They say you never forget your first time. And the broad smile that creases Myles Kennedy’s ruggedly handsome face as fragmented recollections of a red-letter day coalesce and come into focus rather telegraphs his subsequent admission that he treasures the memory as a transformative moment in his life. A practised, unhurried storyteller, he leans forward to sketch out the scene with broad strokes. It’s 1984, and in Spokane, Washington, Alter Bridge’s future frontman – at this point a 14-year-old schoolboy – is set to perform in front of an audience for the first time.
“My friends and I had formed an ‘air’ band, and we’d told everyone that we were going to play a gig without any instruments,” Kennedy explains. “We set up in the church pianist’s basement, and our parents thought it was going to be really cute, so everyone was like: ‘Let’s go downstairs and watch the kids play!’”
At the appointed hour, Kennedy’s step-father, a minister in the Methodist church, invited his congregation to join him for a very special musical performance. Descending into the basement, the unsuspecting churchgoers were greeted by a demonic cacophony that Satan himself might have considered ‘a bit much’ when selecting his walk-on music for Judgement Day.
The passing of time has done nothing to dull Kennedy’s gleeful memory of what happened next, as he watched familiar smiling faces darken in confusion, horror and disgust.
“What they didn’t realise was that our set-list featured only full-on metal,” he explains. “Shout At The Devil, Screaming For Vengeance, Iron Maiden… It took literally two songs to clear the entire room. It was wonderful.”
To his eternal credit, pastor Kennedy took the prank in good humour, and sustained only minor damage to his reputation in the local community. Known simply as Glenn to the two boys he raised as his own following the untimely death of their father Richard Bass, his laid-back, supportive approach to parenting will forever make him a “hero” in the eyes of Myles Kennedy. But when, during a family camping trip the following year, the teenager raised the prospect of a second ‘air band’ performance, the minister, mindful of the boy’s growing obsession with the music of Van
