Classic Hits

Now that Elton John‘s a father of two young boys, he seems to have a soft spot for kids — including one visually impaired child who attended his concert Tuesday night in Leeds, England.

In video posted on the Leeds-Live website, Elton is seen stopping the concert to praise fans in the audience who’ve attended more than 100 of his concerts and other fans who’ve dressed up like him. “It makes me feel so happy,” he says. “And I’ll tell you what made me feel even happier tonight is a little boy in the front row called Louie.” 

“And he can’t see me but he can hear me,” Elton added. “And he just broke my heart all night.” 

As the audience cheered, Elton told the boy, “You are so special, young man, and you made me feel so great tonight. I tell you what, we are going to get your telephone number and I’ll keep in touch with you.” The audience cheered again.

Elton thanked the crowd for “so many years of love and loyalty,” adding, “You’ve shown me more kindness on this tour than I can ever remember.”

Elton’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour officially wraps up in July.

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David Bowie’s daughter, Alexandria “Lexi” Jones, is giving the public a little more insight into her relationship with her rock star dad. The 22-year-old, whose mom is supermodel Iman, just posted a throwback video to Instagram, showing her dancing with her dad. She captioned the clip, “My forever sunshine.”

The video starts with Lexi dancing on Bowie’s feet as the rocker sings along to the English nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” She later breaks off and dances on her own as Bowie watches on. Then, at the line “down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose,” Bowie does the very dad thing and steps in to “snatch” her nose.

This isn’t the first time Lexi has shared a throwback video featuring her dad. Back in January, on the seventh anniversary of Bowie’s January 10 death, she shared a clip of them playing piano together.

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Bryan Adams kicked off his North American tour in Baltimore Tuesday, treating fans to a 23-song set filled with lots of hits and more.

According to setlist.fm, Adams kicked off the show with the So Happy It Hurts track “Kick A**,” then proceeded to rock the crowd with such classic tracks as “Somebody,” “Summer of 69,” “Cuts Like A Knife,” “Run To You,” “It’s Only Love,” his duet with the late Tina Turner and more.

Of course, there were plenty of ballads, including “Heaven,” “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” and “All For Love,” which was a collaboration with Sting and Rod Stewart. There were even two requests, “Never Gonna Rain” and “The Boys Night Out,” a song he hasn’t played since 2015.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts are opening for Adams on this tour, and while their set was filled with hits, they also took the opportunity to debut some new songs, playing “Shooting Into Space,” “(Make the Music Go) Boom,” “If You’re Blue” and “Whiskey Goes Good” from their just-released EP, Mindsets. The rest of the set was filled with fan favorites, including The Runaways track “Cherry Bomb,” plus classics like “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Crimson & Clover,” “I Hate Myself for Loving You” and “Bad Reputation.”

The Bryan Adams/Joan Jett tour hits Philadelphia on Wednesday, June 7. A complete list of dates can be found at bryanadams.com.

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The Guess Who has dropped a new video for their latest single, “Headline,” the third track released from their upcoming album, Plein D’Amour. 

“Headlines are inherently orchestrated, recurring one-liners regurgitated by our media. They are negative in nature and most of the time…. verbatim en masse,” songwriter and lead singer Derek Sharp says of the track. “Something genuine, uplifting and inspiring is the path forward. This dusty old review could use a new headline.”

“Headline” follows The Guess Who’s previous two Plein D’Amour singles “The King” and the album’s title track, which had great responses on streaming services. The album is available for preorder now.

The Guess Who is currently on a tour of North America. Their next show is happening June 28 in Layton, Utah. A complete list of dates can be found at theguesswho.com.

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On This Day, June 7, 1975 …

Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy became the first album in history to debut at #1 on the Billboard chart. The album remained at #1 for seven weeks. 

The record, Elton’s ninth studio album, included the classic “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” inspired by Elton’s near marriage to his then-girlfriend.

The album was certified Gold by the RIAA before its May 19 release and went on to sell 1.4 million copies in its first four days of release.

The album went on to spawn the 2006 sequel, The Captain and the Kid.

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The Tribeca Festival kicks off Wednesday, June 7, in New York City, and while it’s mostly known for its movie premieres, there will be a lot of music and music-related events happening this year.

The festival opens Wednesday with a new documentary, Kiss the Future, featuring members of U2. The film, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Sarah Anthony, follows a group of underground musicians and creatives during the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted from April 1992 to February 1996. The doc includes footage of U2’s memorable 1997 concert at Koševo Stadium celebrating the country’s liberation, along with interviews with Bono, the Edge and Adam Clayton.

The festival will also feature an appearance by Paul McCartney, with the former Beatle sitting down for a conversation with Conan O’Brien for a recording of the former talk show host’s podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend. The event will have the pair discussing McCartney’s new photo book, 1964: Eyes of the Storm, which drops June 13. The chat is happening June 15 at 6 p.m. at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center.

John Mellencamp will also sit down for a conversation with another famous talk show host, David Letterman. That event is set to happen June 8 at 6 p.m. at the BMCC.

Plus, the Gloria Gaynor documentary Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive will premiere June 9, with Gloria performing after the screening. The Cyndi Lauper doc Let The Canary Sing will premiere June 14 at the Beacon Theatre, with Lauper performing following the premiere. The Carlos Santana doc Carlos will premiere June 17, also at the Beacon, with Carlos set to perform.

The Tribeca Festival runs June 7-18 in New York City. More info can be found at tribecafestival.com.

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The countdown to the end of Billy Joel‘s decadelong Madison Square Garden residency has begun, and you’ll be able to give thanks for the past 10 years with a special Thanksgiving Eve show this November.

The show, scheduled for November 22, has just been announced, with presale tickets going on sale June 7 at 10 a.m. ET via CitiEntertainment.com and Verizon.com. The general public can buy them at 10 a.m. ET on June 9 via Ticketmaster.com. 

The November show will be the 96th show of Billy’s residency and his 142nd lifetime show at the Garden. While Billy’s final residency show — and his 150th lifetime performance at the legendary venue — will take place in July 2024, not all the shows leading up to it have been scheduled yet. The final announced Garden shows are as follows:

July 24
August 29
September 10
October 20
November 22

Meanwhile, there are still many opportunities to see Billy in places other than New York. June 16 is his next co-headlining show with Stevie Nicks, and those run on and off through next March.

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Roger Waters has been getting a lot of backlash over his May concert in Berlin for, among other things, wearing what looked like an SS soldier costume. Well, now the White House has weighed in on the controversy. 

During Monday’s State Department press briefing, a reporter asked about a tweet in which the U.S. special envoy to combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, agreed with the criticism of Waters. In a new statement, the Biden administration backed her up.

According to The Associated Press, the State Department said Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people,” noting the Berlin concert in question “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust.”

Lipstadt’s tweet supported another tweet posted by EU antisemitism envoy Katharina von Schnurbein, condemning Waters and the show. The White House added, “Special Envoy Lipstadt’s quote-tweet speaks for itself.”

As previously reported, Waters has already responded to the criticism over the Berlin show, insisting the parts of his concert getting backlash “are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms.” He added that “attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated.”

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Lionel Richie counts Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters among his celebrity pals: He appeared in the band’s horror movie Studio 666, and Grohl performed with Lionel when the “Hello” singer was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But it turns out there’s an even harder-rocking band that wanted to collaborate with Lionel.

It seems chart-topping heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold reached out to Lionel to sing on their new album, Life Is But a Dream… . Speaking with the Nik Nocturnal Podcast, Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows revealed they reached out to Richie to sing on the track “Beautiful Morning.”

Specifically, they wanted him to sing during the part of the song where the brutal, heavy metal portion ends, and a mellow, Beach Boys-like tune starts, with the lyrics, “It’s a beautiful morning/ it’s a beautiful day/ everybody is smiling/ In a beautiful way.”

“We were talking to Lionel Richie about doing the vocal part there, forever,” Shadows shared. “At the end of the day, he got too busy with America’s Got Talent or whatever.”

We assume Shadows meant ABC’s American Idol, for which Lionel has been a judge since 2018.

“It would’ve been so good,” Shadows says of the missed collaboration. “Everybody would’ve been like, ‘What?'”

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Jackson Browne is the latest artist setting up shop in Las Vegas. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer just announced a limited engagement at The Venetian Theatre inside The Venetian Resort Las Vegas.

The limited residency consists of five shows: October 6, 7, 11, 13 and 14.

Presale tickets go on sale Wednesday, June 7, at 10 a.m. PT, with the general on-sale set for Friday, June 9, at 10 a.m. PT.

The new shows are just the latest additions to Browne’s North American tour. He’s set to play Akron, Ohio, on June 6, with dates confirmed through October 20 and 21 in Los Angeles. A complete list of dates can be found at jacksonbrowne.com.

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