Classic Rock 93.9

The Who’s Roger Daltrey recently stepped down as curator of the annual Teenage Cancer Trust charity shows after 24 years, and he’s now opening up about why he decided to retire from the position.

“I have to be realistic. I’m on my way out,” the 80-year-old rocker wrote in a backstage diary for U.K.’s The Times. “The average life expectancy is 83 and with a bit of luck I’ll make that, but we need someone else to drive things.”

Daltrey isn’t stepping away from the charity completely but will stick to working behind the scenes.

For his final year, The Who headlined two of this year’s shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and Daltrey headlined a third show with a series of guests to celebrate his tenure as curator.

The rocker revealed that before taking the stage for those shows, he was actually worried “about how many words” he needed to remember for them.

“We haven’t done anything for seven months and this winter’s been brutal. I’ve been in hibernation. For the whole of January, I lost my voice completely,” he wrote. “I live like a monk and if I went on tour for a week I’d be fit as a butcher’s dog again, but tonight, for the first time in my career, I think, ‘Blimey, this is hard.’”

While Daltrey seems ready to hang it up, his bandmate Pete Townshend has indicated he was up for at least one more tour. In a recent interview with The New York Times, he shared, “It feels to me like there’s one thing the Who can do, and that’s a final tour where we play every territory in the world and then crawl off to die.”

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On This Day, April 1, 2008…

The Rolling Stones released Shine A Light, the soundtrack to their Martin Scorsese-directed concert film of the same name.

The concert doc featured performances from the band’s two-night stand at the intimate Beacon Theatre in New York, which took place October 29 and November 1, 2006. The shows took place during their A Bigger Bang Tour.

The movie featured special guests Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera performing with the Stones; they also appeared on the soundtrack.

Performances on the release included “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Symphony for the Devil,” “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up.” 

The Rolling Stones are getting ready to hit the road once again later this month. They’ll kick off their Hackney Diamonds tour on April 28 in Houston, Texas.

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Guitarist Joe Satriani is set to join Sammy Hagar on his Best of All Worlds tour this summer, where they’ll be playing, among other things, songs from the Van Halen catalog. And despite his expertise with the instrument, Satriani doesn’t expect it to be easy.

“My task right now is trying to unravel the mystery of Eddie Van Halen‘s strange guitar playing,” Satriani tells Classic Rock in a new interview. “I spent decades avoiding how to learn this stuff so I wouldn’t copy it, and now all of a sudden I’m doing a crash course on the idiosyncrasies and the genius of his guitar work.”

He adds, “I know these songs but I’ve never actually played them. It’s a task.”

And while it won’t be easy, Satriani is happy to do it, sharing, “I can’t think of a (Van Halen) song that doesn’t put a smile on my face – it’s just a question of figuring out how to play them.”

Satriani says he can guarantee that fans who come to the shows will “see someone who’s hell-bent on being the most respectful guitar player to the legacy of Eddie and his playing.” 

He adds, “I have every intention of nailing everything, and when I can’t I’ll wink to the audience and they’re gonna know that one’s just gonna slip by.”

Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, which also features Van Halen’s Michael Anthony on bass and Jason Bonham on drums, kicks off July 13 in West Palm Beach, Florida. A complete list of dates can be found at redrocker.com.

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The Zombies, former Eagles guitarist Don Felder and Foghat are among the artists booked to perform on the Rock Legends Cruise XII.

The trip is happening February 13-17, 2025, on Royal Caribbean’s Independence from the Sea, departing from Miami.

Other musicians ready to set sail on the cruise include the Gregg Rolie Band, Guess Who’s Burton Cummings and Procul Harum’s Robin Trower. 

Information on the itinerary and how to book a cabin can be found at rocklegendscruise.com.

The 2024 Rock Legends Cruise took place last February, with a lineup that included Sammy Hagar, ZZ Top‘s Billy F Gibbons and The Immediate Family.

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Paul McCartney’s rep is disputing a claim by an artist who suggested that a portrait he made of The Beatle legend was banned for being unflattering.

As previously reported, London artist Wilfrid Wood created a sculpture of McCartney’s face for the cover art for “Pipes of Peace,” McCartney’s contribution to War Child U.K.’s annual Secret 7” auction, but shared on Instagram that it was “BANNED by Macca and the gang because it was TOO UNFLATTERING.”

McCartney’s spokesperson has since denied Wood’s claim, telling NME the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer “never saw this artwork.”

In the end, a positive thing did wind up coming from the portrait. Wood sold it on eBay for over $1,700 and plans to donate all proceeds to War Child U.K. in their mission to help children affected by conflict in various war zones, including Gaza and the Ukraine.

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In a recent Billboard article, Billie Eilish spoke out against artists who release multiple vinyl variants of their new albums without thinking about the environmental consequences, but not everyone agrees with her stance.

Sean Ono Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, took to social media to share his opposing views. 

“The vinyl record industry is a tiny shadow of what it once was. LPs and 45s are NOT disposable single use plastics,” he writes. “Everyone complaining about vinyl records from an environmental perspective are doing so with their cellphones and their computers and their blue jeans and their sneakers and their bulls***.” 

Lennon doesn’t mention Eilish by name but insists he’s not trying to disrespect her. “The main artist speaking on this is brilliant and talented at music,” he shares. “I love them very much actually.”

He continues, “But coming out against a tiny niche market in an industry that has already been gutted by streaming services, is not the win you think it is. We literally only have a tiny handful of factories globally that can even print vinyl anymore.” 

“Leave us boomers alone. We like our music to sound good. Let us have our records in the physical world. You can stream all you want to pay a tiny handful of CEOs. But we like vinyl” the 48-year-old Lennon warns, signing off, “From my cold dead hands!”

In her interview, Eilish said it’s “wasteful” to release multiple vinyl variants just to sell more records. “It’s irritating to me that we’re still at a point where you care that much about your numbers and you care that much about making money — and it’s all your favorite artists doing that s***,” she noted.

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Peter Frampton fans will now be able to appreciate his classic live album Frampton Comes A Live even more, as it’s streaming on Dolby Atmos for the first time.

“This is the definitive version of the album; audio was sourced from the original 1975 masters by Doug Sax,” Frampton shares on Instagram, adding, “and it sounds better than ever.”

Released in January 1976, Frampton Comes Alive was the guitar great’s first double live album. It went to #1 on the Billboard 200 thanks to performances of such songs as “Show Me the Way,” “Baby I Love Your Way” and “Do You Feel Like We Do,” and spent 10 nonconsecutive weeks in the top spot.

The album went on to become one of the bestselling live albums of all time and has been certified eight-times Platinum by the RIAA.

Frampton, who was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, is currently on his Never Ever Say Never tour. It hits Waukegan, Illinois, on Saturday, March 30. A complete list of dates can be found at frampton.com.

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The viral music collective Rockin’1000 has taken on yet another rock classic. 

The collective just shared a recent performance of Pink Floyd‘s iconic tune “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two),” featuring 1,000 musicians playing the track in Cesena, Italy, to a stadium filled with fans. The performance also includes a guitar solo from Enrico Drigo Salvi of the Italian rock band Negrita.

Rockin’1000 is the same group responsible for the viral performance of Foo Fighters‘ “Learn To Fly” in Cesena in 2015. It also featured 1,000 musicians playing the song. After the video went viral, the Foos got wind of it and decided to play a show in Cesena later that year.

“Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)” from Pink Floyd’s 1979 album, The Wall, is the band’s only #1 single in the U.S. It also topped the charts in 13 other countries, including the U.K. and Canada. It has sold over 4 million copies worldwide.

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Earlier this month, paparazzi photos surfaced online of Timothée Chalamet in character as Bob Dylan for the upcoming movie A Complete Unknown, but now, we have our first official photo from the film.

The movie’s director James Mangold shared a photo on social media of Chalamet as Dylan, dressed in a black jacket and dark glasses, crossing 23rd Street in Manhattan in front of the famed Chelsea Hotel. The only detail Mangold shared about the shot was the camera that was used to take it: a “Leica SL3 Summicron-SL APO 50mm 2.8 1/160 ISO 12500.”

A Complete Unknown, which has been in the works for more than four years, is set in New York in the early ’60s, when 17-year-old Dylan comes to the Big Apple and meets artists like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. It follows him through his famed 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival, where he shocks the crowd by plugging in an electric guitar.

The rest of the cast includes Edward Norton as Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Baez, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash and Nick Offerman as Alan Lomax.

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Sammy Hagar fans are going to want to tune in to AXS TV on Sunday, April 14, because starting at 10 a.m. ET the network will devote a day of programming to the rocker.

Dubbed Sammy Super Sunday, the programming will include the concert film Sammy Hagar & The Wabos: Livin’ It Up, featuring Hagar’s former Van Halen bandmate Michael Anthony. The concert will air at 9 p.m. ET, with a set that includes tunes like “I Can’t Drive 55″ and “Heavy Metal,” along with Van Halen tracks like “Good Enough” and “Best of Both Worlds.” 

Other highlights of Sammy Super Sunday include a Sammy appearance on Daryl Hall’s Live from Daryl’s House; episodes of Rock & Roll Road Trip with Sammy Hagar, featuring such artists as Willie Nelson, Robby Krieger and Rick Springfield; The Eddie Money Tribute Concert, with a performance from Sammy; and a Sammy edition of Rockstar Shuffle. 

“Sammy Hagar is the quintessential rock icon, and a longtime favorite for our audience,” said Katie Daryl, vice president of programming for AXS TV. “He continues to be a beloved fixture on our network, and we are excited to raise a toast to him this spring!” 

To coincide with Sammy Super Sunday, AXS TV is holding a sweepstakes in which a winner and their guest will get to see Sammy live in Las Vegas. The package includes two VIP tickets to the opening party of Sammy’s Island, a poolside restaurant and bar at the Palms Casino, along with two VIP tickets to see Sammy with The Circle at The Pearl on May 18. The sweepstakes open April 1 and runs until April 15 via AXS TV’s social media platforms.

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