Classic Hits

Sammy Hagar & The Circle will team up with REO Speedwagon next year for a May 7 concert in Laughlin, Nevada, at the Laughlin Event Center.

Opening the show will be Sir, Please, a band featuring REO Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin‘s twin sons Josh and Shane.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on Wednesday, November 10, at 10 a.m. PT, while pre-sale tickets will be available starting today at 10 a.m. PT via Ticketmaster.com.

The concert is one of two performances Hagar and his current band have confirmed for 2022, along with a headlining appearance on July 8 at the Lakefront Music Fest in Prior Lake, Minnesota.

First up for Hagar, the Red Rocker will wrap up his 2021 “Sammy Hagar and Friends” residency at The Strat hotel and casino in Las Vegas with concerts this Friday, November 12, and Saturday, November 13.

Sammy’s Vegas gigs have featured various guest musicians joining him, including his friend Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead, who hit the stage with Hagar and his longtime backing group The Wabos this past Friday. They played three songs — covers of Buddy Holly‘s “Not Fade Away,” The Rascals‘ “Good Lovin’,” and Depeche Mode‘s “Personal Jesus.”

Meanwhile, Hagar and The Circle will head to the Lone Star State in December for the “A Toast to Texas” tour, a four-show outing that also will celebrate the recent launch of Sammy’s Beach Bar Cocktail Co., the Red Rocker’s new line of canned sparkling rum cocktails.

The tour will visit Fort Worth on December 3, San Antonio on December 4, Austin on December 6 and Houston on December 8.

Visit RedRocker.com for more details about Hagar’s itinerary.

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As Graham Nash prepares for the November 16 release of his new photo book A Life in Focus, which offers a career-spanning look at his photography, the 79-year-old folk-rock legend also has some interesting music projects on the horizon.

Nash tells ABC Audio that one project reunites him with his childhood friend and Hollies co-founder Allan Clarke.

“I’m actually working on an album with Allan Clarke, my friend since I was six years old,” he reveals. “We’ve been remotely recording. We’ve got eight tracks, and it’ll be a really fun album.”

Clarke, who was The Hollies’ lead singer, retired from the group in 1999, partly due to vocal-cord issues, but he returned to the music in 2019 with a new solo album, Resurgence.

“[Allan’s] singing…really, really well,” Nash says. “He’s a very underrated singer. He’s one of the most underrated lead singers in a pop band ever…He’s got a great voice, and it’s back.”

Meanwhile, Graham also reports that he’s continuing to work on a follow-up to his most recent solo album, 2016’s This Path Tonight.

Nash already had reported that he had seven songs left over from writing sessions for This Path Tonight that he plans to include on his next album, and now he tells ABC Audio that he’s continued to write during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has recorded five tracks remotely with his touring musicians.

As Graham explains, he records acoustic guitar and vocal tracks, which he sends to Shane Fontayne, who adds guitar and bass. The recordings are then sent to drummer Toby Caldwell and then Toby’s brother, keyboardist Todd Caldwell. After Todd records keys, he sends all the tracks back to Nash for mixing.

Graham says the process is “an interesting sonic journey.”

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KISS‘ Paul Stanley is mourning the death of his father, William Eisen, who has passed away at 101 years old.

“My dad William Eisen has left this earth after 101 years & 7 months,” Stanley tweeted Sunday alongside a photo of him and his dad.

“His thirst for knowledge never [waned],” the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer added. “He could speak on virtually any subject. His pride in my accomplishments was heartwarming as was seeing his love of my family. He said he’d always be with me and he will.”

Stanley, 69, and KISS are currently off the road after playing the KISS Kruise earlier this month. Their planned Las Vegas residency, which was scheduled to kick off in December, was recently canceled.

My dad William Eisen has left this earth after 101 years & 7 months. His thirst for knowledge never wained. He could speak on virtually any subject. His pride in my accomplishments was heartwarming as was seeing his love of my family. He said he’d always be with me and he will. pic.twitter.com/uKWHP9Okax

— Paul Stanley (@PaulStanleyLive) November 8, 2021

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While some of the things that Alanis Morissette has experienced in her career seem like no laughing matter, she’s teaming with ABC to develop a comedy based on her life, Deadline reports.

Alanis is serving as an executive producer for the show, which called Relatable, and she’ll also write original music for it. The show focuses on a 40-something married woman with three kids who spent her early years as a rock star famous for her “anthems of female rage and teen angst” — sound like anyone you know?  The comedy will apparently arise from her inability to get her children to listen to her.

The characters, according to Deadline, are “fictional and non-biographical,” though Alanis’ life will “loosely inform” the show.

A documentary on Alanis will also air later this month on HBO, though the singer has publicly denounced the film.

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Billy Joel announced last week that tickets for his show on September 23, 2022, at Houston’s Minute Maid Park would go on sale this Friday. However, those plans have now been put on hold following the tragedy at this weekend’s Astroworld festival, which left eight people dead and hundreds more injured.

“Out of respect for the Houston community after the events at Astroworld on Friday, organizers for the upcoming Billy Joel concert scheduled for Minute Maid Park in Houston…announced they are delaying the on sale until further notice,” reads a statement on Billy’s website. “Organizers will provide an update shortly on when ticket sales will begin.”

On Friday night in Houston, the Astroworld festival, organized by and featuring rap superstar Travis Scott, ended in disaster when the crowd of 50,000 surged forward; many fans were crushed or trampled and multiple people collapsed. 

The concert’s promoter reportedly agreed to halt the show, but Scott continued to play. Two concertgoers have already filed lawsuits in the festival’s aftermath as of early Monday. 

Scott has said he’ll pay funeral costs for the victims, and will provide refunds for anyone who bought tickets to the event.  He described himself as “absolutely devastated” by the tragedy, and said he is “working closely with everybody to get to the bottom of this.”

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So, The Beatles are the greatest band of all time, right? Not if you ask Paul McCartney.

Sir Paul himself feels that The Everly Brothers deserve the honor.

British newspaper the Daily Mail reports that, according to a passage in his new book The Lyrics, the former Beatle says he and band mate John Lennon were plenty inspired by the pioneering American rock ‘n’ roll duo.

“The biggest influence on John and me was The Everly Brothers. To this day, I just think they’re the greatest,” McCartney expressed. “And they were different.”

“You’d heard barbershop quartets, you’d heard [British pop trio] the Beverley Sisters — three girls — you’d all heard that. But just two guys, two good-looking guys? So we idolized them. We wanted to be them,” he remarked.

The Everly Brothers, comprised of brothers Don and Phil Everly, are credited for pioneering the country-rock genre.  The duo also experimented with infusing pop elements into their music, which include the hit singles “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie” and many more. Other artists influenced by the duo included Simon & Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees and The Hollies.

Don passed away in August of this year.  He was predeceased by Phil, who died on January 3, 2014.

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With Led Zeppelin celebrating the 50th anniversary today of the release of its classic 1971 untitled studio album, better known as Led Zeppelin IV, comes news that the record has just been certified 24 times Platinum by the RIAA for notching 24 million equivalent album unit sales in the U.S.

This moves Led Zeppelin IV into a tie with The Beatles‘ White Album for the fifth-best-selling album ever in the States.

The only albums ahead of Zeppelin IV are the Eagles‘ Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975, at 38-times platinum; Michael Jackson‘s Thriller, at 34-times platinum; the Eagles’ Hotel California, at 26-times platinum; and AC/DC‘s Back in Black, at 25-times platinum.

Led Zeppelin recorded most of Led Zeppelin IV‘s basic tracks while staying at a country house called Headley Grange in Hampshire, England, using The Rolling Stones‘ mobile studio.

Led Zeppelin IV featured several of the band’s best-known tunes, including perhaps their most famous song of all, the epic rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven.”

Robert Plant recalls that he was at Headley Grange when he began writing the lyrics for “Stairway to Heaven.”

“I was sitting next to Jimmy [Page] in front of the fire…He’d written this chord sequence and was playing it to me,” Plant remembers. “I was holding a pencil and paper and suddenly my hand is writing the words ‘There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold…’ I sat there, looked at the words and almost leaped out from my seat. Looking back, I suppose I sat down at the right moment.”

Late drummer John Bonham said around the time of Led Zeppelin IV‘s release that he felt it was the best album the band had made up till that time.

“I love it,” he added.

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Van Morrison is being sued for libel by Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann after the singer called the politician “dangerous” in a series of recent outbursts criticizing Swann over his policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sunday Life newspaper reports.

According to the paper, Swann has hired libel lawyer Paul Tweed, who has represented such high-profile clients as Harrison Ford, Justin Timberlake and Jennifer Lopez, and is preparing for a High Court showdown with Morrison this coming February, unless the case can be settled before that.

Swann’s lawyers claim that Van’s public comments were equivalent to accusing the minister of misusing his office and endangering the public, and maintain that the singer falsely suggested that Swann had misrepresented facts regarding the pandemic.

The lawsuit stems from three separate incidents where Morrison verbally attacked Swann. The first occurred at a June concert in Belfast where Morrison, angered that some of his upcoming concerts had been canceled because of the pandemic, attempted to lead the audience in a chant of “Robin Swann is very dangerous.”

The second incident occurred when a Sunday Life reporter asked Van to comment about whether he regretted his remarks about Swann at his Belfast show and Morrison responded, “No, no I don’t regret it…Of course he’s dangerous.”

The third instance cited was a pair of videos Van posted on his YouTube channel in which he explains why he feels Swann is dangerous, while also expressing disdain for the politician over a then-recent op-ed piece Swann wrote for Rolling Stone in which he criticized Van’s anti-lockdown views and his series of recent protest songs he’d released in which he expressed those views.

Starting last year, Morrison began releasing songs protesting U.K.-imposed regulations meant to curtail the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Van believes the regulations are taking away people’s freedoms and destroying musicians’ livelihoods.

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Ex-UB40 member Terence Wilson, better known as Astro, died Saturday. He was 64.

The vocalist passed away following “a very short illness,” according to a tweet posted on his and founding UB40 lead singer Ali Campbell‘s joint Twitter account on Saturday.

“We are absolutely devastated and completely heartbroken to have to tell you that our beloved Astro has today passed away after a very short illness,” the statement reads. “The world will never be the same without him.”

Astro joined UB40 in 1979, a year after Grammy-nominated band’s formation, and remained with the group until 2013. Aside from contributing spoken-word vocals to the band’s work, he also played percussion and trumpet with the group.

After leaving the band, Astro teamed up with Campbell and longtime UB40 keyboardist Mickey Virtue, both of whom exited the group in 2008, to form UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro in 2014.

As part of UB40, Astro was featured on all of the group’s major hits, including their chart-topping covers of Neil Diamond‘s “Red Red Wine” and Elvis Presley‘s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and their top-10 renditions of Al Green‘s “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” and The Temptations‘ “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”

Astro’s former band also saluted his life in a tweet on Saturday, writing, “We have heard tonight, the sad news that ex-member of UB40, Terence Wilson, better know as Astro, has passed away after a short illness. Our sincere condolences to his family.”

Wilson’s family is asking for privacy during this time.  No additional information regarding Astro’s health has been made available.

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Fifty years ago today, November 8, Led Zeppelin released its classic fourth studio album, an untitled collection commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV.

The massively successful album is packed with some of the band’s best-known songs, including one of the great all-time rock anthems, “Stairway to Heaven,” and cemented Led Zeppelin’s reputation as the world’s biggest hard rock band.

Led Zeppelin IV missed topping the Billboard 200 chart, peaking at #2, but the album has gone on to sell over 23 million copies in the U.S., making it among the five best-selling studio albums ever in the States.

Besides “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin IV features “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “Misty Mountain Hop,” “Going to California” and more.

“Black Dog” reached #15 on the Billboard Hot 100, Led Zeppelin’s second highest-charting single in the U.S. after “Whole Lotta Love,” which peaked at #4 in 1970.

Two guest artists are featured on Led Zeppelin IV. Former Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny duets with Robert Plant on “The Battle of Evermore,” and original Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart plays piano on “Rock and Roll.” Denny was the only guest vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin song.

Heart sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, who famously saluted Led Zeppelin at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors by performing “Stairway to Heaven” with late Zeppelin drummer John Bonham‘s son, Jason, tell ABC Audio that Led Zeppelin IV made a major impact on them.

Ann credits the album with being “probably one of the biggest turning points of my musical life,” while Nancy says that Led Zeppelin “painted…culture-altering landscapes” on the record.

Meanwhile, a video series profiling the making of Led Zeppelin IV has been posted on the band’s YouTube channel.

Here’s the album’s full track list:

“Black Dog”
“Rock and Roll”
“The Battle of Evermore”
“Stairway to Heaven”
“Misty Mountain Hop”
“Four Sticks”
“Going to California”
“When the Levee Breaks”

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