‘Forged By Fire’ – A new song by Glen Hodgson – The Burning Cities

It’s been a good few years since we last sat down with Glen from The Parlotones at Hells Kitchen Melville. He wasn’t drinking then. He also vowed he would never get married. Fast Forward to 2021 and the world is a new place – engaged, humbled, and now eager to meet for a whiskey.

Expect a follow up interview to our first interview in a few weeks time.
In the meantime, check out the teaser to the new single Forged By Fire. There’s no holding back here, the intro smashes into full run and is honest, emotional, angry and raw. They say to create your best work, you need to hit rock bottom. This feels like Glen has truly had to let go and is like that phoenix out of those proverbial flames.
Glen Hodgson has spent 21 years in the commercially successful Parlotones. He unwittingly entered the SA music scene at age 17, and the storybook reads very differently than a traditional one. While the band’s fanbase, repertoire and passport stamp collection grew over the years, it’s not the kind of corporate ladder the rest of the world are normalised into climbing. And after the shaky rope ladder was severed in 2020, this talented musician was forced to learn life-skills that his non-muso friends had been gradually exposed to over 2 decades: except he needed to get the crash course in a matter of months. And crash it did.
Forged by Fire is a reflective memoir on the hardship and tragedy that Glen
experienced following the rug-pull of the only industry he knew how to function in, once the pandemic hit. The song is an honest and vulnerable expression of the rock – bottom he faced, the resultant emotional and mental weight that he carried, and the subsequent optimistic climb out: emerging as a different person on the other end.
One of the (many) perks, however, of living one’s entire adulthood as one quarter of the most successful Pop/Rock bands in Africa is that you get to cherry-pick the greatest contributors of the genre to feature on your solo project, and Glen called on the very best rock, punk and pop artists in the genre with Dale Schnettler (Prime Circle), Justin Serrao and Garth Barnes (Tweak /Crashcarburn).
Forged By Fire is coming 25 September 2021.