Classic Rock News

Is Rod Stewart giving up on rock ‘n’ roll?

In the new print edition of the magazine Scottish Field, Rod says that his upcoming concerts in Edinburgh, Scotland, on July 6 and 7 will be “the last of the rock n’ roll shows.” He explains, “I want to move on and I’ve always wanted to do The Great American Songbook live. It sold 38 million copies.”

Rod was referring to his bestselling series of albums of standards, which began in 2002 with It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook. He made five Songbook albums in all, and they all reached the top 10 in both the U.S. and the U.K.

He goes on to say he’s recorded a “fantastic swing album” will Jools Holland, the pianist and TV host who was a founding member of Squeeze. “I just want to make a change,” he tells the magazine.

It’s likely that Rod means the Edinburgh shows are his last rock ‘n’ roll shows in the U.K., since he’s got a whole U.S. tour kicking off on July 29, followed by a string of shows in Las Vegas as part of his residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

Elsewhere in the interview, Rod, who lives up the street from Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, says he used to go to the former president’s Christmas parties and balls, until his wife, Penny Lancaster, put the kibosh on that.

“There was stuff he was coming out with, what he was saying about women he had known in the past,” Rod explains. “And Penny said ‘you’re not going – he’s a disgrace.'”

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Blue Öyster Cult drummer and founding member Albert Bouchard is set to release a new album, Imaginos III – Mutant Reformation, on July 7. 

The album is the third and final record in Bouchard’s trilogy of Imaginos, following 2021’s Imaginos 2 — Bombs Over Germany and 2020’s Re Imaginos, which was a reworked version of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1988 concept album Imaginos.

The albums have all been inspired by the writings of the late producer and songwriter Sandy Pearlman, which centered on an alien conspiracy happening in the 1800s and early 1900s through the actions of an evil character named Imaginos.

“Sandy’s not being here to feel the long-awaited culmination is perhaps the greatest irony of this epic journey through the invisibility of conspiracy, the shape-shifting, and eternal light that is Desdinova,” Bouchard says. “But legend lives on, as will tales told ‘round the fire of when Man still walked the Earth, and the carnage had yet to begin.”

And Bouchard is giving fans a taste of Imaginos III with the release of his new take on the Blue Öyster Cult track “E.T.I.,” featuring his brother, Blue Öyster Cult bassist and singer Joe Bouchard.

Imaginos III – Mutant Reformation is available for preorder now.

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Chicago and The Go-Go’s Belinda Carlisle are among the artists set to perform live on A Capitol Fourth, the annual PBS special celebrating Independence Day. 

The celebration will air Tuesday, July 4, at 8 p.m. and will feature a telecast of the fireworks live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.

The program will be hosted by Alfonso Ribiero and will also feature a tribute to the late Tina Turner by Adrienne Warren, who played Tina in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, along with performances by the cast of the Neil Diamond Broadway musical A Beautiful Noise, Boyz II Men, Babyface, the National Symphony Orchestra and more.

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Foo Fighters‘ But Here We Are has debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard 200.

The 11th studio effort from Dave Grohl and company enters the chart at #8 with a total of 62,000 equivalent album units, making it the 10th top-10 Foos record.

As previously reported, But Here We Are debuted at #1 in the U.K. after narrowly edging out the new album from Noel Gallagher‘s High Flying Birds; it also debuted at #1 in Australia. Foo Fighters have two #1 albums on the Billboard 200: 2011’s Wasting Light and 2017’s Concrete and Gold.

But Here We Are, which features the lead single “Rescued,” is the first Foo Fighters album since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. The group returned to the road in May with new drummer Josh Freese.

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AC/DC’s Brian Johnson made a surprise appearance over the weekend, joining Sam Fender at one of his two homecoming shows at St. James’ Park in Newcastle, England, where the pair treated the crowd to two AC/DC classics. 

Loudersound reports that Fender had just brought out his former guitar teacher Phil Martin and told the crowd  they planned to play some AC/DC when he added, “We cannot really do AC/DC songs without the one, the only Geordie legend, the singer of AC/DC, Brian Johnson!”

Fan-shot footage on YouTube shows Fender and Johnson, who is from nearby Dunston, England, teaming up for “Back in Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long,” much to the crowd’s delight.

Johnson’s appearance was his first live performance since joining Foo Fighters for their Taylor Hawkins tribute at London’s Wembley Stadium last September. Next up, he and AC/DC will be one of the headliners for the Power Trip festival, happening October 6-8 at the Empire Polo Club In Indio, California.

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On This Day, June 12, 1982…

Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and Gary U.S. Bonds performed for a million protestors at Rally for Nuclear Disarmament in New York’s Central Park.

The gathering was the largest anti-nuclear weapons demonstration in U.S. history.

In 2018, a two-CD set featuring highlights from the rally was released, including performances of Springsteen’s “Promised Land,” Browne’s “Running On Empty,” Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou,” Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” and more.

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Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament has announced a new album in collaboration with ex-Fitz & Tantrums drummer John Wicks.

The record, which the duo is releasing under the name Deaf Charlie, is called Catastrophic Metamorphic and arrives June 30.

“There’s a real optimism in this batch of mostly dystopian themes, and that comes from John’s upbeat production and playing,” Ament says. “He infused a lot of pop and reggae elements into the songs, pushing my arrangements and rhythms into new territory. Most of these tunes had real journeys between our two visions.”

You can listen to the single “Losing My Mind,” featuring guest vocals by Marlon Grace, now via digital outlets.

Ament and Wicks — and yes, that’s John Wicks with an “s,” not to be confused with the Keanu Reeves hitman franchise — previously worked together on the score for the 2022 miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven. They also released a collaborative song in 2020 called “Something Real.”

Pearl Jam, meanwhile, is gearing up for a U.S. tour, kicking off in August.

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Joni Mitchell made another triumphant return to the stage this weekend, headlining her first ticketed concert in over 20 years.

The show, a “Joni Jam,” took place at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington as part of Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival, and featured a host of special guests, including Carlile and her musical partners Phil Hanseroth and Tim Hanseroth, Annie Lennox, Marcus Mumford, Sarah McLachlan, Lucius’ Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Celisse, The Revolution’s Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman and more.

The three-hour set featured songs sung by and for Joni, including such classics as “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Blue” sung by McLachlan, “Lady of the Canyon” sung by Lennox, “A Case of You” with Carlile, “Summertime,” “Help Me” and more.

The show was similar to Joni’s return to the stage last summer at the Newport Folk Festival. That performance is being released as a live album, Joni Mitchell at Newport, on July 28. The album is available for preorder now.

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Gov’t Mule is set to drop their 12th studio album, Peace…Like A River, on Friday, June 16, and it sounds like it wasn’t too hard for frontman Warren Haynes to come up with the title of the record.

“When I was going through all the lyrics, I realized that the word ‘peace’ and the word ‘river’ appear more than anything else, several times in multiple songs,” he tells ABC Audio. “And so I wanted to find something that combined those two things together.”

The title was also inspired by the Paul Simon song “Peace Like a River,” with Haynes noting, “We almost recorded it and we may still at some point.” 

The album was recorded during COVID-19 lockdowns, during the same sessions as 2021’s Heavy Load Blues. Haynes explains they decided to work on both “because we had all this time on our hands and I had written a ton of material, and we couldn’t travel and we couldn’t tour, so it was the best way to utilize our time.” 

Haynes says the pandemic did affect the way he was thinking and feeling while writing the record, but he insists, “I tried not to let it affect the subject matter so much.”

“I didn’t want to write a bunch of COVID-centric songs, but at the same time, that’s what the world was going through,” he shares. “And so I tried to write songs that were universal, but with the mindset that was happening at the time.” 

Peace…Like A River is available for preorder now.

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Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band fans in Washington, DC, will have to wait an additional month before they can see them hit the stage.

It was just announced that The Boss’ August 28 concert at Nationals Park has been postponed to September 29, noting tickets to the original show will be valid for the new date.

No reason for the move was given.

Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band are currently on tour in Europe and are scheduled to play Landgraaf, The Netherlands, on Sunday, June 11. The tour returns to North America with a two-night stand at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, August 9 and 11. A complete list of dates can be found at Springsteen.net.

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