Classic Rock 93.9

Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses had something of a rivalry back in the day, but it appears time has long healed that wound.

Dave Grohl has joined the “Welcome to the Jungle” rockers live onstage several times over the past few years, most recently during their headlining set at Glastonbury for a performance of “Paradise City.” Speaking with NME, guitarist Slash calls the Nirvana drummer-turned-Foo Fighters frontman “one of my all-time favorite musicians.”

“I knew [Grohl] was gonna be around, and I think it was [bassist] Duff [McKagan] who said to him, ‘Hey, you wanna come jam?'” Slash says of the Glastonbury collaboration. “So yeah, it eventually came together and it was fun.”

The GN’R appearance was one of a few surprises Grohl pulled off at Glastonbury, along with an unannounced Foo Fighters set, which had been billed as a mystery band called The Churnups.

Elsewhere in the interview, Slash gives a shout-out to another ’90s alt titan: Radiohead‘s Jonny Greenwood.

“I … think Jonny Greenwood is a great f****** composer,” Slash says, referencing the guitarist’s film work. “There Will Be Blood was one of the best scores of the last 20 years.”

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Chicago is one of several musical acts set to perform on PBS’ A Capitol Fourth, and original member Lee Loughnane is certainly looking forward to celebrating our nation’s independence in Washington, D.C. 

“A Capitol Fourth is a great show,” he tells ABC Audio. “You wait the whole show and hear some great music and then at the end, the fireworks are just, they blow your mind.”

This is the second time Chicago has performed on A Capitol Fourth, and this time they’ll perform three songs for fans. And as a bonus, Lee and the band will get to be right on the lawn watching the fireworks with everyone else.

“The fireworks has always been the greatest thing about the Fourth of July,” he says. “Besides the fact that the country is celebrating a birthday and this is the freest country in the world, and I’m proud to be able to call myself an American.”

The 76-year-old Loughnane is now in his 58th year of touring with Chicago — and even he can’t believe it sometimes.

“There is no way to look into the crystal ball and think that you might be doing the same songs that you were doing when you’re 19, 20 years old,” he says. “[It’s] really fun to be able to still do this. I mean, I feel like I’m 20 sometimes. My body doesn’t all the time, but, you know, my mind is. I’ve never quite grown up.” 

A Capitol Fourth, hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro, airs Tuesday, July 4, at 8 p.m. on PBS. In addition to Chicago, it will feature performances by Belinda Carlisle, Babyface, Boyz II Men and more.

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David Lee Roth has shared a new mini doc about the short-lived US Festival, which was the brainchild of Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. According to the doc, Wozniak had hoped the ’80s would be “more community oriented” than the ’70s. 

The US Festival, the US standing for Unite us in Song, not United States, took place outside of California. It consisted of two multiday festivals, one during Labor Day weekend in 1982 and another during Memorial Day weekend in 1983. The latter consisted of four shows broken down by genre — new wave, rock, heavy metal and country — with Van Halen headlining the heavy metal day, which also included Mötley Crüe, Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne.

Roth’s somewhat bizarre 24-minute documentary starts with a discussion of his creation of what he called the Jungle Studs, a group of friends he’d go on adventures with. But his traveling time was cut short when Van Halen was offered the US Festival gig by Wozniak. They at first turned it down, but changed their minds when they were offered $1 million for the gig.

At the time, the show was the biggest concert of Van Halen’s career. They wound up getting paid even more than the initial offer, since they had a clause in their contract that no band could be paid more than them. Wozniak, desperate to get David Bowie for the rock day lineup, paid $1.5 million to get him and his crew to the show.

In the end, the festival cost Woz $10 million — and there were two reported deaths. The festival never returned.

(Video includes uncensored profanity.)

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Paul McCartney recently revealed that artificial intelligence was used to “extricate” the late John Lennon’s voice from an old demo, for what he says will be “the last Beatles record.” As previously reported, he later clarified that “nothing has been artificially or synthetically created” for the tune. Well, now the only other living Beatle, Ringo Starr, is chiming in on details about the song.  

In an upcoming episode of Rolling Stone‘s Music Now podcast, Ringo insists they would “never” go so far as to fake Lennon’s vocals for a song. He also says they used recordings the late George Harrison made before his 2001 death. 

“This was beautiful,” Starr says of the tune, “and it’s the final track you’ll ever hear with the four lads. And that’s a fact.”

So far there’s no word on the name of the song. Speculation suggests it’s the tune “Now And Then,” which was recorded at the same time as “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love,” which appeared on the Beatles Anthology albums, which were released between 1995 and 1996.

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John Mellencamp will be featured in the debut episode of the new public television series WITH, set to debut Saturday, July 1 (check local listings). The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer sits down for a chat with TV personality Bob Costas for the episode, which was filmed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

“I’m a curmudgeon,” Mellencamp says in a preview of the episode, much to Costas’ mock surprise. “I like to do things my way and I pay an awfully high price for that.” Mellencamp also discusses his love of painting in the clip. 

According to the series’ description, it “explores the concept of collaboration and the impact that relationships and experiences can have on the creative process,” looking at the “unseen influences and inspirations that shape an artist’s work.” Each episode features a musician paired with fellow creators, musicians and friends.

A trailer for the series reveals future episodes will feature interviews with Peter Frampton, the members of AC/DC, Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell, and Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks.

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Dolly Parton’s upcoming album, Rockstar, features a reunion of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on her cover of “Let It Be,” and she tells the U.K.’s Absolute Radio just how she got the two Beatles to join her for the track. 

“I’ve always loved that song,” Dolly says. “I recorded the song without them and then I thought, ‘Wow. Wouldn’t it be great if Paul McCartney would agree to play piano and sing on it?!’ And then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it even be greater to have Ringo Starr – because that’s the last of The Beatles – play on that track?!’”

It turns out it wasn’t hard to convince them. Dolly explains, “I just asked if they’d do it and they said, ‘Yeah,’ and I was excited to death.” She adds, “They were so generous and so sweet about it. I was so, so touched with so many of the people on the album that they were so willing to do it.”

Mick Fleetwood and Peter Frampton also appear on the track, with Dolly’s noting, “I thought, ‘This is an all-star song!’”

Meanwhile, one person Dolly couldn’t get for the record was Rolling Stone frontman Mick Jagger, not that she didn’t try. The Mail quotes Dolly as saying, “I wanted Mick Jagger so bad, because my husband loves him.” She says she wanted him for her for a cover of “Satisfaction,” but he wanted to do “something new and different.”

“We kept looking for the right song,” she says, “but unfortunately he was doing an album in LA, and I was doing stuff in Nashville, and I kept missing him, but he wanted to do it.” 

Dolly Parton’s Rockstar drops November 17. It is available for preorder now.

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Dead & Company’s current tour has brought in big bucks for some very good causes.

The band is currently on their Final Tour, and throughout the trek, they’ve held several auctions organized by the non-profit voter registration organization HeadCount. According to HitsDailyDouble, the band has raised $1 million over the past month from auctions selling pieces of drummer Mickey Hart’s art and guitars specifically tailored to certain tour stops.

So far, five guitars featuring artwork by poster artist AJ Masthay have been auctioned off. The biggest bids came in for a guitar from their Citifield show in New York, which sold for $125,000, and another from Saratoga, New York, which brought in $114,420, the last three numbers being quite appropriate for fans of the Dead.

The $1 million is just the beginning since Dead & Co. still has plenty to auction off during the rest of the tour, including an autographed guitar played by Bobby Weir at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, signed drumheads, posters, and more.

All the money raised will be donated to causes important to the band, including HeadCount, the environmental organization REVERB and over a dozen more. 

Dead & Company’s Final Tour hits Boulder, Colorado, for a three-night stand July 1-3. It’s set to wrap with three nights in San Francisco, July 14-16. A complete list of dates can be found at deadandcompany.com.

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Legendary Jamaican musician Bob Marley will release Africa Unite, a posthumous album featuring his greatest hits. 

A fusion of reggae and Afrobeats, the ten-track project blends some of the icon’s most beloved songs, like “Waiting In Vain” and “Three Little Birds,” with the contemporary sounds of popular African musicians Tiwa Savage, Teni, Sarkodie and more. 

“Africa Unite is an album that showcases the importance of Bob Marley in modern day Africa,” Marley’s daughter Cedella Marley said. “The artists that feature on this album have reimagined Bob Marley’s classics in a way we know he would have loved and been proud of.”

Three of the 10 songs are available for streaming today, while the full release of Africa Unite is expected on August 4.

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Will we be getting a new Pearl Jam album in 2024?

That appears to be the band’s goal, according to bassist Jeff Ament. Speaking with Consequence’s Kyle Meredith with… podcast, Ament shares, “I think everybody hopes that we have a record out next year.”

“If we have a record out next year that means we’ll probably play a few more shows,” he says. “There’s a couple places we haven’t played in quite awhile … I think we have stuff penciled in.”

Aments remarks follow guitarist Stone Gossard‘s comments that the upcoming album, the follow-up to 2020’s Gigaton, is “getting close to the finish line.”

“The hardest part of making a record a lot of times is figuring out which songs go on the record and ‘Do we need to record another song?’ and ‘What’s the artwork, what’s the title?’ … all that stuff,” Ament says.

“I know for a fact right now everybody wants the summer off, because last summer was a bit of a grind,” he continues. “I know at that point, the record’s still not done, so, come September … the questions we have about where are we at, whatever, we’ll ask those questions again and we’ll revisit them.”

Pearl Jam is also kicking off a short U.S. tour August 31 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Queen is back with episode 23 of their weekly YouTube series Queen The Greatest Live, where they are still delving into the process of adapting their studio hits for the live stage.

This time, they are focused on the 1980 classic “Another One Bites The Dust,” which became one of the band’s biggest hits. The clip features archival footage of their performance at the first of their two shows at Wembley Stadium in July 1986.

“I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school, and I’ve always been interested in that sort of music,” bassist John Deacon previously told Bassist & Bass Techniques about the song. “I’d been wanting to do a track like ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ for a while, but originally, all I had was the line and the bass riff. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did.”

That song was totally transformed live, thanks to frontman Freddie Mercury, who led the Wembley crowd of over 72,000 fans in a call and response, with Brian May improvising guitar licks on his Red Special guitar. 

Next week on Queen The Greatest Live, the group gets into “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

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