Melvins’ King Buzzo selects his five favorite classic rock songs

Underrated gems from Led Zeppelin, Montrose and Thin Lizzy are among the five tracks that King Buzzo chose as his favorite classic rock songs.

The Melvins frontman is currently touring as one half of King Dunn, along with Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle, who collaborated with Buzzo on his 2020 album “The 4000.” Gift of Sacrifice album. The duo has since released a four-song EP under two different names, I am afraid of everything And Eat the spray. The North American leg of King Dunn’s 2024 tour, which will feature Buzzo on acoustic guitar and Dunn on upright bass, is scheduled to conclude in Phoenix, Arizona, on September 26 before heading overseas. For full show information and tickets, visit Ipecac.com.

“We’re doing a set that includes a few songs from my first acoustic record, a few songs from the Melvins and a few songs from the Gift of Sacrifice record. And I really let Trevor run wild. You put a guy like that out there, you let him do his job, I let him go, and that’s what I want,” Buzzo tells UCR. “That’s the appeal of playing live. A third (of the shows) are really good, a third are pretty good, and a third you just can’t do anything right no matter what you do. And you can’t tell when something like that is going to happen. You can have the best show of the tour on a Tuesday night in Tallahassee, you just don’t know. You can’t predict it. So that’s the one thing they can’t give you on the Internet, which is the experience of going out and playing in front of people. Going to a show and seeing the artists play, you can’t download that.

“There’s something about music that moves us more than any other art form and I don’t know why,” said Buzzo when explaining his choices. “It’s just always been with us, even the most primitive cultures have always had some kind of music, it speaks to us in ways we can’t define. It’s magical, to me it’s magical, it takes me to a place that’s not of this earth. I just wanted to play classic rock, I knew I had to stick with that, but there are so many bands that do that for me, like The Birthday Party or Tom Waits, there are millions.”

Montrose, “Space Station No. 5” (From Montrose1973)

“Oh man, I’ve known them probably since 1977. … I was interested in Montrose maybe because of ‘Frankenstein’ by Edgar Winter, which (guitarist Ronnie) Montrose played on, which led him to his own band. But ‘Space Station #5,’ which was produced by Ted Templeman, that record that predated Van Halen. Ironically, years later, Sammy Hagar ended up in Van Halen. The song starts off really weird, with this loud guitar stuff or whatever it is, and then Hagar’s, I just think the song is fucking awesome, the riff is so good. And Hagar’s vocals are… for people who don’t know, Sammy Hagar is a fucking awesome singer under the right circumstances. That scream he does at the beginning of the song touches me every time. It’s just like ‘Oh my God, this is the kind of music I lived for,’ that’s what I wanted, I wanted pure adrenaline, when you put this on in the morning, you don’t need a cup of coffee. That Guitar riff is fucking awesome, people just don’t know it… It’s a fucking good record, the whole record is good. But this song in particular is my thing… I don’t care what people say about Sammy Hagar, this record is fucking awesome.”

Kiss, “Calling Dr. Love” (Ex Rock and Roll Over1976)

“Gene Simmons has one of the best rock voices of all time in my opinion. People really don’t give him the credit he deserves as a singer. I also think he’s a highly underrated bass player. But the best thing about the song is that it has one of my two favorite Ace Frehley guitar solos. The solo in ‘Dr. Love’ is fucking amazing, it’s just awesome. I love that song, from the beginning it’s just a great riff, I never get tired of it. But that guitar solo, listen to it again, it’s Ace at his best, it’s really inventive and sounds strange. It’s a benchmark for Ace Frehley’s guitar solos, right next to ‘Strange Ways.’

Read more: The Melvins talk about Kiss fandom, covers and sharing the stage

Led Zeppelin, “Achilles Last Stand” (From Present1976)

“A hugely underrated record. I think it’s their least successful record. (That’s for albums released when Zeppelin were together, but it still sold over three million copies.) I could be wrong, but I think it sold worse than any of their other albums. I think it’s a really good record. A lot of people don’t like that song, I never understood it. It’s fast, really fast for Led Zeppelin, and it’s a crazy song to open an album with. It’s not a hit, it’s nine minutes. It’s hugely inventive and it’s just… I don’t know what it is, when I’m working out by myself at home or in a hotel gym, I play ‘Achilles Last Stand.’ You do a nine-minute intense workout to that song and you’ve got it down. The guitar work on that song is really weird. To me, it’s probably the most underrated Led Zeppelin song.”

Harry Nilsson, “Jump Into the Fire” (Aus Nilsson Schmilsson1971)

“I think the first time I heard it was sometime in the ’80s, and I just thought, ‘Oh, that’s a cool record.’ I never knew who Harry Nilsson was until (Goodfellas) movie when they used that on the soundtrack. It was so damn good. And then of course I had to track down that album. I think he died when he was about 53, which is awful. But that song, I love the vocal effect on it, and the bass playing on it is really good, the drum solo. It’s a great song, I never get tired of that song. He’s a great singer, and even though he didn’t write ‘Everybody’s Talkin’, I think he wrote the definitive version of it on Midnight Cowboythat song really upped the ante in that movie. But ‘Jump Into the Fire’ is great, it shows that if he wanted to do pure rock stuff he wouldn’t have had any problems.”

Thin Lizzy, “The Rocker” (Aus Vagabonds of the Western World1973)

“Oh my God, (I found this) when I was about 12. Jailbreak record, I think that’s probably their best record for me. I really like ‘Cowboy Song’, it’s always fun to hear a black Irish guy singing about American cowboys. ‘The Rocker’ is another record where I’ve heard one of my favorite rock guitar solos ever. I think (Eric Bell’s) wah-wah use is absolutely amazing. He does the wah-wah solo, which is subtle, and I just love that. That’s another record like ‘Space Station #5’ where I’ve never lost the feeling that song gave me when I was 12 years old, and I hope that never happens to me. That magic has always been there. A song like that has aggression and anger and passion and just everything that’s good about rock music.”

Listen to King Buzzo with Trevor Dunn performing “Mock She” (Kiss’ “Shock Me”)