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 Norman 4/29/21 Mark Norman 4/29/21

David Croft - Sports Broadcaster

There are some sports that are just more heavy metal than most. American Football, for example. Boxing. Wrestling. And then there’s motorsport. Specifically, there’s F1. And it’s just as well that F1 is the sporting equivalent of a KISS show in full flight, because the man whose voice has become synonymous with the sport is at his happiest when the guitars are turned up loud.

David Croft - or Crofty as he’s been affectionately known by everyone who’s worked with him since he started his career as a PR for the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage back in the 80s - is possibly one of the world’s biggest Bruce Springsteen fans, and over the years that devotion has grown rather than diminished, to the point where he’s a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge about all things Boss-related.

But co-habiting with Springsteen in his ears is also metal. And not just old skool metal either, though he’s a very definite fan of Metallica, Iron Maiden and The Black Crowes, among others. You’ll also find him listening to the likes of Parkway Drive (a firm favourite also of McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo), The War On Drugs, and Guns N’ Roses. Oh, and he’s also an avid listener to - and champion of - independent metal station Primordial.

His tastes are so metal, in fact, that the rest of the Sky Sports commentary team (Martin Brundle aside) can’t bring themselves to listen to his pre-race playlist

Earlier this year, the Sadmen got the chance to spend an hour with the man himself and delve into his love affair with hard rock and heavy metal - an affair that started in earnest at Knebworth Park in 1985 and his first encounter with Deep Purple, Meat Loaf, UFO, the Scorpions and Blackfoot - among others - and has continued to his karaoke choices at the F1 constructors’ Christmas parties that he’s occasionally invited to.

Listen on the player below to discover how a eve-of-race Springsteen show in Barcelona almost rendered him literally speechless for the following day’s Spanish GP, his and the boys’ tribute to the simple pleasure of visiting a record shop, and how his journey with the music he loves - metal or not - has helped shape who he is today.

You can also scroll down further to find out his top 10 albums of all time.

Crofty’s Top 10 Albums of All Time

**10. The War On Drugs - Lost In The Dream (2014)**

“There are some tracks on here that are unbelievably good. Underneath all of this is a man who’s really suffering - a lot of these songs build into a climax and I love the way the album just builds and builds and builds. I absolutely adore this album and I put it on when I just need to sit down and let music wash over me.”

gunsnroses_appetitefordestructi_cbhl (1).jpg — **9. Guns N’ Roses - Appetite For Destruction (1987)**

“*Appetite For Destruction* is in the top ten because it has to be in the top ten, and if Guns N’ Roses had stopped after this I don’t think I’d have been disappointed, because nothing they did afterwards was as good. This is their *Never Mind The Bollocks.*
“This is just a sensational album. Twelve tracks by a band who were burning at their brightest and who weren’t going to burn for long.”

**8. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968)**

“I put this in because there are some albums that you have to listen to at a certain time of the day, and if you listen to *Astral Weeks* for heaven’s sake don’t listen to it before eleven o’clock at night because you just won’t get what Van Morrison was trying to achieve.
“It’s a stream of consciousness that doesn’t necessarily make much sense. It’s rock folk blues jazz, a jam session with a bunch of musicians who were absolutely in the right moment together. And it contains *Sweet Thing*, which I think is just one of the most gorgeous tunes ever written.”

**7. Jason Isbell - Southeastern (2014)**

“This is not necessarily a happy album but it’s an album written by a man who is coming to terms with the way his life is, who doesn’t have the answers to how his life will pan out, but knows the answers will come eventually.
“No one is writing songs like Jason Isbell at the moment. I adore great lyricists, and he absolutely falls into that category.”

**6. Queen - A Night At The Opera (1975)**

“This was the most expensive album album ever made at the time they recorded it and this was Queen showing what Queen could really do when they were let loose in a studio - *A Night At The Opera* is every bit of this band’s talents.
“*Bohemian Rhap[sody* does tend to dominate most people’s view of this album, but *The Prophet’s Song* is an amazing piece of operatic rock, 39 is a wonderful folky tune that George Michael used to busk to, *Love of My Life* is a beautiful song. There are so many great tracks on this album.
“It’s the first album I ever bought and I still play it to this day.”

ironmaiden_thenumberofthebeast_jy0 (1).jpg — **5. Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast (1982)**

“I loved *Number Of The Beast*. This was just the dog’s, wasn’t it? *Invaders* could have been a better opening track, but it starts slow and builds to a cresecendo. Then there’s *Children of the Damned -* my god, you see the difference between DiAnno and Dickinson on a track like that!
“But it’s tracks 5 through 8 - *Number of the Beast, Run to the Hills, Gangland* and *Hallowed Be Thy Name* - that make the album. Commercial they may be, but they’re still staples in a Maiden set today.”

**4. Bruce Springsteen - Darkness On The Edge Of Town (1978)**

“There are a lot of Springsteen fans out there who’ll be wondering why this isn’t in the top 3, and the simple reason is that I prefer the other one that is in my top 3.
“I’m a hopeless optimist. I dream of better days and there’s something in *Born To Run* that strikes a chord with me in every single track.
*“Darkness On The Edge of Town* is a great introduction to Springsteen, but it’s an album he wrote after a long protracted dispute with his former manager that stopped him recording any music for a couple of years.
“This is a more grown up Springsteen. There’s a more guitar orientated sound than was on *Born To Run*. This is regarded by many of his fans as his best work.”

**3. Metallica - Ride The Lightning (1984)**

“Who agrees with me that this is the best Metallica album of all time? *Ride The Lightning* is the album that introduced the proper Metallica to the world.
“The confidence this band had to put out an album with acoustic guitar in a thrash metal album showed they had the guts and belief that what they were doing would be appreciated by the majority of people.
“They could have continued doing what they were doing and we’d all have been very happy with that, but they experimented and there are just some intense tracks on this album as a result.”

**2. The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion (1992)**

“The Black Crowes could have been the biggest band on the planet, but a mixture of greed, drug taking, the fight for control that wasa going on, and several bad decisions, they didn’t become the banmd they should have become.
“This album is The Black Crowes’ legacy - a great album that the world should appreciate and enjoy. It took eight days to record and I think it’s incredible.”

**1. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run (1976)**

“I think *Thunder Road* is the most beautiful song ever written. The whole album is full of images that Springsteen set to music. Lyrics like these only get written once, and for me this is an album of hope.
“The album is a band that’s finding its feet. The Vietnam War had just ended and Springsteen captures the mood of a nation with this.
“It’s also the album where the band is joined by Clarence Clemons and its a colelction of songs that celebrates Springsteen, the white rock star and Clemons, the Black horn guy, not just as friends but partners.
“Just a fabulous album.”

Mark Norman 3/9/21 Mark Norman 3/9/21

Jody & Julie Turner - Rock Goddess

Rock Goddess will need no introduction to most fans of the pod. But the hour we spent with the two thirds of the band who are related has been a high point in the life of the show so far. Find out what they had to say, and what 10 records would make it to each of their desert islands.

84bcd3c9-0482-4a1b-9fe4-072d39bebd27 (1).JPG

For four years at the start of the 80s the New Wave of British Heavy Metal juggernaut thundered down the hard rock highway flattening everything in its path and snowballing into something wondrously magical and joyously subversive.

We don’t mean to sound like your Dad here, kids, but it’s just impossible to adequately describe to someone who wasn’t there just how raw, dangerous and liberating it was to be into metal as Thatcher’s Britain waved a blue-rinsed farewell to the sneering musical anarchy of punk and prepared to greet the wild abandon of hard rock done the UK way.

And if you were there and you took more than a passing interest in this new breed of noisemakers, then the London borough of Wandsworth would have doubtless popped up on your radar as the childhood stamping ground of two of the NWOBHM movement’s more notable bands in Girlschool and Rock Goddess.

Now, listen up. We’re not here to get into the gender politics of heavy metal. Fuck that shit. There’s no doubt that any female heavy metal band starting out in the early 80s probably found it more difficult than it should have been to climb the ladder of success. But that had nothing to do with ability, and everything to do with being part of a society that still thought It Ain’t Half Hot Mum was edgy comedy.

Anyway, unreconstructed they may be, but like all genuine rock fans the Sadmen have always believed that if you could play, and if what you played was - in the words of former heavy metal parishioner Ian Kilmister - good ‘n’ loud, then most people didn’t really gave much of a fuck whether you were Arthur or Martha or something in between.

And whether Girtlschool or Rock Goddess could play was never in doubt. The opening chords of their respective debut albums put that beyond any doubt.

Rock Goddess will need no introduction to most fans of the pod, but for those of more tender years than the Sadmen or those who managed to miss pretty much every copy of Sounds or Kerrang! magazines between 1982 and 1985, you have the unquestionable pleasure of being able to discover a band that was never happier than when in front of a Marshall stack.

And for the two thirds of the Enter Sadmen podcast who got to spend an hour or so chatting to two thirds of the band about their career - and, as importantly - to have them reveal their top 10 albums of all time, it was a chance to be just a little starstruck in the presence of two sisters who they had first seen 37 years previously at the London Dominion theatre on a co-headlining tour with Y&T.

How did we end up talking about Jody’s pipes? Why is Julie the queen of the click track? And what drink did the boys have to promise to bring with them when they catch up with the band on next year’s tour with Diamond Head?

You can listen to the interview in full using the player below and scroll down to discover the girls’ top 10 albums of all time!

You can also hear our review of Rock Goddess’ 1983 debut below - and find out where it ended up in the hallowed Hall of Fame

If you haven’t yet caught up with the latest latest album This Time, where the hell have you been? It’s not as though you’ve been going out anywhere. Do yourself a massive favour and check it out NOW on Spotify (it took us about four years to get past Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right ‘cos Mark kept it on repeat)