Classic Hits

Mariah Carey is bringing Christmas cheer — the alcoholic kind — to select cities via a series of pop-up bars in Virgin Hotels locations nationwide.

From Nov. 15 to Dec. 29, Mariah Carey’s Black Irish Holiday Bar will offer fans custom cocktails, photo ops and the opportunity to sing along to Mimi’s holiday hits. The bars will be available in Virgin Hotels in New York City, Nashville, New Orleans, Chicago and Dallas.

At each bar, you can reserve a 90-minute block starting at $22 per person, which includes a welcome cocktail. There’s also a brunch option on Saturdays and Sundays for $30 per person. In addition to eating, drinking and singing along to “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” you can write a holiday letter to Mariah with your wish list and recreate “memorable Mariah Xmas moments” for your social media posting pleasure.

All the festive cocktails on offer are made with Mariah’s signature brand of Irish cream liqueur, Black Irish, with punny names like What More Can I Do martini, It’s Time!, Queen of Christmas Cocoa and the Make My Wish Come True martini.

Mariah’s Christmas Time holiday tour is currently underway; her next date is in Palm Springs, California, on Nov. 13.

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Monday, Nov. 11 — 11/11 — is apparently Singles Day because it’s 1-1-1-1, and some special singles have just been released to mark the occasion.

Capitol Records has dropped two special vinyl releases from The Beatles: the group’s most-recent single, “Now and Then,” with the 1962 single version of “Love Me Do” in black, clear and light blue vinyl, and a Revolver special-edition box set featuring four LPs and a 7-inch bonus EP.

There’s also Ringo Starr‘s 45 RPM Singles Collection, featuring three 7-inch singles, which was previously available for Record Store Day.

There are also four Singles Day releases from ABBA, as well as classic holiday tunes from Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. They are all available at shop.capitolmusic.com.

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Timothée Chalamet is opening up about his experience playing Bob Dylan in the upcoming movie A Complete Unknown.

In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Chalamet calls playing Dylan “the most unique challenge I’ve taken on,” but notes he gained his confidence by performing all the movie’s music live.

“Maybe it was the least responsible thing on the actor’s part because the music exists and the performances exist,” he said. And while Chalamet did prerecord songs, in the end he opted to sing live during filming because he felt the recorded tunes were “too clean,” noting, “There’s not a single prerecord in the movie.”

While fans may be hoping to learn a lot more about Dylan watching the film, Chalamet warns that they aren’t really seeing a true biopic on the legendary singer.

“This is not definitive, this is interpretive, this is not fact, this is not how it happened,” he says. “This is a fable.”

As for how he approached playing Dylan, Chalamet explains why he didn’t want to directly mimic the singer. 

“Somebody once said to me, ‘You can’t make a movie about a painter because it’s not interesting to watch paint dry,’” he said. “Bob has that element because he’s not one of these forward-facing musicians.”

And while he did have a vocal and dialect coach, Chalamet says he found that it wasn’t “my style” or Dylan’s either.

“Bob did not have a vocal coach. He had two bottles of red wine and four packs of cigarettes,” he said. “There’s no way to impersonate that.”

A Complete Unknown opens Dec. 25.

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While Pete Townshend recently shared in an interview with The Standard that The Who will “definitely do something next year,” it looks like his bandmate Roger Daltrey has made other plans in the meantime.

Daltrey just announced dates for the Alive and Kicking…And Having Fun tour of the U.K., which promises “Who hits, rarities, solo hits and stories.” 

The tour consists of nine intimate shows, kicking off April 20 in Brighton, England, and hitting such cities as London, Glasgow and Edinburgh before wrapping May 4 in Manchester.

Daltrey will be joined on the tour with a nine-piece band that includes Who collaborator, and Pete’s younger brother, Simon Townshend on guitar and vocals.

“I can’t wait to get back on the road in the UK with these shows,” Roger shares. “It’s a joy to be on stage performing – up close and personal for the audience, chatting with them and playing familiar songs in an unfamiliar way.” 

Tickets for all shows go on sale Friday. A complete list of dates can be found at thewho.com.

Daltrey toured the U.S. back in June, where he treated the audience to a mix of The Who classics, covers and more. The last time The Who toured the U.S. was in 2022.

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On This Day, Nov. 11, 1972 …

Berry Oakley, bassist and founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, was killed in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia. He was only 24.

Oakley’s death occurred just three blocks from where fellow Allman Brothers Band member Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident one year prior, on Oct. 29, 1971. Duane also died at the age of 24.

Oakley played in guitarist Dickey Betts‘ band Blues Messengers prior to the 1969 forming of the Allman Brothers Band with guitarists Duane and Dickey, singer and keyboardist Gregg Allman, and drummers Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johanson.

Considered by some to be one of the best bass players of all time, Oakley was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 with the Allman Brothers Band.

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Paul Simon and singing partner Art Garfunkel have been estranged for years, but it sounds like their relationship may be on the mend.

In a new interview with the U.K. paper The Sunday Times, Garfunkel opened up about an emotional lunch they had together recently, which was one of the first times they’d been together in awhile.

“I looked at Paul and said, ‘What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?’” Garfunkel shared. “Paul mentioned an old interview where I said some stuff. I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him.”

He added, “Looking back, I guess I wanted to shake up the nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel. Y’know what? I was a fool!”

And in even happier news for Simon & Garfunkel fans, the two 83-year-old musicians are planning for more meetups in the future, although that doesn’t necessarily mean a reunion is in the works.

“Will Paul bring his guitar? Who knows,” Garfunkel said. “For me, it was about wanting to make amends before it’s too late. It felt like we were back in a wonderful place. As I think about it now, tears are rolling down my cheeks. I can still feel his hug.”

Simon & Garfunkel, known for such classic tunes as “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Homeward Bound” and “The Sound of Silence,” originally broke up in 1970, but reunited several times over the years. The last time they performed together was in 2010 at the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement tribute to The Graduate director Mike Nichols, where they performed their classic track from the film, “Mrs. Robinson.”

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The Grammys weren’t the only awards show to announce its nominees Friday. The concert trade publication Pollstar has also revealed its nominees for the 2025 Pollstar Awards.

Up for the Rock Tour of the Year prize are Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, Green Day, blink-182, Metallica and Coldplay. 

Coldplay is also nominated for the all-genre Major Tour of the Year prize, along with Noah Kahan.

Other nominees include Paramore and The Smashing Pumpkins for Support/Special Guest of the Year for opening for Taylor Swift and Green Day, respectively, Billie Eilish for Pop Tour of the Year, and Sleep Token for New Headliner of the Year.

Meanwhile, the Residency of the Year category includes U2, Dead & Company and Eagles‘ runs at the Las Vegas Sphere, and Billy Joel‘s residency at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which concluded in July after 10 years.

The 2025 Pollstar Awards will take place Feb. 19.

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KISS fans are no doubt disappointed that the band’s live career has come to an end, but even the band’s Paul Stanley says he’s having trouble getting used to the idea.

In a preview of an upcoming interview on the Rock of Nations podcast, Stanley says that it’s been an “adjustment” for him to realize that, after 50 years, he isn’t going to be touring in the near future.

“There’s no way to give that up and not feel a sense of, if not lost, kind of disoriented,” he says. “It was time [to stop] and intellectually it made sense, but that doesn’t mean that emotionally it doesn’t play a part in it. So, yeah, being home … is normal. What’s not normal is I’m not going back out.”

“KISS remains. We’re so involved in what’s going on now and the future and this phenomenal, mind-boggling KISS avatar show,” he continues. “But, yeah, to not be up there — I see video from 10 months ago, 11 months ago and it almost seems like a lifetime ago, because I’ve kind of come to grips with not doing that again.”

Referring to the band’s planned avatar show, which will feature holographic representations of each member in makeup as their iconic characters, Stanley noted, “Star Child is forever — but me up there, that’s done.”

Incidentally, November marks the 51st anniversary of KISS signing their first record contract.

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Art Garfunkel and his son Art Garfunkel Jr. have teamed up for a joint album — called, appropriately, Father And Son — which features them covering songs from the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

The album is out now, and includes the two singing everything from Cyndi Lauper‘s “Time After Time” and The Everly Brothers‘ “Let It Be Me” to Eurythmics‘ “Here Comes the Rain Again” and Nat King Cole‘s “Nature Boy.” The two even duet on the Simon & Garfunkel classic “Old Friends.”

“I like to say my son is a better singer than I am. I mean, I’m pretty good … but he is better … it’s very thrilling to record with him now,” the elder Garfunkel says in a statement. “The new album is a love letter. It brings us together.”

The younger singer, born James Garfunkel in 1990, says, “It’s truly a father-son project. I brought more of the 80s influences into the project, and my father brought more of the Great American Songbook – wonderful songs from the 1940s and so on. These two influences came together in a pretty exciting way.”

The father-son duo will do a residency at New York City’s The Carlyle hotel from Nov. 12 through Nov. 16.

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Fans who missed U2‘s acclaimed residency at Sphere Las Vegas now have more chances to enjoy the concert film of the event.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film at Sphere Las Vegas, which has been running at Sphere since Sept. 5, has been extended to the end of February 2025. The final date is now Feb. 27; you can choose either a 7 p.m. or a 9:30 p.m. screening, depending on the day. Visit Ticketmaster for all the information.

Of course, the downside is that you have to go to Las Vegas to see the film — it’s only showing at Sphere, with tickets starting at $98.

As previously reported, the film, directed by U2 guitarist The Edge and his wife, Morleigh Steinberg, captures the band during their residency, which ran from September 2023 to March 2024. Over that time, the band played to 700,000 fans. The concert was shot with Sphere’s high-res camera system.

The Eagles are currently headlining a residency at Sphere that will run through March. There are rumors that an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is being developed to play at the venue later next year.

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