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 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.

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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)