Lynch & Campbell onstage in 1979; Gary Gershoff/Getty Images
Founding Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and his current band, The Dirty Knobs, now have a very familiar face behind the drum kit: Founding Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch.
On Facebook, Campbell explained that Matt Laug, the drummer for The Dirty Knobs, has “a commitment touring in Italy through the end of June,” so Lynch will be filling in for him on all the band’s shows through a June 26 show in Aspen, CO.
Lynch’s first gigs with the band took place over the weekend in Boulder and Denver, CO. Their next show is April 28 in Houston. Laug will rejoin the band in July.
Campbell describes Lynch as “an old friend who I love dearly,” adding, “We’ve had the best time reconnecting.”
Lynch was a member of the Heartbreakers until he left in 1994; he was replaced by Steve Ferrone. He reunited with the Heartbreakers for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
In addition to the Heartbreakers, Lynch, who is also a songwriter and producer, contributed to albums by The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, Toto, Warren Zevon and many other artists.
Since Johnny Winter was such a venerated blues-rock guitarist, Edgar made sure to invite many acclaimed players to do justice to his brother’s songs. These included ZZ Top‘s Billy Gibbons and Allman Brothers Band alums Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes.
Gibbons and Trucks both contribute their guitar talents to a blazing version of Johnny’s 1969 song “I’m Yours and I’m Hers,” with Billy also lending vocals to the track.
Edgar tells ABC Audio that he felt “the juxtaposition” of Billy’s and Derek’s playing made the track special, noting, “I love hearing that interplay between the two of them.”
Winter says Trucks’ slide work “was just nothing short of amazing.”
As for Gibbons’ singing on the track, Edgar notes, “I love hearing Billy’s voice. You know, he has such a distinctive voice that you immediately know it’s him…[H]e put a lot of love into it.”
Haynes sings and plays guitar on a rendition of “Memory Pain,” which appeared on Johnny’s third studio album, 1969’s Second Winter. Edgar recalls that Warren immediately insisted on doing “Memory Pain” when asked to take part in the project, noting that Haynes was more than prepared for his session.
“You talk about magical moments in recording,” Edgar enthuses. “He walked up to the mic, he plugged in his guitar and he did that whole song start to finish, singing and playing at the same time. He did the song exactly the way Johnny would have done it with [his] blues trio.”
He adds, “[T]he honesty and sincerity of that just blew me away.”
Here’s Brother Johnny’s full track list:
“Mean Town Blues” — featuring Joe Bonamassa
“Alive and Well” — featuring Kenny Wayne Shepherd
“Lone Star Blues” — featuring Keb’ Mo’
“I’m Yours and I’m Hers” — featuring Billy Gibbons & Derek Trucks
“Johnny B. Goode” — featuring Joe Walsh & David Grissom
“Stranger” — featuring Michael McDonald, Joe Walsh & Ringo Starr
“Highway 61 Revisited” — featuring Kenny Wayne Shepherd & John McFee
“Rock ‘n’ Roll Hoochie Koo” — featuring Steve Lukather
“When You Got a Good Friend” — featuring Doyle Bramhall II
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” — featuring Phil X
“Guess I’ll Go Away” — featuring Taylor Hawkins & Doug Rappoport
“Drown in My Own Tears”
“Self Destructive Blues” — featuring Joe Bonamassa
“Memory Pain” — featuring Warren Haynes
“Stormy Monday Blues” — featuring Robben Ford
“Got My Mojo Workin'” — featuring Bobby Rush
“End of the Line” — featuring David Campbell Strings
Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Bonnie Raitt’s back with a new album, Just Like That…, her first release in more than six years. And while Bonnie’s big breakthrough didn’t come until she was 40, with her album Nick of Time, she now says that she’s glad it took years for her to have success.
Speaking to Variety, Bonnie, 72, admits, “I look at Taylor Swift and…Adele and Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran and people are handling incredible early success with the guidance and experience of people decades older, and I’m just so happy to see that. Because I don’t think I could have handled it.”
“I didn’t seek it and I wouldn’t have wanted a hit record,” she explains. “I actually turned down songs that would have made me a star…I just didn’t want to be that in that pressure. I was in it for the long run…planning to be doing this into my eighties or so.”
And that’s still her plan: As she tells Variety, her fellow musicians make her believe she’ll be able to do it.
“If you watched the Tony Bennett special with Lady Gaga, I stood up and gave him a standing ovation in my house. That’s how much I love that he still was able to do that show,” she notes. “And Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] — oh my God, what an inspiration. And Mavis [Staples, her current tour mate].”
“I don’t see any sign of any of us retiring,” she adds. “I mean, Bruce Springsteen and Sting — people are at the top of their form right now, I think.”
Meanwhile, Bonnie’s back on tour for the first time since the pandemic, and she’s thrilled, saying, “I’ve never had more of a mission to go back out on the road to bring joy and relief to people.”
If you need motivational anthems to keep you pumping iron at the gym, Queen will, Queen will rock you — thanks to Apple+ Fitness.
The Apple+ Fitness app has just debuted a Queen playlist specifically designed to make you yell “Don’t Stop Me Now!” while you’re doing the Fandago with free weights, the treadmill, the bike or workout machines. The playlist will “lift your spirits and deliver that extra shot of energy for whatever your goal might be,” according to Apple.
In addition to the inevitable “We Will Rock You,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions,” the playlist also includes hits and classic cuts like “I Want It All,” “Keep Yourself Alive,” “Tie Your Mother Down,” “Hammer to Fall,” “Death on Two Legs,” “Killer Queen,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “You’re My Best Friend,” “Stone Cold Crazy,” “Radio Gaga,” “Headlong,” “Fat Bottomed Girls,” “I Want to Break Free,” “Now I’m Here” and more.
You can check out a video on the Apple Fitness+ website showing a snippet of a Queen-soundtracked workout. There are also playlists from ABBA and Korean boy band BTS, if you feel like dancing.
KISS‘ upcoming archival release Off the Soundboard: Live at Donington doesn’t come out until June 10, but the band has released a track from the album to whet fans’ appetites.
It’s a live version of “Do You Love Me,” from the band’s 1976 album Destroyer. It’s now available on all the streaming services, as well as on YouTube. As previously reported, KISS — Off the Soundboard: Live at Donington 1996 features a 17-song headlining set the band played at the Monsters of Rock festival at England’s Donington Park on August 17, 1996.
In other KISS news, Paul Stanley‘s custom C8 Corvette 3LT convertible is going under the hammer at Barrett-Jackson’s 2022 Las Vegas Auction, taking place June 30 to July 2. Chevrolet presented the vehicle — with VIN 001, indicating that it’s the first Corvette produced for the 2022 model year — to Stanley, but he’s selling it because he’s not much of a car collector.
“I want to make it available to somebody who might be able to get more out of it, whether it’s to add to a collection or to drive it,” he says in a statement. The highest bidder will also get a signed Ibanez PS120 Paul Stanley Signature guitar.
“The guitar is another part of my life, another aspect of who I am. So I thought that whoever [might] acquire the car would have another piece of who I am,” he said, adding, “For me, my life has always been about the joy I can bring to other people. So here’s a car and a guitar. Go enjoy.”
Forty years after his tragic death in a plane crash at age 25, the life of guitarist Randy Rhoads is being explored in a new documentary.
Called Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon, the film is narrated by Tracii Guns and charts Rhoads’ career as the co-founder of Quiet Riot, which he subsequently left to become Ozzy Osbourne‘s guitarist. With Ozzy, he co-wrote legendary songs like “Crazy Train” and “Mr. Crowley” — the solos of which are among the most iconic in heavy metal history — and “Suicide Solution.”
After appearing on Ozzy’s first two solo albums, Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, Rhoads was killed in March of 1982 when the single-engine Beechcraft F35 plane in which he was riding — piloted by Ozzy’s tour bus driver — crashed and burst into flames while attempting to “buzz” Ozzy’s tour bus.
The documentary features interviews with Rhoads’ band mates, family members and fellow musicians, including Ozzy, the late Eddie Van Halen, Quiet Riot’s Rudy Sarzo, Drew Forsyth and the late Frankie Banali, Dokken‘s George Lynch, ex-KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick, the late Gary Moore, Dweezil Zappa and more.
Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon will be available on VOD starting May 6 on iTunes, Amazon, Dish, DirecTV, Google Play and many other services.
Rock artists are marking Earth Day by speaking up about climate change.
Eddie Vedder has partnered with NASA to interview the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. In their conversation, which you can watch now on YouTube, the Pearl Jam frontman asks the crew about their insights into climate change looking down on Earth from outer space, and the lessons learned living aboard the ISS that might help those of us on the ground live more peacefully.
Vedder previously teamed up with NASA to release a video for his song “Invincible,” which appears on his new solo album, Earthling. The clip features footage from various pre-launch tests and animation related to NASA’s upcoming Artemis I lunar mission.
Meanwhile, Annie Lennox, Pretenders, Brian Eno, Bruce Cockburn, Tom Morello and funk legend Bootsy Collins are among 6,000 music industry figures who’ve signed on to support an environmental initiative called Music Declares Emergency US.
“We call on all those within the US music industry to join us in declaring a climate emergency and to work towards making the cultural and operational changes necessary to contribute towards a sustainable future,” the campaign says.
In a statement, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde says, “This declaration needs to be the moment where music steps up and really pushes the truth to our audiences and confronts governments so that things happen much more quickly.”
Sting‘s partnership with reggae star Shaggy is continuing with a very unexpected project.
The former Police frontman and the chart-topping “It Wasn’t Me” singer won the Best Reggae Album Grammy in 2019 for their joint album, 44/876. Now they’ve teamed up for a new album, due out May 25, called Com Fly Wid Me.
Conceived and produced by Sting, the album features Shaggy singing reggae versions of Frank Sinatra classics like “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Luck Be a Lady,” “Under My Skin” and more. Turns out Sting came up with this unconventional idea three years ago, when he and Shaggy were on a boat in Norway and Sting heard Shaggy singing along with a Sinatra tune that was playing on the boat’s sound system.
In a statement, Sting says, “This idea of getting my friend to sing ten iconic songs from the Frank Sinatra songbook in a reggae style had been brewing for a while…I know, it sounds crazy! But every time the idea crossed my mind, it made me smile. And what does the world need now, more than anything else…something to smile about!”
“He’s not trying to be Frank, he’s Shaggy,” Sting adds. “So, relax and let that smile soothe the cares of the world away,” Sting adds.
A one-night-only performance celebrating the album’s release will take place May 26 at New York City’s Blue Note Jazz Club. Details of the gig will be announced soon.
Friday, April 22 is Earth Day, so here’s a reminder that you can score some unique and rare tracks today — and fight the global climate crisis at the same time.
As previously reported, Michael Stipe has teamed with legendary producer Brian Eno for a new single called “Future if Future,” which is one of about 100 songs that are available today with sales benefiting groups focused on raising awareness and fighting climate change.
In addition to the Stipe track, you’ll also find a never-before-released version of Peter Gabriel‘s classic 1982 track “Shock the Monkey,” as well as a version of Coldplay’s “Humankind” recorded live in Mexico City. There are also songs by ex-Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, Nile Rodgers and Eno himself.
Sales of the tracks benefit an organization that Eno founded, EarthPercent. Proceeds will go to organizations developing promising solutions to the climate crisis. All of the songs are now available for streaming and download at Earthpercent/bandcamp.com.
Part of EarthPercent’s mission is dedicated to addressing the environmental impact of the music industry, such as lowering the carbon footprint of touring artists. EarthPercent is asking the music community and related businesses to pledge a small percentage of what they make to the cause, with a goal of raise about $100 million by 2030.
Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett has premiered the video for his solo song, “High Plains Drifter.”
The animated clip begins with a car driving through a tunnel before crashing into another vehicle. The painterly images interact the dynamics of the music as they reflect the driver’s life flashing before their eyes.
You can watch the “High Plains Drifter” video streaming now on YouTube.
“High Plains Drifter” appears on Hammett’s upcoming debut solo EP, Portals. The four-track, instrumental collection will be released Saturday, April 23, as part of Record Store Day.
