Today's Day in Rock Stories

The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan Dead At 46

"It's on the cards, but it's just gonna be a few select shows. We're not gonna be touring with it," Campbell tells Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon. "We're gonna get these people involved and [we have to allow for] their schedules as well. We'll just do some special shows worldwide, which will be good - a tribute to Lem and to the band maybe, yeah. But it wouldn't be an ongoing thing. Everyone's too busy. But [we want to] do something special. We're still trying to work on that now."

Lemmy died in December of 2015 from prostate cancer, a cardiac arrhythmia, and congestive heart failure at the age of 70, a few months after the release of the group's 22nd studio album, "Bad Magic."

Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal is one such musician. The guitarist was part of the Axl Rose-led Guns N' Roses for eight years from 2006 to 2014 and played on the now infamous Chinese Democracy album. Speaking in a recent radio interview, Thal described the last Guns N' Roses album as a "masterpiece" and that "if you really break down everything that is going on in that record, there is so much. It's such a fragile balance of so many parts that works just right."

"We're always jamming, Joe and I," Hughes tells the Blues Rock Review, "and I may have been tuning my bass up and he starts playing (hums riff) and I'm going, 'Don't stop! Carry on, what key is this?' I found out we were in B and I'm, like, this is great and then I started to sing, 'Oh, when I come around.'

"I know what's coming. I know when there's going to be a pre-chorus and when the chorus hit, I started to play these Beatle kind of chords in a rock version and we just knew this was a song. Of course, the Fleetwood Mac part is Joe being Joe, but as you know, Joe will say to you he's just borrowing from somebody else as I borrow from X, Y or Z. Trust me, we all borrow from each other."

Sugar Mama is a bit of a take on a Howlin Wolf thing. I love some of the riff based songs of his that have such a raw power about them. Those recordings are alive! You can feel the room. I wanted to capture that raw energy in my own way. Those are the tunes that people would be getting down to at juke joints and they have that boogie. I love to write from riffs like that and I find those are usually the quickest songs I write. There's nothing like a powerful guitar riff.

This was actually the last song I recorded for the EP, and I wasn't planning on adding another song to it. I thought five was enough. It's funny that it happens to be the first single that I've released, so I'm very glad it made it on the EP. The recording happened very naturally. The core of the song was composed and recorded in one take, which is what you hear on the record. I had my studio all set up from a previous session and my 12 year old neighbor Chris stopped by on his bicycle, as he often does. He plays drums every week at his church and is an incredible drummer. He's got a long career ahead of him. I asked him if he wanted to jam and he went and hopped on the drum set and I hit record on my tape machine. What you hear is us just freely playing together. I was very happy to have a song with him playing on the record as I believe it's the first recording he's ever done. I just started playing that riff and it galloped off after that. I made up some lyrics on the spot and later went back and re-tracked the vocals and added some more guitars and the bass, and that's it. When I replaced the middle section electric guitar with acoustic it really opened up and I realized I wanted to put it on the album.

I love recording in that way, keeping everything spontaneous. It's raw and unpredictable and you can hear it. Songs are very fragile things, and often for me they can lose their original inspiration if too much time is spent trying to make them perfect or overly thought out. Learning to allow that spontaneity and uncertainty has been crucial to my recording process and I think produces more exciting recordings. I kept the lyrics very direct and simple so as to draw as much power out of them and my voice as possible. At the end of the day it's really a blues tune.

As it turns out, all of the above reasons are why Slash's son London Hudson doesn't play guitar. The fifteen year-old plays drums in the The Classless Act and along with his bandmate Nico Tsangaris, gave his first interview to the Appetite For Distortion podcast.

During the interview, Hudson was asked when he realised how famous his dad was and in the process, he revealed why he chose drums over guitar: "Since I was little, especially with the Velvet Revolver stuff, because that was the most I toured with him, was for the Velvet Revolver stuff. Seeing that many people at the shows was kind of crazy, and how they all just worshipped. Then going on the last GNR tour, and seeing all those people who still like him for much older stuff�.is when it really clicked, going on that tour. But it never really hit me until this summer, where I was like, I don't want to live in his shadow, when I started playing in the band. That's the main reason I don't play guitar or stringed instruments."

Hackett has told Ultimate Classic Rock, "Keith Emerson and I were going to form a band with Jack Bruce and Simon Phillips. Of course, two of those guys have passed on now, but what talent, what drive. Irreplaceable. I have enormous respect and love for their work.

"It was the early '80s, before Keith reformed ELP with Cozy Powell. We had a band there for about five minutes, and it all seemed like it might be very good. But I think Keith and Jack had their differences, and afterwards Keith said to me, 'Well, Jack's gone now, but how would you feel about being the singer?' I said, 'Whoa, in no way do I consider myself to be in Jack's league as a singer."

Now, as Portlandia wraps up, Brownstein's set to begin work on her next TV project, a half-hour pilot for Search and Destroy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series is "loosely inspired' by Brownstein's 2015 memoir Hunger Makes A Modern Girl and is "about a young woman, a band and a community learning how to be unafraid of their own noise."

In a recent interview with Music Radar, Brock spoke about those early days in London in the Sixties, when he and Eric Clapton used to hang out: "It would've been about '63 or '64. Quite early on. We used to sit around plonking away on guitars. We used to hang out in Richmond because it was a really nice place, and go down Eel Pie Island and meet up in L'Auberge coffee bar. Eric lived in Cobham in Surrey, which isn't far from there. That's where everybody used to hang out. We used to sit there and play guitar and swap around - each one of us would have a go."

Phil had the following to say, "This song was written for my mother. She passed away in February of 2017 after a three-year battle with cancer. She loved dragonflies which happen to have deep spiritual significance in many traditions and cultures, representing love, freedom of spirit and compassion.

Kennedy recorded the album last year with producer and longtime Alter Bridge associate Michael "Elvis" Baskette. The singer's six-date UK run will open in Birmingham on March 17, and see stops in Nottingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Bristol before wrapping up in London on March 26.

A series of ticket pre-sales will begin Wednesday, January 17 at 9 a.m., with general pubic seats available Friday, January 19 at 9 a.m. via LiveNation.co.uk, venue box offices and via regular ticket providers.

Recorded in Brussels, Belgium with producer Joylon Thomas and London, UK with co-producer Tom Dalgety, the project debuted atop the UK charts upon its release in June to duplicate the success of the band's 2014 self-titled record, the fastest-selling British rock debut album in their native country in three years.

Royal Blood streamed a live performance at the House Of Vans in London last month after more than 10,000 fans applied for free tickets to the intimate event.

In order to qualify under the Best Rock Album category, more than half (at least 51%) of an album's playing time must be dedicated to 'new rock, hard rock, or metal recordings." Below, explore each record that's up for a Best Rock Album GRAMMY!

Emperor of Sand - Mastodon: Rolling Stone ranked Emperor of Sand #4 on its list of the 20 Best Metal Albums of 2017, and not only is it up for Best Rock Album but its track 'Sultan's Curse" is up for Best Metal Performance. The record is a metaphor for cancer and the trail of destruction it leaves behind, giving the album an emotionally raw finish. Mastodon previously mentioned that vocal improvement was a huge focus in creating their 7th LP, and hard work clearly pays off, as the band now has 2 chances to take home a GRAMMY.

Hardwired' To Self-Destruct - Metallica: By the summer of 2017, Metallica's 10th studio album, Hardwired' To Self-Destruct, had already sold over 1 million copies in the US. If Metallica were trying to capture the grit of their early years, they succeeded. Rolling Stone ranked it #1 on its list of the 20 Best Metal Albums of 2016. And while the band already won 8 GRAMMYs, they have a shot at winning two more: in this category and Best Rock Song ('Atlas, Rise!" ).