John Lodge says he and Moody Blues bandmate Justin Hayward have no plans to reunite

August 4, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

The Moody Blues‘ John Lodge and Justin Hayward haven’t performed together since the band’s tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of 1967’s Days of Future Passed album ended in November 2018, and Lodge says there are no plans for them to work together moving forward.

Since 2018, Lodge and Hayward have regularly toured as solo artists, although their respective concerts always showcase plenty of Moody Blues material.

Meanwhile, Lodge tells ABC Audio that his contact with Hayward these days only involves business matters.

“He’s doing what he wants to do,”Lodge says. “I email him about different things, but I don’t know what he wants to do [with regard to new music]. He doesn’t want to be a Moody Blue. That’s all I know.”

As for his feelings about Hayward, Lodge notes, “We’ve had a friendship for over 50 years, so that’s not gonna change, from my point of view.”

In a Facebook post last November following the death of founding Moody Blues drummer Graeme Edge, Hayward explained that he felt the band couldn’t carry on without Edge.

Lodge recently played a one-off show with his solo group in Ocean City, New Jersey, and although he has no other confirmed concerts scheduled this year, he tells ABC Audio that he’s hoping to line up more tour dates for later in 2022.

“I told my agent when I want to go on the road, and hopefully he’s working hard at it,”Lodge says with a laugh. “It’s my life, you know? I love being on the road. I love meeting people. I love playing the music to people and getting the reaction from it. And it’s what I’ve done since I was 15.”

Hayward will kick off a two-week U.K. solo tour on September 11.

Rush members, Sammy Hagar among stars featured on new Jack Bruce tribute album, ‘Jack Songs’

August 3, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

Sammy Hagar and Rush‘s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson are among the many well-known musicians who have lent their talents to former Bruford bassist Jeff Berlin‘s new tribute album, Jack Songs, a salute to late Cream singer/bassist Jack Bruce.

The 10-track collection, which focuses mainly on Bruce’s post-Cream solo work, is available now on CD and as a digital download and can be ordered at JeffBerlinMusicGroup.com.

Other guests artists featured on Jack Songs include former Santana singer Alex Ligertwood, All Starr Band drummer Gregg Bissonette, Level 42‘s Mark King, ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, King Crimson‘s Tony Levin, Nathan East, guitar whiz Eric Johnson, Mr. Big‘s Billy Sheehan, Snarky Puppy‘s Michael League and more.

“Recording the music of Jack Bruce has been the most emotional recording project of my career,” says Berlin, who was friends with Bruce. “Jack was the greatest bass influence I ever had. In the center of his music were these strange and wonderful bass lines weaving in and out of the key, reaching for resolutions and finding them, again, and again. Jack’s playing was a living evolving improvisation.”

He adds, “When he died, I immediately set out to honor him by reviewing his music to choose some of my favorite songs of his and recording them via my own musical vision.”

Berlin explains that he used producer Giles Martin‘s work on the soundtrack to Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles LOVE stage production, a collection of Beatles mashups, as inspiration for Jack Songs.

“I arranged the music so that each song on ‘Jack Songs’ would end up as an individual work comprised of various parts of other songs in them,” Jeff notes.

Bruce died of liver disease in 2014. He was 71.

Here’s the album’s full track list:

“Creamed”
“Theme from an Imaginery Western”
“A Letter of Thanks”
“L’Angelo Misterioso”
“Rope Ladder to the Moon”
“One Without a Word”
“Smiles Story and Morning Grins”
“Folk Song”
“Traintime Time”
“Fuimas (We Have Been)”

Metallica teams up with ’Stranger Things’ for Hellfire Club merch

August 3, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

Come crawling faster…to buy new Stranger Things-themed Metallica merch.

The metal legends have teamed up with the Netflix sci-fi show to create a new line of apparel featuring the logo of the Hellfire Club, the Dungeons and Dragons group led by everyone’s favorite metalhead, Eddie Munson.

The merch collab, of course, follows the placement of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” in the Stranger Things season four finale, which has led to a renewed interest in the 1986 song. Following the finale’s premiere in July, “Master of Puppets” made its first-ever appearance on the Billboard Hot 100.

You can order your own Metallica Hellfire Club shirt now via Metallica.com or Netflix.shop.

Metallica previously rocked Hellfire Club shirts in a TikTok of them jamming “Master of Puppets” alongside the scene where Eddie shreds the thrash classic in the Upside Down. The “Enter Sandman” outfit later met actor Joseph Quinn, who plays Eddie, backstage at last week’s Lollapalooza.

Bryan Adams releasing deluxe ‘So Happy It Hurts,’ vinyl ‘Classic’ collections in October

August 3, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

A two-CD super deluxe version of Bryan Adams‘ latest studio album, So Happy It Hurts, will be released on October 28.

The expanded collection includes a bonus disc featuring 12 of the tracks that appeared on Adams’ 2022 Classic and Classic Pt. II digital albums, which originally were released in March and last week, respectively. Those albums boasted newly recorded versions of many of Bryan’s best-known tunes.

A two-LP, 14-track vinyl edition of the Classic recordings will be released on October 28, and will be available on standard back vinyl and limited-edition orange vinyl. Both versions will feature a laser etching of Adams’ silhouette on the fourth side.

You can preorder the two-CD version of So Happy It Hurts and the Classic two-LP sets now.

Coinciding with the recent release of the digital version of Classic Pt. II, Adams debuted a music video for his updated rendition of his 1998 single “When You’re Gone,” a duet with Melanie C of the Spice Girls. Bryan also recently premiered a video for the So Happy It Hurts track “I Ain’t Worth S*** Without You” that was shot on the stage of London’s historic Royal Albert Hall.

Here’s the track list for the super deluxe So Happy It Hurts package:

Disc 1
“So Happy It Hurts”
“Never Gonna Rain”
“You Lift Me Up”
“I’ve Been Looking for You”
“Always Have, Always Will”
“On the Road”
“Kick A**”
“I Ain’t Worth S*** Without You”
“Let’s Do This”
“Just Like Me, Just Like You”
“Just About Gone”
“These Are the Moments That Make Up My Life”

Disc 2
“Summer of ’69”
“(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”
“Run to You”
“Heaven”
“Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”
“Cuts Like a Knife”
“Please Forgive Me”
“Straight from the Heart”
“When You’re Gone” — featuring Melanie C
“Here I Am”
“Back to You”
“Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”

And here’s Classic two-LP track list:

“Summer of ’69”
“(Everything I Do) I Do It for You”
“Run to You”
“Heaven”
“Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”
“Cuts Like a Knife”
“Please Forgive Me”
“Straight from the Heart”
“Hidin’ from Love”
“When You’re Gone” — featuring Melanie C
“Here I Am”
“When You Love Someone”
“Back to You”
“Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman”

Keith Richards plans to work on more new Rolling Stones music with Mick Jagger this year

August 3, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

The Rolling Stones wrap up their 2022 SIXTY tour tonight with a concert at the Waldbühne theater in Berlin. In a recent interview with Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson, guitarist Keith Richards reports that after the trek, he expects to continue working on Stones songs with Mick Jagger.

Richards told Wilkinson that he and Jagger had previously spent some time in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains together and collaborated on new material, noting, “I guess when this tour’s finished, [we’ll] give it a break for a bit, but then I imagine that we’ll pick up where we left off in Jamaica.”

He added, “There’s some good stuff there. It was fun.”

Reflecting on his writing sessions with Mick, Keith said, “We played it like hermits, we didn’t go out, we just worked, but we’ll pick up on that I guess a little later in the year.”

As for how The Stones might approach releasing their new music, Richards said, “I couldn’t say what form things are going to come out. I hope that we’ll have recorded some stuff by the end of the year. And then, I mean, what do we do, stream it? I don’t know. Anyway, I just make records and then we figure out how they come out, right? That’s what I do.”

The Stones’ SIXTY tour, which celebrates the band’s 60th birthday, kicked off June 1 in Madrid and has visited 14 European cities. One of the originally scheduled shows, a June 17 date in Bern, Switzerland, was canceled after Jagger tested positive for COVID-19 early in the trek.

Updated version of 1990 Billy Joel concert film to be screened in theaters this fall

August 3, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Billy Joel‘s solo career, a remixed and re-edited version of the Piano Man’s 1990 concert film Live at Yankee Stadium will be screened at select North American theaters in early October.

The screenings will take place October 5 and October 9 in the U.S. and October 5 and October 8 in Canada. Tickets will go on sale Wednesday, August 10, at 10 a.m. ET at BillyJoel.film.

Live at Yankee Stadium was shot at two shows that Joel played at the historic Bronx, New York, ballpark on June 22 and 23, 1990. The re-edited movie features 4K video and Dolby ATMOS audio newly mixed from the original tapes. The film version includes a previously unreleased performance of “Uptown Girl,” interviews with Joel and behind-the-scenes footage from the event.

Among the many other classic songs featured in the movie are “Piano Man,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “New York State of Mind” and “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”

As a preview from the film, a clip of Billy performing “We Didn’t Start the Fire” has debuted on YouTube.

Meanwhile, the updated version of Live at Yankee Stadium and its remixed companion album will be released on November 4 on Blu-ray, CD, as a two-LP vinyl set and digitally, and can be preordered now.

Jonathan Cain says his lyrical inspiration for Journey’s ‘Freedom’ album was “heaven sent”

August 3, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

Journey‘s first new studio album in 11 years, Freedom, was released last month.

The 15-track collection was recorded mostly remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, with guitarist Neal Schon overseeing the music with veteran drummer/producer Narada Michael Walden, and keyboardist Jonathan Cain penning just about all of the lyrics.

Cain is a devout Christian who’s released a series of faith-based solo albums in recent years, and he tells ABC Audio that his inspiration for Journey’s new tunes was the same as his spiritual compositions.

“People asked me the other day…’Where do you get your lyric inspiration from?’ I said, ‘God, Holy Spirit,'” Cain reveals. “[H]e’s like [Elton John lyricist] Bernie Taupin for me, you know? He’s right there whenever I need him…And we’ve got a relationship, so a lot of these lyrics on this Journey record, I think, are heaven sent. So, [I’m] happy to be able to crank ’em out.”

Explaining how he collaborated on the Freedom material with Schon and Walden, Jonathan says, “Narada and Neal had some titles they threw out at me…and they had the beginnings of some choruses. And…I just tried to weave them into a lyric and complete it.”

Cain notes that Schon and Walden were the driving creative forces on Freedom, which was fine with him.

“[T]his is pretty much their baby, I would say,” he tells ABC Audio. “[T]hey were pretty relentless with the music and the direction. And I thought, ‘If you’re on a roll, go for it.'”

Describing the sound of the album, Cain says it has moods reminiscent of three of Journey’s biggest albums — 1981’s Escape, 1983’s Frontiers and 1986’s Raised on the Radio — plus “a little bit of [1978’s] Infinity in places.”

ZZ Top adds three new US shows with Jeff Beck to 2022 tour

August 2, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

ZZ Top recently lined up three September concerts in their home state of Texas featuring guitar legend Jeff Beck and Heart‘s Ann Wilson as special guests. Now three more shows with just Beck have been announced, taking place later that month in Tennessee and Alabama.

The new concerts are scheduled for September 27 in Franklin, Tennessee; September 29 in Pelham, Alabama; and September 30 in Orange Beach, Alabama. Tickets for the shows will go on sale to the general public this Friday, August 5, at 10 a.m. local time, while presale tickets can be purchased now.

As previously reported, ZZ Top’s Texas concerts with both Beck and Wilson will be held September 23 in Del Valle, September 24 in Dallas and September 25 in the Houston suburb of The Woodlands.

All of the concerts are part of ZZ Top’s 2022 Raw Whisky Tour, which is mapped out through a November 13 gig in Pompano Beach, Florida. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame trio also has a Las Vegas residency scheduled for this December at The Venetian.

ZZ Top released its latest album, Raw, on July 22. The collection features intimate live versions of 12 songs from the group’s back catalog, recorded in 2019 in conjunction with the documentary That Little Ol’ Band from Texas.

As for Jeff, he released a collaborative album with actor/rocker Johnny Depp titled 18 on July 15.

The Rolling Stones, U2 among ‘Pollstar”s top touring artists of the last 42 years

August 2, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

A variety of famous rock acts populate the top of Pollstar‘s new lists of the top touring artists by total box-office grosses and total ticket sales, based on information the concert-industry publication began collecting in 1980.

At #1 of top-grossing touring artists are The Rolling Stones, who have brought in a whopping $2.17 billion between July 7, 1980, and July 1, 2022.

Not far behind The Stones are U2, who landed in second place on the tally with $2.12 billion in concert grosses.

Other rock artists in the top 10 of the list are Elton John at #3 with $1.75 billion; Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band at #4 with $1.53 billion; Bon Jovi at #7 with $1.33 billion; the Eagles at #8 with $1.31 billion; Metallica at #9 with $1.22 billion; and Paul McCartney at #10 with $1.19 billion.

A bit lower on the tally are Billy Joel at #11, Roger Waters at #18 and Rod Stewart at #19.

The top touring artists by ticket sales are U2, with 26.2 million sold. The Stones are at #3 with 22.1 million, with Springsteen & the E Street Band at #4 with 20.8 million, Elton at #5 with 19.8 million, Metallica at #6 with 19.5 million, Bon Jovi at #7 with 17.8 million, Joel at #8 with 17 million and The Grateful Dead rounding out the top 10 with 15.5 million.

You can check out the full lists at Pollstar.com.

Legendary Warner Bros. Records executive Mo Ostin dead at 95

August 2, 2022 by Classic Rock 93.9

Mo Ostin, the legendary record executive who headed the Warner Bros. Records label for over 30 years, died “peacefully in his sleep” on Sunday at age 95, according to a Warner Music Group press statement.

“Mo was one of the greatest record men of all time, and a prime architect of the modern music business,” Warner Records co-chairmen Tom Corson and Aaron Bay-Schuck said in a joint statement. “For Mo, it was always first and foremost about helping artists realize their vision … Mo lived an extraordinary life doing what he loved, and he will be deeply missed throughout the industry he helped create, and by the countless artists and colleagues whom he inspired to be their best selves.”

As explained in a Billboard obit, early in his career, Ostin was hired by Frank Sinatra to run the iconic singer’s Reprise Records in 1960. After Warner Bros. Records bought Reprise in 1963, Ostin signed artists like The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young to the label.

Ostin began his tenure as president of Warner Bros. Records in 1970, became the company’s chairman and CEO in ’72, and oversaw saw the label and its Reprise imprint until he retired in 1994.

During his years with Warner Bros. Records, the company signed such famous artists as Van Halen, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Paul Simon, ZZ Top, Don Henley, Tom Petty, R.E.M., The B-52s, Green Day, Dire Straits, Chaka Khan and Prince.

After retiring from Warner Bros., Ostin co-founded and ran the DreamWorks SKG’s music division from 1996 to 2004. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2003.

A wide range of artists and other music-industry figures have shared tributes to Ostin, including Clive Davis, Neil Young, Nancy Sinatra, Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ Flea, The Beach Boys‘ Al Jardine and Christopher Cross.

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