Classic Rock News

Pearl Jam is showing their support for the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month.

The Seattle rockers are selling a new, limited edition Pride shirt, featuring their classic stickman figure with the band name printed in rainbow colors and the word “Pride” in red at the bottom. 

The T-shirts sell for $34.95, with proceeds going toward “organizations that need our support more than ever amid a wave of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.”

The T-shirts are on sale now on the band’s website, with shipping set to begin in late June.

Pearl Jam is set to kick off a short tour starting August 31 in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrapping with a two-night stand in Austin, Texas, September 18 and 19. A complete list of dates can be found at pearljam.com.

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The Queen musical We Will Rock You reopened at the London Coliseum this week, and the gala performance featured a special appearance by none other than Queen guitarist Brian May. The rocker rose up to the stage through a trap door in the floor to join the performers for the guitar solo on “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

May shared video of the moment on Instagram, describing it as “just about the greatest gift any guitar player could have.”

“The shot of adrenaline it gives ME is massive – literally knocking the breath out of me,” he writes. “That risky stuff is very similar to jumping off a cliff under a ‘parapente’ wing ( I know, because I’ve done it) or going on the biggest roller coaster in the park (we’ve all done it – right?) – but in this case I’m on my own with no safety net.”

He did add, “[It’s] Not quite so terrifying as playing live on the roof of Buckingham Palace to an audience of half a billion – but not far off.” 

We Will Rock You runs until August 26. Tickets are on sale now.

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A long-in-the-works movie about The Beatles manager Brian Epstein is one step closer to finally hitting the big screen, although it’s now having to get past another hurdle.

Deadline reports the film, Midas Man, is in post production, but it has just brought on its third director, Joe Stephenson, who directed the 2023 film Doctor Jekyll.

Stephenson takes over the project after Vinyl director Sara Sugarman left, reportedly due to creative differences and scheduling problems. She took over the project from Jonas Åkerlund, who left in 2021 following disagreements with producers.

The film stars The Queen’s Gambit’s Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Epstein, with four newcomers playing the Beatles — Jonah Lees as John Lennon, Blake Richardson as Paul McCartney, Leo Harvey Elledge as George Harrison and Campbell Wallace as Ringo Starr.

In addition to director problems, Deadline reports the film has had issues with funding and scheduling.  

The film’s producer Perry Trevers tells the site, “With principal photography now being finished we are incredibly happy at what has been shot and look forward with excitement at being able to share it with the world.”

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KISS just kicked off the European leg of their End of the Road tour and it’s got Gene Simmons reflecting on the band’s legendary career. In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Simmons says he feels “pride in a half a century of defying the critics.”

“We use them as mulch. You know what that is? You grind ’em up and you put ’em in the dirt. They don’t mean anything,” he shares. “If it was up to critics, we wouldn’t have our favorite things — Star Wars and, you know, all the fun stuff in life. We completely ignored them.”

As for the decision to stop touring, Simmons notes, “You have to have a little pride and self-respect. Know when to get off the stage,” joking, “It’s been half a century, and boy, do I look good.”

He adds, “I can’t tell you how much it means to us to be in front of the fans and put on the spectacle of all spectacles.” 

Finally, he says of the end, “It’s gonna be happy, because of the amazing journey we’ve had, but sad, of course, because it’s gonna be heartbreaking.” 

KISS’ End of the Road tour hits Prague on June 10. They wrap the tour for good December 1 and 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A complete list of dates can be found at kissonline.com.

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Foo Fighters‘ But Here We Are has debuted at #1 on the U.K.’s Official Albums chart.

The latest from Dave Grohl and company takes the top spot after an intense battle with Noel Gallagher‘s Council Skies, the ex-Oasis guitarist’s new record with his High Flying Birds solo band. At one point over the past week, OfficialCharts.com reported that the two albums were within 200 units of each other.

Not only does But Here We Are give the Foos their sixth #1 album across the pond, it also ends a historic streak of #1s for Gallagher in his home country. Between Oasis’ run and his first three High Flying Birds records, Gallagher had notched a record-setting 10-straight U.K. #1 studio albums.

But Here We Are is the first Foo Fighters album since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. It also debuted at #1 in Australia.

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Neil Young recently revealed he’s hitting the road this summer on a West Coast solo tour, and now we have the dates. 

Young’s Coastal Tour, featuring special guest Chris Pierce, will consist of 13 dates, kicking off with a four-night stand at Los Angeles’ John Anson Ford Theatre on July 1, 2, 4 and 5.

The tour will hit California cities like Santa Barbara, San Diego and Paso Robles, plus stops in Washington and Oregon, before wrapping July 23 in Napa, California. A complete list of dates can be found at neilyoungarchives.com.

Tickets for all shows go on sale Wednesday, June 14, at 10 a.m. local time. To cut down on scalping, tickets purchased through Ticketmaster can only be resold through Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange.

As previously reported, Young revealed in a Zoom with Neil Young Archives subscribers that the tour will focus on songs he hasn’t actually played live before. The tour will be Young’s first since before the pandemic. 

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Eric Clapton is giving fans another taste of his upcoming box set The Definitive 24 Nights, dropping June 23. The latest is a previously unseen performance, “Key to the Highway (Live At Royal Albert Hall).” 

The Definitive 24 Nights features six hours of music from Clapton’s historic 24-night run at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1991, including 35 never-before-released performances. During the run, Clapton performed with three lineups — a rock band, a blues band and an orchestra; “Key to the Highway” was featured in the blues section of the shows.

The Definitive 24 Nights will be released in a six-CD or eight-LP set. There will also be standalone versions of each genre — 24 Nights: Rock, 24 Nights: Blues and 24 Nights: Orchestra. All options are available for preorder now.

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On This Day, June 9, 1978…

The Rolling Stones released the album Some Girls, which was their first album to feature guitarist Ronnie Wood as a full-time member.

The album, which went to #1 in the U.S., featured the #1 song “Miss You,” along with future classics “Beat of Burden,” which peaked at #8 on the chart, and “Shattered.”

There was some controversy surrounding the album’s artwork, which featured the band members in drag, alongside pictures of famous females like Lucille Ball, Farrah Fawcett, Liza Minelli, Marilyn Monroe and more. Several of them threatened to sue over the use of their likeness without permission, and the cover was reissued without the celebrities images.

In marking the anniversary of the Some Girls release on Instagram, the band noted that the album “became the longest-running studio album on the American chart in the Stones history,” adding it was their first studio album to earn a Grammy nod for Album of the Year.

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Fans of The Rolling Stones can look forward to a lot of new vinyl in 2023 and beyond. ABKCO Records is continuing its campaign to reissue 16 titles from the band’s back catalog, with the latest being the U.K. version of the Big Hits compilation, High Tide and Green Grass, out now.

The plan is to continue to reissue Stones vinyl throughout the year and into early 2024, focusing on releases from 1963 to 1970. The next reissue will be the U.S. version of High Tide and Green Grass and 1967’s Flowers, coming June 16.

Future releases include: 1975’s rarities collection Metamorphosis on July 14; 1965’s Out of Our Hands (U.S. & U.K. versions) on September 15; 1964’s England’s Newest Hit Makers on October 6; 1969’s compilation Through The Past Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) (U.K. version) on October 20; 1969’s Through The Past Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2)(U.S. version) on November 10; 1965’s The Rolling Stones No. 2 and December’s Children (And Everybody’s); and 1966’s Got Live If You Want It! on December 1.

Plus, 2024 will see the vinyl reissues of The Rolling Stones, Now! and The Rolling Stones (U.K. version).

ABKCO Records’ reissue campaign kicked off earlier this year with the releases of 1967’s Between The Buttons and 1966’s Aftermath, the first time in 37 years they’ve been out on standalone vinyl.

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Queen is back with episode 20 of their weekly YouTube series Queen The Greatest Live, this week looking at one of their classic performances of “Is This the World We Created…?”

The performance was recorded at one of their Magic Tour sell-out shows at London’s Wembley Stadium in July 1986, and shows how the acoustic performance, featuring just Freddie Mercury and Brian May, can captivate an audience just as much as their more epic tunes.

The song, from 1984’s The Works, was penned by Mercury and May after watching a documentary on the African famine of the eighties. A year earlier they had performed the song for the Live Aid concert at the very same venue.  

And coming up next week – “Adapting Songs.”

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