Paul McCartney scored his sixth post-Beatles #1 album with his band Wings’ triple live release, Wings Over America. It was the first triple album by a group to top the chart.
The album featured songs recorded during Wings’ spring 1976 tour, including live performances of Beatles tunes “Yesterday,” “Lady Madonna,” “Blackbird” and “The Long and Winding Road.”
The lead single was a live recording of the McCartney solo track “Maybe I’m Amazed,” which became a top 10 hit.
Sunday, January 21, marked the 40th anniversary of Yes’ hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart” hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Trevor Rabin, the song’s main writer, always had a feeling it would be a hit.
“I had an idea that was going to be the song because it’s very hooky and got all the ingredients,” Rabin tells ABC Audio.
Believe it or not, Rabin says he actually wrote the track on the toilet because acoustically the sound was great in the bathroom.
He notes, “When I wrote that riff, I thought, ‘Ohhh.’ I stopped and I actually pondered it and I thought, ‘This is either something really kind of cool or it might be just absolutely nothing.’”
Well, it certainly didn’t turn out to be nothing. The song, which appeared on Yes’ 11th studio album, 90125, was the only Yes single to top the charts, spending two weeks in the top spot. And the album turned out to be Yes’ bestselling release, selling over 3 million copies in the U.S.
But not everyone immediately thought “Owner of a Lonely Heart” would be a hit. Rabin says that after he wrote it he sent the song out to a bunch of people, including famed music executive Clive Davis, who told him the song wasn’t commercial enough.
But Rabin showed him, noting, “I sent him the Billboard clipping of it [at] #1.”
Jon Bon Jovi is set to appear at February’s Pollstar Live! conference, HitsDailyDouble reports.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has joined the conference’s February 7 panel called How To See a Million Faces and Rock Them All, a reference to the Bon Jovi hit “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
The band’s 40th anniversary will also be marked during the conference, with the rocker honored with Pollstar Live!’s Milestone Award.
The conference is set to take place February 6-8 in Los Angeles.
Jon’s appearance at Pollstar Live! will take place just a few days after he receives another prestigious honor. As part of Grammy week he’ll receive the MusiCares 2024 Person of the Year award at a gala held Friday, February 2, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Duran Duran is set to return to The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, California, on Tuesday, February 6, for a concert that will raise money for Hamilton Families, a San Francisco-based nonprofit whose mission is to end family homelessness in the city.
The Guild Theatre is the same venue Duran Duran played back in August for their benefit concert to raise money for the U.K.-based cancer charity The Cancer Awareness Trust, where their former guitarist Andy Taylor was receiving treatment for stage 4 prostate cancer.
Presale tickets for the new show go on sale Monday, January 22, with the general sale set for Wednesday, January 24, at noon PT. More information on tickets can be found at guildtheatre.com.
The Alarm is returning to the U.S. for a new North American tour, and they’re bringing along two other acts from the MTV era.
Joining The Alarm on the Live Today Love Tomorrow Tour MMXIV will be The Blow Monkeys, best known for their top 20 hit “Digging Your Scene,” and Belouis Some, best known for songs like “Some People” and “Round and Round,” the latter of which was featured on the soundtrack to ’80s classic Pretty in Pink.
“This tour will be a chance for a generation of fans – both old and new – to step back into the future and celebrate a time that defined millions of people’s life soundtracks when the era of Music Television ruled the earth,” The Alarm’s Mike Peters shares. “All our bands made an initial impact through the medium of music, but it was driven deeper into the hearts and imaginations of people all over North America via Music Television.” He noted it “paved the way for a new generation of artists and fans of which had never been witnessed before.”
The tour kicks off May 1 in New Orleans, hitting Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York and more, with dates confirmed through May 29 in Boston.
A ticket presale will kick off Wednesday, January 24, with the general sale happening Friday, January 26.
Bob Dylan was one of the many A-list stars who took part in the 1985 charity single “We Are the World,” but according to Lionel Richie, who co-wrote the song, he didn’t have an easy time nailing down his contribution.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to promote The Greatest Night In Pop, a documentary about the making of the song, Richie reveals Dylan “was having a nervous breakdown” while recording his part.
“He’s trying to sing it. And we said, ‘No, we don’t want you to sing it, just do it like Bob Dylan,’” Lionel shares. “If you’re thrown in a room with a bunch of singers, you have a tendency to get psyched out, that you want to sound like them.”
With each artists getting only a small portion to sing, Lionel explains, “We had to make sure that whoever was singing, your voice was identifiable right away.”
“Now, Bob Dylan has an identifiable voice instantly. But he was trying to sing it another way,” he says. “We kept saying, ‘No, just sing it like Bob Dylan.’ But did you see that look on his face? He was like, well, what does that sound like?”
“We Are The World” features huge stars like Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and more, but one person who didn’t show up for the recording session was Prince.
“I was hoping he was going to come by,” Lionel says. “But there’s a point when that tape starts rolling, that’s it.”
In the end, Huey Lewis wound up taking Prince’s part.
“Poor Huey, even to this day, he still hasn’t recovered. He did a great job,” Lionel laughs.
The Greatest Night in Pop premieres January 19 at the Sundance Film Festival; it hits Netflix on January 29.
Sting, ZZ Top and Devo are among the acts booked for the 2024 BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach, California.
Sting is set to headline the festival’s opening night on Friday, May 3, with Devo on the bill for Saturday, May 4, and ZZ Top playing on the final night, Sunday, May 5.
Joining Sting as headliners are Incubus and My Morning Jacket, with Seal, Trey Anastasio, Sugar Ray, Fleet Foxes and more also on the bill.
Kevin Mazur/MTV VMAs 2021/Getty Images for MTV/ ViacomCBS
Van Halen’s David Lee Roth has fired some shots at his replacement Sammy Hagar in a new post shared to his Instagram.
In the clip titled “The Ballad of Popsicle Sam,” Roth uses Hagar’s 2011 claim that he was visited by aliens to try and explain some of Hagar’s behavior toward him over the years. He suggests Hagar’s conduct is a result of him being sex probed.
Hagar has said some disparaging things about Roth over the years. In a 2023 interview on Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast, Hagar said Roth didn’t care about his voice and called his singing embarrassing.
Despite “a constant fart gas aimed” in his direction, Roth insisted he’s never “said a single syllable about” Sammy. “I think we’ve arrived at both the technical and the medical answer that may explain some of Sammy Hagar’s conduct and his constant spew of diarrhea vitriol in our direction,” he wrote, revealing, “Sammy Hagar was abducted by aliens and he was sex probed. Sex probed.”
Roth then questioned what sex probing entails, before offering, “What I do know with absolute accuracy is that if you take a half of a popsicle and you jam it into a cassette tape player, no matter how carefully you extract it, that tape player will never play the same again, no matter how carefully you try and fix those delicate little parts. And it’ll get worse and it’ll seem like the singer that you used to [be] will stop making sense whatsoever. A lot like Sam.”
Hagar’s set to launch his The Best of All World Tours on July 13 in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he plans to celebrate Van Halen’s music. He’s invited Roth to stop by, but after these comments, who knows what the chances of that happening will be.
The classic Fleetwood Mac lineup of Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham,Christine McVie and John McVie reunited for the first time in six years to perform at President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration gala.
The band performed their classic Rumours track “Don’t Stop,” which had been used as Clinton’s campaign song.
Other performers at the gala included Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
The classic Fleetwood Mac lineup would wind up reuniting again in 1997 for a live filmed concert, The Dance. It spawned a live album of the same name, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, and an arena tour followed. The lineup continued to work together until 2018, when Lindsey Buckingham was fired from the group.
Queen continues to delve into the live performances from the 21st century, highlighting a RogerTaylor-penned ballad in the latest episode of their weekly YouTube series, Queen the Greatest Live.
This week’s clip features footage of a 2005 performance of Taylor’s “These Are the Days of Our Lives,” from a Queen + Paul Rodgers show.
Taylor wrote the song in the late ’80s as frontman Freddie Mercury was ill, something only those in the Queen camp knew. He previously shared that the song was inspired by the adventures he and Mercury had experienced when they were young men.
“I was sitting at home in a rather reflective mood and I did know that Freddie was ill, and I think it came out of that slightly melancholic mood,” Taylor previously told Absolute Radio. “I guess I was trying to put an optimistic slant on it in a way –those were the days then. And these are the days of our lives – today is more important than yesterday.”
“These Are The Days Of Our Lives” appeared on Queen’s 1991 album, Innuendo, and the video for the song wound up being the last one Freddie made before his death in November of that year.
Queen fans can catch another classic live performance by the band on screens this weekend. Queen Rock Montreal, a concert film featuring a show from their November 1981 stand at the Montreal Forum, is in IMAX theaters from now until January 21. A complete list of theaters and ticket information can be found at queeninimax.com.
