Classic Rock 93.9

Billy Joel and Sting are teaming up for more stadium shows in 2024. 

The rockers and friends are now set to co-headline the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, on Friday, October 25, and Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium on Saturday, November 9.  

The Vegas concert is Billy’s first Sin City show since he headlined Allegiant in February 2022. Sting also spent plenty time in Vegas, where he headlined his My Songs residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace from October 2021 through April 2023.

A Citi presale kicks off Monday, January 29, at 10 a.m. local time, and tickets will go on sale to the general public starting Friday, February 2, at 10 a.m. local time.

Billy and Sting are now set to co-headline five shows together in 2024, including concerts in Tampa, San Diego and St. Louis. A complete list of dates can be found at billyjoel.com.

The news comes as Billy is getting ready to debut “Turn the Lights Back On,” his first song with lyrics — sung by Billy himself — since his 2007 single “All My Life.”  The song will be released on Thursday, February 1, and he’ll perform it on the Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 4.

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Appearing onstage at Birmingham, England’s New Alexandra Theatre on January 24, Sharon Osbourne revealed more details about Ozzy Osbourne‘s farewell shows in the city, his hometown.

According to the Birmingham Mail, Sharon, who appeared as part of her Cut the Crap speaking tour, said that Ozzy, 75, will be “coming home to say goodbye” with shows at Villa Park Stadium, taking place this summer.

“He’s going to have his mates with him, all his great mates that he’s toured with for years so he’ll have many friends with him and it’s going to be a celebration,” she added.

Asked by the event’s host if Ozzy will be well enough to board a plane to Birmingham, Sharon said, “I know with this that it’s mind over matter and he wants it too bad. He’ll be here.”

She also confirmed that Ozzy can’t put on a proper tour because of his health problems.

“It’s true, Ozzy won’t tour again, definitely he won’t. It’s terrible for him because it’s hard to let something that you lived for go, and no matter what over anything, the greatest love of his life is his fans and performing,” she said. “He lives for performing, it’s like his oxygen has been cut from him.”

The last time Ozzy played a full live show was in 2018. Since then, he’s been hampered by a number of health issues and has undergone multiple surgeries after suffering a fall in his home in 2019. He was booked to play the Power Trip festival in 2023 but dropped off the lineup due to his health.

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The late Robbie Robertson and director Martin Scorsese, his good friend and collaborator, will be honored with the Society of Composers and Lyricists’ Spirit of Collaboration Award.

The award honors “a composer/director relationship which has created a prodigious body of work.” In addition to the Oscar-nominated score for Killers of the Flower Moon, Robertson and Scorsese have worked on 13 projects together, including movies like Gangs of New York, Raging Bull, Casino and The Color of Money.

Robertson’s Killers of the Flower Moon score has also been nominated by the SCL in the Original Score for a Studio Film category, where it will compete with the scores of Saltburn, The Boy and the Heron, Oppenheimer and American Fiction. 

Also earning an SCL nod is Lenny Kravitz, whose Rustin song “Road to Freedom” has been nominated in the Outstanding Original Song for a Drama or Documentary category. It is set to compete against songs from the movies The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, American Symphony, Carmen and Jacob the Baker.  

The fifth annual SCL Awards are set to take place Tuesday, Feb. 13, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California.

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30 years ago today — January 25, 1994 — Alice in Chains released their chart-topping EP Jar of Flies. Now, the band has announced details of a 30th anniversary version of the project, due out March 22.

The Jar of Flies 30th Anniversary edition will be available on black 12″ vinyl from all retailers. At the band’s web store, you can purchase it on tri-colored vinyl and cassette. A clear vinyl version with flies embedded in it and a deluxe limited-edition box set will also be available.

That set, which’ll set you back $225, includes the tri-colored vinyl, a log-embossed jar with a touch-activated LED and fake flies, a 60-page hardcover book and a poster, all in a screen-printed box.

And if that’s not enough AIC merch for you, there’s also a capsule collection available for preorder. It includes clothing, a skate deck, a poker set and adorable plush “Whale & Wasp” toys.

The acoustic-driven Jar of Flies EP was the first EP to debut at #1. It won two Grammy Awards, including Best Hard Rock Performance for “I Stay Away.” It’s been RIAA certified four-times Platinum.

Alice in Chains will perform April 27 at the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas.

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On This Day, January 25, 1991…

Paul McCartney recorded an episode of MTV Unplugged at Limehouse Studios in Wembley, London.

The legendary Beatle took the name of the show literally, performing each song completely unplugged, unlike other artists who used acoustic instruments plugged into amplifiers.

The set list featured such songs as “Blackbird,” “We Can Work it Out,” “And I Love Her,” “Here, There and Everywhere” and more.

McCartney’s appearance on MTV Unplugged’s second season proved to be pivotal for the show. As one of the first A-list artists to do the show, he influenced other big name stars, including R.E.M., Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart, to follow suit.

The episode aired on April 3, 1991, and a live album of McCartney’s performance, Unplugged (The Official Bootleg), was released a month later, including three songs that were not featured on the program. He was the first artist to release a live album of the show.

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Eddie Vedder‘s Ohana is confirmed to come back in 2024.

This year’s edition of the Pearl Jam frontman’s annual festival will take place September 27-29, once again in Dana Point, California. The lineup has yet to be announced, though Vedder encourages you to sign up for text alerts for up-to-date artist and ticket info.

The 2023 Ohana Festival featured Foo Fighters and The Killers as headliners, as well as a solo set by Vedder.

Pearl Jam, meanwhile, is set to be on the road in 2024 and is confirmed to play the BottleRock Napa Valley festival in May, as well as Europe’s Mad Cool and NOS Alive festivals. The grunge rockers have also been working on a new album, the follow-up to 2020’s Gigaton.

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If you missed the chance to see Queen Rock Montreal in IMAX theaters last weekend, you now have a second chance.

The film’s IMAX release has been extended, with additional showings set to run from Friday, January 26, to Thursday, February 1.

The extension comes after the initial IMAX weekend brought in $4.1 million globally, to make it the biggest IMAX exclusive event opening ever. 

Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor caught a screening of the IMAX film, and in a new video they share what it was like to see the concert on such a big screen.

“I’ve never seen anything that makes you feel quite so involved with the performance,” Roger shares. “And the great surprise for me was how f****** good we were.” 

“The quality of the shots is amazing, really amazing, but the energy is there, my God there’s a lot of energy,” May adds. “As Roger said when we finished watching it, ‘Bloody hell, we weren’t bad were we?’” 

As for seeing the late Freddie Mercury onstage again, Brian notes, “It’s just something you really treasure these days. You want to see every breath he takes. … It makes us very emotional seeing that.”

“Fred was just the most inspiring frontman. I have no bad memories, just joy working with him,” Roger recalls. “I guess it’s a good snapshot of Freddie probably near the height of his powers.”

Tickets for Queen Rock Montreal are on sale now.

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Back to the Future fans probably couldn’t imagine the film without Christopher Lloyd playing Doc Brown, but it turns out he may not have been the first choice for the role.

While at the Sundance Film Festival, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo told The Wrap he was originally offered the part by the film’s producer Steven Spielberg and director Robert Zemeckis.

Mothersbaugh says Spielberg and Zemeckis attended one of Devo’s shows, and at the end of the night they came up to him and said they wanted to talk to him about working on their film. He was convinced they were going to ask him to do the score, so he was totally surprised by their offer.

“I went into this meeting and they said, ‘Well, we love what you do on stage. We love the way your band looks. We want you to be sort of a crazy mad scientist in this film we’re doing,”’ he shared. When he asked them what they meant, they told him, “There’s a part in the film of a guy who runs around in a lab coat and he has a car that goes through time. We want you to play that part.” 

But Mothersbaugh had no interest, telling them, “I don’t want to act in a movie.” When they argued he already acts onstage, Mothersbaugh countered, “Well, we make that stuff up ourselves.”

And while Mothersbuagh didn’t do the film, a quick reference to Devo is featured in the movie: Marty, played by Michael J. Fox, comments, “What is this Devo?” when he sees Doc’s contamination suit. That clip now appears in the new documentary Devo, which had its debut at the Sundance Film Festival.

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Iron Maiden‘s Bruce Dickinson has shared a new song called “Rain on the Graves,” a cut off his upcoming solo album, The Mandrake Project.

The track is accompanied by a six-minute video, in which Dickinson plays a preacher who makes a deal with the Devil, which, as is often the case, doesn’t work out too well for him. You can watch it now streaming on YouTube.

The Mandrake Project, Dickinson’s first solo effort in nearly 20 years, drops March 1. It also includes the single “Afterglow of Ragnarok.”

Dickinson will launch an international solo tour in April.

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 First he took a shot at Sammy Hagar; now David Lee Roth is taking aim at Eddie Van Halen’s son, Mammoth WVH frontman Wolfgang Van Halen.

In a new Roth Show video, the rocker shares his displeasure at having had to work with Eddie’s son, who played bass in Van Halen from 2007 to 2015. Roth starts off the video with a mock interview, painting Wolfgang as Jesus Christ, who’s complaining about not getting any respect.

“I want people to know I got this job because of my talent,” says Roth. “I woulda had this job anyway even if my dad wasn’t God,” a reference to claims Wolfgang only got the Van Halen gig because of his dad. 

Referring to Wolfgang as “this f****** kid” throughout the video, Roth then starts discussing how Wolfgang would complain about his behavior onstage.

“He’s complaining the entire tour like I’m not paying enough attention to him onstage,” Roth says. “I’m giving him the best, everything I got in front of 20-30,000 people at a clip and he’s complaining to everybody around me, the business manager, the security guy, the clothing lady, ‘Dave’s not paying enough attention to me.’”

Roth then tells two stories about how Wolfgang had Roth’s female guests thrown out of shows in New York and Los Angeles to allegedly teach him a lesson. But unbeknownst to Wolfgang, the women were actually from the band’s accounting firm and were there to pay the crew. Roth gave them tickets only after Eddie and Alex Van Halen stiffed them.

The video comes just days after Roth went after Hagar in a clip, suggesting Hagar being probed by aliens was the reason for his bad behavior toward Roth.

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

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