Classic Rock News

Julian Lennon is sharing his thoughts on the 2019 film Yesterday: he has mixed feelings, especially when it comes to how his father, John Lennon, is depicted in it.

The film stars Hamish Patel as a struggling musician who wakes up after an accident to a world that has never heard of the Beatles and begins to pass off the band’s tunes as his own, making him a huge superstar.

During an appearance on Kevin Nealon’s web series Hiking with Kevin, Julian shared that he “loved” the movie, “until they put that weird bit of an impression of what Dad would look like in his 70s and 80s or whatever, up on a Scottish or Irish island,” referring to the plot twist where Patel’s character finds out in this new world Lennon is still alive and goes to find him.

Julian says the twist “kind of threw the whole film off for me,” explaining, “I didn’t get—it wasn’t necessary for me, I don’t think. And it was just weird.”

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KISS is still on their End of the Road farewell tour and are making another trip to the United Kingdom, which they claim will be their last.

Pollstar reports the band — Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer — just announced their last ever U.K. dates, kicking off June 3 at Plymouth Argyle’s Home Park Stadium, with stops in Birmingham, Newcastle, London and Manchester, before wrapping things up July 8 at OVO Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland. 

They also previously announced they will headline England’s Download Festival, which takes place June 12 to 14, and also features Iron Maiden and System of a Down.

A ticket presale for the new U.K. dates is happening Tuesday at 10 a.m., followed by a general sale Friday at 10 a.m.

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Iggy Pop has shared a new song called “Strung Out Johnny,” a track off his upcoming album, Every Loser.

The tune finds the Godfather of Punk singing lines including “God made me a junkie/But Satan told me so” over a dark, ’80s-esque sound. You can listen to “Strung Out Johnny” now via digital outlets.

“Strung Out Johnny” is the second track to be released from Every Loser, following the lead single “Frenzy,”  which gave Iggy the new Billboard record for longest gap between appearances on the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.

Every Loser arrives January 6. The album was produced by Andrew Watt and features Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Blink-182‘s Travis Barker, Jane’s Addiction‘s Dave Navarro and Eric Avery, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, ex-RHCP guitarist Josh Klinghoffer and late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.

(Video contains uncensored profanity) 

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ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd are teaming up for a new co-headlining tour. The Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour is set to hit 22 North American cities this summer, including Phoenix, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Denver and Saratoga Springs.

The trek kicks off July 21 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and runs through September 17 in Camden, New Jersey. It’s mostly made up of outdoor amphitheaters shows.

Tickets go on sale starting Friday at 10 a.m. local time. Check out the complete list of dates here.

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Bono isn’t done talking about his biography. The U2 frontman just announced a new set of dates for his Stories of Surrender book tour, which is dubbed “an evening of words, music and some mischief.”

The new dates are also called Bono at the Beacon, since all the dates take place at New York’s Beacon Theater. The leg consists of eight shows starting April 16 and running through May 3.

The shows have Bono recounting stories from his recently released memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and also performing stripped down versions of U2 songs. He’ll be backed by Gemma Doherty on harp, keyboard and vocals, and Kate Ellis and cello, keyboard and vocals, with Jacknife Lee serving as musical director.

Tickets for all shows go on sale Thursday at 10 a.m. ET. Check out the complete list of dates here.

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Peter Frampton recently finished up the 2022 dates of his farewell tour, after announcing a few years ago that he’ll be retiring from the road due to a degenerative muscle condition.  He sat with Guitar World for a wide-ranging interview about his career, in which he discusses his struggles with his ’70s-era fame, and how David Bowie saved his career.

After 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive made him one of the world’s biggest stars, Frampton says that after the follow-up, 1977’s I’m In You, “I could feel it slipping away…I started to lose a lot of audience…I felt like I was in a sinking ship.” As the ’80s arrived, Frampton admits he wasn’t making his best work, and he wasn’t having much commercial success, either. But in 1986, things turned around for him — and he gives the credit to Bowie, his old schoolmate.

“I did a record for Atlantic called Premonition,” he tells Guitar World. “It still wasn’t a great record…but that’s the album David Bowie listened to…he said, ‘Can you come and play some guitar for me?’”

Frampton ended up playing on Bowie’s 1987 album Never Let Me Down, and then joined him on his Glass Spider tour. 

“He could have chosen anybody…but he chose me. I can never thank him enough for that,” admits Frampton. Rather than missing the spotlight, he says being a sideman is his “comfy chair,” explaining, “I’ve always been more comfortable playing guitar, not singing.”

He notes, “David inviting me to do the album and tour changed my credibility; I got my credibility back that I felt I’d lost when I’m In You came out. I’m a musician first and foremost. David gave me back that credibility to continue and bring people back to me.”

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AC/DC will celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2023, and in honor of the occasion, an officially licensed book on the band is on its way.

AC/DC: 50 Years Of High Voltage Rock ‘N’ Roll will arrive at some point next year from Rufus Publications. Right now there’s only a teaser video for the book, so it’s not clear if it’ll be a band biography, a photo collection or both. The company describes it only as “something very special.”

AC/DC was formed in November 1973 by Malcom and Angus Young, bass player Larry Van Kriedt, singer Dave Evans and drummer Collin Burgess. In 1974, Bon Scott replaced Evans as vocalist and they released their first album, High Voltage. The band’s big U.S. breakthrough didn’t come until 1980’s Back In Black, released with new singer Brian Johnson following Scott’s death, became their all-time best-selling album.

AC/DC’s most recent album, 2020’s Power Up, hit number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and earned the band three Grammys.

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Steppenwolf was formed in 1967 and after scoring massive hits like “Born to Be Wild,” “Magic Carpet Ride” and “Rock Me,” broke up in 1972. The band reformed in 1974 and then split again two years later — and it’s that second era that is now being collected in a new box set slated for release on January 27.

The Epic Years 1974-1976 gathers together the three albums Steppenwolf recorded for the Epic label: Slow Flux, Hour of the Wolf and Skullduggery. 1974′s Slow Flux contained Steppenwolf’s final U.S. top-40 hit, “Straight Shootin’ Woman.” 

When the 1975 follow-up, Hour of the Wolf, barely made the charts, frontman John Kay tried to break up the group, but the label demanded the band fulfill its contractual obligation with one more album. Skullduggery came out in 1976, and later that year, Kay announced on TV that the band was splitting up.

In addition to those three albums, the box set also includes two rare bonus tracks: a mono promotional single mix of “Caroline (Are You Ready for the Outlaw World),” from Hour of the Wolf, and that single’s B-side, “Angeldrawers.”

You can preorder the box set now at Cherryred.co.uk.

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Mick Jagger‘s youngest kid is a chip off the old Stone.

Deveraux, the rock legend’s eighth child, turned 6 years old on Thursday. His mother, Melanie Hamrick, Jagger’s girlfriend, posted a photo on Instagram of the three of them celebrating together. In the photo, Hamrick holds a birthday cake and kisses Deveraux on the cheek, while Jagger smiles happily. 

Deveraux looks very much like his famous dad in the series of photos Hamrick posted; in one, he’s standing in a recording studio holding a cookie while wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt. “Happy 6th Birthday to our WONDERFUL Devi. Love you so much !!!!!” Hamrick captioned the post.

Jagger and Hamrick have been dating since 2014; they welcomed Deveraux in 2016. In July, Hamrick posted a photo of Devi dressed as Spider-Man watching his dad rock out onstage.

Jagger shares four children — Gabriel, 25, Georgia May, 30, James, 37, and Elizabeth, 38 — with Jerry Hall, and Jade, 51, with his ex-wife, Bianca Jagger. He’s also father to Karis, 52, with actress Marsha Hunt and Lucas, 23, with Brazilian TV presenter Luciana Gimenez.

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After teasing it in a recent interview, Roger Waters has now released The Lockdown Sessions.

Waters recorded the five songs on the project — a digital-only release — at home during the COVID-19 lockdown between 2020 and 2021. One song postdates those tracks, though: a new version of “Comfortably Numb” that was recorded during Waters’ 2022 This Is Not a Drill North American tour.

The songs include material from both Waters’ solo career and Pink Floyd: “Mother” and “Vera” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall; “Two Suns In the Sunset” and “The Gunner’s Dream” from Waters’ final album with Floyd, The Final Cut; and “The Bravery of Being Out of Range” from his 1992 album, Amused to Death.

Explaining why he chose to record these particular songs, he writes, “Our Us and Them Tour lasted three years … At every gig we did an encore after the main show…[we] closed with ‘Comfortably Numb’… the encore was always ‘Mother’ … I can’t remember why I decided to start doing other songs? Anyway, at some point after the end of the tour … I started thinking, ‘It could make an interesting album, all those encores … The Encores — yeah, has a nice ring to it!'”

He continues, “Then … I’m in England doing the Ginger Baker tribute gig one Tuesday night at the Hammersmith Odeon with Eric Clapton and … the following Saturday marching from The Australian Embassy to Parliament Square to make a speech in support of Julian Assange, when, bugger me, Covid! For me it was Friday March 13, 2020. Lockdown! So much for the Encores project.”

Waters adds, “We’ve tacked C. Numb on the end of the collection, as an appropriate exclamation point in closing this circle of love.”

The European run of This Is Not A Drill will kick off March 17 in Lisbon, Portugal.

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