Classic Rock News

You rarely think of heavy metal when you think of board games, but the two now go together thanks to a collaboration between Iron Maiden and board game publisher Usaopoly (The Op Games). The pair has just come out with a new Maiden version of the popular board game Monopoly, dubbed Monopoly: Iron Maiden Somewhere on Tour. 

While played with traditional Monopoly rules, the board has been given a Maiden makeover, with properties named after classic Iron Maiden albums, including The Number of the Beast and Brave New World. The money features the Maiden mascot Eddie, and he also appears on the Chance and Community Chest cards, which are renamed “Feeling Lucky?” and “Open The Box.”

And gone are the top hat and thimble. Instead, players move about the board using one of six custom sculpted pewter tokens, including an albatross, amp stack, flying helmet, Nicko’s drum kit, “Wasted Years” computer and Steve’s bass.  

“We’re delighted to have been given the opportunity to have Monopoly get the full Eddie treatment,” Iron Maiden’s manager Rod Smallwood says. “The game is full of our humor (who else would ransom Nicko’s pal Sooty?), even the player pieces reflect our unique history (yeah, the impaled albatross!) and the weird and wonderful world we share with our fans and they have come to expect from us!”  

Monopoly: Iron Maiden Somewhere on Tour is on sale now.

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July will mark the 50th anniversary of David Bowie‘s final performance as Ziggy Stardust, and now fans will be able to relive the experience in theaters across the country.

A fully restored version of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture will screen in over 500 theaters across the U.S. throughout July, with tickets on sale now.

In addition, a 50th anniversary edition of the soundtrack is being released on August 11, with remastered audio and new mixes from Bowie producer Tony Visconti. It is available for preorder now.

As previously reported, the anniversary will also be marked with a special world premiere screening of the restored film on July 3 at London’s Eventim Apollo Hammersmith (formerly the Odeon), the actual site of Bowie’s last Ziggy show on July 3, 1973. The event will also include a live Q&A with some of Bowie’s famous friends. 

Bowie took on the fictional character of Ziggy Stardust, an androgynous alien rock star, throughout 1972 and 1973, performing as Ziggy for his concert tours of the U.K., Japan and North America.

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Foo Fighters‘ show in Rogers, Arkansas, on Wednesday, June 14, featured the live debut of “The Teacher,” according to Setlist.fm.

A cut off the new Foos album But Here We Are, “The Teacher” is seemingly a tribute to frontman Dave Grohl‘s mother, Virginia, who was a teacher.

Fan-shot footage of “The Teacher” performance, which featured vocals by Grohl’s daughter Violet, is streaming now on YouTube. Notably, “The Teacher” was the closing song for the set, taking the place of usual show-ender “Everlong,” which wasn’t played.

But Here We Are was released June 2. It’s the first Foo Fighters album since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022.

The Foos are currently touring in support of But Here We Are with new drummer Josh Freese.

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Carlos Santana revealed back in 2000 that he had been sexually abused as a young child, and in a new interview with People he describes how he learned to forgive his abuser. 

Sharing that “acceptance and forgiveness are really spiritual,” he says, “I learned to look at everyone who ever went out of their way to hurt me, demean me or make me feel like less, like they’re 5 or 6 years old, and I’m able to look at them with understanding and compassion.”

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer first opened up about his abuse in a 2000 interview with Rolling Stone, saying it happened “almost every day” between the ages of 10 and 12. 

The guitar great says of the man who abused him, “instead of sending him to hell forever, I visualized him like a child, and behind him there was a lot of light. So I can send him to the light or send him to hell knowing that if I send him to hell, I’m going to go with him. But if I send him to the light, then I’m going to go with him also.”

He adds, “There’s this saying, ‘Hurt people hurt people.’ It’s my pain. It did happen to me. But if you open your hands, and you let it go, then you don’t feel that anymore.”

Santana’s life is the subject of a new documentary, Carlos, which is premiering at the Tribeca Festival on Saturday, June 17.

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As previously reported, Queen’s Brian May is revisiting his 1983 all-star collaboration, Brian May + Friends: Star Fleet Project with a new box set. The project featured Eddie Van Halen, Alan Gratzer, Phil Chen and Fred Mandel, and now May’s sharing some insight into how the project came to be in the first place.

In a new mini documentary, May explains that in 1983, after years of recording and touring, the members of Queen had become “slightly, I think, irritated with each other,” noting, “We decided we needed a break.”

“What I remember most vividly was, waking up in LA, one of my favorite places, thinking, ‘I could do anything today. Sun is shining, I got some friends here. Why don’t I make some phone calls?’” he says. “That’s what happened. I got on the phone with Ed Van Halen.” 

May got Van Halen to come to the studio, along with all the others, and soon had an idea for what he wanted to record.

“The biggest idea was I wanted to bring this TV series thing into kind of a rock domain as I saw it. I wanted to experiment with it,” he explains, referring to “Star Fleet,” a tune from a Japanese kid’s science fiction series, noting he “wanted to explore making the song into some sort of rock anthem.”

He adds of the group’s time in the studio, “It was just charged with electricity, excitement and anticipation,” adding, “it was a great feeling just to go in there and have this completely new interaction with people, all of whom I really respected.”

Brian May + Friends: Star Fleet Project will be released July 14 and is available for preorder now.

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Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is sharing his support for fans of the Oakland A’s baseball team amid their “reverse boycott.”

As opposed to refusing to go to games, as one might do in a traditional boycott, the A’s faithful are showing up in droves to show their love for the team amid John Fisher‘s plan to move it to Las Vegas. Attending fans have been chanting “sell the team” in protest of Fisher’s relocation plan.

Reverse boycott organizer Gabriel Hernandez tweeted a photo of Armstrong at a recent game wearing an A’s hat and holding a green shirt reading, “SELL.”

“@billiejoe SUPPORTS THE MOVEMENT,” the tweet reads.

Armstrong was born in Oakland and formed Green Day amid the Bay Area punk scene of the ’80s. He’s previously thrown out the ceremonial first pitch for the A’s.

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While in the past Bruce Springsteen has taken song requests from fans in the audience, that hasn’t been the case on his current tour with The E Street Band. Well, that all changed at his recent show at Letzigrund Stadion in Zurich, Switzerland.

For the first time this tour, and the first time since February 2017, The Boss played his Born in the U.S.A. track “My Hometown” after a group of fans in the audience held up signs requesting the song.

According to Jambase.com, the effort to get the song played was the brainchild of a Swiss radio personality named Judith Wernli, who got the word out on her show and on social media. That resulted in fans designing their own signs and bringing them to the concert, although huge banners were not allowed in the stadium.

And all that effort seemed to work, with fan-shot footage posted to YouTube showing Springsteen acknowledging the campaign during the show.  

“My first question is why?” Springsteen asks. “Why are there so many signs that say ‘My Hometown’? I’m puzzled! I’m slightly puzzled. But, the people have spoken,” and then he launched into the tune. 

Next up, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street hit Birmingham, England, on Friday, June 16. The tour returns to North America with a two-night stand at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on August 9 and 11. A complete list of dates can be found at brucespringsteen.net.

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Another John Fogerty tune has joined Spotify’s Billions Club.

The singer’s Creedence Clearwater Revival hit “Fortunate Son” has now been streamed on the service 1 billion times. It is his second tune to achieve the milestone, following CCR’s “Have You Ever The Rain,” which reached 1 billion streams in March.

“I am humbled and honored to have my song ‘Fortunate Son’ achieve one billion streams [on Spotify],” Fogerty shares. “I wrote this song to express my outrage about the unequal treatment of people in our culture. These words came straight from my heart, and I still feel the same today. I am looking forward to celebrating this song with my fans.” 

Released in October 1969, “Fortunate Son” appeared on CCR’s album Willy and the Poor Boys. The track peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts and wound up becoming an anti-war movement anthem during the Vietnam War. In 2013 it was chosen by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.

And speaking of that celebration with fans, Fogerty is set to kick off a new leg of his North American tour on July 9 in Ravinia, Illinois. A complete list of tour dates can be found at Fogerty.com.

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On This Day, June 15, 1999 … 

Santana released their 18th studio album, Supernatural, featuring collaborations with Lauryn Hill, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews Band and, most famously, Rob Thomas.

The album reached number one in 11 countries and topped the Billboard 200 for 12 nonconsecutive weeks, reviving Santana’s career. It featured his first-ever U.S. #1 song, “Smooth,” featuring Thomas, which spent 12 weeks at number one. “Maria Maria,” featuring The Product G&B, went to #1 as well, spending 10 weeks on top.

The album, which sold 30 million copies, went on to win nine Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, making Carlos Santana the first Hispanic artist to win the award.

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When Santana played Woodstock in 1969, they were a relatively unknown band that shot to superstardom after their performance. But according to Carlos Santana, it’s surprising the set went off as well as it did.

In a new interview with People, the guitar great, whose documentary Carlos premieres at the Tribeca Festival on June 17, says he was high as a kite during the performance thanks to the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, who handed him some hallucinogens right before he took the stage. 

“It was a real test, and the test was, ‘You are higher than an astronaut’s butt right now with whatever Jerry Garcia shared with me,'” Santana says. “When I came out onstage, I was like, ‘Oh my God, am I going to be able to play? I can’t even touch my nose.'” 

Santana says, “It was like being inside a kaleidoscope. And then somebody told me, ‘Trust in God. Just ask him to keep you in time and in tune.’ So I said, ‘God, I really believe in you. If you help me right now, I won’t poo my pants in front of everybody.’ Next thing I knew, we hit the notes and the people went, ‘Wooo!'”

And Santana certainly thinks he and the band pulled it off, telling the mag that while Sly Stone’s set was the “absolute best,” followed by Jimi Hendrix, “Anybody else had to fight for number three with me and with our band.”

He says, “When I look at the video, and even though I was there, it was Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and Santana, and then there was everybody else.”

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