Classic Hits

The Who may be known for their live shows, but it turns out Pete Townshend may not exactly be enjoying his time on the stage.

In a new interview with Spain’s RockFM, Townshend shares that he doesn’t necessarily love performing.

“Most musicians are not like me. Most musicians do two things that I don’t really do or don’t enjoy doing. One is they love performing,” he says. “I don’t love performing. I don’t like being on a stage. I don’t mind being on a stage. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t fill my soul in the way that you see some performers, just their soul is filled through being on the stage. That’s not me.”

The other thing he doesn’t love to do is collaborate with other artists, sharing, “For me, collaboration is something that I find very difficult.”

“If I was in a studio, like with a really, really great musician, or with a group of really great musicians, I think I would find it very hard. I often do find it very hard,” he says. “I find it difficult to collaborate. I find it very difficult looking in the eyes of another musician. I find myself looking to my own energy to express myself. So, I’m very different to most musicians in that respect,” although he notes that he does “admire the process of collaboration.”

While he may not love performing, Townshend will be doing just that in July. The Who have two shows coming up, both in Italy: July 20 in Padua and July 21 in Milan.

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On This Day, April 25, 1987…

Three weeks after its release, U2’s The Joshua Tree hit #1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart.

The album, the band’s fifth studio release, was U2’s first U.S. chart-topper, and it remained at number one for nine weeks.

The record included future U2 classics “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” which remain U2’s only #1 singles in the U.S., as well as “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

The Irish rockers went on to have seven more #1 albums: 1988’s Rattle and Hum, 1991’s Achtung Baby, 1993’s Zooropa, 1997’s Pop, 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, 2009’s No Line on the Horizon and 2017’s Songs of Experience.

U2 celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree with tours in 2017 and 2019, during which they played the album in its entirety. The tour hit North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.

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Sammy Hagar has released the new single, “Encore, Thank You, Good Night,” which is described as “a celebration and expression of appreciation” of his time in Van Halen.

Sammy has said that the song was inspired by a dream he had about late Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

“This song is my final bow to that part of my life,” Sammy shares. “It’s not meant to be anything more than a thank-you — with love, with respect, and with one hell of a guitar solo.”

In the lyrics, Sammy thanks Eddie for coming into his dream, noting, “thank you for the visit, what took so long,” and also thanks him for the music, the “good times,” and the “fortune and the fame,” noting, “since you’ve been gone, things don’t feel the same.”

“Encore, Thank You, Good Night” is available now via digital outlets. Sammy is set to debut the video for the song on Sunday when he headlines the Stagecoach Festival’s Palomino Stage. It will also debut on YouTube.

Sammy co-wrote “Encore, Thank You, Good Night” with Joe Satriani, and it features Satriani on guitar, Van Halen’s Michael Anthony on bass and Kenny Aronoff on drums. These are the same guys Sammy will be playing Van Halen tunes with at his Las Vegas residency, The Best of All Worlds Tour Stays in Vegas – The Residency, which kicks off Wednesday at Dolby Live at Park MGM.

A complete list of dates can be found at RedRocker.com.

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The Rolling Stones have recorded a song for a tribute album to the late King of Zydeco, Clifton Chenier, which is being released in celebration of what would have been the singer and accordion player’s 100th birthday.

A Tribute to the King of Zydeco, dropping June 27, is a 14-track album featuring a host of A-list musicians covering tunes from Chenier’s catalog. Other artists on the record include Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Taj Mahal, John Hiatt and Jimmie Vaughan.

The Stones cover the tune “Zydeco Sont Pas Salés,” and are joined by accordion player Steve Riley. The tune marks the first new music from the band since they released 2023’s Hackney Diamonds.

Chenier helped pioneer zydeco, a music genre created in Louisiana that blends blues, R&B and Afro-Cuban rhythms with music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles. He won a Grammy Award in 1983 for his album I’m Here and in 2014 he was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Chenier passed away in 1987 at the age of 62.

Proceeds from the album benefit the all-new Clifton Chenier Memorial Scholarship at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. The album is available for preorder now.

In other Rolling Stones news … the rockers have teamed with the Aston Martin Aramco for a new co-branded merch collection. The line features hoodies, t-shirts and hats all with The Stones’ tongue logo and the Aston Martin wings. The line is described as “fusing the speed and precision of Formula One with the rebellious spirit of rock and roll.”

The collection launched Thursday at The Stones’ RS No.9 Carnaby Street store in London, and is now available online at rsno9.com.

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The late David Bowie‘s wife Iman is celebrating their love on what would have been their 33rd wedding anniversary.

The supermodel shared two heartfelt posts on Instagram marking the occasion, the first reading, “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure,” featuring the captions “#BowieForever” and “#ImanDaily.”

The second post included a black and white picture of them together, with a caption that included the date, April 24, and a poem, “I am going to love you until the end/ I will love you until I reach the end/ I will love you until I die/ I will see you in the sky/ Tonight,” along with the hashtags “#EternalLove” and, once again, “#BowieForever.”

Bowie and Iman wed in a private ceremony in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 24, 1992. They welcomed their first and only child together, daughter Alexandria Zahra Jones, in 2000. The 24-year-old, who goes by the name Lexi, released a new album, Xandri, earlier this year.

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The music of the B-52s will be celebrated with a new career-spanning box set.

The Warner and Reprise Years will include newly remastered versions of B-52s albums released between 1979 and 1992: 1979’s The B-52s, 1980’s Wild Planet, 1982’s EP Mesopotamia, 1981’s Party Mix!, 1983’s Whammy!, 1986’s Bouncing Off Satellites, 1989’s Cosmic Thing and 1992’s Good Stuff.

Songs featured in the set include such B-52s hits as “Rock Lobster,” “Private Idaho,” “Love Shack,” “Roam” and more.

The set will be released on June 20 in two formats: an eight-CD set and a nine-LP set, pressed on a rainbow of colored vinyl to celebrate Pride month. The LP set is limited to 2,000 copies and can be preordered exclusively through Rhino.com.

Formed in 1977 in Athens, Georgia, B-52s went on to sell over 20 million records worldwide, with five of the eight albums in the set having been certified Gold or higher by the RIAA.

The Warner and Reprise Years is available for preorder now.

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch is set to release a new album with his new band The Speaker Wars in May, and they’ve just shared another preview of the release.

The group — made up of Lynch, singer-songwriter Jon Christopher Davis, Jay Michael Smith on guitar, Brian Patterson on bass, Steve Ritter on percussion and Jay Brown on keyboards — dropped a video for the new single “The Forgiveness Tree.” It’s the third track they’ve released from the record following “It Ain’t Easy” and “You Make Every Lie Come True.”

“This one had legs from the start — it’s written from the heart,” Lynch shares. “It’s a roadmap to healing. It’s the truth.”

The Speaker Wars’ self-titled album will be released May 30, with Lynch making an appearance on Talk Shop Live on May 28 to discuss the release. It is available for preorder now.

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The Grateful Dead are continuing their 60th anniversary celebration with the release of the new compilation, Greatest Hits, on June 16.

The record, the band’s first official greatest hits compilation, will feature studio recordings of such Dead classics as “Casey Jones,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Fire on the Mountain, their only Billboard top 10 hit “Touch of Grey,” and more.

Greatest Hits will be released digitally, and on CD and vinyl. There will also be an exclusive blue smoke vinyl, available at Dead.net, as well as multiple exclusive colored vinyl variants, available at retailers.

Greatest Hits is available for preorder now.

The Greatest Hits news follows the recent announcement that Grateful Dead will be releasing a 60-CD collection, Enjoying the Ride, on May 30. It features recordings from 25 years of live shows, spanning 1969 to 1994, with recordings from 20 different venues.

And the band has just shared a new preview of the record, a performance of “Althea,” recorded at the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 14, 1981. It is available now via digital outlets.

Enjoying the Ride is limited to 6,000 individually numbered copies and is available exclusively on Dead.net.

And if 60 CDs is too much, Rhino is also set to release a smaller compilation, The Music Never Stopped, on May 30. The 3-CD or 6-LP set is described as a “shorter route through the band’s diamond anniversary celebration.” It is also available for preorder now.

Here is the track list for Greatest Hits:

“Casey Jones”
“Friend of the Devil”
“Box of Rain”
“Sugar Magnolia
“Truckin’”
“Scarlet Begonias”
“Fire on the Mountain”
“Estimated Prophet”
“Touch of Grey”

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Bryan Adams just announced a new North American tour, with Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo as special guests. And it turns out Benatar may have inadvertently helped him launch his career in America.

In a new interview with Billboard, Adams says in 1981 he wrote the song “Lonely Nights” for Benatar, and while she “didn’t do it,” everything turned out OK in the end.

“It ended up being the first song off my second album that really opened the door for me in America,” Adams shares, referring to his 1981 album You Want It You Got It. “I may have to add that during the set because it’s kind of a good story to tell.”

While Adams says he hasn’t actually met Benatar or Giraldo yet, he notes, “I just really love her voice so it’s great that she’s gonna be out with us.”

Adams’ Roll With The Punches tour, named after his upcoming album, will first hit Canada Sept. 11 in Kamloops, British Columbia. U.S. dates kick off Oct. 25 in Uncasville, Connecticut, and run through Nov. 26 in Minneapolis.

A Citi presale begins April 29 at 10 a.m. local time, with tickets going on sale to the general public May 2 at 10 a.m. local time.

A complete list of dates can be found at BryanAdams.com.

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Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood have been teasing new music from their ’70s group Faces for a while now, and their bandmate Kenney Jones has shared an update on their progress.

In an interview with the U.K. outlet The Telegraph, Jones reveals that the trio has recorded “about 11 tracks” for a possible album.

“Not all of them are going to be right,” he said. “But most of them are good.”

Jones didn’t narrow down a time frame for when that album may finally come out, noting Stewart and Wood’s busy schedules have gotten in the way.

“I can’t see it coming out this year,” he shared. “But I can see it coming out next year. Everyone’s doing different things. We do little snippets [of recording] here and there. Then all of a sudden, [The Rolling Stones] are out [on tour] again, Rod’s out again.”

Both Stewart and Wood talked about new Faces music last year. In February, Rod told Vulture he had some songs that were written and not released. He added that he had sent them to Wood, telling him, “This is stuff we’ve recorded with my band, maybe the Faces would like to do it instead?”

Then in November, Wood talked about Faces with BBC Radio’s Front Row, sharing, “We’re making some continued developments of music we made back in the day. … It still sounds as no time has gone by.”

If Faces does finally release a new album, it would be their first album since 1973’s Ooh La La.

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