Classic Hits

Peter Frampton recently finished up the 2022 dates of his farewell tour, after announcing a few years ago that he’ll be retiring from the road due to a degenerative muscle condition.  He sat with Guitar World for a wide-ranging interview about his career, in which he discusses his struggles with his ’70s-era fame, and how David Bowie saved his career.

After 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive made him one of the world’s biggest stars, Frampton says that after the follow-up, 1977’s I’m In You, “I could feel it slipping away…I started to lose a lot of audience…I felt like I was in a sinking ship.” As the ’80s arrived, Frampton admits he wasn’t making his best work, and he wasn’t having much commercial success, either. But in 1986, things turned around for him — and he gives the credit to Bowie, his old schoolmate.

“I did a record for Atlantic called Premonition,” he tells Guitar World. “It still wasn’t a great record…but that’s the album David Bowie listened to…he said, ‘Can you come and play some guitar for me?’”

Frampton ended up playing on Bowie’s 1987 album Never Let Me Down, and then joined him on his Glass Spider tour. 

“He could have chosen anybody…but he chose me. I can never thank him enough for that,” admits Frampton. Rather than missing the spotlight, he says being a sideman is his “comfy chair,” explaining, “I’ve always been more comfortable playing guitar, not singing.”

He notes, “David inviting me to do the album and tour changed my credibility; I got my credibility back that I felt I’d lost when I’m In You came out. I’m a musician first and foremost. David gave me back that credibility to continue and bring people back to me.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On Friday, Cher tweeted that her heart was breaking for her “beloved friend, sister” Tina Turner, whose son Ronnie passed away at age 62. But on Saturday, Cher found herself mourning a loss: Her beloved mother, Georgia Holt, had passed away at age 96.

“Mom is gone,” the legendary entertainer tweeted.  No details were provided, but back in September, Cher had tweeted that her mother had been in the hospital with pneumonia. 

Holt, a singer, actress and model born Jackie Jean Crouch, had appeared in classic TV shows like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and I Love Lucy, as well as movies like 1950’s A Life of Her Own and 1951’s Father’s Little Dividend.

She was married and divorced a total of six times in her life, including to Cher’s father, John Sarkisian, who she was married to from 1946 to 1947. They remarried in 1965, but divorced in 1966. She was in a relationship from 1976 until her death with Craig Spencer.

A singer since childhood, Holt recorded a country album, Honky Tonk Woman, in 1980. Featuring a duet with Cher, it wasn’t released until 2013. That same year, she was the subject of a Lifetime documentary called Dear Mom, Love Cher.

In addition to Cher, Holt is survived by her other daughter, Georganne LaPiere, and her two grandchildren: Cher’s children Chaz Bono and Elijah Blue Allman.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

More than 50 years after he first wished the world “Feliz Navidad,” José Feliciano has a new holiday song, and you can watch the animated video for it now.

The upbeat song is called “Viva La Navidad (Long Live Christmas),” and you can find it on the Puerto Rican guitarist’s latest album, Love & Christmas. In the clip, an animated version of Feliciano, 77, is shown riding a sleigh across the world and sing along with a band of snowmen. It’s the first original Christmas song Feliciano has written since “Feliz Navidad.”

In addition to the new holiday song, Love & Christmas includes Feliciano’s takes on classics like Jimi Hendrix‘s “Purple Haze,” the Bee Gees‘ “To Love Somebody” and Michael Jackson‘s “Human Nature.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

AC/DC will celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2023, and in honor of the occasion, an officially licensed book on the band is on its way.

AC/DC: 50 Years Of High Voltage Rock ‘N’ Roll will arrive at some point next year from Rufus Publications. Right now there’s only a teaser video for the book, so it’s not clear if it’ll be a band biography, a photo collection or both. The company describes it only as “something very special.”

AC/DC was formed in November 1973 by Malcom and Angus Young, bass player Larry Van Kriedt, singer Dave Evans and drummer Collin Burgess. In 1974, Bon Scott replaced Evans as vocalist and they released their first album, High Voltage. The band’s big U.S. breakthrough didn’t come until 1980’s Back In Black, released with new singer Brian Johnson following Scott’s death, became their all-time best-selling album.

AC/DC’s most recent album, 2020’s Power Up, hit number one on the Billboard 200 album chart and earned the band three Grammys.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

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.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.