Rock
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What’s the best way to relax after screaming your lungs out for nearly three hours to a sold-out baseball stadium full of fans? How about doing the viral dance to Charli XCX‘s Brat song “Apple?” Joining the likes of Joe Jonas, Late Show host Stephen Colbert and Glen Powell, Foo Fighters singer/guitarist Dave Grohl hopped […]
When it comes to overheated claims that their explosive 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony set on Friday was somehow in league with Beelzebub, French metal band Gojira could take a page from Vice President Kamala Harris’ playbook. Just as the potential democratic presidential candidate and her supporters keep describing Republican rivals Donald Trump and his veep pick JD Vance as “weird,” lead singer Joe Duplantier told Rolling Stone that suggestions their eye-popping set was “satanic” is just, well, weird.
“It’s none of that. It’s French history. It’s French charm, you know, beheaded people, red wine, and blood all over the place — it’s romantic, it’s normal,” Duplantier said of the unexpected explosion of double kick drums, growling vocals, pyro-mania and raining blood-like streamers that accompanied the group’s performance of the 19th century French anthem “Ah! Ça Ira” from the windows of Paris’ Conciedrgerie palace during a four-hour opening spectacle.
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“There’s nothing satanic [laughs]. France is a country that made a separation between the state and religion during the revolution,” Duplantier added. “And it’s something very important, very dear to the foundation of republican France. We call it laïcité. It’s when the state is not religious anymore, so therefore it’s free in terms of expression and symbolism. It’s all about history and facts. We don’t look too close closely at symbolism in terms of religion.”
In addition to the sight of a dozen decapitated Mario Antoinettes singing along as columns of fire shot up all around them, Gojira were joined by mezzo-soprano Marina Voitti, who floated by on the prow of a ship. With a few days to let it all soak in, Duplantier told RS that things are still feeling a bit “unreal.” He described getting a call from Olympic committee and opening ceremony composer Victor le Masne months ago and thinking it was a long shot that they would end up in the final cut because the whole thing sounded “completely unreal.”
“The amount of people that would see us live kind of eclipsed the moment. I wasn’t thinking about what it was going to be because it was just too mind-bending to think about,” he said, noting that the Olympic Committee could have picked a more well-known global hard rock act such as Metallica or AC/DC for the honor. “So the reality of the moment was absolutely mind-blowing from where we were, up there at the Conciergerie and the view we had of the scenery and all the Olympic teams, passing by on boats. It was pretty surreal… We never considered ourselves the biggest band in the world that would be worthy to play the Olympics or anything like that. It’s so weird.“
Not only didn’t Gojira pick the song they performed, but Duplantier said they were totally in the dark in terms of how they would fit into the full ceremony along the Seine River, including the fact that Celine Dion and Lady Gaga would also be performing that night. “We didn’t know what was going to happen at all,” Duplantier said, adding that they never got a chance to rehearse on site beforehand. “We just went back and forth with the composer of the Olympic ceremony, Victor le Masne. He threw us a tempo and a guideline. And then we did our thing.” The only time Duplantier even got a feel for the historic building was when he climbed up on the balcony he performed from for 10 minutes three days before to try out his harness, without his guitar.
Determined to represent and honor the metal scene, the singer said they didn’t want to “play a few notes to shock people,” but rather go all-in with the double-kick drums, growling vocals and a tempo breakdown at the end to really “show what metal is all about.”
While brushing off comments from such social media trolls as Andrew Tate and some talking heads on Fox News that the performance was inspired by the devil, Duplantier also had to shrug at similar pearl-clutching on the American right from Donald Trump Jr. and House Speaker Mike Johnson that the ceremony’s recreation of the “Last Supper” featuring drag queens was an insult to Christians. “I haven’t seen it, as surprising as it seems,” the singer said. “I have a family. I have children. So right after all that work and concentration on the Olympics, I was totally in the dark. I didn’t get to sit and watch the whole thing properly.”
Watch Gojira’s performance again below.
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Slash posted a heartbreaking tribute to late stepdaughter Lucy Bleu-Knight, 25, who died in Los Angeles on July 19 of as-yet-undisclosed causes. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist and solo star wrote of his anguish over the loss of the artist alongside a moody picture of Knight staring into the camera.
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“My heart is permanently fractured. I will never ever stop missing you & remembering what a beacon of happiness, laughter, creativity & beauty you have always been. & still are,” Slash wrote. “The brightest light in the lives of so many that loved you so much. I find solace in the hope that you are at peace now. I will love you eternally. #LBK”
On July 22 Slash announced that Knight — the daughter of the guitarist’s longtime love Meegan Hodges and her ex, Mark Knight — had died. No information on the cause of death has been released so far, with the L.A. Medical Examiner’s office reportedly deferring the announcement as it completes additional testing. In his original post, Slash called Knight an “incredibly talented artist, a passionate dreamer, and a charming, lovable, sweet soul,” noting that she “passed away peacefully.”
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Slash’s latest tribute drew letters of support and condolence from some of his fellow musicians, including Lenny Kravitz, who wrote, “my deepest condolences brother. And yes, she still IS! Love to the family,” with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello adding, “Ahh I’m so sorry my friend. Love to you and family.” Others offering kind words included former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson, skateboarder Christian Hosoi, former Headbangers Ball host Riki Rachtman, actor Jason Momoa and Fergie, among others.
Hours before announcing Knight’s death Slash announced the cancellation of four dates on his S.E.R.P.E.N.T. tour, “due to unforeseen circumstances.” As of Sunday (July 28), the traveling blues fest resumed with a show in Toronto and another coming up on Tuesday (July 30) in Lewiston, N.Y.
Check out Slash’s post below.
King of darkness Ozzy Osbourne has shown his light side once again. The metal legend offered up a mea culpa to Britney Spears on the latest episode of The Osbournes podcast after daughter Kelly Osbourne asked her dad if their family owed Spears an apology.
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After first replaying Ozzy’s offensive comments, Ozzy offered up a less appeasing peace offer than offspring Jack and Kelly. “Britney, I really owe you an apology,” Ozzy said. “I’m so sorry for making that comment. However, it would be better if you didn’t do the same f–king dance every day! Change a few movements… I love Britney Spears, but it’s the same dance every day!”
That comment drew a loud guffaw from Jack, while Kelly noted that she is a fan of Britney’s dancing — “Britney, never stop dancing, I love your dancing it makes you happy” — while apologizing on behalf of the family if she felt offense, with wife Sharon adding “I like Britney a lot.” The family also objected to Ozzy’s claim that it was, literally, the same dance every day, with Kelly and Jack noting that sometimes “there’s knives.”
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Ozzy then leaned into a less strings-attached amends, adding, “I really do apologize. I love you and I think you’re beautiful.”
The spat originally began two weeks ago when Ozzy criticized Spears’ dancing videos, saying on his family’s podcast that he was, “fed up of seeing poor old Britney Spears [dancing] on YouTube every f–kin’ day. It’s sad, very, very sad,” with Sharon adding, “poor little thing.” At the time, Spears shot back with a terse Instagram post that has since been deleted, in which she said, “I’m gonna… tell the Osbourne family who is the most boring family known to mankind to kindly f–k off!”
Spears has long made a habit of posting dance videos from her home in which she does interpretive moves to her favorite songs.
See Ozzy’s apology below.
The flames, the double kick drums blast beats, the headless Mario Antoinettes, the opera singer on a giant boat. There was nothing about French heavy metal band Gojira‘s set during Friday’s glittering opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics that you could have predicted from the first hard rock band to ever take the stage […]
New York City in 1978 was a very different place. The city had nearly gone bankrupt only three years earlier and it still felt uncertain, edgy and threatening. But it was exploding with musical creativity, from the Bowery to the Bronx.
For an ambitious young musician, Bronx-born and raised on Long Island, coming off the most successful album of his career, it was time to come in from the suburbs and claim the city as his own.
On Dec. 14, 1978, Billy Joel made his debut at Madison Square Garden.
Flash forward almost exactly 35 years to December 2013. That was when Joel, along with his longtime agent Dennis Arfa and Garden officials, came up with the audacious plan for the singer to perform a monthly residency at the arena — which would continue, he said then, “for as long as there’s demand.”
Onstage at the Garden on Thursday (July 25), Joel, 75, declared “It’s time.” In a joyous, raucous, moving night of music and memories, Billy Joel played his 150th show at Madison Square Garden and the finale of his unprecedented decade-long residency. He recalled the many milestones of his live career — one of the first acts to play Yankee Stadium and the “last play” at Shea Stadium; performing in Berlin before the Wall fell down, in the Soviet Union, in Havana, Cuba and at the Colosseum in Rome.
“But out of all of them,” said Joel, “this is the best!”
To be sure, the demand to see Joel at the Garden has never slackened; on Thursday the place was packed to the rafters — where, of course banners hang proclaiming Joel’s MSG records: most consecutive performances by any artist and most lifetime performances by any artist. Jimmy Fallon joined Joel to raise the new “150 Performances” banner Thursday night. (Axl Rose was Joel’s second guest, later in the evening).
Over the past decade, the Garden reports, Joel has sold more than 1.9 million tickets to these shows to fans from all 50 states and more than 120 countries. But make no mistake; this was a hometown crowd, cheering the local references in Joel’s powerhouse, customary show opener “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway).”
Here are 10 of the greatest moments from the finale of Joel’s MSG residency
Today I Am Your Champion — Still
The Foo Fighters came to play on a picture-perfect Thursday night (July 25) in Cincinnati on the latest date of their Everything or Nothing At All summer stadium tour. After rocking warm-ups from Wolfgang Van Halen’s WVH and Akron, OH-native Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders, the veteran band charged onto the stage at Great American Ball Park and got right to work with the one-two punch of “All My Life” and “No Son of Mine,” with the latter meandering through digressions into Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
The hit-packed set touched on all the classics that fans — lead singer/guitarist Dave Grohl kept shouting out the group’s “OG” day ones throughout the night — were there for, including “The Pretender,” “Breakout,” and “My Hero,” in addition to an extended band introduction bit that included various members flashing their style on covers of songs by the Beastie Boys, Ramones and Nine Inch Nails.
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But the moment that likely swelled the hearts of the crossover areas in the rock and roll/baseball Venn diagram was when lead guitarist Chris Shiflett came out for the encore wearing a red “Cincinnati Invented Hustle” t-shirt that he’d picked up that day to show his support for the city’s disgraced hit king.
The choice was even more apt considering that HBO dropped its new four-part documentary series about baseball’s all-time hits leader this week, Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, which touches on Rose’s illustrious career, as well as the betting scandal that resulted in the former Cincinnati Reds player and manager’s lifetime ban from the game and the Baseball Hall of Fame; Rose’s nickname as a player was Charlie Hustle in reference to his tenacious style of play.
Shiflett made sure the fans who filled the Reds’ home stadium got a glimpse at his homage to their beloved, tarnished local legend, swinging his guitar to the side a few times during the emotional, roiling encore tribute to Grohl’s late educator mother, Virginia, “The Teacher” to make sure they got the wink-wink reference; check out fan footage of the song, and the shirt, here. The show also featured the band’s nightly tribute to late drummer Taylor Hawkins, “Aurora,” with Grohl noting that it was Taylor’s favorite Foo Fighters song.
The Rose shout-out was just one of a handful of nods to the band’s ties to the Buckeye state during the raucous show that ran for nearly three hours and found the band veering from near speed metal tempos to a touching solo acoustic segment in which Grohl strummed an acoustic guitar for a hushed “Under You.” Earlier in the show, Grohl noted that he’d grown up in Warren, OH before moving to Virginia, and also referenced the fact that bassist Nate Mendel’s wife is from the Queen City. “He married a Cincinnati girl,” Grohl said. “Fellas, if you want to find a good girl, you come to Cincinnati.”
Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll get some serious help from their significant others in the emotional video for their new team-up, “Lonely Road.” In the Sam Cahill-directed clip for the song that pays homage to John Denver’s iconic 1971 hit “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” KellyRoll — as they’ve dubbed themselves — are joined by MGK’s girlfriend, actress Megan Fox, and Jelly’s wife, Bunnie Xo, who both have prominent roles in the tear-in-your-beer storyline.
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KellyRoll play a pair of old pals struggling to provide for their families in the visual that opens with the duo clad in all black at a funeral before jumping to footage of the pair grinding away at an auto shop in matching tan jumpsuits. “I probably could’ve saved us/ But instead I let us crash/ Cuz I don’t trust no one to love me back,” MGK sings while strumming an acoustic guitar. “But she say I do/ And this is not the place for you.”
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As the past due notices continue to pile up, we see MGK kiss one-time fiancé Fox’s swelling belly and Jelly Roll standing in a field singing about using alcohol on the road to fill the hole of loneliness he feels when he’s thousands of miles from his love. “Will our home ever be the same/ I hear the devil wears Prada, but I couldn’t read the tags/ And your horns started showing when I see you mad,” he sings as he and Bunnie console each other after receiving a letter confirming an infertility diagnosis.
The storylines are particularly poignant and personal for both men, as Jelly revealed last month that Bunnie, 44, is undergoing IVF as they try to conceive their first child together and in November, mother of three Fox opened up about the “very difficult” miscarriage she suffered with MGK.
After the two couples share a quiet home meal together, MGK tries to rope Jelly into a scheme to make some quick money, a road the “Save Me” country star says he can’t go down anymore. Following one more shot of MGK kissing Fox’s stomach, the rapper-turned-rocker-turned-country crooner hops on his motorcycle and pulls off a bank heist that ends with his arrest as he’s kissing his love and their unborn child goodbye one last time.
Cut to eight month later and Jelly, Bunnie and Fox are all cooing over the baby, who MGK kisses through the glass in the prison visiting room.
The long and winding road to “Lonely Road” has taken more than two years, with MGK recently saying that the duo have been working on the track over “2 years, 8 different studios, 4 different countries, [and] changed the key 4 times.”
Watch the “Lonely Road” video below.
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Queens of the Stone Age were forced to cancel another string of summer tour dates on Friday (July 26) due to singer Josh Homme’s unspecified medical treatment. After scotching eight European dates in June when the band announced that Homme had to immediately return to the U.S. for “emergency surgery,” the rockers announced the latest […]
Billy Joel crashed his historic Madison Square Garden residency run to a close on Thursday (July 25) with a sold-out gig marking his record-setting 150th show at the storied New York arena. After serving up such classics as “New York State of Mind,” “The Entertainer,” “Allentown” and “The Downeaster Alexa,” Joel invited Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose out for a mini-set of covers and duets.
Wearing a Las Vegas-worthy sequin-covered sparkly sport coat, black jeans and shirt and dark shades, Rose came out mid-show to croon his iconic take on Wings’ James Bond theme “Live and Let Die,” with Joel tinkling the ivories as Rose stalked the stage, tossing off wailing high notes and stomping his foot to the song’s staccato stabs.
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Joel busted protocol and stepped up from his piano to strap on an electric guitar as the two also jammed on a cover of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell. Though it seems out of character, the cover was wholly appropriate since Rose filled-in for ailing AC/DC singer Brian Johnson on the hard rockers’ 2016 tour and Joel and Rose have collaborated on the song before, including at Billy’s 2017 Dodger Stadium show in Los Angeles.
After Joel, 75, rolled through a run of other classics — “Only the Good Die Young,” “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,” “Piano Man,” “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “Uptown Girl” and “Big Shot” — Rose was back for the big finale: a duet on Joel’s 1980s Glass Houses burner “You May Be Right.”
The epic MSG run, during which Joel has sold nearly two million tickets, began on Jan. 14, 2014 and was eased into the history books with some help from Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, who ran onstage to mark the moment when a blue banner reading “Billy Joel 150: Most Lifetime Performances by Any Artist” was unfurled in the rafters.
Joel — who released his first new pop song in 17 years, “Turn the Lights Back On” in February — is not nearly done, with stadiums shows in the UK, Cleveland, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Las Vegas keeping him on the road through November.
Watch fan video of the Rose and Joel performances below.
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