Black Country Communion and the proud return of classic rock

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Back in 2017, if you’d asked Joe Bonamassa about the likelihood of a fifth Black Country Communion album, he’d have been far from certain. At that time, the band had just released their fourth album, IV, and ostensibly all was going well. Critics loved it. Fans loved it. The band were proud of it. But they still had ‘day jobs’, outside commitments – other lives, in other words – that had always stood between them and the ‘supergroup’ they all loved so much. How much longer could a side project be viable?

“That was fifty-fifty,” Bonamassa says now, looking back on the aftermath of IV. “And after [third album] Afterglow, that was when I would probably have given it a twenty per cent chance of ever firing up again. But then with the fourth record, we just started chatting and said let’s do it, you know.”

IV had its share of obstacles. With Bonamassa having sent up the BCC ‘bat signal’ (it’s generally him who does this), diaries had to be finagled. They ended up with just five days to record. On the fourth day, singer/bassist Glenn Hughes had to fly to the UK to his mother’s bedside (she died a couple of days later). Still, they ended up with a strong album, with standouts tracks like Collide and Sway reminding the world what hooky, meaty anthems they were capable of.

“You hear the word ‘magic’ a lot in this industry,” Hughes enthuses, with notes of awe and gratitude that tend to pepper his answers – plus the vigour of someone 30 years sober. “But there’s magic in this band. There is real magic with these four members, and Kevin [Shirley, producer], of course. I think it’s magic. The albums we’ve made are incredible.”

“But this one,” Bonamassa says of BCC’s recent V, “when I first heard the mixes, I called Kevin and said: ‘Am I hallucinating, or is this the best one we’ve done?’ And he goes: ‘No, this is the best one’. And I said: ‘I agree.’”

Speaking separately (Hughes from a ship in Nassau, where he’s just played a set of Deep Purple classics; Bonamassa backstage at the London’s Royal Albert Hall, where he’ll play a solo show in about an hour), Black Country Communion’s writing core are legitimately pumped about V.

They make an interesting pair. Hughes is all yoga, vibes and LA sunshine; Bonamassa is straight-talk with a touch of sarcasm. But even with their own professional peaks elsewhere, they seem to hold a special attachment to Black Country Communion – an almost schoolboy-ish optimism, shared by bandmates Derek Sherinian and Jason Bonham, and Beatles-esque ‘fifth man’ Kevin Shirley, who brought the band together back in 2009.

“You can hear the joy and the fun in the record,” Bonamassa says, sitting in his dressing room and looking very on-brand in a Gibson jumper and socks with guitars on them. “It’s really groovy and it’s inspired and it’s fresh and it’s not laboured, you know, and that’s… We just kind of took all of our influences and went: “Here they are.’”

It paid off: V is a brilliant classic rock record. It emits the spirits of bygone heroes, not least Jason Bonham’s dad’s old band. It’s consistently beefier, catchier and groovier than previous BCC albums. First single Stay Free made a great first impression – riffing and shimmying like a funky Trampled Underfoot – although in truth they could have picked almost any of the tracks to lead off with, such as pummelling opener Enlightened or the more tender Love & Faith. The expression ‘all killer, no filler’ feels genuinely apt.

Something clicks between the five of them. Where there was once a degree of tension over egos, and tours prevented by other commitments (most notably Bonamassa’s), today Black Country Communion appears to be a harmonious club. They sit in at each other’s other gigs. They have a group text, where they share “dirty jokes and Ferrari pictures” and geek out over Free. They’re friends, in other words.

“We have not gotten along better as a band [than] in the last two years,” Bonamassa says. “Everyone’s older, wiser, more chill.”

“We were all on there [the group text] last night,” Hughes says. “Once a week or so, and maybe this wasn’t happening ten years ago. Maybe things are changing. I just think we’re all realising: ‘Hey, we’re still here, we just made this album, it’s been seven years since the last one…’ you know?”

Maybe some truths are dawning on all of them, in a way that they hadn’t before: time is precious; life is fleeting; good collaborations are worth fighting for.

After a drawn-out series of diary clashes and inevitable pandemic-induced delays, there had been conversations about a new record at the start of 2022. There was just one problem, and this time it wasn’t with Bonamassa’s schedule. Hughes had a new Dead Daisies album and tour to complete – and, it turned out, he couldn’t be in both bands simultaneously. Bonamassa suggests that this caused V to be pushed back “probably two years”.

“Glenn’s like: ‘We can’t do anything until I… well, bail,’” the guitarist says with a shrug. “It was a very straight thing. And when he told me he was leaving the Dead Daisies, he was like: ‘Let’s boogie.’”

So if the Dead Daisies hadn’t been in the equation, V would have been done earlier? “Well, I don’t think they….” he considers his words, and grins. “It’s like if you tried to bring a pineapple in from Hawaii into London Heathrow, if you know what I mean. They don’t allow outsiders.”

Unsurprisingly, Hughes offers a more generous perspective, singing his former band’s praises and referring sincerely to “my friends in the Dead Daisies”. Still, when that band’s guitarist David Lowy said (in December 2022) that he’d be taking a hiatus, Hughes saw that his time with the Aussie rocker/business magnate’s venture could be up.

“I said to myself and my manager: ‘I don’t think I can sit around for six months, especially at this time in my life,’” he says. “I think when you’re in that band, you’re in there and you can’t really do anything else. But I’m a man who wants to do a lot of stuff.

“And I have so much respect for the Daisies,” he adds. “David Lowy especially, lovely man. I had a really good time in that operation. Some people think: ‘Why can’t Glenn stay in one band? Is he restless?’ No, I just want to make new music. I want to keep working while I can.”

With Hughes’s Dead Daisies obligations fulfilled, work on V began at his house in Palos Verdes, Los Angeles,where he and his wife live with their three rescue dogs. Bonamassa came over for “five or six sessions”, and the two of them came up with song ideas. At this point, 15 years into their relationship, it’s a well-oiled and familiar process.

“I know where he’s going to sit, I know where I’m going to sit,” Hughes says. “I know what guitars we’ll play. I know everything that’s going to happen. It just flows. We don’t overthink it. These songs come together pretty damn quick. They’re all special songs, you know?”

That said, according to Bonamassa the sketches they had were “pretty basic”. He was, he says, “a little concerned” as they went in to record.

In June 2023 they convened with Sherinian, Bonham and Shirley at Hollywood’s Sunset Sound. Its luminary history made it an appetising choice; Led Zeppelin recorded their own IV in the same studio.

“It was so funny, because Jason unknowingly brought the same type of wood drum kit that his father played in studio two,” Bonamassa says, smiling, “but didn’t know it until they told him, like: ‘When your dad was here, it was this kit!’”

With the place to themselves and mostly rough songs to work with, they found themselves enjoying their most collaborative album process yet. The more they worked, the stronger the songs became, the happier the atmosphere was, and so it went on. V might have started out with Hughes and Bonamassa, but the completed record was a true team effort. Everyone thrived, not least their drummer.

“I’ve never seen Jason that creative,” Bonamassa enthuses. “He has so many different things other than the Bonham; he’s got Chester Thompson, there’s Phil Collins, he’s got a lot of these other flavours. I mean, can he lay down Kashmir better than anybody? Of course. That’s in his DNA. So we still had a lot of that stuff.”

But the main influence – and the band the five of them really bond over – is Free. Hughes and Free bassist Andy Fraser were pals, the latter being a huge influence on the former’s bass chops. Bonamassa has said, in these pages, that if he could play guitar in any other band, it would be Free.

“Andy was a dear friend,” Hughes remembers. “I remember being over at John’s [Bonham] house in 1971, and I stayed over one night, we’d been drinking… And I was awakened by a child, just out of diapers, and it was little Jason! And his father and I have been playing Free all night, and a bunch of other great artists from the late sixties and early seventies.”

“When we’re stuck in the mud creatively,” Bonamassa says, “it’s always: ‘What would Andy Fraser do?’ ‘How would [Paul] Kossoff play that chord?’ ‘How would [drummer] Simon Kirke play that bit?’ That really kind of bonds us together.

“And we’re a classic rock band,” he adds. “So of course it sounds derivative. Of course it sounds like 1973. We’re not trying to be like, you know, ‘Here’s a modern take’, we’re unapologetically time travellers backwards.”

In a way it sounds blissful. Pure-pleasure escapism for five very busy people; the classic rock band of their dreams, with a 70s veteran at the helm. For Bonham it’s a chance to be himself, not his father. For keyboard player Sherinian it plants him outside the progosphere he typically inhabits. For Bonamassa it’s a rare space for him to ‘just’ be a guitar player.

“I have forty-nine records,” he says quietly, suddenly realising this. “That includes all the Black Country Communion, Beth Hart, Rock Candy Funk Party, the solo stuff, the live DVDs… As you get older you want to take a minute and, when you’re ready to make something cool, do it. In terms of Black Country Communion, I went to the studio every day going: ‘This is inspiring, I feel like part of something very special.’”

For Hughes, even with his extensive solo pursuits (he has a new record in the works), it’s hard to shake off the feeling that he’s a ‘band guy’ at heart. That he’d love Black Country Communion to be his full-time band.

“That would be the ideal scenario,” he says, a little wistfully. “But the thing is that Joe is booked two years in advance. I am booked all the way through to the end of next year. We are talking about doing a selection of shows. Everybody I know wants to see this band, and hopefully that’s going to happen.”

It’s easy to feel as though our enduring cultural icons will be around for ever. We know that rock’s most famous faces are as mortal as the rest of us, even as some of them have a way of feeling somewhat infinite. A small number go a step further, bypassing the obstacles of age and sustaining a blistering ideal of the classic rock star – still sounding, and looking, the part. Arguably, no one embodies this more than Hughes.

“I am so grateful that I have been given this… this voice that God has given to me. I mean, how lucky am I?” he says. “I work with a physical therapist for yoga moves and postures and breathing exercises. I might be too thin, but I like to keep fit. I do take care of myself. I really do.”

“I never heard anything like it in my life,” Bonamassa enthuses. “He can subconsciously connect his chest voice and his head voice, and his range is unlimited. Peers? I can’t think of anyone. Paul Rodgers is the only one. Or McCartney. There’s maybe five or six people left, you know, Peter Frampton, Ann Wilson… But the rest of his peers that sang that kind of power style, they’ve all come down a bit.”

Still, even Hughes knows it’s not for ever. He’s had those thoughts. Concerns about the future, and making as much music while he can. Those moments of realising that he’s 72; that time is not infinite. It’s this sort of urgency that emotes through V in thick, groove-heavy strokes and heartfelt melodies.

“I want people to know that this will possibly be the last band that I’m in,” Hughes tells us. “I’m so deep into my solo career with this new album I’m about to make. And Black Country Communion to me is, seriously, a band of brothers. I can’t imagine being in another band after this.”

So with all that mind, will it be another seven years until the next record?

“No,” Bonamassa says, shaking his head. “Because if we want this to be an active thing, we need to be active. We can’t just be like: ‘Oh, come see us once’, and then ‘We’ll see in six years’. Because eventually it will just stop. Everybody still has that skill set that makes the band special. And we need to make sure that we use it while it’s there.”

When the prospect of live shows was raised recently, in-house they all said: “I’m in.” But it’s at this point in our conversation – in contrast with the clean-living glow, the full-tilt enthusiasm that’s so integral to his public ‘Voice Of Rock’ persona – that Hughes expresses a little caution.

“I don’t know if there’s even going to be one,” he says frankly. “It’s a matter of ‘is there going to be enough time?’ You know how old I am, and the fact is that I want to do this for as long as I possibly can. So many of my friends have disappeared or died or retired or whatever. I am one of the last of the early-seventies gang that are still doing it. I’m not saying there won’t be [another BCC album]. But if there’s going to be one, it needs to be in the next couple of years.”

Hughes, it’s no surprise to learn, is one of those people who says “the word ‘retire’ isn’t in my vocabulary”. He doesn’t have an exact age in mind (Bonamassa does: 62), only that he’ll make music as long as he’s able to do it. But there is a recognition – one that’s maybe easier to sit with, at this happy point in his life – that it will happen.

“I don’t want to be doing this when I’m eighty,” he says. “I know there are a couple of my mates who are eighty still doing it, but I don’t think I’ll be doing this when I’m eighty. I don’t think so.”

V is out now via J&R Adventures/Mascot Label Group.