Classic Rock News

Carlos Santana has announced plans to release the first single from his band’s forthcoming studio album, Blessings and Miracles, later this month.

Coinciding with the news, the legendary guitarist has announced that the star-studded project will be released as part of a new global deal he’s signed with the BMG label.

“I am honored to partner with BMG to release Blessings and Miracles,” Carlos says in a statement. “I would like to thank everyone at BMG for sharing our collective commonality-vision to touch people’s hearts with energy, conviction and integrity. Now more than ever, we need songs and melodies to remind us that we are significant, meaningful and that life is full of blessings and miracles.”

BMG executive Thomas Scherer adds, “Listening to and feeling this album is an embrace of the source from where we all come from. Blessings and Miracles is full of joy, and we are grateful to be his partner in spreading this musical treasure to his fans and new fans everywhere around the world.”

Santana recently revealed to ABC Audio that Blessings and Miracles will feature guest appearances by Steve Winwood, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, Living Colour frontman Corey Glover and Fifth Harmony‘s Ally Brooke, among others. In addition, Carlos reported that hit-making songwriter Diane Warren and country star Chris Stapleton have contributed tunes to the album.

Carlos’ next performance will be at the star-packed “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert” event taking place August 21 in New York City’s Central Park. The Santana band then is slated to kick off a new series of Las Vegas residency dates at the House of Blues on August 25. Check out the group’s full schedule at Santana.com.

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Black Sabbath‘s reissue campaign continues with Technical Ecstasy.

An expanded edition of the 1976 record will be released October 1. Along with the original album remastered, the reissue includes a new mix by Steven Wilson of the prog band Porcupine Tree, various alternate mixes and outtakes, and live recordings from Sabbath’s 1976-77 world tour.

You can check out the remastered version of album opener “Back Street Kids” now via digital outlets.

Technical Ecstasy was Black Sabbath’s seventh studio album. It was also the band’s penultimate release before Ozzy Osbourne‘s firing in 1979.

This year, Black Sabbath has also released reissues of 1972’s Vol. 4, 1975’s Sabotage, 1980’s Heaven and Hell and 1981’s Mob Rules.

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Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello is on a “Highway to Hell,” and he’s brought Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam‘s Eddie Vedder along for the ride.

That’s right, The Boss and Vedder are featured on Morello’s just-released new cover of the classic AC/DC song “Highway to Hell” that’s available now via digital formats.

The track will appear on Morello’s upcoming second solo album, The Atlas Underground Fire, which will be released October 15.

“Our version of ‘Highway to Hell’ pays homage to AC/DC but with Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder, brings this legendary song into the future,” Morello says in a statement.

Explaining how the cover of “Highway to Hell” came about, Tom notes that he played the song live a few times with Springsteen – and Vedder on guest vocals — when he was touring as a temporary member of Bruce’s E Street Band in Australia in 2014.

“I began to wonder, what does the most ferocious version of this song sound like in 2021?” notes Tom. “I put together a pretty rocking demo and sent it over to Bruce and Eddie with my fingers crossed. This is what we got back: one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time, sung by two of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll singers of all time, and then I play a shredding guitar solo. Thank you and good night.”

The Atlas Underground Fire, which you can pre-order now, will feature a variety of other guests, including country star Chris Stapleton, reggae artist Damian Marley and many more.

Here’s The Atlas Underground Fire‘s full track list:

“Harlem Hellfighter
“Highway to Hell” — featuring Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder
“Let’s Get the Party Started” — featuring Bring Me the Horizon
“Driving to Texas” — featuring Phantogram
“The War Inside” — featuring Chris Stapleton
“Hold The Line” — featuring grandson
“Naraka” — featuring Mike Posner
“The Achilles List” — featuring Damian Marley
“Night Witch” — featuring phem
“Charmed I’m Sure” — featuring Protohype
“Save Our Souls” — featuring Dennis Lyxzén of Refused
“On the Shore of Eternity” — featuring Sama’ Abdulhadi

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Guns N’ Roses debuted a new song live during their concert in Boston Tuesday. Well, sort of.

During their set, the “Welcome to the Jungle” rockers performed a track titled “Absurd.” While it now has a new title, the tune is actually a reworked version of the notably profane GN’R rarity, “Silkworms.”

“Silkworms” was one of the many songs written during the sessions for Chinese Democracy, the long-fabled Guns record that finally became reality in 2008 after a 10-year recording process. Though it was performed live in the early 2000s, “Silkworms” didn’t make the final Chinese Democracy track list.

You can watch fan-shot footage of the “Absurd” performance streaming now on YouTube.

Guns N’ Roses is currently in the middle of a U.S. tour, with support from Wolfgang Van Halen‘s Mammoth WVH. The outing was originally scheduled for 2020 before being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

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Dee Snider released his latest solo album this past week, Leave a Scar, which the Twisted Sister frontman says is a true follow-up to his 2018 studio effort, For the Love of Metal.

Like For the Love of Metal, Leave a Scar finds Snider collaborating with Hatebreed‘s Jamey Jasta and exploring heavier, contemporary metal sounds.

Snider notes that while he left songwriting duties to Jasta and other collaborators for his previous album, with Leave a Scar, he felt motivated to co-write the new tunes, inspired by the state of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was very much driven by ‘I need to say something,'” Snider tells ABC Audio. “This record is of the time. Every song is inspired by what’s going on in the world, and what [we’re]…all going through.”

He adds, “It was the pandemic. It was the social unrest, the political unrest in the world. I mean, our country was a mess, but it was going on in England and Brazil and all around the globe.”

While the songs on Leave a Scar tackle some heavy subjects, Snider says he also wanted the tunes to offer messages of hope for people dealing with the frustration of life during the pandemic.

The album kicks off with “I Gotta Rock (Again),” a song in the tradition of Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock,” only much heavier, that also serves as an anthem for rock fans itching to go to live concerts again.

“By the middle of COVID, ‘I Gotta Rock (Again)’ popped in my head and I said, ‘Boy, if there was ever a Dee Snider title, that’s [one] right there,” he explains. “[I]t was supposed to be an anthem. It was supposed to be a sledgehammer. And I’m hoping it achieves its goal.”

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McCartney III Imagined, the new album featuring various interpretations of the songs from Paul McCartney‘s 2020 solo effort, McCartney III, has reached #1 on Billboard‘s Top Album Sales chart after being released on physical formats on July 23.

As previously reported, the collection was personally curated by McCartney and includes covers or remixes of McCartney III tracks by Beck, Blur‘s Damon Albarn, Queens of the Stone Age‘s Josh Homme, Radiohead‘s Ed O’Brien, Anderson .Paak, St. Vincent, Phoebe Bridgers and others.

The album sold 21,000 copies in the U.S. during the week ending July 29, according to MRC Data, driven by its release on CD, vinyl LP and cassette. Of that 21,000 sales figure, 16,100 were vinyl LPs, 4,300 were CDs and about 300 were cassettes.

McCartney III Imagined is the former Beatles legend’s third album to peak at #1 on the Top Album Sales tally in the chart’s 30-year history, following Egypt Station in 2018 and McCartney III in early 2021.

McCartney III Imagined also is #1 on Billboard‘s Vinyl Albums chart, and #19 on the Billboard 200.

The album got its initial release in digital formats back in April. During its first week, it debuted at #60 on Top Album Sales, after selling 2,200 downloads.

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This past Saturday, the same day Journey rocked Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival, the band’s co-founder, Neal Schon, auctioned off a collection of his guitars, in the process bringing in a whopping $4.2 million.

More than 90 instruments were sold in total, among them the 1977 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Black Solid Body model that Schon used to record many songs on Journey’s chart-topping 1981 album, Escape, including “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

That guitar was purchased for $268,000, including fees, by Indianapolis Colts owner and renowned memorabilia collector Jim Irsay.

Irsay, who says he plans to include Schon’s guitar in a museum hopes to open in the future, previously has purchased historic instruments that have belonged to Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Elton John, Jerry Garcia, and David Gilmour.

“I look forward to sharing this and other pieces of the collection in the hopes that they may educate and inspire others to do great, meaningful things,” Irsay said.

The two guitars that brought the most money at Schon’s auction were a pair of 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard Sunburst models that sold for $350,000 and $300,000, respectively.

Other high-priced instruments sold during the auction included a 1959 Gibson ES-335 Natural Semi-Hollow Body guitar that fetched $137,500, a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Solid Body that brought in $131,250, and a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Standard Goldtop Solid Body that was purchased for $125,000.

Check out the full results of the auction at HA.com.

Journey’s next concert is scheduled for August 20 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Visit JourneyMusic.com for a complete list of the band’s shows.

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The upcoming official Led Zeppelin documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin has been added to the lineup of the 2021 edition of Italy’s Venice International Film Festival, which runs from September 1 through September 11.

The movie will be screened as part of the out-of-competition section of the festival.

As previously reported, Becoming Led Zeppelin features new interviews with band members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, as well as archival interviews with late drummer John Bonham.

The film, which was directed by Bernard McMahon, follows the individual paths of Led Zeppelin’s four members through their various groups and musical endeavors en route to becoming part of one of the biggest and most influential rock bands in the world. The documentary ends in 1970, at the height of Led Zeppelin’s meteoric rise.

“With Becoming Led Zeppelin my goal was to make a documentary that looks and feels like a musical,” McMahon says in a statement. “I wanted to weave together the four diverse stories of the band members before and after they formed their group with large sections of their story advanced using only music and imagery and to contextualize the music with the locations where it was created and the world events that inspired it.”

McMahon adds, “I used only original prints and negatives, with over 70,000 frames of footage manually restored, and devised fantasia sequences, inspired by Singin’ in the Rain, layering unseen performance footage with montages of posters, tickets and travel to create a visual sense of the freneticism of their early career.”

McMahon also directed American Epic, an award-winning documentary series focusing on American roots music and its impact on the world.

Becoming Led Zeppelin was co-written and produced by Allison McGourty, who also co-wrote American Epic.

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Sir Paul McCartney is hoping to encourage more of his fans to get the COVID-19 vaccine if they haven’t already done so.

Taking to Instagram on Monday, the 79-year-old music legend shared a photo of him getting the jab and captioned his post in all capital letters, “BE COOL. GET VAX’D.”

Sir Paul opted to wear navy blue beanie, navy sweater and a matching face mask for his appointment.

The former Beatles member shared his latest PSA as COVID-19 infections caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant continue to rise worldwide.  

The music legend previously expressed to British publication The Sun that he was eager to be vaccinated, as it will allow him to perform before a live audience in the near future.

“The vaccine will get us out of this,” Paul said at the time. “I think we’ll come through it, I know we’ll come through, and it’s great news about the vaccine. I’ll have it as soon as I’m allowed.”

The British government reports that, as of Monday, nearly 90 percent of its adult population has obtained at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 72 percent of eligible adults are fully vaccinated.

COVID-19 has killed over 153,000 people in the U.K., according to government figures, and has infected nearly six million British citizens.

BE COOL. GET VAX’D – Paul pic.twitter.com/33PtIyub5X

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) August 2, 2021

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In recent new episode of Marc Maron‘s WTF Podcast, Lindsey Buckingham says despite his firing from Fleetwood Mac in 2019, “pretty much everyone [in the band] would love to see me come back.”

Having said that, Buckingham admits that he’s not sure if returning to the group is “doable.”

Buckingham reveals that his conflicts with Fleetwood Mac began after he finished a tour with Christine McVie supporting their 2017 duo album when he asked if the band would delay its own planned trek so he could promote a solo album he was preparing.

“[I asked the band,] ‘I have this other album that I’m really proud of…and I’d love if you could give me an extra three months to just put it out and do some American dates before Fleetwood Mac goes out,'” Lindsey explains. “And there was certainly one person who did not want to bestow that on me.”

The “one person,” of course, was Stevie Nicks.

Buckingham adds, “To be fair, everyone was anxious to get on the road. But…we’ve all made time for each others things. You know, I’d been in the band for 43 years for God’s sake.”

Lindsey then notes that the touring issue “led to other things that kind of built up around that. And then it just got to the point where someone just didn’t want to work with me anymore, and other people were perhaps not feeling empowered enough to stand up for me when possibly they should have or could have.”

Buckingham said he feels his firing harmed the band’s legacy.”

Meanwhile, Lindsey reports that he’s still in touch with drummer Mick Fleetwood, noting, “we love each other and we reinforced each other’s sensibilities in the band.”

Buckingham’s new self-titled solo album will be released on September 17.

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