Classic Hits

The Police are giving fans some insight into the making of their #1 single “Every Breath You Take” ahead of the upcoming 40th anniversary reissue of their multi-Platinum album Synchronicity.

The band just released a demo of the song, which, according to a post on Instagram, was “Recorded at London’s Utopia Studios, around two months before the version that we all know today.” 

“Every Breath You Take,” The Police’s first and only #1 song, spent seven weeks on the top of the charts. The song earned The Police two Grammy Awards, Song of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

The 40th anniversary edition of Synchronicity will be released Friday in a variety of formats, including a six-CD super deluxe box set featuring 55 previously unreleased tracks, made up of alternate takes, instrumentals, demos and live recordings. It is available for preorder now.

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Lenny Kravitz has just dropped the video for “Paralyzed,” the third single off his recent album Blue Electric Light.

The clip, directed by Anthony Mandler, begins with Lenny, in leather pants, a leather jacket and no shirt, walking in the desert toward five women covered in red robes. According to the video’s description, they “symbolize Kravitz’s hypnotic affection for the woman” he’s singing about in the song.

As the clip continues, the video cuts to footage of Kravitz playing with his band, and of the girls dancing alone and around a shirtless Kravitz. The clip also features an epic guitar solo from the rocker.

Blue Electric Light, Lenny’s first new album since 2018’s Raise Vibration, was released in May.

The rocker is currently on tour in Europe. He plays Stuttgart, Germany, on Thursday and brings his show to the U.S. for a five-night stand at Dolby Live in Las Vegas starting Oct. 18. A complete list of dates can be found at lennykravitz.com.

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Billy Joel will play the final show in his residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Thursday, and the legendary venue is sending the Piano Man out with a bang.

Starting Thursday, fans can see a “Defining Moments” exhibit on the Garden’s sixth-floor concourse, which will feature memorabilia from Billy’s entire career run of 150 shows, including a pair of his Ray-Bans, set lists, photos, ticket stubs and a replica of one of his banners, which are currently hanging in the rafters. Fans will also be able to write a special message to Billy.

Meanwhile, fans who attend the final show will be able to enjoy special foods at the venue’s concession stands, including a “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”-themed menu of items like cannoli and chicken vodka parmesan heroes.

And everyone — not just ticket holders — can access a pop-up merch shop at Chase Square at the Garden. It’s  open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday and features a range of merchandise celebrating the final show, including varsity jackets, T-shirts, posters, prints, hats, tote bags and mugs.

Billy’s Instagram has posted a carousel of photos showing some of the famous guests he’s welcomed during the residency, which started in January 2014. Among them: Tony Bennett, Sting, Miley Cyrus, Jon Bon Jovi, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Fallon, Bruce Springsteen, Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and Billy’s daughters Alexa, Della and Remy.

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Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart is exploring the connection between the worlds of music and sports in the new ESPN film Rhythm Masters: A Mickey Hart Experience. The film will have him talking to legends from the world of sports and using those conversations to create an original score.

“Rhythm is the heartbeat of life, and it’s everywhere — in the music we create and the sports we love,” Mickey shares. “When I set out to make Rhythm Masters: A Mickey Hart Experience, my goal was to explore this universal pulse and celebrate how music and sports are deeply intertwined.”

He adds, “Through the voices and stories of some of the greatest athletes, we uncover the profound connection that rhythm brings to their performance and passion. This film is a journey into that shared human experience, a testament to the power of rhythm in uniting us all.” 

In Rhythm Masters, Hart talks to such athletes as Joe Montana, Marshawn Lynch, Laila Ali, Phil Jackson and others, including the late basketball legend Bill Walton, a huge Dead fan, who passed away on May 27. Hart dedicates the film to him, noting Walton’s “own rhythmic journey in sports and life has been a true inspiration.”

Rhythm Masters: A Mickey Hart Experience will debut Aug. 14 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN+.

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Mick Fleetwood has some new music to share.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has teamed with ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro for a new album, Blues Experience, dropping Oct. 18.  

As the title suggests, the record has the pair sharing their take on classic blues tracks, including “Rollin’ N Tumblin’,” which you can listen to now via digital outlets. 

Jake also penned one original song that appears on the album, “Kula Blues,” about the area in Maui where Mick lives. The album also includes their take on Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World,” Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” and the Christine McVie-penned Fleetwood Mac track “Songbird,” with Mick also adding a spoken word version of the song.

“I’ve always wanted to do a blues album, and when Mick and I started talking about working together, I thought who better to work with than Mick Fleetwood?” Jake shares. “Mick’s energy when he plays is so infectious. He’s such an intense musician. He pushes everyone around him, and it’s inspiring to see his facial expressions and watch his movement and the way he hits the drums.”

Mick adds of “Rollin’ N Tumblin’,” “Jake and I had a full let-it-all-go moment on this one!! Jake let his hair down. A blues standard being given a wake-up call!”

Blues Experience is available for preorder now.

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Eric Clapton has paid tribute to his “mentor,” blues and rock legend John Mayall, who passed away Monday at the age of 90.

Before hitting it big, Clapton was a member of Mayall’s band the Bluebreakers. In a video posted to Instagram, Clapton thanked Mayall “for rescuing me from oblivion and God knows what when I was a young man ’round the age of 18, 19 when I decided that I was gonna quit music.” 

“He found me and took me into his home and asked me to join his band and I stayed with him and I learned all that I really have to draw on for today in terms of technique and desire to play the kind of music I love to play,” he said.

Clapton called playing in Mayall’s band “a fantastic experience,” noting Mayall taught him “it was OK just to play the music you wanted to play.”

“He was my mentor and a surrogate father,” Clapton added. “He taught me all I really know and gave me the courage and enthusiasm to express myself without fear, without limit.” Clapton then noted that all he taught Mayall was drinking and womanizing, noting, “I wish to make amends for that. I did that while he was alive and I have obviously since learned that is not the best way to carry on.” 

“I shall miss him but I hope to see him on the other side,” Clapton concluded. “Thank you, John. I love you, I’ll see you soon, but not yet, as they say in the Gladiator movie.”

Clapton wasn’t the only one to honor Mayall. The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood both shared tributes on social media, as did Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler.

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On This Day, July 24, 2022 …

Joni Mitchell was the surprise musical performer at the Newport Folk Festival, joining Brandi Carlile for a special set that featured the legendary musician performing with a variety of guests. 

The so-called Joni Jam was Joni’s first public performance since surviving a brain aneurysm in 2015.

During the set, a seated Joni was joined by artists like Wynonna Judd, Marcus Mumford and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, performing 13 songs, including some of her classic tunes like “Both Sides Now,” “A Case of You” and “Big Yellow Taxi.”

An album from the performance, Joni Mitchell at Newport, was released in July 2023. Joni also went on to headline another Joni Jam in June 2023 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington. She’s scheduled to headline two similar concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Oct. 19 and 20.

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Cher first announced that she was working on her memoir back in 2017. Now, we’re finally getting the first installment.

November 19 will bring Cher: The Memoir, Part One, with the second part coming in 2025.  The first part will start with her upbringing as a dyslexic child who had a difficult relationship with her mother, and run through her relationship with Sonny Bono, from their meeting, to their marriage, to their eventual divorce.

According to the publisher, Dey Street Books, “Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century … it is a life too immense for only one book.”

In November of 2023, Cher told Jimmy Fallon that she had “totally chickened out” while writing the book because, she explained, “I didn’t put in some things that needed to be in. And they’re not comfortable, but they need to be in, so I have to go back and man up.”

She also teased that the memoir would be extensive, telling Fallon, “I’ve lived too long and done too much and so it’s like it should be the encyclopedia.”

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Dead & Company is giving fans a chance to win a very unique piece of memorabilia.

The band just launched a new Prizeo sweepstakes, with a grand prize of a one-quarter-scale functioning recreation of the Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound. The original Wall of Sound was created by sound engineer Owsley Stanley for The Dead’s 1974 concert tour.

The replica stacked sound system, built by Anthony Coscia, has been on display at the Dead Forever Experience, the immersive pop-up in Las Vegas that opened to coincide with Dead & Company’s Dead Forever residency at the Sphere. 

Money raised from sweepstakes entries will benefit Hope for the City, a nonprofit aiming to end hunger across the Vegas valley, and the Recording Academy’s charitable arm MusiCares. 

Dead & Company returns to the Las Vegas Sphere on Aug. 1, with their final show happening on Aug. 10. A complete list of dates can be found at deadandcompany.com.

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British blues and rock musician John Mayall passed away Monday at the age of 90.

“It is with heavy hearts that we bear the news that John Mayall passed away peacefully in his California home yesterday, July 22, 2024, surrounded by loving family,” read a post on his Facebook page. “Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world’s greatest road warriors,” adding, “John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain.”

The post noted, “We, the Mayall family, cannot thank his fans and long-list of bandmembers enough for the support and love we were blessed to experience secondhand over the last six decades.”

Mayall was the frontman of the band the Bluebreakers, which was formed in 1963. Different incarnations of the band featured artists who would go on to be huge rock stars of the’ 60s and ’70s, including Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac’s John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green, The Rolling Stones’ Mick Taylor, Cream‘s Jack Bruce, Journey‘s Aynsley Dunbar and more.

Mayall and the Bluesbreakers released their now-classic debut album, Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton in 1966. Mayall’s best-known song in the U.S. was the harmonica-centric track “Room to Move.”

Mayall, a two-time Grammy nominee,  was set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this October in the Musical Excellence category. He was also made an Officer of the British Empire, or OBE, in 2005.

Mayall’s career lasted six decades. He released his final studio album, The Sun is Shining Down in 2022 and played his final show in March of that same year in San Juan Capistrano, California.

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