Judas Priest will mark the 35th anniversary of their 1990 album Painkiller on their 2025 Shield of Pain tour.
In an Instagram post, the metal legends tease, “This rare unique set including beloved classics will be defending the metal faith in a truly memorable experience throughout Europe this summer.”
The RIAA Gold-certified Painkiller spawned singles in “A Touch of Evil” and the title track. It marked the final Priest album to feature frontman Rob Halford before his departure in 1992. He rejoined the band in 2003.
The Shield of Pain tour launches in June. So far only European dates have been announced.
Judas Priest’s latest album, Invincible Shield, was released in March.
New documentary The Session Man about the late rock keyboardist Nicky Hopkins is out now on Prime Video, giving fans insight into the famed musician who played on records by The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and more.
The film features interviews with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, as well as The Kinks’ Dave Davies, The Who’s Pete Townshend and Peter Frampton, who met Hopkins when he was hired to play guitar on HarryNilsson‘s album Son of Schmilsson.
“Nicky and I hit it off straight away,” Frampton tells ABC Audio. “I mean, he was a gentle soul, a gentle man, and very much so. And that shows in his emotional playing.”
Newly minted rock & Roll Hall of Famer Frampton thinks Hopkins deserves to be in the Rock Hall as well, especially when you consider his body of work. He played on The Beatles’ “Revolution,” as well as the Stones’ Exile on Main St. and Let It Bleed; The Who’s Who’s Next;The Kinks’ Face to Face;and John Lennon‘s Imagine. He played on250 albums in all.
“[Do] you know the list of people he played with?” says Frampton. “It’s incredible who he didn’t play with!”
When it comes to the many classics Hopkins played on, Frampton says you can really get the feel for who he was as an artist by listening to his work on Joe Cocker’s top five hit, “You Are So Beautiful.”
“I mean, it’s just Joe and him playing piano,” Frampton says. “And it’s an incredible piece of piano playing. So he was definitely a genius. Didn’t realize it.”
He adds, “You know, I’m sure he knew he was good. But that was the beautiful thing about him. He was always so modest and that’s why I was a friend of his.”
In October, Pink Floyd sold the rights to their recorded works to Sony Music for a reported $400 million. And guitarist David Gilmour says he’s glad to be done with it — so he doesn’t have to fight with his bandmates anymore.
Speaking to theLos Angeles Times, Gilmour, 78, says, “I’m an old person. I’ve spent the last 40-odd years trying to fight the good fight against the forces of indolence and greed to do the best with our stuff that you can do. And I’ve given that fight up now.”
“I’ve got my advance — because, you know, it’s not fresh new money or anything like that. It’s an advance against what I would have earned over the next few years anyway,” he continues. “But the arguments and fighting and idiocies that have been going on for the last 40 years between these four disparate groups of people and their managers and whatever — it’s lovely to say goodbye to.”
Gilmour and Pink Floyd bassist/vocalist Roger Waters have famously been at odds for several years. The rest of the “four groups of people” Gilmour is referring to are presumably drummer Nick Mason and his camp, and late keyboard player Rick Wright, who died in 2008 but was involved in nearly all the group’s recordings.
The estate of founding member Syd Barrett, who was ejected from the group in 1968 and died in 2006, also benefited from the deal, though he wasn’t involved in the 40 years of “arguments and fighting.”
Gilmour, currently touring behind his album Luck and Strange, further tells the paper that he’s retained his publishing rights, so he doesn’t really care what Sony does with the band’s classic recordings: “If it comes on an advert, I’m not gonna give a s***.”
Over the five decades that Saturday Night Live has been on the air, almost ever major rock or rock-adjacent act has appeared on the show. So in honor of the show’s milestone 50th season, Rolling Stone has ranked its 50 greatest musical performances.
Topping the list is David Bowie‘s 1979 performance of “The Man Who Sold the World,” during which he was carried to the mic by performance artists Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias. Why? Because he was encased in a plastic tuxedo that made it difficult for him to move.
Rolling Stone chose that performance over the other two Bowie did that night, which were just as weird: He sang “TVC15” while wearing a pencil skirt and performed “Boys Keep Swinging” while using special effects to place his head on a marionette.
Number two on Rolling Stones‘ list is The Replacements‘ 1986 performance of “Bastards of Young,” during which singer Paul Westerberg shouted, “Come on f*****!” at guitarist Bob Stinson. According to Rolling Stone, Lorne Michaels was furious and said they’d never perform on TV again, though they did return that night to sing “Kiss Me on the Bus.”
Number three is Elvis Costello‘s legendary 1977 appearance, where he stopped his agreed-upon song, “Less Than Zero,” and then kicked into the then-unreleased track “Radio Radio.”
Number 4 and 5 are Prince‘s 1981 performance of “Partyup” and Radiohead‘s 2000 take on “The National Anthem.”
Others that made the list: Neil Young‘s “Rockin’ in the Free World”; R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”; Pearl Jam‘s “Alive”; George Harrison and Paul Simon‘s acoustic duet of “Homeward Bound”; Tom Petty‘s “Free Fallin'”; U2‘s “I Will Follow”; Talking Heads‘ “Take Me to the River”; The Rolling Stones‘ “Shattered”; and Smashing Pumpkins‘ “Cherub Rock.”
Robert Plant is rich enough to take a private plane wherever he wants to go, but evidently he prefers to take the train — if you believe a new ad for Italy’s Trenitalia rail service.
Plant is currently touring Europe with his acoustic band Saving Grace, which features Suzy Dian. According to Classic Rock magazine, when they were in Italy they made the promotional film for Trenitalia’s new “Red Arrow” high-speed service, which reaches speeds up to 186 mph.
Called Welcome aboard, Robert Plant!, the film is set to Plant and Saving Grace’s cover of “Everybody’s Song” by the band Low. It shows Plant and Dian traveling between Naples and Venice — a 435-mile journey that takes five hours — in luxurious surroundings on the Red Arrow. It ends with them arriving and then performing live in concert.
The tagline is, “When a rock legend chooses Red Arrow to get to his concerts, the journey becomes music.”
Plant and Saving Grace are currently on the U.K. leg of their tour, which wraps up Nov. 24. They have more European dates scheduled for next year, starting in May.
Stevie Nicks, who recently admitted that she didn’t vote until she was 70, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Mondayto perform her women’s rights anthem “The Lighthouse.”
The two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer gave a dramatic performance of the song, singing against a backdrop of flashing lightning in the night sky: “Don’t let them take your power/ Don’t leave it alone in the final hours/ Don’t close your eyes and hope for the best/ The dark is out there, the light is going fast.”
Nicks, 76, also recently performed the song on Saturday Night Live.
When Nicks first released the song, she said in a statement that she started writing it soon after Roe v. Wade was overturned and has been working on it since September 2022.
Stevie’s only scheduled concert date is a March co-headlining stadium show with Billy Joel. She recently told Rolling Stone that she’s glad her most recent tour is over, because now she’ll have time to work on an album, draw, write poetry — and maybe even develop her own perfume.
Elton John released his fourth studio album, Madman Across The Water, featuring nine tracks composed and performed by Elton, with lyrics written by his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin.
The album featured two future Elton classics, “Tiny Dancer” and “Levon,” although neither were huge hits at the time they were released. In fact, while “Levon” peaked at #24, “Tiny Dancer” failed to make the top 40, only making it to #41.
Madman Across The Water charted at #8 on the Billboard 200 Album chart and has gone on to be certified double Platinum by the RIAA.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is voicing his support for Vice President Kamala Harris in her presidential campaign against former President Donald Trump.
On Monday night, ahead of Tuesday’s Election Day, Armstrong shared an Instagram video saying, “I think there’s probably a lot of things that people disagree with but the one thing that we all … do agree on is Trump has got to go and we need to turn the page.”
He continued, “To stop Trumpism once and for all is so important and important to our country so we can turn the page and have a future.”
Armstrong has long been vocal about his opposition to Trump. During the 2016 American Music Awards, he chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” and during the 2023 New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, he changed the lyrics to “American Idiot” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.”
As it turns out, Armstrong’s distaste for Trump goes back even further. Along with the voting message, he also shared a story about when he performed at an Elvis Costello tribute concert at a Trump-owned venue in Atlantic City, New Jersey, back in the mid-2000s, long before Trump became president.
“There were all these bottles of water on the stage, and had Donald Trump’s picture on every single one of the bottles, like everything in that hotel,” Armstrong recalled. “It was like this big sort of ode, or, you know, Trump and his sort of bulls*** businessman persona.”
“I put Hitler mustaches on every single one of ’em,” he smiles. “I’m just being me.”
Bruce Springsteen seemingly wants to remind everyone who’s Boss — even on the set of his own biopic.
According to People, Springsteen dropped by the New Jersey set of Deliver Me From Nowhere on Nov. 4 and was photographed embracingJeremy Allen White, who’s playing him in the film. The movie chronicles the creation of Bruce’s 1982 album, Nebraska, and is adapted from the Warren Zanes book of the same name.
In the photos, White is dressed all in black, including a black leather jacket similar to the one Springsteen wore during that time. Bruce, meanwhile, is rocking flannel and denim. The Boss recently told The Telegraphthat he knew White could do the job after seeing him in the Emmy-winning role that the actor is most famous for.
“I only had to see him on The Bear, and I knew he was the right guy, because he had that interior life, but he also had a little swagger,” Bruce said.
In addition to White, Deliver Me From Nowhere stars Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau.
Bruce’s drop-in came in the middle of his tour of Canada with the E Street Band; he’s set to play Toronto on Nov. 6.
Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of Bryan Adams’ fourth studio album, Reckless, which was a huge commercial success for the Canadian rocker.
The album’s release coincided with Adams’ 25th birthday and it hit #1 on the Billboard 200 Album chart — to this day it’s Adams’ only #1 record in the U.S.
But even before the release and the chart success, Adams knew Reckless was a good one.
“I knew going into this record that I had something special,” he tells ABC Audio. “I knew that when we recorded the first couple of tracks for the record that we were on to something really good.”
He added, “We didn’t know really what we’d created, we just [knew] we liked it. And that was the test, you know?”
The album spawned six singles, including the #1 hit “Heaven”; “Summer of ’69,” which went to #5; the Tina Turner duet “It’s Only Love”; “Somebody”; and “One Night Love Affair.” But for Adams, it was the album’s first single, “Run To You,” which went to #6, that was the standout.
“The magical songs that came out of it obviously are the ones that were some of the biggest hits, and one of them, of course, was ‘Run to You,’” he says. “For me, ‘Run to You’ was the jewel of the album, because … it just set the tone for everything.”
Reckless went on to sell 12 million copies worldwide and is Adams’ second-highest-selling record in the U.S. behind 1991’s Waking Up The Neighbors. The album went on to be certified five-times Platinum in the U.S.
