Classic Rock 93.9

Billy Idol guitarist Billy Morrison has announced a new solo album featuring a whole bunch of guests.

The record, titled Hollow, is due out in August and includes contributions from Godsmack frontman Sully Erna, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Marilyn Manson, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, Billy Idol’s Steve Stevens and rappers Chuck D, B-Real and DMC. 

The first single is called “Becoming” and will feature Erna and Bettencourt. It’ll premiere on March 27.

“The guests on this record are at the core of the collaborative spirit that I try to put in the center of these records,” Morrison says in a statement. “Every single person I worked with stepped up, brought their A game and helped me produce an album that crosses genres, features some really diverse songwriting, and yet has a truly cohesive, and powerful sound.”

He adds, “Ultimately, I am just grateful to everyone involved for allowing me to do this again.”

Hollow follows Morrison’s 2024 effort, The Morrison Project, which includes the Ozzy Osbourne collaboration “Crack Cocaine.”

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After being forced to cancel their planned reunion tour due to frontman Dee Snider’s health, the remaining members of Twisted Sister have found someone else to front the band.

Jay Jay French and Eddie Ojeda announced on Instagram that former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach will be taking over lead singer duties for “a handful of select dates this fall.” The post features a clip of Twisted Sister’s “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘N’ Roll,” which appears to feature Bach on vocals. 

It also adds that the shows with Twisted Sister “do not affect or conflict with Sebastian’s current or future solo touring schedule, which remains fully intact.”

Dates for Twisted Sister with Sebastian Bach have not yet been announced.

The planned Twisted Sister reunion with Snider was supposed to kick off April 25 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. On Feb. 6, the band announced the tour cancelation “due to the sudden and unexpected resignation of Twisted Sister’s lead singer Dee Snider brought on by a series of health challenges.”

A statement released on behalf Snider said that a “lifetime of legendarily aggressive performing has taken its toll” on the singer, noting the 70-year-old suffered from degenerative arthritis and recently found out that “the level of intensity he has dedicated to his life’s work has taken its toll on his heart as well.”

Bach is currently on a solo tour and will play Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, on Wednesday. He has dates confirmed through Oct. 3 in Saint Charles, Missouri.

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Bret Michaels, Rick Springfield and Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy and Warren DeMartini are among the acts booked for  The Mountain Music Festival, happening Aug. 21-23 at the Gatlinburg Convention Center in the Great Smokey Mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

The three-day classic rock festival features over 25 artists on three stages, with the lineup that also includes 38 Special, Night Ranger, Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach, Warrant, John Waite, Lita Ford, Jackyl and more.

Three-day and two-day passes for the festival are on sale now, with single day general admission passes going on sale this spring/summer. A complete lineup can be found at TheMountainUSA.com.

The Mountain Music Festival debuted in October 2021 in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

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Lynyrd Skynyrd’s classic “Free Bird” has gotten a chart boost thanks to the Winter Olympics.

After the song became the unofficial anthem for the U.S. men’s and women’s gold medal winning hockey teams, the track has hit #15 on Billboard’s Rock & Alternative Songs chart, #1 on the Rock Digital Songs Sales chart and #6 on the Digital Song Sales chart.

“Free Bird,” from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut album, (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), is one of the band’s signature songs. During its original chart run in 1975, it peaked at #19 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In addition to the Olympics, the song was recently used in Budweiser’s “American Icons” Super Bowl ad.

Lynyrd Skynyrd will be spending the summer on the road on the Double Trouble Vision tour with Foreigner. The tour kicks off July 23 in Atlanta and wraps Aug. 29 in Rogers, Arkansas. A complete list of tour dates can be found at lynyrdskynyrd.com.

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Paul McCartney was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 1999, but it turns out he was expecting it to happen a lot earlier.

Vanity Fair just published a 2015 interview with McCartney that was conducted for a biography about Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner and in it McCartney reveals Wenner, who co-founded the Rock Hall, went back on a promise regarding his solo induction.

McCartney explained that when John Lennon was inducted into the Rock Hall as a solo artist in 1994, Wenner asked him to handle the induction, and while he agreed, it got him thinking about himself. 

“Then I put the phone down. I thought, Well, what about me? I’m not inducted. Now John’s going to go in,” McCartney said. “The thing about John Lennon and McCartney was we were always equal. But, of course, once John got murdered, he became the martyr—the Buddy Holly, the James Dean character—because of the atrocity.”

McCartney said he eventually called Wenner and said, “Well, wait a minute. What about me? Maybe I’ll do John, and then maybe I should go in.”

McCartney said Wenner told him they couldn’t do that, with McCartney noting, “In all my dealings with him, it’s never up to Jann. It’s up to these other people down the corridor somewhere. He happens to have ‘owner-editor’ on his door, but they’re responsible for things?”

McCartney says Wenner eventually told him his solo induction would happen the next year.

“I said, ‘Okay.’ And I bought the deal,” McCartney said. “Next year came around … Crickets.”

McCartney noted, “Eventually I did creep in there, and my daughter Stella wore a T-shirt [that said] ‘About f***** time.”

According to the article, Wenner claimed to not remember making the deal with McCartney.

Both McCartney and Lennon were inducted as members of The Beatles in 1988.

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Metallica has announced the exact dates for the six newly added shows to the band’s upcoming Life Burns Faster residency at the high-tech Sphere venue in Las Vegas.

The updated schedule now includes performances on Oct. 8 and 10, Nov. 5 and 7, and Jan. 28 and 30, 2027. Presales for members of Metallica’s Fifth Member fan club begin Wednesday at 10 a.m. PT.

Those shows join the previously announced dates taking place Oct. 1 and 3, 15 and 17, 22 and 24, and 29 and 31. Each pair of performances takes place on a Thursday and a Saturday, with no repeated songs between the Thursday set and its corresponding Saturday concert.

Presales for the initially announced shows are ongoing, and tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday at 10 a.m. PT.

For all ticket info, visit Metallica.com.

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Elton John: He’s not just like us. We’ve got our family photos framed on a shelf, but he’s got his family photo hanging in one of London’s most famous museums.

A portrait of Elton, his husband David Furnish, their sons Elijah Furnish-John, 13, and Zachary Furnish-John, 15, plus their two Labrador Retrievers, Joseph and Jacob, has been unveiled at London’s National Portrait Gallery. The portrait was taken by photographer Catherine Opie, who has a new exhibit opening at the museum.

The U.K. paper The Telegraph quotes Elton and David as saying, “To have our family photographed by Catherine Opie and on display at the National Portrait Gallery is a huge honour. We are huge admirers of her work, and proud to have her beautiful and poignant images in our collection.”

The photo was taken at the couple’s home in Old Windsor, England. According to the paper, Opie took the portrait three days before Christmas in the library of the house. She’s quoted as saying, “It is truly an honour to photograph Elton, David, Zachary and Elijah. For me, it represents the humanity of what family can be.”

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Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings are set to tour the U.S. as The Guess Who for the first time in 23 years.

The Canadian duo has announced dates for a U.S. leg of the Takin’ it Back Tour, with former Eagles guitarist Don Felder on board as special guest.

The dates kick off June 25 in Shakopee, Minnesota, outside Minneapolis, and wraps Aug. 22 in Seattle, Washington.

“Randy and I are incredibly grateful that our music has endured all these years,” Cummings said in a statement. “Knowing that people still want to hear these songs live means everything to us, and when we go out on stage, our goal is to truly honor the music.”

Bachman added, “I’m really excited about reuniting with Burton and touring again as The Guess Who. He noted, “We created an amazing body of work together, along with memories that have lasted for decades, and those songs are still as strong as ever. I can’t wait to sing them with everyone very soon.”

A Citi presale for tickets begins Wednesday at 10 a.m. local time, followed by an artist presale at 12 p.m. local time. Tickets go on sale to the general public starting Friday at 10 a.m. local time.

Before the U.S. shows, Burton and Cummings will launch the Takin’ it Back Tour in Canada, starting May 26 in Moncton. A complete list of dates can be found at TheGuessWho.com.

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Peter Gabriel has released another track off his upcoming album, o/i.

The latest, “What Lies Ahead,” has been released to coincide with Tuesday’s blood/worm moon. Gabriel notes that the unfinished instrumental track of the song was played during his 2023 tour as a “work in progress.”

“The song actually began with a melody that my son Isaac was playing with and I thought, oh, that’s really nice – I could build that into something,” says Gabriel. “It’s a song about inventors and invention.”

“My dad was an electrical engineer, inventor and I saw him go through the frustrations of not only trying to realize an idea, which has to normally go through so many iterations, but then to sell it, both to the people who’ve got the money and then to the outside world,” he adds. “So, I’ve always been curious about the creative process and how that applies to inventors.”

As he did with his last album, 2023’s i/o, Gabriel plans to release a new song from o/i with each full moon of the year. The entire album will be released by the end of 2026, along with Dark-Side and Bright-Side mixes handled by Tchad Blake and Mark “Spike” Stent, respectively.

“What Lies Ahead (Bright-Side Mix)” is available now via digital outlets.

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Sharon Osbourne has confirmed that Ozzfest is “absolutely” returning.

“We’re gonna do it,” Sharon said during the 2026 MIDEM conference in France.

Sharon founded Ozzfest, named after her late husband, Ozzy Osbourne, in the ’90s. It became a staple of the late ’90s and early 2000s hard rock and metal scene, helping propel the careers of bands including Linkin Park, Slipknot and Deftones.

In an interview with Billboard published in January, Sharon said she’d “been talking to Live Nation about bringing [Ozzfest] back.” Meanwhile, the Ozzfest Instagram account began teasing a return for 2027.

The last Ozzfest was held on New Year’s Eve 2018 in Los Angeles. It marked Ozzy’s final full-length live performance before the 2025 Back to the Beginning concert, during which he played a solo set with the reunited Black Sabbath. Ozzy died just over two weeks later on July 22.

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