A movie based on Pink Floyd’s classic album The Wall opened at The Empire, Leicester Square in London, England. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason all attended the premiere, as did such fellow musicians as Pete Townshend, Sting, Roger Taylor, Andy Summers and more.
Directed by Alan Parker, with a screenplay by Waters, the film starred The Boomtown Rats’ Bob Geldof as a depressed rocker dealing with the pressures of stardom and more. In order to protect himself, he constructs both a physical and emotional wall around himself.
The movie didn’t open in the U.S. until that August; it went on to earn $22 million at the box office worldwide.
Slash collaborates with Demi Lovato on a new version of the pop star’s song “Sorry Not Sorry.”
“Slash is an iconic artist who I’ve been a fan of for years,” Lovato says of the Guns N’ Roses shredder. “It’s an absolute honor to have such a legend like him on the rock version of ‘Sorry Not Sorry.'”
You can listen to “Sorry Not Sorry (Rock Version)” now via digital outlets and watch its accompanying lyric video streaming now on YouTube. The track will also appear on the upcoming album REVAMPED, featuring similarly guitar-driven rerecordings of Lovato’s past songs.
Lovato previously explored heavier rock sounds on the 2022 album HOLY FVCK and toured behind the record with a live band featuring Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss.
Slash, meanwhile, has been involved with several projects lately that may be surprising for GN’R fans. In addition to rocking with Lovato, he teamed up with Dolly Parton and Chris Janson on the country song “21 Forever” and plays guitar on the Barbie movie soundtrack.
Bogawa worked on the film with acclaimed album cover designer Storm Thorgerson, who was a childhood friend of Barrett’s, and Bogawa tells ABC Audio their goal was to create a “vey personal” film.
“We agreed wholeheartedly on trying to make this (an) intimate portrait,” he explains, noting they wanted to “humanize” the misunderstood artist.
Syd, who came up with the band’s name, was ousted from Pink Floyd in 1968. Some claim it was due to mental illness, while others suggest it was drug related; the film doesn’t attempt to provide a definitive answer on what happened.
“I think, you know, it’s easy to put him in that sort of ’60s acid casualty, you know, the drugs made him crazy. But I think at the core of it, nobody really knows what happened,” Bogawa says. “For sure, there was an element that he didn’t want to be in the band.”
He adds, “Everybody agrees something happened, but no one really can, you know, fundamentally say, ‘I was there, this is what happened.'”
Bogawa believes Barrett’s story can be compared to those of other “tortured” musicians, like The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones, The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who all discovered an outlet to express all they’d been feeling — but the pressure got to be too much. Bogawa notes, “That’s the universal kind of sad story about it.”
Have You Got It Yet? opens in New York on July 14 and Los Angeles on July 21, with additional cities to be announced.
Gov’t Mule is once again inviting fans to come hang out with them on the beach. The band just announced details of their Island Exodus 14, happening January 14-18, at Jewel Paradise Cove Resort in Runaway Bay, Jamaica.
The island getaway will feature four nights of music, including three full sets from Gov’t Mule, along with a solo set by frontman Warren Hayes. Other guests on the bill include Robert Randolph Band, Samantha Fish Band featuring Jesse Dayton,and Pressing Strings.The bill also includes WednesdayNight Titans with special guest Ron Holloway, and Circles Around the Sun, with the latter playing January 13, the night before the official opening.
The getaway will also include lots of other fun activities for fans, like a joint Q&A with Hanes and Gov’t Mule drummer Matt Abts and Ron Holloway’s Fan Jam.
A presale for attendees of Island Exodus 13 begins Tuesday, July 18, while folks who attended previous festivals get access starting Wednesday, July 19. The general onsale begins Thursday, July 20. All ticket sales begin at 10 a.m. ET.
If you want fuel, fire and that which you desire, then you, Metallica and NASA are all on the same page.
The metal legends have loaned NASA their Reload single “Fuel” to soundtrack a new video promoting the Artemis program. The clip, which is streaming now on YouTube, features footage from the Artemis I launch, which sent an uncrewed rocket around the moon, and teases the upcoming Artemis II mission, which is set to send a crewed craft on a lunar flyby.
“What do Metallica and NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon have in common?” the video’s description asks. “Both love ‘Fuel’ and fire.”
Metallica previously became the first band to perform on every one of Earth’s seven continents, so maybe NASA can help them perform on the moon, too.
In the meantime, you can catch Metallica live on our home planet when their U.S. M72 tour kicks off August 4 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Billy Joel is back on the Billboard Hot 100 … sort of. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer returns to the singles chart as a writer, thanks to Fall Out Boy’s update of “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” which debuts at #94 on the all-genre chart.
The cover gives Joel his first Hot 100 appearance as a writer since the Glee days, when the show’s version of “Uptown Girl” charted in 2011. It has also led to the original “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which is one of Joel’s three #1 Hot 100 hits, increasing 44% in streams and 104% in downloads.
Fall Out Boy dropped their “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in June with updated lyrics referencing pop culture and world events that have occurred since the original was released in 1989. Joel gave his blessing to the cover in an interview with BBC Radio 2, declaring, “Fall Out Boy, go ahead, great, take it away!”
AC/DC‘s “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” is featured in season 2 of FX’s The Bear, but executive producer Josh Senior tells Billboard there was a real worry they wouldn’t be able to secure the rights to the tune.
“Everybody I’ve ever talked to about licensing music always told me AC/DC was hard to get, hard to pay for, hard to contact, hard to deal with,” he says. “And we knew we wanted that song.”
It turns out, all Josh’s worry was for nothing. He notes, “They ended up being amazing and awesome. But the hype was intimidating.”
“If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” appears on AC/DC/s sixth studio album, Highway To Hell, which was the last to feature lead singer Bon Scott. It appears in episode 9 of The Bear,as the restaurant gets ready to open.
Sammy Hagar is putting to rest any talk of a Van Halen reunion to honor the band’s late guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who passed away in 2020.
Although there was talk of some sort of tribute in the past, Hagar discusses why a reunion of the band can’t really happen during an appearance on the That Rockspodcast.
“It’s the same old story. It’s the same old f***** story,” Hagar says. “Alex [Van Halen] won’t respond to me. I reach out to him. I haven’t done it in a long time now, ’cause it’s, like, ‘Hey, you wanna talk to me? Call me.’ But there’s not going to be a Van Halen reunion,” he continues, adding, “it’s too late.”
If it were to happen, Sammy says Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, “would be the perfect guy” to be a part of it, but he’s too busy now with his own band Mammoth WVH. When it comes to the band’s other frontman, David Lee Roth, Hagar says, “there’s no way he would cooperate with me.”
“So if [Dave] goes out by himself, that’s not a Van Halen reunion; that’s half a Van Halen reunion. If I go out by myself without him, it’s a half a Van Halen reunion,” Hagar explains. “Only good news about that is that I could sing his songs just fine.”
Sammy and bassist Mike Anthony are still close and perform together; Sammy says he’d love to have Alex come play with them as well, but “the thought of a Van Halen reunion without Eddie, no, there’s no such thing.”
Duff McKagan got a new tattoo paying tribute to Ozzy Osbourne.
The Guns N’ Roses bassist shared an Instagram post showing off his latest ink, a bat on top of his hand.
“I FINALLY got my @ozzyosbourne tattoo!” McKagan writes in the caption.
Ozzy, of course, infamously bit the head off a bat during a 1982 concert. As one fan quips in the comments of McKagan’s post, “This is a fake! The bat still has a head!”
In addition to being a big fan of the Prince of Darkness, McKagan worked with Ozzy on his last two solo albums: 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9.
The Beach Boys are finally getting ready to tell their story. The band is set to release their first official book, The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys, via Genesis Publications.
The book was created using new interviews with Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston as well as archival interviews from Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson. It will feature personal photos from the band as well as photos culled from both the Capitol Records and the band’s archives. Among them are behind-the scenes pics from recording sessions, live concert and rehearsal shots and more.
The book will also feature an abundance of archival memorabilia, including tour posters, programs, handwritten notes, lyrics, newspaper clippings and more, as well as contributions from artists like Eric Clapton, ElvisCostello, Bob Dylan, Def Leppard, Lindsey Buckingham, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend and others.
Genesis will release a deluxe edition of The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys, limited to only 415 numbered copies, with all of them signed by Wilson, Love, Jardine and Johnston. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Surfrider Foundation.
