Loud haller

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”.

Thirty years after its release, Billy Corgan looks back at the making of The Smashing Pumpkins ’ era-defining big, bold, bombastic masterpiece Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness .

Magic hexes, hotel robberies and cut-throat deals: band members and associates chronicle the heady days of 1972/73, when Led Zeppelin seized control of the industry and became the biggest rock band on the planet.

Martin Barre MCNIDDER & GRACE

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…

What was your first guitar? I wanted a guitar when I was 10, but it took until I was 12 before my parents gave in. We went to a shop in King’s Cross in North London, and they had guitars hanging up, i