Classic Hits

As rumored earlier in the year, the Eagles will be the next band to play the Sphere in Las Vegas. 

Eagles – Live in Concert at Sphere will consist of eight shows, kicking off Sept. 20, with the band playing Fridays and Saturdays through October 10. A complete list of dates can be found at eagles.com. 

A ticket presale begins June 18 at 10 a.m. PT, with presale registration now open. Tickets go on sale to the general public starting June 21 at 10 a.m. PT. In addition, ticket and hotel packages go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. PT, with VIP packages going on sale June 18 at 10 a.m. PT

Eagles will be the fourth band to take up residency at Sphere. U2 opened the venue back in September, with Phish and Dead & Company also playing residencies there.

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Def Leppard is back with new music. The band just dropped the brand new tune “Just Like 73,” featuring a guitar solo by Rage Against The Machine‘s Tom Morello.

Like the title suggests, the song has a ’70s rock vibe, with frontman Joe Elliott sharing, “It encapsulates a time that burned deep into our DNA. We wanted to celebrate that very important and glorious time.”

Guitarist Phil Collen adds, “When I saw David Bowie on TV between 1972 and 1973, everything I thought I knew about music went from black and white to vivid technicolor. Our song ‘Just Like 73’ represents that awakening.”

Morello shares that he “had a blast rocking a solo” on the tune, noting, “I played ‘Rock Of Ages’ in my college cover band almost 40 years ago and here Def Leppard are still killing it in stadiums with a brand new tune that’s one of their best.” 

The single is streaming now on digital outlets, with a video set to premiere on June 20. The tune will also be released on 7-inch black and colored vinyl on Aug. 2 and can be preordered through DefLeppard.com.

“Just Like 73” is the first new music from Def Leppard since they released their 2022 album, Diamond Star Halos. In 2023 they released the new album Drastic Symphonies, but that featured reworked versions of their classic tunes backed by an orchestra. 

The song comes as Def Leppard is gearing up to hit the road this summer with Journey. The stadium tour, featuring special guests Steve Miller Band, Heart and Cheap Trick, kicks off July 6 in St. Louis. A complete list of dates can be found at DefLeppard.com.

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Gov’t Mule is heading to the Caribbean again this January.

The band, fronted by Warren Haynes, just announced plans for their Island Exodus 15, an all-inclusive music festival happening Jan. 19-23 at Jewel Paradise Cove Resort in Runaway Bay, Jamaica.

Described as a “concert-cation,” the four-day festival will include three two-set beachfront concerts from Gov’t Mule, plus Hayes will headline an afternoon solo set. Other artists booked for Island Exodus include Drive-By Truckers, Karina Rykman, Big Sugar and Ron Holloway.

“We’re excited to return to Jamaica for our 15th Island Exodus,” Haynes shares. “This is always such a special experience so this year, we handpicked a lineup featuring talented friends of ours and artists that share a connection with Gov’t Mule.”

In addition to music, attendees will get to take part in a Q&A with Haynes, plus there will be all sorts of activities, like a corn hole tournament, yoga, tie-dyeing on the beach and more.

Presale tickets for those who attended Island Exodus 14 begin June 18, with another presale happening June 19 at 12 p.m. for previous attendees. Tickets go on sale to the general public June 20 at 12 p.m. ET. 

More info can be found at islandexodus.com.

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The Who’s Pete Townshend will be in New York to attend the 77th annual Tony Awards, which will air Sunday live on CBS at 8 p.m. ET. 

Townshend is confirmed as a presenter on the telecast, where the cast of The Who’s Tommy is set to perform. The show has been nominated for Best Revival of a Musical, where it will compete with Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, Gutenberg! The Musical! and Merrily We Roll Along.

This isn’t Townshend’s first encounter with the Tonys. The 1993 original run of The Who’s Tommy won five Tony Awards, including Best Original Score for Townshend. 

The Who’s Tommy is currently running at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre.

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The Police are looking back on their hit album Synchronicity and just shared the original promotional short film used over 40 years ago to celebrate the album’s release.

“They don’t make album promo like they did in 1983,” the band shares on social media. “A burning telephone, eggs on the piano, a taxidermy goat. It’s got to be The Police.”

The almost four-minute black-and-white clip includes all of those things mentioned, as well as a dinosaur skeleton, a collage of images of the band and more, and features clips of tracks like “Walking In Your Footsteps,” “Mother” and “Synchronicity II.”

It ends with snippets of the music videos for their future #1 single, “Every Breath You Take,” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger.” 

The release of the video comes as The Police are set to reissue Synchronicity in honor of its 40th anniversary. The release comes out July 26 in a variety of different formats, including six-CD and four-LP sets. A six-CD super deluxe box set features 55 previously unreleased tracks — alternate takes, instrumentals, demos and live recordings — along with new liner notes, interviews and previously unseen photographs.

It is available for preorder now. 

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In an extensive interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Kevin Spacey opened up about the support he received from Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, following the sexual assault allegations that derailed his Oscar-winning career.

Spacey was exonerated in courts in both the U.S. and the U.K., and told Morgan both stars have stood by him through it all. 

“Elton was the first email I got on Oct. 30 of 2017 after the [Anthony] Rapp story had come out, saying, ‘We love you, whatever you need, we’re here for you,'” Spacey said. 

The former House of Cards star also revealed he “didn’t ask” the pair to testify in his defense in the U.K. case, but they “insisted.” 

“I told them a piece of information that one of the accusers had said about them, which was not true, and Elton and David said, ‘Well, we have to testify. … We have to let the jury know that this individual is not telling the truth,'” he shared.

The trio had a reunion last summer in France, Spacey recalled, calling their dinner together “very beautiful.”

But while Elton and David have stood by Spacey, he says he’s been shunned by many in Hollywood.  

“Yeah, there are some people who definitely ran into the forest, but … I continually find myself very moved by people who take the time and to reach out to find out how I’m doing,” he said.

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While artists like Billy Joel, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner have had Broadway musicals written around their songs, it doesn’t sound like you’ll ever see one featuring the Bon Jovi catalog.

“I’ve been asked to do that 100 times,” Jon Bon Jovi tells Variety about the possibility of doing a jukebox musical. “Everybody wanted to write the story of Tommy and Gina [from ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’], but I’m going to guess that ABBA did it and Jersey Boys did it, and they did it really well many, many years ago. So I have turned down that opportunity time and again.”

It seems Jon feels like the band’s story has already been told on the stage. 

“I do recall all those years ago when I saw Jersey Boys, and I went, ‘Oh, that’s our story.’ That’s every band’s story. So our story isn’t that unique,” he explains. “And then I thought, OK, if you take the characters of Tommy and Gina and build two and a half hours around the catalog and their life, then it’s Mamma Mia. So that’s not unique.”

Instead, Jon is working hard to get his voice back after having vocal surgery two years ago. And when he does, he hopes to get his band back onstage for a tour.

“I know that none of us can achieve perfection, but I have to achieve excellence in order for me to do it on that level again, or I won’t,” he says. “I don’t want to pretend to be something I was … I don’t try to be that boy from 29 years ago, but I want to be the very best version of the 2024 version of me.”

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The four members of R.E.M. – Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Bill Berry and Peter Buck – sit down with CBS Mornings Thursday for what will be their first interview together in almost 30 years.

The band is set to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame that night, and in a preview of the interview they discuss how it feels to be recognized for their songwriting.

“We lived or died on the strength of our songs, so this is a huge honor,” Mills shares, with Buck adding, “It is the hardest thing that we do and it’s the thing that we worked on the most from the very beginning.”

“Because we had to,” Berry chimes in. “I mean early on just to put food on the table we had to write songs as fast as we could.” 

When asked if they ever look at their body of work as a whole, Mills noted that they aren’t quite that self-indulgent, to which Stipe interrupted with, “OK I am.”

“And then I wind up on YouTube and I watch some live performance, I’m like, ‘Wow I can’t believe we did that,’” he says. “Like we did, we did things and we did it really well from time to time.”

The Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala takes place Thursday in New York City. This year’s other inductees include Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker, Timbaland, Hillary Lindsey and Dean Pitchford.

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The model who inspired the cover of Duran Duran’s 1982 album, Rio, has been identified, 42 years after the album’s release.

The Instagram account @nagel_angel shared a post revealing that artist and illustrator Patrick Nagel used a 1981 multipage editorial from Vogue Paris featuring model Marcie Hunt for the cover. The info was confirmed by the late Nagel’s assistant, Barry Hahn, who replied to them, “Great Catch!” 

“We suspect the model and maybe the band Duran Duran had no idea Nagel was influenced and used this image to create the cover of their musical masterpiece, ‘Rio,’” the post shares. “He certainly changed many things, most specifically removing her glasses, but he obviously loved her smile. And that smile has been an iconic piece of Duran Duran history for decades.” 

And it appears the suggestion that Duran Duran didn’t know could be right, as they shared the post on Instagram with the comment, “WOW!”

Marcie also commented on the revelation, writing, “This is so cool! I absolutely did not know until now that this photo of me was used for the Rio cover. Very exciting! Love Duran Duran, and danced to their music often in the 80s. And later at my husband, Tom’s and my wedding. Thank you all for your wonderful comments. And yes, I’m still alive!”

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On This Day, June 12, 1982 …

Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and Gary U.S. Bonds performed for a million protesters at the Rally for Nuclear Disarmament on the Great Lawn in New York’s Central Park. 

The rally was timed to coincide with a United Nations Special Session on Disarmament.

The gathering was the largest anti-nuclear weapons demonstration in U.S. history. 

In 2018, a two-CD set featuring highlights from the rally was released, including performances of Springsteen’s “Promised Land,” Browne’s “Running On Empty,” Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou” and Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”

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