Classic Rock News

Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor are set to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band’s iconic tune “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a very special performance.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers will appear at BBC Radio’s Last Night of the Proms, which is described as the “biggest party in classical music,” to perform an orchestral arrangement of the song with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and chorus, the BBC singers and National Youth Choir.

“What a splendid way to celebrate a Queen masterpiece in its 50th year: Bohemian Rhapsody performed with a 100-piece BBC Symphony Orchestra and a choir of over 150 singers – on the most prestigious night of the year in The Royal Albert Hall,” May and Taylor shared on Instagram. “Freddie will be loving it!” they added, referring to the band’s late frontman Freddie Mercury.

The event takes place at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Saturday at 7 p.m. BST, and will air live on BBC Radio 3, and also on BBC TV.

The almost six-minute “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the lead single off Queen’s 1975 album, A Night at the Opera, and went on to sell over 6 million copies worldwide.

The song had a resurgence in popularity in 1992 after appearing in the film Wayne’s World. After the release of the 2018 Queen biopic, also named Bohemian Rhapsody, the song became the most streamed song of the 20th century and was certified Diamond by the Recording Academy.

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Mötley Crüe is setting the record straight about accusations by their former bandmate Mick Mars that they don’t perform live in concert.

The accusations came out in Mars’ 2023 lawsuit in which he claimed he was forced out of the band he founded and that his bandmates were cutting his stake in the group.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Nikki Sixx acknowledges the band uses backing tracks, but says that doesn’t mean they aren’t playing.

“Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Sixx tells the paper that Mars’ accusations were “a crazy betrayal” to the band’s legacy.

“Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” he adds. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Mötley Crüe kicks off a 10-show Las Vegas residency on Friday at Dolby Live at Park MGM. The shows were originally scheduled for the spring, but were postponed due to frontman Vince Neil’s health issues. Sixx says Neil’s been working “really hard” at getting back in shape for the shows.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking a** like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that,” Sixx tells the LA Times. “If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

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On This Day, Sept. 12, 1975 …

Fifty years ago, Pink Floyd released their ninth studio album, Wish You Were Here.

The album featured the nine-part “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” which was a tribute to founding member Syd Barrett, who’d been fired seven years earlier due to his drug use and mental health issues.

The album’s title track became a classic rock staple and has often made lists of the greatest songs of all time. Other songs on the album include “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine.”

Wish You Were Here went on to be a huge hit for the band, reaching #1 in both the U.S. and U.K. It became Pink Floyd’s fastest-selling album ever and went on to sell 20 million copies.

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The Black Crowes are revisiting their third studio album, 1994’s Amorica.

To celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary, the band is set to release a super-deluxe box set featuring new mixes of the original album, along 14 previously unreleased recordings.

The bonus material includes Tallest, nine newly mixed songs recorded during the sessions for Tall, an unreleased album the band worked on before Amorica but was scrapped by Chris Robinson and Rich Robinson. 

The box set also includes The Marie Laveau Sessions, featuring seven songs Chris and Rich worked on during a soundcheck on their High As The Moon tour and then recorded in New Orleans on a day off from the trek. There will also be four recordings from a live broadcast from AIR Studios in London.

“Amorica was about breaking free and doing things on our own terms,” said Chris. “It wasn’t about fitting into what was happening in music at the time. It was about trusting our instincts – and 30 years later, that’s still who we are.”

Rich adds, “The bond between us, even when tested, always came back to the music. That’s what Amorica represents – our belief in ourselves and in this band.”

As a preview of the deluxe edition, the Crowes have released “Bitter, Bitter You,” a previously unreleased song from the Tall sessions.

The Amorica super-deluxe box set will be released Nov. 14 as a five-LP or three-CD set. There will also be two-LP and one-CD editions.

All formats are available for preorder now.

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The upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, focuses on the making of the rocker’s 1982 album Nebraska, but some may be wondering why it isn’t a full-blown biopic on The Boss.

The movie is based on Warren Zanes’ book Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. The film’s director, Scott Cooper, tells Entertainment Weekly that he liked the “intimacy” of the source material.

“It wasn’t about Bruce Springsteen, the icon and stadium-filling rock star,” Cooper tells the mag. “It was about Bruce alone in a rented house, trying to understand himself and his unresolved trauma through song.”

He adds that the book “captured the tension between the myth of Bruce Springsteen and the man.”

“That’s where the film lived for me,” he says. “Not in the spectacle, but in the silence, the hesitation, the uncertainty. I saw a cinematic portrait of an artist who was willing to strip himself bare.”

Cooper says the film “isn’t a typical musical biopic,” noting he didn’t want to tell Bruce’s entire story.

“It’s about honoring this particular moment — the stillness, the searching, and the emotional honesty,” he tells EW.

Cooper also had a personal reason for wanting to make a film about Nebraska.

“Nebraska was my entry into Bruce Springsteen. I was immediately struck by its minimalist quality, its power,” he says. “It seemed to come from some of the same world that I was accustomed to. You could tell that these were songs that meant something to somebody.”

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White as Bruce and Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau, opens in theaters Oct. 24.

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Robert Plant has announced a new U.K. tour with his band Saving Grace, featuring Suzi Dian.

The tour kicks off Dec. 8 in Portsmouth, with shows in such English cities as London, Birmingham and Manchester, as well as stops in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, before wrapping Dec. 23 in York.

Tickets for all shows go on sale Sept. 18.

Robert Plant and Saving Grace are set to release their self-titled debut album on Sept. 26. Anyone who preorders the album by Monday will have early access to tickets for the tour.

Plant and the band will launch their first U.S. tour in support of the album on Oct. 30 in Wheeling, West Virginia, with dates confirmed through Nov. 23 in Valley Center, California. A complete list of dates can be found at RobertPlant.com.

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It sounds like Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour would be open to an ABBA-like avatar show.

Louder Sound reports that at the premiere of his concert film Live At Circus Maximus, Rome at London’s BFI IMAX, Gilmour was asked how he’d feel about playing some modern venues, like the Sphere in Las Vegas. And he had an interesting take on it.

“Well, you know, I’m hoping, one of these days, to go there and sit and watch myself doing it, which is something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “My avatar, you know? So I don’t actually have to get up and do it.”

Live at Circus Maximus, Rome hits theaters and IMAX on Sept. 17. It is a recording of a concert on Gilmour’s 2024 Luck and Strange tour at the famed Italian venue set against the backdrop of the ancient ruins of Rome.

Tickets are on sale now at DavidGilmour.film.

And in Pink Floyd news, fans think the band has been teasing an upcoming announcement with some cryptic posts on social media and digital services.

The band has blacked out the cover photos on their social media pages, and on digital services the covers of all their albums have been replaced with black squares with one line descriptions of the cover art. For example, on Wish You Were Here it reads “two men in suits shaking hands one man is on fire.” The Wall reads, “A wall of white bricks with red graffiti.”

Although there’s no word on what they could be teasing, Friday marks the 50th anniversary of Wish You Were Here, so it could be related to that milestone.

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Legendary songwriter and producer Bert Berns has been posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the organization revealed Thursday.

Berns, who passed away in 1967 at age 38, was responsible for writing such iconic tunes as “Twist and Shout,” “Piece of My Heart,”  and “Hang on Sloopy.” His songs were recorded by such artists as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and David Bowie.

Berns’ induction was celebrated during an intimate ceremony at 54 Below cabaret club in New York City on Wednesday, hosted by musician Paul Shaffer and Berns’ son Brett Berns and daughter Cassandra Berns. Cassandra also performed at the event.

The evening included video tributes from fellow Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Paul McCartney and Morrison.

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Items from David Bowie’s archives will be on display at the new David Bowie Centre in London, and one of those pieces gives fans insight into the legendary singer’s musical tastes.

According to Rolling Stone, on display will be a document titled “Memo for radio show – list of favourite records,” which reveals Bowie’s top 15 songs.

Songs on the list include The Beatles’ “Across the Universe,” Little Richard’s “True Fine Mama,” Jeff Beck’s “Beck’s Bolero,” Sonic Youth’s “Tom Violence,” Miles Davis’ “Some Day My Prince Will Come” and Ronnie Spector’s “Try Some, Buy Some.”

The David Bowie Centre, which will be the home of the David Bowie Archive, is set to open at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on Saturday. Located at the V&A East Storehouse, the David Bowie Centre will feature nine rotating displays, with the museum having access to over 90,000 items in the Bowie Archive.

More info can be found at vam.ac.uk.

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Mike Campbell and his band The Dirty Knobs are heading out on the road this December for a very special tour, in which Campbell will be performing and sharing stories from his memoir, Heartbreaker, which was released in March.

The former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist has announced dates for what he’s calling A Semi-Acoustic Evening with Mike Campbell and The Dirty Knobs – Songs and Stories from Heartbreaker.

“Your expressions of support for my memoir ‘Heartbreaker’ have meant the world to me,” he shared on Instagram. “I’m excited to announce that the Dirty Knobs and I will bring the book to life on a short tour this winter.”

The tour consists of five shows, kicking off Dec. 3 in Santa Barbara, California. They’ll then play El Cajon, California, on Dec. 5, Las Vegas on Dec. 6, San Francisco on Dec. 9 and Los Angeles on Dec. 11.

Tickets go on sale to the general public starting Friday at 9 a.m. PT.

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