Classic Rock 93.9

Ringo Starr stopped by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday to talk about his latest photo book, Lifted: Fab Images and Memories of My Life with The Beatles from Across the Universe, which features many rare, unseen and newly discovered photos of the band members, as well as recollections and anecdotes written by Ringo.

One memory he shared with Kimmel was that the band slept two to a room while on the road, a tradition that began as soon as he joined the band.

“As soon as we started going around, you know, Europe first, and even Scotland if we had to stay over, but usually if it was in Britain, that night we’d drive home. Even if it was 200, 300 miles, we’d drive home,” he recalls. “When we started going out, we only ever had two suites. We shared all the time.”

When Kimmel asked if there were situations where the hotel rooms didn’t have two beds and they were forced forced to sleep in the same bed, Ringo joked, “Well, I don’t want to talk about that.”

The idea to play their final concert on the roof of Abbey Road Studios also came up, which, like many of the band’s best laid plans, seemed to fizzle in the end.

“[It was always that way] with The Beatles, we’re going to India, we’re going to Everest, we’re going here! Aw, sod it, let’s just go on the roof,” he explained. “Abbey Road was another one. Let’s go to the Alps, let’s go to India…ah, just walk across the road.”

Lifted can be purchased now exclusively at JuliensAuctions.com. Proceeds benefit Ringo’s Lotus Foundation, which funds and supports charitable projects that focus on various social welfare causes.

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Last month, Dead & Company was forced to call off its two-weekend Playing in the Sand destination festival due the Omicron surge of COVID-19.  But the band’s Bob Weir is planning to hit the road next month with his other band, and tells USA Today that, “God willing,” Dead & Company will be on the road this summer.

Weir’s Wolf Bros, which Weir formed in 2018 with Don Was and Jay Lane, are scheduled to launch a 13-city tour March 9 in Nashville, TN.  “It’s looking like, knock on wood, the Omicron effect will be in the rearview mirror,” Weir tells USA Today. “Here’s hoping something else doesn’t pop up.”

If you can’t make the tour, Friday sees the release of the first-ever vinyl Wolf Bros LP, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live in Colorado, recorded in June of 2021. Released on Third Man Records, it’s the first volume of a two-volume collection, due out later this year.

Asked to reflect on his musical legacy, Weir — whose resume also includes Ratdog and Furthur in addition to The Grateful Dead, Dead & Company and Wolf Bros — refuses to be pinned down to being famous for just one thing.

“There are great musical cultures and great music to be found. But there is nothing quite as magical as the American songbook. I spent 60 years or so delving as deep into it and as intently as I can,” he says. “I just love the stuff so much…be it country, blues, R&B…I try to play it all.”

Weir adds, “I guess in years to come, when people listen to me they’ll make note of the fact that he tried to play it all. We’ll see how successful people think I got.”

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Many unseen photos of the late Joe Strummer — plus some well-known pictures, like the cover of his 1989 album, Earthquake Weather — have been compiled in a new book called Joe Strummer: Print the Myth.

The book is the work of photographer and creative director Josh Cheuse, who first met Strummer in 1981, when he called Electric Ladyland Studios from a payphone at his high school and asked The Clash if he could photograph them. Their creative partnership and friendship lasted until Strummer’s death in 2002.

In addition to photos of Strummer, the book includes sketches, handwritten notes and collages, as well as Cheuse’s personal stories about Strummer. Among the images included are a photo of The Clash performing in 1981 at Bond’s International Casino in New York, as well as a photo taken outside Buckingham Palace in 1988. You can see those images at RollingStone.com.

You can now sign up at JoeStrummerBook.com to get a discount when pre-order begins, and get the chance to have your name in the book.

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The breakup of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham fueled many of Fleetwood Mac‘s most famous songs.  But Stevie now says that if they’d split when they really wanted to, Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have been around for them to record those songs.

In a new interview in The New Yorker, Stevie explains, “I broke up with Lindsey in 1976. We’d only been in Fleetwood Mac for a year and a half, and we were breaking up when we joined Fleetwood Mac. So we just put our relationship kind of back together, because I was smart enough to know that, if we had broken up the second month of being in Fleetwood Mac, it would have blown the whole thing.”

“I just bided my time, and tried to make everything as easy as possible, tried to be as sweet and as nice to Lindsey as I could be,” Stevie continues. “He wasn’t happy, either. Then something happened that was, y’know, ‘We’re done’…it was time.”

“The band was solid, by that time, so I could walk away knowing that he was safe. And that the band was safe. And that we could work it out,” she concludes.

Speaking about two classic songs inspired by the breakup, Stevie says, “I always laugh because Lindsey’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ and my [song] ‘Dreams’ are, like, counter songs to each other. I’m, like, ‘When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know,’ and he’s, like, ‘Packing up, shacking up’s all you want to do.’”

She notes, “He’s looking at it from a very unpleasant, angry way, and I’m saying, in my more airy-fairy way, we’re gonna be all right. We’ll get through this.”

Stevie has several festival performances booked for this year, while Buckingham has a slew of tour dates lined up for the month of April.

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Happy 50th birthday, Billie Joe Armstrong!

The Green Day frontman was born half-a-century ago today, on February 17, 1972. Growing up in Rodeo, California, Armstrong quickly became interested in music, and formed Green Day with childhood friend Mike Dirnt was he was just a teenager. Their first album, 39/Smooth, dropped in 1990, followed by 1991’s Kerplunk!, which marked drummer Tré Cool‘s debut.

Green Day soon became a local sensation in the local East Bay punk scene, but they exploded into the mainstream with their first major label album, 1994’s Dookie. The now RIAA-Diamond-certified record spawned singles including “Longview,” “Basket Case” and “When I Come Around.”

Dookie was followed by 1995’s Insomniac, 1997’s Nimrod and 2000’s Warning, and a greatest-hits compilation in 2001. With declining sales, some felt that Green Day had reached their peak, but the trio soon turned the doubters wrong with one of the most successful career transformations in rock of the new millennium.

In 2004, Green Day dropped American Idiot, an hour-long punk rock concept album that launched hit singles in the title track, “Holiday,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” American Idiot would become six-times Platinum, earn multiple Grammy wins and nominations, and was even adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical.

Green Day then released 21st Century Breakdown in 2009, followed by the 2012 trilogy of ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! That year, Armstrong entered rehab for substance abuse after an expletive-ridden rant during a live show. He returned to the band in 2013.

Armstrong and Green Day were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. They’ve since released two more albums, 2016’s Revolution Radio and 2020’s Father of All…

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In 2019, Neil Young was offered, and turned down, what he then described as “millions of dollars” to do a tour focusing on his classic 1972 album, Harvest. Now, in a new interview, he explains exactly why he said no to that potentially huge payday.

“I’d rather do a new album with new musicians and not try to play old parts by other musicians who aren’t here anymore,” Neil tells the U.K. magazine MOJO. “You can’t recreate the past. If the past is preserved, you don’t have to recreate it.” 

He adds, “As far as my world, it’s not what I’m interested in.”

Young has a similar opinion about any future work with Crosby, Stills and Nash, saying, “I wish them all the best. But musically, I’m not interested in reliving the past.” However, he gives himself an out, noting, “I’m not saying it will never happen. Why would I say [that?] It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m focused on what’s going on on the planet, what’s going on in the world and trying to listen to my musical sense of what my soul wants to do…so I just have to take care of that and keep going,” Neil further tells MOJO. “So I just have to take care of that and keep on going while at the same time be aware of the world and what is happening. And if Crosby, Stills and Nash fit into that, we’ll see what happens.”

Currently, Neil is promoting Barn, his new album with Crazy Horse. As previously reported, a documentary about the making of the album, also called Barn, which was directed by Young’s wife, Daryl Hannah, is streaming for free on Neil’s YouTube channel.  However, he has no plans to tour, telling Rolling Stone late last year, “I don’t want to put people in danger.”

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Originally released in September of 1992, The Police compilation Greatest Hits is being reissued on vinyl for its 30th anniversary.

The album had a limited vinyl release because of course back in the day, all anybody wanted was CDs.  As a result, it’s long been out of print, but it’ll be back on April 15.  The two-LP set was remastered at Abbey Road and cut at half speed. It comes as two heavyweight vinyl discs packaged in a gatefold sleeve. You can pre-order it now.

The album includes 16 tracks spanning the band’s five studio albums, from “Roxanne” from Outlandos d’Amour, to “Tea in the Sahara,” from Synchronicity.

Meanwhile, the three members of The Police are keeping busy: Sting resumes his world tour in March and his Las Vegas residency in June, while Andy Summers will tour his latest photo exhibit this July and his one-man multimedia music show in October.  Stewart Copeland will be performing with an orchestra in North America and Europe this year, and premiere his latest opera, The Witches Seed, in Italy in July.

Here’s the Greatest Hits track listing:

Disc One

Side A
“Roxanne”
“Can’t Stand Losing You”
“So Lonely”
“Message in a Bottle”

Side B
“Walking on the Moon”
“The Bed’s Too Big Without You”
“Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
“De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”

Disc Two

Side A
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”
“Invisible Sun”
“Spirits in the Material World”
“Synchronicity II”

Side B
“Every Breath You Take”
“King of Pain”
“Wrapped Around Your Finger”
“Tea in the Sahara”

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After announcing on his socials earlier this month that he’d be touring North America this summer with Cheap Trick, Rod Stewart has now revealed the full list of dates for the trek, as well as the on-sale dates.  But Rod says when it comes to his set list, it’ll pretty much be the hits and nothing but the hits.

The 38-date tour, which officially kicks off June 10 in Vancouver, Canada, is Rod’s first in four years. And while his new album, The Tears of Hercules, came out last year, he says fans may not hear much more beyond its first single at his shows.

“Yeah, ‘One More Time‘ will be in there,” he says of the song he released last year. “But, you know, I give people what they want: They all want to hear the same songs.”

Rod adds, “As much as I’ll try and say, ‘Look, please let me play a few new songs!’ they want to hear the old ones. As would I!” 

That’s right: Rod knows what it’s like to want to hear your favorite artist play your favorite songs, because that’s what he’d want to hear…if he could.

“If my idols were alive today, I would want to hear Sam Cooke sing ‘Cupid,’ Otis [Redding] sing ‘Dock of the Bay,’ David Ruffin sing ‘My Girl,'” he admits. “I’m a give-[’em]-what-they-wanter type of bloke.”

Right now, Rod’s tour is scheduled to wrap up September 17 in Edmonton, Canada. Tickets for most dates go on sale to the public on February 25 at 10 a.m. local time; Canadian dates go on sale March 4 via LiveNation.com.  Details on pre-sales, which start on Monday, can be found at RodStewart.com.

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If you’re craving more Dave Grohl metal, we’ve got good news.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, the Foo Fighters frontman reveals he’s planning to release an entire metal album under the moniker Dream Widow in connection with the band’s upcoming horror-comedy movie, Studio 666.

In the film, Dream Widow is a fictional band that previously occupied the house where the Foos are recording a new album. In a fit of insanity stemming from creative differences, the Dream Widow lead singer kills his band members and himself, thus bringing demonic forces to the now-haunted mansion.

The Dream Widow album Grohl will release, then, is meant to represent the group’s “lost” album that they were recording before all the murder and demon stuff happens. Grohl tells Rolling Stone that he hopes to have the record ready by Studio 666‘s theatrical premiere on February 25.

“I mean, I work fast, but f***, this deadline is going to kill me,” Grohl says. “Yes, I’ll get it out for the movie. By February 25th, there will be a Dream Widow record.”

For a preview, you can check out the Foo Fighters-as-Dream Widow song “March of the Insane,” which was released earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Grohl and company also talked about Studio 666 on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday.

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Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard‘s Stadium Tour just got a bit bigger.

The two bands have announced an additional five dates to their upcoming joint outing, which will also feature Poison and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts on the bill. The new shows will take place August 8 in Toronto, August 16 in Indianapolis, September 2 in Vancouver, September 4 in Edmonton, and September 9 in Las Vegas, which will mark the final date on the tour.

Tickets go on sale next Friday, February 25, at 10 a.m. local time via Live Nation.

The Stadium Tour was first announced back in 2019, and marked the reunion of Mötley Crüe just four years after they played what was billed as their “final” show, effectively voiding the group’s “cessation of touring agreement.”

Originally planned for 2020, the Stadium Tour has been delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s set to finally launch this year starting June 16 in Atlanta.

For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit Motley.com.

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