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Alex Van Halen hopes that those coming to his new memoir, Brothers, for a tell-all will be disappointed.
“It’s not about the dirt,” Van Halen, older brother and bandmate of the late Eddie Van Halen, tells Billboard. “If I start throwing dirt, it’ll never end. I think some people would like that; that’s how projects are sold nowadays. I think it divides the audience, and we’re not here to divide. I think the tone of the book and how I want the book to be perceived is more on a spiritual and creative level. That’s why there’s very little, or any, dirt in there.
“The majority of things that were written about Ed were third party,” he continues. “They weren’t really there. I’m not degrading any of it, but it’s not accurate. I really felt like a lot of the stuff that was out there was incorrect, and it didn’t do justice to the more sensitive side of Ed. So before I die I would like to at least partially set the record straight.”
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Brothers, publishing Oct. 22 and written with New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy, acknowledges the sex and drugs and rock n’ roll. But as the title indicates it’s primarily a chronicle of the drummer’s relationship with his guitar hero brother, who passed way during Oct. 2020 at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer. The tome is undeniably emotional, with some passages written directly to his late brother. Van Halen acknowledges that the process “really took its toll on me.”
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“You have to remember we were together for 65 years; that’s a lifetime, if not more,” explains Van Halen, who was born in Amsterdam and came to the United States with his family in 1962, eventually settling in Pasadena, Calif., where the Van Halen band was formed in 1974. “(Brothers) not only forced me to look at everything Ed and I had done in our lifetime, but also — and I should thank Ed for this — it forced me to look at me. What are my motivations? Why am I really doing this? Who does anybody do this? It took me a lot of places…very heavy.”
Throughout Brothers’ 231 pages, Van Halen discloses the tight bond between him and Eddie, personally and musically — and presents the connection between those two as one and the same thing. Van Halen offers a detailed account of the entire family dynamics, too, from the influence of their father, Jan, a jazz musician, and their more strict Dutch East Indies-born mother Eugenia, and the impact of immigrating to America and being treated as outsiders. The passion for music came early and was a constant, of course, and one can read in Brothers a kind of mission on Van Halen’s part to offer a more expansive and sophisticated view of his brother’s talents.
“There was more going on than most people recognize or realize, and it’s not our job to ‘teach’ people,” explains Van Halen, who also makes use in the book of a variety of other sources, including published interviews with his brother, books by original frontman David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman, and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The brothers, who first learned to play piano, actually started out on each other’s instruments before switching as teenagers. “When Ed picked (the guitar) up he could make it sing. It was amazing. That sound, that intonation was phenomenal. You couldn’t express it in words. Everybody gets blinded by the fact Ed was such a phenomenal player (that) you’re not even understanding who the human being was. Maybe people don’t care, but I care. He’s my brother.”
Brothers of a Band
Writing about Van Halen the rock band in Brothers, Van Halen says that “me, Ed and Dave were very subversive in the way we looked at music and the political system and the way we looked at people in general…The band was dysfunctional. It was completely running on three wheels, if you will. I think Ed was quoted as saying ‘but we always played well,’ and that was ultimately what kept it together until it was no longer together. It was a very sad moment when that whole thing fell apart.” Van Halen, in fact, writes in Brothers that Van Halen’s 1985 split with Roth “was the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust. Until I lost my brother.”
Despite the acknowledged rancor with Roth over the years – and blaming Roth for the failure of a planned Eddie Van Halen tribute tour — Van Halen maintains that “I’m not angry at all with Dave. He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out. That’s why I mentioned (in the book) that the first person I called when Ed died was Dave because I felt like I owed him that, to the work we had done together and the fact that our families knew each other and the fact that everybody was sort of on the same level, if you will, when we first started. I don’t know where things went wrong…I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dave and his work ethic. I just think some of his choices were really strange to me, but that’s not my job to figure it out.”
Other than his brother’s death, Van Halen chose to stop the story with the Roth split, leaving out subsequent runs with Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone and even the reunion with Roth that started in 2007. (Roth and Hagar both wrote memoirs after their respective tenures with the band.) Van Halen cites “limitations to how big the book could be” but also says it the scope of the narrative made sense to him.
“What happened after Dave left is not the same band,” Van Halen explains. “I’m not saying it was better or worse or any of that. The fact is Ed and I did our best work whenever we played. We always gave it our best shot. But the magic was in the first years, when we didn’t know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything.” Not surprisingly, Van Halen was not responsive, either, when Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony reached out about him taking part in some way in their Best of All Worlds tour celebrating Van Halen.
“I’m not interested,” he says. “They’re not doing the band justice. They can do what they want to do. That’s not my business.”
Everybody Wants Some
Van Halen does add, however, that his auction of drum equipment and other items in June “was misinterpreted” and simply clearing out a warehouse of gear that wasn’t being used.
“I’m not quitting. I don’t know where that came from,” Van Halen says. “I’ll die with sticks in my hand.” Spinal issues he’s been battling for decades are still present, he adds, including a recent injury during a trip to a shooting range in 2022. “But with modern technology we have now I should be OK in about five years,” he says.
Despite rumors of what the Van Halens were up to between the last tour with Roth (in 2015) and Eddie’s death, Alex maintains there was little to report. “We never really talked about it,” he says. “We prefer that things just happen by some kind of magic. The issue was Ed had been dealing with cancer for quite a number of years, and some of the stuff that he was doing out of the normal procedures, if you will, had side effects. Some of the stuff that was being said about Ed was completely wrong, and it was painful…. He was fighting cancer. It’s as simple as that.”
Fans are certainly excited about the presence of a new instrumental track, “Unfinished,” that’s part of the audio version of Brothers. It hails from a trove of ideas the brothers recorded at Eddie’s 5150 studio and stashed away, and Alex anticipates releasing more of that material “when it feels right.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” he says. “I do have a certain obligation to keep it to Ed’s standards. He was meticulous and he was a pain in the ass…and I need to have access to the right takes, ’cause not every day did we play at our best. But we always had the tape recorders running. We didn’t go in the studio like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna make a record from beginning to end.’ We had little pieces here, little pieces there, you put ’em away until the time comes and you go, ‘Hey, I think I like that piece…’ and then go back to it and build something from there.” He told Rolling Stone that he’s approached OpenAI about using its technology to help turn some of the material into songs.
“I know people want to hear it,” Van Halen adds, before cautioning that, “the other side of the coin is this doesn’t sound like Van Halen. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” He says that for future releases he’s also “looking forward to getting some people involved…other musicians and producers. You have to have the right team, because not everybody can do everything. So we’ll see.”
For the time being Van Halen is focused on promoting Brothers, which he’d also like to turn into a movie — though he notes that, “I learned a long time ago not to put your hope in things that don’t exist yet. I know people who would be willing to participate, but it’s a very complex fabric of things that need to happen.” Meanwhile Van Halen has three book events lined up — signings at Barnes & Noble in New York on Oct. 21 and at Books & Greetings in Northvale, N.J., the following day, and a live conversation on Oct. 24 at the Frost Auditorium in Culver City, Calif.
“People can ask whatever they like — that’s their prerogative,” Van Halen says. “It’s my prerogative to answer. Or not answer.”
One thing Van Halen will make clear, however, is that his brother is still a strong presence in his life.
“He’s not gone for me,” Van Halen says, citing the “island voodoo” of their mother’s upbringing and the Spooky Action at a Distance concept of quantum physics. “He’s still there. His spirit’s here, and it’s not something you can grab or touch. There’s something between us that’s just connected on a level that is beyond explanation. Scientists will tell you that you cannot destroy energy, it just takes different shapes, and that’s kind of how it is for me with Ed.
“I really had a tough time when Ed passed — full of rage, for a number of reasons. I heard this thing by Billy Bob Thornton; he just said basically when his brother died he didn’t know how to deal with it, and he basically said that you’re not running away from the fact that you’re not together anymore. You accept it for what it is and then the pain will slowly diminish, but it’ll never go away. That’s why i said (in the book), ‘When I see you again, I’m gonna kick yo’ ass…’”
Brothers by Alex Van Halen
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Ringo Starr‘s first new full-length album in six years, Look Up, will find the former Beatles drummer and solo star going country, again. The 11-track album of original songs produced and co-written by T-Bone Burnett is due out on Jan. 10 and was prefaced on Friday (Oct. 18) by the tear-in-your tea ballad “Time On My Hands.”
“I have loved Ringo Starr and his playing and his singing and his aesthetic for as long as I can (or care to) remember,” said Grammy-winning producer/songwriter Burnett, 76, in a statement. “He changed the way every drummer after him played, with his inventive approach to the instrument. And, he has always sung killer rockabilly, as well as being a heartbreaking ballad singer. To get to make this music with him was something like the realization of a 60-year dream I’ve been living. None of the work that I have done through a long life in music would have happened if not for him and his band. Among other things, this album is a way I can say thank you for all he has given me and us.”
Burnett wrote or co-wrote nine of the songs on Starr’s 21st solo album, on which the peace-and-love advocate sang and played drums; one song so written by Billy Swan and another was co-written by Starr and Bruce Sugar. According to a release announcing the project, Starr co-wrote the album’s closer, “Thankful,” which features one of Burnett’s previous collaborators, bluegrass singer/fiddler Alison Krauss.
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Burnett also roped in some other Nashville ringers for the project, including Billy Strings, Larkin Poe, Lucius and Molly Tuttle. Though pop and R&B stars dipping their toes into the country pool has become de rigueur over the past year, with swerves into the genre by Beyoncé, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, MGK and Lana Del Rey, the release noted that Starr’s appreciation for all things twangy goes back more than half a century.
“I’ve always loved country music. And when I asked T Bone to write me a song, I didn’t even think at the time that it would be a country song – but of course it was, and it was so beautiful,” Starr said of his collaboration with friend of more than four decades Burnett, which was spurred by a chance meeting in L.A. in 2022 where the ex-Beatle asked Burnett to write a song for an EP he was working on at the time.
“I had been making EPs at the time and so I thought we would do a country EP -but when he brought me nine songs I knew we had to make an album!,” Starr added of the tracks Burnett wrote that all had a country vibe. “And I am so glad we did. I want to thank, and send Peace & Love, to T Bone and all the great musicians who helped make this record. It was a joy making it and I hope it is a joy to listen to.”
“Time on My Hands” finds Starr wistfully lamenting the loss of a true love over pedal steel and gently strummed acoustic guitar, with his signature laconic vocals taking center stage in the ballad about the one that got away. “I used to have a true love/ Everything was fine/ But now she’s found a new love/ She’s no longer mine,” he sings.
From the country-tinged Beatles songs he performed and wrote, including “Act Naturally,” “What Goes On” and “Don’t Pass Me By,” to his 1970 sophomore solo album Beaucoups of Blues,” Starr has dipped his toe into the genre since his early, pre-Beatles days playing in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. In fact, the release added, Starr was so enamored with country and blues as a teenager that he tried to emigrate from London To Texas in his younger years after learning that blues great Lightnin’ Hopkins lived there.
Starr’s first new full-length album since 2019’s What’s My Name, will get a proper country welcome on Jan. 14-15, 2025 when the singer/drummer headlines the legendary Ryman Auditorium; tickets for the show will go on sale on Oct. 25.
Check out the full track list and cover art for Look Up below.
“Breathless” (featuring Billy Strings)
“Look Up” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Time On My Hands”
“Never Let Me Go” (featuring Billy Strings)
“I Live For Your Love” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Come Back” (featuring Lucius)
“Can You Hear Me Call” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Rosetta” (featuring Billy Strings and Larkin Poe)
“You Want Some”
“String Theory” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Thankful” (featuring Alison Krauss)
Ringo Starr
Courtesy Photo
From In the Heights to Hamilton, New York City – with its frenetic pulse and intoxicating contradictions – has been an intrinsic part of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s artistic palette. Even so, the EGT-winning musical mastermind is likely to confound more than a few fans with his and Eisa Davis’ new project: Warriors, a narrative concept album based on the 1979 cult film The Warriors.
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For those who do not reflexively think “come out to play” when they hear bottles clinking, The Warriors is about a Coney Island street gang forced to traverse the city after dark while a gaggle of gangs — each one sporting a distinct fashion aesthetic, from goth baseball to silken Harlem Renaissance — tries to murder them as revenge for an assassination they’re falsely accused of. It’s the violent, stylish stuff of midnight movie legend, and despite Miranda’s affinity for NYC-based tales, a surprising choice for a guy who was recently penning smashes for Disney.
With Warriors out Friday (Oct. 18) on Atlantic, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis (a playwright/actress who appeared in Miranda’s 2021 film Tick, Tick… Boom!), hopped on the phone with Billboard to discuss the inspiration behind their gender-flipped take on the subject matter, how they landed hip-hop royalty (Nas, Busta Rhymes, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Cam’ron, Ghostface Killah and RZA) for the project and what might be next for their Warriors.
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Lin — at a preview listening session, you mentioned that about 15 years ago, someone pitched the idea of a Warriors musical to you. You summarily shot it down but kept mulling it over. What was the “aha” moment where you had a breakthrough?
Miranda: That friend, Phil Westgren, approached me in 2009, and the bulk of my thinking why it couldn’t work is, “Well, it’s an action movie.” Action movies and musicals are always fighting for the sale real estate: When you can’t talk anymore — the emotion is heightened — you fight and/or sing. So doing it as a concept album first freed us from that. It allowed us to score the moment. We approached that in different ways throughout the album. Sometimes we dilated a moment of action, sometimes it’s a montage and you hear sound effects and by the end the Warriors are victorious. (laughs) The other thing that made it compelling to write was flipping the gender of the Warriors as a female gang. I had that notion in response to seeing GamerGate happen online around 2015. These toxically online men doxxing women’s home addresses, the chaos of it struck me as a very Luther thing to do. Luther shoots Cyrus, blames the Warriors and then watches the fun unfold. It seemed to be the same malignant chaos. That thought led me to thinking of the Warriors as a female gang and suddenly it got really interesting to write. Every plot point is wrinkled or changed in some fundamental way. I got excited by the notion of writing women’s voices surviving the night.
Eisa, unlike Lin, you said The Warriors was not part of your childhood. What was it that made you think, “I get it, I have something to say here”?
Davis: Number one: Lin asked me. Number two: Because they’re women, I thought, this is really exciting to look at the wrinkles and search for the ways that this is a specifically femme story. What is it that I’ve experienced on the streets of New York at night, or what is it that I want when it comes to protection and having a crew? We based the album on the movie; the movie is based on the novel; the novel was based on a Greek narrative from 400 B.C. Obviously, it has staying power and good bones. There’s something intrinsically human to the various responses to violence and adversity and loss that are in this story. One is that you can try and take revenge and continue the cycle of violence. Another thing the Warriors do is they defend themselves against the injustice of being falsely accused and develop more courage. Another response is to try and end that cycle of violence, try to create a peace not only in yourselves but the communities around you. All of those human responses being baked into the story, it has something very compelling to everyone.
What you said about GamerGate is interesting. Similar to the misogynist response to the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, do you think some perpetually online bros will get upset about the Warriors’ gender swap?
Miranda: Maybe. Probably. I know none of those people have seen this movie more than I have, and in many ways it’s a love letter to that original movie, too. I don’t think a beat-for-beat recreation of the movie would be satisfying. I’ve seen those adaptations, they’re not satisfying: You’re just waiting for the moment that you liked in the [original] movie. I think of this as a love letter to the original film and its own thing that could not be confused for the original film. To me, it’s the best of both worlds.
You really scored a murderer’s row of rappers to represent each borough: Nas, Cam’ron, Busta Rhymes, RZA, Ghostface Killah and Chris Rivers (Big Pun’s son). What was it like giving feedback to these legends? Lin, you’re a genius in your own right, but was that intimidating?
Davis: That’s such a great question because, of course, the only reason this murderer’s row, as you put it, are even on this album is because they already respect Lin and what he has accomplished. So everyone was on board and ready to do this. It was written for all of these rappers and what their rhythms are, but it was a question of, “Are they able to say someone else’s lines?” That’s a big deal.
Miranda: They’re used to writing their own features.
Davis: And have pride in never being ghostwritten.
Miranda: The shift was, “You’re not playing yourself. You’re playing the Bronx. You are the voice of Staten Island or the voice of Manhattan.” It’s having them playing these roles but bring what we love about them as emcees to the table.
The Warriors film is known for its violence and grit, things not usually associated with musicals. How did you go about ensuring there was a sense of danger on the album?
Miranda: It was freeing doing this as an album. Our job is to paint it as vividly as possible musically, to paint those slick sidewalk streets in your mind. To that end, we got the best artists we could find. We even got Foley artists to create some of the soundscapes of the subway and the city on top of these songs we’d written.
Davis: That really helped with creating that grit you’re talking about.
Miranda: The job is to create the sickest movie in your head possible. It’s also 1979 shot through 2024. I remember recording the scene where Luther calls an unknown associate and gives them a status update and someone said, “I don’t think young people know what a rotary phone sounds like anymore.”
Davis: That someone was Lin’s wife, Vanessa. (Miranda laughs) What we had to do was make sure we baked into the dialogue that this is a phone call, so people who had no idea what these sounds were would know. To make sure we didn’t have what you would call a pat musical theater score, something more cliché, one of the first things we did was make each other playlists and say, “This is an idea for this particular gang, they might have this particular sound.” Maybe there’s more of this Jamaican patois in the DJ so we have the Jamaican roots of hip-hop represented. Maybe we have this really amazing beat that can add this ballroom culture and have this queer, trans [vibe]. We were going for all of these vibes that would be legitimate for a pop listener.
As you’re saying, there are so many different musical styles on Warriors. Which was the hardest to get right, and which was the most fun to play with?
Miranda: They were all fun. The most joyous probably was going down to Miami to record with Marc Anthony and his orchestra. It would not sound as good as it does if we had not gone down to where Marc plays. We came in with a fully finished demo but by the time Marc is translating it to his orchestra with Sergio [George], his righthand man, he found another level of authenticity. Writing all of these was enormous fun. I think the one people will be most surprised by, considering what they’ve heard of my work, is our metal song, “Going Down,” with Luther. But I’m a big metal fan. The challenge was not so much writing the song and not blowing my voice out on my demo — because I don’t have a screamo voice — but finding the person to play Luther. My metal gods are all my age or older. (Davis laughs) We went to Atlantic and said, “Who is the next great metal singer we don’t even know about yet?” And I think Kim Dracula is one of the great discoveries of this album. Everyone who listens to this leaves going, “Who the f–k was that? And how can I hear more of that?” That was an exciting discovery.
Davis: Like Lin said, everything was so fun. It was wonderful to spend a week and a half with our Warriors, because they’re such dear friends, and hearing this gel together and sing was something only they could do. Another thing that was so joyful was to be with Mike Elizondo, our producer, at his studio, and being able to work with his band. What was challenging for me, as someone who does not have the same experience and Lin and Mike, was making sure the ideas of everything I heard was something I could articulate and share with all of our artists. Everything was so clear in how I could hear it, but how could I share how to get there? I had a nice learning curve.
I love that you flipped the Lizzies into the Bizzies, a boy band. Did you use any particular boy bands as sonic touchstones for that?
Miranda: We wanted to do the boy band to end all boy bands. The Voltron of boy bands, if you will. The Megazord. We wanted to connect New Edition all the way to Stray Kids and back again. You have Stephen Sanchez holding down the gorgeous falsetto crooner at the top; you have Joshua Henry holding down the soulful Boyz II Men era vocals; you have Timothy Hughes holding down the bass; and then Daniel Jikal representing the new school of hip-hop.
I love that you included K-pop boy band music on this, because that is the new school.
Davis: That was a flash of genius on Lin’s part. Of course, he doesn’t speak Korean….
Miranda: (laughs) How dare you tell them that!
Davis: We went to Helen Park, who is an incredible composer, and she dropped that instantaneously.
How much direction did you give her?
Miranda: We painted the picture for her: This needs to be the come on to end all come-ons, but then at the end, you sneak in the phrase “you killed our hope.” The folks who speak Korean will have a head start on how nefarious this gang is.
Ms. Lauryn Hill portrays the DJ on this, which is wildly impressive. At what point in the process did she enter?
Miranda: It was the first song we wrote. We had no plan B. We wrote it to Lauryn Hill’s voice. Essentially, we sent her manager a love letter from me and Eisa, the track and some test vocals for her to fill in however she pleased. And we stayed in touch. I learned from her manager she was an admirer of Hamilton. That kept the door from being all the way shut.
Davis: And then we prayed.
Miranda: And then a lot of prayer until one day the Dropbox came and it had all the vocals. It was so much better than we even imagined. The fact that she trusted us and sang the song we wrote will always be among the greatest honors of our careers, but then added so much of herself to it, added background vocals. She’s a co-producer on that track and she earned every bit of it.
I know you said making this a recording allowed you a certain freedom, but are you considering a staging?
Miranda: Yeah. It was an enormous privilege to be able to write it this way. This caliber of world-class talent, it’s hard to get them in the same room at the same time much less on a stage eight times a week. The fact that we get these fingerprints on these roles is incredible. And you’re talking to two theater artists. Of course, we’d love to imagine continuing to work together and what the next incarnation could be, but what we really love is that everyone gets the thing we made on Friday. It’s not a recording of the thing we made that you have to be in New York to see. Everyone gets it at the same time. As someone who lived through both Hamilton cast album going around the world and the relative inaccessibility of Hamilton because we could only serve 1400 people at a time, it’s enormously gratifying to give everyone the same gift at the same time.
Davis: If there’s a show, it’s a discrete thing. The album is its own thing and if we have a show, it’s its own thing. It’s another level of adaptation, just like we adapted the film. This is its own thing.
Final question for you both. In the movie, which is your favorite gang and why? And you can’t say the Warriors.
Davis: What’s the gang that puts their tokens in?
Miranda: (Laughs, coughs) In the opening montage, there is one gang that’s very courteously [entering the subway] like they’re on a school trip.
Davis: They’re like, “We’re going to uphold the social compact on the way to a meeting of gangs across the city.”
Miranda: My favorite gang is the Turnbull AC’s. The Turnbull AC’s walk to a Mad Max: Fury Road vibe. And a converted school bus of bats and chains is the most terrifying, awesomest thing.
Sharon Osbourne has had an inside angle on the highs and lows of the music industry for more than 45 years as her husband Ozzy’s manager. On Thursday (Oct. 17), she took aim at the music biz for what she said was its failure to support former One Direction singer and solo star Liam Payne, who died at 31 on Wednesday following a fatal fall from the balcony of his Buenos Aires, Argentina hotel room.
“Liam, my heart aches. We all let you down,” wrote Osbourne, a three-season veteran of the British X-Factor, where Payne rose to stardom after he was grouped with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson in 2010. “Where was this industry when you needed them?” she asked in an Instagram post featuring a solemn picture of the late singer who first auditioned for the reality singing show in 2008 as a solo act, before giving it another shot two years later at age 16. “You were just a kid when you entered one of the toughest industries in the world. Who was in your corner? Rest in peace my friend,” said Osbourne, who left X-Factor several years before Payne auditioned.
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Payne often talked about the overwhelming pressures he faced when 1D rocketed to global superstardom in 2012, which included suicidal thoughts and substance use, telling the BBC in 2017 that he often used alcohol to “mask” his feelings. I was very confused about fame when it all happened… and learning to be a person outside of your job was difficult,” he said at the time.
Fellow boy bander-turned-solo-star Robbie Williams weighed in as well on Thursday, expressing, “shock, sadness and confusion” about Payne’s death, while urging fans to think deeply about how they treat celebrities online and urging kindness and compassion. “I met the boys on The X Factor and ‘mentored’ them. I use the word mentored in inverted brackets cos I hardly did anything to be honest. I just hung out with them,” wrote Williams, who chronicled his tumultuous years in the spotlight as a member of British boy band Take That and his personal struggles with depression and substance use in the years after in his solo career in a self-titled 2023 Netflix documentary series.
“They were all cheeky and lovely,” Williams wrote. “I enjoyed the light hearted piss takery and Thought about all the times I was that cheeky pisstaker with the Popstars that had gone before me when I was in Take That.”
Williams said he crossed paths with the 1D stars over the years since and while saying he was “fond” of all of them, adding that what Payne’s “trials and tribulations were very similar to mine, so it made sense to reach out to offer what I could. So i did.” He also included what appeared to be a text exchange with Payne from 2022 in which Williams told the singer he was “very proud” of him, to which Payne replied, “that’s man, that means the world.”
The note from Williams included an all-caps section in which the singer reminded fans that we “don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. What pain they’re going through and what makes them behave in the way that they behave. Before we reach to judgement, a bit of slack needs to be given… Even if you don’t really think that celebrities or their families exist, they f–king do.”
Williams lamented that the “media will unfortunately carry on being the media and fame will carry on being fame.” He ended with a plea for compassion and love, writing, “As individuals though we have the power to change ourselves. We can be kinder. We can be more empathic. We can at least try to be more compassionate towards ourselves, our family, our friends, strangers in life and strangers on the internet. Even famous strangers need your compassion. What a Handsome Talented boy. What a tragic painful loss for his friends, family, fans and by the looks of the energy this moment has created – The World.”
A preliminary autopsy said that Payne died from multiple traumas and internal and external hemorrhages sustained from the impact of a fall from the third-story of the Casa Sur hotel in the Palermo district in Argentina. Police are still investigating the incident, but initial reports are that they found substances in the star’s disheveled room that appeared to be narcotics and alcohol.
Osbourne and Williams’ tributes came after all four of Payne’s former 1D bandmates — Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan — issued a joint statement mourning the loss of their brother, saying “the memories we shared with him will be treasured forever.” All four living members also offered up their own personal statements, as did Payne’s family and his former school.
See Osbourne and Williams’ tributes below.
Maggie Rogers joined the chorus of fans and musicians paying tribute to Liam Payne in the wake of the late One Direction and solo star’s death in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Wednesday at age 31. During her show at TD Garden in Boston on Thursday night (Oct. 17), Rogers took a moment to remember Payne before performing a moving cover of a beloved 1D ballad.
“This week, in particular, I’ve been thinking how precious life is and how quickly things can change,” the singer said while seated at piano, as seen in videos of the special moment posted by fans. She said she’d been preparing to go to dinner with one of her oldest friends — who she’s known since she was nine-years-old — when that person walked into the room and told her about Payne’s death. “We’re just about the same age,” said Rogers, 30. “Any time a public figure, especially a musical peer, slips off, it’s really present and I’ve been sending a bunch of love to my friends and my band the last couple days… I wanted to just honor anyone who has been touched by [One Direction’s] music or those songs.”
She then launched into a hushed piano-and-voice cover of 1D’s “Night Changes,” the final single from the group’s penultimate album, 2014’s Four. “We’re only getting older, baby/ And I’ve been thinking about it lately/ Does it ever drive you crazy/ Just how fast the night changes?,” she sang as a rush of recognition came over the hushed crowd. “Everything that you’ve ever dreamed of/ Disappearing when you wake up/ But there’s nothing to be afraid of/ Even when the night changes/ It will never change me and you.”
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Rogers was just the latest artist to pay homage to Payne, who died following a fall from the third-floor balcony of his hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday, sustaining multiple, mortal injuries.
On Thursday, Payne’s former 1D bandmates — Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan issued a joint statement mourning the loss of their brother, saying “the memories we shared with him will be treasured forever.” In addition, all four living members offered up their own personal statements, as did Payne’s family and his former school.
Rogers’ tribute came after Rita Ora honored her former duet partner just hours after his death was reported during her concert in Japan. Ora struggled to get through the lyrics to “For You,” the collab single she recorded with Payne for the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack in 2018. Overcome with emotion, Ora let the audience sing in her stead as she walked around the stage with her head bowed.
A preliminary autopsy confirmed that Payne died from multiple traumas and internal and external hemorrhages sustained from the impact of a fall from the third-story of the Casa Sur hotel in the Palermo district in Argentina. Police are still investigating the incident, but initial reports are that they found substances in the star’s disheveled room that appeared to be narcotics and alcohol.
Watch Rogers’ tribute to Payne below.
Niall Horan joined his former One Direction brothers in paying tribute to their late bandmate and friend Liam Payne in a heartfelt personal tribute posted on Friday morning (Oct.18). After a group statement from the former 1D members and individual notes from Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, Horan’s emotional letter touched on the universal feeling of wishing you had one more goodbye, one more hug, or just another quiet moment with the ones you love.
“I’m absolutely devastated about the passing of my amazing friend, Liam. It just doesn’t feel real,” Horan wrote in an Instagram post featuring a smiling photo of the two from their One Direction days. The tribute came less than 48 hours after a preliminary autopsy report said Payne, 31, died following a fall from the third-floor balcony of his hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, sustaining multiple, mortal injuries.
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“Liam had an energy for life and a passion for work that was infectious. He was the brightest in every room and always made everyone feel happy and secure,” Horan continued. “All the laughs we had over the years, sometimes about the simplest of things, keep coming to mind through the sadness. We got to live out our wildest dreams together and I will cherish every moment we had forever. The bond and friendship we had doesn’t happen often in a lifetime.”
Horan said he felr fortunate that he got to see Payne recently when the “Strip That Down” singer attended one of Niall’s shows at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires on Oct. 2. “I sadly didn’t know that after saying goodbye and hugging him, I would be saying goodbye forever. It’s heartbreaking,” Horan lamented. His tribute concluded with a message of love for Payne’s family, including the late singer’s seven-year-old son, Bear.
“Love you brother,” he concluded.
Horan’s older brother, Greg, wrote that he too was “heartbroken” over the loss of Payne. “You were a top young boy to a man a son a brother you are only one of 4 lads I was happy enough to take my place in nialls life as a brother you will be forever missed,” he wrote.
In an earlier solo message, Styles said he was “truly devastated” by the loss of his friend, sharing that Payne’s “greatest joy was making other people happy, and it was an honour to be alongside him as he did it.”
Tomlinson lamented the loss of his “brother,” saying, “Liam was somebody I looked up to everyday, such a positive, funny, and kind soul.” Zayn’s message nodded to the times the two “butted heads,” but focused on the kindness Payne showed him during dark days. “I never got to thank you for supporting me through some of the most difficult times in my life,” he said. “When I was missing home as a 17 yr old kid you would always be there with a positive outlook and reassuring smile and let me know you were my friend and I was loved.”
In addition to their own posts, 1D also issued a joint statement on Thursday (Oct. 17), writing that, “the memories we shared with him will be treasured forever.”
Local authorities have said that believe Payne was not sober at the time of his death, reporting that they found substances that appeared to be narcotics and alcoholic drinks in his room. In the moments leading up to the star’s death, a hotel manager called 911 to report that a guest was “overwhelmed with drugs and alcohol” and “destroying [their] entire room”; by the time police arrived on scene, Payne had already fallen from the balcony of his room and died due to his injuries.
At press time there was no information on funeral arrangements for Payne.
See Horan’s tribute below.
He’s back: Sam Fender has announced a string of arena shows in the U.K. and Ireland for later this year. The Geordie musician has been working on his third album and shared details of his first full U.K. tour since 2022.
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Fender’s dates will kick off in Ireland at the 3Arena in Dublin on December 2, then head to Leeds, Manchester, London, Birmingham, Glasgow and conclude in his hometown Newcastle on December 20. See the full dates below.
He’s also announced a string of shows throughout mainland Europe in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and more for next March. Tickets for all shows go on sale at 10 a.m. on October 25 via Fender’s official website.
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£1 from every ticket sold will be donated to the Music Venues Trust, and follows Coldplay’s recent commitment to donate 10% of their upcoming tour revenue to the grassroots music scene via the Music Venues Trust.
Fender released his most recent album, Seventeen Going Under, in 2021 which topped the U.K.’s Official Album Charts upon release. The ensuing year saw him play several sold-out tours and included huge shows at London’s 40,000-capacity Finsbury Park and at St. James’ Park in Newcastle, home of his beloved soccer team Newcastle United. Earlier this year he collaborated with Noah Kahan on a new version of Kahan’s single “Homesick.”
Fender snagged huge slots across the globe on his last tour, headlining Reading & Leeds Festival in England, as well as appearing internationally at Lollapalooza in Chicago and Splendour In the Grass in Australia. In addition, over the summer he played a brace of U.K. gigs in Plymouth and at Boardmasters Festival in Cornwall.
In recent weeks he has shared teasers of the live dates and his upcoming record and he’s previously performed two unreleased song during shows, “People Watching” and “Nostalgia’s Lie.”
Sam Fender European tour 2024/25 dates:
December 2 – 3Arena, DublinDecember 4 – First Direct Arena, LeedsDecember 6 – Co-Op Live, ManchesterDecember 10 – The O2, LondonDecember 13 – Utilita Arena, BirminghamDecember 16 – Obo Hydro, GlasgowDecember 20 – Utilita Arena, NewcastleMarch 4 – Olympia, ParisMarch 5 – 013 Poppodium, TilburgMarch 8 – Halle 622, ZurichMarch 10 – Palladium, CologneMarch 12 – Zenith, MunichMarch 13 – ChorusLife Arena, BergamoMarch 16 – Uber Eats Music Hall, BerlinMarch 18 – Afas Live, AmsterdamMarch 19 – Forest National, Brussels
Dua Lipa performed a one-off show at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Thursday night (Oct 17).
The concert was taped for an upcoming TV special and included a 53-piece orchestra, bringing new shades to her most recent album, Radical Optimism, which landed at No.2 on the Billboard 200 upon release in May.
Elton John — who Dua collaborated with on the 2021 smash “Cold Heart” — also joined the singer during the encore for a live performance of the track. See a clip of the performance below.
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Arriving on stage in a red Jean Paul Gaultier dress, Lipa said that the show was “unlike anything I’ve done before”. Her seven band members were joined by 14 choristers and The Heritage Orchestra, conducted by Ben Foster. Over 500 people were involved in turning the venue into an in-the-round concert experience.
The historic Hall – which opened in 1871 – typically hosts a mixture of classical and pop concerts. Recent performers include Florence + The Machine and Sam Smith, who also both bolstered their sounds with an orchestral twist.
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The show was Lipa’s first performance in the U.K. since her well-received Glastonbury Festival headline set in June earlier this year.
The show began with several live debuts of Radical Optimism tracks, including “End of An Era” and “French Exit,” on the singer’s way to performing all 11 songs from the LP.
Speaking to the crowd, Lipa said that she’d “been thinking about this show for a very long time” and had been “taking it very seriously.” She added that the new arrangements allowed her to “go to the bare bones of the songs and helped me get closer to the music.” She also performed a cover of London neo-soul singer Cleo Sol’s “Sunshine” midway through the set.
Radical Optimism hits “Houdini” and “Training Season” were given a fresh sound with added string and horn sections. There were also renditions of Future Nostalgia songs “Don’t Start Now” and “Levitating,” both of which had considerable success on the Billboard Hot 100 upon release in 2020.
Towards the show’s climax came the special surprise duet with her collaborator John. The iconic pop legend and Lipa teamed up in 2021 for “Cold Heart,” which topped the charts across the globe, including in the U.K. The pair had previously performed the song live at John’s concert at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium in 2022.
Dua performed the majority of the set solo without her usual dancers, though the troupe joined during the encore as she gave a live debut of the Barbie soundtrack smash “Dance The Night Away.”
The show was filmed for an upcoming television special, which is set to be announced soon. Lipa continues on her Radical Optimism tour in Asia this November, and in 2025 she’ll perform two sold-out nights at London’s iconic Wembley Stadium.
Dua Lipa Royal Albert Hall setlist:
“End of an Era”“Houdini”“Levitating”“Maria”“French Exit”“Sunshine” (Cleo Sol cover)“Training Season”“These Walls”“Whatcha Doing”“Love Again”“Pretty Please”“Illusion”“Falling Forever”“Anything For Love”“Happy For You”“Cold Heart” (with Elton John)“Be The One”“Dance The Night”“Don’t Start Now”
A post-Bangles (the first time) Susanna Hoffs already had one solo album, When You’re a Boy, behind her and was starting to conceive her second when she got a call from David Baerwald, Dan Schwartz and some of the other musicians involved in Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club — and began a long path to The Lost Record, a collection of those songs and their subsequent recordings that comes out Oct. 18 on Baroque Folks Records.
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“They were just reaching out to me; I went to David Kitay’s studio and we kind of created our own version of something along the lines of what they had done with Tuesday Night Music Club,” Hoffs recalls for Billboard via Zoom. “It was, like, meeting together weekly. We would sit around, working on songs. There was one day when Joni Mitchell showed up; I have a recording of David Baerwald, me and Joni singing ‘Love Potion No. 9.’ She really loved that song.”
That’s not one of the 10 tracks on The Lost Record, but it would actually be another few years before Hoffs actually recorded those songs — during 1999, in the garage of her home on Blythe Avenue in west Los Angeles, where she was living with husband Jay Roach and their two young children. “Dan Schwartz reached out to me and said, ‘You want to make some music? Should we continue where we left off from the David Baerwald sessions?’” recalls Hoffs, who had reunited with the Bangles a year prior to record “Get the Girl” for Roach’s film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. She would tour with the group in 2000, but at the time of The Lost Record sessions considered herself in “a non-Bangles chapter.”
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“I told Dan, ‘Yeah, but can we do it in my garage. I have a new baby and I’m kind of staying at home right now.’ He said, ‘Yeah,’ and we had all these great people — Jim Keltner, Dan, Brian MacLeod, all these people. It was a true garage band situation, which I loved. The Bangles were formed in the garage of my childhood home, so I’ve had a lifetime of recording in garages.”
The Lost Record hardly sounds slapdash however. The songs — including the psychedelic-flavored “Under a Cloud,” which surfaced the Bangles recorded for its 2011 album Sweetheart of the Sun — is dominated by nuanced singer-songwriter fare such as “I Don’t Know Why,” “Grateful,” “November Rain,” “As It Falls Apart” and “Who Will She Be,” and orchestrated pieces like “I’ll Always Love You (The Anti-Heartbreak Song),” “I Will Take Care of You” and “Life on the Inside,” the latter a co-write with Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s.
“I grew up in the Bangles but the Go-Go’s had come before that and they had really inspired me, the idea of an all-girl band,” Hoffs notes. “So to write with Charlotte and Jane was really special. It was just a very creative time. I was reaching out to all the people that I’d known and loved during the ’80s into the ’90s. It was like a friend group, a creative friend group.”
Lyrically, Hoffs acknowledges that The Lost Album‘s songs found her grappling with “this sort of identity crisis. I was a mom and married to a filmmaker and living this so-called grownup-life and finding myself at a crossroads, like, ‘How do I juggle all this stuff?’ and trying to figure out how to ‘Do it all.’” The deceptively uptempo “Living Alone With You” in particular was inspired by how, with Roach’s filmmaking career taking off, the couple “were like ships crossing in the night.”
“It was such a reflective time, a really emotional time,” she remembers. “I think when your emotions are right up at the surface like that it’s a great time to write songs.”
Hoffs does not remember why The Lost Record became, well lost. “I think it became a little bit fraught,” she says. “There was some discourse between some of the personalities, I think, and maybe it was because the Bangles wanted to get back together and I felt that I had to park this, somehow, for the greater good. It was so long ago. It was just, like the stars were not aligning or something, and I had to shelve it.
“But I’ve always loved these sessions. I had such a fondness for the material and for these recordings because they were so honest and sort of basic and stripped down. It was so much the spirit of creativity in that garage. I’m so glad it’s coming out, finally.”
Hoffs is hoping to play some of the songs live; she mentions the possibility of returning to playing regularly at the Largo nightclub, as she’s done in the past. She has other project in motion, too, including a Bangles documentary and second book to follow-up her 2023 novel This Bird Has Flown, which Universal has optioned for a film adaptation. And Hoffs is working on a new album of her own to follow last year’s The Deep End, which she says will combine new songs with re-recordings of Bangles favorites accompanied by New York’s YMusic string ensemble and should be out next year.
“I’m bounding around, doing music and my next book and whatever,” Hoff says. “I live for art, and art and music has always driven me. I think when I put my mind to something and have such a passion for it, I can’t stop myself. I’m so grateful I’ve had that ability in my life.”
Wizkid has partnered with Brent Faiyaz on his new single “Piece of My Heart,” which was released on Friday (Oct. 18). It’s the lead single from Wizkid’s upcoming sixth studio album Morayo, which will be released on Nov. 22 via Starboy/Sony Music International/RCA Records. The two artists were recently spotted in London together, with Wiz […]