Classic Rock News

Paul McCartney and the Eagles were among the many artists who celebrated the late Jimmy Buffett at Keep the Party Going: A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett in Los Angeles on Thursday, with fan-shot footage on YouTube showing McCartney sharing tales of his friendship with the singer. 

“I had the great pleasure of knowing Jimmy,” McCartney told the audience at the Hollywood Bowl. “And like everyone else on the bill tonight has said, this is one great man. He was generous, he was funny, he’d done just about everything in his life.”

McCartney talked of the time Buffett got a custom left-handed guitar made for him, and also reminisced about singing with him the week before he died. He then performed one of the songs they’d played, The Beatles classic “Let It Be,” backed by the Eagles.

According to a post to Buffett’s Instagram Story,  the night also included Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl on drums with Zac Brown Band and Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band for a cover of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” ZBB also debuted a new song appropriate for the occasion, “Pirates and Parrots.” The Eagles performed “Take it to the Limit” and “In The City,” while Don Henley performed his tune “Boys of Summer.” Sheryl Crow performed Buffett’s ”Fins.”

The Coral Reefer Band also performed several of Buffett’s classics, including “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” and “Volcano” with Eagles’ Timothy B. Schmit.

The night ended with an encore featuring all of the night’s performers – including Jackson Browne, Brandi Carlile, Kenny Chesney and Eric Church – returning to the stage for Buffett’s signature tune, “Margaritaville.”

Buffett passed away September 1 after a four-year battle with a rare and aggressive form of skin cancer. He was 76.

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Blue Öyster Cult just released the new album Ghost Stories, featuring a collection of “lost gems” recorded between 1978 and 1983, and guitarist/vocalist Eric Bloom is explaining why these tunes never made it to an album in the first place.  

“You know, when you’re writing songs for a record, sometimes you work at it, you work at it, you work at it, never quite gets to where you want it to be recorded,” he tells ABC Audio. “That happens a lot on records.”

To get these tunes to where they needed to be for this album they were transferred from reel-to-reel analog tape to digital audio by the band’s original audio engineer, George Geranios, with producers Steve Schenck and Richie Castellano using artificial intelligence to complete the songs.

Despite the tunes being recorded so long ago, Bloom says he didn’t really forget about them — but at least one, “Don’t Come Running To Me,” gave him what he called an “oh yeah moment.”

“I’m listening to that, and I’m going, you know, I remember that. I said, ‘How did I ever sing that high?’ Which kind of blew me away cause I could never sing that now,” he says.

When Ghost Stories was announced, the label described it as “a fitting finale” to BOC’s recording legacy, but Bloom doesn’t believe that necessarily means it’s their last album ever.

“I can’t say we’ll never record again,” he says. “I mean, look at the example of KISS. You know, they’ve been saying final tour for about 20 years. So, I’ll, I’ll put it on the same level as that.”

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The battle over who owns the rights to The Guess Who‘s name and music has taken a sudden and extreme turn. 

The founding members of the band, Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman, sued original members Jim Kale and Garry Peterson in October, accusing them of misleading fans into thinking the founding members are part of the current lineup that’s on tour. Peterson is the only original member still touring with the group under the name The Guess Who.

According to Rolling Stone, in an effort to put an end to Kale and Peterson’s version of The Guess Who, Cummings — who wrote the band’s classic hits like “American Woman” and “These Eyes” and owns the publishing for them — has canceled the performing rights agreements for the songs. That means no band, including the current incarnation of The Guess Who, is allowed to play those songs live.

Here’s how it works: By canceling those agreements, concert venues can no longer host any acts who are performing Cummings’ songs. If they do, Cummings’ publishing company could sue them. The move has already resulted in several The Guess Who concerts in Florida being canceled.

But the move will likely wind up costing Cummings money, too, because it will prevent him from collecting royalties when the songs — or any covers of those songs — are played on radio, TV shows and more.

“I’m willing to do anything to stop the fake band; they’re taking [Bachman and my] life story and pretending it’s theirs,” Cummings tells Rolling Stone. “Yes, I’m going to lose some money, but we’re going to find out what’s worth what. I will not have this fake band going on any longer.”

He adds, “I’m going to lose some money, but … the name is worthless without those songs.”

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Joe Elliott wants fans to know that what they see at a Def Leppard concert is all live.

“You want people to hear it and go, ‘My God, they’re tight,’ but you can tell there’s a difference between the live and the record,” he tells Stereogum in a new interview.

While Elliott said he doesn’t “normally comment on this kind of stuff,” he wanted to set the record straight after W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes and Testament’s Chuck Willy had claimed the band used backing tracks in concert. 

“I’m flattered because their standards must be very different to ours,” Elliott says. “For anybody that thinks we use backing tracks, it must mean that when they hear us, they can’t believe how good it is for real.”

He adds, “The fact is that if you rehearse the way we do and you’re as talented as the band are as musicians, then maybe you would believe it. I’d be happy to invite any of those guys to come stand side stage with a pair of headphones on so they could actually hear what’s coming out of the stage.”

Elliott does acknowledge the use some effects, like keyboards and drum loops, the latter of which he says is used by “thousands of other drummers to enhance a sound.” 

“But backing tracks or playing along to a backing track — we’ve never done that, never,” he insists. “We’ve never mimed to the vocals, or we’ve never had multiples of stuff on tape. It’s literally live.”

Finally Elliott notes, “So, sorry Chuck and Chris Holmes, but you’ve got that one completely wrong. But thanks for thinking that we need them. We don’t. We’re that good.”

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Queen’s Brian May is set to join French new age performer Jean-Michel Jarre for a special concert to kick off this year’s STARMUS Festival.

The one-off show, Bridge from the Future, will take place May 12 at Incheba Bratislava, Slovakia, under the backdrop of the SNP (UFO) Bridge. The concert is free to attend and will also stream on Jarre’s YouTube channel.

The concert will kick off the seventh edition of STARMUS Festival, which is described as “the globe’s preeminent gathering uniting science, art, and music.” May, who in addition to a being a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is an astrophysicist, is one of the co-founders of the festival, along with astrophysicist Garik Israelian.

“We’re thrilled that STARMUS VII will kick off with such a unique and spectacular show,” May shares. “And in this concert, Jean-Michel Jarre will set the tone for the spirit of this conference, specifically aimed towards addressing our planet’s current problems.”

The STARMUS Festival will take place May 12-17. More info can be found at starmus.com.

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While Billy Idol is getting ready to release a 40th anniversary deluxe expanded edition of Rebel Yell on April 26, it seems when it comes to music he isn’t stuck in the past.

In an interview with the Calgary Herald, Idol revealed he has a new album coming out later this year, which will be his first in almost a decade; his last album was 2014’s Kings & Queens of the Underground.

“We don’t just do old stuff. We’ve got an album coming out in October, which I think is going to be a kicka** record,” he shares. “I really enjoyed making that. So we’re just as fired up about what we’re doing today as we ever were, and I can see the same on the faces in the audience.”

Idol will kick off a set of U.S. dates on May 3 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and will launch a Canadian tour on July 30 in Vancouver. When asked if this will be the end of his touring career, Idol shut down the thought.

“No, of course not. Not right now and hopefully, I never stop,” he said. “I’m just thinking I’ll rock til I drop. That’s kind of my ethos.” 

A complete list of Billy Idol tour dates can be found at billyidol.net.

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Jethro Tull’s first live album, Bursting Out, is getting reissued with a whole host of extras for fans. 

Originally released in September 1978 as a double album, Bursting Out was recorded during the band’s Heavy Horses European tour, featuring performances from shows that took place in May and June of that year.

The reissue, Bursting Out (The Inflated Edition), will be released as an expanded three-CD/three-DVD set, remixed by Steven Wilson. It will feature previously unreleased performances, a CD of an edited version of a 1978 Madison Square Garden show, previously released in 2009, and a DVD of the full MSG show, with over 50 minutes of video that was previously broadcast on the BBC and Radio 1.

Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson says the album “serves as a fine testimony for the many wonderful shows we did in the 70s before general touring fatigue and burn-out began a year or so later,” adding, “Enjoy vintage Tull at its ’70s best!”

Bursting Out (The Inflated Edition) will be released June 21. It is available for preorder now.

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Paul Simon was the musical entertainment at the White House State Dinner for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Yuko Kishida, hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Wednesday.

Video posted to social media shows Simon performing an acoustic version of his Grammy-winning song “Graceland” at the event, which former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Robert De Niro, Apple CEO Tim Cook and more attended.

Simon revealed last May that he had lost hearing in his left ear, making it difficult to play, although things have now changed. Just last month, he revealed that his hearing had returned enough to make him feel comfortable enough to sing and play guitar again.

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Jon Bon Jovi‘s first hit was “Runaway,” but as many fans know, his first paid job as a singer was on Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album. He discussed the latter on April 10 during his appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Jon was working as a gofer at the studio where the Star Wars Christmas Album was being made. The man in charge of the album needed a young-sounding guy to sing on a track called “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and tapped Jon for the job.

“He says, ‘Young boy, can you sing?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I think I can,'” Jon remembered. “He says, ‘Go in there and if you wanna do this, it pays 183 dollars.'”

Jimmy then played a clip of the song, to which Jon smiled and even sang along.

“Legend!” Jon joked. 

Speaking of that, Bon Jovi‘s new album, Legendary, is coming out in June. The band’s documentary begins streaming April 26 on Hulu.

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Last month, Mick Jagger posted a video of him dancing to a band playing Maroon 5’s hit “Moves Like Jagger,” and Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine still can’t believe it. 

“It’s really surreal,” Levine shared during an appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. “It’s just one of those things you’re like, ‘Oh my, like how is this possible. What is happening. It’s bizarre.’” 

Jagger posted the video with the caption, “Moves like who!” and Maroon 5 shared their approval on Instagram with an animated “GOAT” — “Greatest of All Time” — graphic. 

Levine said that while folks probably think tons of people sent him the video after Jagger posted it, that just wasn’t the case.

“I think it was one of those like everyone thought everyone had already sent it to me thing,” Levine shared, noting he only got it from a few people. “My mom and like one of my friends sent me the video. I was shocked not more people sent it to me.”

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