Jimmy Kay From Canada’s The Metal Voice talks to Martin Popoff about his NEW BOOK Led Zeppelin“All the Albums, All the songs”, talking about the songs, the albums, the artwork, their inspirations and their influence on Hard Rock Heavy Metal Today.
Watch the interview here:
THE STORY BEHIND EVERY STUDIO TRACK.
Commonly described simply as heavy, Led Zeppelin’s music was actually a complex amalgam of blues, rock, folk and country. Martin Popoff dissect each of Zep’s 81 studio tracks, including the circumstances that led to their creation, the recording processes and their historical contexts. Introductory essays for each album features sidebars listing studios, release dates and personnel. Beautifully illustrated with rare performance and offstage photography and memorabilia, the result is a stunning look at the foursome who forged the template for the marauding modern rock ‘n’ roll band.
Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Rock Author Martin Popoff about his new book, ‘Hit the Lights’ The Birth Of Thrash the first of a three part book series on Thrash Metal.
Watch the interview here:
Popoff told The Metal Voice, “The main questions answered in this book is who invented thrash? This book starts in the late 70’s it gives some key touchstone points from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that Thrash guys had really appreciated and that sound somewhat like thrash back then. But as we go on there is a little bit of the punk touchstones as well and then hard core as you get into 81-82. Then things really heat up with essentially with Dave Mustaine and his Pre-Metallica band and James Hetfield and his Pre-Metallica band Leather Charm where they do the song Hit The Lights. A very important Thrash song, probably the first Thrash song, made in the Thrash environment and it also starts off with birth of Exodus. Before that Motorhead with Overkill which is one of the first double bass songs which is double bass all the way through plus a little bit of that Low-Fi recording on purpose idea, a gruff vocal on purpose and Motorhead is really the first band that had no mellow songs on their albums.”
Martin now brings us Hit the Lights: The Birth of Thrash, attacking heavy metal’s next wave of faster, heavier, angrier sounds, with a geographical shift in the axis to San Francisco and Los Angeles, with a bit of New York, Germany and Canada thrown in for good measure.
Come join Martin, along with dozens of his old school headbanging buddies (including multiple members from thrash’s big four and beyond), as they together tell the tale of thrash’s forging from the influence of punk, ‘70s metal and the NWOBHM. Venom, Anvil, Exciter, Raven, Exodus, Anthrax, Metallica… they’re all here and willing to explain candidly and at length how and why metal past the implosion of the NWOBHM suddenly found itself barreling down the tracks at breakneck speed.
Canada’s The Metal Voice is producing an online tour Documentary called Canadian Entanglement on former IRON MAIDEN singer Blaze Bayley on his upcoming Canadian Mini Tour. Part 1 of the multi-part series is now streaming below.
In Part 1 Blaze Bayley is at his home in the Birmingham, England preparing his luggage and documents for his travel, part one also includes commentary by Rock Author Martin Popoff and Bassist/ vocalist of Venom Inc, Tony Dolan
Film-maker and Executive Producer Jimmy Kay had this to say about the project, “Blaze has to be one of the most underrated front men and vocalists in Metal history. This tour documentary aims to capture the reciprocal love with his fans, the reality of the day to day excitement and grind on tour, as well as information on his time with Wolfsbane, Iron Maiden and his solo career to-date.”
Blaze Bayley added “I’m excited to be returning to Canada and I look forward to meeting my fans at these shows, with the opportunity also for them to be a part of the filming of this Canadian Entanglement documentary”.
Blaze was born 29th May 1963 in Birmingham, England. Having started his professional music career in WOLFSBANE in 1984, his career elevated to global heights when he joined IRON MAIDEN with whom he released two albums and toured worldwide between 1994 and 1999.
After leaving Iron Maiden, Blaze embarked on a solo career, during which he has released eight albums including ‘Infinite Entanglement’ in 2016 and has continued to tour worldwide, collaborating with a host of talented artists and bands.
Always open to collaborating, Blaze just recently joined DISTURBED onstage at Download Festival (UK) for a rendition of ‘Baba O’Riley’ by THE WHO, was accompanied onstage in Poland by Swedish metalheads SABATON for a version of Maiden classic ‘Man On The Edge’, and has been announced as guest vocalist on the forthcoming album by former QUEENSRYCHE singer Geoff Tate .
Canadian Tour Dates
Sept 21 Ottawa, Canada
Sept 22 Shawiningan, Canada
Sept 23 Quebec City. Canada
Sept 24 Montreal, Canada
Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to acclaimed Metal author Martin Popoff about his new book Metal Heart-Aiming High with Accept
The book covers the complete Accept biography discussing all the bands albums and songs. It explores all era’s, from the Udo Dirkschneider beginnings and success, to the David Reece dramas and break up, to the rebirth and relevance with current singer Mark Tornillo.
Popoff tells ‘The Metal Voice’ about Accept’s break out album Balls to The Wall,” Balls to the wall had this uniform smoothness to it and edge in the lyrics and that’s a whole story that’s talked about in the book. Gaby Hoffmann at this point is writing all their lyrics, a female, the manager of the band and some of the songs are written perhaps from a female point of view. Then they came out with this whole gay controversy on the album cause there is a picture of all of them with their shirt off and the Balls to the wall, the guy holding a ball, the big wrestler leg thing. It had this very funny sub current story line behind it. But I remember getting it and just thinking this is a really a multi dimensional band.”
Popoff goes on to discuss the bringing in of American vocalist David Reece and firing of Udo in 1989 an attempt for more commercial success (Eat the Heat album),” there is a funny quote from David Reece, Dieter Dierks takes David Reece aside and says, if this album fails were both going to get blamed or if it’s successful we both going to be heroes, of course it fails.”
Popoff concludes on the overwhelming acceptance of Mark Tornillo in the present, “ This is a textbook example of being able to change their singer and having it work out perfectly because Mark Tornillo is totally accepted as a member of Accept.”
Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice interviewed critically acclaimed Rock author Martin Popoff about his new YES book “Time and a Word” Popoff talks ‘Yes’ history, the Breakups, Reunions, the albums and side projects.
Popoff told the Metal Voice, “The roots of progressive metal itself are definitely Rush. Rush I think is the first progressive metal band. Yes is probably the band that is the precursor, the proto progressive metal band. A little bit of Yes, a little bit of King Crimson, little bit of Genesis. A lot of metal people like Yes and they like prog in general.”
Popoff went on to say, “In 1972 Yes came out with Close To The Edge. I was thinking at one point I might do a book of the top 500 progressive rock albums of all time. And I started taking a poll. As I was taking that poll, it basically turned out that Close to the edge would win that poll. Basically Yes Close To The Edge is the greatest progressive rock album of all time.”
Popoff also spoke about one of the most famous projects that never went got going, the supergroup XYZ which included members of Yes and Led Zeppelin, after John Bonham’s death. Popoff said, “Basically in this book I cover off quite a bit of detail all the side bands of YES, including ASIA and all the solo projects of everybody. But one that didn’t get off the ground is this XYZ situation. They (Chris Squire, Alan White, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page), did do a little bit of jamming trying to get things off the ground. But it just didn’t really go anywhere, Robert’s heart and head really wasn’t really into it. Jimmy was a little more game into trying to do something with it. You can hear some of these sessions online. I believe a bunch of this is on Youtube. A little bit of those songs (don’t quote me) which show up on later projects possible the firm and later Yes albums.”
Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke with respected Heavy metal author Martin Popoff who just released his new book entitled “Kickstart My Heart, A Motley Crue, day by day”.
Popoff also talks about his recent controversy with Nikki Sixx, where Sixx said, “This (Book) is not endorsed, supported or approved by Motley Crue. Another Scumbag cashing in on our years of hard Work and Music. ”
Popoff also goes on to ranking all the Motley Cure Albums from Worst to First
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 