From Black Sabbath awakening to jam band to Hanoi Rocks to decades-straddling solo artist, via Finland, London, NYC and beyond, he’s been up, down and up again, through thrills, spills, triumph and tragedy. You could say he’s really lived the rock’n’roll life, but that would be an understatement.

He turned down Hendrix, butted heads with Lemmy, was saved from a bad trip by Pete Townshend, present at a thousand pop-culture flashpoints… Ten Years After bassist Leo Lyons explains why he’s like “the rock’n’roll Forrest Gump”.

Martin Barre MCNIDDER & GRACE

Rival Sons’ frontman on his solo album, songwriting, the call of the wild, storytellers, falling in love, destroying his past…

With Joe Bonamassa having gathered the cream of the scene for the B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100 tribute album – and written the intro to this feature – we take an alphabetised look back at the blues legend’s classic tracks, hotel bombings, car crashes, conspiracy theories, towering infernos and more…

So Paul McCartney said to Danny Francis in 1974. Francis, who passed away last year, spent the best part of 40 years putting himself between rock stars and trouble – and keeping them out of trouble. But, working with some of the rock world’s biggest names, he was more than just a bodyguard.