Rock
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Graham Nash suspects that David Crosby knew he was dying and wanted to make amends before it was too late. Nash said the former Crosby, Stills & Nash bandmates — who were famously estranged for years before Crosby passed last month at 81 — were in the midst of a rapprochement just before Crosby died of unknown causes on January 18.
“The fact is that we were getting a little closer at the end. He had sent me a voicemail saying that he wanted to talk to apologize, and could we set up a time to talk,” Nash told AARP magazine. “I emailed him back and said, ‘Okay, call me at eleven o’clock tomorrow your time, which is two o’clock on the East Coast.’ He never called, and then he was gone.”
It was a painful ending to a half century friendship and musical partnership that produced some of the indelible folk rock of the 20th century. But Nash said he is trying to focus on the love, and music, they shared. “I think one of the only things that we can do, particularly me, is only try to remember the good times,” Nash said. “Try to remember the great music that we made. I’m only going to be interested in the good times, because if I concentrate on the bad times, it gets too weird for me.”
Nash said Crosby reached out to him shortly before he died and he suspects the singer may have known the end was near. “Since his liver transplant and all his stents. He had seven stents. His body was really failing,” Nash said of Crosby, who was open about his long struggle with drug addiction. “But once again, I can only try to remember the good times, because we had many of them.”
Comparing his friend’s passing to an “earthquake,” Nash described the death setting off a series of smaller temblors, saying it took several days for the reality to really set in. “Crosby was my dear friend, my best friend for over 50 years. I can only concentrate on the good stuff,” he said, brushing aside the rifts that had grown between them over the years due to Crosby’s sometimes pointed comments about his former CSN (and CSN&Y) bandmates; in 2021, Crosby said in a scathing interview that he hadn’t spoken to Nash, or Neil Young, in years and didn’t plan to anytime soon.
“But if he was willing to call me and apologize for what he had done and how he had hurt me, it made his death a little easier for me to accept,” Nash said.
Asked what made Crosby’s musical style so singular Nash pointed to the singer’s “unbelievable uniqueness” as a musician, pointing to a jazz influence in David’s early days and “very strange” tunings he played in that made for a one-of-a-kind sound. “He really was in many ways the heartbeat of this band,” Nash said. “I mean, he was incredibly talented and unique as a musician. That’s what he brought… I have never heard anybody with the same brilliant sense of music and harmony that David had.”
Read the full interview here (requires log-in).
Blink-182 fans were curious when drummer Travis Barker tweeted out a four-letter expletive earlier this week with zero context. “F–k,” read his post from Tuesday, which led to a lot of questions, and, finally, an answer on Wednesday (Feb. 8).
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“I was playing the drums at rehearsals yesterday and I smashed my finger so hard I dislocated it and tore the ligaments,” he explained along with a cursing face emoji. At press time it was unclear if the injury would have any impact on the band’s touring plans in support of their as-yet-untitled reunion album with twice former singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge; a spokesperson for the group had not returned requests for additional comment at press time.
In January, DeLonge teased that the collection is “the best album we’ve ever made,” assuring fans that they need to “buckle up.” Amping up the excitement, DeLonge added, “I’m personally tripping and so proud of what we have created TOGETHER. As one unified force of fun, eternal youth, and most of all- close friends.”
DeLonge — who rejoined the band in 2022 after leaving for a second time in 2014 — tagged bandmates drummer Travis Barker and singer/bassist Mark Hoppus in the post about the eagerly awaited follow-up to the trio’s 2019 album Nine, their second, and final, studio effort featuring fill-in third member Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio).
While a release date and title for the new album have not yet been announced, the collection’s first single, “EDGING,” has been a smash at alternative radio.
The reunited trio’s massive world tour is slated to kick off on March 11 in Tijuana, Mexico at the Imperial GNP festival and keep the band on the road in South America and Mexico through April 2 before shifting to North America on May 4 with a show at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota; those dates will run through a July 16 gig in Nashville at the Bridgestone Arena and then move on to Europe in September and Australia/New Zealand in early 2024.
See Barker’s tweets below.
I was playing the drums at rehearsals yesterday and I smashed my finger so hard I dislocated it and tore the ligaments 🤬— Travis Barker (@travisbarker) February 8, 2023
Rage Against the Machine received its latest nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this month, and Tom Morello finally reacted to the news in a new interview on Wednesday (Feb. 8).
“This is Rage Against the Machine’s fifth nomination. So always the bridesmaid, never the bride in a way,” he said in a joint sit-down with Måneskin for Audacy Check In. “It’s an honor, and it’s great for the fans, and it’s something my mom would be very happy (about).”
Other acts up for induction as part of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023 include Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Soundgarden, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes and Warren Zevon.
During the chat, the rock guitarist also offered up his assessment of the Italian newcomers, whom he joined on the band’s hard-charging new single “Gossip” from their recently released third studio album RUSH!, saying, “It’s an unusual thing in 2023 to have a rock and roll band that has songs on the radio. Then to have a song on the radio that has not one, but two guitar solos in it. It really is an anomaly in this day and age.”
The members of Måneskin only had great things to say about working with Morello in the studio, telling host Nicole Alvarez they learned from his “passion and not really giving a f–k about all these limits or anything. And that really inspired us and made us [think], like, ‘If a legend does it this way, then for me it’s right.’”
Watch the full interview with Morello and Måneskin below.
The Scorpions‘ iconic video for their 1990 power ballad “Wind of Change” has officially entered the YouTube billion views club. The black and white clip that opens with a haunting whistle over images of fans holding up sparklers is credited by some with helping to hasten the end of the decades long Cold War between the U.S. and former Soviet Union.
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In between footage of singer Klaus Meine crooning and a massive crowd holding up lighters, the video sprinkles in images of tanks rolling, economic disasters, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in China and the fall of the Berlin Wall. “I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park/ Listening to the winds of change/ An August summer night, soldiers passing by/ Listening to the winds of change,” Meine sings on the track from the band’s Crazy World album that is the band’s first video to pass the billion mark.
The power ballad that peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 tally and became the best-selling single by a German artist was written during a 1989 visit to Moscow; the previous year the band became the second-ever Western rock band to play in Russia when they performed in Leningrad on their Savage Amusement tour.
They returned in August 1989 for that summer’s Moscow Music Peace Festival — which also featured Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderella, Motley Crue, Skid Row and headliners Bon Jovi — where they said they were inspired by seeing thousands of young Russian fans cheering for a West German rock band. When the Berlin Wall fell in Nov. 1989, “Wind of Change” became a kind of unofficial anthem of German reunification.
The song was the subject of an eight-part 2020 podcast of the same name hosted by Patrick Radden Keefe that looked into the rumors that American intelligence officers were secretly behind the writing of the tune as part of an effort to end the Cold War. And while the band has never confirmed or refuted the rumors on the record, in the series an unnamed former spy told journalist and author Keefe that it was not out of the question that the CIA dabbled in subversive songwriting.
“In fact, I’d be somewhat surprised if they weren’t still doing that sort of thing today,” the source said in the podcast. “I’ll leave it to you to wonder which acts that might be.”
Check out “Winds of Change” below.
Metallica‘s Dec. 16 Helping Hands concert raised millions for the group’s All Within My Hands Foundation. In a release on Wednesday (Feb. 8), the band announced that the gig at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles raised around $3 million, all of which will go to the foundation’s efforts to support workforce education, fight hunger and provide disaster relief and other critical local services.
“The funds raised from the Helping Hands Concert & Auction will have a lasting impact on All Within My Hands’ ability to grow our Metallica Scholars Initiative, combat hunger, and aid in response to natural disasters,” said the organization’s executive director, Peter Delgrosso, in a statement. “The Los Angeles event was the largest fundraiser in our history, and we profoundly appreciate the generosity of everyone involved. We could not have achieved these results otherwise.”
The gig hosted by late night’s Jimmy Kimmel was streamed live on Paramount+ and also featured sets from Greta Van Fleet, a surprise appearance by St. Vincent and Robert Downey Jr. introducing the headliners. The Helping Hands Concert and a parallel auction honored a number of local organizations, including: Baby2Baby, First Star, Feeding America, World Central Kitchen, mikeroweWorks Foundation, and The Skatepark Project.
The band also announced that the first donations from their 2021 The Metallica Blacklist compilation — which featured covers of the group’s songs by Mac DeMarco, Juanes, Rina Sawayama, Weezer, White Reaper, Royal Blood, Cage the Elephant, J Balvin, Phoebe Bridgers, Miley Cyrus, Elton John and more — has generated more than $1 million in donations to date.
According to the release, all the profits from the Blacklist project will be divided evenly between All Within My Hands and charities chosen by the participating artists — including Happy Hippie Foundation (Cyrus), Outlaw State of Kind (Chris Stapleton), RAINN (Bridgers), Dhamma Mahavana (Weezer), Borne Cancer Fonden Denmark (Volbeat), St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Balvin), The Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation For Autism (Jon Pardi), The Special Olympics (Cage The Elephant), Save The Children (Alessia Cara + The Warning, Ha*Ash), Camp Aranutiq (Ghost), and more.
London-based trio Dream Wife have revealed details for their third studio album, Social Lubrication, out June 9 via Lucky Number. The group — vocalist Rakel Mjöll, guitarist Alice Go and bassist Bella Podpadec — self-produced the 10-track set that includes previously released single “Leech” and latest song “Hot (Don’t Date a Musician),” which is out Tuesday (Feb. 7).
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In typical Dream Wife fashion, the band’s new single is a playful punk rager and inspired by Mjöll’s grandmother’s sage advice despite the fact that she herself dated many musicians in her day, according to the band.
“Dating musicians is a nightmare,” says Mjöll in a release. “Evoking imagery of late night makeouts with f–kboy/girl/ambiguously-gendered musicians on their mattress after being seduced by song-writing chat. The roles being equally reversed. Having a laugh together and being able to poke fun at ourselves is very much at the heart of this band. This song encapsulates our shared sense of humor. Sonically, it is the lovechild of CSS and Motorhead. It has our hard, live, rock edge combined with cheeky and playful vocals.”
Social Lubrication promises to be another electrifying album from the group, who released its debut album in 2018, followed by breakthrough record So When You Gonna… in 2020. The trio’s sophomore effort yielded remixes from Rina Sawayama, Nova Twins and Porridge Radio, and international touring at festivals slots at Lollapalooza and Primavera Sound. In addition, the band has opened up for rock headliners Garbage, The Kills and even the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park.
In the band’s words, Social Lubrication is “hyper lusty rock n’ roll with a political punch, exploring the alchemy of attraction, the lust for life, embracing community and calling out the patriarchy. With a healthy dose of playfulness and fun thrown in.”
“Music is one of the only forms of people experiencing an emotion together in a visceral, physical, real way,” says Go. “It’s cathartic to the systemic issues that are being called out across the board in the record. Music isn’t the cure, but it’s the remedy. That’s what Social Lubrication is: the positive glue that can create solidarity and community.”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs is coming to a city near you! On Tuesday (Feb. 7), the group — which consists of members Karen O, Brian Chase and Nick Zinner — announced that it will hit the road this summer for a tour across North America, Europe and Asia.
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The North American leg of the tour will kick off on May 3 with a date at Washington, D.C.’s The Anthem. The trio will make stops, for solo gigs and on the festival circuit, throughout Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago and more before concluding on June 10 at The Greek Theatre in Berkley, Calif. After performing at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival, the band will hit up London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin in August. The Faint and Perfume Genius will be supporting the band on select dates.
Fans wanting to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs can score pre-sale tickets starting on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 8 a.m. PT (password is COOLKIDZ23). General on-sale begins on Friday, Feb. 10, at 10 a.m. local. If your city has been skipped this time around, don’t worry. “We’ll be announcing some more dates soon!” the group wrote on Instagram.
In addition to the tour dates, the group dropped the video for “Blackdrop,” which hails from its fifth studio album, Cool It Down. The visual features lead singer Karen O in glittering eye makeup and glossy red lips, singing the track’s emotive lyrics in a fuzzy video reminiscent of the ’80s.
“‘Blacktop’ stuck out to me early on — the demo was very stripped down instrumentally and emotionally. It was a step towards what radical closeness feels like after a long separation,” the singer explained in a press release. “Each record has one of these diamonds in the rough that just feels like flying to me. It felt right to keep the video as stripped down and dare I say beautiful in its naïveté. David Black put us in front of his ’70s analog video camera with the intention to pull stills for band shots. He had me sing to ‘Blacktop’ before I had even memorized the lyrics — I thought I knew the song by heart but it felt like an introduction, like meeting it for the first time. It wasn’t intended to end up as a video and as a return to the earliest visuals from the record it completes a circle. We’re so happy we have it, a simple layered performance for a deceptively simple song. We hope you enjoy.”
Watch the visual for “Blacktop” in the video above. See the dates for Yeah Yeah Yeahs summer tour below.
YEAH YEAH YEAHS 2023 TOUR DATES
The decades-long bitter feud between former Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour was re-ignited this week after guitarist/singer Gilmour’s wife, songwriter Polly Samson, issued a scathing rebuke of the former Floyd bassist/lyricist/singer in a tweet accusing him of antisemitism and misogyny, among other accusations.
Rogers was quick to respond, tweeting on Monday afternoon (Feb. 6) that, “Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter which he refutes entirely. He is currently taking advice on his position.”
Waters’ response came after Samson — a novelist who helped to pen a number of songs on 1994’s The Division Bell and contributed to 2014’s The Endless River Pink Floyd albums following Waters’ split with the band in 1985 — posted her tweet about Waters earlier in the day.
“Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core,” Samson tweeted. “Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” Gilmour liked the post and then added, “Every word demonstrably true.”
At press time a spokesperson for Waters and Gilmour had not returned a request for comment on the back-and-forth.
Samson appeared to be responding to an interview Waters did with Germany’s Berliner Zeigtung in which — based on a translation from Waters’ site — he said his view of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had changed over the past year in the midst of Russia’s ongoing, unprovoked war on Ukraine. “The most important reason for supplying arms to Ukraine is surely profit for the arms industry. And I wonder: is Putin a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II? I am not so sure. Putin didn’t invade Vietnam or Iraq? Did he?,” Waters said in the interview, repeating previous statements he’s made, while adding that he’s “more open” now to listening to what Putin has to say.
“He launched it on the basis of reasons that if I have understood them well are: 1. We want to stop the potential genocide of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas. 2. We want to fight Nazism in Ukraine,” Rogers said of Putin’ purported reasoning behind the year-long war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers; there is a near unanimous consensus that Putin’s claims of rooting out Nazis in Ukraine is a false narrative.
When the reporter noted that Waters irritates people by making it sound like he is defending Putin, the singer made no apologies. “Compared to Biden, I am,” he said, adding that he thinks boycotting Russia would be “counterproductive” and that the cancellation last year of his planned concerts in Poland over his controversial statements were an example of “Russophobia.”
The interview also found Waters doubling-down on his longstanding view that the Israeli government is committing “genocide” against the Palestinian people, and included him once again comparing the state of Israel to Nazi Germany and questioning Israel’s right to exist.
Ever since Waters left Floyd in 1985 he has been involved in an ongoing legal dispute with Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason about the use of the band’s name, failing in his bid to block the Gilmour-fronted version of the band from releasing albums and touring in the 1990s.
See the tweets below.
Sadly @rogerwaters you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching,misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.— pollysamson (@PollySamson) February 6, 2023
Ozzy Osbourne reacted to winning two Grammy Awards on Sunday (Feb. 5) in the exact way you’d expect from heavy metal’s legendarily salty king of darkness. After landing best rock album for Patient Number 9 and best metal performance for the album track “Degradation Rules,” in a statement on Monday (Feb. 6) Osbourne, 74, was perfectly candid about what it felt like to land his fourth and fifth Grammys wins.
“I’m one lucky motherf—er to have won the ‘best rock album’ Grammy,” Osbourne said. “I was blessed to work with some of the greatest musicians in the world and [producer] Andrew Watt was my producer on this album.” The rock icon added that winning best metal performance was “equally gratifying being that the song featured my longtime friend and Black Sabbath bandmate, [guitarist] Tony Iommi.”
Osbourne’s 13th solo studio album was indeed packed with some of his favorite players, from the title track (one of several that featured late guitar legend Jeff Beck), to songs featuring Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready (“Immortal”) and Ozzy’s longtime musical partner guitarist Zakk Wylde (“Parasite,” “Mr. Darkness,” “Nothing Feels Right,” “Evil Shuffle”) and Eric Clapton (“One of Those Days”). Other guest performers/songwriters included: Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, Jane’s Addiction bassist Chris Chaney, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and others.
Though Osbourne will make a hilarious appearance in a Super Bowl LVII commercial on Sunday (Feb. 12), he recently revealed that he will never tour again due to a spinal injury, which forced the cancelation of his scheduled European/UK tour.
All Time Low reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for the second time, as “Sleepwalking” rises to the top of the Feb. 11-dated survey.
“Sleepwalking” follows the 18-week reign of the act’s “Monsters,” featuring blackbear, in 2020-21. It stands as the third longest-leading hit in the chart’s 34-year history, alongside Foo Fighters’ “The Pretender” and behind only Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still” (20 weeks) and Muse’s “Madness” (19). Its overall 88-week stay is the longest in the chart’s archives.
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In between “Monsters” and “Sleepwalking,” All Time Low earned an additional top five hit with “Once in a Lifetime,” which peaked at No. 5 in 2021.
Concurrently, “Sleepwalking” bullets at its No. 5 high on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay tally with 3.6 million audience impressions, up 1%, Jan. 27-Feb. 2, according to Luminate.
On the most recently published multimetric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart (dated Feb. 4), “Sleepwalking” ranks at No. 48, after reaching No. 45, with 1.1 million official U.S. streams, in addition to its radio audience.
“Sleepwalking” is the lead single from Tell Me I’m Alive, All Time Low’s ninth studio album, due March 17.