Classic Hits

For a lot of musicians, getting to play the Super Bowl halftime show is an experience they wouldn’t think of turning down, but it sounds like Elton John may have done just that.

In an interview with The Wrap, Elton’s husband and manager, David Furnish, discusses why Elton decided to go with a live, rather than taped, performance for his Disney+ special Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium — and seemed to let it slip that they were once offered the Super Bowl gig. 

Noting that for Elton “everything he does with his band, is always 100% live,” Furnish revealed, “We looked at the Super Bowl at one point, and the reason we decided to back away from it is that elements of the Super Bowl show, they don’t allow you to do live.” He said they expected Elton to play live along to prerecorded instruments.

Furnish says he has full confidence in Elton and his band’s live abilities, sharing, “There’s nothing he hasn’t encountered in his 50-plus years as a performer that he hasn’t been able to handle and that his band hasn’t been able to maneuver around.” He says for the the Disney+  special “going 100% live just felt like the magical right thing to do. And it felt like more of an event, too.”

Finally, he offers, “Doing a livestream to 150 million people felt like an opportunity too good to pass up.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry is the new face of Marc Jacobs. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is one of the stars of Jacob’s latest campaign for the St. Marc Collection.

“Marc Jacobs has invited the lead vocalist of the iconic band Blondie to introduce the reimagined St. Marc silhouette,” the designer revealed on Instagram.

Photos posted to social media show Harry dressed in a black leather jacket holding a St. Marc bag and in a black-and-white dress, with black leather gloves and Marc Jacobs Kiki platforms. There’s also one with Ever Anderson, where they are both holding a yellow St. Marc bag. Anderson noted on Instagram that “shooting with this ultimate musical icon Debbie Harry is beyond my imagination.”

As for her other job, Debbie Harry and Blondie are about to hit the road. The band’s U.K. tour kicks off in Cardiff, Wales, on June 16. A complete list of dates can be found at blondie.net.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

John Mellencamp is currently on his Live and In Person tour, but one of the shows isn’t going on as planned. 

The rocker just announced that his sold-out show at The Palace Theatre in Albany, New York, on Tuesday, June 13, has been canceled. No reason for the cancellation was given, and refunds will be given to all ticketholders.

Mellencamp’s next show is scheduled for Wednesday, June 14, at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse, New York. The tour is set to wrap with a two-night stand, June 26 and 27, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A complete list of dates can be found at Mellencamp.com.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Is Rod Stewart giving up on rock ‘n’ roll?

In the new print edition of the magazine Scottish Field, Rod says that his upcoming concerts in Edinburgh, Scotland, on July 6 and 7 will be “the last of the rock n’ roll shows.” He explains, “I want to move on and I’ve always wanted to do The Great American Songbook live. It sold 38 million copies.”

Rod was referring to his bestselling series of albums of standards, which began in 2002 with It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook. He made five Songbook albums in all, and they all reached the top 10 in both the U.S. and the U.K.

He goes on to say he’s recorded a “fantastic swing album” will Jools Holland, the pianist and TV host who was a founding member of Squeeze. “I just want to make a change,” he tells the magazine.

It’s likely that Rod means the Edinburgh shows are his last rock ‘n’ roll shows in the U.K., since he’s got a whole U.S. tour kicking off on July 29, followed by a string of shows in Las Vegas as part of his residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

Elsewhere in the interview, Rod, who lives up the street from Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, says he used to go to the former president’s Christmas parties and balls, until his wife, Penny Lancaster, put the kibosh on that.

“There was stuff he was coming out with, what he was saying about women he had known in the past,” Rod explains. “And Penny said ‘you’re not going – he’s a disgrace.'”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Blue Öyster Cult drummer and founding member Albert Bouchard is set to release a new album, Imaginos III – Mutant Reformation, on July 7. 

The album is the third and final record in Bouchard’s trilogy of Imaginos, following 2021’s Imaginos 2 — Bombs Over Germany and 2020’s Re Imaginos, which was a reworked version of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1988 concept album Imaginos.

The albums have all been inspired by the writings of the late producer and songwriter Sandy Pearlman, which centered on an alien conspiracy happening in the 1800s and early 1900s through the actions of an evil character named Imaginos.

“Sandy’s not being here to feel the long-awaited culmination is perhaps the greatest irony of this epic journey through the invisibility of conspiracy, the shape-shifting, and eternal light that is Desdinova,” Bouchard says. “But legend lives on, as will tales told ‘round the fire of when Man still walked the Earth, and the carnage had yet to begin.”

And Bouchard is giving fans a taste of Imaginos III with the release of his new take on the Blue Öyster Cult track “E.T.I.,” featuring his brother, Blue Öyster Cult bassist and singer Joe Bouchard.

Imaginos III – Mutant Reformation is available for preorder now.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Chicago and The Go-Go’s Belinda Carlisle are among the artists set to perform live on A Capitol Fourth, the annual PBS special celebrating Independence Day. 

The celebration will air Tuesday, July 4, at 8 p.m. and will feature a telecast of the fireworks live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.

The program will be hosted by Alfonso Ribiero and will also feature a tribute to the late Tina Turner by Adrienne Warren, who played Tina in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, along with performances by the cast of the Neil Diamond Broadway musical A Beautiful Noise, Boyz II Men, Babyface, the National Symphony Orchestra and more.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

AC/DC’s Brian Johnson made a surprise appearance over the weekend, joining Sam Fender at one of his two homecoming shows at St. James’ Park in Newcastle, England, where the pair treated the crowd to two AC/DC classics. 

Loudersound reports that Fender had just brought out his former guitar teacher Phil Martin and told the crowd  they planned to play some AC/DC when he added, “We cannot really do AC/DC songs without the one, the only Geordie legend, the singer of AC/DC, Brian Johnson!”

Fan-shot footage on YouTube shows Fender and Johnson, who is from nearby Dunston, England, teaming up for “Back in Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long,” much to the crowd’s delight.

Johnson’s appearance was his first live performance since joining Foo Fighters for their Taylor Hawkins tribute at London’s Wembley Stadium last September. Next up, he and AC/DC will be one of the headliners for the Power Trip festival, happening October 6-8 at the Empire Polo Club In Indio, California.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Last fall, Melissa Etheridge presented the autobiographical stage show Melissa Etheridge Off Broadway: My Window – A Journey Through Life. Now, the show is coming to Broadway.

Melissa Etheridge: My Window will officially open at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre on September 28.  Previews begin September 14, with tickets on sale now via Telecharge.com. 

“I truly love Broadway, and it’s long been a dream of mine to tell my story and share my music there,” says Melissa in a statement. “I never felt more connected to this community and New York audiences than I did after telling my life story off-Broadway last year. The intimacy of the live theatrical stage is like no other, and Circle in the Square is going to be a magical home for my show’s Broadway debut.”

She adds, “It’s a deeply personal experience to be able to tell these stories again, in a fresh and exciting way, and reconnect with my fans and theatergoers.”

The off-Broadway version of the show, written by Melissa and her wife, Linda Wallem-Etheridge, featured the Grammy-winning singer telling her life story, interspersed with performances of her songs. It’s not clear what, if anything, will change in the Broadway version.

The show coincides with the publication of Melissa’s new memoir, Talking to My Angels, which comes out September 5.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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 protestors at Rally for Nuclear Disarmament in New York’s Central Park.

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,” Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” and more.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Gov’t Mule is set to drop their 12th studio album, Peace…Like A River, on Friday, June 16, and it sounds like it wasn’t too hard for frontman Warren Haynes to come up with the title of the record.

“When I was going through all the lyrics, I realized that the word ‘peace’ and the word ‘river’ appear more than anything else, several times in multiple songs,” he tells ABC Audio. “And so I wanted to find something that combined those two things together.”

The title was also inspired by the Paul Simon song “Peace Like a River,” with Haynes noting, “We almost recorded it and we may still at some point.” 

The album was recorded during COVID-19 lockdowns, during the same sessions as 2021’s Heavy Load Blues. Haynes explains they decided to work on both “because we had all this time on our hands and I had written a ton of material, and we couldn’t travel and we couldn’t tour, so it was the best way to utilize our time.” 

Haynes says the pandemic did affect the way he was thinking and feeling while writing the record, but he insists, “I tried not to let it affect the subject matter so much.”

“I didn’t want to write a bunch of COVID-centric songs, but at the same time, that’s what the world was going through,” he shares. “And so I tried to write songs that were universal, but with the mindset that was happening at the time.” 

Peace…Like A River is available for preorder now.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.