Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page Explains Stairway To Heaven

"The idea of 'Stairway,'" says Page, "was to have a piece of music, a composition, whereby it would just keep unfolding into more layers and more moods.

"The whole subtlety and intensity of the overlay would actually accelerate as it went through every level - every emotional level, every musical level. And so it keeps opening up, as it continues through these patterns."

The classic song will be rereleased later this month as part of the upcoming expanded reissue of their 1971 release, "Led Zeppelin IV", due on October 28.

The group are releasing both "Led Zeppelin IV" and "Houses Of The Holy" on the same day. Led Zeppelin kicked off their reissue series in June with the release of expanded editions of the band's first three albums - "Led Zeppelin I", "Led Zeppelin II" and "Led Zeppelin III" - each with a companion disc of bonus material.

Watch the video here.

Sammy Hagar Unplugs For Van Halen Classic

Due October 14 - the day after his 67th birthday - the project sees Hagar joined by Waboritas guitarist Vic Johnson to present stripped-down versions of tunes from his lengthy career.

"It was just me and Vic live in the studio with no overdubs," says Sammy about the album. "Just two guitars, sometimes one guitar, sometimes just one voice, sometimes two voices."

"Dreams" was the second single released from "5150", Van Halen's first album with Hagar; the tune reached No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. Check out the new song here.

Pearl Jam Celebrate John Lennon's Birthday With Cover Songs

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder has just released his own cover of "Imagine." The singer performed the song during a solo show at the Super Bock Super Rock festival in Portugal on July 18.

Pearl Jam are in the middle of a fall US tour that will wrap up in Denver, Colorado on October 22. Check out videos of Pearl Jam's performances of the two Lennon songs here.

Slayer Covered By Sock Puppets

The song features altered lyrics, in which the socks sing of their concern over washing machine spin cycles and running colors. Performed by Stayner, the song has also been renamed Raining Bleach.

The real Slayer are working on new material for what will be their first album without founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman who died last year. Watch the parody video here.

Anthrax Release In The End Live Video

The Chile concert date was one of the final shows of the band's three-plus-year campaign to record and support "Worship Music" and the "Anthems" EP. "We wanted to finish on a high note," explains drummer Charlie Benante, "we didn't want to look back and regret that we didn't record the live show."

"Chile On Hell" was produced by Jay Ruston, with cover art designed by Stephen Thompson - who partnered with Benante to "redesign" the artwork from last year's "Anthems" EP. Watch the video here.

Pepper Keenan Discusses NOLA's Influence On Corrosion Of Conformity

The New Orleans native joined COC when they were a fixture in the New York hardcore scene and he says the "slippery, greasy" guitar sound of his hometown made the band more punk rock than they had ever been.

Keenan features in episode five of NOLA: Life, Death & Heavy Blues From The Bayou - a series investigating the city's heavy metal scene. He was snapped up by COC in 1989 after making his name with New Orleans group Graveyard Rodeo.

He says: "COC were looking for a singer and that was a huge turn in my life. I had the opportunity and I ran with it. The New Orleans guitar playing style I had learned from Graveyard Rodeo came in handy when I jumped into that.

"When we wrote a song called Albatross, COC was so ingrained in the New York hardcore scene, playing a Sunday matinee at CBGB's and sh*t. We wrote Albatross and we though these motherf***ers were going to kill us.

"I felt more punk rock writing that sh*t from the world we were in, I felt like we were really putting our dick on the chopping block. That was the turning point for me. When I could get to the point that you were pissing off your own scene, it made you feel alive."

Watch the episode here.

North Atlantic Oscillation Provide Guide To New Album

Great Plains II: "We discarded several tracks that were written early in the sessions. They had some interesting internal architecture but didn't quite hang together. In keeping with the modular or atomic approach taken towards the album as a whole, we cannibalised the discards for spare parts. This track is built from some of them. That's why it seems to start in medias res, and end in similarly ambiguous fashion."

Elsewhere: "One long rejected track yielded some of Great Plains II and some of Elsewhere, which is why the keys conveniently match up. This was a tricky one to sing and a tricky one to mix. There were a good 20 or 30 draft mixes before it started to cohere. Some of the 'ambient' percussion is an old mantel clock with the weight removed so that it ticked faster and more erratically."

August: "Some spurious time signatures smuggled into what is otherwise a fairly guileless dream-pop song. Too Many Organs was engineer Pete Meighan's working title for it."

Read the rest here.

Alice Cooper Previews Limited Edition Guitar

The guitar features a hand-carved mahogany top, a solid mahogany body, a rosewood fingerboard and mother-of-pearl trapezoid inlays. The package is completed by a Gravedigger headstock, custom ASG Arsenal pickups and chrome ASG headstock emblem.

Alice, meanwhile, has been busy recording tracks for the forthcoming Paul McCartney tribute album, "The Art Of McCartney." More details about that here.

Red Racer Release Pull It out Video

The trio are made up of John Hogg (ex-Moke, Hookah Brown and HOGG), Sean Genockey (Tom McRae and Futureheads producer) and Jesse Wood (Reef). Define was recorded at Rancho De La Luna, Joshua Tree, with Jesse Hughes from Eagles of Death Metal. The band are also joined on the album by Joey Castillo from Queens Of The Stone Age, Masters Of Reality's Chris Goss, and Abby Travis and Hayden Scott of Spinnerette.

The video for Put It Out was was filmed at the famous Rockfield Studios in Wales, and features cameo performances from legendary Damned drummer Rat Scabies and Rockfield owner Kingsley Ward.

"Filming at Rockfield was fitting, considering our close ties and huge respect for the place", says frontman John Hogg. "They're all such lovely people there, too, that it made the whole process of making a music video feel more like a family affair. We were even treated to meals in Kingsley's stately dining room, which was surreal and moody, in a great way! And to have Rat come hang out and beat on his old Haymans, and for Kingsley to be revealed at the end of the video as the person searching... these are experiences none of us will soon forget. Rat has done it all and Kingsley has seen it all: all the bands, all the rotters, all the stories we can and can't talk about - a true legend with a tractor - and a Rolls to boot."

Watch the video here.

Distorted Harmony Release As One Live Video

Chain Reaction, the follow-up to 2012 debut Utopia, was launched earlier this year after a successful crowdfunding campaign. Ahead of its release the Prog Award nominated band said: "This album is going to be heavier, with songwriting that is a lot more focused, mature and coherent.

"The band as a whole has gotten tighter; the variant music influences of each member have been carefully balanced and woven into the compositions." Distorted Harmony play three shows in the Netherlands next month. Grab the dates and watch the video here.

Hang The Bastard Streaming New Song

The band say of the album: "It's significant to us on many different levels. It's an album that has been over three years in the making. Hang The Bastard has undergone many a mutation which has ultimately come to produce a new creative partnership and a solid musical identity."

They'll support Entombed AD on their European tour in November, which takes in four UK and Ireland dates. Check out the tour dates and listen to the new song here.

Singled Out: Jared McCloud's Where The Devil Don't Tread

The first version of "Where The Devil Don't Tread" was written for a songwriting group that I had belonged to. Consequently I was later kicked out of said group�twice� for lateness (what musician isn't perpetually late?). The theme that week was "two faces" and I instantly thought of someone I used to know. A divorce will do that to you I guess...

Essentially I had a vision of myself: alone, starring at nothing and surrounded by ruins. The song paints a picture of shattered glass everywhere, pictures thrown about and empty bottles- which is sort of how I felt my life looked at the time. Me just in the middle of all this wreckage I guess. I had a pretty dark period where I wanted to disappear from the world and have no one even think about me. I was determined to live in this wreckage, surrounded by fragments of someone I used to be. If anyone reading this is going through a divorce I swear to you it gets better, but at the time it was all pretty bleak and the song reflects that.

The title came from that old saying "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy". I had a thought of the Devil himself feeling so bad for me that even he wouldn't have gotten involved with my life at that point. So in the end it's just me by myself, my only friend the Devil.

After tinkering with the words for a few days and playing around with different blues licks I had the final version. I demoed it along with a bunch of other tunes for the new EP and sent them to my producer, who right off the bat latched on to this one. I think we both knew that we could really do some interesting things with it and we were excited about the possibilities. Going for that "drrrty south" vibe we added plenty of slide guitar, banjo, and leads on it and played the main part on an old beat-up National resonator knock-off.

At the end of the day it became one of my favorites, as well as a crowd pleaser at recent shows. "With pain, comes great art", right?

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!

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