Classic Rock News

In 2015, Whitesnake released The Purple Album, which celebrated frontman David Coverdale’s three years in the band Deep Purple. Well, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Coverdale’s Deep Purple debut, Whitesnake is now reissuing the album. 

The Purple Album: Special Gold Edition, a newly remixed and remastered version of the album, will be released October 13. It will contain plenty of extras, including previously unreleased recordings, one of which is the four-song demo that helped Coverdale land the Deep Purple gig.  

Coverdale says he found the original demo amongst his late mother’s belongings. “I had no idea my Mam had the tape,” he says. “For me, to open my Mam’s trunk of personal items, 30 years after her passing, was a gift from Heaven.”

Deep Purple is giving fans the first taste of the reissue with the digital release of a live version of the 1974 track “Burn.”

The Purple Album: Special Gold Edition will be released as a two-CD/Blu-ray set, which includes concert videos from The Purple Tour, official music videos and more, including commentary from Coverdale. It’s also being released on two-LP gold vinyl. Both formats are available for preorder now.

Coverdale joined Deep Purple in 1973 when he was just 21. He recorded three albums with them, 1974’s Burn and Stormbringer and 1975’s Come Taste The Band, and was eventually inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the group. He left the band in 1976, and two years later, formed Whitesnake.

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Carlos Santana has seemingly shared his thoughts on the trans community during a speech at one of his concerts.

Video posted to social media, which Consequence reports was from a recent show in Atlantic City, New Jersey, shows the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer telling his audience, “a woman is a woman and a man is a man.” 

“When God made you and me, before we came out of the womb, you know who you are and what you are,” Santana said. “Later on, when you grow up, you see things, and you start believing that you could be something that sounds good, but you know it ain’t right. Because a woman is a woman and a man is a man. That’s it.”

He adds, “Whatever you wanna do in the closet, that’s your business. I’m okay with that.” 

In the speech, Santana also described comedian David Chapelle as his “brother” and made a gesture indicating how close they were. Chapelle has come under fire in the past for making what many felt were anti-trans jokes in his standup routines.

One person who was at the show told Consequence that Santana’s remarks were “very disturbing and seemed to come out of nowhere.”

The report comes just one day after Alice Cooper made some controversial remarks in an interview with Stereogum, saying he was concerned that being transgender was “a fad.”

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Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart is hitting the road to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the band’s classic album Sweet Dreams, but fans hoping to hear Annie Lennox sing with him are out of luck.

Stewart announced plans for the Eurythmics Songbook Sweet Dreams 40th Anniversary Tour, but Annie won’t be a part of it because she is no longer touring.

“Looking forward to this, I love performing these songs,” he writes on Instagram. “I spent 1,000’s of hours crafting them in the studio and had the best partner in Annie but she has said she won’t be touring anymore which I totally understand.”

Instead, Stewart says he’ll be accompanied by “brilliant all female musicians and three wonderful female vocalists,” noting, “I promise a stunning show full of memorable songs.” 

Right now, Stewart has only announced one show, taking place November 7, in Basel, Switzerland. He advised fans to “stay tuned for more live show announcements coming soon!”

Tickets for the Basel show go on sale August 30 at 7 a.m. U.K. time.

The Eurythmics have not released any new music since their 1999 album, Peace. The last time Stewart and Lennox took the stage together was at the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where they reunited to perform “Would I Lie To You,” “Missionary Man” and “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”

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On This Day, August 24, 2021…

Charlie Watts, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame drummer for The Rolling Stones, passed away at a hospital in London. He was 80.

Earlier in the month, the band had announced that Watts was going to miss their 2021 No Filter Tour of North America in order to recover from an unspecified medical procedure. He played his last show with the band on August 30, 2019.

Watts appeared on every Rolling Stones album, alongside frontman Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the band in 1989.

When the Stones resumed touring in September 2021, Steve Jordan filled in behind the drum kit.

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Roger Waters is giving fans another taste of his upcoming reimagining of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which he’s calling The Dark Side of the Moon Redux.

The rocker just released his new take on the album’s fourth track, “Time.” It is the second song he’s released from Redux following his new version of “Money.”

When he initially announced the album, Waters said he wanted to redo Dark Side to help celebrate the album’s 50th anniversary this year, noting it “deserves a reimagining.” He added, “I hope that we can gain more from it than we did back in 1973 when it first came out, ‘cause it’s been part of all of our lives for 50 years, and yet we are still not yet breathing in the air.”

The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, dropping October 6, is available for preorder now. It features reworkings of all the tracks on the original album. A double LP edition of the release will include a 13-minute bonus track, “Original Composition,” which was inspired by the rerecording.

Waters will celebrate the album’s release by performing his new take on Dark Side live at The London Palladium on October 8 and 9.

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Gene Simmons is known for having a huge stash of memorabilia, and now he’s giving fans a chance to own a piece of it. The KISS rocker has just added his personal ’80s Rockman II B belt amp to his personal auction page, GeneSimmonsAuctions.com.

“What you see here is my effects box. It was actually invented by a guy named Tom Scholz who was a guitar player and main songwriter in Boston,” Simmons shares in a video describing the piece. “So as soon as he invented this gizmo, you didn’t need a big amp to get a distorted guitar sound.”

Simmons explains that he used the effects box to record demos at home, which helped him get “good guitar sounds.” He says by using the amp he was able to sound like he was “playing out of a 100 watt Marshall amp.”

Gene says he used the belt amp on about 100 songs, including demos that appeared on his box set The Vault Experience 1966-2016.

Bidding on the autographed item is open now, with the highest bid as of Wednesday, August 23, being $450. The highest bidder will also get a video of Gene describing the item’s background, along with a background that notes it was “GS owned.”

Meanwhile, after a show at Crandon International Speedway on September 1, KISS will launch a fall leg of their End of The Road in North America tour on October 19 in Cincinnati, Ohio. A complete list of dates can be found at Kissonline.com.

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Paul McCartney is bringing his Got Back tour south of the border.

The two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has just announced a November 14 show at Foro Sol in Mexico City. The concert will be McCartney’s first in Mexico in six years.

A presale on McCartney’s website will begin Tuesday, August 29, with a public on-sale beginning Saturday, September 2.  

McCartney is set to kick off the latest leg of his Got Back tour in Australia in October and will then bring the tour to Brazil in November. A complete list of dates, and information on the Mexico City presale, can be found at paulmccartney.com.

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A cryptic ad posted in London’s Hackney Gazette appears to be teasing a new album from The Rolling Stones. It promoted something called Hackney Diamonds, with the ad’s message featuring several Stones song titles, leading to speculation that an album announcement is coming.

Well, the editor of the paper has confirmed the ad was taken out by the band.

“It’s very exciting to have such a massive band announcing their new album in our papers, especially in such a cryptic manner,” Simon Murfitt, senior editor of both the Hackney Gazette and Islington Gazette, said, confirming the ad was taken out by Universal Music Group. “I have already had several emails requesting back copies and no doubt the papers will become collectors’ items for music fans.” 

He added, “I’ve always said The Rolling Stones have good taste when it comes to their local news and this just proves it!”

If the speculation is true, the album will be The Stones’ first record since 2016’s Blue and Lonesome, which was an album of blues covers.

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Alice Cooper is the latest rocker to share his thoughts on young people who question their gender at an early age. 

During an interview with Stereogum, Cooper was asked about Dee Snider and Paul Stanley’s recent comments about gender-affirming care for kids, in which they suggested it was a “fad.” And he seems to agree.

“I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” he says. “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.'” 

He adds, “I mean, if you identify as a tree … I’m going, ‘Come on! What are we in, a Kurt Vonnegut novel?’ It’s so absurd, that it’s gone now to the point of absurdity.”

Cooper also takes issue with “the whole woke thing,” suggesting it’s become “laughable.”

“If anybody was trying to make a point on this thing, they turned it into a huge comedy,” he says. “I don’t know one person that agrees with the woke thing. I don’t know one person.”

He also shares his worries about transgender people in public bathrooms. “A guy can walk into a woman’s bathroom at any time and just say, ‘I just feel like I’m a woman today’ and have the time of his life in there,” he says. “Somebody’s going to get raped, and the guy’s going to say, ‘Well, I felt like a girl that day, and then I felt like a guy.’ Where do you draw this line?”

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Lou Gramm doesn’t sound at all happy that his former band, Foreigner, which he fronted until 2003, is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He believes the omission is personal. 

“It’s not anything to do with our music or the amount of hits or notoriety or anything like that,” Gramm shares in an interview with The Rock Shop With Ralph. “It’s a personal thing that we’re not in there. It’s a personal vendetta between the gentleman who owns Rolling Stone and Mick,” referring to Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones.

The Rolling Stone owner he’s likely referring to is Jann Wenner, who cofounded the mag and is also the cofounder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In reality, Wenner no longer owns Rolling Stone, having sold his remaining interest in the mag in 2017.

Regarding the band’s snub, Gramm notes, “It’s very juvenile, the whole thing, and I don’t think it’s gonna get any better. I think it’s gonna stay that way. I think we’re being made an example of.”

Foreigner has been eligible for the Hall of Fame since 2002, but to this day have never been nominated, and Gramm thinks it’s a travesty. 

Asked whether he thinks they deserves to be in the Hall, Gramm declares, “Of course I do,” although he notes it should be “the original Foreigner” as opposed to later lineups. He adds, “I put an exclamation point at the end of that.”

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