hard rock

Joe Bonamassa (born May 8, 1977) just wanted to earn enough money to buy a deluxe Nintendo game when he started playing the guitar professionally. Then he met blues legend B.B. King. At the age of 12, his mother got a call from a local promoter, Richard Thornton asking if he wanted to be the opening act at a concert at which King was the headliner. After hearing the gifted adolescent play, King was so impressed that he invited Bonamassa to tour over the summer with his band.

Staind is an alternative metal band formed on November 24, 1995 in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. After meeting through friends and covering pop hits of the day in smalltime clubs for a year and a half, Staind self-released their debut album, Tormented, in November 1996, citing influences in brutal latin thrash metal. Until recently, the album was difficult to obtain, as only four thousand copies were originally sold. Since then, the band's official website has released the album to meet the demand from fans.

Def Leppard are an English rock band from Sheffield, who formed in 1977 during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Largely on the strength of their albums Pyromania and Hysteria, Def Leppard became one of the top-selling rock bands throughout the 1980s, selling over 65 million albums worldwide, including over 35 million in the United States alone. Rick Savage (bass), Pete Willis (guitar), and Tony Kenning (drums), all students at Tapton School in Sheffield, formed a band called Atomic Mass in 1977.

There are at least three bands who perform under the name Blonde On Blonde: a) Blonde on Blonde was a guitar-led psychedelic rock group from South Wales. The band was originally formed in Newport in 1967 by vocalist/guitarist Ralph Denyer, drummer Les Hicks, bassist/organist Richard Hopkins and guitarist/sitar player Gareth Johnson. Even though they enjoyed strong reviews from music critics and achieved massive exposure playing before gigantic crowds at the 1969 Isle of Wight festival, they never managed to generate much in the way of sales. They disbanded in early 1972.