Classic Rock 93.9

Elton John and British pop singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran have collaborated onstage, but never on record — until now.

The U.K.’s Official Charts Company reports that, while speaking to NPO Radio 2, Sheeran revealed the news that he and Elton, whose company used to manage him, are teaming up for a Christmas single.

Sheeran explained that Elton called him up last December 25 to say Merry Christmas, but also to say that he wanted Ed to join him to do another holiday song, because his festive classic “Step into Christmas” had returned to the British top 10.

No word yet on what the new song’s title is, or when it will be released. However, the race to have the so-called “Christmas number one” — the song that’s at the top of the charts on December 25 — is a big deal in the U.K., and Official Charts now predicts that this song, whatever it is, will be a strong contender for the title.

Elton is set to release his recently announced album of collaborations, The Lockdown Sessions, on October 22, while Ed is putting out his new album, = (Equals), on October 29. While this Christmas single hasn’t appeared on either of those projects’ track listings, perhaps it’ll be added to the digital version of the releases.

Grote primeur in het 10-voor-9 journaal! @edsheeran heeft een kerstsingle met @eltonjohn gemaakt. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/sygJQNTvbS

— Jan-Willem Start Op! (@jwstartop) October 6, 2021

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An expansive new Emerson, Lake & Palmer box set titled Out of This World: Live (1970-1997), featuring five full concert performances spanning 27 years of the British prog-rock trio’s long history, will be released on October 29.

The collection, which you can pre-order now, will be available as a seven-CD set and a 10-LP vinyl package. Most of the recordings haven’t been issued on vinyl before.

The first concert in the box set is an August 1970 performance at the U.K.’s Isle of Wight Festival, the band’s second-ever live show.

The second concert is ELP’s headlining set at the California Jam festival, held in April 1974 in Ontario, California.

Concert number three took place in August 1977 at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, and featured the band showcasing their 1977 Works albums.

The fourth concert is an October 1992 show at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall that the band played after the release of Black Moon, its first new studio album in 14 years.

The final show on the Out of This World: Live box set is a previously unreleased recording of September 1997 performance at Phoenix’s Union Hall capturing ELP a few years after the arrival of its final studio album, 1993’s In the Hot Seat.

The box set comes packaged with a 32-page photo book featuring rare and intimate images of the band, plus a foreword penned by Prog magazine editor Jerry Ewing.

“The box set is one of my proudest moments,” says ELP drummer Carl Palmer, the band’s last surviving member. “I know Keith [Emerson] and Greg [Lake] would agree with me!…For me, this shows ELP at their very best throughout years of touring and recording. The box set represents the lifeline of our music in our time.”

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James Heftfield and Lars Ulrich feel they “weren’t equipped” to handle bassist Jason Newsted leaving Metallica.

Newsted, of course, exited the legendary metal outfit in 2001 in part to work on other projects. His departure was a sore spot for Hetfield and Ulrich, who felt Newsted releasing his own music was a betrayal of Metallica. The bad blood was explored in great detail in the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster.

In an interview Wednesday with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Hetfield and Ulrich expressed regret about how they handled Newsted leaving.

“Jason is the only member of Metallica who has ever left willingly,” Ulrich says. “That in itself is a statistic. And the resentment from James and I was just so…You can’t do that. You can only leave if we want you to leave. And then we weren’t equipped at the time to do a deep dive into why he was leaving.”

The drummer continued, “You can see 20 years later, it makes complete sense. We write the songs. We make the decisions. We do all of it. You have no creative outlet in this band. You have no creative voice. Then when you go and do something that gives you satisfaction in a way for you to express yourself to the rest of the world, then we get p***ed at you. Then that resentment then goes to you leaving the band.”

If something similar happened with Metallica today, Hetfield feels he’d handle it differently.

“If it was like that right now, say, [current bassist] Robert [Trujillo] comes and says, ‘Hey, I’m done here’…I would fight for him,” he said. “I didn’t know about the fight back then.”

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A little over a year after the release of their last studio effort, Whoosh!, Deep Purple has announced plans to put out a new album titled Turning to Crime on November 26.

The new collection, which was produced by the band’s frequent collaborator, Bob Ezrin, features the British hard-rock legends putting their own spin on 12 songs originally recorded by other artists.

Turning to Crime, which is Deep Purple’s first-ever covers album, includes versions of Fleetwood Mac‘s “Oh Well,” Bob Dylan‘s “Watching the River Flow,” Little Feat‘s “Dixie Chicken,” The Yardbirds‘ “Shapes of Things,” Cream‘s “White Room,” and more.

The final track is a medley titled “Caught in the Act” that features sections of songs by Booker T & the MG’s, The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, and The Spencer Davis Group.

According to a making-of video posted on the earMUSIC label’s YouTube channel, the album came together remotely while the band members were separated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each member chose songs they wanted to record and then the group voted on the final list of tunes.

In advance of Turning to Crime, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers have released the album’s lead track, a prog-flavored version of Love‘s 1966 garage-rock classic “7 and 7 Is,” as a digital single.

Turning to Crime can be pre-ordered now, and will be available on CD, as a two-LP vinyl set, as a five-LP/DVD box set and digitally.

You can check out more details about the album at TurningToCrime.com. Fans who sign up for Deep Purple’s newsletter at the site will receive a free download of a non-album track on November 12.

Here’s the full Turning to Crime track list:

“7 and 7 Is”
“Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu”
“Oh Well”
“Jenny Take a Ride!”
“Watching the River Flow”
“Let the Good Times Roll”
“Dixie Chicken”
“Shapes of Things”
“The Battle of New Orleans”
“Lucifer”
“White Room”
“Caught in the Act” (Medley: “Going Down”/”Green Onions”/”Hot ‘Lanta”/”Dazed and Confused”/”Gimme Some Lovin'”)

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A recording of Bruce Springsteen recording a passage from John Steinbeck‘s classic book The Grapes of Wrath is featured in a new Italian documentary titled Ants, about the plight of African and Asia migrants trying to make their way to Europe to find a better life.

A segment of Springsteen’s spoken-word soliloquy can be heard in a new trailer for the film that got its exclusive premiere at Variety.com.

In the clip, interspersed with scenes of various migrants in the midst of their journeys, we hear The Boss read, “The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line…On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.”

Ants producer Davide Azzolini tells Variety that he reached out to Springsteen via his manager, David Landau, to see if Bruce would do the reading, which he felt would give the film a “more universal” appeal.

The Grapes of Wrath, of course, was written during the Great Depression and focuses on people who left their homes in the Dust Bowl region of the U.S. to travel to California seeking a better future. Springsteen’s song “The Ghost of Tom Joad” was inspired by the novel’s main character.

Azzolini says he wasn’t hopeful about Springsteen agreeing to the request, but a few weeks later, he was informed that Bruce “would tape [the reading] in his studio.”

A few days later, Azzolini says he was emailed “two different takes of his recordings.”

Ants, which was directed by Italian journalist and filmmaker Valerio Nicolosi, features footage shot on rescue vessels, in crowded migrant camps on the Greek island of Lesbos, and in the Balkans. The movie currently is being submitted to international film festivals.

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of Eddie Van Halen‘s death.

The legendary guitar virtuoso and Van Halen co-founder died October 6, 2020, following a battle with cancer. He was 65.

Eddie and his older brother, Alex, were born in The Netherlands before the Van Halen family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1962. The two were interested in music in an early age and played in several bands together before forming Van Halen in the early ’70s with Eddie on guitar and Alex on drums. They soon found vocalist David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony, who comprised Van Halen’s “classic” lineup.

Though each member of Van Halen brought their own personality to the band, Eddie’s guitar playing was always the star of the show. He was particularly renowned for his finger-tapping technique, famously heard in the Van Halen instrumental “Eruption,” which is now considered to be among the greatest guitar solos of all time.

Van Halen’s classic lineup released six albums, from 1978’s self-titled debut to 1984’s 1984, and produced classic singles in “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Unchained,” “Panama,” and the number-one hit, “Jump.”

In between all that, Eddie married actress Valerie Bertinelli in 1981 — with whom he had a son, Wolfgang, in 1991 — and played the solo on Michael Jackson‘s hit “Beat It.”

Roth left Van Halen in 1985 and was replaced by Sammy Hagar, whose tenure fronting the band produced four-straight number-one albums. Hagar was then replaced by Gary Cherone for one more album before Van Halen disbanded in 1999.

During the group’s hiatus, Eddie underwent treatment for tongue cancer and separated from Bertinelli. The couple eventually divorced in 2007, and Eddie married his second wife, publicist Janie Liszewski, in 2009.

Van Halen reunited briefly in the mid-2000s with Hagar singing before reforming again in 2006, with Roth back and a then-teenage Wolfgang playing bass instead of Anthony. That lineup would produce a final Van Halen album, 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, before playing their last tour together in 2015.

Following his father’s death, Wolfgang revealed that there had been plans for a so-called “Kitchen Sink” Van Halen reunion tour, which would potentially feature Anthony back along with all three of the band’s singers. However, those plans were put on hold due to Eddie’s declining health.

Wolfgang, meanwhile, is carrying on the family legacy with his solo band, Mammoth WVH. The project has already scored two number-one Billboard rock singles.

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Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner has shared more about the scary health issue that necessitated emergency heart surgery late last month.

In a statement posted to the band’s website, Faulkner explains that he felt something was off during Priest’s performance of “Painkiller” during their set at September’s Louder than Life festival.

“As I watch footage from the Louder than Life Festival in Kentucky, I can see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling whilst playing ‘Painkiller’ as my aorta ruptured and started to spill blood into my chest cavity,” Faulkner writes. “I was having what my doctor called an aortic aneurysm and complete aortic dissection.”

Indeed, if you look at fan-shot footage of the performance, it does appear that Faulkner grabs his chest towards the end of the song.

Faulkner was immediately rushed to the local Rudd Heart & Lung Center — which, luckily, was only four miles away — where he underwent over 10 hours of open heart surgery.

“It could have all ended so differently,” Faulkner muses. “We only had an hours set that night due to Metallica‘s performance after us — and it does cross my mind if it was a full set, would I have played until total collapse…? If it hadn’t happened in such a high adrenaline situation would my body have been able to keep going long enough to reach the hospital…?”

“We can always drive ourselves crazy with these things but I’m still alive thankfully,” he adds.

Faulkner is now on the road to recovery, and notes that several parts of his chest were “replaced with mechanical components.”

“I’m literally made of metal now,” he says.

Due to Faulkner’s surgery, Judas Priest postponed the remainder of their 2021 U.S. tour.

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Here’s wishing a happy 70th birthday to longtime REO Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin.

Cronin first joined the Illinois-based band in 1972 in time to record their second album, R.E.O./T.W.O., but he left the group because of creative differences during the making of their next record, Ridin’ the Storm Out.

In 1976, Kevin rejoined REO Speewagon and has fronted the band ever since. During the group’s heyday in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Cronin split main songwriting duties with guitarist Gary Richrath.  In 1978, REO scored minor hits with the Cronin-penned “Roll with the Changes” and “Time for Me to Fly,” which were both featured on the band’s You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish album.

REO Speedwagon’s real commercial breakthrough came in 1980 with Hi Infidelity. The album spent 15 non-consective weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 in 1981, more than any other album that year. It featured the chart-topping ballad “Keep On Loving You” and the #5 hit “Take It on the Run,” both written by Cronin. Hi Infidelity has gone on to be certified Diamond by the RIAA for sales of over 10 million in the U.S.

Numerous other Cronin-penned Billboard Hot 100 hits followed for REO Speedwagon during the ’80s, including “Keep the Fire Burnin’,” which peaked at #7 in 1982, and the band’s second chart-topping single, “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” which was #1 for three weeks in 1985.

Richrath was fired from REO over conflicts with Cronin in 1989, and Kevin has continued to lead the band. REO’s most recent studio album was the 2009 holiday collection Not So Silent Night…Christmas with REO Speedwagon, but the group still tours regularly.

The band’s next concert is scheduled for this Friday, October 8, in Boerne, Texas.

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New music from Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators is “coming soon.”

That’s according to a new Facebook video posted by the Guns N’ Roses shredder featuring footage of him jamming along with his solo band.

“I think the record itself is probably the best one that we’ve done so far,” Slash says in the clip, referring to the upcoming fourth Conspirators album. “We’re showing no signs of slowing down.”

The most recent Conspirators effort is 2018’s Living the Dream.

Slash, meanwhile, just released a pair of new singles with Guns N’ Roses, “Absurd” and “Hard Skool.” The tunes mark the first fresh material from the “Welcome to the Jungle” rockers since Slash and Duff McKagan rejoined Axl Rose in the band in 2016.

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Foo Fighters are set to headline the 2022 edition of the Innings Festival.

The baseball-themed event, which coincides with the beginning of MLB’s spring training, takes place February 26-27 in Tempe, Arizona.

Other artists on the lineup include Tame Impala, St. Vincent, Black Pumas, White Reaper, My Morning Jacket, Dashboard Confessional, Matt and Kim, Fitz and the Tantrums and Nothing but Thieves.

The festival will also feature appearances by a number of former MLB players, including Roger Clemens, Jake Peavy, Dave Stewart and Rick Sutcliffe.

For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit InningsFestival.com.

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