Classic Hits

Steppenwolf was formed in 1967 and after scoring massive hits like “Born to Be Wild,” “Magic Carpet Ride” and “Rock Me,” broke up in 1972. The band reformed in 1974 and then split again two years later — and it’s that second era that is now being collected in a new box set slated for release on January 27.

The Epic Years 1974-1976 gathers together the three albums Steppenwolf recorded for the Epic label: Slow Flux, Hour of the Wolf and Skullduggery. 1974′s Slow Flux contained Steppenwolf’s final U.S. top-40 hit, “Straight Shootin’ Woman.” 

When the 1975 follow-up, Hour of the Wolf, barely made the charts, frontman John Kay tried to break up the group, but the label demanded the band fulfill its contractual obligation with one more album. Skullduggery came out in 1976, and later that year, Kay announced on TV that the band was splitting up.

In addition to those three albums, the box set also includes two rare bonus tracks: a mono promotional single mix of “Caroline (Are You Ready for the Outlaw World),” from Hour of the Wolf, and that single’s B-side, “Angeldrawers.”

You can preorder the box set now at Cherryred.co.uk.

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Mick Jagger‘s youngest kid is a chip off the old Stone.

Deveraux, the rock legend’s eighth child, turned 6 years old on Thursday. His mother, Melanie Hamrick, Jagger’s girlfriend, posted a photo on Instagram of the three of them celebrating together. In the photo, Hamrick holds a birthday cake and kisses Deveraux on the cheek, while Jagger smiles happily. 

Deveraux looks very much like his famous dad in the series of photos Hamrick posted; in one, he’s standing in a recording studio holding a cookie while wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt. “Happy 6th Birthday to our WONDERFUL Devi. Love you so much !!!!!” Hamrick captioned the post.

Jagger and Hamrick have been dating since 2014; they welcomed Deveraux in 2016. In July, Hamrick posted a photo of Devi dressed as Spider-Man watching his dad rock out onstage.

Jagger shares four children — Gabriel, 25, Georgia May, 30, James, 37, and Elizabeth, 38 — with Jerry Hall, and Jade, 51, with his ex-wife, Bianca Jagger. He’s also father to Karis, 52, with actress Marsha Hunt and Lucas, 23, with Brazilian TV presenter Luciana Gimenez.

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There’s more tragedy for Tina Turner: Her son Ronnie has died, People magazine reports. He was 62.

His wife, French singer Afida Turner, revealed Ronnie’s death in an Instagram post, saying she did her best “to the end” to save him. 

Her post also referred to the death of Ronnie’s brother Craig, who died by suicide in 2018; his father, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Ike Turner, who died in 2007; and his aunt, Tina’s sister Alline Bullock, who died in 2010. The post also showed Ronnie posing and performing with Tina.

People confirmed that Los Angeles Police Department officers responded to Ronnie Turner’s address in Encino, California, for a death investigation involving a male, though the man’s identity was not confirmed. TMZ reported that Ronnie had had trouble breathing and was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

Ronnie was born to Tina, 83, and her ex-husband Ike in 1960. Craig was Tina’s son with Raymond Hill, though Ike later adopted him. People reports that Ronnie was a musician who played in a band called Manufactured Funk. He had a small role in the 1993 Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It.

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After teasing it in a recent interview, Roger Waters has now released The Lockdown Sessions.

Waters recorded the five songs on the project — a digital-only release — at home during the COVID-19 lockdown between 2020 and 2021. One song postdates those tracks, though: a new version of “Comfortably Numb” that was recorded during Waters’ 2022 This Is Not a Drill North American tour.

The songs include material from both Waters’ solo career and Pink Floyd: “Mother” and “Vera” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall; “Two Suns In the Sunset” and “The Gunner’s Dream” from Waters’ final album with Floyd, The Final Cut; and “The Bravery of Being Out of Range” from his 1992 album, Amused to Death.

Explaining why he chose to record these particular songs, he writes, “Our Us and Them Tour lasted three years … At every gig we did an encore after the main show…[we] closed with ‘Comfortably Numb’… the encore was always ‘Mother’ … I can’t remember why I decided to start doing other songs? Anyway, at some point after the end of the tour … I started thinking, ‘It could make an interesting album, all those encores … The Encores — yeah, has a nice ring to it!'”

He continues, “Then … I’m in England doing the Ginger Baker tribute gig one Tuesday night at the Hammersmith Odeon with Eric Clapton and … the following Saturday marching from The Australian Embassy to Parliament Square to make a speech in support of Julian Assange, when, bugger me, Covid! For me it was Friday March 13, 2020. Lockdown! So much for the Encores project.”

Waters adds, “We’ve tacked C. Numb on the end of the collection, as an appropriate exclamation point in closing this circle of love.”

The European run of This Is Not A Drill will kick off March 17 in Lisbon, Portugal.

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This Saturday marks the 15th anniversary of Led Zeppelin‘s 2007 reunion show. To celebrate the occasion, the “Stairway to Heaven” legends have announced an online global watch party of their Celebration Day concert film, which captured the historic performance.

You can watch the stream beginning Saturday at 3 p.m. ET on YouTube.

Recorded December 10, 2007, at the O2 Arena in London, Celebration Day featured the reunion of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, along with the late John Bonham‘s son Jason Bonham on drums. It marked Led Zeppelin’s first live performance since their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and their first full concert since their 1980 breakup following John Bonham’s death.

Celebration Day was screened in theaters in 2012, and was released as a live album and on home video later that year.

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Stevie Nicks is on a roll when it comes to social media posts. After praising Lizzo for her People’s Choice Awards acceptance speech earlier this week, she’s now written a letter expressing her happiness that basketball player Brittney Griner is back in the U.S.A. A plane carrying the WNBA star landed in the U.S. early Friday, nearly 10 months after she was detained in Russia.

“Welcome home Brittney Griner!” Stevie wrote on Instagram. “I found out at 5:30 this morning that you were ‘in the air’ on your way home. I am crying, seriously, and just so happy that you have been released. You are free … Today is a beautiful day. Love Stevie Nicks.”

Griner was detained in Moscow in February for possession of vaping cartridges containing hashish oil, an illegal substance in Russia. She pleaded guilty in July and was sentenced to nine years in prison on August 7. Griner’s appeal of the sentence in October was rejected. It was revealed Thursday that she was freed in a swap for convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been imprisoned in Illinois.

Nicks’ post prompted numerous comments from fans who are unhappy about the prisoner exchange because of Bout’s past crimes and also because former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan is still imprisoned in Russia.

In other Stevie Nicks news, more stadium dates for her co-headlining 2023 tour with Billy Joel have been announced. They now have a total of seven shows lined up, spanning from March 10 in Inglewood, California, to September 23 in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

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In the wake of Elton Musk‘s takeover of Twitter, Elton John has become the latest rocker to announce that he’ll no longer use the social media platform.

In what’s apparently his farewell tweet, Elton writes, “All my life I’ve tried to use music to bring people together. Yet it saddens me to see how misinformation is now being used to divide our world. I’ve decided to no longer use Twitter, given their recent change in policy which will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked.”

It’s not clear if anything specific spurred Elton’s decision, but it comes after Twitter updated its online rules on Monday to read, “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.” Since he took over, Musk has reinstated the accounts of some users who were previously banned for spreading COVID misinformation.

Other rockers who’ve famously left Twitter since the Musk takeover include Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Jack White.

In other Elton news, he’s mourning the death of his beloved aunt. On Instagram, he writes, “My beautiful Auntie Win passed away this morning at 95 years of age. I loved her so much and will miss her terribly. She was kindness personified.” His songwriting partner Bernie Taupin responded in the comments, “I’m so sorry, she was one of a kind.”

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David Crosby & The Lighthouse Band Live at the Capitol Theatre, out Friday, is billed as David Crosby‘s “first live solo release.” But since it documents a 2018 show that he played with his frequent collaborators The Lighthouse Band — Becca Stevens, Michelle Willis and Michael League — Crosby doesn’t actually consider the record a “solo” release at all.

“We sell them that way because my name sells them more than saying, ‘Hey, this is The Lighthouse Band,’ who you’ve never heard of,” Crosby tells ABC Audio bluntly. “And so we sell them as David Crosby records, but that’s a group record.”

Crosby previously recorded an album, 2016’s Lighthouse, with the trio, and before the pandemic, he’d toured on and off with them regularly.  “That’s a really definite group chemistry that happens in between me and [them],” he notes. “I noticed it right away when we started working together. I said, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this is special.'”

Also special: the 2018 show in Port Chester, NY that’s documented on the album.

Crosby explains, “It was the end of the tour. We were polished up. We knew what we were doing. There was a certain confidence to it. The night had that kind of magic to it. We all agreed it was as good as we were gonna be.”

In addition to songs new and old, the album includes new arrangements of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s “Guinnevere” and “Woodstock” and “Déjà Vu” by CSNY. With such a rich back catalog, how does Crosby decide which throwback tunes to perform?

“It’s pretty hard not to do ‘Guinnevere.’ It’s probably my best song,” he admits. “We didn’t go anywhere near a whole lot of them. But there were certain ones that just really flourished under a fresh read, a fresh look, a fresh treatment.” 

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Participating artists have been announced for The Music of Paul McCartney, a tribute concert scheduled for New York City’s Carnegie Hall on March 15, 2023.

The show is the latest in the series of annual charity concerts that New York City entrepreneur Michael Dorf has been organizing since 2004. Each year focuses on the music of a single well-known artist.

The lineup includes McCartney’s old pal Peter Asher, the guitarist, singer, manager and producer who was a member of the vocal duo Peter & Gordon, and is the brother of McCartney’s former girlfriend, Jane Asher. 

Also on the bill are Ingrid Michaelson, Lyle Lovett, soul singer Bettye Lavette, the band Lake Street Dive, Irish singer/songwriter Glen Hansard and Canadian singer/songwriter Allison Russell. More artists will be added in the coming weeks.

Proceeds from the concert will go to organizations that provide music education programs and opportunities to underserved youth. Since the concert series started in 2004, over $1.5 million in proceeds have been donated.

VIP tickets are available now via MusicOf.org, with general admission tickets coming soon. The top-tier A Day in the Life Package costs $15,000, which not only gets you tickets to the show, but also lets you help Michael Dorf determine the set list. 

The Really Love You package costs 10 grand: That gets you access to the rehearsals and a dinner party with the artists, access to soundcheck, great seats for the show, the ability to join everyone onstage for the finale and access to the after-party. The rest of the packages range from $375 to $3,000.

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Wednesday night was the New York City premiere of If These Walls Could Sing, a documentary about London’s Abbey Road Studios directed by Mary McCartney that will premiere on Disney+ on December 16. For some inside information, the filmmaker, photographer and cookbook author turned to one of Abbey Road’s most well-known regulars: her dad, Paul McCartney.

Speaking to People, Mary says, “I was with him and I was like, ‘I’m going to make this documentary about the history of Abbey Road,’ and he would just sort of give me little tips. It was good! He was mulling it over and he sort of told me little anecdotes.” What Paul wanted to stress, she says, is how important the people who worked there were to the Beatles’ career.

“He was keen to talk about how the people there had helped them—staff, people behind the scenes, engineers,” Mary explains. “He feels passionate about it. I think in the documentary you see how passionate he is about it.”

Mary says her inspiration for the film was a photo taken of her parents in 1977 which shows them walking across the famous crosswalk seen on the cover of the Abbey Road album with a pony.

“I love the picture of my mom going over the zebra crossing. She had a little pony in London … she’s my inspiration,” Mary tells People of Linda McCartney, Paul’s first wife, who died in 1998. While researching the film, Mary says she learned that her mom would “apparently would come around to [Abbey Road] and be like, ‘Could somebody babysit the kids tonight?’ It shows how I grew up there.”

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