Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on July 10th, 2020

Aerosmith announced on July 9 that they're rescheduling their 50th anniversary concert at Boston's Fenway Park to Sept. 14, 2021 "out of an abundance of love and caution" amid the coronavirus pandemic. "It's better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret, for the safety of our families, for our crews, for the fans and for the Blue Army," read the statement posted on Facebook. "All tickets will be honored for the new date so hold onto yours! Or if you are unable to make it, you'll be able to request a refund. Ticket holders will be emailed with all details. Until then, stay safe and stay healthy. Big love from the Bad Boys of Boston... Aerosmith," it continued. Aerosmith had planned the 50th anniversary blowout for Sept. 18 at Fenway, with support from opening act Extreme. - Billboard, 7/10/20...... Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon Osbourne, and their son Jack Osbourne will launch a new 8-part paranormal series on cable TV's Travel Channel on Aug. 2. The series, entitled The Osbournes Want to Believe, will find Jack trying to make believers out of his parents, who are, of course, natural skeptics. According to a press release, each hour-long episode will find Jack screening clips of unexplainable events, from Bigfoot and UFO sightings to poltergeists, creepy dolls and other unexplainable phenomenon to his mom and dad. "My parents have always lived on the edge, even when it comes to believing in the supernatural... My biggest challenge may be keeping their comments family friendly. It will be a classic Osbourne gathering!," Jack said in a statement. Ozzy and Sharon will check out Jack's videos and critique them and the series premiere promises to include "their outrageously funny reactions" including "Ozzy's historical digressions on Greeks, Romans and the berserkers and a copious amount of swearing." Meanwhile, possibly taking a cue from rapper Kayne West, Ozzy has just launched a new merchandise line featuring the slogan "Ozzy for President." Osbourne's presidential merch will include t-shirts, buttons, hoodies and bumper stickers. Captioning a link to the merch on Twitter, Ozzy posted "It's time for a new candidate." His presidential merch can be ordered now via his online store on Ozzy.com. - Billboard/New Musical Express, 7/10/20...... In other Black Sabbath-related news, Queen guitarist Brian May has spoken about his long-rumored collaboration with Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, telling Guitar World magazine that fans' hopes shouldn't be dashed just yet. May said he and his good pal Iommi have spent many hours chatting and listening to riffs Iommi has written but never used. "I think there is a chance. We do more talking than anything else, but we do a lot of talking," May said. "[Iommi] is really my dearest friend in the business and has been for so many years. I could write books about Tony because he's just the most... I don't even know how to put it into words. You know, he's a luminous human being... with a wonderful, kind nature and an incredibly baffling sense of humour," added. Iommi has said the two first talked of collaborating shortly after Iommi was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. May has had his own health problems of late, revealing in late May that he suffered a "small heart-attack" and also tore a muscle while gardening and was unable to walk "for a while." Queen drummer Roger Taylor told Rolling Stone that the band's European tour was probably doomed before the coronavirus pandemic shut it down due to May's health. "We cancelled the tour and then Brian got really sick," Taylor said. "We may have had to cancel it anyway, which is the irony," he added. But Taylor added that May is "very much on the mend" and the pair are in "daily contact." Taylor also recently told the UK's Daily Express paper that a sequel to Queen's successful Bohemian Rhapsody biopic is unlikely. "I don't think it's particularly a good idea. Just because something's been successful, I don't think one should necessarily have part two," he said. Released in Nov. 2018, Bohemian Rhapsody became the highest-grossing musical biopic of all time, raking in more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office. - New Musical Express/Music-News.com, 7/9/20...... The Rolling Stones announced on July 9 they're reissuing their classic 1973 No. 1 album Goats Head Soup as multiple-disc standard and deluxe CD and vinyl sets on Sept. 4 via Polydor/Interscope/UME. All rereleased packages will feature 10 bonus tracks with alternate versions, outtakes and at least three previously unreleased tracks, including "All The Rage" and "Scarlet" featuring Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page on guitar and Blind Faith's Rick Grech on bass. The first never-before-heard track from the rerelease, "Criss Cross," was shared on YouTube and other streaming services along with the music video on July 9. The box set editions will include a 15-track live album Brussels Affair from their memorable 1973 Belgium show, videos of "Dancing With Mr. D," "Silver Train" and "Angie," and an exclusive 100-page photo essay book. - Billboard, 7/9/20...... Celebrating his big 8-0 birthday online on July 7 due to social distancing, Ringo Starr took some time to note how influential Black music was to creating the Beatles' sound. "There's no greater act than any others can make than to stand up and be counted when you see injustice," he said during the livestream. "I don't have to tell you that the Beatles' early set had a lot to do with the influence we found in American artists. We loved listening to Ray Charles, Little Richard is my hero, Stevie Wonder, Sister Rosetta Tharpe -- I saw her live at the cabin --and my stepdad's favorite, Billy Eckstine. The list goes on and on," he said. The show also had a number of throwback onstage moments, including a dynamic "Helter Skelter" performance with Ringo's former bandmate Paul McCartney, who took to social media earlier in the day to wish his pal a happy birthday. "Happy birthday SIR RICHARD alias RINGO. Have a great day my long time buddy!," Sir Paul posted to Twitter. Joe Walsh, Gary Clark Jr., Sheryl Crow, Sheila E., Dave Grohl and Ben Harper also took part in the event, performing Beatles covers at home. Ringo's full "Big Birthday Show" has been shared on YouTube. Meanwhile, Ringo told Britain's Sunday Mirror paper on July 6 that the Beatles once walked away from a multi-million dollar offer to reunite for a one-off concert because the opening act was "a guy biting a shark." Starr says the Beatles were offered $62.4 million (£50 million) -- worth around $250 million (£200 million) in today's money -- back in 1976 to stage the comeback show, just six years after they parted ways, and "we called each other to see what we think." "We decided not to do it because the opening act was a guy biting a shark," referring to showman Bill Sargent's deal of an odd-warm up act which involved a man wrestling an 18-foot long Great White. "So we thought, 'No'," he said. According to Ringo, it was the only offer the band had seriously considered before John Lennon was shot and killed outside his New York home in 1980. Billboard/Music-News.com, 7/7/20...... Elsewhere on the Fab Four front, insiders say 87-year-old Yoko Ono is "slowing down" after she was last spotted in Jan. 2019 at a women's march in a wheelchair and has not been spotted in public since. In 2017, Yoko was presented with a Centennial Song Award by the National Music Publishers Association and was pushed onstage in a wheelchair by her son Sean Lennon, shocking some who didn't realize the formidable avant-garde artist was incapacitated. She began her short acceptance speech by "addressing the elephant in the room. While it's not clear what "illness" she was referring to, Ono is reportedly still ailing, and requires round-the-clock care and rarely leaves her sprawling apartment in The Dakota, a source close to her staff recently told The New York Post. Ono, who has reported assets of $700 million, recently donated $50,000 to the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, which during the coronavirus pandemic has provided thousands of meals to out-of-work and needy residents in her Upper West Side neighborhood. - The New York Post, 7/4/20...... Bruce Springsteen has made a surprise release of a live Streets of Philadelphia album recorded on Sept. 25, 1999, at Philly's First Union Center. The longtime fan favorite bootleg, featuring his classic E Street Band lineup, has never been officially available before. The 22-song show, newly mixed from multitrack masters, opens with "Incident on 57th Street" and "The Ties That Bind," and includes such favorites as "Prove it All Night," "Atlantic City," "Point Blank," "Badlands" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" and encores of "Jungleland," "Born to Run," "Thunder Road" and "Land of Hope and Dreams." The album's title comes from the song Springsteen wrote for the 1993 Tom Hanks/Denzel Washington AIDS drama Philadelphia. Streets of Philadelphia can be streamed on YouTube. In May, Springsteen released a July 1981 live concert recorded at the Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey with proceeds earmarked for the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund. - Billboard, 7/7/20...... Elvis Costello has shared his second single of 2020, "Hetty O'Hara Confidential," along with an animated lyric video, on YouTube. The track, with similarly furious synthetic percussion to his previous single "No Flag," is described pithily by Costello in a statement as "the tale of a tattler who outlives her time." The dual singles are the first new material since Costello and his band The Imposters released a 2019 EP entitled Purse. They released their last studio album, Look Now, in 2018. - New Musical Express, 7/10/20...... Iggy Pop's classic 1977 track "The Passenger" has finally been given an official music video 43 years after its release. Pop shared the video on YouTube on July 9 and announced it on Instagram with a message: "So 'The Passenger' finally has an official video. Thank you @simontayl0r for your talent and thank you #EstherFriedman and @paulmcalpinerr for sharing images from the times of The Passenger." In the description of the video on YouTube, Pop added another thank you "for those beautifully captured shots that make this video truly encapsulate the period." Meanwhile, a live recording of the last concert performed by Pop's former band the Stooges' in its original lineup will drop on Aug. 7. - NME, 7/9/20...... The Eagles and Guns N' Roses are reportedly among the musicians who have received financial support during the COVID-19 crisis. Data released by America's Small Business Administration and Treasury Department and obtained by the publication showed the Eagles, Pearl Jam and Disturbed took out loans of between $350,000 (£280,000) and $1 million (£800,000). The loans are for the artists' touring companies, with the Eagles helping retain 50 jobs while they are unable to perform during the pandemic. - Music-News.com, 7/9/20...... The family of reggae legend Bob Marley have reimagined Marley's iconic song "One Love" to raise money for Unicef's coronavirus fund. Originally recorded in 1977 by Marley and his band The Wailers, the new take on "One Love" sees vocals from Marley's son Stephen, daughter Cedella and grandson Skip. The song, which has been shared on YouTube, also features a host of children living in vulnerable environments and musicians from conflict zones. All proceeds from the song will go to Reimagine, Unicef's global campaign which aims to prevent the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for children. - NME, 7/9/20...... The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced on July 9 that its 2020 induction ceremony has been cancelled due to coronavirus and will now be broadcast as an HBO special. The traditional live ceremony, originally set to take place on May 2 but was pushed back due to concerns over the coronavirus outbreak, and though a new date in November was announced soon afterwards, that has also now been scrapped. Instead, the ceremony will be broadcast as a pre-recorded HBO special, airing on the same planned date of Nov. 7. "To protect the health and safety of our Inductees, their families, crews and our attendees, we've made the decision that the scheduled live event is not possible, John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement. Whitney Houston, The Notorious B.I.G., Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, T Rex and the Doobie Brothers are among the artists to be inducted into the RRHOF class of 2020 for its 35th annual celebration. Also the 2021 edition of the ceremony has been pushed back from spring to autumn, and take place in the organization's home base of Cleveland, Oh. - New Musical Express, 7/9/20...... KISS vocalist/guitarist Paul Stanley took to Twitter on July 8 to urge fans to wear face masks in order to help stop the spread of coronavirus as several US states have begun ordering citizens to wear face masks in public. Stanley posted a photo of himself with his daughter, Emily, and wrote: "Sunset at the beach with Emily. WEAR YOUR MASK! Don't listen to conspiracy theorists or graduates of The Internet University Of Medicine. While the credible authorities and experts continue to learn more about Covid 19 they remain in agreement about safety protocols. End of story," he wrote. Stanley's post comes after his fellow KISS bandmate Gene Simmons made similar pleas to Twitter users earlier in 2020. - NME, 7/8/20...... Elton John has become the latest artist to be honoured by Britain's Royal Mint's series of commemorative coins. Sir Elton is featured on the coin, which can be viewed on the Reuters Twitter page, in his trademark straw boater hat, a Union Jack and a pair of quaver notes. The coin is available in gold, silver and brilliant uncirculated editions, beginning July 6. "It really is a fabulous honour to be recognised in this way. The last few years have contained some of the most memorable moments of my career, and this is another truly humbling milestone on my journey," John said in a statement. Meanwhile, Elton has postponed the homecoming U.K. leg of his "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The concerts were set to run from Nov. 2 to Dec. 17, 2020, but have now been pushed back until Oct. 30 through Dec. 14, 2021. "Rescheduling my concerts is never a decision taken lightly, but my priority is always the safety of all parties including my tour crew, the venue staff and of course you, my amazing fans," John said in a statement. - NME/WENN/Canoe.com, 7/6/20...... In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz said it "would be nice" if his iconic New Wave band reunited. Frantz, speaking about his new biopic Remain in Love, said he hasn't seen Talking Heads frontman David Byrne since a 2003 meeting at a restaurant on New York's Lower East Side, and wasn't invited to see Byrne's "American Utopia" stage show on Broadway, which ran across 2019. Frantz said Byrne told him that evening that he would "think about" a reunion, but three days later he received a blunt email from Byrne saying, "I will never reunite with the Talking Heads. Please don't bring this up again." Frantz admits that he would like to reunite with the band, though, saying: "It would be nice if it could happen because unlike many of our contemporaries, we're all still alive." Talking Heads broke up in 1991, and have only played together once since, for their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. In late 2019, fans believed that a potential Talking Heads reunion was finally in the works, after the band appeared to launch an official Instagram account. The account hasn't shared a single post, and isn't verified as of yet. - New Musical Express, 7/7/20...... British photographer Fiona Adams, who took several memorable snaps of the Beatles including the iconic pic of the Fab Four jumping off a Brick Wall on London's Euston Road which adorned the cover of their 1963 "Twist and Show" UK EP, has died at the age of 84. Ms. Adams, who graduated from the Ealing College of Art and Technology in 1952, also went on to photograph some of the Sixties' other defining icons too -- including Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. In 2009 the National Portrait Gallery featured her Sixties work, in their exhibition "Beatles to Bowie: The 60s Exposed." She was hailed as "an unsung heroine of the decade now retired and living in the Channel Islands." Her death follows that of fellow Beatles collaborator/photographer Astrid Kirchherr earlier in 2020. - NME, 7/10/20...... Legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who is best known for scoring The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, has died in Rome following complications from a fall. He was 91. Mr. Morricone, who scored more than 500 films, is widely regarded as one of cinema's greatest composers and won a long-overdue Oscar for his work on Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight in 2015. He also received nominations for Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), Roland Joffe's The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987), Barry Levinson's Bugsy (1991) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena (2000). But it was Mr. Morricone's collaboration with director Sergio Leone on the "Dollars" spaghetti Western trilogy featuring Clint Eastwood that arguably spawned his best known work -- the iconic theme to The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Affectionally known as "The Maestro," Mr. Morricone was handed an honorary Oscar by astwood in 2007, with the Academy hailing his "magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music." - New Musical Express, 7/6/20.

Southern rock/country music legend Charlie Daniels, who worked his way up to platinum album sales through heavy touring with an eclectic repertoire that touched on several genres including boogie, bluegrass, country, blues, hard rock and even a bit of Tex-Mex, died at a hospital in Hermitage, Tenn., on the morning of July 6 from hemorrhagic stroke, his publicist confirmed. He was 83. Born on Oct. 28, 1936, in Wilmington, NC, Daniels was the son of a lumberman and began his professional career at 21 when he formed the Jaguars. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, he played in Southern bars and roadhouses, and in 1964 he co-penned "It Hurts Me" with friend Bob Johnston, a B-side for Elvis Presley on his double-sided Top 30 hit "Kissin' Cousins." In 1967, he disbanded the Jaguars and settled in Nashville , where he became an in demand studio musician playing guitar, fiddle, bass, and banjo on albums for such major rock acts as Bob Dylan (on his Nashville Skyline album), Ringo Starr (on Beaucoups of Blues), Leonard Cohen and Pete Seeger, also contributing to numerous country sessions. He wrote songs that were recorded by the likes of Tammy Wynette, Gary Stewart and others, and also worked as a producer, most notably on four albums by the Youngbloods. After an eponymous debut LP for Capitol Records in 1970, he switched to Kama Sutra for another solo effort, Te John, Grease, and Wolfman. In 1971, he formed the Charlie Daniels Band, modeled after the Allman Brothers Band with its two drummers and twin lead guitars. In 1972, the CDB's LP Honey in the Rock featured the talking-bluegrass novelty hit "Uneasy Rider," which became a Top 10 hit in 1973. The band built a loyal following in the South and West by touring relentlessly, playing nearly 200 shows a year. In 1973, his Fire on the Mountain album featured the rollicking "Trudy" and made him a national star, and 1975's Nightrider included the rebel rouser "The South's Gonna Do It Again," a Top 30 hit. In 1974, he began his annual Volunteer Jam concerts in Nashville, several of which were recorded for live albums from 1976 through 1981. Signing with Epic Records in 1975 for a reported $3 million, Daniels recorded Saddle Tramp and added three new members to his band. In 1976, he performed benefits for presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, and later performed at Pres. Carter's inauguration. In 1979, he scored a multi-million selling breakthrough with Million Mile Reflections, which yieled his No. 3 hit, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and earned him a Grammy for Best Country Vocal. The increasing political edge of his music was demonstrated with the 1980 No. 11 hit "In America," and in 1982 his version of Dan Daley's "Still in Saigon" concerned the traumas of a Vietnam vet. In 1993, he switched to Liberty Nashville Records, with another patriotic anthem in the title cut of America, I Believe in You. In 1994, he recorded his first gospel LP for Sparrow Records, The Door, which featured a songwriting collaboration between himself and Steven Curtis Chapman. Although his edgy, early music which celebrated pot smoking and poking fun at rednecks raised eyebrows in Nashville, he softened some verses in the 1990s and in 2008 joined the epitome of Nashville's music establishment, the Grand Ole Opry, and eight years later was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Daniels had suffered what was described as a mild stroke in Jan. 2010 and had a heart pacemaker implanted in 2013 but continued to perform. In 2017 he published his memoir, Never Look at the Empty Seats, and followed up in 2018 with Let's All Make the Day Count: The Everyday Wisdom of Charlie Daniels. In March, despite the coronavirus pandemic putting many events on hold, Daniels confirmed the lineup for a 2020 Volunteer Jam concert on Sept. 15, naming performers such as Trace Adkins, Justin Moore, The Marshall Tucker Band and Charley Pride, among others. Accolades to Daniels on Twitter from several country acts include Brad Paisley, who posted "A tale of hard work, musical discovery, and faith, Charlie Daniels's journey has been one of a kind. Equal parts rebel rouser and apostle, it's no small coincidence he launched his career by beating the Devil with a fiddle in hand. I love this man, the things he stands for, and his music. What a story." Daniels is survived by his wife Hazel, who he married in 1964, and son Charlie Jr. - Billboard/The Daily Mail UK/Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock, 7/6/20.