October 16, 1947 – January 10, 2026

WHEN JAKE E. Lee was hired by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne in 1982, he was a young gun with no experience and huge chops. The former led to a lack of songwriting and publishing on his first record with Oz

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…

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”.

ALTHOUGH HE WAS 84 and had been ill for several years, the passing of soul-funk-R&B legend and general jack-of-all-trades Steve Cropper still stings — a lot. Perhaps it’s because Cropper, despite his