The guitar Eddie Van Halen played in Van Halen‘s “Hot for Teacher” video is going up for auction.
Created specifically for Eddie by Paul Unkert of Kramer Guitars, the “Hot for Teacher” axe was one of Van Halen’s main guitars between 1983 and 1984. In the “Hot for Teacher” video, Eddie memorably shreds the song’s solo on the guitar while walking across desks in a library.
The auction begins at $1.8 million, and is expected to fetch between $2 million and $3 million. It’s open until April 18 via Sotheby’s.
Ian Bairnson, a guitarist best known for his work with Alan Parsons Project, passed away Friday at the age of 69. His death was confirmed on social media by his wife, Leila, who wrote, “Ian was the sweetest, kindest, loving husband I could ever have wished for and I take comfort that he is resting now up there in his very own piece of ‘Blue Blue Sky’.”
Alan Parsons paid tribute to the musician on Facebook, sharing, “It was a great pleasure to have him participate on every album by The Alan Parsons Project and several other albums under my name since.” He also shared a few memories of Bairnson, including the fact that he talked Parsons into not scraping what turned out to be one of his biggest hits, “Eye in the Sky.”
Parsons adds, “He was a true master of the guitar – he knew every possible playable guitar chord and how to describe it,” noting, “Ian will be greatly missed, but never forgotten.”
In addition to the Alan Parsons Project, Bairnson was a member of the Scottish band Pilot and played guitar on several of Kate Bush’s albums, having a notable guitar solo on her 1978 debut single, “Wuthering Heights.” As a session musician he worked with such artists as Mick Fleetwood, Jon Anderson and Neil Diamond. He played live with Sting, Eric Clapton and many more.
Gavin Rossdale‘s family is getting bigger now that his daughter, Daisy Lowe, has welcomed her first baby.
Lowe shared the news in an Instagram post Easter Sunday alongside the caption, “Our Easter egg finally hatched!”
“Ivy Love Saul you have made all my dreams come true- our dream girl,” Lowe wrote. “I have never known happiness or love like this. I can’t stop crying tears of joy.”
The new addition makes the Bush frontman a grandfather for the first time.
Lowe, 34, is Rossdale’s daughter from his relationship with designer Pearl Lowe. He also shares three sons with ex Gwen Stefani.
Metallica has announced a competition for college and high school marching bands to see who can put their best twist on the metal legends’ discography.
The contest is divided between college Division 1 and Division 2 and 3, and high school. Metallica themselves will pick a winner in each category from five finalists chosen by a professional judging panel. A popular vote will also determine a “fan favorite” winner across college as a whole and high school.
The winner in each category will receive between $10,000 and $75,000 in musical instruments and equipment, depending on the division.
Interested ensembles can enter now via MetallicaMarchingBand.com and receive sheet music to songs including “Enter Sandman,” “Master of Puppets,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and the 72 Seasons single “Lux Æterna.”
72 Seasons, the new Metallica album, drops Friday, April 14. Metallica will be celebrating the record’s arrival with a weeklong residency on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! beginning on Monday, April 10.
John Regan, a bass player who worked with Ace Frehley, Peter Frampton and others, passed away at the age of 71. Consequence reports that news of his death was confirmed by his wife, Cathy, in a post on a friend’s Facebook page.
Regan played in Frehley’s group Frehley’s Comet from 1984 to 1990. He also toured with Frampton and appeared on several of his albums, including 1980’s Rise Up and 1981’s Breaking All The Rules. Frampton took to social media to pay tribute to the musician, calling him “one of my closest buddies.”
“There might only be a handful, if that, of people who come into your world and truly enrich your life,” he shared on Instagram. “He certainly enriched my life because of the person and great player he was.”
Frampton added, “John Regan was the best of us. He went out of his way to help people when things weren’t right. It didn’t matter who you were, prince or pauper. … He was a friend to all. Always musically inspiring and one of the funniest people on the planet…I love you my brother. You will be missed by many. Rest in Peace.”
Regan’s bass playing can also be heard on such songs as TheRolling Stones’ “Dirty Work” and the Mick Jagger/David Bowie collab “Dancing in the Streets,” as well as songs by David Lee Roth, Billy Idol and more.
Paul McCartney publicly “quit” The Beatles via a press release for his first solo album, in which he says he has no plans for new Beatles music or any future songwriting with John Lennon. Lennon, who’d left the group months ago but agreed to keep quiet about it, was reportedly furious.
In December of that year McCartney filed a lawsuit to formally dissolve the band’s partnership, which was officially dissolved by an English court in January 1975.
As for that first solo release, McCartney, it went to number one in the U.S. McCartney later formed the band Wings, releasing seven albums. He went on to have huge solo success, releasing 18 solo records.
Fans of The Who may not want to hold their breath waiting for the band to tour the U.S. again.
In an interview promoting their recent live album, The Who with Orchestra: Live at Wembley, Roger Daltrey shared his doubts that The Who would ever hit the road in North American again.
Daltrey tells USA Today they don’t currently have any U.S. tour dates planned, noting, “I don’t know if we’ll ever come back to tour America.”
He added, “There is only one tour we could do, an orchestrated Quadrophenia to round out the catalog. But that’s one tall order to sing that piece of music, as I’ll be 80 next year. I never say never, but at the moment it’s very doubtful.”
Roger also points out that “touring has become very difficult since COVID,” with a lot of bands not being able to get insured for shows, making things very expensive.
“Most of the big bands doing arena shows, by the time they do their first show and rehearsals and get the staging and crew together, all the buses and hotels, you’re upwards $600,000 to a million in the hole,” he says. “To earn that back, if you’re doing a 12-show run, you don’t start to earn it back until the seventh or eighth show. That’s just how the business works. The trouble now is if you get COVID after the first show, you’ve (lost) that money.”
The Who do plan to tour Europe this summer. The latest leg of their The Who Hits Back tour kicks off June 14 in Barcelona, Spain. A complete list of dates can be found at thewho.com.
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band are currently on their North American tour, and it certainly sounds like E Streeter StevenVan Zandt is loving it.
“This tour is really interesting, and different from what we’ve done for the past 40 years,” he tells USA Today, noting that unlike previous concerts where the set changes every night, this one has a theme and “is more like a Broadway show.”
He says, “It combines a theme of mortality with a proof of vitality. This show is a hurricane from beginning to end.”
Little Steven has toured with Springsteen for a long time and has performed a lot of his songs. So, what are some of his favorite ones to play live? “A lot of my favorites we don’t play,” he says, listing off cuts like “Restless Nights” and “Loose Ends” from the 1998 compilation Tracks, and “The Little Things (My Baby Does)” and “Gotta Get That Feeling” from 2010’s The Promise.
“But I love the show we’re doing,” Van Zandt says. “The guy has not written a song that I don’t enjoy.”
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band still have a couple of shows left for this leg of the tour. They play Long Island, New York, on Tuesday, April 11, before wrapping things up on Friday, April 14, at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. They then go to Europe and the U.K. before returning to the States in August. A complete list of dates can be found at BruceSpringsteen.net.
Bob Dylan fans have been waiting a long time for the planned Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet in the lead role, and it sounds like it’s finally closer to happening.
The film’s director, James Mangold, broke the news to Collider that the movie is expected to begin shooting in August, with Timothée doing his own singing in the film.
Mangold says he was interested in the project because “it’s such an amazing time in American culture,” sharing that it will explore “a young 19-year-old Bob Dylan, coming to New York with $2 in his pocket and becoming a worldwide sensation within three years.”
He adds, “It’s so beyond belief, it’s such an interesting true story and about such an interesting moment in America, the American scene, different characters from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan, to Pete Seeger, to Joan Baez. All have a role to play in this movie.”
After making headlines by claiming that the amount of royalties Sting gets from Diddy‘s song “I’ll Be Missing You” is $5,000 a day, Diddy now claims it was a big joke.
Earlier this week, Diddy replied to a clip of Sting confirming that he makes $2,000 per day in royalties from “I’ll Be Missing You” because it samples “Every Breath You Take,” his 1983 number one hit with The Police, Diddy wrote, “Nope. 5K a day. Love to my brother @OfficialSting!”
But on Friday, Diddy took to Twitter to walk back his comment.
“I want y’all to understand I was joking! It’s called being Facetious! Me and @OfficialSting have been friends for a long time! He never charged me $3K or $5K a day for Missing You,” Diddy wrote. “He probably makes more than $5K a day from one of the biggest songs in history.”
The whole thing is really semantics, though. Diddy used the sample without permission, which caused Sting to take legal action: He sued for a chunk of royalties and won. So while Sting may not have personally “charged” Diddy for the sample, the fact remains that he gets a percentage of whatever royalties the song earns, whether it adds up to $2,000 per day — that’s $730,000 per year — or more.
In 2003, Sting told Rolling Stone, “Those guys just take your s***, put it on a record and deal with the legality later … I put a couple of my kids through college with the proceeds, and me and [Diddy] are good pals still.”
