Classic Rock News

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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Michael Gudinski may not have been a household name, but he was a major player in the music business. That’s why the likes of Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl and Ed Sheeran, among others, are happy to talk about him in a new documentary charting his career.

Gudinksi, who died unexpectedly in March 2021, was the head of the Mushroom Group, which encompasses all aspects of the music and entertainment industry in Australia. Chief among those ventures is Frontier Touring, the third largest concert promoter in the world. Through Frontier, Gudinski had a huge impact on the world’s biggest stars’ careers, bringing them Down Under for what were often record-breaking tours.

In the trailer for Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story, Sting describes the late promoter as having “the energy of a rock drummer.” Grohl says, “I imagine being a rock promoter as the biggest f****** nightmare. There has to be a reason why he did it.” Springsteen laughs, “He came on strong!”

Other artists who appear in the documentary include Vance Joy, Australian pop diva Kylie Minogue and Shirley Manson of Garbage.  

According to The Music Network, Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story will premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival August 10, before opening in theaters in Australia on August 31. There’s no word on a U.S. theatrical or streaming release yet.

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These days a lot of streaming platforms offer games, both free and paid, in addition to movies and TV shows. And as of May 23, you can play a Jimi Hendrix-themed game on one of those platforms.

Play.Works The Jimi Hendrix Experience is a slots game that is now available on Roku and will soon be rolled out to other pay TV platforms. It’s the first time that Hendrix’s music has been incorporated onto a connected TV, or CTV, platform. As you level up on the game, you can see unreleased photos and hear music from across Hendrix’s catalog.

Later this year, Play.Works will launch a Jimi Hendrix trivia video game. Both the games are part of a partnership between Play.Works, Experience Hendrix LLC and Authentic Hendrix LLC, the official representatives of Jimi’s estate.

Experience Hendrix President and CEO Janie Hendrix explains, “It’s a step toward the future. We recently celebrated what would have been Jimi’s 80th birthday, and he continues to appeal to people of all ages and walks of life. The Play.Works game and video trivia are an excellent way to reintroduce his magic and music to a whole new generation.”

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Aerosmith‘s recorded their share of legendary albums that are packed with classic tracks, but unlike many of their peers, the band never really did one of those tours where they played one of their famous albums in its entirety. The reason? According to guitarist Joe Perry, it was just too boring.

Speaking to Kerrang, Perry says, “The closest we ever got to that was doing a version of Toys [In The Attic] front-to-back, but after we tried it a couple of times live, we realized that to maintain the energy of the show, we’d have to drop a couple of songs out. It wasn’t exciting enough, for me.”

“There are other songs that people would rather get to hear than being able to say they saw that album played in full,” he adds. “Any time you perform, you’ve got to treat it as the one time you get to play in front of that audience. You don’t know when you’re going to be back.”

And considering that Aerosmith’s upcoming Peace Out tour is billed as their farewell trek, it seems unlikely the band will ever attempt that again.

Perry also tells Kerrang that, having been rocking for 50 years, he feels the ultimate era of rock music was — big surprise — the ’60s and ’70s.

“You lived and died by how you played onstage. You could go out there and have a great single that was on top of the charts, but if you couldn’t deliver a great show live, you’d be gone, because there were all these other bands that could,” Perry say.

“It was about having your feet on the ground, standing in front of the fans, delivering.”

Aerosmith’s Peace Out tour kicks off September 2 in Philadelphia.

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