News from the live music scene in the north east

Many years ago, Noddy Holder worked as a roadie for Robert Plant's pre-Led Zeppelin band, Band of Joy.
Holder had known Robert since childhood. When Robert was kicked out of his home, he moved in with Roger Beamer, who played in the band Listen. He was a school friend of Noddy's. Then, when Robert formed Band of Joy, he moved in with the keyboardist across the street from Holder's house. His father was a window cleaner—he had a large, branded van for his work. Noddy occasionally used this van to help out with Band of Joy. Whether jokingly or seriously, Noddy believed Plant had stolen his look—white curls and all. Their first album, Beginnings, from 1969, was weak, but it marked the beginning of their tumultuous success story. Slade looked fierce to the extreme. Determined, working-class guys. The onstage scenes at Slade concerts had the feel of football fan squabbles. Screams and chaos in the pub car park after closing time.
Slade's lengthy tour ended at Earls Court. 18,000 people attended their final performance. The band was at the peak of its popularity. A week later, Don Powell was in a car accident. Doctors believed he had no more than 24 hours to live. On July 4, 1973, in Wolverhampton, Don Powell suffered serious injuries, and his girlfriend, Angela Morris, died.
Don Powell survived, but suffered partial memory loss. He lost his sense of taste and smell. The band members couldn't imagine how Slade could continue. All four members were essential to the band.
Don slowly recovered. After six or seven weeks, his strength began to return. Don suffered from memory loss but, despite this, they took him along on tour. It turned out that Don could remember a song as soon as the band started playing it. As Noddy Holder announced the song to the crowd, Jim Lea whispered in Don's ear: It goes like this: tippetty-tap, tippetty-tap-tap.

Every Runaway Modelled Herself on a Different Rock Legend and Nobody Ever Talks About It
Circa 1975, inside the rehearsal rooms and dressing rooms and cramped tour vans where The Runaways were forging their identity as the most electrifying teenage rock band America had ever produced, something was happening that was simultaneously deeply personal and architecturally brilliant, and the documentary that finally revealed it four decades later left music fans genuinely breathless. Every single member of The Runaways had independently chosen a specific rock legend as her personal blueprint, her north star, the artist she studied and absorbed and channeled into her own performance. Cherie Currie had modelled everything, her hair, her stage clothes, her walk, her entire relationship with an audience, on David Bowie, specifically the Aladdin Sane era Bowie who had cracked open the entire definition of what a rock star could look like and be. Joan Jett had built herself in the image of Suzi Quatro, the tough, leather-clad bass guitarist from Detroit who had proved in Britain that a woman could stand at the front of a rock stage and command it with absolute authority. Lita Ford had split her guitar influences evenly and precisely between Jeff Beck and Ritchie Blackmore, two of the most technically demanding and emotionally powerful rock guitarists who had ever lived. Sandy West had patterned her entire drumming approach and stage energy on Roger Taylor of Queen. And Jackie Fox had chosen Gene Simmons of KISS as her model. Think about what that combination actually means. Five teenage girls. Five completely different rock legends. Five distinct visual and musical languages being simultaneously absorbed and synthesized into a single band. The Runaways were not an accident of chemistry. They were a deliberately assembled collage of the greatest rock archetypes of their era, filtered through the energy and fearlessness of teenagers who had nothing to lose and everything to prove.

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Circa 2000, John Lydon received a phone call from his stepdaughter Ari Up, the ferociously brilliant frontwoman of the Slits who had been raised in Nora's household through the entire founding era of British punk and who had grown into one of the most original musical voices the post-punk world had produced, and Ari told him that she could no longer cope with her twin teenage sons and that she did not know what to do, and John Lydon did not hesitate for even a single moment before telling her to send the boys to him and Nora in Venice Beach because he was not having them abandoned, and that was the end of that conversation. The twins arrived in California, and John has described with characteristic bluntness that they could not read, could not write, could not form proper sentences, and gave him and Nora absolute hell from the moment they arrived, and that he loved every single minute of it because he had always wanted children in the house and this was his chance to do what had never been properly done for him. He taught them to read. He taught them to write. He got them through school. He said it was something he felt he had been trained for, that caring for people who were lost inside themselves was something his own childhood had equipped him for in ways nobody had intended. When Ari Up died of breast cancer in 2010 at the age of forty-eight, her third child came to live with John and Nora as well, and John Lydon became the sole guardian of three grandchildren while simultaneously caring for a wife in the early stages of Alzheimer's and continuing to tour and record with Public Image Limited. He announced Ari's death personally, posted a statement from himself and Nora, and then said quietly that he would be spending as much time as possible with his wife and that the music would have to wait. The man who wrote Anarchy in the UK raised three grandchildren in a beach house in California. That is who John Lydon actually was when nobody was watching.

JUDAS PRIEST Announces Remixed & Remastered Version Of Sad Wings Of Destiny
Normally I would include a picture here, but . . .
Judas Priest released their Sad Wings of Destiny record 50 years ago on March 26, 2026. To celebrate (or to make you feel old), Exciter Records and its publishing affiliate, Reach Music, have announced a 50th-anniversary reissue of the Judas Priest classic in all its touched-up glory.
The special editions of the record focus on creating truly definitive versions of Sad Wings of Destiny, returning to the original multitrack and master tapes. Developed in collaboration with Judas Priest, these editions deliver a new level of sonic depth, clarity, and fidelity.
The project will include newly remixed and remastered editions, following the approach established with the 50th anniversary of Rocka Rolla, alongside audiophile-quality pressings of the original album.
Judas Priest said in a statement: "Sad Wings of Destiny was a defining moment for us as a band. It's where we really began to shape the sound and identity that would carry through everything we've done since. To see it recognized 50 years on – and to have it presented in new editions – is incredibly meaningful."
Exciter Records President Michael Closter added: "We've returned to the original master tapes for Sad Wings of Destiny – untouched for decades – and we're excited and honored to bring these definitive editions to fans worldwide."

Courtesy Metal Injection

Couple of things to report: 1: Those Manny Fagnet lads have eventually got in touch to give at least some clue as to what type of toons they cover. Heaven forbid you should turn up to some pipe playing Country and Western types! Worry thee not, they responded thus: "We are a covers band who play a wide range of covers mainly from AC/DC, Alice In Chains, Whitesnake, Audioslave, KISS, Pearl Jam, Toto, Soundgarden and many many many more". So now you know. Catch them sporting their wares at the Little Buildings, Newcastle NE1 2PW on April 5.
2: The more astute amongst our readers may have noticed I have had to remove some photos. Apparently, and I have only just become aware of this, if one copies a photo from even an open source site - such as Facebook - there is a possibility that it could be a copyrighted photo, even though no such indication is apparent - or even exists. And yes, Riffs has become victim of this and money has been demanded from a company darn sarf for 'copyright infringement'. The fact that any offending photo is removed immediately, and that Riffs is not a money-making business, has no bank account, is a non profit making site, and is run solely to support local Rock and Metal bands and venues, doth butter no parsnips to those still demanding that filthy lucre. The fact that I am not rolling in money, nor heir to a huge fortune is no barrier to their constant harrassment for money. Fingers crossed they realise they are flogging a dead horse...(perhaps I could do them for animal cruelty?!)

The moment John Lydon walked off the stage of the Winterland Ballroom and officially ended the Sex Pistols in January 1978, Malcolm McLaren immediately launched a legal battle to prevent him from using the name Johnny Rotten ever again, arguing that the name was the intellectual property of the band's management rather than of the man who had been given it, which meant the person who had actually been called Rotten since a guitarist looked at his green teeth in a clothing shop was now fighting in a British courtroom for the right to be addressed by his own nickname. The legal battle that followed consumed years of Lydon's life and a significant portion of his finances, but by 1986 he had won back both the name and, far more importantly, a deal that returned control of the Sex Pistols' recorded assets back to the band members themselves rather than to McLaren's management machinery, which was one of the most significant legal victories any rock musician had won against a manager in the history of British music. But here is the detail that makes this entire story even more striking: while he was locked in this legal war with McLaren and building Public Image Ltd from scratch with no management support and a record label that barely understood what he was trying to do, Lydon was simultaneously teaching himself how the music industry actually worked from the inside out, learning contracts and licensing and intellectual property law with the same ferocious self-education that had once driven a teenager with no memory to rebuild his own identity from nothing after meningitis. By the time the case concluded Lydon understood the business of music better than most executives in it, and he never signed another management deal that gave away the kind of control that McLaren had once held over him. A man who had been dismissed as a nihilist spent a decade quietly becoming one of the most legally self-aware artists in rock history

During the White Riot tour of 1977 The Slits pulled off something so wonderfully audacious that it became punk legend instantly, because when audience members and critics alike accused them of being incompetent musicians, The Slits responded by literally inviting members of the audience up onto the stage to play their instruments while the four women stepped down to the floor and danced, turning mockery into performance art, turning a put-down into a power move so sharp and so confident that even their harshest critics did not quite know what to do with it. John Lydon himself described them as full of guts and quite insane, (Grunge) which from the man who fronted the Sex Pistols is perhaps the highest compliment a punk band could ever receive. Viv Albertine, who had once rehearsed in a squat with Sid Vicious as part of the Flowers of Romance, brought a philosophical fury to her guitar playing that transcended technique entirely, and decades later she would write a critically acclaimed memoir that revealed the full depth of what those years on the road actually felt like from the inside, a book that became essential reading for anyone who wanted to understand what punk truly meant for young women navigating a world that had no framework for them. The Slits were chosen by filmmaker Derek Jarman to appear in his iconic 1977 film Jubilee, cementing their place not just in music history but in the broader cultural history of an era. Even after Ari Up passed away in Los Angeles in 2010 at the age of 48, her final gift to the world was a music video released posthumously exactly as she had wished, a last defiant act of creative control from a woman who never surrendered it once. The Slits never stopped being themselves and the world is immeasurably richer for it.

Circa 1977, when the Sex Pistols were deep in recording sessions for their only album, producer Chris Thomas faced an unusual and genuinely funny problem: the band's new bassist Sid Vicious, who had replaced the highly skilled Glen Matlock, simply could not play bass well enough to record. The solution was elegant and slightly absurd. Guitarist Steve Jones picked up the bass and recorded every single bass line on the entire album himself. Thomas later explained in a documentary that Jones essentially played the same thing on bass as he did on guitar, just following the root note an octave lower. That simplicity, that pure driving root-note bass approach, was actually the secret weapon that gave Never Mind the Bollocks its enormous, crushing, unstoppable power. The album that defined punk bass playing was performed entirely by a guitarist who picked up the instrument as a practical necessity. Sid Vicious, whose name and image became synonymous with punk bass worldwide, whose face adorns T-shirts and posters in every music shop on Earth, played essentially no bass on the record that made him a legend. He was there. He had the look. He had the attitude. He had the tragedy. But it was quietly, brilliantly Steve Jones underneath all of it, holding the whole thing together with borrowed skill and pure rock and roll instinct. History keeps these secrets for a long time, and when they finally come out they make everything even more incredible than it already was.

INTO THE FIELDS 2026
The BIG one is nearly here. The line up is amazing this year with so many of the best bands from all around the UK. SAVE MONEY AND BUY WRISTBANDS DIRECT FROM THE BLIND TIGER IN BLYTH. Will also save queueing at the festival entrance. Very limited BLUE LIGHT DISCOUNT tickets. Available from The Blind Tiger or message direct to transfer. This will also save you money on booking fees plus 20% off. Nearly all gone.
The dates of the festival will be the late May bank holiday Friday 22nd May, Saturday 23rd May and Bank Holiday Sunday 24th May. We have loads of room for caravans, motorhomes and tents so come and make a weekend of it. Plus we have a train station right next to us so easy access from Newcastle.
Some amazing acts are already confirmed to play include the best tributes to Bon Jovi, Blur, Oasis, Sam Fender, Abba, Bruce Springsteen, Limp Bizkit, Elvis, AC/DC Foo Fighters, Elton John, Sabrina Carpenter, Levellers, Bee Gees, Gerry Cinnamon, Rage Against The Machine, Green Day, Metallica, Arctic Monkeys, Nirvana, The Beatles, Stone Roses, Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran to name a few. Plus the best cover bands such as Hip Hop Hooray, The Baldy Holly Band, The Brit Pack, Breakfast Club, C Collective, Punk Pop Disaster and many more to come.
Ticket link: https://www.seetickets.com/event/into-the-fields-blyth-2026/meggies-burn/3510780