Classic Hits

Last month, Dead & Company was forced to call off its two-weekend Playing in the Sand destination festival due the Omicron surge of COVID-19.  But the band’s Bob Weir is planning to hit the road next month with his other band, and tells USA Today that, “God willing,” Dead & Company will be on the road this summer.

Weir’s Wolf Bros, which Weir formed in 2018 with Don Was and Jay Lane, are scheduled to launch a 13-city tour March 9 in Nashville, TN.  “It’s looking like, knock on wood, the Omicron effect will be in the rearview mirror,” Weir tells USA Today. “Here’s hoping something else doesn’t pop up.”

If you can’t make the tour, Friday sees the release of the first-ever vinyl Wolf Bros LP, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros: Live in Colorado, recorded in June of 2021. Released on Third Man Records, it’s the first volume of a two-volume collection, due out later this year.

Asked to reflect on his musical legacy, Weir — whose resume also includes Ratdog and Furthur in addition to The Grateful Dead, Dead & Company and Wolf Bros — refuses to be pinned down to being famous for just one thing.

“There are great musical cultures and great music to be found. But there is nothing quite as magical as the American songbook. I spent 60 years or so delving as deep into it and as intently as I can,” he says. “I just love the stuff so much…be it country, blues, R&B…I try to play it all.”

Weir adds, “I guess in years to come, when people listen to me they’ll make note of the fact that he tried to play it all. We’ll see how successful people think I got.”

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Many unseen photos of the late Joe Strummer — plus some well-known pictures, like the cover of his 1989 album, Earthquake Weather — have been compiled in a new book called Joe Strummer: Print the Myth.

The book is the work of photographer and creative director Josh Cheuse, who first met Strummer in 1981, when he called Electric Ladyland Studios from a payphone at his high school and asked The Clash if he could photograph them. Their creative partnership and friendship lasted until Strummer’s death in 2002.

In addition to photos of Strummer, the book includes sketches, handwritten notes and collages, as well as Cheuse’s personal stories about Strummer. Among the images included are a photo of The Clash performing in 1981 at Bond’s International Casino in New York, as well as a photo taken outside Buckingham Palace in 1988. You can see those images at RollingStone.com.

You can now sign up at JoeStrummerBook.com to get a discount when pre-order begins, and get the chance to have your name in the book.

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Men at Work frontman Colin Hay, who’s also a member of Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, has released a new track from his upcoming solo album Now and the Evermore.

The song “Love Is Everywhere,” and it comes with a trippy, partially animated video.  Even if you don’t like the song, you’ll want to watch the video for the adorable footage of different animal species expressing love for one another. C’mon, who doesn’t want to see a puppy snuggle with a rooster,  or a dog frolicking with a baby deer?

Speaking about the song, Hay says, “I think what this song is attempting to counter, by at least some measure, is the end result of the continued tragic global catastrophe of separation. The colossal calamity of believing yourself to be separate from everything and everybody else. Refusing to consider the possibility that we all are part of this planet’s structural fabric. Every day I feel love, and I’m happy that I do.”

Now and the Evermore, the title track of which features Ringo on drums, will be out March 18. Hay will launch a solo tour that same day that will keep him on the road through May 12.  Starting June 2 in Boston, he’ll join Ringo for the All Starr Band’s summer tour.

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The breakup of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham fueled many of Fleetwood Mac‘s most famous songs.  But Stevie now says that if they’d split when they really wanted to, Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t have been around for them to record those songs.

In a new interview in The New Yorker, Stevie explains, “I broke up with Lindsey in 1976. We’d only been in Fleetwood Mac for a year and a half, and we were breaking up when we joined Fleetwood Mac. So we just put our relationship kind of back together, because I was smart enough to know that, if we had broken up the second month of being in Fleetwood Mac, it would have blown the whole thing.”

“I just bided my time, and tried to make everything as easy as possible, tried to be as sweet and as nice to Lindsey as I could be,” Stevie continues. “He wasn’t happy, either. Then something happened that was, y’know, ‘We’re done’…it was time.”

“The band was solid, by that time, so I could walk away knowing that he was safe. And that the band was safe. And that we could work it out,” she concludes.

Speaking about two classic songs inspired by the breakup, Stevie says, “I always laugh because Lindsey’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ and my [song] ‘Dreams’ are, like, counter songs to each other. I’m, like, ‘When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know,’ and he’s, like, ‘Packing up, shacking up’s all you want to do.’”

She notes, “He’s looking at it from a very unpleasant, angry way, and I’m saying, in my more airy-fairy way, we’re gonna be all right. We’ll get through this.”

Stevie has several festival performances booked for this year, while Buckingham has a slew of tour dates lined up for the month of April.

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Originally released in September of 1992, The Police compilation Greatest Hits is being reissued on vinyl for its 30th anniversary.

The album had a limited vinyl release because of course back in the day, all anybody wanted was CDs.  As a result, it’s long been out of print, but it’ll be back on April 15.  The two-LP set was remastered at Abbey Road and cut at half speed. It comes as two heavyweight vinyl discs packaged in a gatefold sleeve. You can pre-order it now.

The album includes 16 tracks spanning the band’s five studio albums, from “Roxanne” from Outlandos d’Amour, to “Tea in the Sahara,” from Synchronicity.

Meanwhile, the three members of The Police are keeping busy: Sting resumes his world tour in March and his Las Vegas residency in June, while Andy Summers will tour his latest photo exhibit this July and his one-man multimedia music show in October.  Stewart Copeland will be performing with an orchestra in North America and Europe this year, and premiere his latest opera, The Witches Seed, in Italy in July.

Here’s the Greatest Hits track listing:

Disc One

Side A
“Roxanne”
“Can’t Stand Losing You”
“So Lonely”
“Message in a Bottle”

Side B
“Walking on the Moon”
“The Bed’s Too Big Without You”
“Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
“De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da”

Disc Two

Side A
“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”
“Invisible Sun”
“Spirits in the Material World”
“Synchronicity II”

Side B
“Every Breath You Take”
“King of Pain”
“Wrapped Around Your Finger”
“Tea in the Sahara”

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After announcing on his socials earlier this month that he’d be touring North America this summer with Cheap Trick, Rod Stewart has now revealed the full list of dates for the trek, as well as the on-sale dates.  But Rod says when it comes to his set list, it’ll pretty much be the hits and nothing but the hits.

The 38-date tour, which officially kicks off June 10 in Vancouver, Canada, is Rod’s first in four years. And while his new album, The Tears of Hercules, came out last year, he says fans may not hear much more beyond its first single at his shows.

“Yeah, ‘One More Time‘ will be in there,” he says of the song he released last year. “But, you know, I give people what they want: They all want to hear the same songs.”

Rod adds, “As much as I’ll try and say, ‘Look, please let me play a few new songs!’ they want to hear the old ones. As would I!” 

That’s right: Rod knows what it’s like to want to hear your favorite artist play your favorite songs, because that’s what he’d want to hear…if he could.

“If my idols were alive today, I would want to hear Sam Cooke sing ‘Cupid,’ Otis [Redding] sing ‘Dock of the Bay,’ David Ruffin sing ‘My Girl,'” he admits. “I’m a give-[’em]-what-they-wanter type of bloke.”

Right now, Rod’s tour is scheduled to wrap up September 17 in Edmonton, Canada. Tickets for most dates go on sale to the public on February 25 at 10 a.m. local time; Canadian dates go on sale March 4 via LiveNation.com.  Details on pre-sales, which start on Monday, can be found at RodStewart.com.

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Fender has created a limited-edition replica version of George Harrison‘s 1968 rosewood Telecaster, which the late Beatle used during the 1969 sessions for the band’s Let It Be album and played at the group’s historic rooftop concert in London, as seen in the acclaimed Disney+ docuseries The Beatles: Get Back.

The instrument is available for a list price of $2,900, and only 1,000 copies will be produced.

The original 1968 rosewood Telecaster was a prototype model that Fender gave to Harrison in late 1968.

The guitar’s features include a chambered rosewood body, a late-1960s “C”-shaped rosewood neck, a rosewood fretboard, two vintage 1964 Telecaster pickups, “F”-stamped tuners and a neckplate that boasts an engraved George Harrison’s signature and his tradmark Om logo.

In a YouTube video promoting the George Harrison Rosewood Telecaster, Fender product manager notes that the guitar “has a sound all its own, with bell-like highs, smooth mids and punchy lows.”

The guitar comes packaged in a hardshell case.

Visit Fender.com for full details.

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Now we know why Journey‘s upcoming North American trek is called the 2022 Freedom Tour. Guitarist Neal Schon took to his Instagram page today to reveal that the band’s new studio album is titled Freedom.

Schon posted a photo that shows Journey’s logo, the title Freedom and the record’s 15-song track list, along with a message that reads, “Teaser…it’s coming and it’s loaded.”

The album includes lead single “The Way We Used to Be,” which was released back in June of 2021, as well as songs titled “Together We Run,” “Still Believe in Love,” “After Glow,” “Let It Rain,” “All Day All Night” and “United We Stand.”

Schon also posted a note today on his Twitter feed about the forthcoming album, writing, “I wanted to stick true artistically to the times and values of older albums where every track means something and it’s meant to be played from top to bottom and take you on a ride…no pun intended ‘JOURNEY FREEDOM.'”

No word yet on a release date.

Freedom will be Journey’s first new studio album since 2011’s Eclipse. It’s also the band’s first new album since the 2020 firings of longtime bassist Ross Valory and drummer Steve Smith, who were replaced, respectively, by Randy Jackson and Narada Michael Walden.

Journey’s current lineup features Schon, keyboardist Jonathan Cain, singer Arnel Pineda, keyboardist/backing singer Jason Derlatka, and drummer Deen Castronovo. It’s not clear whether Jackson or Walden will be touring with the band.

Journey’s Freedom Tour 2022, featuring special guest Toto, kicks off February 22 in Pittsburgh.

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Mariah Carey may soon have to take the witness stand and testify against her brother, Morgan Carey, who claims that his famous sister defamed him in her best-selling memoir.  He first filed his case in March 2021, claiming his sister was spreading “malicious falsehoods” that caused “serious damage to his reputation.”

According to court documents obtained by ABC News, Justice Barbara Jaffe of New York ruled that Mariah could be sued for defamation over two passages in The Meaning of Mariah Carey.  The Grammy winner had stated that Morgan, who is 10 years her senior, had a criminal past and sold narcotics.  

“Although Carey maintains that the phrase ‘sometimes drug dealing’ is a ‘rhetorical epithet,’ in light of the earlier statement that plaintiff had supplied clubgoers with ‘powdered party favors,’ the average reader could understand this phrase to mean that plaintiff had committed a serious crime,” Jaffe ruled on Wednesday.

While the judge ruled that Morgan can sue to hold his sister liable, Jaffe rejected his request to also name Macmillan Publishing Group, the book’s publisher, as a defendant.  The judge wrote, “Evidence that Carey was a difficult person does not demonstrate that publisher defendants entertained or should have entertained doubts about the veracity of her statements at the time of publication.”

Morgan will have to refile a new complaint against Mariah, as his original case singled out eight passages.  Jaffe rejected six of those passages, saying they didn’t meet the standards of defamation, but said the sections about Morgan’s alleged drug dealing did satisfy the requirements.

Once Morgan refiles, his case can then proceed to trial. 

That isn’t the only legal battle Mariah is potentially facing over her memoir.  Her sister, Alison, similarly filed suit over certain passages in the book.

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A partial list of artists who will perform at the 2022 Beale Street Music Festival was revealed in December, but now the full lineup has been announced for the event, which takes place April 29 to May 1 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Van Morrison, Counting Crows, Sarah McLachlan and Elvin Bishop are among the artists who have joined the bill. Other notable new additions to the lineup include Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, Indigo Girls, Grace Potter, Patty Griffin, Chevelle, Spoon, and Death Cab for Cutie.

Previously announced artists set to play the festival include Lindsey Buckingham, Foo Fighters, The Smashing Pumpkins, Toad the Wet Sprocket, rap star Lil Wayne, and blues guitarist Sue Foley.

This year’s event will take place at the Fairgrounds in Liberty Park, since the Memphis festival’s traditional site, Tom Lee Park, is undergoing renovations.

For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit MemphisinMay.org.

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