If a band is more than a pop group, but not a metal band, what are they? These are the rockers, the bands who are very definitely rock and roll, but aren’t extreme enough to be metal or punk or any of those clannish genres. The first section is a straight Q&A, while the second follows a double mix-and-match format. Confused? Read on to find out . . .
Answers: here
1 The 2016 box set The Last of the Teenage Idols was a definitive collection of whose recordings? What unfortunate fate befell his younger brother Les, in 1972?
2 In Bon Jovi’s monster hit ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, where does Tommy, one of the protagonists, earn his living? On which platinum-selling album does the song appear?
3 Which band’s sound revolved around the twin guitars of Andy Powell, complete with Flying V, and Ted Turner? What’s the title of their well-received third album from 1972, a critical and commercial high point for the band?
4 Which Canadian band originally consisted of three brothers, Randy, Robbie and Tim, plus bassist/singer Fred Turner? What was their breakthrough single, which topped the US chart and went to number two in the UK in 1974?
5 If, in the late eighties, you saw Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler on stage, which two other musicians would you probably have been watching alongside them?
6 Bruce Dickinson has always been the most high-profile member of Iron Maiden, but who’s the band’s bass player, principal songwriter and de facto leader? And who’s been Maiden’s drummer since 1982?
7 Led Zeppelin were formed to fulfil tour dates booked for Jimmy Page’s previous band. Who were they? And what was the name of singer Robert Plant’s previous band, which he revived for a 2010 album?
8 Which Scottish rockers only hit it big with their fourth album, Puzzle? Which Daft Punk classic did they cover on Dermot O’Leary’s Saturday Sessions in 2014?
9 Which glam rocker broke six ribs after falling offstage while touring his 1975 album Welcome to My Nightmare? What’s the title of the 2011 release that served as a kind of sequel to the album?
10 Which 1983 album was the biggest commercial hit for ZZ Top, largely off the back of the lead single ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’’? Which song by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, originally written for Elvis Presley, gave them their only other UK Top 10 hit?
11 Meat Loaf released Bat out of Hell in 1977. What were the subtitles of Bat out of Hell II and III, released in 1993 and 2006 respectively?
12 What was the lead single from Thin Lizzy’s 1976 album Jailbreak? What was the band’s equally excellent follow-up album, issued only six months later?
13 AC/DC took which damned route to chart success in 1979? Two years earlier, on Let There Be Rock, what had they already determined about this same destination?
14 Which album took Lenny Kravitz to number one in the UK, with a Top 10 single of the same name leading the way? What part did Kravitz play in the first two films in the popular Hunger Games series?
15 Who replaced Ian Gillan as lead vocalist with Deep Purple in 1973? Which band did he go on to form after leaving in 1976?
Below, three lists. The first features 15 epic songs. The second contains 15 bands. The third takes in 15 albums. All you have to do is match each song with its artist and the album from which it originally came. If you match all three, score two points. If you get the right artist but the wrong album or vice versa, score one point. But if you match up artist and album but get the wrong song, you get nowt. Because, let’s face it, matching The Who to Who’s Next ain’t really that tricky.
Songs:
1 ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. 2 ‘Stargazer’. 3 ‘Like a Hurricane’. 4 ‘Tyrants’. 5 ‘Child in Time’. 6 ‘War Pigs’. 7 ‘Keeper of the Seven Keys’. 8 ‘Ocean In Between the Waves’. 9 ‘Homecoming’. 10 ‘In My Time of Dying’. 11 ‘Free Bird’. 12 ‘I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’. 13 ‘This Corrosion’. 14 ‘Prophet’s Song’. 15 ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
Artists:
Black Mountain, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Green Day, Helloween, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Meat Loaf, Queen, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Sisters of Mercy, the War on Drugs, the Who, Neil Young.
Albums:
American Idiot, American Stars n Bars, Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell, Floodland, In the Future, In Rock, Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II, Lost in the Dream, A Night at the Opera, Paranoid, Powerslave, Physical Graffiti, (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-’nérd ‘Skin-’nérd), Rainbow Rising, Who’s Next.