Classic Rock 93.9

Acclaimed bassist Robbie Shakespeare, who with drummer Sly Dunbar made up the legendary Jamaican rhythm section and production duo Sly and Robbie, died Wednesday at the age of 68, Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner reports.

According to the newspaper, Shakespeare had been suffering from kidney-related health issues and died in Florida, where he’d lived for the last few years.

Sly and Robbie first worked together in the Jamaican session group The Revolutionaries, and soon began collaborating as a musical duo and a production team. Their work is credited with revolutionizing the sound of reggae.

The reggae stars they worked with include Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, Black Uhuru and Bunny Wailer. They also collaborated with a wide-ranging list of rock and pop artists, including Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Jackson Browne, Joe Cocker, No Doubt, Grace Jones, Sinead O’Connor and Simply Red.

Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Jamaica’s minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, paid tribute to Shakespeare in her Twitter feed, writing, “Robbie and Sly Dunbar…have been among Jamaica’s greatest musicians. This fantastic team took bass playing and drumming to the highest level as they made music for themselves as a group and for many other artistes locally and internationally. Robbie’s loss will be severely felt by the industry at home and abroad. He will be sorely missed.”

In Rolling Stone‘s 2020 list of the “50 Greatest Bassists of All Time,” Robbie ranked #17. The magazine wrote of his and Dunbar’s musical contributions, “No other musical entity in the post-[Bob] Marley era has been so omnipresent in shaping the sound of Jamaica and bringing it to the world.”

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Metallica has announced announced livestreams for the band’s upcoming 40th anniversary concerts, taking place December 17 and 19 in San Francisco.

You’ll be able to watch both shows for free via Amazon Music, the Amazon Music Twitch channel and Amazon Prime Video, even if you don’t have an on-demand Prime membership. Following their live premiere, the concerts will be available for later viewings via the Coda Collection, a music-themed channel on Amazon Prime Video.

The livestreams also mark the first entry in a newly announced partnership between Metallica and the Coda Collection, which is set to include a “full slate of concert films, documentaries, and additional content” premiering in 2022.

For more info, visit CodaCollection.co.

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Billy Idol is one of the music stars that will help Fox ring in the New Year.

Idol is among several artists who will featured in pre-recorded performances on Fox’s New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast 2022, which airs live Friday, December 31, beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

Ken Jeong and Joel McHale will be hosting the special live from Times Square, while Ozzy Osbourne‘s daughter, Kelly, will also be on hand as a special correspondent.

Other performers set to perform on the show, albeit in pre-recorded footage, include Maroon 5, Pink, Imagine Dragons and more. Country star Trace Adkins will appear live to ring in 2022.

Once the New Year gets underway, Idol will join Journey as the opening act for the first portion of the veteran rockers’ Freedom Tour 2022 of North America, from February 2 through April 5.

This past September, Billy released an EP titled The Roadside, his first collection of new music since his 2014 studio album, Kings & Queens of the Underground.

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KISS‘ Gene Simmons showed up on stage while Foo Fighters were rocking and rolling all nite during a recent concert in Las Vegas.

During the show, guitarist Chris Shiflett started playing the riff to a KISS song when Dave Grohl interrupted him to reveal that Simmons was actually backstage.

“We can’t do that in front of Gene Simmons!” Grohl said. He then started begging Simmons to come on stage and show the crowd his “punim” — Yiddish for “face.” Simmons finally obliged and walked out briefly while wearing a face mask, and handed Grohl what appeared to be a dollar bill.

“I had posters of that motherf***er on my wall when I was a kid,” Grohl exclaimed as Simmons returned backstage. “Let me rephrase that — I still have posters of Gene Simmons on my f***ing wall at home.”

You can watch fan-shot footage of the interaction streaming now on YouTube.

Simmons also tweeted a video of him palling around with the Foos before the show.

Grohl, by the way, just covered KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” with producer Greg Kurstin for the final night of their Hanukkah Sessions series.

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

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Neil Young‘s latest studio album with his frequent backing band Crazy Horse, Barn, gets released this Friday, and Young sat down recently with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to chat about the project, which was recorded quickly this past June in a restored barn that Young owns in the Colorado Rockies.

During the interview, which was conducted at producer Rick Rubin‘s Shangri-La Studio in Malibu, California, Young explains why he feels Barn is one of his best albums.

“I’m very thankful for having made it,” he declares. “And I think it was a gift and everything in it works [for me], and it’s not often that happens…Everything felt right. So I feel great about it.”

Young says he contacted Crazy Horse’s members 10 months in advance and timed the Barn sessions to happen during the full moon.

“[W]hen we got set up, we started to play and then [the moon] got bigger and bigger and bigger until we recorded everything,” Neil recalls. “So that was cool. It was really cool.”

Regarding the actual  barn, Young notes that it dates back to the 1870s, “and it was falling down and going back into the ground…So we took it and got a real master barn builder…and we rebuilt. Made it just like it was in the old drawings of it and old photographs.”

As previously reported, a film capturing the making of Barn, directed by Young’s wife, actress Daryl Hannah, will be included on a Blu-ray packaged with the deluxe version of the album, and also released as a standalone Blu-ray.

The documentary will get its theatrical premiere tonight at theaters in New York City, Chicago and Santa Monica, California. Visit NeilYoungArchives.com for more details.

Watch Young’s full interview with Lowe at Apple Music’s YouTube channel.

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The first-ever authorized documentary devoted to the life of late Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia is going into production and will be directed by filmmaker and longtime Garcia collaborator Justin Kreutzmann, son of founding Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann.

Garcia’s daughter Trixie is serving as an executive producer of the film on behalf of the Jerry Garcia Family LLC company, and the project will be given full access to Jerry’s personal archives. The movie will seek to tell the definitive story of Garcia’s life, looking at Jerry’s endeavors as a father, husband, musician, artist and friend.

The documentary will feature previously unheard interviews with Jerry and various people who were close to him, as well as never-before-seen footage Justin shot of Garcia throughout the years. The movie also will profile how Garcia inspired a movement of peace-minded followers and had an enduring impact on American culture.

The film is being produced by RadicalMedia, whose previous projects include the award-winning and critically acclaimed 2021 documentary Summer of Soul.

“When people ask what I miss most about him not being around, I think it’s just missing Jerry, the person. People like him don’t come around very often,” Justin says in a statement. “It’s my dream to capture the feeling you got when you hung out with Jerry and listened to him play music. A lot of people have told the world what they thought of Jerry but I want to show what Jerry thought of the world.”

Adds Trixie, “Who better to illuminate the musical journey of Jerry Garcia than someone who grew up right in the middle of the Grateful Dead scene? Jerry loved Justin like one of his own and so do we.”

Garcia died of a heart attack in August 1995. He was 53.

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Founding Survivor member and The Ides of March frontman Jim Peterik has reached a multi-million dollar deal with Primary Wave Music, which has acquired a majority stake in the royalties of his music publishing catalog and rights to many of his compositions.

Among the many songs Peterik has co-written are the Survivor hits “Eye of the Tiger,” “The Search Is Over,” “Burning Heart,” “High on You” and “I Can’t Hold Back,” and he also penned the Ides of March classic “Vehicle.”

In addition, Jim has co-written hits and memorable tunes for a variety of other artists, including 38 Special‘s “Hold On Loosely,” “Caught Up in You” and “Rockin’ into the Night,” Sammy Hagar‘s “Heavy Metal” and The Beach Boys‘ “That’s Why God Made the Radio.”

In conjunction with the deal with Primary Wave, the company will help Peterik with marketing, branding and licensing of his music.

Peterik joins a growing list of well-known artists whose publishing or music catalogues have been at least partly acquired by Primary Wave, among them Stevie Nicks, Chris Isaak, late Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro, Prince and many more.

“I’m thrilled to be with a company who is as passionate about music as I am,” says Peterik, adding, “It seems that many of my musical heroes feel the same way! I’m looking forward to great days ahead creating new music and finding new homes for the many songs in my catalogue!”

Peterik continues to front The Ides of March, whose latest album, Play On, was released in 2019. He also co-wrote many songs for ex-Styx singer/keyboardist Dennis DeYoung‘s two recent solo albums — 2020’s 26 East, Volume 1 and 2021’s 26 East, Volume 2.

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Jethro Tull has premiered a music video for a second advance track from its forthcoming studio album, The Zealot Gene, an English folk-flavored tune titled “Sad City Sisters.”

The clip, which was directed by Iranian filmmaker Sam Chegini, can be viewed at the band’s official YouTube channel. The video shows a female puppet that gets jostled and soiled as it gets passed along from hand to hand through various scenes and backdrops.

Explaining the inspiration for the song, Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson says, “‘Sad City Sisters’ throws up memories of a Saturday night in Cardiff, Wales when I was on my way home from our concert…some years ago. It could equally well have been any town in the UK, I suppose, or even most cities of the Western World. What possesses hell-bent and vulnerable young people to slip so easily into that tragic loss of dignity and end up sprawling drunk in a wet and windy street at midnight?”

“Sad City Sisters” is available now as a digital download and via steaming services. Its release was preceded by “Shoshana Sleeping,” which also was accompanied by a music video.

As previously reported, The Zealot Gene will be released on January 28, 2022. The 12-track collection is the first new studio album from the veteran prog-rockers in more than 18 years. Jethro Tull began work on The Zealot Gene in 2017, and the album includes a number of songs that incorporate Biblical imagery while examining religious themes.

The Zealot Gene, which can be pre-ordered now, will be released in multiple formats and configurations, including a CD digipak, a two-LP/CD set, a limited-edition two-CD/Blu-ray artbook, and a limited-edition deluxe three-LP/two-CD/Blu-ray artbook.

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While many artists returned to the road in 2021, others decided to hold off until 2022. Now, Gametime, the app that specializes in last-minute tickets, has released its list of the most in-demand concerts for next year, and based on ticket sales, Elton John‘s rescheduled farewell tour is at #2 on the tally.

Elton was originally set to resume the Europe and U.K. legs of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour this year, but in September, he announced that he was moving those dates to 2023 because he had to have a hip operation. The next opportunity that fans will have to see Elton is January 19, 2022, when his North American tour — postponed from 2020 due to COVID-19 — begins in New Orleans.

Also on Gametime’s list are the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who are listed at #9 on the ranking. The veteran rockers plan to embark on a global tour starting in June, with a North American leg set to begin on July 23 in Denver. The trek will mark the group’s first full live outing since guitarist John Frusciante rejoined in late 2019.

Number one on the list is Latin superstar Bad Bunny, while other artists in the top 10 include Dead & Company collaborator John Mayer at #6. Mayer, who toured this year with Dead & Company, will launch his solo Sob Rock trek in February.

Here’s the app’s full list of the top-10 in-demand concerts for 2022:

1. Bad Bunny
2. Elton John tour
3. Billie Eilish
4. The Weeknd stadium tour
5. Justin Bieber
6. John Mayer
7. Dua Lipa
8. Tyler The Creator
9. Red Hot Chili Peppers
10. Tool

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Longtime David Bowie keyboardist Mike Garson is organizing a second annual star-studded virtual concert event celebrating the late rock legend on the January 8 anniversary of his birth.

The 2022 edition of the event, dubbed “Mike Garson’s A Bowie Celebration,” will take place on what would have been David’s 75th birthday, and will feature performances by Def Leppard, Duran Duran‘s Simon Le Bon and John Taylor, Living Colour, Rob Thomas, WALK THE MOON, and actors Gary Oldman and Evan Rachel Wood, among others.

In addition, Ricky Gervais will make a special appearance during the show, part of the proceeds from which will benefit the Save the Children charity.

Garson will lead a house band featuring musicians who toured and/or recorded with Bowie, including guitarists Earl Slick, Charlie Sexton and Gerry Leonard; drummers Alan Childs and Omar Hakim; sax players Steve Elson and Stan Harrison; and bassist Carmine Rojas.

Other guest singers will include longtime Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and Rolling Stones backing vocalist Bernard Fowler.

The event will be dedicated to legendary late photographer Mick Rock, and also will celebrate the 35th anniversary of Jim Henson fantasy film, Labyrinth, which starred Bowie as the Goblin King and featured five songs he wrote.

Tickets and ticket bundles for the event are available now at RollingLiveStudios.com/Bowie. Among the special extras included in some of the bundles are a Q&A with band members and an personal piano track recorded by Garson.

The presentation will begin at 9 p.m. ET on January 8 and will be available for 24 hours.

“It’s an honor to be able to continue to share David Bowie’s music with the world,” says Garson in a statement. “I’m excited for everyone to be able to experience this very special show.”

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