Classic Rock News

Nils Lofgren has released a new single off his upcoming solo album, Mountains, which is dropping July 21. The latest is the track “Nothin’s Easy (For Amy),” featuring guest vocals from Neil Young.

As the title suggests, Lofgren wrote the song for his wife, Amy Aiello Lofgren, who is also a co-writer on the album.

Lofgren, who plays guitar in Young’s backup band Crazy Horse, tells ABC Audio that “Nothin’s Easy (For Amy)” is “one of my better songs,” and he felt that it would be a great tune for Young’s harmonies. “I sent it to him and said, ‘Please listen, see if you would be OK with singing harmony or not,’” Lofgren says. “And he heard it, he loved it, said, ‘I’ll do it, send it.” 

In addition to Young, Mountains features a variety of special guests, including Ringo Starr on the album’s first single, “Ain’t The Truth Enough,” and the late David Crosby on the song “I Remember Her Name.”

To coincide with the release, Lofgren will launch his Rockality video series, where he’ll share stories from his music career. The videos will be available for purchase starting July 21 at nilslofgren.com.

Mountains is available for preorder now.

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Yes released their new album, Mirror to the Sky, last week, and now they’re treating fans to a new animated video for the album’s closing track, “Circles of Time.” 

The track is the third single Yes has released from the record. It follows “All Connected” and “Cut From The Stars.”

“This is a very important album for the band,” Steve Howe, Yes’ longest serving member and producer of the record, shared when it was first announced. “We kept the continuity in the approach we established on (2021’s) The Quest, but we haven’t repeated ourselves.” He added, “As Yes did in the 1970s from one album to another, we’re growing and moving forward.” 

Yes fans are going to have to wait a bit before they get to see the band play any of these new songs live. They aren’t expected on the road until next year, with their 2024 U.K. tour kicking off May 23 in Manchester, England. Tour dates can be found at yesworld.com.

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Wednesday, May 24, marks one year since the Uvalde school shooting, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, and the sad day prompted Stevie Nicks to ponder a big “what if” about her life.

The two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer shared an Instagram post titled “The Lost Futures of Uvalde,” in which she shares how she and her family moved to El Paso, Texas, when she was in the third grade. She recounted how at a young age she already knew she wanted to be a dancer and a singer, and how her dreams just got bigger from there. 

She writes of how years later, after moving to California, she “met a boy and eventually we started making music together,” referring to Lindsey Buckingham, and how that led to a dinner with a band aka Fleetwood Mac “that changed our lies.” 

“When I look back, it all happened so fast. I was just a ten-year-old in El Paso, Texas deciding what to do with the rest of my life. … I got to grow up and be Stevie Nicks.”

She writes, “As we ponder the one-year anniversary of Uvalde and the myriad of shootings that have happened since that fateful day, I can’t help but ask myself, what if I had been shot and killed by a man with a gun while in my ballet class in the third grade? And I can’t help but think of all those little lost futures.”

Finally, Stevie shares, “my arms go around each one of those little hearts like a ring of angels that will always be missing. I will never be able to let this go… If anything, I will do all I can to keep this story alive.”

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Kansas is getting ready to kick off their 50th anniversary tour next week, and they’ve just added a new member to the band. The group announced that violinist/guitarist Joe Deninzon will join the band, replacing departing violinist David Ragsdale.

“We are extremely excited for Joe Deninzon to be the newest member of Kansas,” original member and drummer Phil Ehart shares. “We believe Kansas fans will enjoy what Joe will bring to the band.”

Deninzon, who’s worked with The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson and more, describes himself as a “lifelong fan of Kansas,” adding, “I am overwhelmed and humbled to have been invited to join this legendary band!”

Kansas’ 50th anniversary tour kicks off June 2 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A complete list of tour dates can be found at kansasband.com.

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Toto’s Steve Lukather is sharing another track off his upcoming solo album, Bridges, which drops June 16. The latest is the tune “Someone,” which he wrote with his Toto bandmates Joseph Williams and David Paich. 

Bridges is Lukather’s ninth solo album and has him working with several members of the Toto family, including Paich and Williams, as well as Simon Phillips, Shannon Forrest, Lee Sklar and Steve Maggiora. Also on the record are Lukather’s son Trev and Gov’t Mule bassist Jorgen Carlsson.

Lukather describes the album as “a bridge between my solo music and Toto music,” sharing, “It also proves that most of my old pals and I are still great friends, and I wanted to do a record ‘in the style of,’ as Toto will never record another studio album. This is as close as we will get.”

Bridges is available for preorder now.

Meanwhile, Lukather has a busy year ahead of him: he’s touring as part of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band. The tour hits Las Vegas for three nights starting Wednesday, May 24. A complete list of dates can be found at RingoStarr.com.

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Huey Lewis is showing his appreciation for Foo Fighters. The singer thanked the band for talking about Huey Lewis & The News’ music during their recent livestream, Preparing For Music Concerts.

Huey’s music came up after Foo guitarist Chris Shifflett started playing a bit of “Workin’ for a Livin’” and the band joined in. Frontman Dave Grohl asks his bandmates whether the tune was on Lewis’ 1983 album, Sports, to which guitarist Pat Smear corrects him that it was on the album before, referring to 1982’s Picture This. 

“It was the buildup to Sports, you know what I’m saying?” Smear says. “It was like, ‘Wait! We gotta pay attention to this band.’”

While the interaction wasn’t the big news to come out of the livestream — that was the reveal of new Foo drummer Josh Freese — it still made an impression on Lewis.

“Thank you to the @foofighters for the flattering words about ‘Workin’ For A Livin’,’ ‘Sports,’ and our music in general,” Huey tweeted. “It was an honor to be talked about in your ‘Preparing Music For Concerts’ video. #foofighters #hueylewisandthenews”

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On This Day, May 24, 1941…

Robert Allen Zimmerman, who later changed his name to Bob Dylan, was born in Duluth, Minnesota.

Considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan’s 60-year career is known for such classic songs as “Blowing in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and many, many others.

He got his start singing folk songs, but shocked fans at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he went electric, forgoing his acoustic guitars. This electric sound can be heard on such classic rock albums as 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, as well as 1966’s Blonde on Blonde.

Dylan is the winner of 10 Grammys and eight of his songs have been inducted into the Grammy Hall Fame. He’s also an Academy Award and a Golden Globe winner for “Things Have Changed” from the movie Wonder Boys. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997.

Dylan is still making music and touring today. His most recent release is 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways. On June 2, the soundtrack to Dylan’s 2021 concert film Shadow Kingdom will be released, with the film itself following on June 6. October 24 brings Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, a 608-page book giving fans a look at the Bob Dylan Archive, which is housed in Tulsa, OK.

In addition, a Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet is expected to begin filming this summer and  Dylan kicks off a European tour on June 3.

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The Doobie Brothers are celebrating their 50th anniversary with a new round of tour dates that kicks off May 25 in Hollywood, Florida. Co-founder, lead singer and guitarist Tom Johnston has just announced that he’ll be sitting out this leg of the tour due to back surgery, but reflecting on the band’s five decades, he says he’s surprised they’ve made it that long.

“I don’t think anybody probably thinks that far ahead, there’s no way you can, because you can’t see the future,” he told ABC Audio last month. He adds that the Doobies are the “sort of a band that doesn’t really plan a lot of stuff, other than tours and what have you, and working on an album.”

Noting that most bands probably don’t consider having that kind of longevity, Johnston laughed, “If you find somebody that actually does that, I’d like to meet ’em.”

But one thing that has helped keep The Doobie Brothers going all these years is their loyal fanbase, and these days, that includes some younger folks.

Johnston says he’ll see “a sprinkling” of teens in the crowd, as well as some fans in their 20s, 30s and 40s, who  he says have “been turned on to the music by their parents.” 

Of course, there are also plenty of older fans who grew up with the Doobies, but the age of the fan isn’t something that really matters to Johnston. He explains, “The one thing I like about it is everybody is wild and crazy, doesn’t matter.”  

The Doobie Brothers’ 50th anniversary tour is set to run through October. A complete list of dates can be found at thedoobiebrothers.com.

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Imagine a rock concert by a legendary act taking place on an episode of TV’s Downton Abbey in front of 25,000 screaming fans. In real life, something very similar is going to happen in England this summer, and the local residents aren’t too happy about it.

The Badminton Estate, a 17th century mansion on 52,000 acres of land in Gloucestershire, in the area of England known as The Cotsworlds, is hosting two major rock concerts this summer: Rod Stewart on July 2 and The Who on July 16. 

The Times of London reports the owner of the estate, Henry Somerset, the 12th Duke of Beaufort, started selling tickets to the two concerts on the home’s website, even though he and the concert promoter hadn’t obtained a license. But after they got one, more than three dozen locals officially registered complaints, mostly about the traffic.

One villager complained, “The company say that the music will end at 11.30pm and they will have 25,000 people off the site…in their cars and clear of the village by 12am. This is utterly ludicrous.” 

Another resident wrote a letter saying the concerts present “an unwarranted and wholly avoidable inconvenience and distress to the residents.”

Yet another villager complained these two concerts are only the start of what they fear will be an invasion of rock shows in the area, turning their neighborhood into “Glastonbury in the Cotswolds.”

The Who’s date is part of their first U.K. tour in six years. Rod’s show is part of the U.K. and European leg of a tour that’ll hit North America starting July 29.

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Chas Newby, who played bass for The Beatles several times in their early days, has died at age 81.

The Facebook page for The Cavern Club Liverpool, where The Beatles got their start, posted a message reading, “It’s with great sadness to hear about the passing of Chas Newby. Chas stepped in for The Beatles for a few dates when Stuart Sutcliffe stayed in Hamburg…interestingly, he was also the first left-handed bass guitarist in The Beatles.”

In case you’re not up on your Beatles minutiae, when the band first started, it was John Lennon‘s art-school friend Stu Sutcliffe who played the bass; Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison all played guitar. Paying tribute to Newby, noted Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn explained on Twitter that the late bass player “deputized for Stuart on a few dates when the Beatles returned from Hamburg the first time, end-1960” and called him “a charming man, always a pleasure to meet.”

According to The Mirror, John wanted Newby to go on a tour with them to West Germany, but Newby decided to go back to school instead. Sutcliffe officially left the band in 1961, and since neither John nor George wanted to play the bass, Paul — who is, of course, also left-handed — took over the instrument, becoming the group’s second left-handed bass player.

Meanwhile, Newby became a math teacher.

Roag Best, brother of original Beatles drummer Pete Best, wrote on Facebook, “Both Pete and I and the whole Best family absolutely devastated to hear the very sad news with regards to one of the families closest friends Chas Newby passing last night.”

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