Classic Rock 93.9

From blues and folk, to rock and pop, to standards and swing, it seems like Rod Stewart has done it all, and as he turns 80 on Jan. 10, he has no plans to slow down.

While his 2025 tour is called One Last Time, the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer said in November he’ll be making some changes to his schedule, but he’s not going to hang up his microphone. “This will be the end of large-scale world tours for me, but I have no desire to retire. I love what I do and I do what I love,”
he wrote.

“I’m fit, have a full head of hair and can run 100 meters in 18 seconds at the jolly old age of 79,” he boasted.

2025 is shaping up to be a very busy year for Rod the Mod, who’s sold 120 million records worldwide and scored a string of U.S. top-10 hits, including the number ones “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?,” “Maggie May” and “All For Love,” a collaboration with Sting and Bryan Adams.

Rod is going to perform at the U.K.’s biggest festival, Glastonbury, on June 29. He also has a couple of co-headlining shows with Billy Joel lined up, including a concert at New York’s Yankee Stadium in July, and he’ll kick off a new round of Las Vegas residency shows at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in March.

On top of that, Rod continues to promote his signature brand of whisky, Wolfie’s, and enjoy his huge family, including wife Penny Lancaster, his various ex-wives and partners, his eight children and his three grandchildren.

In his November post, Rod also said that he’s already planning a 2026 tour in which he’ll perform songs from his bestselling collection of Great American Songbook albums, as well as his most recent release, Swing Fever, which hit #1 in his native U.K.

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Director James Mangold is known for making movies about musicians, like Walk the Line about Johnny Cash and his recent release, the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. So what music has played a pivotal role in his life?

In a new interview with NME, Mangold shared the music that he considers the soundtrack to his life, and it includes Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M. 

Mangold says the first concert he ever went to was Springsteen in 1980, just a few days after the death of The Beatles‘ John Lennon.

“I could only afford nosebleed seats but I was so thrilled to be seeing Springsteen, who was a hero of mine. Still is,” he says. “Honestly, the music sounded like s*** from where I was in the rafters, but just seeing him in real life, existing, standing there on the edge of the stage, it was thrilling.”

He adds, “Springsteen is a touchstone for me. There’s incredible economy of storytelling in his songwriting.”

Mangold also reveals that R.E.M.’s “It’s The End of the World As We Know It” is the song he can’t get out of his head, while “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book is the first song he remembers hearing and Glen Campbell‘s “Wichita Lineman” is the song he wants played at his funeral.

Boston’s 1976 self-titled debut was the first album he ever bought, although he notes, “The best song is ‘More Than A Feeling,’ obviously. The album immediately goes downhill after that.”

And Cash also plays a part in Mangold’s soundtrack, with the director sharing that “A Boy Named Sue” is his go-to karaoke tune, mostly because he’s a baritone. He says he loves singing “anything by Johnny Cash,” noting “that’s in my range.”

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Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett is set to release the new live album Live Magic At Trading Boundaries on Jan. 17, and he’s just shared another track from the release.

The latest is a live performance of the song “Jacuzzi,” which originally appeared on his 1980 solo album, Defector.

Live Magic At Trading Boundaries is a compilation of various recordings taken from years of shows at the intimate venue in Sussex, England, with Hackett performing stripped down versions of classic tracks, including solo material, and Genesis tunes like “Blood On The Rooftops” and “Horizons.”

Hackett has been playing Trading Boundaries yearly since 2016, and ahead of the release he’ll play shows there on Jan. 18 and Jan. 19. A complete list of tour dates can be found at hackettsongs.com.

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David Lee Roth’s solo career is being revisited in a new box set from Rhino.

The Warner Recordings 1985-1994 will include Roth’s first five solo records, including his debut solo EP, 1985’s Crazy from the Heat, which was a top-15 hit for Roth. It included such hit tracks as “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody,” which peaked at #12, and a cover of The Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” which hit #3.

The set also includes 1986’s Eat ‘Em and Smile; 1988’s Skyscraper, which featured the top-10 hit “Just Like Paradise”; 1991’s A Little Ain’t Enough; and 1994’s Your Filthy Little Mouth.

The Warner Recordings 1985-1994 will be released Feb. 21 in a variety of formats, including digitally and as a five-CD set. There will also be a five-LP version sold exclusively at Rhino.com. All versions are available for preorder now.

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Before the new year, Elton John told ABC’s Good Morning America that he wasn’t sure about the status of new music because of his eyesight issues. But it seems he’s not going to let that problem stand in his way.

Speaking to Deadline, Elton says, “Yep. I still love playing the piano. That’s going to happen and I’m waiting to get back in the studio. I can’t wait to release new stuff. So yeah, all is good. I’m raring to go.”

For now, though, Elton’s happy about his duet with Brandi Carlile “Never Too Late,” from his Disney+ documentary of the same name. The song has made the Oscars short list for best original song, and he says if it is nominated, he’ll definitely perform it at the ceremony on ABC March 2.

“It’ll be the first time I’ve ever played it live, so it’ll be great,” he says.

But in addition to another Oscar nomination — if he receives a nod, it’ll be his fourth — Elton says he’s looking forward to some other projects, as well as getting his “eyesight a little better.”

“We have some irons in the fire that’s pretty lucky,” he teased. “And I can’t reveal them yet, but they will be revealed soon.”

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Heart‘s Nancy Wilson had quite a reaction to Led Zeppelin the first time she and her sister and bandmate, Ann Wilson, saw the band in concert.

While speaking to Premiere Guitar for the Jimmy Page episode of their 100 Guitarists podcast, Nancy shares that in May 1969 they went to see Fifth Dimension at the Green Lake Aqua Theater in Seattle, where Led Zeppelin was the opening act. They actually walked out because they thought frontman Robert Plant was being too racy.

“We were like, ‘Oh my God, the singer, he’s so suggestive,’” she said. “He’s got his shirt wide open, he’s got his bare chest and his jeans were really low riders and he was moving in this way that was so super-suggestive and we were kind of, like, shocked.” 

She adds, “We were in a little folk band at the time, so we were from the suburbs, right. So we were kind of square, square little hippie chicks to be unenlightened, let’s just say. And so, we were like, ‘Oh, they’re so lewd. They’re just being so suggestive and lewd.'” 

But what put it over the top was Zeppelin’s performance of “The Lemon Song,” a track that appeared on their album Led Zeppelin II.

“Then he sang about, like, ‘squeeze my lemon’ and we’re like, ‘Oh, we must leave, we must leave the premises’ because we were just shocked,” she said. “We were scandalized, and we had seen enough and we walked away.”

Their thoughts on Led Zeppelin apparently changed at some point. In fact, Ann and Nancy paid tribute to Led Zeppelin when they received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012, performing the classic “Stairway to Heaven,” which featured Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin’s late drummer John Bonham. The performance earned a standing ovation from Plant and later went viral on YouTube.

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Actor Michael Shannon and musician Jason Narducy will hit the road in February for a tour where they’ll be performing songs from R.E.M.’s 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction, and folks just got a taste of what to expect. 

The musicians appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Wednesday, where they performed the R.E.M. classic “Driver 8.”

The tour kicks off Feb. 14 in Pioneertown, California, with stops in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, New York and more before wrapping March 14 in Chicago. 

This isn’t the first time the pair have launched a tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of an R.E.M. album. They previously went on the road in honor of the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s debut album, Murmur.

The latest tour includes two shows, Feb. 27 and Feb. 28, in R.E.M.’s home city of Athens, Georgia. During Shannon and Narducy’s Murmur tour, all four members of R.E.M. — Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Bill Berry and Peter Buck — made a surprise appearance at the Athens show, although Stipe did not perform.

In other R.E.M. news … Buck is set to join Drivin N Cryin frontman Kevin Kinney for four shows in January. The shows kick off Jan. 28 in Atlanta and include stops in Chattanooga and Athens, before wrapping Jan. 31 in Ellijay.
 

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On This Day, Jan. 9, 1944 …

James Patrick Page, better known as Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, was born in Heston, a suburb of London.

Page started his career as a studio musician and was a member of The Yardbirds before forming Led Zeppelin in 1968 with Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham.

The band went on to become one of the bestselling acts in music history, releasing nine studio albums that all reached the top 10, with six hitting #1. 

Led Zeppelin called it quits in 1980 following Bonham’s death, although the surviving members would reunite in 1985 to perform at Live Aid in Philadelphia and again in 1988 for the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary concert in New York, with Bonham’s son, Jason Bonham, behind the drum kit. They reunited for a final time in 2007 at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at London’s O2 Arena, again with Jason.

Outside of Led Zeppelin, Page and Plant worked together in the band the Honeydrippers and performed together as Page-Plant in the early to mid-’90s. Page also collaborated with several other artists, including David Coverdale and The Black Crowes.

Page was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Led Zeppelin in 1995. In 2005 he was appointed Order of the British Empire and earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award with Led Zeppelin.

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A singer covering a Green Day song at an England venue found himself performing in front of Billie Joe Armstrong himself.

The “American Idiot” rocker stopped by the Cavern Club in Liverpool, which is famous for hosting The Beatles back in the day, and caught a set by resident artist Callum McMorran, who just happened to be putting a spin on Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”

The Cavern Club posted footage of the moment on Instagram, adding in the caption, “Imagine performing a @greenday song to Billie Joe Armstrong… Well our resident @callummcmorran got to on The Cavern Club front stage.”

Armstrong has an England gig of his own coming up Jan. 15 in London, which he’s playing with his side project The Coverups.

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Back in 1990, Billy Joel staged the first rock concerts ever held at New York’s Yankee Stadium. Now he’s coming back, and he’s bringing Rod Stewart with him.

Billy has announced that he and Rod will play a one-night-only show at the iconic New York venue on July 18. A Citi cardmember presale starts Jan. 13 at 10 a.m. ET. The general sale begins Jan. 17 at 10 a.m. ET.

During his residency at Madison Square Garden, which ended last year, Billy generally avoided performing at other venues in the New York-New Jersey area, but now all bets are off. He’s also going to perform at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Aug. 8 with Stevie Nicks.

Billy and Stevie began performing shows together in 2023. Last year, he added Sting and Rod to his list of co-headliners for stadium dates.

Billy’s next show is Jan. 17 in Hollywood, Florida, solo. On Feb. 8, he and Sting will perform in Indianapolis.

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