Classic Rock 93.9

AC/DC is ready to bring their Power Up tour to the U.S. and Canada.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers have just announced a set of North American tour dates, which will be the first time they’ve toured the States in nine years.

The 13-date stadium tour will kick off April 10 in Minneapolis, with stops in Arlington, Pasadena, Las Vegas, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Chicago and more before wrapping May 28 in Cleveland.

Tickets for all shows go on sale Friday. A complete list of dates can be found at acdc.com. 

AC/DC — Angus Young on lead guitar, vocalist Brian Johnson, rhythm guitarist Stevie Young, drummer Matt Laug and Chris Chaney on bass — launched their Power Up tour in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, in May. It was their first tour since releasing their most recent album, Power Up, in 2020, as they were unable to support it on the road due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last time they played the U.S. was at the Power Trip festival in Indio, California, in October 2023, although the last time they toured the U.S. was in 2015.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Beatles ’64, a documentary capturing The Beatles‘ 14-day trip to America in February of that year, is streaming now on Disney+. While there have been several docs about this particular chapter of Beatles history, this one has plenty of new stuff for fans to enjoy.

“A big goal for us with this film is to try to bring something new to a beloved story that has been oft-told,” producer Margaret Bodde [BOW-dee] told ABC Audio.

Among those new things: 17 minutes of never-before-seen footage shot fly-on-the-wall style by Albert and David Maysles, who followed the band over those 14 days. That footage “has so many intimate moments with the band, and also really intimate and revealing moments [with fans],” says Bodde.

Plus, the audio from The Beatles’ live performances during that time has all been restored. “For the first time, you can hear how great the band is. They have so much energy. They’re such great musicians,” she adds.
 

Martin Scorsese is a producer on the film and, according to director David Tedeschi [tuh DESK ee], the film legend was “beyond happy” to interview Ringo Starr on camera, as he shows off some of the memorabilia he has from that time period. 

“It was very exciting. … You can’t quite believe that this is Ringo’s drum kit and this is what he played on [The Ed Sullivan Show],” Tedeschi says.

Tedeschi’s other favorite moments in the film include a scene where George Harrison confuses a reporter by naming “White Christmas” as his favorite “rock” song, and footage of a fan who brought a monkey to greet the band in Miami.

Tedeschi notes, “It gave me a real sense of the chaos … as George said [in the film], they were normal, and everybody around them went crazy.” 

Disney is the parent company of ABC Audio.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

In the U.K. it’s a big deal for a song to land at #1 for Christmas, and a new campaign is trying to make that happen for the classic ELO tune “Mr. Blue Sky.” 

According to the Official Charts site, the “Mr. Blue Sky” Christmas #1 campaign was started on social media by Jon Morter, who was behind a successful 2009 campaign to get Rage Against the Machine to #1 for Christmas. The new campaign was sparked by a desire to help promote the Bluesky social media app over Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter.

“It certainly became apparent after I’d made the suggestion that many [users] on the Bluesky app want to make it happen to help promote the new place [now that] many are going away from X/Twitter,” Morter tells the  site. “If nothing else it will be a lot of fun to see if Bluesky users can have an impact on the annual Christmas #1 race.”

The campaign will also serve as a way to celebrate the band, now dubbed Jeff Lynne’s ELO, performing at the upcoming British Summertime Hyde Park festival. The concert is happening July 13 and has already been announced as their final show.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Roger Daltrey seems mighty impressed by a youth band’s cover of The Who‘s classic tune “Baba O’Riley.”

The Central Pennsylvania Music Hall of Fame, a nonprofit focusing on youth music education, just shared video on TikTok of Daltrey singing the praises of the Central Pennsylvania Youth All-Star Band, who covered the tune in a video posted a little over a year ago.

“I have just seen the most amazing video of the Central Pennsylvania All-Star Band playing ‘Baba O’Riley,’ and I’m gonna tell you I am really impressed,” Daltrey says in the TikTok clip. “The way it’s filmed is really good, but the music you’re playing and the characters in it are all, every one of you, your personalities are coming out, you’re singing from the heart and it shows.” He adds, “It’s wonderful … and I loved it.”

The Central Pennsylvania Music Hall of Fame posted the “Baba O’Riley” video back in August 2023, and it has since been viewed over 50,000 times. Based on the video’s recent comments, Daltrey’s video has attracted a new group of fans to the clip.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Blue Öyster Cult’s classic tune “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” was the subject of a now legendary Saturday Night Live sketch in 2000, which featured Will Ferrell on the cowbell and host Christopher Walken as producer Bruce Dickinson, who keeps demanding “more cowbell” during the recording session. Well, BOC guitarist Buck Dharma is now sharing how it affected the band and their live show.

“It’s been a 25-year journey with the cowbell and riding that horse,” Dharma tells Vulture in a new interview devoted to the sketch. “I can’t complain about any of the history and what’s happened. It’s all good.”

Dharma says when he watched the sketch for the first time he felt relief.

“Relief that it was funny and relief that it wasn’t too cruel on the band,” he says. “SNL had done some rather cruel things about Neil Diamond and other artists over the years, so I was happy it was actually hilarious. While it poked fun at Blue Öyster Cult, it wasn’t mean-spirited at all.”

And believe it or not, the sketch resulted in the band adding, you guessed it, more cowbell to their live shows.

“For 20-odd years, we didn’t use a live cowbell for our shows and never considered it,” he says. “We had to play the cowbell because there was just no getting away from it.”

He adds, “I’m grateful that as significant as the sketch is – because after 25 years, it still is – it didn’t kill the song, its original intent, or its original mood. … So I’m glad the sketch didn’t kill the song and didn’t make it one big joke.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The Dio greatest hits compilation The Very Beast of Dio Vol. 2 is being reissued on vinyl.

The two-LP set, which has been out of print for nearly 10 years, is due out Jan 31. It will also be available on CD.

The Very Beast of Dio Vol. 2 was originally released in 2012 and includes selections from the final four Dio albums — 1996’s Angry Machines, 2000’s Magica, 2002’s Killing the Dragon and 2004’s Master of the Moon — as well as a song called “Metal Will Never Die,” which was frontman Ronnie James Dio‘s final recorded track before his death in 2010.

Vol. 1, which spans the first six Dio albums, was released in 2000.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Queen’s Roger Taylor is defending the Band Aid charity after it received criticism for its decision to release a 40th anniversary remix of the charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

The original “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was spearheaded by Bob Geldof and released in 1984, featuring a collection of U.K. stars that included U2‘s Bono, Sting, Phil Collins, Duran Duran and Paul Young. The song was later revived in 1989, 2004 and 2014, each time with artists who were popular at that moment.

The remix mashes together vocals from the different versions of the song over the years. But when it was announced, Ed Sheeran, who appeared on the 2014 version, wrote on Instagram that if he had known about the remix, he would have denied Geldof permission to use his vocals. He cited an Instagram Story by Ghanian-English musician Fuse ODG, in which Fuse wrote that such all-star charity projects “perpetuate damaging stereotypes.”

Taylor has now taken to social media to share how he feels about being on the single, and he can’t understand the criticism.

“Proud to be a part of this. It’s probably one of the greatest moments in rock ’n’ roll history actually having an effect on the world!” he shared on Instagram next to the Band Aid 40 logo. “How anyone can criticise such a magnificent and charitable project, which continues to save so many lives from famine is beyond comprehension. They need their heads examined and their values readjusted. #bandaid40.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On This Day, Nov. 27, 1970 …

The Beatles‘ George Harrison released his third studio album, the triple album All Things Must Pass, which would go on to spend seven weeks on top of the Billboard Album chart.

The record, co-produced by Phil Spector, was Harrison’s first full-length album following the breakup of The Beatles and featured guest appearances by Harrison’s Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr, as well as Eric Clapton, Billy Preston and others.

All Things Must Pass contained the #1 single “My Sweet Lord,” which made Harrison the first former member of The Beatles to score a solo #1 in the U.S. The track, which was released as a double A-side single with “Isn’t It a Pity,” also went to #1 in several other countries, including the U.K. and Australia.

A commercial success for Harrison, the record has been certified seven-times Platinum by the RIAA.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

If you’ve ever thought that Billy Corgan looks a lot like comedian Bill Burr, well, you’re not alone. According to The Smashing Pumpkins frontman, though, there may be a real, biological reason for that.

As Corgan shares on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast, his stepmother once raised the possibility that Burr could be one of his stepsiblings.

“She goes, ‘I think [Burr] might be one of your father’s illegitimate children,'” Corgan recalls. “‘Bill Burr might be one of the children that your father sired in his days being a traveling musician.'” 

Corgan adds that, as much as Burr might look like him, he thinks Burr looks even more like his father. What’s more, Corgan says that his father once told him he had a half brother who was named Bill around the same age as him. Corgan is 57, while Burr is 56.

“This is all totally true, I swear to God, bottom of my heart, cross my heart, hope to die,” Corgan says.

As compelling as all this might be, though, Corgan is skeptical he and Burr really share a father.

“It’s my belief at this point, ’cause I’ve sat on this story for 10 years, that I don’t think Bill Burr and I are related,” Corgan says. “I think it’s just one of those things.”

Burr, meanwhile, hasn’t made any comments responding to Corgan, though he did share a link to the podcast on his Instagram Story.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The surviving original members of the Grateful Dead just revealed that a 60th anniversary reunion was in the works prior to the October death of band member Phil Lesh at the age of 84.

Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart shared the news in an interview with CBS Mornings, taped just five days after Lesh’s death, with the trio noting that Lesh was supposed to take part in the interview as well.

“I was hoping that we could play with him again one more time,” Kreutzmann shared of their bandmate, “so that was my sadness on that one. Because I know he wanted to play with us again, too.”

“We were kicking it around,” Weir said of the idea of playing together again. “We were gonna get together and, and kick some songs around tomorrow.”

All three musicians confirmed there was some discussion about the four of them coming together to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary in 2025, but it likely won’t happen now because of Lesh’s death.

“We just don’t have enough to put a band together right now,” Weir said, with Kreutzmann adding, “Well not the three of us,” although he suggested if they did it would have to be with guest musicians.

“I was hopin’ that we could do it for the 60th. Would be fun,” Kreutzmann said.

“We were gonna see where it goes. But we were just gonna play the four of us. And now there’s only three of us … that’s different,” Weir said. 

The interview comes ahead of the Grateful Dead’s latest honor: they are set to receive the Kennedy Center Honors in December. They will also be celebrated as the 2025 MusiCares Person of the Year in February.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.