Classic Rock News

The Dirty Knobs, the band fronted by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, will release their second studio album, External Combustion, on March 4.

The album, a follow-up to 2020’s Wreckless Abandon, can be pre-ordered now, and will be available on CD, via digital formats, and as a vinyl LP pressed on standard black vinyl or limited-edition green translucent vinyl.

The 11-track collection features guest appearances by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople fame and acclaimed alt-country artist Margo Price on the respective songs “Dirty Job” and “State of Mind.” In addition, Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench plays piano on a tune titled “Lightning Boogie.”

Campbell wrote most of the songs on External Combustion during the past year, although two tunes date back to the 1990s, and were recently rediscovered in Mike’s vault of unreleased tracks.

The album’s lead track, “Wicked Mind,” has been released as an advance digital single, and a companion music video has premiered on Campbell’s official YouTube channel.

The amusing clip begins with Mike in a coffin that an alluring yet sinister woman is preparing to bury. Before she gets the chance, Campbell wakes up and flees his captor, making his way to a bar where his fellow Dirty Knobs are playing. He joins the band onstage, but the woman has followed him into the watering hole, where she proceeds to do a threatening dance in front of the stage. Mike then flees the bar with the woman in pursuit. Watch the full video to find out Campbell’s fate.

After multiple delays because of COVID-19, Campbell and The Dirty Knobs finally will hit the road on a U.S. tour launching March 9 in Tampa, Florida. Visit TheDirtyKnobs.com for the band’s full schedule.

Here’s the full External Combustion track list:

“Wicked Mind”
“Brigitte Bardot”
“Cheap Talk”
“External Combustion”
“Dirty Job” — featuring Ian Hunter
“State of Mind” — featuring Margo Price
“Lightning Boogie”
“Rat City”
“In This Lifetime”
“It Is Written”
“Electric Gypsy”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Prog-rock supergroup Asia has announced plans to launch a 40th anniversary tour this summer, while also revealing that the band has welcomed a new member into the lineup.

Joining Asia as its new lead vocalist and guitarist is Marc Bonilla, a former member of late Emerson, Lake & Palmer keyboardist Keith Emerson‘s solo band. Bonilla replaces ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, who joined Asia in 2019.

The group currently also features two founding members, drummer Carl Palmer and keyboardist Geoff Downes, as well as bassist Billy Sherwood, who joined the band in 2017 after the death of original lead singer and bassist John Wetton.

Downes and Sherwood both are also part of Yes’ current lineup, while Palmer, of course, is a co-founder of ELP and the famed prog-rock trio’s last surviving member.

Asia’s 40th anniversary tour is expected hit the U.S. leg in late summer.

“40 years of ASIA is a real musical milestone for us,” says Downes. “The success we experienced with our early albums has carried us through and gave us the foundation when we reformed in 2006. ASIA has been together ever since, although we lost John in 2017 to cancer. Still, we have endured and will carry on now with Marc Bonilla, who we know will be a great addition to the band.”

Adds Palmer, “The fans have never left ASIA. That first ASIA album with all those radio and MTV hits weaved the fabric of the music scene in the early 1980s. Those great songs like ‘Heat of the Moment,’ ‘Sole Survivor,’ and ‘Only Time Will Tell,’ still hold up today.”

In December, Asia released a 10-CD box set titled The Official Live Bootlegs Volume 1 that features five full concerts by the band’s original lineup from various years.

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Jethro Tull‘s latest album, The Zealot Gene, the veteran prog-rock band’s first new studio effort in over 18 years, was released today.

Frontman Ian Anderson tells ABC Audio that he considers the 12-track collection something of a concept album, because the songs are based on a list of positive and negative “extreme human emotions” he compiled, that he then recognized as “words that I remember reading in the Bible.”

Anderson explains that the list included “nice stuff, like love, fraternal love, erotic love, spiritual love, compassion, loyalty,” as well as “bad stuff, like anger and rage and jealousy and vengeance.”

Ian notes that he felt the song “The Zealot Gene” was a good choice for the album’s title track because it’s “about that extreme of emotion, the degree to which things are polarized into black and white, and opposites, especially in the populist world of politics today.”

The singer/flutist/guitarist says he began work on the album in 2017 and had recorded seven of the songs with his band in the studio before the COVID-19 pandemic started. After the pandemic began, Anderson recorded the basic tracks for the other five tunes by himself, then enlisted the group’s other members to add their parts remotely.

Ian says this resulted in an album with “a little bit more dynamic range,” because the last five songs wound up being more sparse and acoustic-based than the first seven.

Anderson made The Zealot Gene with the members of his longtime solo band, but says he decided to release the record under the Jethro Tull moniker because “it seemed appropriate to recognize the, on average, 15 years of long service that the members of the band have had playing with me over the years.”

Here’s The Zealot Gene‘s full track list:

“Mrs. Tibbets”
“Jacob’s Tales”
“Mine Is the Mountain”
“The Zealot Gene”
“Shoshana Sleeping”
“Sad City Sisters”
“Barren Beth, Wild Desert John”
“The Betrayal of Joshua Kynde”
“Where Did Saturday Go?”
“Three Loves, Three”
“In Brief Visitation”
“The Fisherman of Ephesus”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

This Sunday marks the 53rd anniversary of The Beatles‘ historic performance on the roof of the band’s Apple Corps headquarters in London, and the milestone is being celebrated with a number of special releases and events.

Kicking things off, the complete audio of the Fab Four’s rooftop concert will be available for streaming globally for the first time ever via various platforms starting at 12 a.m. ET this evening. The recording, aptly dubbed The Beatles: Get Back — The Rooftop Performance, has been mixed in stereo and Dolby Atmos by producer Giles Martin and his frequent studio collaborator, engineer Sam Okell.

Then, on Friday at 12 p.m. ET, singer-songwriter Norah Jones will debut videos of her performing two Beatles songs from the Let It Be album that were filmed recently with her band at the top of New York City’s Empire State Building. The clips, featuring renditions of “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Let It Be,” will be viewable on Norah’s YouTube channel.

On Saturday, the cast of the Las Vegas production The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil will debut a video featuring a rooftop performance tribute of “Get Back” at 9 a.m. ET on the Cirque du Soleil troup’s YouTube channel. In addition, a behind-the-scenes video about the making of the tribute performance clip will premiere at 10 a.m. ET.

Lastly, on the actual anniversary of the event this Sunday, the previously announced IMAX screenings of footage of the full rooftop concert, as seen on the Disney+ docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, will take place at select theaters. The screenings will feature a Q&A with director Peter Jackson via satellite, while attendees will receive an exclusive mini-poster. To purchase tickets, visit Tickets.IMAX.com.

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Foo Fighters have broken a new Billboard chart record.

The band’s song “Love Dies Young,” the current single off their new album Medicine at Midnight, has reached number nine on the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, giving Dave Grohl and company a total of 29 top-10 hits on the ranking. That breaks a tie with Tom Petty, who hit the 41-year-old chart’s top 10 28 times as a solo artist and with the Heartbreakers, making the Foos the sole leader in Mainstream Rock Airplay top-10s.

Earlier this year, “Love Dies Young” helped Foo Fighters break another Billboard record when it earned the band their 14th top-10 hit on the Rock & Alternative Airplay ranking, which combines radio airplay across rock and alternative formatted stations. Twenty One Pilots and Cage the Elephant are tied for second, notching 13 top-10s across the chart’s 12-year history.

If you wish to celebrate the Foo Fighters’ achievement and enjoy a little hockey while you’re at it, the Cleveland Monsters minor-league hockey team is giving out Dave Grohl bobble-heads to the first 10,000 fans who attend its game against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins this Saturday, January 29.

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Music, Money, Madness…Jimi Hendrix in Maui, the 2020 documentary focusing on two legendary 1970 shows that the Jimi Hendrix Experience played in Hawaii, will be screened in select U.S. theaters on various dates in February.

The documentary, which originally was released on Blu-ray in November 2020 in conjunction with the companion album Live in Maui, tells the story of how Hendrix and his band traveled to the island of Maui during the summer of 1970 to participate in the making of the movie Rainbow Bridge by playing two free outdoor concerts on the slopes of the dormant Haleakala volcano. The shows, which took place on July 30, were attended by a few hundred local residents.

Only 17 minutes of the footage from the two sets were used in Rainbow Bridge, a poorly received 1971 movie directed by Andy Warhol associate Chuck Wein that focused on various counterculture figures on the Hawaiian island. Music, Money, Madness…Jimi Hendrix in Maui incorporates previously unseen footage from the performances and the band’s visit to the island, as well as new interviews with Experience bassist Billy Cox, Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer, Wein, a number of Rainbow Bridge cast members and Warner Bros. label executives.

The first theatrical screenings of the documentary are scheduled for February 1 in various California cities, as well as Buffalo, New York; Oklahoma City; and Tacoma, Washington.

A special screening will be held on February 16 in Los Angeles at The Regent Theater that will feature a Q&A and conversation with Kramer, director John McDermott and Experience Hendrix CEO Janie Hendrix, Jimi’s sister.

Visit JimiHendrixMaui.com for more information about the screenings.

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A new exhibit inspired by the recent Peter Jackson-directed Beatles docuseries The Beatles: Get Back will open at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on March 18.

The immersive exhibit, dubbed “The Beatles: Get Back to Let It Be,” will treat visitors to an in-depth look at the historic January 1969 sessions in London that yielded the Fab Four’s final album, Let It Be, and the band’s famous concert on the rooftop of Apple Corps’ headquarters.

The display will feature original instruments played by The Beatles, clothing the band members wore and handwritten lyrics, all seen in the documentary. Some items were loaned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the estates of George Harrison and John Lennon.

The exhibit also will feature high-def film clips, audio segments and other multimedia that will help transport attendees into the group’s world at that time.

Memorabilia featured in the exhibition include a black-and-gray shirt McCartney wore in the studio and his handwritten lyrics for “I’ve Got a Feeling”; the borrowed red raincoat Starr donned during the rooftop concert and his Ludwig drum kit; a pair of Lennon’s famous eyeglasses and his handwritten lyrics for “Dig a Pony”; and a pink pinstripe suit worn by Harrison and his handwritten lyrics for “I Me Mine.”

The display also will include photos of the sessions taken by Linda McCartney and Ethan Russell.

In addition, the exhibit will offer three screening rooms featuring footage filmed at each location shown in the docuseries —  Twickenham Studios, Apple Studios and the Apple Corps rooftop.

The three-part, seven-plus hours The Beatles: Get Back docuseries premiered on Disney+ in November.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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America‘s self-titled debut album was released 50 years ago this month in the U.S.

The trio of Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek, whose fathers were U.S. Air Force personnel stationed in the U.K., formed America after graduating from the same London high school.

All three were talented singer-songwriters who contributed multiple songs to the America album. The album was released in the U.K. in December 1971, initially without the lead single, the Bunnell-penned folk-rock classic “A Horse with No Name.”

When “A Horse with No Name” began enjoying some chart success, it was added to the U.S. version of the album. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in the spring of 1972, while the album spent five straight weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 around the same time.

Reflecting on the band’s immediate success, Beckley tells ABC Audio, “It doesn’t happen too often. We had a number-one single and album with our very first release. We’d barely been together a year. It was a rocket ship that basically burned pretty solid for almost 10 years.”

The album’s follow-up single, the Beckley-written ballad “I Need You,” also was a hit, reaching #9 on the Hot 100.

America was co-produced by Warner Bros. staff producer Ian Samwell, whom Beckley says was tasked with recording the songs simply, without much studio embellishment. Beckley also recalls that the album was recorded quickly and inexpensively, and he credits engineer Ken Scott — known for his work with David Bowie and The Beatles — for keeping the sessions going smoothly.

America was the group’s only album to top the Billboard 200, and has been certified Platinum by the RIAA for sales of one million in the U.S.

Here’s the America track list:

Side One
“Riverside”
“Sandman”
“Three Roses”
“Children”
“A Horse with No Name”
“Here”

Side Two
“I Need You”
“Rainy Day”
“Never Found the Time”
“Clarice”
“Donkey Jaw”
“Pigeon Song”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Veteran Canadian rocker Aldo Nova, best known for his 1982 hit “Fantasy,” has unveiled plans for two album projects that will be released in April.

The first is a 10-track EP titled The Life and Times of Eddie Gage that’s due out April 1 and will serve as the first chapter of a planned rock opera.

The Life and Times of Eddie Gage tells the fictional story of a talented young rocker who is tempted and exploited by various characters as he tries to break into the music business. He initially succumbs to drugs, alcohol and other excesses before finding redemption when he delves into spirituality.

One of the EP’s tracks, “Free Your Mind,” has been released as an advance digital single.

Nova began working on the rock opera in 2008, and the final project will encompass 25 songs. Aldo wrote, produced, arranged, engineered and mixed all of the EP’s tracks, and the recording includes a 40-piece orchestra and a full gospel choir.

“The record was done from pure inspiration,” Nova says. “I was truly channeling some place away from myself. It was almost as if something above connected to me and gave me these songs.”

The second project is a three-disc set titled Aldo Nova 2.0 Reloaded that will be released on April 19.

The collection features updated versions of nine tunes from Nova’s back catalog on the first disc, and those same tracks mixed without vocals and without guitar, respectively, on the second and third discs.

“Nobody’s ever done this,” Aldo says of Reloaded. “You can basically sing with me as your backing band or play along as a backing track…I want to encourage kids to improvise and learn.”

Here’s the EP’s track list:

“Hey Ladi Dadi”
“Free Your Mind”
“Follow the Road”
“King of Deceit”
“The Bitch in Black”
“On the Way to the Psycho Ward”
“When All Is Said and Done”
“Say a Little Prayer”
“Burn Like the Sun”

Bonus Track:
“Les Anges”

And here’s the track list for Aldo Nova 2.0 Reloaded:

Disc One:
“Blood on the Bricks”
“Monkey on Your Back”
“Under the Gun – War Suite”
“Foolin’ Yourself”
“Ball and Chain”
“Paradise”
“Modern World”
“Fantasy”
“I’m a Survivor”

Disc Two (No Lead Vocal):

“Blood on the Bricks”
“Monkey on Your Back”
“Under the Gun – War Suite”
“Foolin’ Yourself”
“Ball and Chain”
“Modern World”
“Fantasy”
“I’m a Survivor”

Disc Three (No Lead Guitar):
Same as Disc One

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Spotify has announced that it’s officially removed Neil Young‘s music from the streaming service as per the folk-rock legend’s request because he didn’t want share the platform with Joe Rogan‘s popular podcast, which Neil accuses of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and the pandemic.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” the company says in a statement. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Meanwhile, Young posted a lengthy message on his official website regarding his decision, noting that he believes that Spotify has “recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID.”

Neil noted, “Most of the listeners hearing the unfactual, misleading and false COVID information on SPOTIFY are 24 years old, impressionable and easy to swing to the wrong side of the truth. These young people believe SPOTIFY would never present grossly unfactual information. They unfortunately are wrong. I knew I had to try to point that out.”

Young also thanked his label, Warner Brothers/Reprise Records, for supporting him in his decision, noting that the company will take a sizable financial loss because “Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world.”

Neil points out that fans will still be able to stream his music on other platforms, and that some of those services offer higher-quality audio than Spotify does.

Young ends his message by saying he hopes “other artists and record companies will move off the SPOTIFY platform and stop supporting SPOTIFY’s deadly misinformation about COVID.”

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