Derek Oliver. — 100 p. — ISSN: 2514-0043.
Language: English.
We launched Rock Candy Mag in March 2017 because we couldn’t find a magazine anywhere that was dedicated to the stuff we love – classic ’70s and ’80s hard rock.
Rock Candy magazine is a bi-monthly, 100-page rock publication produced and managed by a bunch of British rock journalists with decades of experience in music and mags, writing for legendary publications including Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Raw.
We wanted to read a magazine that cared whether Aerosmith’s ‘Rocks’ is better than ‘Toys In The Attic’, whether Maiden were mightier with Di’anno than Dickinson, whether Journey’s ‘Escape’ is the greatest AOR album ever and if Rob Halford bought his stage gear from M&S. Or was it S&M?
This is the kind of stuff that has kept Derek Oliver, Howard Johnson and Malcolm Dome awake for years. Throughout the ’80s they had endless arguments about the minutiae of metal over beers in the Coffee House pub next door to the old Kerrang! offices in London’s Carnaby Street. They’re still at it today. Amazingly, they’re still friends.
Derek has run rock re-issues label Rock Candy Records for over 10 years. But he thought it was time we got back to our roots to produce a magazine that was loud and proud the way Kerrang! used to be in its heyday.
We don’t do demographics, market intelligence, focus groups or anything else that people wearing suits do. We produce a magazine about the greatest era of rock there ever was. And that’s about it, really…
But this is really an event: the British company Rock Candy Records, known for its reissues of obscure rock classics of the 70s and 80s, has launched its physical 100-page Rock Candy Magazine.
The publisher is the same journalist and A&R manager Derek Oliver, who once signed the Dream Theater group to Atlantic Records, and among the authors are such great names of English rock journalism, remembered by many from the classic KERRANG magazines! and Metal Hammer as Malcolm Dome, Paul Suter, Paul Elliott, Philip Wilding, Dave Reynolds, Jerry Ewing, Xavier Russell Xavier Russell and Steffan Chirazi.