Guys and gals! I want you all to take a moment to hit the HARDDRIVE LIVE TOUR SITEnow to watch the Story of The Road to the HARDDRIVE LIVE TOUR! (CHUCK, you are so awesome, dude! Thank you!) It is so freakin’ cool! Alter Bridge and Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti kicked off his first full solo tour on last night (Sep 20th) in Flint, Michigan as the headliner of the 2012 Harddrive Live Tour, presented by yours truly, Harddrive Radio. Along on the trek as temporary bassist is Wolfgang Van Halen of the band Van Halen. Wolfgang just joined up with the group last week, but he and Tremonti both said he didn’t need long to learn the songs: [(Wolfgang) “I already have like religiously listened to the record because it’s freakin’ amazing, and yeah, I learned most of them on guitar, on my own. I’m a kind of fast learner when it comes to stuff like that, so . . . “ (Tremonti, starts off-mic) “He’s a very fast learner. He learns faster than anybody I’ve ever seen. He’s amazing.” Van Halen is replacing Tremonti’s bandmate from Creed and Alter Bridge, Brian Marshall, who is sitting out the Tremonti trek for undisclosed personal reasons. Tremonti told Horns Up Rocks! that Wolfgang “had been a bass player that we had considered for the band in the first place, but he was on tour with Van Halen.” Wolfgang Van Halen’s dad, Eddie Van Halen, is currently recuperating from emergency intestinal surgery, which will keep the Van Halen band off the road until early 2013. Tremonti is on the road behind his debut solo album, All I Was, which came out this past July. After this tour ends, the band head over to Europe to tour with Slash and then Creed does a string of shows in Indonesia! They’ll be back in February! Check out clips from the tour at harddrivelivetour.com! And if you hit a show, please download the vivogig app on your smart phone and USE It to take shots of the tour! We’ll give a prize to the person who’s got the best shot! …What a fun interview yesterday with Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach! I think I cut to the quick with him about all the struggles he’s had between recording The Connection, having to drop off the Uproar Tour because of the nodule on his vocal cords resulting in surgery and culminating with the reunion with his wife of 14 years, Kelly! I am so happy for his recovery to sobriety (yes, again) and he looks AH-mazing with his new hair! LOVE LOVE LOVE me some Jacoby Shaddix! Good people deserve good things! Check out this trailer for the new album and the NEW Jacoby and hear a bit of “Before I Die” from the album. The new album is really some of their finest work. I am sure they’ll have it streaming somewhere soon, so keep yer eyeballs peeled to find it and then, damn it, buy it! You will definitely hear the struggles and demons Coby lived through during those trying times.And, as Nietzche once said, “Which the does not kill us, makes us stronger.” And oddly enough, he died young…..Pulse of Radio reports no less than four albums from Metallica made the Top 10 list of “The Greatest Heavy Metal Albums Of All Time,” as voted by the online readers of Rolling Stone magazine. The band’s classic 1986 effort Master Of Puppets topped the survey, followed by Black Sabbath‘s 1970 landmark Paranoid at Number Two. In fact, the only band in the Top Five besides Metallica and Sabbath was Iron Maiden, who landed at Number Four with 1982’s The Number Of The Beast. Rolling Stone‘s editors wrote about the poll, “Metal fans are a very passionate bunch. They’re also very opinionated, so when we asked them to vote for their favorite metal albums we expected a huge response. We also expected a big debate about the very definition of ‘heavy metal.’ Some metal fans say that groups like Led Zeppelin and Guns N’ Roses are metal. Others think that’s completely insane. We aren’t here to settle these debates. We’re merely here to count the votes.” Metallica and Black Sabbath also happen to be the only two “pure” heavy metal bands inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When their induction was announced in 2009, Metallica members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo were asked who else should be in there: (Hetfield) “Motorhead. Lemmy is rock and roll.” (Lars Ulrich, drums) “I’d say Deep Purple. If you say Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, you also have to say Deep Purple. They come as a threesome.” (Kirk Hammett, lead guitar) “I would have to say Rush. I think they’re a great band who took rock to a different level altogether in terms of like songwriting and technical proficiency, and I believe that they deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.” (Rob Trujillo, bass) “I mean, I love UFO, I know Kirk’s a huge fan of UFO too, and a band like that, you know, should be recognized, and hopefully someday will be.” “The Greatest Heavy Metal Albums Of All Time,” according to the online readers of Rolling Stone magazine:
- 1. Master Of Puppets – Metallica
2. Paranoid – Black Sabbath
3. Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
4. The Number Of The Beast – Iron Maiden
5. …And Justice For All – Metallica
6. Reign In Blood – Slayer
7. Appetite For Destruction – Guns N’ Roses
8. Metallica (the “black album”) – Metallica
9. Led Zeppelin II – Led Zeppelin
10. Ride The Lightning – Metallica
(Who’s in Your Top 10? Email to us via the interact link on the home page!)
