Classic Rock News

Mick Fleetwood has some new music to share.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has teamed with ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro for a new album, Blues Experience, dropping Oct. 18.  

As the title suggests, the record has the pair sharing their take on classic blues tracks, including “Rollin’ N Tumblin’,” which you can listen to now via digital outlets. 

Jake also penned one original song that appears on the album, “Kula Blues,” about the area in Maui where Mick lives. The album also includes their take on Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World,” Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” and the Christine McVie-penned Fleetwood Mac track “Songbird,” with Mick also adding a spoken word version of the song.

“I’ve always wanted to do a blues album, and when Mick and I started talking about working together, I thought who better to work with than Mick Fleetwood?” Jake shares. “Mick’s energy when he plays is so infectious. He’s such an intense musician. He pushes everyone around him, and it’s inspiring to see his facial expressions and watch his movement and the way he hits the drums.”

Mick adds of “Rollin’ N Tumblin’,” “Jake and I had a full let-it-all-go moment on this one!! Jake let his hair down. A blues standard being given a wake-up call!”

Blues Experience is available for preorder now.

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Eric Clapton has paid tribute to his “mentor,” blues and rock legend John Mayall, who passed away Monday at the age of 90.

Before hitting it big, Clapton was a member of Mayall’s band the Bluebreakers. In a video posted to Instagram, Clapton thanked Mayall “for rescuing me from oblivion and God knows what when I was a young man ’round the age of 18, 19 when I decided that I was gonna quit music.” 

“He found me and took me into his home and asked me to join his band and I stayed with him and I learned all that I really have to draw on for today in terms of technique and desire to play the kind of music I love to play,” he said.

Clapton called playing in Mayall’s band “a fantastic experience,” noting Mayall taught him “it was OK just to play the music you wanted to play.”

“He was my mentor and a surrogate father,” Clapton added. “He taught me all I really know and gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear, without limit.” Clapton then noted that all he taught Mayall was drinking and womanizing, noting, “I wish to make amends for that. I did that while he was alive and I have obviously since learned that is not the best way to carry on.” 

“I shall miss him but I hope to see him on the other side,” Clapton concluded. “Thank you, John. I love you, I’ll see you soon, but not yet, as they say in the Gladiator movie.”

Clapton wasn’t the only one to honor Mayall. The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood both shared tributes on social media, as did Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler.

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Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong has released a cover of the Jesse Malin song “Black Haired Girl,” recorded for an upcoming tribute album to the longtime New York City punk fixture.

As previously reported, proceeds from the record, titled Silver Patron Saints, will support Malin and his recovery efforts after having a spinal stroke in 2023.

You can listen to Armstrong’s “Black Haired Girl” now via digital outlets. Silver Patron Saints will be released Sept. 20.

Others featured on Silver Patron Saints include Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello, Bleachers, Elvis Costello, late MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, Spoon, The Wallflowers, Rancid, The Kills‘ Alison Mosshart, The Bangles‘ Susanna Hoffs, Counting Crows, Dinosaur Jr. and The Replacements‘ Tommy Stinson.

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On This Day, July 24, 2022 …

Joni Mitchell was the surprise musical performer at the Newport Folk Festival, joining Brandi Carlile for a special set that featured the legendary musician performing with a variety of guests. 

The so-called Joni Jam was Joni’s first public performance since surviving a brain aneurysm in 2015.

During the set, a seated Joni was joined by artists like Wynonna Judd, Marcus Mumford and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, performing 13 songs, including some of her classic tunes like “Both Sides Now,” “A Case of You” and “Big Yellow Taxi.”

An album from the performance, Joni Mitchell at Newport, was released in July 2023. Joni also went on to headline another Joni Jam in June 2023 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington. She’s scheduled to headline two similar concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Oct. 19 and 20.

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We are finally getting our first real look at Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan.

The first trailer for the upcoming Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, has just been released, and not only do we get to see Chalamet as Dylan, we get to hear him sing as Dylan as well.

The clip opens with Ed Norton as Pete Seeger talking about Dylan to an audience.

“Let me tell you a little story, a few months back my friend Woody Guthrie and I, we met a young man, he dropped in on us out of nowhere and he played us a song,” Norton shares. “In that moment we got a feeling we were getting a glimpse of the future.” 

As he’s talking, we see Dylan’s back as he walks through the streets of New York, before it cuts to Dylan singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to an audience. There are then more images of Dylan in New York, as well as clips of Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.

It ends with Dylan looking up at Seeger, and saying, “that’s all I got so far,” with a kid telling him, “good start,” before the opening chords of “Like a Rolling Stone” kick in.

“Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s,” reads the film’s description, “A Complete Unknown follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”

So far there’s no release date for A Complete Unknown, although the description says it will be in theaters this December.

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Dead & Company is giving fans a chance to win a very unique piece of memorabilia.

The band just launched a new Prizeo sweepstakes, with a grand prize of a one-quarter-scale functioning recreation of the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound. The original Wall of Sound was created by sound engineer Owsley Stanley for The Dead’s 1974 concert tour.

The replica stacked sound system, built by Anthony Coscia, has been on display at the Dead Forever Experience, the immersive pop-up in Las Vegas that opened to coincide with Dead & Company’s Dead Forever residency at the Sphere. 

Money raised from sweepstakes entries will benefit Hope for the City, a nonprofit aiming to end hunger across the Vegas valley, and the Recording Academy’s charitable arm MusiCares. 

Dead & Company returns to the Las Vegas Sphere on Aug. 1, with their final show happening on Aug. 10. A complete list of dates can be found at deadandcompany.com.

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British blues and rock musician John Mayall passed away Monday at the age of 90.

“It is with heavy hearts that we bear the news that John Mayall passed away peacefully in his California home yesterday, July 22, 2024, surrounded by loving family,” read a post on his Facebook page. “Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world’s greatest road warriors,” adding, “John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain.”

The post noted, “We, the Mayall family, cannot thank his fans and long-list of bandmembers enough for the support and love we were blessed to experience secondhand over the last six decades.”

Mayall was the frontman of the band the Bluebreakers, which was formed in 1963. Different incarnations of the band featured artists who would go on to be huge rock stars of the’ 60s and ’70s, including Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac’s John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green, The Rolling Stones’ Mick Taylor, Cream‘s Jack Bruce, Journey‘s Aynsley Dunbar and more.

Mayall and the Bluesbreakers released their now-classic debut album, Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton in 1966. Mayall’s best-known song in the U.S. was the harmonica-centric track “Room to Move.”

Mayall, a two-time Grammy nominee,  was set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this October in the Musical Excellence category. He was also made an Officer of the British Empire, or OBE, in 2005.

Mayall’s career lasted six decades. He released his final studio album, The Sun is Shining Down in 2022 and played his final show in March of that same year in San Juan Capistrano, California.

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Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen is stepping into the world of graphic novels.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the rock star has co-authored the new graphic novel Hysteria, which will be released in the spring.

The release, which shares a name with Def Leppard’s multi-Platinum 1987 album, is descried as “a horror story dealing with the dark side of rock stardom” and follows the frontwoman of an indie band, Darkside, who inherits a demonic guitar from her father’s estate that promises her fame and success. Def Leppard makes an appearance in Hysteria: Darkside is set to open for them in concert. 

“Poured out on the pages of this graphic novel is a story (Phil) couldn’t tell you in a song that takes you to places Def Leppard have never gone before with their music,” says Damian Wassel, CEO of Vault Comics, the graphic novel’s publisher.

Collen co-wrote Hysteria with Eliot Rahal, writer of graphic novel Bleed Them Dry. “It reminded me of songwriting with someone you really like,” Collen tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was very much like that, bouncing ideas, and he would run with it.” 

He adds, “When you hit on something, it runs away, and you’re part of the slipstream. It was very inspiring, I gotta say.”

An exact release date has not been announced, but Hysteria is expected to come out in retail and deluxe editions, with an accompanying merchandise line, including a guitar custom made with Collen’s input.

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Green Day has premiered the video for “Corvette Summer,” a track off the band’s new album, Saviors.

As previously reported, the clip features Star Wars icon Mark Hamill, who starred in a 1978 movie also called Corvette Summer, as well as comedian Hannibal Buress.

“The song was named after one of our favorite cult classic movies, so it only made sense to pay homage to it with the music video,” Green Day says. “We even took things one step further and got Mark Hamill (who starred in the original) to star in our remake alongside us, Hannibal Buress, and some others.”

The bands adds, “We blew the entire budget on them so we had to get creative with cardboard boxes, some duct tape and matchbox cars we found in [drummer] Tré [Cool‘s] basement.”

You can watch the “Corvette Summer” video streaming now on YouTube.

Green Day will launch a U.S. tour in support of Saviors, while also celebrating the respective 30th and 20th anniversaries of their albums Dookie and American Idiot, on July 29 in Washington, D.C. You can also catch them perform on the Good Morning America Summer Concert Series on Friday.

(Video contains uncensored profanity.) 

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