Classic Rock News

On This Day, May 9, 1974 …

A 24-year-old Bruce Springsteen opened for Bonnie Raitt at the Harvard Square Theater in Boston. Rock critic Jon Landau was in the audience and was so impressed that in a review for Boston’s The Real Paper he wrote these famous words: “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

Landau and The Boss struck up a friendship, and he was eventually hired by Springsteen as a record producer. His first album with Bruce was 1975’s Born To Run, with Landau co-producing all of Bruce’s albums through 1992’s Human Touch and Lucky Town, with the exception of 1982’s Nebraska.

Landau later became Springsteen’s manager, a position he holds to this day.

Springsteen, of course, proved Landau’s words true. At age 74, he is still on tour, with his latest trek with The E Street Band hitting Belfast, Ireland, on May 9. He released his most recent album, Only The Strong Survive, in 2022.

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The Beatles‘ 1970 documentary Let It Be is now streaming on Disney+, the first time the film has been made available to the public in more than 50 years. To celebrate the momentous occasion, The Beatles are set to drop a new music video for the title track on Friday, May 10, at 9 a.m. ET.

The video will not only include clips from the film, which has been restored by Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post Production, but also unseen outtakes.

Originally released in April 1970, Let It Be follows The Beatles inside the studio as they record what would wind up being their final album, Let It Be. It also includes footage from their January 1969 Apple Corps rooftop concert. It was released one month after the band officially broke up.  

Footage from the film was used in Jackson’s 2021 Emmy-winning docuseries, The Beatles: Get Back, which also aired on Disney+.

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Billy Joel has been alive for “The Longest Time:” He turns 75 on May 9.

The Piano Man will celebrate the milestone by doing the same thing he did when he turned 65 in 2014: He’ll be performing at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Back then, his residency, which started in January of that year, was fairly new. The May 9 performance, however, will be the residency’s third-to-last show and his 148th career show overall at the iconic venue. 

Billy’s residency ends for good in July with his 150th career show at the Garden, but unlike his former tour mate, Elton John, he’s not quitting the road. He’s got stadium shows booked throughout the rest of this year, some on his own and some with Sting, Stevie Nicks and Rod Stewart.

In his five-decade career, Billy has sold more than 160 million records worldwide. He’s won five Grammys, been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, and received both the Kennedy Center Honors and the Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

Billy’s married to Alexis Roderick, his fourth wife, with whom he shares two daughters: Della and Remy. He also has an adult daughter, Alexa Ray, with ex-wife Christie Brinkley.

In February, Billy released “Turn the Lights Back On,” which returned him to Billboard‘s Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts — as an artist, not just a writer — for the first time since 1998. He recently told USA Today that for years, when he sang his song “The Entertainer” and got to the line, “You’ve heard my latest record / It’s been on the radio,” he’d shake his head “no.”

He added, “Not any more.”

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As Lenny Kravitz gets ready to release his new album, Blue Electric Light, he’s looking back at his career with Vulture.

In the interview, Kravitz credits his debut single, “Let Love Rule,” as the tune where he truly found his voice for the first time, sharing that the inspiration for the track came from an unlikely place.  

“’Let Love Rule’ came toward the end of that album. It was something that came to me when I was living in Soho,” he shares. “I’d written ‘Let Love Rule’ on the wall, next to the elevator, so that people would see it coming and going from the apartment.”

He says that while he would constantly see the words, it took a while before they would inspire him to write the track.  

“Then one day I walked in the apartment, looked at it again, went and picked up a guitar, and it just came,” he says. “I thought it was just a nice phrase. “

As for finding his voice, Kravitz notes, “When I did that song, it was the beginning of me accepting my voice. That was the first time I had heard myself and went, ‘Okay, that’s me.'”

When it comes to Blue Electric Light, due out May 24, Lenny chose it as the album that’s his “biggest creative rejuvenation.”

“I wanted fresh energy, new energy, and youthful energy, because youth isn’t only an age,” Kravitz, who turns 60 on May 26, shares. “Youth is also a feeling and a place to be. I’ve never been older than I am today, sure, but I’ve never felt younger than I feel today, which is an interesting place to be.”

Blue Electric Light is available for preorder now.

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The Beatles documentary Let it Be is now streaming on Disney+, and in a new interview, Ringo Starr admits he wasn’t really a fan of the film when it first came out.

“I was always moaning about the original film, because there was no real joy in it,” he tells The Daily Beast.

The film follows The Beatles as they record what would wind up being their final album, Let It Be; they broke up one month before the film’s release. In one scene, Paul McCartney and George Harrison are caught having an argument, which Ringo describes as “this litter downer incident.”

“But that’s just how it was; four guys in a room, you know?” he says. “You’re bound to have a few ups and downs.”

Thanks to Peter Jackson’s 2021 Disney+ docuseries, The Beatles: Get Back, fans have a bit more context as to what happened during the filming of the doc, and Ringo thinks that makes Let It Be a better experience this time around.

“Now it’s got a start, a middle, and a finish. The start is very slow, and then we get into creating, and then we’re at it and then we’re out,” he says. “I love it. But I’m in it, of course, so six hours is never long enough.”

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Succession star Jeremy Strong may have found his next role. Variety reports that the Emmy winner is in talks to join the cast of the Bruce Springsteen movie Deliver Me From Nowhere, where he’ll play The Boss’ manager, Jon Landau.

Deliver Me From Nowhere follows Springsteen’s efforts to make the 1982 solo album Nebraska. It is based on Warren Zanes‘ book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

In early April, it was confirmed that The Bear star Jeremy Allen White was in talks to play Springsteen in the picture, which will be written and directed by Scott Cooper, with Springsteen and Landau both involved in the project. The film is being produced by 20th Century Studios and Disney.

Nebraska, released on September 30, 1982, featured 10 acoustic songs that Springsteen originally recorded as demos on a four-track recorder. Springsteen had planned to rerecord the songs with the E Street Band but instead opted to release it as a solo acoustic record. It featured such songs as “Atlantic City,” “Johnny 99” and “State Trooper.” 

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Robert Plant, Peter Frampton, David Gilmour and Bryan Adams are just a few of the A-list musicians supporting the family of the late British singer Steve Marriott, who’s opposing the release of recordings featuring AI-generated versions of his voice, Variety reports.

Marriott, who fronted Humble Pie and Small Faces, the latter of which earned him induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, died in 1991 at 44. His family says his third wife, Toni Poulton, who he married in 1989, has authorized AI-generated recordings to be used on a new album, although Marriott’s four children are against it.

“The Marriott Estate is due to release an AI solo album of old and new songs of my father, Steve,” Mollie Marriott says in a statement, noting the rocker’s family has nothing to do with the estate. Mollie’s statement insists such recordings “would be a stain on my father’s name.”

“Someone who was known as one of the greatest vocalists of our generation, with such a live and raw vocal, it would absolutely break his heart if he were alive to know this,” the statement reads. “This is only for money, not art nor appreciation.”

In addition to Plant, Adams and Gilmour, Frampton is joined by his Humble Pie bandmate Jerry Shirley in supporting the Marriott family, with Small Faces’ Kenney Jones also on board, along with Glenn Hughes, Paul Weller, Paul Rodgers and Gary Kemp.

Chris France, managing director of Marriott’s estate, told Variety there are currently “no confirmed plans to use Steve Marriott’s voice on AI recordings,” but there could be in the future, adding, “I am afraid that [Mollie Marriott’s] opinions are of no consequence to me or his estate.”

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Most Bon Jovi fans are still hoping to see guitarist Richie Sambora back onstage with the band some day, and it appears he hasn’t ruled it out.

Sambora, who departed the group in 2013, reveals in a new interview with The Allison Hagendorf Show that he’s definitely open to performing with his former bandmates again.

“If he gets [his voice] back, I’ll go play. I got songs,” Sambora said, referring to frontman Jon Bon Jovi, who is still recovering from vocal cord surgery he had in 2022. “I swear to God. It’s the honest-to-God truth … I told everybody that I would without a doubt go back. The world needs it.”

And there’s one main reason why Sambora would be open to the reunion: the fans.

“The fans will just love it,” he says. “It’s not finance, it has nothing to do with that. The world could use it.”

But it sounds like Richie isn’t 100 percent convinced Jon can recover enough to sing like he used to.

“It’s an iffy thing at best,” he says. “I don’t know if there’s anybody that has ever had that be successful. I’m not really sure about that.”

But while fans wait for that reunion to possibly happen, there’s plenty of music for them to enjoy. Sambora recently released two new solo singles, “I Pray” and “Livin’ Alone,” with two more on the way: “Songs That Wrote My Life,” coming May 10, and “Believe (In Miracles),” coming May 17. Plus, Bon Jovi is dropping a new album, Forever, on June 7.

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The early solo career of former Fleetwood Mac lead guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham is being explored in a new box set, 20th Century Lindsey.

The set will feature Buckingham’s first three solo albums: 1981’s Law and Order, 1984’s Go Insane and 1992’s Out of the Cradle. There will also be a bonus album, 20th Century Rarities, with eight nonalbum tracks, including two songs that appeared on movie soundtracks, “Time Bomb Town,” from 1985’s Back to the Future, and the Stevie Nicks duet “Twisted,” from 1996’s Twister.

Another track from Rarities, “Slow Dancing (Extended Version),” has just been released to digital outlets. The track was originally released in 1984 as a 12-inch single in Europe and is now making its digital debut.

20th Century Lindsey is set to drop June 14 digitally and as a four-LP set, with a four-CD set coming in August. It is available for preorder now.

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Yes‘ Jon Anderson is set to release a new album with the cover group The Band Geeks, who have been backing him on tour.

True is set to drop August 23, featuring nine new songs. A press release says the new album “harkens back to Yes’ classic 70s sounds as well as to their latter day success with the album 90125,” the album that featured the #1 hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”

Fans will get their first preview of the record with the single “Shine On,” which is expected out in mid-June.

True will be the first new album from Anderson since 2019’s 1000 Hands: Chapter One and his first with The Band Geeks, who he’s been touring with since 2023.

In the meantime, Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks are set to kick off a new tour on May 30 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer booked as special guest on select dates. A complete schedule can be found at jonanderson.com.

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