The Beatles‘ Ringo Starr made his Grand Ole Opry debut over the weekend.
The rocker performed at the Nashville institution on Friday, coming onto the stage in a big white cowboy hat, like the one he wears on the cover of his recently released country album, Look Up.
“As you may have noticed I’m dressed up a bit tonight,” Ringo told the audience, as seen in fan-shot video posted to YouTube. “I’m a cowboy inside and this is a great honor and an incredible moment for me.” He talked about growing up loving country music, noting, “This would just be a dream to end up here.”
Ringo performed three songs at the Opry: the Look Up tune “Time on My Hands” and “Act Naturally,” both with Molly Tuttle, and his iconic Beatles hit “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
Friday’s show was the second time Ringo’s performed in Nashville this year. In January he played two nights at the Ryman Auditorium joined by special guests Sheryl Crow, Jack White, Brenda Lee, Mickey Guyton, Emmylou Harris and more. A CBS special recorded at the concerts, Ringo & Friends at the Ryman, is set to air March 10 at 8 p.m. ET.
Ringo is also set to kick off another tour with his All-StarrBand on June 12 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He has dates confirmed through June 25 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
U2 has marked the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the release of a reading set to a piano piece.
In a post on Instagram, Bono shares that the song and reading of the poem, “My Friendly Epistle” by 19th century poet Taras Shevchenko, is one he and The Edge sent to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just after the invasion began. He notes that Shevchenko is a poet who “defined ‘Ukrainian-ness’ for so many.”
“All who believe in freedom and sense the jeopardy we Europeans now find ourselves in are not sleeping easily on this, the third anniversary of the invasion,” Bono writes. “More to say about this and other bewilderments later.”
The post includes the entire poem written out. It ends with the line, “Then in your own house you will see True justice, strength, and liberty!”
Rock & Roll Hall of Famer neil young and his new band thechrome hearts are hitting the road this summer.
They just announced dates for the love earth world tour, which will hit Europe, the U.K., the U.S. and Canada.
The tour kicks off June 18 in Rättvik, Sweden. It hits the U.S. Aug. 8 in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the tour wrapping with a show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Sept. 15.
Neil Young Archives members will get a first crack at tickets starting Tuesday at 10 a.m. for U.S. shows. Tickets go on sale to the general public starting Friday. A complete list of dates can be found at neilyoungarchives.com.
Young and the chrome hearts – made up of Micah Nelson on guitar and vocals, Spooner Oldham on Farfisa organ, Corey McCormick on bass and vocals and Anthony LoGerfo on drums – released their first song together, “big change,” in January. In early February Young announced that their first album is complete, sharing that he hopes to have it out in April.
Singer Roberta Flack, whose signature voice and soulful interpretations of songs such as “Killing Me Softly with His Song” catapulted her to the top of the charts and influenced generations, has died. She was 88.
The legendary singer died “peacefully surrounded by her family” on Monday, according to a statement from her representative provided to ABC News.
No cause of death was given, but Flack was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as ALS, in 2022, which resulted in the loss of her singing voice.
Flack topped the charts in the 1970s with hits including “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” “Where is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You.”
The songstress was nominated for 14 Grammy awards, winning five — including a lifetime achievement award. She was the first artist to win the Grammy Award for record of the year two years in a row, for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly with His Song” in 1974. The latter would go on to top the charts again three decades later with a cover by the Fugees.
Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, into a musical family; her mother was a church organist and her father a self-taught jazz pianist. A prodigy on the piano, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University, which she started attending at the age of 15. It was there that she would meet her close friend and collaborator, the late Donny Hathaway.
Flack taught in schools for several years before being discovered by Les McCann while performing jazz in a D.C. nightclub; he helped get her an audition with her first label, Atlantic Records.
Several years after signing with Atlantic, Clint Eastwood chose “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from her 1969 debut album for the soundtrack to his 1971 film, Play Misty For Me, bringing Flack to a more mainstream audience. “Killing Me Softly” helped cement her as a star.
Flack regularly recorded duets with Hathaway during the 1970s, including the hits “Where is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You,” until his death in 1979.
In the 1980s she began working with Peabo Bryson, including on the hit single “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” and also had a hit duet with Maxi Priest with “Set the Night to Music.” On TV, she sang “Together Through the Years,” the theme song to the show Valerie, later known as The Hogan Family, which ran for six seasons.
Her last album, Running, was released in 2018. She retired from touring that same year.
In 2020, she received a Grammy lifetime achievement award. Among her other accolades, Berklee College of Music awarded her an honorary Doctor of Music degree in May 2023.
Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of Fame
R.E.M.’s Peter Buck made a surprise appearance at Friday’s Seattle show of Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy, who are on tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s 1985 album, Fables of the Reconstruction.
According to setlist.fm, Buck joined the duo for the second set of the show, once they finished performing Fables of the Reconstruction in its entirety. Buck played on the Reckoning tracks “Time After Time (AnnElise),” “Harborcoat,” “Pretty Persuasion,” “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” and “Second Guessing,” the Life’s Rich Pageant track “Cuyahoga,” and the Murmur song “Sitting Still.”
“It was incredibly moving to sit in on a few songs with the band. And kinda strange too” Peter shared on Instagram. “It’s amazing the power of music to transport you through time.”
This is the second time Buck has joined Shannon and Narducy at an R.E.M.-themed show. He previously took the stage with them in 2024 in R.E.M.’s home city of Athens, Georgia, for the duo’s Murmur tour. At that show, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Bill Berry and Michael Stipe also joined the duo on stage, although Stipe did not perform.
Shannon and Narducy’s next show is happening Monday in Indianapolis. The tour runs through March 14 in Chicago.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono won album of the year at the 24th annual Grammy Awards, held in Los Angeles. The pair won the award for Double Fantasy, the final album Lennon recorded before his death in December 1980.
The Police took home two awards that evening, best rock vocal performance by a duo or group for “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and best rock instrumental for “Behind the Camera.”
Other winners included Pat Benatar, for best female rock vocal performance for “Fire and Ice,” RickSpringfield, for best male rock vocal performance for “Jesse’s Girl” and the track “Bette Davis Eyes,” by Kim Carnes, which took home both song and record of the year.
Over the course of their career, Led Zeppelin released six #1 albums — and one of those is turning 50 on Monday.
Physical Graffiti, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band’s fifth studio album, was released on Feb. 24, 1975. It was a double album and the band’s first to be released under their own label, Swan Song Records.
The album, produced by guitarist Jimmy Page, contained eight songs written and recorded specifically for the record, along with unreleased tracks recorded during sessions for 1970’s Led Zeppelin III, 1971’s Led Zeppelin IV and 1973’s Houses of the Holy.
The iconic cover depicted two buildings on St. Marks Street in Manhattan, with cutouts in the windows. The internal sleeves could be seen through the openings, and depending on which side was facing out, it showed either the album’s title or pictures of iconic figures.
Physical Graffiti was a critical and commercial hit for the band. It spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and also hit #1 in the U.K. and Canada. It was the first album to go Platinum from preorders alone and has since been certified 16-times Platinum in the U.S.
Notable songs on the record include “Houses of the Holy,” which despite being the title of the previous record was left off because the band felt it didn’t fit with the other songs on that album, and another future Led Zeppelin classic, “Kashmir,” known for its classic opening riff. The tune went on to become a staple at Led Zeppelin live shows.
Gibson has revealed another custom guitar, this time inspired by one of Eric Clapton‘s legendary guitars.
The Eric Clapton 1958 Les Paul Custom is a tribute to Clapton’s original Cream-era 1958 Les Paul Custom, which he performed on throughout the ’60s and ’70s, and then gifted to legendary guitarist Albert Lee in 1979, who still uses it to this day.
The new guitar features Murphy Lab aging to replicate the exact aging and wear patterns created by Clapton and Lee, and features a one-piece, all-mahogany body, with a mahogany neck with an ebony fretboard. There’s also a second pickguard that’s signed by both Clapton and Lee.
The Eric Clapton 1958 Les Paul Custom is available now at Gibson.com, Guitar Center and the Gibson Garage Nashville and London, and will be available nationwide starting Tuesday.
Paul McCartney’s photo exhibit is set to hit another city.
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm will debut at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada in February 2026.
Eyes of the Storm features more than 250 photographs taken by McCartney between 1963 and 1964, giving fans insight into his point of view during the height of Beatlemania.
The exhibit debuted in June 2023 at London’s National Portrait Gallery and has since been shown at Virginia’s Chrysler Museum, New York’s Brooklyn Museum, the Portland Art Museum and the Knowledge Capitol Event Lab in Osaka, Japan. It is next set to open at The de Young museum, part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, on March 1.
In addition, select photos will be on display at the Gagosian Beverly Hills art gallery from April 25 to June 21, with McCartney and the gallery offering up small, signed editions of prints for sale. A portion of the proceeds from those sales are being donated to aid recovery and relief efforts in Southern California.
Traffic’s Dave Mason is set to release his 21st studio album, A Shade of Blues, on March 21, and he’s just shared a new single from the record.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has released “Use It, Or Lose It” featuring Joe Bonamassa on lead guitar, with the two artists sharing vocals on the song.
“I’ve been fortunate to play alongside some of the greatest guitarists—Jimi Hendrix among them,” Mason shares. “To now collaborate with a powerhouse like Joe Bonamassa, a torchbearer for the next generation, is a thrill. You can feel that energy in the music and I think it truly shines.”
The 11-track A Shade of Blues, which Mason’s been working on for over a decade, also features guest appearances by The Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald, keyboardist Mike Finnigan and more.
The album is due out just as Mason will launch the new Let It Flow tour. The trek kicks off March 20 in Augusta, Georgia, and wraps April 5 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. A complete list of dates can be found at davemasonmusic.com.
