This month, Metallica released a single as part of their Vinyl Club subscription service featuring recordings from their performance at the Chris CornellI Am the Highway tribute concert in 2019. The release was noticed by the late Soundgarden frontman’s widow, Vicky Cornell, who shared her gratitude toward the metal legends.
“Thank you so much to Metallica for the love and appreciation that you have shown for Chris and for memorializing that love, admiration and support from your performances at the I Am the Highway tribute on this truly amazing and special vinyl,” Vicky wrote in an Instagram post, which is also credited to her children Toni and Christopher.
“Joining the tribute concert meant so much to me and my children and to so many fans around the world,” the post continues. “I know how proud Chris would be, not only because you were there as his friends, but also because he was such a huge Metallica fan.”
Vicky also thanked drummer Lars Ulrich in particular for his comments about her husband.
“Thank you so much and thank you @larsulrich for your very kind words about Chris,” she wrote. “It is true that ‘a man is not dead while his name is still spoken.’ Thank you for continuing to honor him.”
The Vinyl Club single features Metallica’s performances of the Soundgarden songs “All Your Lies” and “Head Injury.”
In related news, Metallica has released a new unboxing video for the upcoming Black Album 30th anniversary deluxe reissue, due out September 10. The clip features former bassist Jason Newsted opening and commenting on the package.
On August 6, in celebration of the release of the 50th anniversary reissues of the late George Harrison‘s 1970 album All Things Must Pass, a temporary living-art installation depicting the album’s cover opened at London’s Duke of York Square.
Now, a mini documentary about the creation of the installation, featuring appearances by George’s son, Dhani, and widow, Olivia, has premiered at Harrison’s official YouTube channel.
The All Things Must Pass cover features a photo of George seated on a stool on the lawn of his Friar Park estate outside of London, surrounded by several garden-gnome statues. For the installation, which will remain open until August 20, celebrated floral artist Ruth Davis created two giant gnomes out of flowers and foliage.
The display also features a wooden stool and oversized rubber gardening boots, similar to the ones Harrison wears in the album’s cover pic.
The documentary features an interview with Dhani at Friar Park discussing his father’s passion for gardening at the estate, noting that “the connection with nature…that’s how he meditated and prayed.”
Dhani also explains how the florist was given a tour of Friar Park’s grounds and conferred with Olivia Harrison about the types of foliage to use for the display, “trying to deconstruct Friar Park and then build it in the center of London as a gnome.”
The video ends with Olivia visiting the finished installation.
Checking out the display, Olivia gushes, “It’s the most joyous thing I’ve ever seen!”
She then notes, “I know how I feel so I know that George [would]…be over the moon with this. He loved nothing more than being in a garden, and his association with gnomes precedes him. It’s beautiful and skillful…and it’s very creative.”
The All Things Must Pass reissues are available now.
Jill Scott is an angel who returns to Earth to transform sadness to joy at a junior high school in the upcoming Highway to Heaven movie, based on the 1980s TV series of the same name. The television film features the three-time Grammy winner as Angela Stewart, a temporary guidance counselor.
In the trailer released Tuesday, Stewart says, ”I am not like anyone else. I am an angel. I can see and do things that other people can’t do.” After she meets Cody, a young student grieving over the death of his mother, she brings happiness to his life.
The school principal tells her, “You are too good to be true. Are you a unicorn?”
Angela replies, ”I am actually a real an angel,” and he laughs. Angela then tells him, “My boss has such big plans for you.”
Later in the trailer, she declares her mission is “to come to those who are looking for a miracle.”
Highway to Heaven will premiere on Saturday, November 6 at 8:00 p.m. ET/:00 p.m. CT on Lifetime.
Dean Guitars CEO Evan Rubinson has responded to the lawsuit filed by Rita Haney on behalf of late Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott‘s estate.
On Monday, Haney — Dime’s longtime partner and the trustee of his estate — sued Dean for fraud, breach of written agreement and false endorsement, among other counts, allegedly committed after their contract with the guitar brand had expired. She also accused Rubinson specifically of being “incredibly disrespectful and often times belligerent to the legacy” of Dimebag.
Dimebag had first signed a deal with Dean in 2004, and the partnership continued with his estate following his murder later that year. In filing the lawsuit, Haney also announced that the collaboration with Dean has now ended.
“We have always treated Dime and his brother Vinnie with the utmost respect and loyalty,” Rubinson writes. “We have enjoyed a long-standing, 17-year relationship with Dime and Vinnie, and continue that relationship with Vinnie’s estate on the drum side.”
The statement continues, “We are shocked and saddened to see the actions that Ms. Haney has taken after both the Abbott brothers have tragically passed away, and we wish her the best in her future endeavors. However, it is unfortunate that Ms. Haney has allowed her unrealistic demands and accusations to dictate the future of the Dimebag Darrell legacy in the absence of Dime’s immediate family.”
Rubinson notes, “Dean Guitars is proud to have played a role in ensuring Dime’s legacy not only survived but thrived over the bast 17 years.”
He adds, “Ms. Haney’s claims — across the board — are baseless, without any merit, and not grounded in reality. We will allow the full truth to come out as the legal process takes its course.”
Former That ’70s Show and Orange Is the New Black star Laura Prepon, who was once a dedicated Scientologist, now reveals that she hasn’t “practiced [it] in close to five years.”
Prepon explains to People, “I’ve always been very open-minded, even since I was a child. I was raised Catholic and Jewish. I’ve prayed in churches, meditated in temples,” adding about the L. Ron Hubbard-founded belief system, “it’s no longer part of my life.”
The actress credits what she refers to as her evolution to being the mother of two children with actor Ben Foster, noting, “If motherhood has taught me anything so far, it’s that something can work out for a period of time, and then you move on and evolve.”
The 41-year-old Prepon recalls, “As a new mom, I was riddled with anxiety…My friends who were mothers with older kids said, ‘Laura, this is a phase, you’ll move on…’ And that has transcended into other parts of my life. We’re all evolving. I always see that with my kids.”
Now, Prepon finds peace by meditating daily with her husband. “I’m really liking it, because it’s something that helps me to hear my own voice and it’s something we can do together,” she says.
In her recent memoir, You and I, as Mothers, the actress revealed the “complicated” relationship she has with her own mother, including that her mother taught her how to be bulimic when she was young. She tells People that her mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Prepon says, “I have to come to terms with the fact that this woman who was an incredible force in my life — is fading. It’s very hard to watch. I just try to be there and stay present for the good moments we have.”
Add Ellie Goulding to the list of celebrities who are on Britney Spears‘ side. After watching the Framing Britney Spears documentary, Ellie says, she couldn’t help thinking about the pressures she’s had to face in her own career.
“It really affected me,” she tells the Daily Mail‘s You magazine about the documentary. “Britney was so young, and she was thrown into this circus without any support.”
Ellie continues, “The same people who want your music and want more from you are also telling you that they want less: ‘I don’t want you to have mental health issues. I want you to be fine and perform and write perfect songs for me.'”
She recalls, “When I started out, there wasn’t much help and mental health wasn’t talked about,” while noting, “There’s more awareness now, but we’ve let a lot of people down, people who have brought us so much joy through their music.”
Ellie says, like Britney, she was sometimes forced to do things she wasn’t comfortable with. “I thought I had to look a certain way and dress a certain way,” she explains. “I thought I had to squish myself into some kind of box as a pop singer.”
She reveals, “I was repeatedly encouraged to wear the girliest, sexiest, most feminine option at any photo shoot. I was made to feel as though I wasn’t enough by myself. I began to think it was way more interesting for me to have a storyline with a man at the forefront, which triggered a wild insecurity of who I actually was without them.”
She notes, “If I just had a bit of what I have now, which is trusting and respecting myself, it would have been a different story.”
(WASHINGTON) — Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he’s in touch with superintendents who are actively defying Florida and Texas governors’ orders not to mandate masks in schools and will have their back should they lose state funding.
“I have had conversations with superintendents and they have asked if this goes in that direction, how do we get support? My message is, open the schools safely. We got your back,” Cardona told ABC News in an exclusive interview Tuesday after touring P.S. 5 Port Morris, a public school in the Bronx.
Last week, Cardona sent a letter to superintendents in Florida reassuring them that if Gov. Ron DeSantis followed through on a threat to withhold salaries from schools that imposed mask mandates, federal funding could make up the difference. The Republican governor has banned mask mandates in the state of Florida — which has the highest case rate in the nation — an order that goes against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest guidance for all students and school faculty to wear masks in the classroom this fall because of the heightened spread of the delta variant.
Cardona also expressed hope that schools will stay in session this year.
“I’m hopeful, I’m optimistic — and if the adults do their job, our kids will be fine,” Cardona said.
“We’re always going to be monitoring changes in delta and we’re willing to move if we need to move, but right now we can safely return our students to school if we follow the mitigation strategies, get vaccinated when you can,” he added.
But states have diverged over what that “job” is along political lines, with many Republican-led states choosing to leave the decision on masks up to students and parents rather than follow CDC guidelines.
Eight states have banned schools from requiring masks for students — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. But Texas and Arkansas have some of the highest case rates in the nation behind Florida.
Like Florida, some Texas school districts have gone against the ban on mask mandates.
But outbreaks have already been reported in districts that have returned to school, particularly in schools that aren’t requiring masks. Hillsborough County Public Schools, which includes the city of Tampa, Florida, announced Monday that 5,599 students and 316 school employees are currently either in isolation or quarantine after COVID exposure at school. The school board intends to discuss implementing mandatory mask mandates at the next board meeting, officials said.
The return to school nationwide is also coinciding with a surge in cases among young people, who make up a large portion of the unvaccinated in the United States. More than 121,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported among kids last week, another “substantial” increase from weeks prior, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association said in a report Monday.
Pediatric coronavirus-related hospital admissions now equal the most seen at any point of the pandemic.
Severe illness due to COVID-19 remains “uncommon” among children, the two organizations wrote in the report, but they warned that there is an urgent need to collect more data on long-term impacts, “including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects.”
The rise in cases has fueled concerns that students will not be able to stay in school without frequent COVID scares sending them back to remote learning.
“Delta is different, so we must pay attention to transmission rates, to what we’re learning about the delta variant, and we as educators have to be nimble to make sure we’re addressing what we’re learning from our health experts,” Cardona said. “Again, it’s really important that we work in tandem with our health experts to make sure we have a safe school reopening.”
But Cardona stressed that students should not fall back into remote-learning options because the benefits of the classroom still outweigh the risks.
“Students learn best in the classroom. We know that. And we have to give them an opportunity to get into the classroom to build relationships,” Cardona said.
Asked if the CDC should tailor guidelines for schools with lower vaccination rates, Cardona said he’s confident those rates will rise once children return to the classroom because of the effort to reach kids in one place — education and pop-up clinics targeting kids at school.
“I’m really confident that when school gets started, and our communities come back, they’re gonna look to the schools to be a place where they can get vaccinated,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is expected to announce, as soon as this week, a plan to roll out booster shots for all Americans who got Pfizer or Moderna COVID vaccines more than eight months ago.
Any plan would be contingent upon getting a green light from federal agencies who say they are still reviewing the data.
Here are five things to know about boosters:
Booster shots could begin as early as mid-September
The first vaccine shots in the U.S. were given out last December — exactly eight months ago — to health care workers and nursing home residents.
It’s expected these same high-risk, high-priority groups would be first in line for booster shots come September, assuming federal regulators agree to sign off.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already given the green light for a third shot for people who are severely immunocompromised. But this group — patients getting treated for cancer or having experienced an organ transplant, for example — was considered less likely to have developed an immune response in the first place.
Booster shots for the broader public would only be called for if the FDA agrees with vaccine makers and independent studies that immunity is indeed waning.
8 months isn’t a precise measure of when immunity wanes
A person’s immune system is a complicated puzzle, with antibodies in a person’s blood stream as only one piece.
Scientists said they are looking at other clues too, including closely watching COVID-related hospitalizations involving vaccinated people.
Pfizer and BioNTech, which partnered to develop the nation’s first vaccine, said it has early data suggesting that a booster dose anywhere from six to 12 months after the initial vaccination will help maintain a high level of protection. Their data have not been shared publicly yet.
In particular, the company said a person getting a booster between eight and nine months after their primary shot showed higher neutralizing antibody levels against the delta variant, compared to people who received the original two doses.
But Pfizer and BioNTech also said in a joint statement that they are waiting for more data before officially submitting a request to allow for booster shots.
New hospitalization data might hold more clues on vaccine immunity
The number of vaccinated people winding up in the hospital with COVID-related complications is an important clue to how well the vaccines are working.
If a vaccinated person becomes infected with the virus but does not become seriously ill or transmit the virus to others, then the vaccine is still working well. But if health officials start reporting a rising number of hospitalizations involving vaccinated patients, that could signal that immunity among vaccinated populations is beginning to wane.
So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said boosters aren’t needed, estimating that 97% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
But that estimate was based on hospital-reported data from spring, before the delta variant began spreading wildly. The CDC said it’s not ready to release updated numbers yet, but is working on getting a clearer picture of delta’s impact on the vaccines.
The FDA and CDC still have to sign off
Pfizer and BioNTech have submitted early data to the FDA, but are still tracking people who got the vaccine. When those results are finalized, the companies are expected to ask the FDA to green light the third shots.
If the FDA signs off, an independent advisory panel to the CDC will likely convene to discuss what exactly should be recommended to Americans. That would then pave the way for an official recommendation by the CDC, along with advice to doctors and patients on getting a booster.
The FDA and CDC have said previously that booster shots for broader populations aren’t needed yet. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top medical adviser to President Joe Biden, has called the possibility inevitable because of the likelihood that protection would diminish over time.
Less is known about people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine
So far, the plan to roll out boosters is focused on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which rely on similar technology.
Less is known about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which rolled out later than Pfizer and Moderna and has been given to considerably fewer people.
Government officials say more data are expected in coming weeks on precisely how much protection J&J allows — information that will be critical in determining whether J&J recipients might need a boost.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Molly Nagle, Sarah Kolinovsky, Sony Salzman and Eric Strauss contributed to this report.
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler‘s Janie’s Fund charity has partnered with the CITIZEN-T project and visual artist Brian Fox to offer a limited-edition designer T-shirt featuring a portrait of the rock legend, each one signed by Tyler.
Only 100 shirts are available, priced at $300, and money raised by the sale will benefit the Janie’s Fund’s LifeSet program, which provides therapeutic support for young women between the ages of 17 and 22 that have experienced various forms of abuse.
The T-shirts are previously used or recycled items that are given new life with the Tyler portrait art, and are presented in zero-waste packaging. You can buy the shirts now at JaniesFund.org; purchases are limited to five per person.
“The fusion of art, sustainable fashion and recovery is perfectly aligned with our values,” says Janie’s Fund executive Richard Shaw. “We’ve been fortunate to partner with artist Brian Fox since Janie’s Fund was launched in 2015, and this CITIZEN-T collaboration is directly bringing our passion forward to create more awareness to this issue that Steven cares deeply about.”
Adds CITIZEN-T founder Stephanie Dillon, “Many of us have been inspired by Aerosmith’s artistry for years but this work to bring awareness and raise funds to help others overcome their trauma is something I’m deeply connected to, and it’s so very timely and needed. We hope this is just the first of what will be many collaborations to help girls and the environment heal.”
Netflix has released the first images of The Crown‘s newest cast members to play Prince Charles and Lady Diana in the in-production fifth season of the Emmy-winning drama.
Dominic West, a veteran of the acclaimed show The Wire, and films including 300, is a dead ringer for a greying Charles in the early ’90s as his marriage to Princess Diana continued to crumble. They divorced officially in 1996.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Tenet veteran Elizabeth Debecki is shown with her head on a pillow, looking haunted. Diana, of course, battled an eating disorder and constant tabloid pressure as their royal marriage splintered amid Charles’ extra-marital romance with his current wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, leading to Diana’s own affair with James Hewitt, played in the series by Daniel Donskoy.
In The Crown‘s fourth season, Emma Corrin plays a younger Diana Spencer, who falls for and eventually marries Josh O’Connor‘s Prince Charles in 1981.
