Classic Rock News

Patti Smith is set to be celebrated with a tribute concert in New York City in March, and now we know the artists who’ll be performing at the event.

R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Ben Harper, Kim Gordon, The National‘s Matt Berninger, Karen O and Sharon Van Etten are among the artists booked for People Have the Power – A Celebration of Patti Smith, taking place March 26 at Carnegie Hall.

The lineup, which also includes Courtney Barnett, the Kronos Quartet, Angel Olsen and the Kills’ Alison Mosshart, will be backed by a house band, made up of bassist/keyboardist Tony Shanahan and guitarist Lenny Kaye, from Smith’s band, as well as Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan.

The night will include performances of songs from Smith’s full catalog, but will also celebrate next year’s 50th anniversary of her classic album Horses.

People Have the Power – A Celebration of Patti Smith is the latest in a series of charity concerts put on by New York City entrepreneur Michael Dorf, with each one celebrating a different artist. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Carnegie Hall series. 

Since the series launched in 2004, the concerts have raised over $2 million for charity. Other artists who’ve received such tributes include Paul McCartney, Van Morrison, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, R.E.M and last year, Crosby Stills & Nash.

Proceeds from the Smith concert will go toward music education for underserved youth.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Last year, Elton John closed out his farewell tour in the U.K. with his first-ever performance at the U.K.’s prestigious Glastonbury Festival. It’s just been announced that his old pal Rod Stewart will be taking the stage next year.

On Instagram, Rod wrote, “I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that I’ll be playing @glastofest 2025! After all these years, I’m proud and ready and more than able to take the stage again to pleasure and titillate my friends at Glastonbury in June. I’ll see you there!”

Rod last headlined Glastonbury in 2002, alongside Coldplay. When he takes the stage there next year, he’ll be 80, but that won’t make him the oldest performer in the festival’s history. In 2022, Paul McCartney played Glastonbury a few weeks after his 80th birthday, and in 2015, 87-year-old Burt Bacharach performed.

Specifically, Rod will be performing in what’s called the “Legends” slot on the festival, which takes place “Sunday teatime,” as the festival quaintly puts it. That’s the afternoon of Sunday, June 29, if you’re thinking of going.  This past year, Shania Twain had that slot.

The festival is taking 2026 off, and organizer Emily Eavis writes on Instagram, “Bringing Sir Rod Stewart back for the Sunday afternoon slot on the Pyramid stage is everything we could wish for. What a way to bow out with the final legends slot before we take a fallow year. We cannot wait!”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

A new book about The Zombies is coming in 2025.

Times and Seasons – The Rise and Fall and Rise of The Zombies by Robin Platts promises to tell the band’s “whole story in detail,” using interviews with the group’s five original members.

According to the description, the book follows The Zombies’ career “from the mid-‘60s Decca Records hits and misses through the break-up, the solo years, and their unexpected revival in the 21st century.”

Times and Seasons features a forward by Bangles frontwoman Susanna Hoffs, who shares, “My love affair with the Zombies may have started in the sixties, but I love them still — even more, as I’ve had the great privilege of knowing what fine human beings they are and the great fortune of seeing them perform many times, watching them inspire a whole new generation of music lovers.” 

Times and Seasons – The Rise and Fall and Rise of The Zombies is available for preorder now, with shipping to begin early next year.

The Zombies, best known for such songs as “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season,” were forced to end their touring career earlier this year after Rod Argent announced his retirement from the road after suffering a stroke.

In early November the band held their annual Begin Here Festival in their hometown of St. Albans, England, outside of London, which included an Argent tribute concert that featured his bandmates Colin Blunstone, Steve Rodford, Tom Toomey and Søren Koch.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The 40th anniversary version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is here — along with a video featuring clips of all the artists who’ve sung on the various iterations of the all-star Band Aid charity single over the years.

U2‘s Bono, Sting, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Duran Duran‘s Simon Le Bon, Paul Young, the late George Michael and the late Sinead O’Connor are all featured in the video, which begins and ends with a 1984 plea from the late David Bowie asking people to help by buying the record. In addition, the new song and video feature changes to many of the song’s problematic lyrics, which have earned it much criticism over the years. 

The video and song also feature excerpts from a famous 1984 BBC News report about famine in Ethiopia that spurred Irish singer Bob Geldof to create the original Band Aid project and the Live Aid concerts. The original song initially raised millions for famine relief and, according to the BBC, the Band Aid Charitable Trust has raised nearly 150 million pounds to date. 

Geldof, meanwhile, is defending the song after pop star Ed Sheeran recently wrote on Instagram that if he had known about the remix, he would have denied Geldof permission to use his vocals. He cited an Instagram Story by Ghanian-English musician Fuse ODG, in which Fuse wrote that such all-star charity projects “perpetuate damaging stereotypes.”

Geldof told The Times of London, “This little pop song has kept millions of people alive …why not keep doing that? … [T]here are 600 million hungry people in the world — 300 million are in Africa. We wish it were other but it is not. We can help some of them. That’s what we will continue to do.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Ringo Starr appears to have confirmed the rumors that Saltburn star Barry Keoghan is going to play him in Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles movies.

Back in February, Mendes announced plans to make four separate Beatles movies, one for each member — Ringo, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison — and almost immediately speculation began as to who’ll play the Fab Four, with Keoghan’s name mentioned for Ringo.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the 84-year-old Ringo appeared to let it slip that the rumor is true.

When asked how he feels about Keoghan playing him, Ringo shared, “Well, I think it’s great. I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”

So far there’s been no official announcement about the casting.

Mendes’ films will be made by Sony Pictures, and will mark the first time Apple Corps Ltd. and The Beatles have granted a studio the rights to the life stories of band members and their legendary catalog of music. Each film will be told from the point of view of one of the band members.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Bob Dylan recently took to social platform X to share his feelings about seeing Nick Cave perform the song “Joy” in Paris, and now Cave is responding to the legendary artist.

“Saw Nick Cave in Paris recently at the Accor Arena and I was really struck by that song Joy where he sings ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now it the time for joy,'” Dylan shared. “I was thinking to myself, yeah that’s about right.”

In his response, Cave shared on his website that he didn’t know Dylan was at the show, but called his post “a lovely pulse of joy that penetrated my exhausted, zombied state.” 

He also noted that he was happy to see Bob still on X, despite many people leaving for Bluesky.

“It felt admirably perverse, in a Bob Dylan kind of way,” he wrote, “I did indeed feel it was a time for joy rather than sorrow. There had been such an excess of despair and desperation around the election, and one couldn’t help but ask when it was that politics became everything.”

He added that he thinks the current obsession with politics has kept people from experiencing “the presence of anything remotely like the spirit, the sacred, or the transcendent – that holy place where joy resides.”

“I was elated to think Bob Dylan had been in the audience, and since I doubt I’ll get an opportunity to thank him personally, I’ll thank him here,” he concluded. “Thank you, Bob!”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Sammy Hagar has shared how he’s feeling after his former Van Halen bandmate Alex Van Halen released his memoir, Brothers, and didn’t even include him in Van Halen’s history.

Alex’s book suggests that Van Halen ended when David Lee Roth left the band and steered clear of mentioning Hagar’s name in interviews, which Sammy tells Rolling Stone is just “sad.”  

“Why he left me out,  I would like to hear him explain that someday, because I don’t get it completely,” Hagar said. “I know that he’s bitter about some things, whatever that is. … It’s like, ‘If you don’t want that era, that even gives me more justification to say I own it then.'”

But Hagar would like to bury the hatchet, telling the mag it’s on his “bucket list” to make peace with Alex.

“I will not take this to my grave, and I don’t want Al taking it to his grave,” he says. “I’ve put the olive branch out there many times, and I just put it out again to (manager) Irving Azoff.”

“I want to be friends, though,” he adds. “I don’t want to play in a band with Al. I’m not asking for that. I can see that he’s not capable of doing that. If he was, I’d be happy to play with him, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I just want to friends again.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Back in September, Elton John revealed that he lost vision in one of his eyes, and he now tells Good Morning America his condition has interfered with his attempts to put out a new album.

Elton revealed he had a new album in the works at the 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, then said it would be out in 2024 during his year-end message to members of his fan community. 

When asked by Robin Roberts for an album update, Elton said, “I don’t know. It’s been awhile since I’ve done anything and I just have to get off my backside,” explaining the issues with his eye delayed things.

“I unfortunately lost my eyesight in my right eye in July because I had an infection in the south of France,” he said. “And it’s been four months now since I haven’t been able to see. And my left eye’s not the greatest.”

Elton said “there’s hope and encouragement that it will be OK,” but he really hasn’t been able to work on music. “I’m kinda stuck in the moment … going into the studio and recording, I don’t know, because I can’t see a lyric, for start.”

“We’re taking an initiative to try and make it better, but at the moment that’s what we’re really concentrating on,” he said. “And it kinda floored me, and I can’t see anything, I can’t read anything, I can’t watch anything.”

But even with all the challenges he’s faced, Elton, whose new documentary Never Too Late debuts Dec. 13 on Disney+, still seems to have a positive attitude. 

“I’m so lucky, I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he said. “I’m proud of my attitude towards myself and what’s going on. I’m just very lucky and very grateful.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On This Day, Nov. 25, 1976 …

The Band — Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel — played their final show ever at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.

Billed as their “farewell concert appearance,” the show featured guest appearances by a whole host of musicians, including Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Dr. John, Ronnie Wood, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison. 

The concert was filmed by director Martin Scorsese and released in April 1978 as The Last Waltz, considered one of the greatest concert documentaries of all time.

The film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2019.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band both earned nominations for the 2024 Billboard Music Awards.

Being that both artists are known for their live shows, it seems fitting they’re nominated in the Top Rock Touring Artist category, with their only other competition being Coldplay.

Both The Rolling Stones and Springsteen were on tour this year. The Stones launched their Hackney Diamonds tour in April in Houston, while Springsteen and The E Street Band returned to the road in March in Phoenix.

Also earning BBMA nominations this year are Pearl Jam, in the Best Hard Rock Album category for Dark Matter, and Dolly Parton, in the Best Rock Album category for Rockstar, which featured collaborations with such artists as Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Stevie Nicks.

The 2024 BBMAs will air Dec. 12 at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, Fire TV channels and on-demand on Paramount+.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.