Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on December 18th, 2019

Queen have shared an animated video on YouTube they recently made for their 1984 yuletide single, "Thank God Its Christmas." Queen founding members Brian May and Roger Taylor devised the concept for the video with direction and production for the video's snowy nighttime scene by Justin Moon and Drew Gleason. Roger Taylor recently remarked on the new video: "Ironically, Christmas tends to be such a stressful time for so many of us. So many emotions, joyful memories of past Christmas' as delighted children and responsible adults / parents. It's just a great relief when it finally happens." Brian May added: "The video goes a little further by including a subtle reminder that we as humans now need to feel a responsibility for the welfare of ALL creatures on Earth - not just for our own benefit, and that of our grandchildren, but out of respect for the rights of the animals themselves." Prior to the new video, no visuals for the song had been released for "Thank God Its Christmas." - New Musical Express, 12/16/19...... A three-minute "Facebook Live" video of Ted Nugent signing a long line of red "Re-Elect That Motherf----r" hats has topped Billboard's monthly Top Facebook Live Videos chart for November. Nugent had the hats produced to show his enthusiastic support of Pres. Donald Trump and to sell them to fans. Along the way, he apologized for the delay in getting the hats, which resemble Pres. Trump's famous "Make America Great Again" hats, out to those who had ordered them. Nugent's video was the only upload from any musician to top 1 million views in its first seven days, racking up 1.2 million views, and was the week's most shared by a musician (17,000). Billboard's Top Facebook Live Videos chart tracks the widest-reaching and most-reacted-to videos posted by musicians on Facebook Live. - Billboard, 12/17/19...... Tom Petty's widow Dana Petty and his daughters Adria Petty and Annakim Violette reached a settlement agreement on Dec. 13 in their legal battle over the estate of the late rock star, who died of an accidental drug overdose on Oct. 2, 2017, at age 66. The legal feud first erupted in April 2019, when the two parties filed dueling court petitions accusing the other of attempting to control Petty's assets. In May, a $5 million lawsuit was filed against Dana and several co-defendants by Petty Unlimited, an LLC established in Petty's will, that accused her of "self-dealing, theft, and gross mismanagement" of her late husband's estate and an attempt to "deprive" Adria and Annakim of their share of his assets. Dana then filed a petition two weeks later asking the court to fund and execute an operating agreement for Tom Petty Legacy, a separate LLC she established on her own, while alleging "foul behavior" on Adria's part with regard to estate matters. She also accused the two daughters of interfering in and delaying several posthumous Petty releases, including the 2018 box set An American Treasure, the 2019 greatest hits collection The Best of Everything and a 25th anniversary reissue of Petty's 1994 acclaimed solo album Wildflowers that has yet to materialize. The new legal documents, filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, do not disclose details of the settlement. - Billboard, 12/13/19...... French musician/composer Alexandre Desplat, who scored the new movie version of Louisa May Alcott's famous 1868 novel Little Women, says that David Bowie provided inspiration for his music for the new film. Desplat says Little Women director Greta Gerwig had requested music resembling "Mozart meeting Bowie" for the film's score. "I always try to ask, 'What do you expect from me as the composer? Do you want me to do something grand? Melancholic? Lush? Huge? Small?'," Desplat said of his initial discussions with the director. "She said with enthusiasm, 'I'd like the music to be a mix of Mozart meeting Bowie'. It doesn't mean anything, but it does mean something if you let the energy come into your system and you get something of that, and this opening is about that." The film has already received an early nod for the 2020 Oscars in the Music (Original Score) category. Desplat has previously bagged two Academy Awards for his work on The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water. - Billboard, 12/18/19...... KISS announced on Dec. 17 that former Van Halen lead singer and solo star David Lee Roth will be their special guest on the final legs of their self-proclaimed continuing End of the Road farewell tour. "David Lee Roth will bring his exciting stage show featuring a twin guitar big rock sound and a set list of classic hits and future energy," the band said in a statement. The tour is slated to officially wind-down with a July 17, 2021 show at an as-yet-unannounced venue in the group's native New York. KISS is currently in Japan where they played the Osaka Dome on Dec. 17, while Diamond Dave is gearing up to launch a Las Vegas residency on Jan. 8 at the House of Blues Las Vegas. Roth recently posted an announcement of his Vegas residency on Instagram. - Billboard, 12/17/19...... Rod Stewart has angered many of his fans in the UK by tweeting a celebratory message after his new album You're in My Heart, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra topped the charts there, while the same time including a congratulatory message to controversial UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his own recent success at the polls. Stewart's praise directed at Johnson has drawn particular controversy from his large contingent of Celtic supporters within his fanbase. Others suggested that the "Maggie May" singer's support of Johnson -- whose Conservative government won the recent general election with a majority in Parliament -- compromised his Scottish identity. Stewart also added a slightly curt "no hard feelings" to The Who guitarist Pete Townshend, whose new Who album WHO was bumped to third place in the UK charts, behind Robbie Williams' new seasonal effort The Christmas Present. - New Musical Express, 12/14/19...... Late The Cars principle Ric Ocasek, late The Monkees member Peter Tork, and late counterculture icon Peter Fonda, all who passed away in 2019, are among the personalities featured in British artist Christ Barker's annual Christmas Sgt. Pepper's cover tribute. Barker began his tribute based on the famous cover of the 1967 Beatles LP in 2016, in which he re-imagines the cover with recently deceased celebrities and pop culture icons, in 2016. He says his first Sgt. Pepper's cover was "partly to cope with the shock" of losing so many celebrities that year, including David Bowie, Prince, Carrie Fisher and George Martin, along with the jarring outcomes of the Brexit referendum and the 2016 election of US Pres. Donald Trump. Barker said he decided to continue the tribute after 007 actor Roger Moore, rock & roll icon Chuck Berry, and Batman actor Adam West passed that year. In 2019, Barker says he's also focusing on his worries about pollution and climate change by featuring a Sumatran rhino to highlight the plight of many endangered species around the world. Also making this year's cover are Cream drummer Ginger Baker, actors Albert Finney, Doris Day, Luke Perry, Rip Torn, Valerie Harper and Jan-Michael Vincent, and Grumpy Cat. - Billboard, 12/13/19...... In other Beatles-related news, Ringo Starr gave a thumbs up to the 2019 Beatles-themed movie Yesterday from the red carpet of the recent Global Citizen Awards at London's Royal Albert Hall. Ringo appeared to not remember about the film, but gave his seal of approval after being reminded by his actress/model wife Barbara Bach. "Oh yeah - I loved it," Ringo explained. "I mean, what a great concept. You know?" he added. The movie, which hit cinemas this summer, follows the story of a fledgling musician whose life takes a dramatic turn when he realizes he's one of only a handful of people left in the world that remembers Beatles songs. - NME, 12/16/19...... Elsewhere on the Fab Four front, a pair of sunglasses once worn by John Lennon have been sold at a Sotheby's auction in London for £137,500. Lennon, who was assassinated outside his New York apartment on Dec. 8, 1980, mistakenly left a pair of glasses designed by Oliver Goldsmith in the back of Ringo Starr's car in the summer of 1968. In a letter by John's former chauffeur Alan Herring, Herring recalled: "I had picked John up with Ringo and George [Harrison] in Ringo's Mercedes and driven the boys into the office. When John got out of his car I noticed that he'd left these sunglasses on the back seat and one lens and one arm had become disconnected. I asked John if he'd like me to get them fixed for him. He told me not to worry they were just for the look. He said he'd send out for some that fit. I never did get them mended -- I just kept them as they were as John had left them." Herring was originally employed by Harrison as a landscape contractor at his home in Surrey, England, and was later employed by fellow Beatles star Ringo. - NME, 12/16/19...... Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain says his main focus in 2020 will be making some new Journey music, the band's first since 2011's Eclipse. Cain says it will probably be in the form of an EP rather than a full album just to "break the ice" after the long gap. "I have quite a bit of ideas lyrically," Cain says. "We have the beginning of a really good song and we've even got a title for the next record. For me it works best with just [guitarist] Neal [Schon] and I in a room and we come together rather than trying to dictate what it is." Cain adds that he and Schon have "mended our friendship and moved on" since their relationship was fractured after some vitriolic social media posts by Schon during the summer of 2017 when Schon became upset that Cain, Journey singer Arnel Pineda and bassist Ross Valory attended a meeting at the White House with Pres. Trump. "Neither one of us liked the way all that went, and neither did the fans. It was just a lot of misunderstanding and things that were taken wrong," Cain says. "I think we both learned a lot, and it shows that our relationship is better than that and we shouldn't come against each other." Cain, who began a solo Christian music career with 2016's What God Wants to Hear and followed it up in 2018 and 2019 with two additional Christian albums, says he's among those who welcome rapper Kayne West to the ranks of Christian music. "For me it looked like a move of God, and I'm thrilled he's doing it," Cain said. Meanwhile, Journey will play the next edition of its Vegas residency in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace starting Dec. 27, including a New Year's Eve show. Its summer tour with Pretenders kicks off May 15 in Ridgefield, Wash., with arena and amphitheater dates into September. - Billboard, 12/17/19...... Roy Loney, the founding lead singer of the influential '70s San Francisco power pop band the Flamin' Groovies, died of "severe organ failure" at CPMC Davies Campus in San Francisco on Dec. 13, after a brief hospitalization. He was 73. Loney was a charismatic frontman whose high-energy stage moves and growly, blues-inflected vocals were part of the psychedelic, hippie vibe of the Bay Area rock scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Unlike the prevailing flower power sound of the time, the Groovies were full-steam-ahead '50s-inspired rockers, injecting blues, rockabilly and R&B swing into a power pop froth on songs such as "Love Have Mercy," "The First One's Free" and "Bam Balam" -- all written or co-written by Loney -- on their full-length 1969 Epic Records debut. They jumped to Kama Sutra Records for their second effort, 1970's even more raw Flamingo, which solidified their gritty sound. In 1971, the band released Teenage Head, a masterpiece of loose, concise bluesy garage rock. But by the next year Loney quit the group as a precursor to a long solo career with a number of different bands; the Flaming Groovies, however, would record Shake Some Action in 1976, and its title track with vocals by new singer Chris Wilson became its signature tune. Loney re-emerged as a solo act in 1979, when he released the full-length Out After Dark, then returned to the music business in the early 1990s with a series of backing bands. He reunited with the Groovies for occasional shows up until May of this year. E Street Band guitarist and radio show host Stevie Van Zandtposted a tribute to Loney on Twitter: "RIP Roy Loney. Legendary Garage Rocker and original lead singer with the Flamin' Groovies. He will live forever in the Underground Garage." - Billboard, 12/16/19...... Legislators in Tennessee are considering replacing a controversial bust of former Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest that has resided in the state Capitol building since 1978 with one of the state's most celebrated musicians, Dolly Parton. According to The Tennessean newspaper, Parton is being considered for the honor because of her revered status as a country music legend and as an ambassador of goodwill around the world, in contrast to the former KKK Grand Wizard. "If we want to preserve history, then let's tell it the right way. Right now there are eight alcoves [in the Capitol]. Seven are filled with white men," said Tennessee House of Representatives member Jeremy Faison. Faison has also suggested building a monument to honour the slaves who built the Capitol Building, while the bust of Forrest should be placed in a museum to educate people about the Fort Pillow massacre of 1864 -- where soldiers under his command massacred African-American troops. Meanwhile, Parton's new Netflix series arrived in late November, and she released her latest album, Heartstrings, on Nov. 22. - The Tennessean/NME 12/16/19...... Joe Smith, a legendary record executive who signed the Grateful Dead and helmed three labels, including as president and CEO of Capitol-EMI Music, died on Dec. 2 at the age of 91. Mr. Smith, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2015, worked closely with a number of artists, including Bonnie Raitt, whom he signed while president at Warner Bros. Records in the '70s and then brought to Capitol and was part of her comeback in the late '80s, including her multiple Grammy winner, 1989's Nick of Time. Among the other artists with whom he worked are Jackson Browne, Frank Sinatra, Garth Brooks, Eagles, Rod Stewart, The Cars and Bob Seger. In 2012, the Library of Congress acquired more than 200 hours of interviews conducted by Mr. Smith for his 1985 book, Off the Record: An Oral History of Pop Music, a collection of interviews with more than 200 artists, producers and executives, including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Tom Jones, B.B. King and Barbra Streisand. "Joe believed in supporting artists for the long haul, allowing us to stretch and grow," Bonnie Raitt said in memoriam to Mr. Smith. - Billboard, 12/2/19...... Emmy Award-winning composer, conductor and electronic music pioneer Gershon Kingsley, who wrote the 1969 top 10 hit "Popcorn" and played a pivotal role in popularizing the Moog synthesizer sound, died Dec. 10 in New York. He was 97. Although "Popcorn" was written by Mr. Kingsley, it was a remake by Hot Butter that reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, and No. 1 in at least six other countries. In 2005, Crazy Frog released its version, with the song again going to No. 1 in a number of countries. In 2018, Mr. Kingsley released a yellow vinyl 12" of his trademark song for Record Store Day. Mr. Kingsley also wrote theme music for the American game show The Joker's Wild and several German television shows. In the 1980s, Mr. Kingsley released a number of New Age albums, and one of his latest theatrical works, "Raoul," about Raoul Wallenberg, premiered in New York in 2004 and went on to full production in Bremen, Germany, in 2008. - Billboard, 12/14/19.

A video of Bruce Springsteen performing with his late saxophonist Clarence Clemons for the last time on Dec. 7, 2010, has been shared on YouTube. The intimate performance was played in front of about 60 Jersey fans in the Asbury Park Carousel House, where The Boss delivered a special live concert of songs from his Darkness on the Edge of Town box set The Promise a year before Clemons died of complications from a stroke. The last song in the set, fittingly, was the melancholy holiday song popularized by Elvis Presley, "Blue Christmas." - Billboard, 12/12/19...... Meanwhile, Paul McCartney has revealed he once recorded a secret Christmas album of demos "just for the family" which gets played once a year at festive gatherings. Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's World at One radio show, Paul said, "Years ago I thought, there's not very good Christmas records, so I actually went into my studio over a couple of years and I made one." But McCartney added he would never release the demo of Christmas carol instrumentals, despite it becoming a firm favourite among his children and grandchildren. "The kids like it," he said. "It's something they've heard through the years, you know, and now it's the grandkids getting indoctrinated with my carols record." McCartney, who will be headlining the UK's legendary Glastonbury festival in 2020, also said he plans on getting ready for his high profile gig by playing 10 concerts "to get up to speed." "You don't get an athlete just coming into the Olympics not having done a few races beforehand," he said. "The idea is by the time I get to Glastonbury it'll just be just like another gig. But of course it won't be, because it's very special." In other Macca news, the Netflix streaming sevice announced on Dec. 11 that they're set to adapt McCartney's 2005 children's novel High In The Clouds into an animated feature film. Directed by Oscar-nominee Timothy Reckart and produced by French movie studio Gaumont, the film will feature original songs and music by McCartney. "I've always loved animated films and this is a hugely important passion project for me. I can't wait for the world to see it," he said in a statement. - New Musical Express/Billboard, 12/12/19...... On Dec. 13, Pink Floyd released The Later Years, a lavish 16-disc box set covering their output from 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason forward, including their No. 1 1994 follow-up, The Division Bell. The six-hour set features an updated and remixed Momentary Lapse, and includes a host of other rarities, including concert footage, new mixes of classic tracks and other bonus material. Also included on the 10 CD/6 Blu-ray set is a new version of Momentary Lapse featuring new drum tracks from Nick Mason. Momentary Lapse co-producer Bob Ezrin says the original album was at "a transition point in music-making, the beginning of the digital revolution." "The essentially Pink Floyd sound has always been very elemental, very much four people and the sound of every individual," Ezrin notes. "So it was great we were able to reinstall Nick and Rick [Wright] in the places they should have been if only we were all available at the time. It has a greater Pink Floyd-ness than it ever had before." - Billboard, 12/10/19...... The Who are on track to chart their first U.K. No. 1 LP in nearly 50 years with their new studio effort from Polydor Records, WHO. WHO leads the U.K.'s Official Albums Chart Update at midweek, ahead of its closest rival, Robbie Williams' The Christmas Present. The Who have released 12 studio albums and hit the chart summit just once, with Who's Next from Sept. 1971. - Billboard, 12/10/19...... Ozzy Osbourne has scored his first No. 1 hit on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Songs chart since 2010 with "Under the Graveyard," the first single from his forthcoming studio album Ordinary Man. The song, Ozzy's first leader on the MRS chart since his 2010 hit "Let Me Hear You Scream," jumped from No. 4 to No. 1 on the survey dated Dec. 14. Osbourne, 71, is among the eldest musicians to appear on the MRS chart, joining Queen's 71-year-old guitarist Brian May, who contributed to Five Finger Death Punch's "Blue on Black," which was No. 1 for five weeks on the same chart in June and July. Ordinary Man, Osbourne's first solo full-length since 2010's Scream, is expected in January. - Billboard, 12/11/19...... Interviewed on Spotify's Best Advice series on Dec. 11, Elton John revealed the best career advice he's ever received. The Rocket Man said American talent agent Howard Rose once encouraged him to perform in smaller venues than what John already knew he could fill. "When you're in places like New York and Los Angeles and you can sell out big venues, we're gonna put you in smaller venues and create a ticket craziness, so you sell out straight away and no one can get a ticket," Elton says Rose once told him. "That means the next time you come around, you're gonna sell out a bigger venue." John will kick off North American dates of the second year of his three-year tour worldwide "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour in 2020 with a two-night stand at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena on Mar. 28 and 29. - NME, 12/12/19...... A David Bowie tribute band called David Live will perform during a Bowie "360 live immersive show" and Sir Patrick Moore Planetarium at England's National Space Centre in January. The band will play the late rocker's music spanning 1969-1972, which is described by the ticket website as "a significant period of time that covered both Bowie's experimental phase (Space Oddity to Ziggy Stardust) and the Apollo lunar landing window." An exhibition of media inspired by Bowie will also be on display at the planetarium. - New Musical Express, 12/11/19...... To the delight of Talking Heads fans, the New Wave icons opened what appears to be an official Instagram account on Dec. 9, sparking rumors of a potential long-awaited reunion. Although the account has yet to share a single post or be authenticated by Instagram's coveted blue check mark, the band's new handle, @talkingheadsofficial, has already garnered more than 10,000 followers in just two days, including former TH keyboard player Jerry Harrison. While frontman David Byrne has been famously reticent in the past about getting the band back together, interestingly 2020 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Heads' critically-acclaimed fourth album, Remain in the Light, which Harrison already announced he'll be celebrating by playing a series of special shows with Adrian Belew and the funk band Turkuaz. - Billboard, 12/11/19...... The Eagles announced on Dec. 10 that they'll be playing their seminal 1976 album Hotel California in its entirety next summer at London's Wembley Stadium. The pair of shows, which will also include a set of the country-rock legends' greatest hits, are set for Aug. 29 and 30 as part of the band's "Hotel California" tour in the U.K. Tickets for the Wembley shows go on sale to the general public on Dec. 14 at 9 a.m. and can be purchased by visiting the Eagles' official website. - Billboard, 12/10/19...... An urban legend that Jimi Hendrix was to blame for the arrival of wild parakeets in Britain has been finally debunked in a new study published in the Journal of Zoology. It was previously claimed that Hendrix released the first pair of parakeets, called Adam and Eve, as a symbol of peace while stoned in London's Carnaby Street in 1968. But the study confirms that the birds were sighted in Britain as far back as 1855, when one parakeet was spotted in Norfolk. Experts now believe that the parakeet population may have risen after the birds escaped from damaged bird houses during Britain's Great Storm of 1987. They also claim that many parakeets kept as pets were released during an outbreak of "parrot fever" in 1929, 1930 and 1952, with the public urged by newspapers to keep away from the "dangerous birds." A rival urban legend claimed that late '80s pop singer George Michael was to blame, after burglars broke into his Hampstead home in the 1990s and raided his secret aviary, but he failed to report the crime since he was wary of the police. Another popular theory claimed that the birds escaped from the set of the classic 1951 film The African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. - NME, 12/12/19...... The family of the late Marvin Gaye are asking the original judge in the now infamous "Blurred Lines" vs. "Got To Give It Up" lawsuit to revisit his decision to deny an award of $3.5 million in attorney fees after Pharrel Williams and Robin Thicke were ordered to pay half of "Got To Give It Up"'s royalties to Gaye's family as well as a one-off payment of $5.3 million in damages in 2015. Gaye's famiy claim that Williams committed perjery in court when defending himself in lausuit after he told GQ magazine in November that he "reverse engineers the feeling he gets from listening certain music, adding that he "did that in "Blurred Lines' and got myself in trouble." The Gaye family, represented by litigator Richard Busch, believes Williams' November 2019 comment constitutes a fraud on the court and evidence of perjury, and wants US District Court Judge John Kronstad to deny the attorney fees. The Gaye family's motion stops short, however, of requesting new criminal prosecution. - NME, 12/10/19...... Linda Ronstadt, who was honored with a prestigious Kennedy Center Honor at the 42nd annual Kennedy Center Honors gala in Washington, D.C., had some strong words for Sec. of State Mike Pompeo at a dinner the evening before the ceremony after Pompeo introduced her to the audience, congratulating her and joking aloud "when he would be loved," a reference to Ronstadt's hit "When Will I Be Loved." In response, the 73-year-old singer told Pompeo, "Maybe when you stop enabling Donald Trump." The awkward exchange was tweeted about by Sam Greisman, the son of Oscar-winning actress and fellow 2019 Kennedy Center Honors recipient Sally Field. "Linda Ronstadt got up to get laurels, looked the f---er right in the eye and said 'maybe when you stop enabling Donald Trump.' Icon," he wrote. Other honorees included Earth, Wind and Fire; conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; and the long-running children's TV show Sesame Street. The event, hosted by LL Cool J, was taped and will be broadcast on CBS on Dec. 15. Pres. Trump an first lady Melania Trump declined to appear at the event for the third year in a row. - Billboard, 12/8/19...... The U.S. Library of Congress announced on Dec. 12 that Prince's 1984 film Purple Rain is among the 25 films added to its annual National Film Registry in 2019. The grossed more than $68 million at the box office in the US in its first release and earned over $80 million worldwide. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song Score, the last movie to receive that particular award. Other "culturally and historically significant" films that are set to be archived in 2019 include Martin Scorsese's classic concert film for The Band, The Last Waltz, and Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It. - NME, 12/12/19...... Queen + Adam Lambert have added five new dates to their forthcoming UK "Rhapsody" tour. The band had already announced five nights at London's O2 Arena in June 2020 along with two dates at the Manchester Arena (6/11, 12). Now they've added five more nights at the O2 to run throughout the month. The "Rhapsody" shows were inspired by the Oscar winning 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and will feature ambitious staging, lighting and visuals. The film is now the highest-grossing music biopic of all time and the biggest-selling film of 2019 in the UK. - NME, 12/11/19...... An AC/DC reunion with former lead singer Brian Johnson has apparently been confirmed by their fellow hard rock acts Twisted Sister and Behemoth, with the latter band's member Nerghal telling Loudwire: "I know there's a new AC/DC album in the making with [late AC/DC rhythm guitarist] Malcolm Young. It's coming. It's going to be an outtake from Rock or Bust. What do I expect? I expect nothing more and nothing less, just give me f---ing rhythm and Angus and Malcolm's guitar. Don't give me anything extra. [Brian Johnson] is back in the band." Dee Snider of Twisted Sister also seemingly backed the reports on Twitter, claiming that the band will reunite with drummer Phil Rudd, who was ousted from the group following his conviction in 2018 for drug possession and making threats to kill a former employee. - NME, 12/10/19.