Classic Hits

Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman is releasing a new live box set capturing his sold-out two-night stand at the London Palladium earlier this year. 

Live at the London Palladium 2023 features recordings of Wakeman’s February 22 and 23 concerts in their entirety. For the shows, Wakeman performed new arrangements of his classic tunes, backed by both the English Rock Ensemble and the English Chamber Choir. It includes performances of Wakeman’s solo work, as well as classic Yes tracks and the premiere of three-part “The Yes Suite,” a medley of themes taken from Yes music.

The set is broken down into four CDs centered around Wakeman’s solo albums: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Classic Yes.

Live at the London Palladium 2023 will be released February 16 and is available for preorder now.

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Lots of folks were happy to see The Rolling Stones return this year with their new album, Hackney Diamonds, but Blur’s Damon Albarn was not one of them.

Speaking to France’s Les Inrockuptibles magazine, Albarn seemed particularly upset about the band’s use of London’s Hackney district in promoting the project. 

“That really irritated me. Because my family lives in Hackney and the way they showed up in the Hackney Empire theater freaked me out,” he says. “They never did anything at Hackney, they didn’t play there, they didn’t contribute anything. They just showed up.”

He also took issue with the album’s first single, “Angry,” because the video “objectified” actress Sydney Sweeney. He then noted her clips, combined with footage of The Stones throughout their career, felt “totally disconnected.”

“I love the idea of ​​dedicating your life to one thing, in search of the sublime. But the truth is that they have become worse. Worse to persist in remaining themselves,” he says. “This is something I don’t understand. Making the exact same music, just not as good. There must be no joy in doing such a thing.”

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AC/DC fans are no longer trying to get their 1990 track “Thunderstruck” to #1 for Christmas.

In November, in honor of the band’s 50th anniversary, the Facebook fan group AC/DC We Salute You launched a campaign to get “Thunderstruck” to top of the U.K. charts for the holidays. The group attempted a similar campaign in 2013, in honor of the band’s 40th anniversary, and got “Highway To Hell” to #4.

Now, the U.K. Official Charts report fans have decided to postpone the campaign to the week of January 4 so it won’t compete with Christmas tunes and has a better shot at the top spot. Organizers say they polled three different fan groups, and 83% agreed to the postponement.

“By choosing to delay by two weeks, we’ll also avoid being caught up in the Christmas songs that will no doubt be prominent the week after Christmas as well,” the page’s administrators told the Official Charts. 

They explain that the #1 is more about celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary than AC/DC actually earning the #1 at Christmas. Plus, they say they’d like to see the Pogues classic “Fairytale in New York” get the #1 spot, in honor of the recent passing of the band’s frontman, Shane MacGowan.

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Nile Rodgers & Chic will be helping folks ring in the new year.

The band is one of many artists set to take part in ABC’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2024, premiering December 31 at 8 p.m. ET. 

Of course, Rodgers and his crew have plenty of hits to help folks party into the new year. They’ll perform classics “Le Freak,” “Everybody Dance” and “Good Times,” along with the Daft Punk hit “Get Lucky,” which Rodgers co-wrote.

Other artists booked for this year’s shows include Bebe Rexha, Aqua, Janelle Monáe, Green Day, Thirty Seconds to Mars and Ellie Goulding.

As always, Ryan Seacrest will count down to the new year in New York’s Times Square, with help from Rita Ora, while Jeannie Mai will host the Hollywood party. The show’s Spanish-language countdown will take place in Puerto Rico with host Dayanara Torres.

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A long out-of-print Neil Diamond concert is getting a special DVD reissue.

The Thank You Australia Concert Live 1976 features Diamond’s March 1976 concert at Sydney’s Sports Ground, which was telecast live to the largest viewer audience in Australian history. The show was the final night of Diamond’s tour of Australia and New Zealand, which marked his return to the stage after a four-year hiatus.

The concert featured performances of such classic Diamond tunes as “Sweet Caroline,” “Cherry, Cherry,” “Song Sung Blue” and more, along with bonus features like Diamond’s first full-length TV interview, commercials Diamond performed live onstage, previously unreleased images and more.

The Thank You Australia Concert Live 1976 will be released January 19; it’s available for preorder now.

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Def Leppard and Journey are teaming up for a huge co-headlining tour next summer.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bands, who previously toured together in 2018, will be playing stadiums across the country alongside fellow Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Steve Miller Band, Heart and Cheap Trick on select dates. 

“We are thrilled to be back on the road in 2024 with so many good friends as part of this tour,” Journey shares. “No matter which city you come to this will be an amazing night of music!”

Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott notes the combination of these bands “makes for an amazing night of music.” 

“We shall hit the boards running with a brand-new stage show and set of songs that will celebrate specific parts of our history. We may even have a surprise or two up our sleeves,” he shares.

The tour is set to kick off July 6 in St. Louis. It will feature stops at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, New York’s Citifield, Boston’s Fenway Park, San Francisco’s Oracle Park and more, before wrapping September 8 in Denver, Colorado.

A Citi presale for tickets kicks off Wednesday, December 13, at 10 a.m. ET, with the general onsale happening Friday, December 15, at 10 a.m. local time. A complete list of dates can be found at journeymusic.com and defleppard.com.

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On This Day, December 7, 1991…

U2 hit #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart with their seventh studio album, Achtung Baby, produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. Unlike their previous records, the band incorporated new sounds into the project, including alternative rock, industrial music and electronic dance music.

U2 released five singles from the record, including “One” and “Mysterious Ways,” which both hit the top 10, as well as “The Fly,” “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.”

The band promoted the album with the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour, and is currently celebrating the record with their critically acclaimed Las Vegas residency, U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere.

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Aerosmith’s “Dream On” may have been released 50 years ago, but fans still love listening to it. 

The classic tune just reached over one billion streams on Spotify, so the band took to social media to thank their fans, the Blue Army, for the milestone.

Released in June 1973, “Dream On” was featured on Aerosmith’s self-titled debut album and became the band’s first big hit. When it was initially released, it peaked at #59 on the Billboard Hot 100, but a 1975 reissue of the longer album version wound up peaking at #6. 

The track has gone on to be one of the band’s signature tunes; it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018.

Meanwhile, fans are anxiously awaiting dates for Aerosmith’s rescheduled Peace Out tour. It was postponed back in September after frontman Steven Tyler fractured his larynx.

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Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson is once again helping other musicians to sound their best.

The rocker just launched his first signature pedal, the Lerxst By-Tor pedal, through Mojotone, which is being sold exclusively on Reverb. The pedal is described as being “capable of going from light crunchy drive sounds to full out roar with sustaining lead tones.” 

This isn’t the first time Lifeson has worked with Mojotone. In 2012, they teamed up on a custom-built tube amp. And just last month, Lifeson and Mojotone launched a new Lerxst Omega line of hand-built guitar amps and cabinets inspired by Lifeson’s five-decade career. 

The Lerxst By-Tor pedal, which features the image of a wolf’s face on the front, is available to order now.

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Producer Jack Douglas, who produced the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album Double Fantasy, is opening up about Lennon’s final days, as we approach the 43rd anniversary of the legendary Beatle’s death.

“He was very positive,” Douglas tells People about his final session with Lennon before his December 8, 1980, murder. “They were both just so happy.”

Double Fantasy wound up being Lennon’s final album. He was shot by Mark David Chapman outside his Manhattan building, The Dakota, as he was returning home from the studio.

Douglas says had Lennon not died, he’d go beyond the album’s release, noting he was planning a tour and even thinking about working with his former bandmates as a backup on Ringo Starr’s next release. 

As happy as Lennon, however, he appeared to have a feeling that his death would come soon, Douglas says. 

“He spoke about death every once in a while. He would say things like, ‘I might be gone soon.’ He would say, ‘When I die, it’s going to be bigger than Elvis,’” Douglas explains. “He insisted on journals being kept for every moment, everything being documented … It felt like he had a feeling something was coming, and he was very intuitive about things. Extremely. Almost supernaturally about things.”

Douglas shares more about Lennon and his death in the new Apple TV+ docuseries, John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, which premieres December 6.

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