Grateful Dead takes the stage wearing Bill Walton’s number

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Ahead of Dead & Company‘s show Thursday at Sphere in Las Vegas, drummer Mickey Hart posted on Instagram, “Tonight we pulse, we vibrate, we dance, for Bill. The BIGGEST deadhead in the world!” Indeed, the band did offer a fitting tribute to the late NBA legend Bill Walton, who died Monday at age 71. He was not only a fanatical Dead fan, but also a personal friend of the group’s members.

Fan-shot footage of the performance shows that the band took the stage with instruments decorated with Walton’s number, 32, which he wore while playing for UCLA, the Portland Trail Blazers and the San Diego Clippers.

During the “Drums” part of the show, the Sphere’s LED screen displayed footage of the time when Walton, who was Hart’s best friend, joined them onstage at a 2016 show for that segment. And when Hart sang “Fire on the Mountain,” the screen displayed images of Walton with the members of the Grateful Dead and Dead & Company over the years.

Walton’s first Dead show was in 1967, and he saw over 1,000 in his lifetime.

Listen to Joan Jett X Alanis Morissette mash-up ahead of their Triple Moon tour

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Joan Jett and Alanis Morissette, plus singer Morgan Wade, will kick off their Triple Moon tour in June. But ahead of the tour launch, Jett and Morissette have released a mash-up of two of their biggest hits.

The track is called “Hate Myself for Loving You Oughta Know,” and brings together Joan and The Blackhearts‘ 1988 hit “I Hate Myself for Loving You” and Alanis’ signature 1995 tune “You Oughta Know.” The song incorporates vocals and music for both songs, and the video includes snippets from both original videos, as well as live footage and vocals from Joan’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” song and video.

Jett’s signature “Ow!” is also scattered throughout the mash-up, created by DJ Cummerbund.

“We wanted to celebrate [the tour] with this mashup,” Alanis wrote on YouTube. “Elated to see you very soon.”

The Triple Moon tour launches June 9 in Phoenix, Arizona. Will Jett and Morissette perform the mash-up onstage? There’s only one way to find out.

Lenny Kravitz remembers hanging with Prince, going with him to “mess with” Michael Jackson

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Lenny Kravitz has been around long enough, and moved in and out of musical genres enough, to have met and worked with everyone from Mick Jagger to Madonna to Jay-Z. But in a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Kravitz says some of his most memorable moments were spent hanging out with two late legends: Prince and Michael Jackson.

“We spent so much time together. He used to call me late, late at night to meet him at a club to go play, just set up and go play,” he says of Prince. He adds the two would often go to Prince’s house “to watch funny movies or comedians,” adding, “He was really, really funny. He had an amazing sense of humor.” He was also, according to Kravitz, a sore loser.

“Prince is very competitive. He’s a very good ping-pong player. He’s very good at pool, basketball, everything,” Kravitz says. He recalls going over to Prince’s place in Paris one time with his then-girlfriend, Vanessa Paradis.

“Vanessa was really good at pool and she kicked his a**. And that was a hard one for him.”

Kravitz also remembers “going to visit Michael Jackson” with Prince, explaining, “He’d pick me up, we’d go see Michael in the studio and just mess with him.”

When Lowe notes the story was always that Prince and Michael Jackson were archrivals, Kravitz says, “I’m sure there was some kind of healthy competition, but it was more about having fun and sort of joking around with him. ‘Let’s go f*** with Michael.'”

When they did that, Kravitz says, “Michael was fascinated with my dreadlocks. He’s like, ‘What do you do?,’ y’know, touching my hair.”

But, he notes, “Both of them were really beautiful people.”

GN’R’s Duff McKagan announces US solo tour

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan has announced a U.S. solo tour.

The outing kicks off Nov. 4 in Boston and concludes in Nov. 20 in McKagan’s hometown of Seattle.

Presales begin June 4, and tickets go on sale to the general public on June 7 at 10 a.m. local time. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit DuffOnline.com.

McKagan will be supporting his latest solo effort, 2023’s Lighthouse. He’s also just released a new live album recorded during the tour behind his 2019 solo record, Tenderness.

The Police’s Andy Summers acknowledges one major reason for their success: “We were cute”

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

While it’s true that all three members of The Police were consummate musicians, and that the band’s songwriting talent was undeniable, guitarist Andy Summers admits there was another reason for their success.

“We were cute guys. We were nice-looking guys,” he tells Vulture of himself and bandmates Sting and Stewart Copeland. “Everybody went mad because we were completely sellable as a pop unit. If the three of us were together and we turned up anywhere, a huge crowd would appear.”

“We weren’t exactly a boy band, but we had tremendous adulation and appealed to the female section of the audience, to put it politely,” he adds. “They wanted to be with us, talk to us, and give us their money.”

Summers, who will launch a solo U.S. tour June 5, is also happy to take the credit for the success of the band’s biggest hit, “Every Breath You Take,” even though he didn’t technically write it.

According to Summers, the song’s parent album, Synchronicity, “went straight to #1 … because I wrote the guitar line for ‘Every Breath You Take,’ which transformed it.”

As Summers tells it, Sting and Copeland were “arguing for weeks” about how the song should sound.

“Finally … Sting said, ‘Go on, go in there and make it your own,'” he recalls. “I went in and the famous guitar line came to me very quickly. … When I finished the guitar line all in one go, they all stood up and cheered. It sealed it.”

“I recently saw that it hit two billion streams on Spotify,” he adds. “I was just about to write to the accountant in London and go, ‘Should we talk about this?’ Because even if it’s half a dime for every play, it’s got to be a lot of money.”

Hear David Bowie cover The Who (differently) on track from ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Star!’ box set

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

For his 1973 album Pin Ups, David Bowie recorded his version of The Who‘s “I Can’t Explain.” But a different take from Bowie on the Who classic has been released ahead of an upcoming box set.

This previously unheard version, called “I Can’t Explain (Trident Studios Version – Take 2),” was recorded in London in 1972, and it’s much faster than the slowed-down version that Bowie eventually put on Pin Ups. It’s included on the five-CD/Blue-ray audio box set Rock ‘N’ Roll Star!, due out June 14.

As previously reported, the box set features 29 unreleased tracks that show Bowie’s musical journey from February 1971 to the release of 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Those tracks include early songwriting demos, rehearsals from Bowie’s home, BBC sessions, live performances, outtakes and alternative versions.

The Blu-ray adds the 2012 remaster of the original Ziggy Stardust album, additional mixes from 2003 and an alternate version of the album, Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth), featuring recordings made at Trident Studios in December 1971. Two books are also included in the package, including a 36-page reproduction of Bowie’s personal Ziggy Stardust-era notebooks.

Rock ‘N’ Roll Star! is available for preorder now.

Mick Jagger urges fans to vote in November election: “Don’t take anything for granted!”

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Since he’s British, Mick Jagger is not eligible to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election this November — but he wants American Rolling Stones fans to be sure they do.

While onstage at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on Thursday, Jagger introduced the portion of the show where the Stones play a song voted on by fans. In fan-recorded video, Jagger can be seen telling the crowd, “Now we’ve got the vote song for you, which everyone got really involved in, I wanna thank you … so many people voted.”

“And what’s more important than that is, November, there’s a presidential election, so don’t forget to vote in that,” Jagger continued. “Don’t take anything for granted!”

The band then performed the song that the fans chose: “Emotional Rescue,” which they hadn’t played onstage since 2014.

Jagger, of course, didn’t tell the crowd who to vote for, though in the past the Stones have had multiple disagreements with former President Donald Trump over the unauthorized use of their songs at his campaign events.

Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder honors those “we lost … too early” with cover of NIN’s “Hurt” at Seattle show

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Eddie Vedder performed a solo acoustic cover of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” during Pearl Jam‘s concert in Seattle on Thursday.

As seen in fan-shot footage posted to YouTube, Vedder introduced the performance by mentioning that the guest list for PJ’s hometown shows is always the biggest of any city. He added, “To be honest, I wish it were longer.”

“There are certain names that I so deeply wish were on the guest list tonight,” Vedder continued, perhaps referring to late Seattle icons like Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Mark Lanegan and Layne Staley. “But we lost ’em too early and in ways that we could’ve never imagined.”

He concluded, “Dammit if I can’t stop thinking about ’em, but that’s a good thing, too.”

During his rendition, Vedder sang the altered “I wear this crown of thorns” lyric from the famed Johnny Cash version of “Hurt.” In the original, Trent Reznor sings the lyric, “I wear this crown of s***.”

Pearl Jam is currently on tour supporting their new album, Dark Matter. Earlier in the run, Vedder paid tribute to late basketball legend Bill Walton.

Guitars from Bob Dyan, Jerry Garcia, Bono & more bring big bucks at Music Icons auction

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

In addition to the record-setting $2.9 million sale of John Lennon‘s 12-string guitar, the two-day Music Icons sale by Julien’s Auctions brought big bucks for instruments by other rock legends.

The 1965 Fender Telecaster guitar played by Bob Dylan on his album Blonde on Blonde and on his now-legendary 1966 tour, and subsequently used by The Band‘s Robbie Robertson on countless other recordings, sold for $650,000. Jerry Garcia‘s Travis Bean “Winterland Ballroom” guitar went for $520,000. The Les Paul guitar played by Steve Jones during his time in The Sex Pistols went for $390,000.

The 1959 Gibson Les Paul that The Guess Who‘s Randy Bachman used to write and record the #1 hit “American Woman” went for more than $285,000. All told, the auction sold 187 of Bachman’s guitars.

Instruments used by U2 also did well: Bono‘s autographed 2005 Gretsch Irish Falcon guitar and a Fender bass used by Adam Clayton during the band’s Las Vegas residency each brought $260,000.

A yellow “Cloud 3″ electric guitar used by Prince in the ’80s and ’90s, once believed to be lost, went for a whopping $910,000, setting a new record for the most expensive Prince guitar ever sold at auction.

Other fun items that were sold at the auction include a red wrestling singlet worn onstage by Queen‘s Freddie Mercury in 1984, which went for $91,000; the sneakers Adam Clayton wore during U2’s Vegas residency, which went for more than $11,000; and a Versace dress worn by Tina Turner during her 1996 Wildest Dreams tour, which sold for $38,100.

Will Rush’s Alex Lifeson write his memoir?: “I’m too lazy for that”

May 31, 2024 by Classic Rock 93.9

Rush’s Alex Lifeson helped his bandmate Geddy Lee promote his memoir, My Effin Life, last year, popping up at some book tour stops where he and Geddy got to share stories from their days in Rush.

Lifeson, of course, plays a big role in Geddy’s story, so he appears in the book often. So, how did he feel reading about himself and their times together?

“(Geddy) sent me a copy of the first edited version,” he tells ABC Audio. “I cried, I laughed out loud, I was mesmerized by it.”

“When I read it, it really struck me that we have this amazing friendship that’s lasted for half a century,” he adds. “And it started out as just two kids in junior high school who were buddies and then started a basement band that became a garage band, that became a high school band and on and on.”

Lifeson notes that what happened to them was a “dream come true for so many young musicians and so many certainly male teenagers. It’s a remarkable story.”

Now that Geddy’s written his memoir, does Lifeson feel the need to tell his side of things with his own?

“I’m way too lazy for that,” he says. “But I keep getting asked that and my wife says I should do it just because there’s stories I tell, road stories, she said are so hilarious, if you put them in a nice little book, it could be a real fun thing.”

He adds, “So who knows, maybe if I can get some motivation.”

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