Classic Rock News

If you saw U2‘s Zoo TV tour, you may remember that among the videos and transmissions shown on the wall of TV monitors onstage were dispatches from Sarajevo, which at the time was under siege during the Bosnian War. Now, the band’s role in helping the people of Sarajevo, culminating in their concert there in 1997, is the subject of a new documentary called Kiss the Future.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film features interviews with Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton, politicians and others. It describes how a photographer and filmmaker named Bill Carter — who wrote the documentary — wangled an interview with Bono and convinced him that the people of Sarajevo needed help. 

The band was fired up by what Carter told them, but after U2’s management nixed Bono’s idea of doing a concert there right way, they started incorporating those video transmissions into the tour.

“We gave them a serious dose of uneditorialized reality in the middle of our show,” The Edge says in the film. However, as Bono notes, they eventually stopped because “it started to look a little bit like reality TV, using people’s pain and anguish for entertainment.” Still, U2 continued bringing attention to the cause, recording the song “Miss Sarajevo” as part of their side project, Passengers.

The war officially ended in 1995, and U2 finally was able to come to Sarajevo in 1997 and do a full-scale concert.  As one attendee recalls, “The war ended the moment U2 came onstage.”

Produced by, among others Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Kiss the Future premiered over the weekend at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On This Day, February 21, 1990…

At the 32 annual Grammy Awards, Bonnie Raitt took home four awards including Album of the Year for Nick of Time. 

She also won for Best Pop Vocal Performance Female and Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female for the album’s title track as well as Best Traditional Blues Recording for her Johnny Lee Hooker collaboration “I’m in the Mood.” 

In total, Raitt has now won 13 Grammy Awards from 30 nominations. She was also honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Following his appearance in a Super Bowl commercial, Ozzy Osbourne‘s now starring in another ad.

The Prince of Darkness shows up in a spot for the new PlayStation VR2 virtual reality system. The clip finds Ozzy putting on the VR2 headset for some virtual reality fun with the game Horizon Call of the Mountain.

As you might expect, there’s a lot of yelling and swearing as the 74-year-old metal legend tries to fight off the game’s enemies, which he refers to as “dino machines.” You can watch the ad streaming now on YouTube.

Ozzy previously entered the virtual reality world during last year’s Metaverse Music Festival.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Roger Waters and David Gilmour are currently feuding, but Waters took to social media to declare that he has nothing but admiration for his former bandmate’s ability to play guitar.

Waters took issue with a piece that journalist Stuart Maconie wrote for the British publication New Statesman. In it, he referred to an article in the Spanish paper El Pais that quoted Waters as saying he was planning to remove Gilmour’s “horrible guitar solos” from his new version of The Dark Side of the Moon.

In a Twitter posting, Waters said he had to “set the record straight” about something in Maconie’s story. Referring to the “horrible guitar solos” quote, Waters wrote, “I don’t know who he thinks he’s quoting when he says Gilmour’s ‘horrible guitar solos’ but it sure as s**t ain’t me.”

He continued, “I was there, I love Dave’s guitar solos on DSOTM, both of them, and on [Wish You Were Here] and on ANIMALS and on THE WALL and on THE FINAL CUT…Dave’s solos on those albums constitute a collection of some of the very best guitar solos in the history of Rock and Roll.”

He then addressed Maconie, writing, “Please check your copy with the subjects of your grubby little piece, before you go to print.” The current version of Maconie’s article now notes that the El Pais quote has been removed.

Of course, there still hasn’t been any resolution between Waters and Gilmour regarding their most recent war of words. Earlier this month, Gilmour’s partner, Polly Samson, tweeted a slew of insults at Waters, to which Gilmour added, “Every word demonstrably true.”

Waters threatened legal action and, then speaking to The Telegraph , claimed Gilmour and late Pink Floyd member Rick Wright “can’t write songs…They have no ideas, not a single one between them.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Guns N’ Roses are hitting the road for the first time since 2021.

The band’s 2023 world tour will start June 5 in Tel Aviv, Israel and storm through Europe through July 22.  The North American dates kick off August 5 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada and will hit arenas and stadiums across the U.S. and Canada, wrapping up in Vancouver on October 16. 

U.S. stops include August 15 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, August 21, at Boston’s Fenway Park and August 24 at Chicago’s Wrigley Field.

The band’s ‘Nightrain’ presale starts Wednesday, February 22 at 10 a.m. local time. The general on-sale date for all shows starts February 24 at 10 a.m. local time via gunsnroses.com.  The website also has full details about VIP packages and more.

Interest in Axl Rose and company remains high: Their video for “November Rain” just hit two billion views on YouTube, and last year, the vinyl version of their Use Your Illusion I & II box set sold out.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Kansas is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year with a new tour kicking off June 2 in Pittsburgh. While you’d think that would mean their audience would be a mostly older crowd, that’s really not the case. It turns out, thanks to the CW show Supernatural using their classic “Carry On My Wayward Son” as their unofficial theme song, the band has been attracting a much younger audience.

“I’m not sure exactly when it was, eight years ago or so, just looking out and going, ‘What are all these 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids doing in the front row?’” guitarist and founding member Richard Williams tells ABC Audio. “And we didn’t really understand it and we said, ‘Curious, why are you here?’ And they said, ‘Supernatural.’”

He adds, “That television show brought probably the biggest thing that’s happened to our career in the last quarter century. Those 15-year-old kids in the front row then are 30 and they’re bringing their kids to Kansas shows.” 

The song was such an integral part of the series that Williams says Kansas was actually supposed to appear in the program’s 2020 series finale, but COVID got in the way.

“The final show was written for us and then we were flying to Vancouver to film it and we were told, ‘Don’t get on the plane because Canada has closed its borders because of COVID,’” he shares. “And so that last episode never got to be filmed. They had to rewrite the ending, and that was a bummer. It was such an exciting thing to be a part of.” 

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On This Day, February 20, 1982 …

Pat Benatar married her guitarist and songwriting partner, Neil Giraldo, which went on to become a rock ‘n’ roll marriage that has lasted over 40 years.

The couple met in 1978 shortly after Benatar signed her first record deal, and they went on to create hit songs together like “Heartbreaker” and the top five hits “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “Love Is A Battlefield” and “We Belong.”

The couple are parents to two daughters, Haley and Hana Giraldo, and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

They continue to perform together and will kick off a new North American tour in April. They are also set to open select dates on Pink‘s Summer Carnival tour.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The Rolling Stones are giving fans a little insight into their early recording process with a documentary about their mobile studio, which they call “the most important music studio on wheels.”

“Did you know that The Rolling Stones owned the world’s first independent recording studio on wheels?” reads a description of the almost 10-minute clip. “The Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, built into the back of a truck, not only produced some of the band’s biggest albums but was also used to record some of the most iconic albums of the 1970s,” including albums by Fleetwood Mac, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. 

The video explains that the recording studio was born out of the band’s desire to not take up studio time rehearsing and instead do that at Mick Jagger’s Stargroves estate in the English countryside. Realizing that would mean transporting all their equipment, their road manager and pianist Ian Stewart suggested building the recording equipment into a truck, allowing them to bring the studio to them anytime they wanted to record.

This iconic mobile recording studio now resides in the National Music Center in Calgary, Canada.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Judas Priest was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, and the band’s frontman, Rob Halford, is hoping another metal band will join them now that Iron Maiden has been nominated this year.

“Iron Maiden’s nomination is absolutely overdue,” Halford tells Metal Hammer. “I vote for them every day; you can do it by phone and it’s dead easy. It takes you to the list of nominees, then you pick the bands you are voting for – and I pick Maiden every single day.”

While Halford’s likely referring to the fan vote, now that he’s a member, he can help Iron Maiden’s chances from the inside. 

“When you’re actually in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame you’re given a vote as a band and Maiden will get Priest’s vote without a doubt,” he says. “That’s just what we do for each other – we’ve had very similar journeys in both bands, so let’s make it happen for Maiden.” 

He adds, “It’d be brilliant – Black Sabbath, Priest and Maiden, what more could a metal maniac ask for?”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

While the members of Queen have been touring with Adam Lambert since 2011, they have yet to put out any original music together, and guitarist Brian May says there’s a good reason for it.

In case you missed it, in an interview with Total Guitar May says they believe that Queen’s fanbase simply won’t accept anyone but Freddie Mercury on a recording.

“I think if people see Queen on a record label, they still want it to be Freddie singing,” he shares. “It could be Jesus Christ on it, but they’d still want Freddie, and I don’t blame people for that.” 

He adds, “There are people who feel like we shouldn’t even be going on stage without Freddie. But I think that would have been very sad, and it’s not what Freddie would have wanted either. He would have wanted us to continue developing. And of course, because we are continuing and developing, it keeps that legacy alive.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.