A two-day celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame kicked off at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Night one featured performances by such artists as Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Joel and John Fogerty.
Night two’s lineup included Aretha Franklin, Metallica, U2, Mick Jagger, Springsteen, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed, Ozzy Osbourne, Billy F Gibbons and Sting.
A four-hour highlight special of the concerts aired on HBO the following month, and was later released on DVD and Blu-ray.
Derick A. Thomas; Dat’s Jazz/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Guitars belonging to Eddie Van Halen, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and more will be part of Julien’s Auctions’ upcoming “Played, Worn & Torn II” auction, happening Nov. 20-21 live in Nashville, as well as online.
The auction house previously revealed that Van Halen’s 1993 Ernie Ball Music Signature Canada Day guitar and Harrison’s early Beatles era Futurama guitar would be part of the auction, but now the other instruments up for grabs have been revealed.
Other guitars on the auction block include: a signed Torino Red Fender Stratocaster electric guitar played byClapton during his 1989-1991 Journeyman tour; a 1997 Gibson Custom Shop Ron Wood VSJ-200 acoustic guitar, signed by The Rolling Stone guitarist with lyrics from the Faces song “Ooh La La”; and Prince’s 1985 Sadowsky Telecaster, played on his 1986 Parade tour. There are also signed guitars from Alice Cooper, John Mellencamp, Peter Frampton and Keith Richards.
Also being auctioned off is a tinsel-adorned Christmas-themed hat worn by Freddie Mercury during Queen’s December 1979 charity concert at London’s Odeon Hammersmith, and the mic The Who‘s Roger Daltrey used during The Who Hits Back 2022 North American tour.
Over 1,000 items will be part of the auction, with proceeds going to several different charities, including City of Hope, Sweet Relief Music Fund, Teenage Cancer Trust and Rock for a Cause.
The “Played, Worn & Torn II” auction will take place at the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville, where items in the auction will be on display to the public through Nov. 21.
The Fleetwood Mac tune“Everywhere” is the latest track to join the Spotify Billions Club.
The tune, from the band’s 1987 album, Tango in the Night, has officially been streamed over 1 billion times on the streaming service, one of four songs by the band to reach the milestone.
Previous Fleetwood Mac tunes to join the Spotify Billions Club include “Dreams,” which joined in June 2022, “The Chain,” which joined in December 2023, and “Go Your Own Way,” which joined in July 2024.
“Everywhere,” a top 20 hit for the band, may have gotten a bit of a boost thanks to its use on TV. The song has been used in commercials for Chevy electric vehicles.
Duran Duran will wind down their 2024 with a concert in Las Vegas.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers will be part of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ New Year’s Eve festivities, playing a show at the BleauLive Theater on Dec. 30.
“Duran Duran is more than a hit-making powerhouse, they are an iconic household name that always brings the energy for an incredible show,” says Fedor Banuchi, Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ senior vice president of entertainment. “We are thrilled to close out the year with them and welcome them into the family of legendary entertainers who have made BleauLive Theater the Strip’s premier destination for award-winning entertainment within our first year.”
An artist presale begins Wednesday at 10 a.m., with tickets going on sale to the general public Friday at 10 a.m.
Duran Duran is currently on a short North American tour, which hits Baltimore on Monday. The trek includes a Halloween show at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Thursday. A complete list of dates can be found at duranduran.com.
The Who is giving fans another chance to get their hands on the Dolby Atmos mix of Who’s Next, which was previously only available as part of the super deluxe edition of the album, released back in September 2023.
The band is now releasing it as a standalone Blu-ray to the SDE (Super Deluxe Edition) shop, featuring producer/audio engineer Steven Wilson’s Dolby Atmos and 5.1 mixes, as well as 14 bonus tracks and instrumental mixes.
The Who’s Next SDE-exclusive Blu-ray audio will be released Jan. 17 and is available for preorder from now until Nov. 1.
Released in 1971, Who’s Next features Who classics like “Baba O’Riley,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Behind Blue Eyes.” The album was originally conceived as another rock opera, Lifehouse, following their 1969 hit Tommy. Pete Townshend eventually scrapped the whole project.
Billy F. Gibbons has announced his first solo tour dates for 2025.
The ZZ Top rocker will hit the road with his band the BFGs,kicking things off with four nights in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jan. 17-20. The tour hits such cities as Phoenix, St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland and more before wrapping Feb. 20 in Bristol, Tennessee.
A complete list of dates can be found at billygibbons.com. Tickets for all shows go on sale Friday.
Meanwhile, ZZ Top recently announced some 2025 tour dates, as well. They’ll kick off their 2025 Revelation tour on March 5 in Dothan, Alabama, with dates confirmed through April 11 in Cape Girardeau, Montana. Dates can be found at zztop.com. Tickets are on sale now.
Elvis Costello never went after Olivia Rodrigo for a writing credit on her SOUR tune “Brutal,” despite many people agreeing it sounded just like his hit “Pump It Up,” and now he’s explaining why.
In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Costello says people don’t cover “Pump It Up” — rather, he says, they “allude to it in their own arrangements. Like Olivia Rodrigo’s producer obviously did.”
“Now, I did not find any reason to go after them legally for that, because I think it would be ludicrous,” Costello continues. “It’s a shared language of music. Other people clearly felt differently about other songs on that record.”
Costello may have been referring to Taylor Swift with that comment; Taylor and her producer Jack Antonoff are listed in the credits of SOUR as co-writers of the songs “Deja Vu” and “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” That’s because of the similarities between “Deja Vu” and Taylor’s song “Cruel Summer,” and the fact that “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” interpolates Taylor’s song “New Year’s Day.”
Costello continued to explain his point of view to Vanity Fair, noting, “[I]f there were no [musical] quotations, there’d be no Bach. There’d be no Mozart. There’d be no Sonny Rollins. So we can’t start worrying about that. That’s the way it works. One thing leads to another. That’s all I’ve ever been saying.”
Stevie Nicks appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, where she talked about her new song, “The Lighthouse,” which is a protest song in support of women’s rights in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Asked why she decided to speak out on the issue, Nicks noted, “Because everybody kept saying, ‘Well, somebody has to do something. Somebody has to say something.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I have a platform. I tell a good story. So maybe I should try to do something.'” She added, “I was also there. I was, been there, done that.“
Stevie recounted her decision to have an abortion in 1979 after she became pregnant with then-boyfriend Don Henley, saying that her having a baby would have “destroyed” Fleetwood Mac.
“It would’ve been a nightmare scenario for me to live through,” she shared.
Asked what she’d want to say to anyone who criticized her decision to have an abortion, Stevie said, “If people want to be mad at me, be mad at me. I don’t care. Had I made the other choice, had I gone the other way, I’d have been a great mom. I went this way, and I’ve done great.”
And for Stevie, the song is more about getting the message out than having a hit.
“Poets write what they write, and poets should not be censored. Writers should not be censored. This song should not be censored,” she said. “It should go out into the world and do what it’s gonna do, maybe change some minds. There is a God, and God gave me this talent to sing and write and dance. So, I’m doing my job.”
Carlos Santana has announced more dates for his Las Vegas residency, An Intimate Evening with Santana: Greatest Hits Live, at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
The new dates are his first for 2025, consisting of 16 shows in January, February and May, starting Jan. 22 and running through May 25.
Santana has been headlining his House of Blues residency for 13 years and will return to the stage on Wednesday for his latest round of shows.
Tickets for the new dates go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. A complete list of dates can be found at santana.com.
The Allman Brothers Band played their final live show at New York’s Beacon Theatre.
The location of the concert was very special to the Allman Brothers Band. They’d played the venue annually since 1989, which helped them set a Broadway record of 237 consecutive sold-out shows.
The concert had the band — founders Gregg Allman, Jaimoe and Butch Trucks, along with Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Marc Quinones and Oteil Burbridge — playing a set that included such songs as “Mountain Jam,” “Midnight Rider,” “Whipping Post” and “Melissa.”
The three-set show was one of the longest in the band’s history, lasting into the wee hours of the morning, which coincided with the 43rd anniversary of Duane Allman’s death.
The concert was recently remastered and released digitally, with a three-CD set and a 16-page booklet dropping Nov. 22.
