It’s all very well the three of us sitting in front of a screen every week and spending three or four hours shuffling up and down rock and metal’s Memory Lane in our carpet slippers, a cut loaf tucked under one arm, trying to remember where the hell we live and why we’re out after dusk, but sometimes it’s good to hear what really happened, from the people who were actually there.

So, occasionally we’re lucky enough to have the honour - and it really is an honour - of talking to some of our heroes (and presumably yours) who over the years have helped to define the music we love.

We publish these conversations as special editions of the Enter Sadmen podcast, but we also ask our guests to do two things for us. First, we ask them to share their 10 all-time favourite albums with us (not necessarily rock or metal, because we want to know what inspires them more than to confirm we like the same noise)

And then we ask them to decide which albums we’ll listen to for the next regular edition of the podcast.

The special editions are playable directly from your browser from within the pages below. You’ll have to listen to the interviews to get the lowdown on real life in a rock and roll band - and the link will be at the end of each Special Guest Top Ten as soon as it’s available, so keep checking back.

Mark 5/26/21 Mark 5/26/21

John Verity - Guitarist & Producer

Here at Enter Sadmen HQ we don’t have many rules, but there are two that we’re pretty intransigent about: we don’t review Greatest Hits or compilation albums, and we generally only consider albums released between 1970 and 1995 (though between you and me, we’ll probably make an exception in the cases of both Zeppelin and Purple … ).

But that means we risk missing out on some of the legendary behaviour and music of the decade that ultimately gave birth to the entire heavy rock genre - the Swinging Sixties, where rock and roll was subversive and anarchic and loud and grubby. All the things, in fact, that drew us to it in the first place.

Luckily, we occasionally get to sit down and chat with people who fuelled that underground swell, riding in on the vapour trails of distortion created by BB King and Hendrix et al. And just as well, really, because it meant we had the chance to spend a couple of hours one evening with John Verity, front man for the John Verity Band who had some hilarious tales of derring-do to share from his early days on the scene during the mid- to late-Sixties all the way to the trials and tribulations of his transition to record producer during the Eighties.

Over the course of our chat John, who counts spells with Argent, Phoenix and The Dave Berry Band and an ill-tempered support slot for Jimi Hendrix on his CV, recounts the night a member of Hendrix’s road crew tried to sabotage their set, how their manager was dropped four floors from an apartment block by Miami cops in a drug bust, being ‘persuaded’ to leave the United States by the US immigration service, how record execs at Carrere managed to review Saxon’s debut album played at the wrong speed, and the moment he thought (wrongly) that Motorhead manager Doug Richards would fire him from a production job on an early 80s live album …

You can listen to the episode by clicking the player below (or find it in all the usual places, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Soundcliud, Tunein, Pandora and Iheartradio). You can also scroll down to discover the top 10 albums that have inspired John along the way, and tune in to the episode to hear him talk about why they’re his desert island picks.

John’s latest album, Passion, is available to buy, stream and download now and you can keep up to date with tour news and all things JV on Facebook at www.facebook.com/johnveritymusic