Yngwie Malmsteen – Trial by Fire: Live in Leningrad

If there were a definitive list of things that should have been left back in the 1980s, I think even a large number of modern rock fans would agree that the concept of “Hair Metal” would be on it.

But at its best, ‘eighties “Hair Metal” was something whose technical spectacle was mind boggling. It could so easily be mocked, as the movie This is Spinal Tap demonstrated with the epitome of aplomb. And it could also rank among the most proficient displays of musicianship across any genre in that era. If you were fed up with buying albums on which the lead vocalist appeared at the top of the personnel listing, this one might provide the change you were looking for…

Jools Holland – Live Performance Audio Cassette – 1994

He’d been the keyboardist in Squeeze, but many teenagers of the early 1980s didn’t really get a taste of who Jools Holland was until he barged his way to the forefront of youth culture TV as a main presenter on The Tube.

The Tube exploded onto UK screens in early November 1982 as a flagship programme for the brand new alternative channel – Channel 4. As its name suggests, ‘4 was only the fourth TV channel to join the UK’s broadcasting network.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Radio One Cassette

Quite a few people could claim to have invented rock music. But there was only one inventor of rock sensibility, and that was Jimi Hendrix.

This was the man who turned the Fender Stratocaster guitar into a sex symbol, and its life was never the same again. It’s now the most famous and popular guitar on the planet by a humungous margin. But in fact, before Hendrix achieved fame, the Stratocaster was far from a world-beater. Its fortunes had been significantly waning, and its makers, Fender, had been focusing on other models.