ANCORA SU “IF” DI MARIO BIONDI,THANKS TO ALOISIO

Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood honoured for outstanding contribution to rock

The guitarist, who has also been through the ranks of the Jeff Beck Group and The Faces, was rewarded for his ”ageless presence on the scene”.

Other stars whose musical contributions were recognised included the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, Cream’s Ginger Baker and the punk pioneer Iggy Pop, who was named a living legend.

Wood, 62, has recently been noted more for the turbulence of his private life, after leaving wife Jo for Russian girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova, than his musical prowess.

He has also moved into the fashion world, with his artwork inspiring a range of clothes and accessories at London store Liberty.

Wood – who joined the Stones in the mid-Seventies – was presented with his award by The Who’s guitarist Pete Townshend.

The Tommy Vance Inspiration Award went to the late Bonham, who died in 1980. Another drummer, former Cream star Ginger Baker was honoured as the Classic Rock magazine ‘Innovator’ for his pioneering uses of rhythm, by bringing jazz techniques into rock.

Iggy Pop was chosen for ‘Living Legend’ status because the magazine said his influence ”on all subsequent hard rock, heavy metal, punk and sleaze” was ”incalculable”. Previous winners have included Alice Cooper, Lemmy and Ozzy Osbourne.

More than 30 years into their career Iron Maiden were recognised as band of the year, while AC/DC’s Black Ice was the year’s best album, according to reader votes.

A group of veterans, well known to rock fans in their own right, were named best new band. Chickenfoot was formed by Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani.

The event, which took place at the Park Lane Hotel in London, puts the emphasis on veteran acts and honoured Mott The Hoople – a band who formed more than 40 years ago and recently reformed after 35 years – for the comeback of the year.

Full list of winners at the Marshall Classic Rock Roll Of Honour 2009:

:: Best New Band – Chickenfoot

:: Album Of The Year – AC/DC, Black Ice

:: Band Of The Year – Iron Maiden

:: Best Reissue – Black Sabbath reissues

:: DVD / Film Of The Year – Anvil! The Story of Anvil!’

:: Event Of The Year – Download Festival

:: Outstanding Contribution – Ronnie Wood

:: Tommy Vance Inspiration Award – John Bonham

:: Innovator – Ginger Baker

:: VIP Award – Doc McGhee

:: Metal Guru – Biff Byford

:: Spirit Of Prog – Dream Theater

:: Marshall 11 Award – Billy Gibbons

:: Childline Rocks Award – Steve Harley

:: Classic Songwriter – Paul Rodgers

:: Classic Album – Aerosmith, Rocks

:: Breakthrough – Joe Bonamassa

:: Comeback of the Year – Mott The Hoople

:: Living Legend – Iggy Pop

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I Bee Gees stanno lavorando su nuovi brani, a me sono sempre piaciuti.

Bee Gees interview
They might be celebrating 50 years in music with a new compilation album, The Ultimate Bee Gees, but the surviving members are in reflective mood. (Telegraph UK)

The image of the Bee Gees in their disco glory days is so strong – all blow-dried hair and tans – it is a bit of a shock to see them in the flesh, 30 years on. At 63, Barry Gibb is grey, chinless, pot-bellied, with a mouth full of what looks like gleaming porcelain and is dressed in an ill-fitting double-breasted grey jacket and jeans. Brother Robin, 59, is rake-thin, heavily wrinkled with a black hairpiece, purple sunglasses and over-loud velvet jacket ensemble. One Bee Gee looks like he’s trying too hard, the other like he’s not trying at all. What they don’t look like is a couple of the most talented, famous and richest popular musicians of all time.

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“We were never really conscious of image,” insists Robin. “Half the time we were just walking around in jeans and T-shirts.”
The defining image of them in silky white, disco jumpsuits and medallions, grinning cheesily from the cover of Saturday Night Fever, was apparently fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo’s doing. “We didn’t even know who the guy was,” says Barry. “He brought the clothes, ‘Here, try these’. So suddenly there we were, looking like Abba. It was just a bit of fun.”
“The song was always the most important thing,” insists Robin. “We never really thought about how people should see it. That was someone else’s vision.”
And while we are busting Bee Gee myths, here’s another. “We don’t dance,” insists Barry. “Never have.”
“We were never consciously writing disco music,” says Robin. “We thought we were just writing pop songs you could dance to, like black American r’n’b, Otis Redding, Stax, Sam And Dave.”
“We have a lot of rhythm inside,” says Barry. “But you can’t put us on the dancefloor.”
The two surviving members of this legendary trio (brother Maurice died suddenly, in January 2003, aged 53, of complications from a twisted intestine) have come together to celebrate a golden anniversary, 50 years in the music business, with a new compilation The Ultimate Bee Gees. It has been a quite extraordinary career, with two distinct periods of world-beating stardom, as Beatles-influenced soft rockers in the late Sixties (their classic hits included To Love Somebody, Words and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart and blue-eyed disco singers in the late Seventies (Stayin’ Alive, Jive Talkin’, Tragedy) with a twilight period as hitmakers for other artists, including Barbra Streisand (Woman in Love), Diana Ross (Chain Reaction), Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (Islands in the Stream) and Dionne Warwick (Heartbreaker). Their catalogue of solid gold standards is rivalled only by Lennon and McCartney.
The anniversary is (as Barry readily concedes) actually a bit of a marketing fudge. The Bee Gees first performed as a group in 1958, released a single in 1963, but didn’t have an international hit until 1967 (with the beautifully bizarre New York Mining Disaster 1941). And anyway, as siblings, they have been together all their lives, and it shows. They are not easy to interview, at once so familiar, yet actually so different that they have a tendency to finish each other’s sentences, but not necessarily in the way originally intended, a conversational habit that spins off in random directions.
A comment from Barry about the “atmosphere” of their records leads Robin to bring up the subject of Bee Gees being used for torture in Guantánamo Bay, which leads on to Barry making a completely contrary point about “music crossing social barriers”, which leads on to the number of beats per minute you use to revive somebody from a heart attack (103 bpm, apparently: the exact tempo of Stayin’ Alive).
Barry, always perceived as the alpha-male Bee Gee, seems most relaxed in his skin, a successful man with little to prove. Robin, who once walked out of the band over Barry’s dominance, is edgier, a bit chippy, still jostling for position. It’s a small detail, but while Barry always says “Robin and I”, Robin says “Me and him”. Yet there is a huge amount of care and deference being shown in what is clearly a very delicate relationship.
“We’re like a non-violent version of Oasis,” acknowledges Barry. “The competition between Robin and I is so strong, we both want attention so badly, that it actually brings something better out of both of us. It’s like a basketball team, one player is pushing the other to rise to a different level. If I didn’t have Robin to compete with, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.”
“It’s not rivalry,” insists Robin, not entirely convincingly (particularly with Barry murmuring in the background, “Well, it could be a bit”). “Unconsciously, we’re actually trying to please each other all the time. We’re our greatest critics. If Barry isn’t liking something I do, then its irrelevant what other people think. You never escape that, it started very early and its there for life. There’s nobody else that can do that to me.”
“So we spend our lives now trying not to cut across each other’s line, trying not to do something that’s going to aggravate each other,” says Barry.
Barry and Robin were the songwriting engine of the Bee Gees. “Other people can’t get in there, its our own little world,” says Barry. “We couldn’t do a good job if someone else was in the room.” Except Maurice (or Mo, as they refer to him), of course. “I think Mo was a victim in a lot of ways, because Robin and I were very bullheaded and strong, and Mo was very passive. Mo was always a listener.”
“The man in the middle,” says Robin.
His death completely shattered the fragile unit. “It changed us radically,” admits Barry. “We’ve hardly spoken to each other for the past five years. A shock like that either brings everybody together or scatters everybody, and in our family it scattered everyone. Any issues we had between each other became much more prevalent and important than simply being a group.”
“When you lose somebody,” says Robin, “it makes you feel fragile and insecure, the idea that life isn’t permanent, you don’t feel safe anymore. Its kind of a depression really.”
“We’re just beginning to come out of that cloud now,” says Barry, “The grieving has come to an end. We will always miss Mo, and we’ll always miss Andy (their younger sibling, who developed drug problems and died in 1988), and we’ll always miss our dad, but we all have to go on with our lives. Robin and I love each other, we still love making music together.”
“The most important thing in my life is me and him,” says Robin.
Having announced the end of the Bee Gees following Maurice’s death, the surviving Gibbs seem to be positively straining at the leash to start making new music together again. “We’re tired of the politics of the Bee Gees,” says Barry. “All we were ever interested in was the creative side, the music. Right now, we’ve got a jumble of ideas waiting for us to find the space, together, without other people involved, so that the music can come to life. We can’t let that go now. Its actually something way beyond music, and we just don’t wanna lose that. We’ve been drawn together by this anniversary. We’re ready.”

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