
But what do you do as the grains get smaller? Is there some way to predict how close to a single crystal you should expect the polycrystal to behave, given its average and variance of grain sizes? As the grains get smaller, it seems like you should expect the thin layers of amorphous solid holding the crystallites together to be more and more important.
In fact, is there any sort of formalism for working with amorphous solids?
Thanks!


'Cron tab(CRON TABle)' is a text file that contains a series of cron functions.
>>>If you want to send your email cources to your subscribers at 11.30 night, you will set the cron job on your server.And your cron manager sends the one email every day at 11.30 until all the emails will be finished.
If you want to send them on Sundays, you can schedule it with your cron.
>>>You can schedule it to delete your website members with expired accounts.
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>>>You can check your links on other websites in link exchange programms.
select how you are going to run, once a day, every minute, once a week, what ever, this is the easy part….
mysername is your cpanel username and cron.php is the file you need to run.
then it is better to use Curl.
Curl is a text based browser that is installed in most hosting environments.


Anjali Oberoi | This is an exciting development both for Bernoulli Finance and me personally: I am joining the board of directors of the Third Millennium Alliance (TMA). TMA is a grassroots nonprofit foundation, which brings together a group passionate environmentalists around the goal to build and protect wilderness areas in Ecuador.
We've already protected nearly 1,500 acres of rainforest and cloud forest along the coastal mountain range, called the Jama-Coaque Reserve. It's open for like-minded visitors who can stay in the Bamboo House lodge, hike through the cloud forest, swim in the waterfalls, go bird watching, and track endangered monkeys. There's even a small cacao and coffee plantation on site, so you can harvest and make your own chocolate. And the Pacific Ocean is just four miles down the road. Check out the 2-minute video below!
Please consider supporting the good work of TMA using this link.
Older PostIs Paypal your Pal?


historicalMisc is an experiment of the CMIP5 - Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 ( https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5 ). CMIP5 is meant to provide a framework for coordinated climate change experiments for the next five years and thus includes simulations for assessment in the AR5 as well as others that extend beyond the AR5. Experiment design: https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/experiment_design.html List of output variables: https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/datadescription.html Output: time series per variable in model grid spatial resolution in netCDF format Earth System model and the simulation information: CIM repository Entry name/title of data are specified according to the Data Reference Syntax ( https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/mips/cmip5/docs/cmip5_data_reference_syntax.pdf ) as activity/product/institute/model/experiment/frequency/modeling realm/MIP table/ensemble member/version number/variable name/CMOR filename.nc . Used forcings in individual ensemble runs (see attached addinfo for more information or at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelE/ar5/ ): r[1-5]i1p1 - NoAIE; r[1-5]i1p102 - Sl: anthropogenic sulfate aerosol, accounting only for indirect effects; r[1-5]i1p103 - Vl: volcanic aerosol; r[1-5]i1p104 - LU: land-use change; r[1-5]i1p105 - Oz: stratospheric and tropospheric ozone from concentration; r[1-5]i1p106 - AAdirect: anthropogenic tropospheric aerosol: direct effect only (via concentration); r[1-5]i1p107 - AA: anthropogenic tropospheric aerosol: direct and indirect effect only (via concentration); r[1-5]i1p108 - BCsnow: black carbon on snow only; r[1-5]i1p109 - Ant: anthropogenic forcing (a mixture, not explicitly defined here, that might include, for example, well-mixed greenhouse gases, aerosols, ozone, and land-use changes); r[1-5]i1p302 - Sl: anthropogenic sulfate aerosol, accounting only for indirect effects; r[1-5]i1p303 - Vl: volcanic aerosol; r[1-5]i1p309 - Ant: anthropogenic forcing (a mixture, not explicitly defined here, that might include, for example, well-mixed greenhouse gases, aerosols, ozone, and land-use changes); r[1-5]i1p310 - AA: anthropogenic tropospheric aerosol via emissions of SO2, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC), NH3; r[1-5]i1p311 - SLG: anthropogenic tropospheric reactive gases (emissions of NOx, CO, volatile organic compounds - VOCs, CH4); r[1-5]i1p312 - ODS: emissions of CFCs; r[1-5]i1p313 - GHGnoCH4: CO2, N2O, small misc. gases by concentration, not CH4.


This week's issue revisits the Digital Public Library of America and offers a progress report as we approach the April 2013 launch. We also look at recent posts from MLA Scholarly Communication Director Kathleen Fitzpatrick and digital artist Kyle McDonald, each confronting the ways public authorship is changing the contours of scholarly and artistic production.
Feel free to add your comments or questions below!
Ever since the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) emerged in late 2010 with the promise of creating a national digital library it has generated much publicity, enthusiasm, and criticism. I attended the plenary meeting in October 2011 and the excitement was palpable. The meeting began with the announcement of $5 million in funding from the Sloan Foundation and the Arcadia Fund, the Beta Sprint presentations demonstrated the commitment of intellectual energy to the project, and the April 2013 launch date loomed, yet seemed manageable. However, the movement seems to have stalled: there are many critical questions that remain unanswered; there is a lack of coordination between the workstreams that has prevented rapid progress, amplified by the non-existence of an executive to call shots; and the April 2013 launch date continues to loom (less than 9 months!).
Hackathon (April 5): began testing the front-end platform and developing apps.
DPLA West (April 27): the workstreams discussed how to better organize their work (e.g. nodes), communicate more effectively, and create incentives for institutions to participate; the steering committee discussed how the organization should be structured and funded as well as the initial architecture of the website.
Steering Committee Meeting (June 12): drafted a 5 year plan (xls) and made plans to hire an executive director; discussed development of the back-end metadata platform.
Technical Development Plan (July): an outline for creating the front-end DPLA platform and an API by April 2013.
Interested in participating? The DPLA website lists number of ways you can get involved. For example, you can help determine how the DPLA front end will look by providing feedback on the Audience and Participation workstream's use cases (better yet, attend the Audience and Participation workshop later this month and share your thoughts in person!).
Kathleen Fitzpatrick's recent post on blogs as serialized scholarship frames the scholarly blog as a return to form: specifically the early modern and 17th-century form of scholarly letter writing and serialized fiction.
This serial audience-author exchange resonates with another of this week's readings, Kyle McDonald's Wired article detailing last year's "People Staring at Computers" blow-up. For those unfamiliar, McDonald's work involved installing applications in the showroom computers at several Manhattan Apple Stores. The app took pictures of customers browsing the machines (a simultaneously public and somehow deeply interior action shot) and uploaded them to a private server—all of which made Apple (and the Secret Service folks hired by Apple) pretty darn anxious.
In both McDonald's and Fitzpatrick's posts, what we find is the desire for gated communities (whether scholars or contemporary artists) to unmoor themselves from gate-i-ness…to use the public space of the web to reassert public relevance.
Of course the question remains: is public relevance necessarily antithetical to the kinds of vetting and gatekeeping both academia and high art rely on when it comes to legitimating their respective authors?


text:
Q: On the definition of independent and dependent random variables In section 7.4 of "Understandable Statistics", the following definitions are given:
Two samples are independent if sample data drawn from one population are completely unrelated to the selection of sample data from the other population
Two samples are dependent if each data value in one sample can be paired with a corresponding data value in the other sample
In more adequate textbooks, I believe the definition for $X$ and $Y$ being independent random variables is that $P(x=X,y=Y)=P(x=X)p(y=Y)$ and that the two variables are said to be dependent otherwise.
I'm teaching an elementary statistics course out of the former textbook this coming fall semester and would appreciate a comment from somebody more knowledgeable in statistics about the definitions from "Understandable statistics". What are the shortcoming of these definitions? In what ways is it accurate?


Gerard Piqué was mobbed by journalists as he left court in Barcelona.
A Spanish court on Monday slapped Barcelona centre-back Gerard Piqué with a fine of €48,000 ($54,000) for driving without a valid licence.
Piqué was stopped by municipal police in Barcelona as part of a routine check and was found to be driving without any points on his licence.
Piqué could have recovered his drivers licence in June 2018 but he did not attend this course so his licence remained suspended in August when he was stopped by municipal police, according to the court ruling.
The player received a fine of €10,500 in 2015 for insulting two police officers who wanted to fine him for parking in a no-parking zone.
Images published by local media at the time showed Piqué in a heated exchange with the officers, and crumpling the fine and throwing it on the ground.


Building your own home offers something that no other property purchase can. Building new means starting with a blank canvas. It means you can get a home that's just right the way you and your family want to live, and then add your own style and character. At Mandalay, we understand this is both an exciting and daunting experience. There are two ways to buying your new home at Mandalay.
This is the most flexible option, where you choose your own builder and design. Every part of the design and build process is up to you, which is fantastic if you have clear ideas of what you would like.
Here, a builder has already secured the land and prepared a home design that's suited specifically to that block. You can generally change finishes inside and out, but not the floor plan. This helps reduce the seemingly endless decisions involved in designing a home.
It's good news for First Home Buyers at Mandalay!
From the 1st July 2017, the Regional First Home Buyers Grant is increasing from $10,000 to $20,000 for newly built homes under $750,000.
There's also stamp duty savings applicable to all first home buyers on all properties up to $600,000 from the same period.
These changes mean that you can save even more when buying your newly built first home at Mandalay.
Our calculators can assist you with your decision to live and build at Mandalay. Find out what your borrowing power is, calculate minimum loan repayments for any borrowed amount or calculate the stamp duty applicable to your desired block.
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text:
Drake beats The Beatles' record on most top five hits with 'Stayin' Alive'
Drizzy's take on the Bee Gees classic knocked his record number to 30
Gemma Ross
Drake has now beaten The Beatles' long-running record of top five hits.
Ironically, the singer surpassed the pop icons with a cover of the Bee Gees' 1977 classic 'Stayin' Alive', which this week debuted at number five on the Billboard Hot 100.
The hit track marked Drizzy's 30th top five hits, beating The Beatles' record of 29. The legendary four-piece made their 29th top five in 1996 with 'Real Love'.
Read this next: Only 5% of music in UK dance charts is from women or non-binary people, new report finds
"DJ Khaled's 'Staying Alive', featuring Drake & Lil Baby, debuted at No. 5 on this week's #Hot100. It has earned Drake his 30th career top 5 hit, passing The Beatles for the most of all time," reads a tweet from Billboard.
.@djkhaled's "Staying Alive," featuring @Drake & @lilbaby4PF, debuts at No. 5 on this week's #Hot100.
It earns Drake his 30th career top 5 hit, passing @thebeatles for the most of all time.
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 15, 2022
Billboard also revealed that Drake is the first artist in history to earn 100 top 20 hits on its Hot 100.
In 2019, the singer-cum-rapper sang the verse: "I got more slaps than The Beatles" in Meek Mill's 'Going Bad'. The same year, the rapper also got a tattoo depicting himself walking along the famous Abbey Road zebra crossing alongside The Beatles.
Despite his references to the famous foursome, Drake has yet to surpass The Beatles' number of UK No. 1's, currently holding just six under his belt compared to the band's 17.
Read this next: Kate Bush has broken three Guinness World Records with 'Running Up That Hill'
In 1964, The Beatles also held all top five positions in the charts for a period of time. The band also achieved most of their top five places in just five years, in comparison to Drake's 14.
Last year, Drake credited both John Lennon and Paul McCartney on his sixth studio album, 'Certified Lover Boy'. The long-awaited record nodded to The Beatles members on 'Champagne Poetry', which reworked the band's 1965 'Michelle'.
Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Editorial Assistant, follow her on Twitter


They met on a sunny October day in 2006. It was Fleet Week on the San Francisco Bay and Millie was invited by a friend to join James for a day sail. She loved it. Fast forward three years and the two exchange wedding vows at the Oakland Yacht Club. Another year later and the house in Alameda is sold. They immediately move aboard Jean Marie and begin planning for that final sail out the golden gate and the big left turn south. Then Millie gets pregnant, prompting James to install a car seat in the cockpit. "We're taking him with us", he announces.
James Wilson is the captain. He started sailing in 1999 after attending the boat show in Oakland and, in a moment of spontaneity, signing up for classes with Club Nautique. He quickly became obsessed with sailing and bought an Ericson 30+ a few months later. James spent 6 years sailing and racing his Ericson while dreaming of trade winds and white sand beaches before finding Jean Marie, a Fast Passage 39 in 2005. James is a native Californian - he grew up on the central coast, attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and has worked all over the bay area as a software engineer. James is also a USCG licensed captain, a licensed Ham operator (KJ6LNI), and a restless dreamer.
Millie Wilson (formerly Millie Cadiz) is the first mate. She began sailing on that fateful day in 2006 and adapted easily to life on the boat. Millie is originally from Hawaii, but grew up in Florida where she studied nursing at the University of South Florida. In 2002 she made her way to CA as a travel nurse where destiny and a 39-foot sailboat awaited her. Millie is an oncology nurse, ukulele player, and lover of all things furry.
Colin Wilson is the deck hand and general trouble-maker. He was born on April 15, 2011 and since that day has been working hard to disrupt the otherwise peaceful lives of mom and dad. They could not be happier. He plans to take the helm as soon as he learns to sit upright.
Keiko is the ship's dog. She began sailing in 2007, although doesn't seem to enjoy it much. Her hobbies include scratching, sleeping, and eating (in that order).