Classic Rock 93.9

Sunday night’s American Idol featured a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, and we’re not talking about judge Lionel Richie.

In case you missed it, contestant Kaya Stewart came out to audition with an original song and got some help from her father, Eurythmics star Dave Stewart, on guitar. The pair performed “This Tattoo,” a song Kaya wrote with her dad.

“This is much more difficult than being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Dave joked.

And it turns out Kaya didn’t necessarily need her dad’s star power, because her voice earned her a ticket to Hollywood.

American Idol airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth is sharing her feelings about the band’s former frontman, David Byrne.

“I recently described David Byrne as Trumpian, which didn’t go down well with everybody,” Weymouth shares with the U.K. Sunday Times. “What I meant was that, from my experience, everything with David is transactional – he will use you until he has no more use for you.”

She says when she and husband Chris Frantz were in the band with Byrne “he always seemed very insecure about himself,” noting he would “try to blame other people if things went wrong.” She explains, “Chris and I loved him dearly and we did our best to overlook these disastrous character flaws, but it seemed obvious that Talking Heads wasn’t going to last.”

And if Byrne is as happy as he’s said he is in interviews, Weymouth wonders why he refuses to refer to his former bandmates by their names and instead refers to them as “people he used to play with.”

“I’ve been around the block a few times and I’ve realized that people act like animals,” she offers. “Some are doves: beautiful and peaceful, like Chris. Unfortunately, some are sly foxes.”

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Roger Waters is in the midst of rerecording Pink Floyd‘s classic album The Dark Side of the Moon, as previously reported, and while some fans may be upset about it, he’s getting the support of his former bandmate Nick Mason.

According to NME, at a playback of the classic album at London’s Dolby Atmos Immersive Studio last week, Mason shared his thoughts on Waters’ project and seems totally OK with it.

“I heard the rumor that Roger was working on his own version of it,” he said, referring to the album, which turned 50 earlier this month. “There was this suggestion that this was going to be a spoiler and Roger was going to go head-to-head with the original version and so on.” 

Mason added, “He actually sent me a copy of what he was working on and I write [sic] to him and said, ‘Annoyingly, it’s absolutely brilliant!’ It was and is. It’s not anything that would be a spoiler for the original at all, it’s an interesting add-on to the thing.”

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Night Ranger was forced to postpone three shows after bassist/vocalist Jack Blades was hospitalized, as previously reported. Now the band is giving fans an update on his health, and it’s all good news.

“He is now out of the hospital and feeling great,” the band shares on Instagram. “Last week he was admitted due to heart irregularities, followed by a successful procedure. We are so happy everything went well. Jack can’t wait to get back out on the road and neither can we!”

The band notes that they are aiming to continue their tour as scheduled, and went on to thank fans for the support and also the “doctors, nurses & staff at Garden Grove & Orange County Global Medical Centers.”

Night Ranger’s next show is scheduled for April 14 in Chandler, Arizona. A complete list of dates can be found at nightranger.com.

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Eric Clapton is returning to North America this fall. The guitar great has announced dates for a short tour, featuring special guest Jimmie Vaughan.

The five-city tour kicks off September 8 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and hits Toronto, St. Louis and Minneapolis before wrapping September 16 in Denver, Colorado. Tickets go on sale Friday, March 31, at 10 a.m. local time.  

These five dates will be the only shows Clapton will be doing in North America in 2023. More info can be found at ericclapton.com. 

Next up for Clapton, he’s headlining a six-night stand at Budokan in Tokyo, Japan, starting April 15, followed by two Jeff Beck tribute shows at Royal Albert Hall in London, May 22 and 23.

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Billy Joel returned to New York this weekend for the 88th show of his Madison Square Garden residency and brought out a special guest for the occasion – ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons.

According to Stereogum, the two Billys joined forces for the ZZ Top tracks “La Grange” and “Tush,” with Joel telling the audience the experience was “a fantasy come true.”  

You can watch fan-shot videos of both performances on YouTube.

Joel’s next MSG residency show is set for April 22, and he’s inching ever closer to his milestone 100th show. He recently announced his 94th concert at MSG will take place September 10, with presale tickets set to go on sale March 29 at 10 a.m. ET and the general sale happening March 31 at 10 a.m. ET.

A complete list of Billy Joel tour dates can be found at billyjoel.com.

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Former Iron Maiden vocalist Blaze Bayley has been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack over the weekend.

A post on Bayley’s Instagram published Sunday by the musician’s management team reads, “We sincerely regret to announce that Blaze had a heart attack at home yesterday evening & is now in hospital in a stable condition, awaiting news of further surgery/treatment.”

The post adds that Bayley is “in good spirits,” however, his European tour dates scheduled for March and April have been postponed.

The Iron Maiden Twitter account also shared Bayley’s post alongside the caption, “Everyone at Iron Maiden wishes Blaze a quick and full recovery!”

Bayley joined Iron Maiden in 1994, and contributed to the albums The X Factor and Virtual XI. He parted ways with the group in 1999, after which longtime vocalist Bruce Dickinson rejoined the band. He has remained Maiden’s singer ever since.

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Your week is about to get a lot heavier, courtesy of Metallica.

The metal legends will drop another new song off their upcoming 72 Seasons album Thursday, March 30. We don’t know the name of the track yet, but you can listen to a 15-second clip of its guitar riff now via Metallica’s Twitter.

72 Seasons, the follow-up to 2016’s Hardwired…to Self-Destruct, drops April 14. It also includes the previously released songs “Lux Æterna,” “Screaming Suicide” and “If Darkness Had a Son.”

Metallica will be supporting 72 Seasons on a massive world tour, which begins in Europe in April before hitting the U.S. in August.

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On This Day, March 27, 1987 …

U2 filmed the video for “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the third single off their album The Joshua Tree. Inspired by The Beatles’ 1969 rooftop concert, U2 took to the roof of a downtown Los Angeles liquor store to perform the song. 

The production attracted more than 1,000 fans who gathered to watch the performance, prompting the police to try to shut them down — something the band was hoping for in order to add drama to the video.

The band actually performed an eight-song set during the video shoot, including four performances of “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

The video went on to earn U2 a Grammy for Best Performance Music Video.

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U2 has another top 10 hit. The band’s latest release, Songs of Surrender, debuts at five on the Billboard 200 Albums chart this week. The Irish rockers moved 46,500 equivalent album units of Songs of Surrender to land their 13th top 10 record.  

With the new chart placement, U2 is now the fourth group to chart a top 10 album in each decade from the 1980s to the 2020s. The others are AC/DC, Def Leppard and Metallica.

As previously reported, Songs of Surrender, which has U2 rerecording and reimagining 40 of their classic hits,  has already topped the U.K. Official Albums chart, making it their 11th U.K. number one.

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