Classic Rock News

Here’s your chance to party in wine country with Metallica.

The metal legends have announced a charity raffle with the grand prize of two VIP three-day passes to the ‘Tallica-headlined BottleRock Napa Valley festival, taking place May 27-29 in Napa, California.

The campaign will raise money for Metallica’s All Within My Hands charity foundation. The more you donate, the more entries you’ll receive.

For more info, visit Metallica.com.

In related news, Metallica’s hometown baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, have announced the details of its 2022 Metallica Night. The annual celebration, which has missed the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, makes its return to Oracle Park on May 24.

Previous Metallica Nights have featured the band performing the national anthem and throwing out the game’s ceremonial first pitch.

You can grab tickets now via MLB.com.

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Everyone knows that Billy Joel is from Long Island, New York, but if you’ve ever wanted to get a better sense of the places that he sings about in his songs, you can now do it online.

The Billy Joel “New York State of Mind” Landmarks website has just launched, featuring an interactive map of 50 locations in New York that are either connected to Billy’s life, or are mentioned in his songs. You can navigate to places he’s played, like Madison Square Garden or Yankee Stadium, or see, for example, exactly where the “Miracle Mile” is that Billy sings about cruising in “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” is located.

In keeping with this theme, a new digital five-track EP called Places is out on all streaming platforms, showcasing some of the locations on the map.  The songs include “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “New York State of Mind,” “Big Man on Mulberry Street,” “Everybody Loves You Now” and “Miami 2017 (See the Lights Go Out on Broadway).” It’s just the first in what will be a series of thematic EPs.

And if you want even more Billy, Walmart is now selling exclusive collectors’ editions of six of his albums, pressed on 12-inch colored vinyl with photo inserts.  Piano Man, The Stranger, 52nd Street, Glass Houses, An Innocent Man and Storm Front are all available, in different colors.

Both the website, the EP and the vinyl discs are part of the #50YearsofBilly celebration, recognizing 50 years since the release of his debut solo album, 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor.

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Dave Grohl may need to clear his schedule for a collaboration with yet another rock legend.

KISS‘ Paul Stanley tells Consequence.net that he’d be interested in working with the Foo Fighters frontman.

“At some point, I’m sure we’ll do something,” Stanley says. “We’ll make some noise together. That’s what makes music so fun.”

The two did previously jam together at Grohl’s birthday party concert in 2015. Grohl, meanwhile, just released a cover of KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” last year alongside producer Greg Kurstin for their Hanukkah Sessions series.

Previous Grohl collaborators include Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Motörhead‘s Lemmy and Led Zeppelin‘s John Paul Jones.

Currently, Grohl is preparing for the premiere of the new Foo Fighters movie Studio 666, which hits theaters February 25. He’s also been working on recording a metal album under the moniker Dream Widow, a fictional band from the film.

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If watching Get Back has made you crave more Beatles, then we’ve got good news: Paul McCartney‘s hitting the road for what he’s calling the Got Back tour.

“I said at the end of the last tour that I’d see you next time. I said I was going to get back to you. Well, I got back!” says Paul in a statement. 

The 13-city trek, the first since his Freshen Up tour wrapped in 2019, launches April 28 in Spokane, WA and is set to wrap up June 16 in East Rutherford, NJ.

The tour marks McCartney’s first-ever show in Spokane, as well as his live debuts in Hollywood, FL, Knoxville, TN and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and his first show in Baltimore, MD since 1964 with The Beatles.

Tickets go on sale February 25 at 10 a.m. local time. American Express® Card Members can get tickets starting Tuesday, February 22 at 10 a.m. local time through Thursday, February 24 at 10 p.m. local time. For all the details, visit PaulMcCartneyGotBack.com.

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Ringo Starr stopped by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday to talk about his latest photo book, Lifted: Fab Images and Memories of My Life with The Beatles from Across the Universe, which features many rare, unseen and newly discovered photos of the band members, as well as recollections and anecdotes written by Ringo.

One memory he shared with Kimmel was that the band slept two to a room while on the road, a tradition that began as soon as he joined the band.

“As soon as we started going around, you know, Europe first, and even Scotland if we had to stay over, but usually if it was in Britain, that night we’d drive home. Even if it was 200, 300 miles, we’d drive home,” he recalls. “When we started going out, we only ever had two suites. We shared all the time.”

When Kimmel asked if there were situations where the hotel rooms didn’t have two beds and they were forced forced to sleep in the same bed, Ringo joked, “Well, I don’t want to talk about that.”

The idea to play their final concert on the roof of Abbey Road Studios also came up, which, like many of the band’s best laid plans, seemed to fizzle in the end.

“[It was always that way] with The Beatles, we’re going to India, we’re going to Everest, we’re going here! Aw, sod it, let’s just go on the roof,” he explained. “Abbey Road was another one. Let’s go to the Alps, let’s go to India…ah, just walk across the road.”

Lifted can be purchased now exclusively at JuliensAuctions.com. Proceeds benefit Ringo’s Lotus Foundation, which funds and supports charitable projects that focus on various social welfare causes.

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Last month, Dead & Company was forced to call off its two-weekend Playing in the Sand destination festival due the Omicron surge of COVID-19.  But the band’s Bob Weir is planning to hit the road next month with his other band, and tells USA Today that, “God willing,” Dead & Company will be on the road this summer.

Weir’s Wolf Bros, which Weir formed in 2018 with Don Was and Jay Lane, are scheduled to launch a 13-city tour March 9 in Nashville, TN.  “It’s looking like, knock on wood, the Omicron effect will be in the rearview mirror,” Weir tells USA Today. “Here’s hoping something else doesn’t pop up.”

If you can’t make the tour, Friday sees the release of the first-ever vinyl Wolf Bros LP, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live in Colorado, recorded in June of 2021. Released on Third Man Records, it’s the first volume of a two-volume collection, due out later this year.

Asked to reflect on his musical legacy, Weir — whose resume also includes Ratdog and Furthur in addition to The Grateful Dead, Dead & Company and Wolf Bros — refuses to be pinned down to being famous for just one thing.

“There are great musical cultures and great music to be found. But there is nothing quite as magical as the American songbook. I spent 60 years or so delving as deep into it and as intently as I can,” he says. “I just love the stuff so much…be it country, blues, R&B…I try to play it all.”

Weir adds, “I guess in years to come, when people listen to me they’ll make note of the fact that he tried to play it all. We’ll see how successful people think I got.”

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Many unseen photos of the late Joe Strummer — plus some well-known pictures, like the cover of his 1989 album, Earthquake Weather — have been compiled in a new book called Joe Strummer: Print the Myth.

The book is the work of photographer and creative director Josh Cheuse, who first met Strummer in 1981, when he called Electric Ladyland Studios from a payphone at his high school and asked The Clash if he could photograph them. Their creative partnership and friendship lasted until Strummer’s death in 2002.

In addition to photos of Strummer, the book includes sketches, handwritten notes and collages, as well as Cheuse’s personal stories about Strummer. Among the images included are a photo of The Clash performing in 1981 at Bond’s International Casino in New York, as well as a photo taken outside Buckingham Palace in 1988. You can see those images at RollingStone.com.

You can now sign up at JoeStrummerBook.com to get a discount when pre-order begins, and get the chance to have your name in the book.

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The breakup of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham fueled many of Fleetwood Mac‘s most famous songs.  But Stevie now says that if they’d split when they really wanted to, Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have been around for them to record those songs.

In a new interview in The New Yorker, Stevie explains, “I broke up with Lindsey in 1976. We’d only been in Fleetwood Mac for a year and a half, and we were breaking up when we joined Fleetwood Mac. So we just put our relationship kind of back together, because I was smart enough to know that, if we had broken up the second month of being in Fleetwood Mac, it would have blown the whole thing.”

“I just bided my time, and tried to make everything as easy as possible, tried to be as sweet and as nice to Lindsey as I could be,” Stevie continues. “He wasn’t happy, either. Then something happened that was, y’know, ‘We’re done’…it was time.”

“The band was solid, by that time, so I could walk away knowing that he was safe. And that the band was safe. And that we could work it out,” she concludes.

Speaking about two classic songs inspired by the breakup, Stevie says, “I always laugh because Lindsey’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ and my [song] ‘Dreams’ are, like, counter songs to each other. I’m, like, ‘When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know,’ and he’s, like, ‘Packing up, shacking up’s all you want to do.’”

She notes, “He’s looking at it from a very unpleasant, angry way, and I’m saying, in my more airy-fairy way, we’re gonna be all right. We’ll get through this.”

Stevie has several festival performances booked for this year, while Buckingham has a slew of tour dates lined up for the month of April.

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Happy 50th birthday, Billie Joe Armstrong!

The Green Day frontman was born half-a-century ago today, on February 17, 1972. Growing up in Rodeo, California, Armstrong quickly became interested in music, and formed Green Day with childhood friend Mike Dirnt was he was just a teenager. Their first album, 39/Smooth, dropped in 1990, followed by 1991’s Kerplunk!, which marked drummer Tré Cool‘s debut.

Green Day soon became a local sensation in the local East Bay punk scene, but they exploded into the mainstream with their first major label album, 1994’s Dookie. The now RIAA-Diamond-certified record spawned singles including “Longview,” “Basket Case” and “When I Come Around.”

Dookie was followed by 1995’s Insomniac, 1997’s Nimrod and 2000’s Warning, and a greatest-hits compilation in 2001. With declining sales, some felt that Green Day had reached their peak, but the trio soon turned the doubters wrong with one of the most successful career transformations in rock of the new millennium.

In 2004, Green Day dropped American Idiot, an hour-long punk rock concept album that launched hit singles in the title track, “Holiday,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” American Idiot would become six-times Platinum, earn multiple Grammy wins and nominations, and was even adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical.

Green Day then released 21st Century Breakdown in 2009, followed by the 2012 trilogy of ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! That year, Armstrong entered rehab for substance abuse after an expletive-ridden rant during a live show. He returned to the band in 2013.

Armstrong and Green Day were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. They’ve since released two more albums, 2016’s Revolution Radio and 2020’s Father of All…

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In 2019, Neil Young was offered, and turned down, what he then described as “millions of dollars” to do a tour focusing on his classic 1972 album, Harvest. Now, in a new interview, he explains exactly why he said no to that potentially huge payday.

“I’d rather do a new album with new musicians and not try to play old parts by other musicians who aren’t here anymore,” Neil tells the U.K. magazine MOJO. “You can’t recreate the past. If the past is preserved, you don’t have to recreate it.” 

He adds, “As far as my world, it’s not what I’m interested in.”

Young has a similar opinion about any future work with Crosby, Stills and Nash, saying, “I wish them all the best. But musically, I’m not interested in reliving the past.” However, he gives himself an out, noting, “I’m not saying it will never happen. Why would I say [that?] It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m focused on what’s going on on the planet, what’s going on in the world and trying to listen to my musical sense of what my soul wants to do…so I just have to take care of that and keep going,” Neil further tells MOJO. “So I just have to take care of that and keep on going while at the same time be aware of the world and what is happening. And if Crosby, Stills and Nash fit into that, we’ll see what happens.”

Currently, Neil is promoting Barn, his new album with Crazy Horse. As previously reported, a documentary about the making of the album, also called Barn, which was directed by Young’s wife, Daryl Hannah, is streaming for free on Neil’s YouTube channel.  However, he has no plans to tour, telling Rolling Stone late last year, “I don’t want to put people in danger.”

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