Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on September 27th, 2026

Elton John will make his first public U.K. performance in over three years when he plays London's Apple Music Hall on Sept. 28. The surprise performance at the the newly remodeled 600-capacity venue at Battersea Power Station will be the Rocket Man's first U.K. performance since the wrapped his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour at Glastonbury Festival in June 2023. John has sporadically performed live since, most recently at Brazil's Rock in Rio festival on Sept. 7. On Sept. 22, Apple announced the opening of its new state-of-the-art space which features a 48-speaker spatial audio system and a customizable 38-foot-wide stage. In 2014, Elton performed a private concert at the venue to mark the building's residential and commercial redevelopment. Other artists including Baby Keem, Skye Newman and Troye Sivan will help christen the new venue with concerts between Oct. 2 and Dec. 2. - Billboard, 9/25/26...... In a new interview with Vulture magazine, Todd Rundgren took aim at Taylor Swift, claiming she has "ruined music" and called her the "apotheosis of mediocrity." Rundgren is the producer of Meat Loaf's classic 1977 set Bat Out of Hell which he has previously said he approached partly as a spoof of Bruce Springsteen. After being asked which contemporary artist he would target if he were making an album intended as a parody, he replied: "Taylor Swift, of course. There's an argument to be made that she ruined music. It's an understandable phenomenon. It's just that, to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity." The veteran singer-songwriter-producer then offered his theory for why female artists have come to dominate mainstream pop, arguing that a shift began in the 1990s when young male consumers increasingly spent their money on video games rather than records. "Back in the '90s, boys stopped spending money on music and started spending it on video games, and that left the music market with, 'Well, where do we go here?'," Rundgren explained. "And they said, 'Well, there's all these young girls and they've got their allowances, too. Why don't we start making music for young girls instead of Pearl Jam or something like that?'" He went on to name Swift alongside Lady Gaga and Pink, but singled out Gaga for praise as a "real musician" and a "classically trained piano player." Returning to Swift, Rundgren said: "Taylor Swift doesn't do anything particularly great except grow hair. She's not a great singer. She's not a great songwriter. She's not a great dancer." Rundgren's comments come shortly after Swift released The Life Of A Showgirl: The Encore, an expanded version of her 2025 album featuring four newly recorded tracks. - New Musical Express, 9/26/26...... Posting on Instagram on Sept. 21, Ozzfest announced it will come to the U.S. for the first time in nearly a decade after previously announcing a show in Birmingham, U.K. "Ozzfest will come to the U.K. and U.S. @theozzfest," with the caption promising, "More Info Coming Soon!!! Where are you hoping Ozzfest 2027 will pop up?" In August, Ozzfest said the hard rock festival would take place at Villa Park, Birmingham, the 42,000-capacity stadium that hosted Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne's farewell show "Back to the Beginning", which took place in July 2025. The event dates and lineup have not yet been shared for the Villa Park show, nor for Ozzfest concerts in other cities. Meanwhile, the trailer for the new Back to the Beginning theatrical film has been shared on YouTube. The minute-long trailer for the film documenting the late Ozzy's final show is packed with emotion, tension, tears and, of course, the indomitable spirit of the Blizzard of Ozz himself. "There's never been a precedent for a show like this," says the event's musical director, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello in voice-over as the camera pans over the 45,000 metalheads who gathered at Villa Park in Birmingham, U.K. on July 5, 2025 to celebrate Ozzy's nearly six-decade career in music. "Millions of people around the world who got to say, 'thank you Black Sabbath. Thank you Ozzy,'" Morello continues over footage of Osbourne performing with Sabbath at the gig. Back to the Beginning is set to debut in theaters worldwide on Oct. 28. Elsewhere, the woman who was confirmed to be the mysterious figure on the cover of Black Sabbath's 1970 self-titled debut LP has announced that she has created a new rock opera, inspired by AI and Alice in Wonderland. The woman on the cover had gone unidentified for decades until 2020 when Rolling Stone magazine shared that she was a model named Louisa Livingstone, with photographer Keith Macmillan saying he chose her for the role because she's five feet tall, and as a result, the landscape around her would look bigger. Since then, Livingstone has been releasing music of her own too, including two tracks inspired by her time on the Sabbath cover: "Witch Woman" and "The Woman by the Mill." More recently, she has been releasing music under the alias Indreba, including a five-song album called Alice, which dropped in August. Livingstone says the inspiration for Alice came to her as a memory of her father reading Lewis Carroll's classic 1871 novel to her as a child, and over time she has seen the premise through the lens of panpsychism -- the notion that all objects and items possess some form of consciousness. That, she shared, led to her exploring the narrative of "myself (or Alice) falling in love with AI", but going on to realise that it is "just a beautiful illusion along with everything else on the internet." She added that the album was about "getting back to being oneself and nature," and that she did use some AI assistance to produce the album. - Billboard/NME, 9/22/26...... On Sept. 24 The Beach Boys abruptly cancelled their "Pet Sounds 60" tour dates which was intended to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their seminal 1966 LP Pet Sounds. In July, the iconic American band had rescheduled the dates until September to allow co-founding member Mike Love time to rest and "recharge." Now, the band have axed their shows in Massachussetts, Pennsylvania, and two shows in South Carolina. No explanation was given for the cancellation. Venues planned to host the Beach Boys such as the Univest Performance Center in Quakertown and Alabama Theatre in North Myrtle Beach have said the cancellation was due to "circumstances beyond [our] control." Now the band are apparently going to restart the tour on Oct. 9 at the Grossinger Motors Arena in Bloomington, Ill. Multiple concerns for Mike Love's health on tour have been noted as the tour has gone by. After one May 30 concert, a reviewer for Slate said the singer's voice was "reduced to a whisper, all warbled, strange, and barely there." Days after that review went up, The Beach Boys axed a series of dates due to Love suffering from an unspecified illness. Love is the only remaining original member of the band left, following the exit of Bruce Johnston earlier this year and the recent death of their iconic frontman Brian Wilson, who died last June aged 82. In January of 2026, the BB released their lost experimental album Adult/Child after almost 50 years, recorded in 1977 and reportedly shelved due to the band's label and Wilson's bandmates not fully believing in the project. - NME, 9/24/26...... After a campaign by Rush members to erect a public art memorial to their late bandmate drummer Neil Peart that began in 2020, Rush singer Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson have presented a check for $785,000 to the Neil Peart Commemorative Task Force Fundraising sub-committee to go toward the $1 million for a Peart memorial in his hometown of Lakeside Park in St. Catharines, Ontario. "This public art memorial will be far more than a tribute to Neil Peart; it elevates the park into a world-class cultural landmark," St. Catherines city manager Eric Lamothe said. "We are thrilled to see a space that is already a beloved destination for residents and tourists become a global beacon for enthusiastic music fans to gather, reflect, and celebrate an icon for generations to come." The campaign launched in 2020 in an effort to place a statue or plaque dedicated to drummer and lyricist Peart in the park that inspired the song "Lakeside Park" on Rush's 1975 Caress of Steel album. The concept for the memorial includes two larger-than-life bronze sculptures of Peart, which will be connected by a pathway offering "experiential and interpretive features providing insight into Peart's personal and professional legacies, including his time with the band," according to the City of St. Catharines site. The memorial park is officially slated to open in late 2027, and a rendering can be viewed on YouTube. - Billboard, 9/23/26...... Giles Martin the newly unearthed John Lennon song "Little Girl" appearing on the definitive Super Deluxe edition of The Beatles's 1965 album Rubber Soul is "just a little ditty... don't expect 'Strawberry Fields' or 'In My Life' from it." The recording is just as Martin describes -- strong in fidelity but clearly unfinished and light on lyrics, with plenty of la-la's as placeholders. "John was playing around with the word 'girl' quite a lot," Martin, son of the late Beatles producer George Martin, notes. "'You can run for your life if you can, little girl'; obviously 'Girl' was on the record; You know, he liked words. He was obsessed with Dylan Thomas, etc. So it's a valid sketch of the songwriting of the period." He adds that there was never a notion of doing more with "Little Girl" than including it amid the wealth of rarities, outtakes, alternative versions and studio chatter included on the new Rubber Soul release, which includes a 4CD/5LP edition featuring new stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes alongside the original mono mix and the original Capitol U.S. album version. The Super Deluxe edition of Rubber Soul hits stores on Oct. 2. Elsewhere, Martin says the new four-part series of Beatles films he's working on with director Sam Mendes are "gonna be very good." "I think they'll trigger a new wave of Beatlemania, to be honest with you," he says. - Billboard, 9/22/26...... Lionel Richie has undergone a procedure to correct his atrial fibrillation, an erratic heartbeat often caused by inefficient blood flow that can cause dizziness and fatigue. Richie, who recently posponed a number of shows on his headlining arena tour with Earth, Wind & Fire has been experienced heart issues off and on since the tour kicked off June 24 at Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul, Minn. While performing his '80s hit "Dancin' on the Ceiling," Richie told the audience he was feeling shaky and then sat down. "When you're feeling dizzy, sit your ass down," he said. He then took an unscheduled intermission and ultimately did not return to stage. Then following his Aug. 29 concert in St. Louis, he checked himself into a local hospital to have some tests run. Richie struggled at times during the normally high energy show, according to TMZ.com, asking for a chair during concert closer, "All Night Long." A rep for Richie says the former The Commodores member and '80s superstar is doing great and his doctor said "everything went perfectly," but will take some time off and will be back on stage soon." As he recuperates, Richie has canceled the next three scheduled shows in San Francisco on Sept. 26, Chicago on Sept. 30 and Columbus, Ohio, Oct. 2. (The latter two dates were already rescheduled from the earlier postponements.) The next concerts on his schedule are a six-show residency at Las Vegas' Encore Theater at the Wynn starting Oct. 14. - Billboard, 9/22/26...... Gary "Angry" Anderson, the feisty frontman of the '70s and '80s Australian band Rose Tattoo, one of the hardest-rocking bands to emerge from Australia in the 1970s, died on Sept. 21. He was 79. "It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Gary 'Angry' Anderson on the eve of Monday 21 September 2026, surrounded by his loved ones here in Australia," reads a statement from Rose Tattoo. Anderson had suffered a heart attack in August while Rose Tattoo was on tour in Europe. The singer was hospitalized in Germany and the remainder of the group's 50th anniversary tour was scrapped, including planned shows in Australia. With Anderson at the mic, Rose Tattoo enjoyed a string of hits in '70s and '80s including "Bad Boy for Love," "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw" and "We Can't Be Beaten." Rose Tattoo was the quintessential Aussie pub rock band, and induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame came in Rose Tattoo was in 2006, in a class that included Helen Reddy. Often clad in leather or a simple singlet, revealing his arms-length collection of tattoos, Angry Anderson always looked hard as nails and as angry as his nickname. But he was a softy at heart. Raised in the school of hard knocks, Anderson was a passionate advocate for disadvantaged young Australians, his work recognized with Anderson made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1993 for services to the community. He also had several movie roles, including a spot alongside Tina Turner in 1985's Max Mad 3: Beyond Thunderdome, and was a familiar face on Australian TV. - Billboard, 9/23/26.