The record, to be titled Teargarden By Kaleidyscope Vol. 1: Songs For A Sailor, is out on May 25. It will come in a silk-screened wooden box containing both CD and seven-inch vinyl versions of the EP, plus a hand-carved obelisk.

The EP contains the first four of what will eventually be 44 tracks – all of which will also be given away as downloads before being packaged into this series of EPs.

Find out more at www.smashingpumpkins.com

It’s at the Villa Manin in the province of Udine, which is apparently one of the most important artistic monuments in Italy.

What makes this special is that BruceAir is planning an excursion out to this picturesque setting from Gatwick Airport.

BruceAir means that Bruce Dickinson will be flying the plane himself, packed full of Maiden fans.

Check the band’s website, www.ironmaiden.com, for full details.

Maiden recently announced details of a global trek starting this summer, including a headline spot at Sonisphere, Knebworth Park on July 30-August 1, along with the release of new album The Final Frontier.

Although known in recent years for concentrating on world music, through shows on BBC Radio 3 and the World Service, Gillett was also among the first DJs to champion Graham Parker, Ian Dury (whom he briefly managed) and Elvis Costello.

He also is credited with giving Dire Straits a massive boost by playing a demo version of Sultans Of Swing on his Honky Tonk programme on BBC Radio London in 1976. Legend has it that half the A&R people in the city were on the phone to Gillett to get the band’s details before the song had even finished!

Gillett also ran Oval Records and wrote for The Observer, Record Mirror and Rolling Stone, as well as penning the celebrated 1970 book The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll. This is regarded as a seminal work on the subject.

Gillett was honoured by the Radio Academy with the John Peel Award For Outstanding Contribution To Radio in 2006.

Yes, you read that correctly – A.P.O.L.O.G.I.S.E.D. The pair fell out after collaborating on new music, with the Smashing Pumpkins main man insisting Love could do nothing with the songs they were working on without his permission. Courtney initially reacted by claiming she already had his say-so and that Corgan “was talking out of his arse”.

Now, the Hole leader has done a total about-face, by issuing the following:

“Dearest Billy: I love you, I love your strong and eternal heart, even love the fucked up gnarly amazing magnificent bigger-than-god louder-than-love karma of the songs you write and allow me to fly with.

“We have again created beauty from the agony between us, all the buried and unburied anguish, all that is true, that is gold, that is meant to be is within this endless and somehow eternal cycle of Billy & Courtney.

“I hope you will take my sincerest apologies for all the thousand ways I sometimes offend you, because I know you are a king, a prince, and my beautiful noble boy. No one will ever force my hand, nothing will come between the truth of what we are”.

This couldn’t have anything to do with the new Hole album, Nobody’s Daughter, being about to drop?

If next week Axl Rose apologises to Vince Neil, then we know we’ve entered the messianic age!

The action happens at Pontins in Prestatyn, North Wales from December 3-5, with everything kicking off on December 2 for the real diehards.

The line-up and theme have again been chosen by the fans and will feature thrash, glam, sleaze, NWOBHM, metal and classic rock bands.

Other acts on the bill so far include Tank, Pretty Boy Floyd, Diamond Head, Paul Di’Anno – who will be playing the first two Iron Maiden albums in their entirety – Blaze Bayley, Skid Row, Michael Schenker Group, Enuff Z’Nuff and LA Guns.

The theme for this year is to be pirates – so get digging out all those eye-patches, parrots and bottles of rum!

Find out more at www.hardrockhell.com

Words: Dave Ling

As the man who wrote all the music and words for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell album – with worldwide sales of 43 million and counting – Jim Steinman should need no introduction. And yet, in contrast to the array of artists that he helped to make famous, the 62-year-old New Yorker is something of a recluse. Consequently, many of the stories about the flamboyant Steinman are quite likely to have been exaggerated.

One that is often recounted – namely that Steinman loves to order the entire menu of the restaurants that he visits, taking a tiny bite from each course – was later confirmed to me by someone who actually saw it happen. Furthermore, said individual revealed that Steinman, just like a member of the Royal Family, sometimes conveniently ‘forgets’ to bring his wallet, leaving it to another diner to pick up the tab!

Steinman is also known to be nocturnal. “People often wonder if I’m a vampire, because I usually sleep during the day,” he once told an interviewer. “My nickname is P.O.D. which stands for Prince Of Darkness.”

As one of life’s genuine rule-breakers, we have come to expect such flagrant unpredictability of the man who Todd Rundgren, the producer of Bat Out Of Hell, calls: “The only genuine genius I’ve ever worked with.”

And quite rightly so. From the stark-staring mad monologue of Love And Death And An American Guitar (‘I took my guitar and I smashed it against the wall/I smashed it against the floor/I smashed it against the body of a varsity cheerleader’) to the wordiness of Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are, a Steinman composition tends to be recognisable within the first few bars.

Kid gloves: A young Jim Steinman.

Jim’s career began in the theatrical world, his musical direction having solidified as 12-year-old following a 21-hour session that paired Wagner’s The Ring Of The Nibelungen with a blast of Jerry Lee Lewis. “I just went, ‘Wow! These things go together!’” he recalled to Sandy Robertson of Sounds magazine in 1981, adding: “I used to listen all the time to rock’n'roll and classical (music); it never occurred to me that there was much difference.”

Having met Meat Loaf whilst touring the National Lampoon Road Show in 1977, Steinman began to lay plans for the album that became Bat Out Of Hell. Luckily, he had a thick skin.

“I think it was turned down by 18 record companies and 10 to 12 producers,” Jim later recalled. “Bob Ezrin was my first choice (as producer) but I couldn’t even get his phone number.”

The eventual success of Bat Out Of Hell served as the ultimate textbook validation of Jim and Meat’s belief in the project. Sadly, however, the pair would later fall out. It took them until 1993 to release a sequel. However, Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell reached No.1 in 28 countries, selling more than 15 million copies.

By the time of 2006 and Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, Meat and Jim were feuding so badly that Steinman – who had registered a trademark for the name Bat Out Of Hell – tried to prevent the album’s release after it was produced by Desmond Child. All seven of the Steinman compositions that it featured had been written for other projects. The matter of the album’s title was eventually settled out of court.

Steinman with Bonnie Tyler.

The man who the L.A. Times once called ‘the Richard Wagner of rock’, Steinman has now served up hits for artists as diverse as Bonnie Tyler, Barbra Streisand, Air Supply, The Everly Brothers, Sisters Of Mercy, Celine Dion, The Opera Babes, Barry Manilow and even Boyzone. Clearly, he still has the golden touch.

But things haven’t always gone entirely to plan. In 1984, Steinman was hired to produce the follow-up to Def Leppard’s Pyromania album. The arrangement was abruptly terminated, neither side speaking fondly of the other.

“When I arrived, Leppard had no guitar amps and they didn’t know where to get them,” Steinman would recall of the sessions, later picked up again by Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange and released as Hysteria. “They’d look at you like these little puppies, ‘Oooh, what are we going to do? We thought you’d have them…’”

Perhaps in keeping with the aforementioned ‘everything on the menu’ story, Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott dryly responded: “All that Jim Steinman knew about the studio was that he didn’t like the colour of the carpet.” The results of the recordings, assuming they even got that far, remain under lock and key.

What’s frustrating is that aside from all of his many collaborations, Steinman has released just one bona fide solo album, 1981’s Bad For Good – a set of tunes originally lined up as a second Meat Loaf record… until Meat lost his voice, reportedly recapturing it after a doctor prescribed the miracle cure of injections made from his own urine. Issued eight years after Bad For Good, the conceptual Original Sin album was the product of an alliance with the all-girl band Pandora’s Box. It was described at the time by Classic Rock’s own Malcolm Dome as follows: ‘Sheer genius. Baroque eroticism. The Shangri-Las invoked by the spirit of Ken Russell and Lord Byron.’

Back when Meat had more Loaf than Warburtons.

As an intended companion piece of Bat…, Bad For Good in particular remains an especially underrated album, full of fabulously overblown songs such as Lost Boys And Golden Girls, Stark Raving Love and Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire that would have perfectly suited the Loaf’s inimitable delivery. Indeed, somewhat controversially, Steinman later claimed that he had to tutor Meat how to sing the songs on Bat Out Of Hell.

Since 2004, various reports indicate that Steinman suffered a stroke, a heart attack or even multiple strokes, but nobody knows for sure. For what it’s worth his lawyer has gone on record as stating that Jim’s health is ‘excellent’.

Steinman’s roots gradually drew him away from rock’n'roll and back to theatrical and cinematic endeavours. His film music includes Footloose, Streets Of Fire, The Shadow and Mask Of Zorro, and he also wrote the score for Tanz Der Vampire, a 1997 musical staged by Roman Polanski, and in 2003 was involved in an MTV production of Wuthering Heights.

Songs from Steinman’s ‘music performance group’ The Dream Engine still can be heard at a MySpace site– click here – which remains online although the project has been inactive since 2006.

Jim has also spoken of a theatrical show based on the songs from Bat Out Of Hell, which he called “like Cirque Du Soleil on acid”.

Check out Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through

Bad For Good

The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be

Wasted Youth

In the meantime, a wealth of information can be found at the following website: www.jimsteinman.com

Steinman also has a blog – though it has not been updated since September 7, 2008.

Truly, he is a man of mystery. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

This happens at Koko in Camden on April 19. It’s the band’s only UK show on their upcoming European tour. Tickets have just gone on sale. You may get them via the national hotline on 08700 603 777. Or book online here.

The band were formed in 1996 by Patterson Hood (son of David Hood from the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) and Mike Cooley. They quickly gained a following with their first two albums, 1998’s Gangstabilly and the following year’s Pizza Delivery. But it was the conceptual 2001 album Southern Rock Opera that really marked them out as major talent.

This was inspired by the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose rise and fall was used to chronicle the change of fortunes for the south. Since then the Truckers have released a series of albums, each showcasing a consistently high standard, and also proving that the band are as influenced by Neil Young, The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty as they are by Skynyrd.

Today, the line-up features guitarist/vocalists Hood and Cooley, joined by John Neff (guitar/pedal steel/vocals), Shonna Tucker (bass/vocals), Jay Gonzalez (keyboards) and Brad ‘EZB’ Morgan (drums). Their latest album, the eighth studio release, is The Big To Do.

Download the song Birthday Boy for free here.

Find out more about the band at www.drivebytruckers.com

The singer first had success in the 1960s with soul rockers Box Tops. Their biggest hit was The Letter, which was a number one single in America in 1967, when Chilton was just 16. When the band split up in 1970, Chilton turned down the chance to join Blood, Sweat & Tears because they were too commercial. Instead he became a member of cult power pop band Big Star, who’ve become a significant influence on many bands, including R.E.M.

In recent years, Chilton (who lived in New Orleans) has been touring and recording, although he never achieved the levels of success his talent deserved.

Check out Thirteen by Big Star here.

These are:

April 22: Workington Carnegie Hall

April 23: Middlesbrough Town Hall

April 24: Edinburgh HMV Picture House

April 25: Inverness Ironworks

April 28: Leamington Assembly

April 29: Cardiff Millennium Music Hall

Support comes from Voodoo Six.

Find out more at www.ufo-music.info

UFO will also play Classic Rock’s High Voltage festival on July 24/25.