Classic Rock News

Folks are still hitting the theaters to catch the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

BoxOfficeMojo reports that the film, starring Timothée Chalamet as the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, has grossed over $120 million at the box office worldwide since its Christmas Day release.

According to Billboard, the film is now the eighth-highest-grossing music biopic, just behind Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles biopic, Ray, which grossed $124 million.

Still topping the list as the highest-grossing music biopic is the Queen film Bohemian Rhapsody, which has a worldwide gross of over $910 million.

And for folks who want to see the movie but don’t want to go to the theater, they can do that, too. A Complete Unknown debuted on digital platforms in late February with never-before-seen bonus extras.

A Complete Unknown follows a 19-year-old Dylan as he arrives in New York from Minnesota and tracks his rise as a folk singer during the ’60s to the top of the charts, ending with his electric rock ‘n’ roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

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Peaky Blinders actor Stephen Graham will play Bruce Springsteen’s father in the upcoming movie Deliver Me From Nowhere, and he tells British GQ what it was like to meet the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.

“I think the first [scene] we did was when we pull up to this big house, and I’m in the ‘50s look, and everything. And he came over, and we had a lovely conversation. He was just like, ‘Thank you so much for being here,'” Graham tells the magazine. “I mean, he’s an icon. He’s an absolute icon. And such a wonderful man. What really touched me … is his humility, and the way he makes time for everybody.”

Graham says that after shooting his final scene as The Boss’ dad he had to quickly leave to get on a plane, but he later got a thank-you text from The Boss regarding the performance.

“It’s better than any award I could ever contemplate, but he said what I did within that scene, he saw his father again, which is just beautiful,” Graham shares.

The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White is set to play Springsteen in the film. Graham says he’s “absolutely f****** unbelievable” as Springsteen, adding, “He’s brilliant. He’s unbelievable. To me he’s the new Pacino and De Niro.”

Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper, follows Springsteen’s efforts to make his 1982 solo album Nebraska. The film is based on Warren Zanes‘ book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

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The ninth annual Love Rocks NYC concert took place at New York’s Beacon Theatre Thursday, raising $4 million for the nonprofit God’s Love We Deliver, which delivers meals to people who are too sick to prepare them themselves.

The concert featured an A-list lineup of talent, including Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Peter Frampton and Michael McDonald.

According to setlist.fm, McDonald performed The Doobie Brothers tracks “What a Fool Believes,” which he wrote with Kenny Loggins, and “Takin’ It to the Streets.”

McDonald also joined the legendary Mavis Staples, a five-time Love Rocks performer, for a performance of “I’ll Take You There.”

Frampton treated the crowd to his iconic tune “Do You Feel Like We Do” and also performed a cover of “Georgia (On My Mind).” He was then joined by Phish’s Trey Anastasio and 18-year-old guitarist Grace Bowers for a cover of George Harrison’s “My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

Cher performed a trio of tunes at the concert: a cover of Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis,” “(This Is) A Song for the Lonely” and her classic “Believe.” Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart teamed with singer Vanessa Amorosi to perform Eurythmics classics “Here Comes the Rain Again” and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

The evening, hosted by comedians Alex Edelman, Amy Schumer, Susie Essman and Tracy Morgan, also featured performances by Beck, Anastasio, Alicia Keys, The Struts’ Luke Spiller, punk rocker Jesse Malin, Black Pumas’ Eric Burton and more, with the whole lineup coming out at the end for an all-star encore of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground.”

The Love Rocks concert launched in 2017 and has now raised more than $50 million, enough to fund 5 million meals for New Yorkers in need.

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Fifty years ago Friday David Bowie released his ninth studio album, Young Americans, which was considered a departure from his glam-rock style, focusing more on funk, soul and R&B influences.

The album, which came out less than a year after 1974’s Diamond Dogs, featured backing vocals by a then-unknown singer named Luther Vandross; its first single, the title track, peaked at #28 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Its second single, “Fame,” featured The Beatles‘ John Lennon on guitar and backing vocals, and became Bowie’s first Hot 100 #1. 

“Fame” was actually one of two songs on the album that featured contributions from Lennon; the other was a cover of The Beatles track “Across the Universe.”

Several months after the album’s release, Bowie appeared on the music show Soul Train, performing “Fame” and “Golden Years” from his next album, Station to Station. The appearance by Bowie marked one of the first times a white artist appeared on the R&B music show.

Young Americans turned out to be a breakthrough album for Bowie in the U.S. It debuted in the Billboard 200’s top 10 in the U.S. and remained on the chart for 51 weeks. The song “Fame” was one of four Bowie songs to be included in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s list of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

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Brian James, founding guitarist of the influential English punk band The Damned, has died. He was 70.

A post to his Facebook Thursday reads, “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of one of the true pioneers of music, guitarist, songwriter, and true gentleman, Brian James.”

The Damned formed in the mid-’70s with James, vocalist Dave Vanian, bassist Raymond “Captain Sensible” Burns and drummer Christopher “Rat Scabies” Millar. Their debut single “New Rose” was considered to be the first official U.K. punk single upon its release in 1976.

“The riffmeister, Brian has gone,” Burns says. “That final act that happens to us all, for most is a sad and miserable affair but while it’s truly awful our mate has been taken I prefer to celebrate the life.. and WHAT A LIFE Brian James had!”

James left the group in 1978, and toured in Iggy Pop‘s live band in 1979 alongside Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock.

“Sad news today about Brian James’ untimely passing,” Matlock says. “Great memories of touring the States together on Iggy’s ’79 tour where he brought the house down every night with his solo on ‘Set ’em up Joe.'”

James returned to The Damned in 1988 and played with them until 1991. He reunited with the band again in 2022. 

The current incarnation of The Damned, which features the three other founding members, plan to dedicate their performance Friday in Brazil to James.

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On This Day, March 7, 1970…

Simon & Garfunkel hit #1 with their fifth and final studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

The album featured such iconic Simon & Garfunkel tunes as the title track, “The Boxer,” “The Only Living Boy in New York,” and “Cecilia.”

With Garfunkel concentrating on an acting career, Simon wrote all the songs on the album, with the exception of a cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye Love.”

The album went on to become a massive hit and spent 10 weeks at #1. It also sold 25 million copies, and went on to win six Grammy Awards, including album of the year.

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40 years ago today — March 7, 1985 — “We Are the World” was released. The charity single was recorded Jan. 28 after the American Music Awards, with stars ranging from Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder to Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner. Billy Joel was one of the artists participating, and the one thing he didn’t like about the experience was “We Are the World” itself.

“I wasn’t that crazy about the song,” Billy told ABC Audio some time ago. “I think that was my main memory of that: ‘Oh, this is the song?'” 

Written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, it features lyrics like “it’s true we make a brighter day/ just you and me.”  Billy says he thought it “sounded like a Pepsi commercial,” but he still took part, finding ways to break up the tedium during the extremely long night.

“If you watch the shots where they have the chorus, some of the times I’m in them and sometimes I’m not,” he laughed. “They kept doing take after take … and I realized that they didn’t need me every time.”

“So I’d kind of sneak off, I’d meet with Bruce Springsteen at the cold cut table, and we’d just stand there and have a beer and listen to everybody else sing, and then we go back!” he laughed. 

Billy also recalled the now-legendary moment when Stevie Wonder had to teach Bob Dylan how to sing like Bob Dylan.  “I wish they had kept it [in the song], ’cause it was absolutely hysterical,” he said.  It’s captured in the Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop.

Lionel Richie once told ABC Audio that a pop culture moment like “We Are the World” couldn’t happen today.

“They’ll say to you, it doesn’t fit our format or it doesn’t fit our demographics, or we’ll do some market testing now to see if it fits the marketplace,” he noted. “So by the time you end up getting the music to the people, it’s over. It’s very difficult now to get the world’s attention.”

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It’s been over a decade since Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench released his debut solo album, You Should Be So Lucky, and he’s back with his sophomore release, The Melancholy Season.

Tench tells ABC Audio that while he’s had enough songs to make a new record since about 2017, “things had intervened” that kept him from doing so, including health issues, a new baby and then COVID-19. But he thinks the delay wound up working out for him.

“Though I had enough songs … I didn’t have all of these songs,” he says. “And these songs, the ones that came in later, when put with some of the earlier ones, made a coherent whole.”

Tench says the tracks on the album paint a picture of what he was going through between 2014 and 2019, which includes Petty’s death in 2017. He says of the songs, “It’s more of a picture of … what was in the air for a concentrated period of time during which there had been a lot of changes.”

As for naming the album The Melancholy Season, Tench shares, “I thought it was a good title for a record. I also thought that it summed up the mood of the record pretty well.”

The album’s cover is a painting Tench had seen at the Art Institute of Chicago, which he says he’s “always loved.”

“And when I thought, ‘I want to call this record The Melancholy Season,’ the first thing I said was, ‘Do you think there’s a way we can use this painting for the cover of the album?’” he says. “Because I think it evokes the record very well.”

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INXS is celebrating the 40th anniversary of their album Listen Like Thieves with a new deluxe edition, and now they are giving fans a preview of the bonus material that will be included in the release.

The Aussie rockers have released a performance of the track “Biting Bullets.” It’s part of a newly unearthed BBC recording, Live From The Royal Albert Hall, London, 1986, that will appear on Listen Like Thieves (40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), along with unreleased outtakes, demos, and a brand-new remix of the album by Giles Martin and Paul Hicks.

In addition to the three-CD/LP deluxe edition, there will be a two-CD extended edition of Listen Like Thieves, which includes the new mix and the CD of B-sides, remixes and live recordings, as well as a single LP edition with just the remix.

All versions will be released May 9 and are available for preorder now.

Listen Like Thieves, released Oct. 14, 1985, was INXS’ fifth studio album and was considered to be the band’s international breakthrough. It featured their first top-five single, “What You Need,” with the album reaching #11 in the U.S.

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The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was honored Wednesday as the first recipient of the Connecticut Governor’s Award of Excellence; he was recognized for his “deep commitment to supporting the local community.”

During a ceremony held at The Westport Library, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont called Richards “an amazing member of our community,” adding, “We’re so proud that he’s here and I’m so proud of the opportunity to give him this award of excellence.”

Richards, a Connecticut resident since 1985, thanked the state for recognizing him with the honor, which came with a custom-made medallion and key to the state.

“I’ve been here for 40 years and it’s been a great place for me,” Richards shared. “I brought the kids up here … I said I have to get the kids out of New York City so they could get some fresh air to breathe. So, we moved up here, and ever since we’ve had a great life.”

He added, “I’m incredibly happy about everything, especially things like this, because you don’t get them every day.”

Keith also mentioned the Westport Library, noting, “This is a great building, a wonderful library, which even I didn’t know the full extent of.” He then talked about the importance of books: “It’s very important that we keep our books unburnt.”

The Connecticut Governor’s Award of Excellence is described as “a prestigious new honor celebrating Connecticut residents who epitomize the state’s core values of creativity, resourcefulness, passion, dynamism, and generosity.”

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