News Roundup 2011: April

KK Downing announced that he had left the metal legends, although the reason for his departure was not immediately clear. One speculative story (started by the band's bassist Ian Hill) suggested that it was so that KK could spend more time working on his golf course in Shropshire. But that wasn't the case, and it eventually turned out that Downing had fallen out with elements of the Priest camp. It's not known whether that meant bandmates or management, and both Priest and Downing have maintained a dignified silence on the whole thing ever since. Priest recruited guitarist Richie Faulkner as a full time member of the band in May.

AC/DC's Phil Rudd had a potentially damaging conviction for drug possession overturned in April. He had been convicted in December of being in possession of 27 grams of marijuana. He was fined $190 plus $101 in court costs, but more importantly he would not have been allowed to tour with DC in the US or the UK.

Bryan Ferry had a health scare at the beginning of the month when he was hospitalised for a little more than 24 hours with a mystery illness. The illness didn't affect Ferry's tour schedule, and the year took a brighter turn when the Roxy Music frontman was given a CBE in June

Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi reunited for a brand new musical project called WHOCARES. The supergroup contained Maiden's Nicko McBrain, former Deep Purple man Jon Lord, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted and Linde Lindström and they released a single to raise money to support the rebuilding of a music school in Gyumri, Armenia. The result? Two outstanding new songs.

Bob Dylan made history in April by playing his first ever gig in China. The legendary songwriter would go on to be accused of bowing to censorship after his set was noticeably lacking in some of his more political tracks. However, he wrote a lengthy letter to his fans which vehemently denied the accusation. "If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play," he said.

Ian Anderson took part in one of the more long distance musical partnerships we've seen when he played a duet with US astronaut - and Tull fan - Catherine Colman.

And Slash confirmed that he would be going home. Back to his hometown of Stoke-On-Trent where he lived until he was eleven years old to play his first ever gig there in July. The show at the Victoria Halls would go on to be released as a live CD and DVD later in the year.