Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and GaryU.S. Bonds performed for a million protestors at Rally for Nuclear Disarmament in New York’s Central Park.
The gathering was the largest anti-nuclear weapons demonstration in U.S. history.
In 2018, a two-CD set featuring highlights from the rally was released, including performances of Springsteen’s “Promised Land,” Browne’s “Running On Empty,” Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou,” Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” and more.
Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament has announced a new album in collaboration with ex-Fitz & Tantrums drummer John Wicks.
The record, which the duo is releasing under the name Deaf Charlie, is called Catastrophic Metamorphic and arrives June 30.
“There’s a real optimism in this batch of mostly dystopian themes, and that comes from John’s upbeat production and playing,” Ament says. “He infused a lot of pop and reggae elements into the songs, pushing my arrangements and rhythms into new territory. Most of these tunes had real journeys between our two visions.”
Ament and Wicks — and yes, that’s John Wicks with an “s,” not to be confused with the Keanu Reeves hitman franchise — previously worked together on the score for the 2022 miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven. They also released a collaborative song in 2020 called “Something Real.”
Pearl Jam, meanwhile, is gearing up for a U.S. tour, kicking off in August.
Joni Mitchell made another triumphant return to the stage this weekend, headlining her first ticketed concert in over 20 years.
The show, a “Joni Jam,” took place at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington as part of Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival, and featured a host of special guests, including Carlile and her musical partners Phil Hanseroth and Tim Hanseroth, Annie Lennox, Marcus Mumford, Sarah McLachlan, Lucius’ Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig,Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Celisse, The Revolution’s Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman and more.
The three-hour set featured songs sung by and for Joni, including such classics as “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Blue” sung by McLachlan, “Lady of the Canyon” sung by Lennox, “A Case of You” with Carlile, “Summertime,” “Help Me” and more.
The show was similar to Joni’s return to the stage last summer at the Newport Folk Festival. That performance is being released as a live album, Joni Mitchell at Newport, on July 28. The album is available for preorder now.
Gov’t Mule is set to drop their 12th studio album, Peace…Like A River, on Friday, June 16, and it sounds like it wasn’t too hard for frontman Warren Haynes to come up with the title of the record.
“When I was going through all the lyrics, I realized that the word ‘peace’ and the word ‘river’ appear more than anything else, several times in multiple songs,” he tells ABC Audio. “And so I wanted to find something that combined those two things together.”
The title was also inspired by the Paul Simon song “Peace Like a River,” with Haynes noting, “We almost recorded it and we may still at some point.”
The album was recorded during COVID-19 lockdowns, during the same sessions as 2021’s Heavy Load Blues. Haynes explains they decided to work on both “because we had all this time on our hands and I had written a ton of material, and we couldn’t travel and we couldn’t tour, so it was the best way to utilize our time.”
Haynes says the pandemic did affect the way he was thinking and feeling while writing the record, but he insists, “I tried not to let it affect the subject matter so much.”
“I didn’t want to write a bunch of COVID-centric songs, but at the same time, that’s what the world was going through,” he shares. “And so I tried to write songs that were universal, but with the mindset that was happening at the time.”
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band fans in Washington, DC, will have to wait an additional month before they can see them hit the stage.
It was just announced that The Boss’ August 28 concert at Nationals Park has been postponed to September 29, noting tickets to the original show will be valid for the new date.
No reason for the move was given.
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band are currently on tour in Europe and are scheduled to play Landgraaf, The Netherlands, on Sunday, June 11. The tour returns to North America with a two-night stand at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, August 9 and 11. A complete list of dates can be found at Springsteen.net.
Pearl Jam is showing their support for the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month.
The Seattle rockers are selling a new, limited edition Pride shirt, featuring their classic stickman figure with the band name printed in rainbow colors and the word “Pride” in red at the bottom.
The T-shirts sell for $34.95, with proceeds going toward “organizations that need our support more than ever amid a wave of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.”
The T-shirts are on sale now on the band’s website, with shipping set to begin in late June.
Pearl Jam is set to kick off a short tour starting August 31 in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrapping with a two-night stand in Austin, Texas, September 18 and 19. A complete list of dates can be found at pearljam.com.
The Queen musical We Will Rock You reopened at the London Coliseum this week, and the gala performance featured a special appearance by none other than Queen guitarist Brian May. The rocker rose up to the stage through a trap door in the floor to join the performers for the guitar solo on “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
May shared video of the moment on Instagram, describing it as “just about the greatest gift any guitar player could have.”
“The shot of adrenaline it gives ME is massive – literally knocking the breath out of me,” he writes. “That risky stuff is very similar to jumping off a cliff under a ‘parapente’ wing ( I know, because I’ve done it) or going on the biggest roller coaster in the park (we’ve all done it – right?) – but in this case I’m on my own with no safety net.”
He did add, “[It’s] Not quite so terrifying as playing live on the roof of Buckingham Palace to an audience of half a billion – but not far off.”
We Will Rock You runs until August 26. Tickets are on sale now.
A long-in-the-works movie about TheBeatles manager Brian Epstein is one step closer to finally hitting the big screen, although it’s now having to get past another hurdle.
Deadline reports the film, Midas Man, is in post production, but it has just brought on its third director, JoeStephenson, who directed the 2023 film Doctor Jekyll.
Stephenson takes over the project after Vinyl director Sara Sugarman left, reportedly due to creative differences and scheduling problems. She took over the project from Jonas Åkerlund, who left in 2021 following disagreements with producers.
The film stars The Queen’s Gambit’s Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Epstein, with four newcomers playing the Beatles — Jonah Lees as John Lennon, Blake Richardson as Paul McCartney, Leo Harvey Elledge as George Harrison and Campbell Wallace as Ringo Starr.
In addition to director problems, Deadline reports the film has had issues with funding and scheduling.
The film’s producer Perry Trevers tells the site, “With principal photography now being finished we are incredibly happy at what has been shot and look forward with excitement at being able to share it with the world.”
KISS just kicked off the European leg of their End of the Road tour and it’s got Gene Simmons reflecting on the band’s legendary career. In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Simmons says he feels “pride in a half a century of defying the critics.”
“We use them as mulch. You know what that is? You grind ’em up and you put ’em in the dirt. They don’t mean anything,” he shares. “If it was up to critics, we wouldn’t have our favorite things — Star Wars and, you know, all the fun stuff in life. We completely ignored them.”
As for the decision to stop touring, Simmons notes, “You have to have a little pride and self-respect. Know when to get off the stage,” joking, “It’s been half a century, and boy, do I look good.”
He adds, “I can’t tell you how much it means to us to be in front of the fans and put on the spectacle of all spectacles.”
Finally, he says of the end, “It’s gonna be happy, because of the amazing journey we’ve had, but sad, of course, because it’s gonna be heartbreaking.”
KISS’ End of the Road tour hits Prague on June 10. They wrap the tour for good December 1 and 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A complete list of dates can be found at kissonline.com.
The latest from Dave Grohl and company takes the top spot after an intense battle with Noel Gallagher‘s Council Skies, the ex-Oasis guitarist’s new record with his High Flying Birds solo band. At one point over the past week, OfficialCharts.com reported that the two albums were within 200 units of each other.
Not only does But Here We Are give the Foos their sixth #1 album across the pond, it also ends a historic streak of #1s for Gallagher in his home country. Between Oasis’ run and his first three High Flying Birds records, Gallagher had notched a record-setting 10-straight U.K. #1 studio albums.
But Here We Are is the first Foo Fighters album since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. It also debuted at #1 in Australia.
