Classic Rock 93.9

Tired of biopics about legendary rock stars? Well, soon you’ll have a chance to watch a biopic about the man behind some of rock’s most legendary recordings.

Variety reports that an authorized biopic about legendary producer Tom Wilson, called Like a Rolling Stone, is in the works from Pfonetic, a movie and TV production company. The title comes from the fact that Wilson produced Bob Dylan‘s iconic single of the same name.

Wilson also produced early Dylan albums like Bringing It All Back Home, Another Side of Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin’. In 1969, Dylan credited Wilson with helping him move from a folk to a rock sound.

In addition to Dylan, Wilson produced Simon & Garfunkel‘s hit “The Sound of Silence”; its success inspired the duo, who’d broken up by that point, to reunite. His other credits include two albums by The Velvet Underground — including the seminal release The Velvet Underground & Nico — plus LPs by The Animals, Frank Zappa and more.

Pfonetic also plans to make a documentary about the late Roger Nichols, a former nuclear scientist and inventor who became Steely Dan‘s recording engineer, winning six Grammys for his work with the notoriously perfectionist group.

Nichols’ name has been in the news lately: His daughters recently discovered a tape among their late father’s things, which turned out to be a legendary “lost” Steely Dan tune called “The Second Arrangement.” The daughters plan to sell the tape at auction to help finance the documentary.

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Brian Setzer has released a new single from his upcoming solo album The Devil Always Collects, which is due out September 15.

The song is called “Black Leather Jacket,” and in a video discussing how he wrote it, he explains that it’s about a journey taken by the ultimate rock ‘n roll accessory.

“It followed the guy through his whole life. He wore a black leather jacket when he met his girl and then got into a crash,” says the Stray Cats frontman. “Til the very end he had a black leather jacket. I like the idea of it. Black leather jackets are very personal things. They’re something you keep. You don’t get rid of those.”

Speaking about his own lineup of leather jackets, Setzer adds, “I still have one from England from the ’80s.” He laughs, “Surprisingly it’s a little small. It must have shrunk! But I still take it out for a ride.”

As previously reported, Brian will kick off his first tour in four years, the Rockabilly Riot tour, on September 27 in Red Bank, New Jersey. A complete list of dates can be found at briansetzer.com.  He says the set list might features a few covers, including the Ray Charles classic “George On My Mind.”

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On Wednesday, August 2, surviving Motörhead members Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee brought the ashes of late frontman Lemmy Kilmister to Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival to be enshrined on the grounds.

“Lemmy loved playing Wacken; there was a long relationship as we played for the first time in 1997 and returned many, many times,” Dee said. “It is quite natural that he is returning now and has another place forever.”

“It’s great that Lemmy will be at Wacken forever among such good friends,” Campbell added. “And I’m glad there’s another home where people can raise a toast to him.”

You can watch a video recap of the ceremony streaming now on YouTube.

Dee and Campbell also stuck around to join headliner Doro‘s set for renditions of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” and “Love Me Forever.”

Meanwhile, the Motörhead camp has taken issue with some articles on the Wacken ceremony reporting that Lemmy’s ashes were “scattered in the mud.”

A post to the Motörhead Instagram reads, “While amusing to us, we have to formally declare, in Lemmy’s language, that this is, indeed, a load of bollocks!”

Some of Lemmy’s ashes were previously enshrined in a giant statue built at France’s Hellfest.

Lemmy died in 2015 at age 70. While Motörhead effectively ended upon Lemmy’s passing, a number of archival pieces have been released over the past few years, the most recent being Live at Montreux Jazz Festival ’07, which dropped in June.

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Former Yes guitarist and vocalist Trevor Rabin has released “Big Mistakes,” the first single and video from his upcoming album Rio, due out October 6.

In a statement, he says the song is “essentially about surviving my late teens/twenties, hence the lyric: ‘We played in the fire/we danced in the rain/Up all night/we made big mistakes’.” He adds, “I should have called the song ‘I Can’t Believe I’m Alive.’”

Rio is Rabin’s first album in 34 years on which he sings; his last album with vocals was 1989’s Can’t Look Away. He released that in the middle of his run with Yes, which produced the albums 90125, Big Generator, Union and Talk. His most recent solo album prior to Rio was 2012’s all-instrumental release, Jacaranda.

Describing the sound of Rio, which is named after his granddaughter, Rabin says, “I wanted to get into many different areas. Of course there are ‘prog things’, but overall there are a lot of styles going on.”

The album is now available for preorder now and will be available in a number of formats, including a limited-edition CD/Blu-ray and two-LP vinyl sets, a digital album and a standard CD. The limited editions feature three bonus tracks.

Here’s the track listing for the album:

“Big Mistakes”
“Push”
“Oklahoma”
“Paradise”
“Thandi”
“Goodbye”
“Tumbleweed”
“These Tears”
“Egoli”
“Toxic”

Bonus tracks:
“Spek & Polly”
“Fragile” (Demo)
“Georgia”

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On This Day, August 4, 1964 …

The Kinks released their third single, “You Really Got Me,” in the U.K., where it became their first number one hit and stayed on top for two weeks. 

The tune was released in America that September and became a breakthrough hit for the band, peaking at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

Guitarist Dave Davies created the distorted guitar sound in the tune by slicing up the speaker on his amp with a razor blade. The highly influential track has been described as proto-punk and early heavy metal.

The track hit the charts once again in 1978 after Van Halen covered it for their self-titled debut album and released it as their debut single. The Van Halen version peaked at number 36 on the Hot 100.

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In-store album signings are increasingly rare these days, but Alice Cooper couldn’t pass up the chance to do one in his hometown. He’ll be signing copies of his new album, Road, at Detroit’s Rock City Music Company on September 4.

“Of course, that’s my hometown and the home of hard rock, so, with the Road album just released the week before, I can’t think of a better place to do an in-store album signing than the Motor City!” Alice says in a statement. “So all you Detroiters come out and see me and we’ll rock a little bit together!” 

You do need a ticket to attend the in-store signing, but the price includes a copy of Road on either LP or CD/Blu-Ray. Both include Alice Cooper — Live at Hellfest 2022, a 90-minute concert recorded in 2022.

The only bad news is that selfies with Cooper won’t be allowed due to time constraints, and he’s only signing copies of Road, so leave your beat-up copy of Billion Dollar Babies at home.

Road arrives August 25. It includes the single “White Line Frankenstein,” which boasts a guitar solo by Tom Morello. On August 5, Alice will be the special guest at the Syracuse, New York, date of the Mötley Crüe/Def Leppard Stadium Tour.

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With Freddie Mercury, Queen’s live shows were just as much about entertainment and spectacle as they were about rock ‘n roll, which you can see in the latest episode of Queen The Greatest Live — “Big Spender.”

The episode showcases footage from two different Queen shows: 1975’s Christmas Eve show at London’s Hammersmith Odeon and a 1986 show at Wembley Stadium.  Both feature Freddie Mercury performing a rocking, yet campy version of “Big Spender,” a song from the 1966 musical Sweet Charity.

In 1975, Freddie removes his kimono to reveal a white top and teeny white shorts. In 1986, he takes off his already-shredded shirt to finish the song bare-chested.  He also changes the song’s pronouns, singing “everyone” or “every gal” rather than “every guy.”

In 1977, Freddie explained to Hit Parader that such a moment was only possible because Queen was already an established act.

“Sneaking my cabaret influences into our act was done slowly. Could you imagine me doing ‘Big Spender’ when we were first starting? As a rock band? They’d freak,” he said. “Now we do more a combination of rock ‘n roll and theater.”

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Back in June, The Police’s classic album Synchronicity celebrated its 40th anniversary, and guitarist Andy Summers recently reflected on the album’s popularity with ABC Audio. 

Summers says when they made the album, The Police were so popular it was “complete pandemonium.” He shares, “We were like The Beatles of the ’80s. I mean, it was insane.” 

Because of that, Summers says they felt they “could put anything out and it would be a hit.” But he insists, “We were trying to make the best possible record.”

But Andy says when they went into the studio there was “quite a lot of tension in the band,” mainly because Sting wanted to “do his own stuff.” While they had a few songs that felt right for the album, he notes, “The key moment came when we had ‘Every Breath You Take.'”

But even with a great song, Summers says it still wasn’t quite coming together until Sting told him to “go on, go in there and make it your own,” and in one take he put down the song’s “immortal guitar line.” 

Their manager instantly insisted it be the first single, although the band was hesitant because it was a ballad. Of course, they were wrong. “Went out and it stayed at number one for eight weeks, the album was number one for four months,” Summers says of the song’s impact. “Now ‘Every Breath You Take’ is the most played song of all time in American radio.”  

Released June 17, 1983, Synchronicity spent 17 weeks on top of the Billboard 200. In 2009 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and in 2023 it was chosen by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

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Peter Gabriel‘s recent song “Road to Joy” has led him back to the Billboard airplay charts for the first time in years.

Gabriel hasn’t appeared on a Billboard airplay chart as a lead artist since 2002. He did chart in 2008, but it was as a featured artist on a song called “Burn You Up, Burn You Down,” credited to Big Blue Ball. 

In 2002 he reached #20 on Billboard‘s Adult Alternative Airplay chart with the song “More Than This,” from his album Up.

But now he’s back with “Road to Joy,” which has debuted at #37 on the Adult Alternative Airplay. The funky track, produced by Gabriel and Brian Eno, is somewhat reminiscent of his 1993 single “Kiss That Frog.”

“Road to Joy” is the sixth song that Gabriel has released from his upcoming album, i/o, which still doesn’t have an announced release date. He’s been releasing one song from it during the full moon each month; the one he put out on August 1 is called “Olive Tree.”

In the ’80s and ’90s, Gabriel was all over the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with hits like “Shock The Monkey,” “Sledgehammer” and “In Your Eyes.”

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Sting is not on the Barbie soundtrack, but he did — albeit inadvertently — inspire Christopher Nolan to make the movie Oppenheimer. Now, he’s reaping the benefits of “Barbenheimer” mania.

As previously reported, Nolan has said in several press interviews that he first became interested in J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb and the subject of Oppenheimer, while growing up in the ’80s. Amid mounting fears of a nuclear war, Nolan said, he heard Sting’s 1986 hit “Russians,” which contains the lyric, “How can I save my little boy/ from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?”

Now Billboard reports that streams of “Russians,” which appears on Sting’s debut solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, are trending up. For the week ending July 27, the song posted a 48% gain, according to Luminate, the company that tracks streaming and sales numbers for Billboard.

This is the second time in recent years that “Russians” seems to reflect the zeitgeist. In March 2022, Sting released a new charity version of the song in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Proceeds go to HelpUkraine.center, a volunteer storage center set up by Ukrainian business owners to receive humanitarian and medical aid from all over the world.

“I’ve only rarely sung this song in the many years since it was written, because I never thought it would be relevant again,” Sting said in a statement at the time. “But, in the light of one man’s bloody and woefully misguided decision to invade a peaceful, unthreatening neighbor, the song is, once again, a plea for our common humanity.”

In the song’s chorus, Sting sings, “What might save us me and you/ is if the Russians love their children too.”

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