Music Magazine Classic Rock Special: Icons of Rock Third Edition Back Issue

Here's a question: who’s the greatest rock icon of them all? Sure, it’s not a competition, but you can still have some fun with it. Is it Jimmy Page, the man in the dragon suit who sold hard rock and guitar heroism to millions of kids across America? Is it Keith Richards, cigarette in mouth, living the lifestyle everybody dreams about but no one but him could survive? Is it ZZ Top’s king of cool Billy Gibbons, monolithic Metallica frontman James Hetfield, or even Eric Clapton, who has spent more than 50 years keeping it classy? (For me it’s Lemmy, purely because no one gave fewer fucks for as long as he did).

In truth, there’s no right answer, just as there’s no way of boiling down exactly what it is that makes a “rock star”. But in this special magazine you’re holding, you’ll find a series of extraordinary up-close-and-personal interviews with some of the icons who built the music we all love, taken from the archives of Classic Rock magazine, which hopefully go some way to shining a light on what makes these legends the people they are.

You’ll find everyone from Jimmy Page talking about the world-beating success of Led Zeppelin in the 70s to Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash reflecting on the rock’n’roll life as recently as 2018, via the likes of AC/DC’s Angus Young, Freddie Mercury, Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Lou Reed, not to mention such cult heroes as Johnny Winter and JJ Cale. They’re all wildly different personalities, but if there’s one thing that unites them, it’s their dedication to the music they play.

And maybe that’s what makes an icon an icon. It’s not the way they look (though that helps), or what they say (likewise), but the legacy they’ll leave. And on that front, you won’t meet any finer examples than in these pages. We hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we did sitting down and talking to them.