Classic Rock News

Ringo Starr is finally ready to share his country album with fans.

The Beatles legend just announced he’ll release Look Up, co-written and produced by T Bone Burnett, on Jan. 10.

The album features 11 songs, with special guest appearances by Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Lucius, Larkin Poe and Alison Krauss, the latter appearing on the album’s closing song, “Thankful,” which was co-written by Ringo.

“I’ve always loved country music. And when I asked T Bone to write me a song, I didn’t even think at the time that it would be a country song – but of course it was, and it was so beautiful,” Ringo shares. “I had been making EPs at the time and so I thought we would do a country EP – but when he brought me nine songs I knew we had to make an album! And I am so glad we did.”
 

He adds, “I want to thank, and send Peace & Love, to T Bone and all the great musicians who helped make this record. It was a joy making it and I hope it is a joy to listen to.”

Fans are getting their first preview of the record with the just released song “Time on My Hands,” which was co-written by Burnett, Paul Kennerly and Daniel Tashian. It is available now via digital outlets.

And Ringo will celebrate the release of Look Up with two shows at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, billed as Ringo Starr & Friends. The shows are happening Jan. 14 and Jan. 15, with tickets going on sale Oct. 25.

Look Up is available for preorder now. Check out the track list below:
“Breathless” (featuring Billy Strings)
“Look Up” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Time On My Hands”
“Never Let Me Go” (featuring Billy Strings)
“I Live For Your Love” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Come Back” (featuring Lucius)
“Can You Hear Me Call” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Rosetta” (featuring Billy Strings and Larkin Poe)
“You Want Some”
“String Theory” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Thankful” (featuring Alison Krauss)

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A new class of musicians will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Saturday night in what’s shaping up to be a great night of music. 

This year’s inductees include Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Matthews Band, Cher, Kool & The Gang, Mary J. Blige and A Tribe Called Quest. Jimmy Buffett and Dionne Warwick will be inducted in the Music Excellence category; MC5, the late blues and R&B singer Big Mama Thornton, British blues musicians John Mayall and the late Alexis Korner, and Motown producer/songwriter Norman Whitfield will be inducted in the Musical Influence category.

Several of this year’s inductees will perform during the ceremony, including Frampton, Foreigner, Dave Matthews Band, Kool & The Gang, Warwick and Blige, but many of them won’t be alone. 

The Who’s Roger Daltrey and country star Keith Urban will be on hand to celebrate Frampton, while Sammy Hagar, Kelly Clarkson and Demi Lovato will join Foreigner for a performance that will also feature Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.

Buffett, who passed away in September 2023, will be celebrated by James Taylor, Kenny Chesney and Coral Reefer Band member Mac McAnally, while Ozzy’s tribute will feature Jack Black, Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, Chad Smith, Wolfgang Van Halen, Jelly Roll, Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, guitarist Zakk Wylde, producer Andrew Watt, Billy Idol and Steve Stevens. Cher will be celebrated by Dua Lipa, with Zendaya giving her induction speech.

Other performers and presenters confirmed for the festivities include Rage Against The Machine‘s Tom Morello, Julia Roberts, Queen Latifah, Common, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, The Roots and Dr. Dre.

The 2024 induction ceremony, taking place at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, will stream live on Disney+ at 7 p.m. ET.  

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Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman doesn’t have any regrets about leaving the band in 1993. In fact, in an interview with Classic Rock magazine, he suggests he stuck around a bit too long. 

“Well, I should’ve done it a lot earlier … in the eighties,” he says. “I hung on for a three-tour ending across ’89 and ’90, after seven years of nothing, and I’d ended up with a bank overdraft of 200,000 pounds because we weren’t earning anything.”

Wyman was referring to the three legs of the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle tour, which was the longest tour the band had done at that point.

He goes on to say money problems weren’t an issue for everyone in the band, noting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards “were totally wealthy, so they weren’t bothered,” but he, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood “were scraping by.”  

“Anyway, I only started playing with them again in the hope it’d only be a couple of years, because I had all these other things I wanted to do,” he says.

Wyman also brought up money issues when discussing the band’s decision to leave the U.K. in 1971 because of a 93% tax, sharing they owed so much that “we could never make enough to pay it back.”

“We had no f***** money,” he says, although Mick and Keith were better off because of their songwriting and publishing.

“You’re in the red with your bank, so you weren’t partying all the time, you were worrying about how to pay your bills,” he said. “It was a nightmare.”

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The Bruce Springsteen movie Deliver Me From Nowhere has reportedly found its Little Steven.

Deadline reports that actor Johnny Cannizzaro, who starred in Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of the musical Jersey Boys, has been cast to play Springsteen’s longtime friend and E Street Band guitarist Stevie Van Zandt in the film, about the making of The Boss’ 1982 album Nebraska.

Crazy Heart writer/director Scott Cooper is directing the film, which will star The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen. The cast also includes Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser and Harrison Sloan Gilbertson.

The project is an adaptation of Warren Zane’s 2023 book, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

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Foreigner is set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday, but it turns out founding members Mick Jones and Dennis Elliot won’t be attending the festivities.

In a post on Instagram, the band revealed that they are “greatly looking forward” to Saturday’s celebration, with Foreigner performing with Demi Lovato, Sammy Hagar and Kelly Clarkson “in a set celebrating the induction of the guys who started it all almost fifty years ago.”

The post reveals that the only band members who’ll be attending the ceremony will be singer Lou Gramm, keyboardist Al Greenwood and bassist Rick Wills, noting the trio will “accept the awards on behalf of the band’s leader and founder Mick Jones and Dennis Elliot along [with] those of Ian McDonald and Ed Gagliardi who passed away some years ago.”

The 2024 induction ceremony, taking place at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, will stream live on Disney+ at 7 p.m. ET. On Jan. 1, ABC will air the special 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, featuring performance highlights.

In other news … Foreigner is set to perform at the halftime show during Sunday’s Cleveland Browns game against the Cincinnati Bengals. The performance is part of the Browns’ celebration of this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees. 

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U2 is throwing it back to 2004, celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb with a look at the video for the album’s first single, “Vertigo.”

The band announced they’ll release a behind-the-scenes video detailing the making of the song’s music video on Friday.

The video for “Vertigo,” directed by the team of Alex & Martin, was shot in Spain and had the band performing in a desert. It won a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video in 2005.

U2 is also celebrating the 20th anniversary of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb with the release of what they’re calling a “shadow album,” featuring songs from the original album’s recording sessions. Dubbed How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb, the album features 10 previously unreleased tracks from the band’s archive. It will be released Nov. 29 as an exclusive for Record Store Day Black Friday, along with a digital release.

In addition, on Nov. 22 U2 will release a special 20th anniversary remastered edition of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, featuring the bonus track “Fast Car,” as well as a package with the remaster and the shadow album together, dubbed How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (Re-Assemble Edition).

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Paul McCartney dusted off a classic Beatles tune for his fourth and final Got Back show in São Paulo, Brazil, on Wednesday. 

According to setlist.fm, McCartney added the 1963 track “All My Loving” to the set about four songs in, marking the first time he’s played the tune on this tour and the first time he’s played it in concert since 2019. 

Although “All My Loving” wasn’t officially released as a single in either the U.S. or the U.K., it got enough radio play to become a hit for The Beatles. It was actually the first song they performed during their debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.

As for the rest of McCartney’s São Paulo concert, he played a total of 37 songs, including Beatles tracks like “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Got To Get You Into My Life,” “Love Me Do,” “Blackbird,” “Get Back,” “Hey Jude” and the most recent track, “Here and Now,” as well as Wings tunes “Live and Let Die,” “Let Em In” and “Jet.”

It also included McCartney solo songs like “Maybe I’m Amazed”; “My Valentine,” which was dedicated to Paul’s wife, Nancy Shevell; and “Here Today,” which was dedicated to John Lennon.

McCartney has one more show in Brazil on Saturday in Florianópolis, with upcoming shows in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico. A complete list of dates can be found at paulmccartney.com.

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Former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee has shared a statement as he continues to recover from being shot in Las Vegas on Tuesday. 

Lee writes in a Facebook post, “I deeply appreciate all the concern and well wishes. Makes everything going on a little better.”

Lee was walking his dog, Coco, early in the morning when he was shot three times.

“Don’t want to go into details now, I’m tired, but I feel relatively very lucky,” Lee writes. “The police found 15 shell casings at the scene which means he emptied his clip on me. I could only dodge so many so one bullet went through my forearm, one through my foot, and one in the back which broke a rib and damaged a lung.”

“Priority now is to keep draining my lung till it’s done crying,” he continues. “Then we can pull that tube out and concentrate on the more minor injuries.”

Lee concludes by assuring, “Coco’s fine and appreciates your inquiries!”

Lee played in Ozzy’s band from 1982 to 1987. In a statement to TMZ, Ozzy said, “It’s been 37 years since I’ve seen Jake E. Lee, but that still doesn’t take away from the shock of hearing what happened to him,” adding, “It’s just another senseless act of gun violence …  I just hope he’ll be OK.”

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On This Day, Oct. 17, 1980 …

Bruce Springsteen released his fifth studio album, The River – his only double album to date.

The project was originally intended as a single album called The Ties That Bind, but Springsteen canceled its release at the last minute and wrote more songs. Retitled The River, the album’s 20 tracks featured a deliberate mix of fun, upbeat tunes and darker material.

The River went on to become Bruce’s first #1 album and contained his first top 10 hit, “Hungry Heart.” It has since been certified quintuple Platinum by the RIAA.

Many songs on the album became fan favorites, including “Out in the Street,” “Sherry Darling,” the title track and “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch),” with many becoming staples of The Boss’ live shows. 

In 2015, Springsteen released the box set The Ties That Bind: The River collection and celebrated the original album’s 35th anniversary with a tour in which he performed the double album in its entirety.

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Jake E. Lee is on the mend after he was shot multiple times in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

That’s according to a text exchange between the former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist and former Guns N’ Roses and Sixx:A.M. shredder Ashba, who posted a screenshot of the conversation in his Instagram Story.

“Please tell me you’re okay??” Ashba texted Lee, who then responded, “Doing surprisingly well.”

“I am one luck mother f*****,” Lee continued. “Just make sure your bday bash is wheelchair accessible! Just jestin’.”

According to a statement from Lee’s management, Lee was shot while walking his dog early Tuesday morning in what is believed to be a completely random incident. The statement added that Lee is “expected to fully recover.”

Lee played in Ozzy’s solo band from 1982 to 1987. In a statement to TMZ, Ozzy said, “It’s been 37 years since I’ve seen Jake E. Lee, but that still doesn’t take away from the shock of hearing what happened to him today. It’s just another senseless act of gun violence. I send my thoughts to him and his beautiful daughter, Jade. I just hope he’ll be OK.”

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