Paul Simon was the musical entertainment at the White House State Dinner for Japan’s Prime Minister FumioKishida and Yuko Kishida, hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Wednesday.
Video posted to social media shows Simon performing an acoustic version of his Grammy-winning song “Graceland” at the event, which former President BillClinton, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Robert De Niro, Apple CEO Tim Cook and more attended.
Simon revealed last May that he had lost hearing in his left ear, making it difficult to play, although things have now changed. Just last month, he revealed that his hearing had returned enough to make him feel comfortable enough to sing and play guitar again.
Jon Bon Jovi‘s first hit was “Runaway,” but as many fans know, his first paid job as a singer was on Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album. He discussed the latter on April 10 during his appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Jon was working as a gofer at the studio where the Star Wars Christmas Album was being made. The man in charge of the album needed a young-sounding guy to sing on a track called “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and tapped Jon for the job.
“He says, ‘Young boy, can you sing?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I think I can,'” Jon remembered. “He says, ‘Go in there and if you wanna do this, it pays 183 dollars.'”
Jimmy then played a clip of the song, to which Jon smiled and even sang along.
“Legend!” Jon joked.
Speaking of that, Bon Jovi‘s new album, Legendary, is coming out in June. The band’s documentary begins streaming April 26 on Hulu.
Last month, Mick Jagger posted a video of him dancing to a band playing Maroon 5’s hit “Moves Like Jagger,” and Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine still can’t believe it.
“It’s really surreal,” Levine shared during an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. “It’s just one of those things you’re like, ‘Oh my, like how is this possible. What is happening. It’s bizarre.’”
Jagger posted the video with the caption, “Moves like who!” and Maroon 5 shared their approval on Instagram with an animated “GOAT” — “Greatest of All Time” — graphic.
Levine said that while folks probably think tons of people sent him the video after Jagger posted it, that just wasn’t the case.
“I think it was one of those like everyone thought everyone had already sent it to me thing,” Levine shared, noting he only got it from a few people. “My mom and like one of my friends sent me the video. I was shocked not more people sent it to me.”
Eddie Van Halen married One Day at a Time actress Valerie Bertinelli eight months after meeting her at a concert in Shreveport, Louisiana.
They welcomed their first and only child, Wolfgang, in 1991, but the marriage didn’t last, and Bertinelli filed for divorce in 2005. Despite the end of their marriage, the pair remained close over the years. In fact, Bertinelli and Van Halen’s second wife were both at his side when he died on October 6, 2020, at the age of 65.
As for Wolfgang, he went on to follow in his father’s footsteps. He performed with his dad in Van Halen from 2006 to 2020 and also fronts his own project, Mammoth WVH, which released their sophomore album, Mammoth II, in 2023.
Alice in Chains‘ Jerry Cantrell has located his lost guitar.
On Tuesday, April 9, Cantrell posted that his prized original Blue Dress G&L guitar, which he’s had since 1985, had gone missing and was believed to be stolen. In a video update on Wednesday, April 10, Cantrell shares that the guitar had simply been “misplaced … during transit between photoshoots and the studio” while he was working on a new album.
“We found the damn thing!” Cantrell exclaims. “God, what a relief … I really thought this thing had gone missing.”
Cantrell notes that he’s had a guitar stolen before, and it took him 18 years to get it back.
“I was worried to death that this thing was gone,” Cantrell says of the Blue Dress. “Happy to cry wolf, it was misplaced, I hope you understand my concern. The thing is OK … and we will be rocking together very shortly for you.”
Cantrell also thanks everyone who reached out to him with and shared his initial post.
“It just makes me feel very f****** special to have so many great people in my life and so many people care,” he says.
Cantrell’s previously said that the Blue Dress guitar has “been on everything I’ve ever recorded, pretty much.” It’s named after the pinup picture on the front, and it also has a Soundgarden sticker on the back.
Sheryl Crow is just one of the big names performing at Keep The Party Going: A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett, a concert in honor of the late singer taking place April 11 at the Hollywood Bowl. Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, the Eagles and Jackson Browne are also on the bill. Sheryl says she and Buffett met even before she was famous: He hired her to sing backup vocals on a project after her two-year stint on the road singing backing vocals for the King of Pop.
“I was blessed enough to get to spend some really good quality time with him,” she tells ABC Audio. “Actually, it’s interesting — he was my first recording session after I came home from the Michael Jackson tour, and I flew down because the band I used to sing with in St. Louis became [Buffett’s] Coral Reefer [Band] — and that was in 1989.”
Sheryl says she loved Buffett because of the way he approached his career.
“He emulates exactly how I wish I could be, which is just so in the joyful moment of making music,” she says. “Y’know, sometimes we get so in our analytical head and decide if something is good or bad, or if we’ve delivered … and he was not that.”
“He was somebody who was there for the fans, and loved what he did and was just a great man.”
Other artists on the bill include Jack Johnson, country stars Kenny Chesney, Eric Church and Zac Brown,and Pitbull.
Pearl Jam fans in London will get to experience the band’s new Dark Matter album on a whole different level.
The grunge rockers have announced the Dark Matter-verse, described as an “immersive and interactive celebration” of the upcoming record. The installation will be open on April 19 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. at London’s Outernet district and is free to enter.
“The exhibit will take you on a 360-degree spatial audio and visual journey, transporting fans through the Dark Matter-verse,” Pearl Jam says. “Enjoy the new album, a curated gallery of photographs, electrifying footage of live performances, and an exclusive Pearl Jam pop-up shop.”
Dark Matter, the follow-up to 2020’s Gigaton, will be released April 19. You can hear the album early during the Dark Matter theatrical experience, playing in cinemas worldwide on April 16. Additionally, select independent record stores will be hosting Dark Matter listening parties on April 14.
Billy Idol‘s single “Rebel Yell” was a huge hit for him, thanks to its video being in heavy rotation on MTV, and that was exactly what he was hoping for when he shot the clip.
In a new video posted to social media, Idol gives fans some behind-the-scenes info on the making of the video, and what he and his team hoped it would do for his career.
“We deliberately did a live performance video … we wanted to show the people in America and around the world what a Billy Idol concert was like,” he shared. “We wanted to show the excitement we had for the music but also the excitement the fans had for discovering me in America solo.”
Idol says his manager at the time knew MTV was about to launch with videos playing 24 hours a day, noting his manager “knew I’d be perfect for it.”
“We knew this was going to give us a platform that was going to break the new music we were making, because there was kind of a holdout against the new music from the people from the ’60s and the ’70s that really didn’t want things to change,” he says.
He added, “We were going to show them … we’re showing these old people, F-off.”
Idol also just shared video of a 2023 live performance of the song, the title track of his multi-Platinum 1983 album, which also featured “Eyes Without A Face” and “Flesh for Fantasy.”
Idol’s set to release a 40th anniversary deluxe expanded edition of Rebel Yell on April 26. It will include the original album, and an album of previously unreleased songs and demos. It is available for preorder now.
The Rolling Stones have announced Gary Clark Jr. as the opener for the first show of their upcoming U.S. tour.
The show takes place April 28 at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas. Clark is originally from Austin, Texas.
Following the Houston date, the Stones will play New Orleans Jazz Fest in May, followed by U.S. stadium performances throughout May, June and July. They’ll be supporting their new album, Hackney Diamonds, which was released in October and marked their first collection of original material in nearly 20 years.
Clark, meanwhile, put out a new record, JPEG RAW, in March. He’ll launch his own U.S. tour in May.
While fans may think that Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora are permanently estranged, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Ahead of the April 26 streaming debut of their documentary Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, Jon told Entertainment Tonight that he and Sambora watched the first three episodes of the documentary together. He said it was the first time he saw Sambora — albeit onscreen — apologize for leaving the band in 2013.
“It was never about money, it was never about a girlfriend. He had issues … and he literally didn’t show up. We were playing for 20,000 people and there’s a black hole on the stage,” Jon told ET about Sambora’s departure.
“Substance abuse or anxieties or single parenting, all those things weighed on him, losing his dad. These were all very hard things,” Jon continued. “But in fairness, why would I take away the livelihoods of … the band…? [What about] … the millions of people that bought a ticket? What am I going to do? Shut it down because you don’t want to go to rehab?”
However, Jon said that in the past 10 years he and Richie have been able to heal their relationship. As Jon told ET, “You read, you talk to professionals, you sit with yourself, you learn to understand from a different perspective that his choices weren’t made out of animosity either.”
Bon Jovi’s new album, Forever, is coming out June 7, but Jon says he won’t tour until his voice is 100% back following the vocal surgery he had in 2022.
As he put it, “I won’t compromise who we are as a band live, because I’d like to think we’re a pretty darn good band.”
