Classic Rock 93.9

Mötley Crüe kicked off their Hollywood takeover Monday night, and they certainly made quite an entrance.

The rockers shared video of highlights from night one at The Troubadour on the Sunset Strip, which shows them getting dumped out of the back of a green garbage truck, much to the delight of their gathered fans. 

According to setlist.fm, the band treated the crowd to a set filled with hits, including “Shout at the Devil,” “Home Sweet Home,” “Dr. Feelgood” and “Kickstart My Heart,” as well as their latest single, “Dogs of War,” and a cover of Bestie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right.”

Mötley’s Hollywood takeover continues Wednesday with a show at The Roxy, followed by a gig at the Whisky a Go Go on Friday.

They also just announced a new Las Vegas residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM. The residency consists of 11 shows, running from March 28 to April 19. A complete list of dates can be found at motley.com.

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Van Halen fans are getting their first preview of Alex Van Halen’s upcoming memoir, Brothers, with a 4 1/2-minute audio sample shared on Spotify.

In a clip titled “Overture,” Alex talks to and about his late brother and Van Halen bandmate, Eddie Van Halen, sharing, “Without my brother I would not be … there is a bond and unconditional love very few people ever experience in their lifetime.”

“Music was our heart and soul. That’s what we did, that’s what we loved, that’s what we enjoyed and that’s what we were good at,” he says. “It’s also the thing that made us as close as two brothers can be. We were connected in every way – genetically, artistically, financially, emotionally and though neither of us stuck with Catholicism, I’m going to go ahead and say spiritually.” 

Alex shares that Eddie was “more introverted, more impressionable and more sensitive” than him, noting that sensitivity made Eddie a “brilliant musician … there is only one Edward Van Halen.”

“Since you’ve been gone, I catch myself talking to you. Yelling at you, in my head or sometimes out loud. I still have trouble believing you’re gone and probably for me, you never will be,” he says.

“Outliving my little brother? This just wasn’t the plan,” he concludes. “As the older brother, I was supposed to die first. Same as always, Ed … butting in line.”

Brothers is due out Oct. 22. The audiobook features the song “Unfinished,” written by Alex and Eddie and described as “the last piece of music they wrote together.” 

Alex will promote the book with a three-city book tour kicking off Oct. 21 in New York, followed by Oct. 22 in New Jersey and Oct. 24 in Los Angeles.

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On This Day, Oct. 9, 1985 …

John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, joined The Beatles fans for the opening of Strawberry Fields in New York’s Central Park, a memorial to the late Beatle named after the Lennon-penned track “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Located on Central Park West at 72nd Street, the 5-acre plot of land features a circular memorial with a mosaic of stones with the word “Imagine,” the title of Lennon’s iconic tune. It is located not far from Lennon and Ono’s New York apartment, The Dakota, where Lennon was killed on Dec. 8, 1980.

Oct. 9 was also Lennon’s birthday, and the opening ceremony coincided with what would have been his 45th birthday.

To coincide with what would have been Lennon’s 84th birthday this year, the documentary Daytime Revolution, about the week in 1972 when John and Yoko took over The Mike Douglas Show, is opening in theaters.

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R.E.M. has contributed a song to a new compilation album aimed at helping those devastated by Hurricane Helene.

Cardinals at the Window: A Benefit for Flood Relief in Western North Carolina is out now on Bandcamp, with R.E.M. contributing a live performance of the Document track “King of Birds,” recorded in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1989.

The album features 136 songs and was put together by three North Carolina natives: musician and community organizer Libby Rodenbough, New Commute founder David Walker and music journalist Grayson Haver Currin.

Other artists contributing to the album include Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, The War on Drugs, Wilco‘s Jeff Tweedy, Feist, Phish, The Decemberists, Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

The album is available for purchase now at bandcamp.com.

All proceeds will be split between three organizations: Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, BeLoved Asheville, and Rural Organizing and Resilience.

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SPOILERS) In episode seven of Only Murders in the Building’s fourth season, one of Billy Joel‘s most beloved songs pops up unexpectedly, and the series’ showrunner hopes the Piano Man will enjoy the joke.

In the episode, Oliver, Mabel and Charles — played by Martin Short, Selena Gomez and Steve Martin, respectively — are afraid they’re being pursued by a killer, so they flee Manhattan for suburban Long Island, where Charles’ estranged sister Doreen, played by Melissa McCarthy, lives.

Arriving at the house, they ring the doorbell, only to hear the melody of Billy’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” — specifically, the part of the song that goes “a bottle of red, a bottle of white” — and it becomes a running joke in the episode.

“Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” from The Stranger, was never a single, but it’s a fan favorite that Billy frequently plays live. It was deliberately chosen by showrunner John Hoffman, who tells Vulture, “I lovingly poke at Long Island throughout the show, and I hope people enjoy the silliness of it … anyone from … Manhattan, as our trio is, feels that way about Long Island.”

“Billy Joel is universally beloved, in my experience, in Long Island, and it’s sacrilegious to think otherwise,” he adds. 

Hoffman says he considered using the melody of another line from the song — “Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies/ and the king and the queen of the prom” — “but then I realized, ‘Oh no, this is too much.‘”

Hoffman tells Vulture he hopes Billy “won’t be too surprised” by the cameo and will get a kick out of it, adding, “I can only hope there is goodwill coming from the Billy Joel side of things.”

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The new documentary Daytime Revolution is in theaters now, giving fans a look at the surprising week in February 1972 when John Lennon and Yoko Ono produced and co-hosted the popular daytime talk show The Mike Douglas Show. 

The film’s director, Erik Nelson, tells ABC Audio the music superstars “in essence hijacked” the show, calling it “an amazing piece of cultural and political history.”

“In my opinion, it represented the high watermark of the entire ’60s, as far as the message of the ’60s, the optimism of the ’60s being injected into mainstream American culture,” he says.

The week of shows featured guests invited by the couple, including activist Ralph Nader, comedian George Carlin, musician Chuck Berry and Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale. The movie features plenty of footage from the actual shows.

The film also gives fans a different look at the couple, who got more comfortable with the show and the format as the week went on. 

“I’ve never seen John Lennon so relaxed, so funny, so articulate,” Nelson says. “It was a great moment where the venue captured the artist at his peak.”

Daytime Revolution hits theaters on what would have been Lennon’s 84th birthday. The director notes that it was also purposefully released ahead of the upcoming presidential election because he feels the message of that week of shows is very relevant to today. 

“If you look at it from an historical perspective, it’s striking,” he says. “This took place in 1972, in the middle of a highly polarized, contentious election year. And in essence, we’re rebroadcasting these shows in the middle of a contentious, polarized election year.” 

He adds, “That conversation between eras was quite intentional on the part of the filmmakers.”

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Graham Nash has set his first shows for 2025.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has announced dates for the spring leg of his More Evenings of Songs And Stories tour. The leg kicks off with a two-night stand, March 29 and March 30, in Easton, Maryland, and wraps with a two-night stand in San Francisco, April 22 and April 23.

Tickets for all shows go on sale Friday.

Nash is currently on the fall leg of the tour. He plays Quebec City in Canada on Tuesday. A complete list of dates can be found at grahamnash.com.

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Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello will induct MC5 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The influential proto-punk outfit is included in the 2024 class with the Musical Excellence Award. The honor comes after the 2024 deaths of band members Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson, who were the final surviving members of the classic Kick Out the Jams lineup.

Morello has long spoken of MC5’s influence on him and Rage, and guests on the band’s upcoming album, Heavy Lifting, due out Oct. 18. Following Kramer’s passing in February, Morello wrote, “Brother Wayne Kramer was the best man I’ve ever known.”

Morello is also returning to the Rock Hall induction ceremony for the second straight year, following Rage’s induction in 2023. He was notably the only Rage member to attend the event and gave a fiery speech encouraging any fans missing the “Killing in the Name” rockers to start their own band.

The 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction takes place Oct. 19 in Cleveland and will stream live on Disney+.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Lenny Kravitz is taking a trip down memory lane on social media, giving fans a tour of some of the places he lived while growing up in New York.

Back in September, Lenny took fans to the apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where he lived with his parents, and now he’s giving folks a tour of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn.

“Here we are in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn on the corner of Troop and Kosciusko,” he says in a new video posted to social media, panning the camera to a home where he says he grew up with his grandparents.

“The house looks nothing like it did,” he says. “This was a single-family house that had a stoop and a little yard back here. It’s a trip to see all the changes.”

At one point the two girls who currently live in the apartment came out on their balcony and invited him up to see the place.

Lenny also gave a little tour of the neighborhood, sharing, “You got a taste of my old block. Bed-Stuy do or die.”

Next up, Kravitz is getting ready to head to Las Vegas. His five-night Blue Electric Light residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM kicks off Oct. 18. A complete list of dates can be found at lennykravitz.com.

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Joni Mitchell is set to headline two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, her first time playing the venue in 24 years, and it sounds like fans are in for some surprises.

The shows, dubbed Joni Mitchell & The Joni Jam, are happening Oct. 18 and Oct. 19, with Brandi Carlile among the artists joining her onstage. During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Carlile teased fans with what to expect. 

“The tea I can spill is that I’ve spent these last five, six years in the passenger seat with Joan, and in this case I’m in the backseat,” she says. “She’s chosen to learn songs that I never heard before, that have been an incredible challenge for us all to learn.”

Brandi tells fans who will be attending that they can expect Joni to put on “a long show.” 

“She wants to give everybody a full-spectrum performance of who she really is and what her career has done,” she says, noting the concerts are “gonna be even crazier” than Joni’s previous shows at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022 and the Gorge Amphitheatre in 2023.

“I’m seeing her be inspired in ways I haven’t seen before,” Brandi adds. “And we’ve got some people that have joined the party that are just an inspiration to watch work.”

In addition to Brandi, previous Mitchell shows featured such special guests as Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan and Marcus Mumford.

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