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Fifty-one years ago, after trying out Zorro, Superman and gorilla costumes, Angus Young took a suggestion from his sister, borrowed her son’s school uniform and wore it onstage. Since then, like his band AC/DC, the lead guitarist’s live persona has been insanely consistent — he once told Billboard that he packs 12 schoolboy costumes for tours.
“We’ve never tried to do something we’re not or looked around to see what the other bands were doing,” Angus said in a 1996 interview. “An audience can tell when you’re phony or you don’t want to be onstage.”
High Voltage, AC/DC’s debut album, set the band’s consistent musical template in 1975 when the record arrived in the group’s home country of Australia. Twelve months later, it reached the United States and, after a few years, established the act as international rock stars.
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Every AC/DC album since, from classics such as 1980’s Back in Black to lesser-known gems like 1995’s Ballbreaker, has exemplified what Billboard declared in a 2014 review of the Rock or Bust album: “Neither trends, age nor the passing of many decades has altered the basic blueprint the band laid out on its 1975 debut, High Voltage.”
“Some people might say that you guys have made the same record over and over 10 times,” an interviewer once suggested to Angus.
“That’s a dirty lie!” he responded. “We’ve made the same record over and over 11 times!”
Of AC/DC’s 19 studio albums, seven have hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200, including two No. 1s, 1981’s For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) and 2008’s Black Ice.
Phillip Rudd, Angus Young, Mark Evans, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott of AC/DC pose for an Atlantic Records publicity still in front of a graffiti-covered wall circa 1977.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Imag
Ten of the band’s tracks have earned more than 177 million streams, beginning with “Thunderstruck” at 1 billion, according to Luminate. AC/DC’s touring power has been similarly steady, from 1978, when it opened for Aerosmith for multiple sold-out arena dates, to 2010, when its four best-selling concerts ever grossed $11.7 million, $12.8 million, $24.6 million and $27 million, all in Australian stadiums, according to Billboard Boxscore.
Despite the loss of Angus’ brother, founding member and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, to dementia in 2017, AC/DC rocks on. The band opened its global Power Up tour on April 10 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
CAA books AC/DC, with agency veterans Rob Light, Chris Dalston and Allison McGregor overseeing dates. The tour takes its name from the 2020 Power Up album. (The band’s repertoire is released by Columbia Records in the United States and by Sony worldwide.) Alvin Handwerker of Prager Metis handles management.
On record, AC/DC began its loud and mighty run 50 years ago, with the release of High Voltage. The album was created in “a very economical two weeks,” as Jeff Apter writes in the 2018 biography High Voltage: The Life of Angus Young. The second week focused on Angus’ guitar solos and the controlled night-prowler shrieks of frontman Bon Scott, who died in 1980.
Angus has said of Alberts, the band’s Sydney studio, “I would have liked to have taken the f–king walls with me and kept them. A guitar just came to life in there. It was a little downtrodden, but it had a great vibe, this energy to it.”
The group’s pathway through the music business began with Sydney publisher Ted Albert, who lived in a mansion called Boomerang and sailed with his father on a yacht of the same name. His company, Albert Productions, had signed Australian rock’n’roll band The Easybeats in 1965, putting out classics such as “Friday on My Mind” and “St. Louis” before it broke up four years later. That act’s rhythm guitarist, George Young, turned out to have talented younger brothers, Malcolm and Angus, and the Albert connection led to AC/DC signing with the company in 1974. George and bandmate Harry Vanda, who served as High Voltage’s co-producers, had a knack for drawing the screechy rock rawness out of Angus and Malcolm.
“That was our first real album,” Angus told Guitar Player in 2003, “and it was the one that defined our style.”
The album’s opening track, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll),” began as a “jam,” Angus recalled in a 1992 interview, published many years later in Classic Rock. “We were just playing away, and my brother George left the tape rolling. After we finished, he was jumping up and down in the studio going, ‘Great, great, this is magic!’ And you’re thinking, ‘What’s he on about?’ And he played it back and there it was. It had that magic atmosphere.”
Although AC/DC became known for its lascivious vocals full of not-so-disguised euphemisms, “It’s a Long Way to the Top” is almost a folk ballad, lamenting endless hard work and “getting old, getting gray, getting ripped off, underpaid.” Country, folk and Americana singers including Lucinda Williams and Cody Jinks have covered it.
The droning track required a droning instrument — bagpipes — as its crucial final touch, the producers’ idea.
“Bagpipes!” exclaimed Steve Leeds, head of album promotion for AC/DC’s longtime U.S. label, Atlantic Records, as reported in Jesse Fink’s 2013 book The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC. “There are no bagpipes on the radio, even today. George and Harry were f–king geniuses. They figured it out. Conventional wisdom says, ‘You guys are crazy.’ ”
George knew how to communicate with musicians, and he recognized that the band’s imperfect quality in the studio could lead to spontaneous excitement on its recordings. At one point, while recording the title track, drummer Phil Rudd thought he had “messed up” during a fill, Angus recalled in 1992. “And George is signaling: ‘Keep going. Keep going.’ And we finish that take and we come in and go, ‘OK, we better try again.’ And he goes, ‘No. That was the take.’ And that was the one we used.” The track wound up closing the album.
From Australia to the United States, where it was released in 1976, High Voltage received almost no attention — other than negative attention. Critics were merciless. Rolling Stone’s infamous pan called the band “Australian gross-out champions,” declared hard rock “has unquestionably hit its all-time low,” referred to its rhythm section as “goose-stepping” and concluded the whole operation added up to “calculated stupidity.” A short feature two years later — written by Ira Kaplan, later frontman of Yo La Tengo — concluded, “There’s nothing new going on musically, but AC/DC attacks the old clichés with overwhelming exuberance.”
Many critics back then blooped over Malcolm’s steel-beam rhythms and Angus’ devotional reinterpretations of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and stripped-down arrangements that distilled The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and The Stooges into riffs that gained power with repetition.
“At that time, Rolling Stone was really into the punk genre and were matching up everything to what was the current flavor of the day,” Angus told Vulture in 2020. “What we did was rock’n’roll and we weren’t going to change anything.”
Malcolm Young, Bon Scott, and Angus Young of AC/DC performing at The Nashville Rooms on April 26, 1976 in London.
Dick Barnatt/Redferns
The vision paid off — eventually. Angus would criticize “really soft” Australian radio for being overobsessed with Air Supply and worse. But in the United States, programmers for a small San Antonio rock station picked up High Voltage and aired it immediately. This led to a show at Austin’s 1,500-capacity Armadillo World Headquarters and, later, airplay in the Bay Area and Boston.
“Up until that point, all we had really done was a lot of touring around Australia, so it was great to get into a studio and really hear how we sounded,” Angus recalled in 2003. “What was impressive about that album was that it sold on word-of-mouth alone.”
The band also played at CBGB, the New York punk fixture where the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie and Talking Heads first became famous. When Atlantic co-founder Ahmet Ertegun saw that gig, he agreed to sign AC/DC, steering the band at first to the label’s Atco imprint. “I’m not sure I would have signed them when I first heard them,” the late Ertegun told Billboard in 1998. “They were very modern; they were pushing the envelope. They were very young-looking then and very ratty-looking. A lot of those bands had disdain for anything that resembled authority.”
Angus responded, sort of. In a 2020 interview with Billboard, he said, “Some people would say, ‘Well, you have a very juvenile approach to what you’re singing.’ But good rock’n’roll is juvenile, in a sense.”
At first, High Voltage was hardly a blockbuster, neither in its native Australia nor the United States. Not even “T.N.T.” charted on the Billboard Hot 100. But it since has become one of the band’s most beloved tracks, with 436 million U.S. streams, as well as 826 million Spotify plays internationally.
AC/DC’s first track to hit the Hot 100 was “Highway to Hell,” in October 1979, at a modest No. 47. And its debut album didn’t crack the Billboard 200 until 1981, long after Highway to Hell broke into the top 20 and Back in Black followed by reaching No. 4. Album-oriented rock, indeed. High Voltage took five years to go gold in the United States in 1981, according to the RIAA, and hit quadruple-platinum in July 2024.
As it turns out, consistency is exactly half of AC/DC’s formula for commercial success. The other half is a combination of songs that sound perfect no matter how many times they’re played on the radio and onstage. Like the song goes, “If you think it’s easy doing one-night stands/Try playing in a rock-roll band.”
James Hetfield of Metallica put it a different way, describing the live Angus experience to Billboard in 2016: “That guy sweats so much every night. I can’t believe his head is still on his body.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
The Cure will revisit their 2024 album Songs of a Lost World on an upcoming remix collection entitled Mixes of a Lost World. The 24-track compilation will feature fresh spins on the songs from EDM stars Four Tet, Paul Oakenfold and Orbital and others.
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The album conceived and compiled by Cure singer Robert Smith will be released on June 13th through Fiction/Capitol Records and also come in a deluxe edition with additional remixes and reworks from Deftones frontman Chino Moreno, as well as Mogwai, 65daysofstatic, Gregor Tresher, Sally C, Daybreakers, Daniel Avery, meera and Trentemøller.
In a statement about the remix album, Smith said, “Just after Christmas I was sent a couple of unsolicited remixes of Songs of a Lost World tracks and I really loved them. The Cure has a colorful history with all kinds of dance music, and I was curious as to how the whole album would sound entirely reinterpreted by others.” The curiosity resulted in what he described as a “fabulous trip” through the original album’s expansive eight songs by 24 artists.
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All of the Cure’s recording royalties from the remix album will benefit War Child UK. The album will come in deluxe three LP, three-CD and three cassette formats with both the “artist and remixers” tracks, as well as two-LP/CD/cassette versions with just the remixers tracks. Songs of a Lost World was the Cure’s first new album in 16 years and the upcoming remix collection will mark their third such release, following on the heels of 2018’s Torn Down: Mixed Up Extras 2018 and 1990’s Mixed Up.
After the long break, Smith said in December that in addition to a live album, Songs of a Live World, that there is “another album which is pretty much ready to go,” one that he referred to as a “companion piece,” seemingly in reference to the remix album. He also said that there is a “third one which is completely different. It’s really kind of random stuff, it’s like late-night studio stuff.”
Listen to Four Tet and Oakenfold’s remixes below and check out the track listings for the deluxe editions of Mixes of a Lost World below.
3LP
VINYL 1
SIDE A
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Paul Oakenfold ‘Cinematic’ Remix)
2. “Endsong” (Orbital Remix)
3. “Drone:Nodrone” (Daniel Avery Remix)
4. “All I Ever Am” (meera Remix)
SIDE B
1. “A Fragile Thing” (Âme Remix)
2. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Danny Briottet & Rico Conning Remix)
3. “Warsong” (Daybreakers Remix)
4. “Alone” (Four Tet Remix)
VINYL 2
SIDE A
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Mental Overdrive Remix)
2. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Cosmodelica Electric Eden Remix)
3. “A Fragile Thing” (Sally C Remix)
4. “Endsong” (Gregor Tresher Remix)
SIDE B
1. “Warsong” (Omid 16B Remix)
2. “Drone:Nodrone” (Anja Schneider Remix)
3. “Alone” (Shanti Celeste ‘February Blues’ Remix)
4. “All I Ever Am” (Mura Masa Remix)
VINYL 3
SIDE A
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Craven Faults Rework)
2. “Drone:Nodrone” (JoyCut ‘Anti-Gravitational’ Remix)
3. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Trentemøller Rework)
4. “Warsong” (Chino Moreno Remix)
SIDE B
1. “Alone” (Ex-Easter Island Head Remix)
2. “All I Ever Am” (65daysofstatic Remix)
3. “A Fragile Thing” (The Twilight Sad Remix)
4. “Endsong” (Mogwai Remix)
3CD
CD1
1. “I Can Never Say Goodby” (Paul Oakenfold Cinematic Remix)
2. “Endsong” (Orbital Remix)
3. “Drone:Nodrone” (Daniel Avery Remix)
4. “All I Ever Am” (meera Remix)
5. “A Fragile Thing” (Âme Remix)
6. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Danny Briottet & Rico Conning Remix)
7. “Warsong” (Daybreakers Remix)
8. “Alone” (Four Tet Remix)
CD2
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Mental Overdrive Remix)
2. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Cosmodelica Electric Eden Remix)
3. “A Fragile Thing” (Sally C Remix)
4. “Endsong” (Gregor Tresher Remix)
5. “Warsong” (Omid 16B Remix)
6. “Drone:Nodrone” (Anja Schneider Remix)
7. “Alone” (Shanti Celeste ‘February Blues’ Remix)
8. “All I Ever Am” (Mura Masa Remix)
CD3
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Craven Faults Rework)
2. “Drone:Nodrone” (JoyCut ‘Anti-Gravitational’ Remix)
3. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Trentemøller Rework)
4. “Warsong” (Chino Moreno Remix)
5. “Alone” (Ex-Easter Island Head Remix)
6. “All I Ever Am” (65daysofstatic Remix)
7. “A Fragile Thing” (The Twilight Sad Remix)
8. “Endsong” (Mogwai Remix)
Alice Cooper says that making a new album with his original bandmates — the first in more than 51 years — was like riding a proverbial bike.
“Oh, very much so,” the veteran shock rocker tells Billboard by phone from his home in Phoenix, speaking about the upcoming The Revenge of Alice Cooper (out July 25 on earMUSIC). “It was very much like this was our next album after (1973’s) Muscle of Love, just like, ‘OK, this is the next album.’ Isn’t that funny after 50 years? All of a sudden it just falls into place.”
Producer Bob Ezrin, meanwhile, says that the band on The Revenge… was eerily similar to the group he worked with on platinum Cooper 70s albums such as Love It to Death, Killer, School’s Out and Billion Dollar Babies. “None of them has changed much as a person,” Ezrin notes. “Obviously everyone’s older and more mature and more settled, but when we all get together and I watch the interplay between them, it’s like they just walked out of high school and were hanging out in the local cafe. They just revert to type. They revert to who they were as kids when the first got together… and make music together like they did 50-some years ago.”
The 14-track album reunites Cooper with guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neil Smith. Guitarist Glen Buxton passed away in 1997 at the age of 49 — the album is dedicated “to our brother Glen Buxton” — and he’s represented on two songs. “What Happened to You” is built from the riff on an old demo tape Dunaway and Buxton made together and the limited-edition box set bonus track “Return of the Spiders 2025,” is an upgraded remix of a track from the group’s second album, 1970’s Easy Action.
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The set also features another bonus remix, of the “Titanic Overunderture” from the group’s 1969 debut, Pretties For You, and a remake of the Yardbirds’ “I Ain’t Done Wrong” from 1965 — a nod to a favorite band of Cooper and company that it covered during their early days as the Spiders on Phoenix.
Cooper will be premiering the first single, “Black Mamba,” on Tuesday (April 22) on the latest episode of his syndicated radio show, Alice’s Attic. Featuring Robby Krieger of the Doors, a friend since the band’s late 60s days in Los Angeles, it was, according to Cooper, “definitely an Alice Cooper, from-the-ground-up song” created during studios sessions for the album.
“It wasn’t even a song yet,” Dunaway recalls. “We’re in the studio and we start jamming on the riff and warming up together. The next thing you know we get this swampy feel and decide it’s gonna be about a Black Mamba snake, which is very deadly, and it fell into place. It was so new Alice had to stop us at one point and ask me if I remembered what the melody was. It was very spontaneous.”
For Ezrin — who also co-wrote songs, sang backup and played keyboards and percussion on the LP — “Black Mamba” in particular defined what The Revenge… was going to be. “When we started to play that it’s when I knew the spirit of the Alice Cooper group was back and that what we were making was very much an album that could’ve been in the 70s, when we were last together. It had the psychedelia, it had the artful drumming and bass playing, the great atmospheric guitars. It has Alice telling a really fabulous story, in character.”
Cooper adds that, “We didn’t know where it was gonna go. At the end we looked at each other and went, ‘Oh, that’s pretty good!’”
The Cooper crew has been working its way towards another full album for more than a decade.
Its split in 1974 — after seven albums over six years, and such iconic hits as “I’m Eighteen,” “School’s Out,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and more — was acrimonious but not insurmountable. “We didn’t’ divorce as much as we separated,” Cooper explains. “There was no anger, no bad blood — not for very long anyway.”
Dunaway adds that, “the breakup wasn’t what the band was about; the togetherness was. After all of these years we’ve buried a lot of hatchets.” Bruce and Smith performed at the opening of one of the Alice Coopers’town restaurants in Phoenix during 1988 and all four living members played for the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2011.
That led to song collaborations on several of Cooper’s subsequent albums — Welcome 2 My Nightmare in 2011, Paranormal in 2017 and 2021’s Detroit Stories, and on Oct. 6, 2015, the four played an eight-song set at Good Records in Dallas to celebrate Dunaway’s memoir Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Group; the show was subsequently released as the Live from the Astoturf album and DVD three years later.
And during 2017, Bruce, Dunaway and Smith performed as special guests on the U.K. dates of Cooper’s Spend the Night with Alice Cooper world tour.
“All of those things got everybody reacquainted — reacquainted is a weird term ’cause we’re so much like family, so it’s more like a family reunion,” Dunaway says. “Then Alice and Bob called and were talking about, ‘Oh yeah, we want to do an album,’ because there’s so many songs kicking around.”
Ezrin explains that, “We’ve worked together here and there over the years. The boys played together… and every time it’s been a joy and complete pleasure, and kind of like going home. So we finally decided, ‘Let’s just do a whole album, an Alice Cooper group album like we used to.”
Work on The Revenge… actually began in Phoenix a few years ago, when Cooper, Bruce, Dunaway and Smith gathered together to try out songs. Dunaway recalls that he and Smith each came in with around 30 songs, putting them on par with Bruce, who was the band’s primary music writer during the 70s.
“Dennis and Neil really blew my mind,” Bruce says. “They’ve come a long way as writers. I just can’t say enough about their songwriting. We all are songwriters now; it’s a real battle of the songwriters. I’m so proud of the band.”
Cooper maintains that he’s long felt, “if we’re gonna do an original Alice record, I want it to sound like the original Alice band. The original band has a darker sound, and a heavier sound. It’s a very different personality, and I even sing differently when I sing with those guys.
“On this (album) it was much more of a band, where each one of us has a certain say. In other words, it wasn’t like my albums. I’m not gonna have a final say on it; I had one-fourth of the say on it, and that’s the way we always did it,” he adds. “I think the best thing about this is normally Bob and I would go, ‘OK, wait a minute — that doesn’t necessarily fit. That shouldn’t go there.’ When we’re working with this band, we go, ‘No, let it go there,’ ’cause that’s what the original Alice Cooper Band did. We would see where it should go, and 70 percent of the song went where it should go, and the about 30 percent of the song went in another direction — but it all sounded like it fit.
“That was the difference. When we heard that, we kinda laugh and say, ‘Let’s go there.’ On my albums I wouldn’t go there, but on this album, we go there.”
Filling Buxton’s role on The Revenge… is Gyasi Hues, a Nashville player who was recommended to Ezrin by Mike Grimes, owner of Grimey’s New & Preloved Music in Nashville and checked out by Dunaway and Smith in a local club. “Neil and Dennis were slightly skeptical,” Ezrin says.
“Nobody wants to replace Glen, and they hold jealously onto his memory and their love for him. But very early on (Hues’) started playing some really cool stuff and the guys were looking around going, ‘That’s kinda great.’ So we have the Alice Cooper group, not with Glen Buxton but with somebody who honors Glen Buxton.” A number of other players, primarily Connecticut guitarist and instrument merchant Rick Tedesco, also appear on The Revenge…
Tracking sessions for The Revenge… began during August of 2022 in Nashville, with other recording done in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Hollywood and Glendale, Calif., and Cooper’s vocals recorded at Noble Street Studios in Toronto.
As word about The Revenge… filters out, Dunaway says the band is “ready to explode with excitement because we’ve kept it secret for so long.” There’s no word yet, however, on whether the four will regroup to play live to support it; Cooper already has a full slate of touring ahead this year, including a May and August dates in the U.S., summer shows in Europe and a co-headlining run with Judas Priest during September and October.
“We haven’t even gotten to that point yet,” Cooper says about putting the quartet back on stage. “I don’t really see it being a full-out tour; it would be very, very hard, I think, if you haven’t done it for a long time. But I could see it being a feature, like going into certain cities — Detroit, New York, L.A., London maybe, and doing a half-hour or 40 minutes in a club or something. We always leave those things open, and if it looks feasible then we do it.”
His bandmates are game. “If (Cooper) asks, I’ll be there,” says Bruce, who continues to write and plays in a local band in Arizona. “I’m an Alice Cooper trouper.” Dunaway, whose various musical endeavors include Blue Coupe with former members of Blue Oyster Cult, adds that, “It has always depended on Alice. If Alice gives us a call, we’re there. We’re ready.”
And while Dunaway considers The Revenge… to be “a full-circle moment” for the original Alice Cooper band, all concerned seem to feel like it’s not the last thing they’ll do together.
“Dennis was talking about a one-off album, and I’m like, ‘Who says it’s a one-off album,” says Cooper, who’s working on his next solo album with Ezrin. “I have no problem working with these guys all the time. I can be doing my albums, working with them. I’ve got the Hollywood Vampires. I’m in the Solid Rock band for all the kids at Solid Rock (his youth centers in Arizona). I’ve got to keep remember what band I’m in! But doing (the original band) again is great. I’ll always be up for that.”
The Revenge of Alice Cooper is currently available for pre-order. The full tracklist includes:
1. “Black Mamba”
2. “Wild Ones”
3. “Up All Night”
4. “Kill The Flies”
5. “One Night Stand”
6. “Blood On The Sun”
7. “Crap That Gets In The Way Of Your Dreams”
8. “Famous Face”
9. “Money Screams”
10. “What A Syd”
11. “Inter Galactic Vagabond Blues”
12. “What Happened To You”
13. “I Ain’t Done Wrong”
14. “See You On The Other Side”
15. “Return of the Spiders 2025” (bonus track)
16. “Titanic Overunderture” (bonus track)
Stevie Nicks is working on her first new solo album in 14 years. The legendary Fleetwood Mac singer and solo star shared the news during her induction into the Pollstar Hall of Fame on Wednesday (April 16). “I’m actually making a record right now,” Nicks said in her induction speech.
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“I call it the ghost record. It just really kinda happened in the last couple of weeks because of, you know, the fires,” she said in seeming reference to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year, during which she was displaced. “I was sitting in a hotel for 92 days, and at some point during that last part of the 92 days, I said, ‘You know what? I feel like I’m on the road, but there’s no shows. I’m just sitting here by myself because everybody else is at the house, doing all the remediations and everything, and it’s just me, sitting here.’ And I thought, ‘You need to go back to work.’ And I did.”
Nicks, who was inducted by longtime friend and former producer Jimmy Iovine, said she’s already written seven songs for the album, a follow-up to her seventh solo LP, 2011’s In Your Dreams. She described them as “autobiographical, real stories where I’m not pulling any punches for probably the first time in my life. They are not airy-fairy songs that you are wondering who they’re about but you don’t really get it. They’re real stories of memories of mine, of fantastic men!”
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Nicks, 76, recently announced a run of summer and fall solo shows she’ll embark on in between stadium gigs with old friend Billy Joel. The tour will kick off on Aug. 12 in Boston and include shows in Toronto, Saint Paul, MN, Cincinnati, Columbus, Tampa, Phoenix and Las Vegas before winding down in Oklahoma City on Oct. 15.
The news about new music comes seven months after Nicks dropped the moving single “The Lighthouse,” a women’s empowerment anthem inspired by the Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.
Watch Nicks discuss the album below.
Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe are teaming up for a hard rock destination festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico this winter. The legendary hard rock groups will set up shop from November 7-9 for the Rock the Tides fest, which will also include sets from Poison singer and solo performer Bret Michaels, Extreme, the Struts, Buckcherry, […]
The New Pornographers have “immediately” severed ties with drummer Joe Seiders after the longtime member of the rock collective was arrested in Palm Desert, CA for possession of child pornography.
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According to a press release from the Riverside Sheriff’s office, Seiders was arrested after officers were dispatched to investigate a report of suspicious activity on April 7 at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant, where an 11-year-old boy told officers that an unknown man had recorded him on a cell phone while he was using the bathroom. Two days later, police said an employee at the same restaurant reported that the man was seen entering and exiting the restroom with juvenile males.
“Believing the male was the suspect from the previous incident, law enforcement was contacted. Upon arrival, deputies located the suspect, identified as 44-year-old Joseph Seiders of Palm Desert, and took him into custody,” read the release. After an investigation, officers served search warrants on Seiders’ residence, vehicle and cell phone, where they reportedly found evidence implicating Seiders in both incidents and “additional crimes,” which they said included possessing child pornography.
Seiders was booked into the John Benoit Detention Center in Indio, CA for possession of child pornography, annoying/molesting a child, invasion of privacy, and attempted invasion of privacy. At press time a spokesperson for the band had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional information on the incident.
In a statement on Instagram, the band wrote, “Everyone in the band is absolutely shocked, horrified and devastated by the news of the charges against Joe Seiders — and we have immediately severed all ties with him. Our hearts go out to everyone who has been impacted by his actions.”
Seiders joined the Canadian indie power pop supergroup — which formed in Vancouver in 1997 — in 2014, joining charter members singer Neko Case, singer/guitarist Carl Newman and bassist John Collins. He appeared on their 2017 album Whiteout Conditions, as well as 2019’s In the Morse Code of Brake Lights and 2023’s Continue as a Guest, as well as their recent single “Ballad of the Last Payphone.” The drummer is being held at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility with bail set at $1 million and is scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Tuesday (April 22).
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.
Sean Ono Lennon is confident that the One to One: John & Yoko documentary “is going to be very revelatory for everybody who sees it. For sure.”
Present company excepted, however. “I do think I know my parents pretty well,” says Ono Lennon, who co-executive produced the film (along with Brad Pitt and others) and served as its music producer. “I knew about that time. It was only a couple years before I was born. My mother spoke about it a lot. I know a lot about their story, including (this time period), so I would not frame it that I learned something necessarily.”
Other viewers, however, will get a thorough look into one of the most dramatic 18-month periods in the couple’s lives — which, for anybody who knows about them, is saying something — from their move to New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1971 to the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 30, 1972, Lennon’s only full-length performances after the Beatles’ 1970 split. One to One premiered at the Venice Film Festival last August, also showing at the Telluride Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival before its IMAX rollout on April 11. One to One opens wide in theaters starting April 18 and will stream on Max later this year.
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Directed by Kevin Macdonald and distributed by Magnolia Pictures, One to One employs a montage-style collection of footage and sound recordings (some provided by the John Lennon Estate) to present Lennon and Ono primarily in their own words, without third-party narration. “Certainly Kevin and myself were sitting around in a room for quite a few weeks, scratching our heads — not in a bad way — deciding what direction we wanted to go in,” says co-director and editor Sam Rice-Edwards. “We didn’t want to make just another Beatles or Lennon documentary; there’s plenty out there, and this needed to be original and fresh.
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“Kevin came up with the concept of presenting the world as John and Yoko would have seen it in 1972; we felt if you did that, and we also spent time with them, in a way, that was really what people hadn’t done before. We found moments where we felt like the camera wasn’t on them…which gave us a fresh look at John and Yoko and allowed (the viewer) to be with them in a way you hadn’t before.”
Ono Lennon — who acknowledges that left to his own devices “I probably would’ve made a live concert film” — felt the approach was “really effective in telling their story. It’s not easy to maintain such a complex story, but (One to One) does it very beautifully. If it was narrated it would’ve been more of an op-ed. This is a true documentary in that it allows the subjects to tell their own story.”
Using other period footage — snippets of TV shows, commercials, news footage, etc. — to provide a context for the time, One to One finds Lennon and Ono embroiled in strident political activism, including an association with Jerry Rubin, that made them targets for FBI surveillance and, ultimately, attempts to deport Lennon by the administration of then-President Richard Nixon. “It’s really a beautiful story because you realize they were willing to risk everything, their careers and even their personal safety, to fight for their political and moral beliefs,” Ono Lennon says. But, he adds, only to a point.
“I think an important message to glean from the film has to do with the way my parents reacted to the more extreme elements of the radical activists they were working with at the time,” he explains. “At a certain point they realized the people they we working with, or some of them — Jerry Rubin specifically — were proposing to do things that were not necessarily aligned with my parents’ philosophy of pacifism and peace and love. You witness the trajectory of my parents experimenting with the radical groups and then realizing that they’d sort of gone too far, and they had to pull back — not just because it became dangerous for them but because people who were arguing for potentially violent activism were basically becoming as bad as the people they were fighting, which is really an important message for today, too.”
Ono Lennon says that as a youth his mother spoke frequently about that particular time, including being “freaked out” about the FBI wiretaps on the couple’s phones. “My early childhood was chaotic, obviously, and a lot of stuff that was happening in the film, the echoes were still resounding throughout my childhood,” he recalls — which includes the FBI planting an agent with the family after Lennon’s assassination in 1980. He adds that Ono “never believed activism was worth losing your life over. She always felt like it’s important to protect yourself so you can keep on doing good. If you’re not alive, what’s the point? Some people glamorized certain revolutionary kinds of characters willing to resort to violence. She never admired those people, and I don’t, either.”
The grail find for the One To One documentarians was an unlabeled box of reel-to-reel tapes that held recordings of Lennon and Ono’s phone calls, which they began making when they discovered their lines were bugged. The conversations, with manager Allen Klein as well as a variety of employees and friends, were discovered by Simon Hilton, vice president of Multimedia Projects for the Lennon Estate, amidst the Lennon archives in New York. Rice-Edwards recalls that “we knew pretty quickly this was really important. Listening to John and Yoko, or the people around them, when they thought they weren’t being listened to was extremely revealing about who they were. And a lot of what they were talking about in the phone calls was relevant to events we were covering in the film.” Ono Lennon, meanwhile, considers the tapes “a pot of gold,” for the film as well as for himself.
The One to One concert materials have been released before, but Ono Lennon and the filmmakers went to great pains to correct shortcomings from the original source material, which was initially released as a TV special directed by Steve Gebhardt and featured appearances by some of the other acts, including Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack and Sha Na Na. “There was some really crazy camera work,” Rice-Edwards says. “A lot of people working on the film, the camera people, were really high, so we had to work with that. But there was some really great stuff as well. That fact it was shot on film originally — in lovely 35mm — helped, and it was certainly good. We just treated it in the right way and made it the best we could.”
On the audio side, Ono Lennon found that “the recordings themselves were quite chaotic…. There were mics that were misplaced, and a lot of mics were moved between the matinee and evening shows. It seems like things were done in an improvised and last-minute manner. But we didn’t mind because it was more fun to have the challenge. I don’t want to give away too many of the tricks. I think there’s a reasonable amount of movie magic in there, let’s put it that way; it was a great time, technologically speaking, for us to reinvestigate the mixes. We have more tools than ever to bring out the best and turn down what’s undesirable. It did take a lot of work to get it where it is now, but that was part of the joy of doing it.”
He did come away with favorites among the performances, including sharpening the mixes of “Cold Turkey” and “Come Together” and hearing his father’s performances of the song “Mother.” “To see him sing that song, which is a very different style from Beatles music…His voice is so incredible and so moving,” Ono Lennon says. “It’s kind of shocking, honestly, and it’s very sweet as well…very vulnerable, but also powerful at the same time.”
His mother’s aggressive rendition of “Don’t Worry Kyoko” also resonated with him. “She had several styles (of music), but ‘Don’t Worry Kyoko’ is the more challenging, punk rock stuff…there wasn’t even (punk rock) yet. Some people might not have liked listening to it on the stereo, but when you see the show and see the audience live, it really does translate. It’s all about the energy, and the groove is there. It’s undeniably rockin’.” He adds that Ono, retired at 92, was not deeply involved with One to One but is “not unhappy with anything” about the film.
ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
Ono Lennon has finished work on a One to One soundtrack release slated for Oct. 9 in several formats and packages. The full two concerts will definitely be part of it, while additional performance content from the period — such as songs from Lennon and Ono’s stint on The Dick Cavett Show during September 1971 — is currently being discussed and licensed.
“Whatever we can put on we’re putting on,” says Ono Lennon, who’s also finishing work on a new album of his own. “I think we’ll put on basically everything that would make sense to put on it…to satisfy the hardcore fans.”
Over his 45-year career, Thurston Moore has always comfortably had his feet in two worlds: the song-centric music of Sonic Youth, the pioneering noise rock band he co-founded in 1980, and the experimental world born from his upbringing in New York’s No Wave scene in the late ’70s and early ‘80s.
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“I really give equal value to composition … that I would give to improvisation,” Moore tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from his home in London. “I mean, they really inform each other.”
Moore’s latest album, Flow Critical Lucidity, released in 2024, often splits the difference between keeping to traditional song structure and tossing the rulebook out the window. Moore was joined in the studio by musicians who have performed on his song-based solo efforts: Deb Googe, the bass player for My Bloody Valentine; drummer Jem Doulton and guitarist James Sedwards. Googe and Sedwards also appear on Moore’s 2020 album, By the Fire, 2017’s Rock N Roll Consciousness and 2014’s The Best Day — albums that harken back to Sonic Youth’s more accessible work and Moore’s 1995 solo debut, Psychic Hearts.
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But much of his work captures his love of experimental music that took root in the New York music scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Spirit Counsel, released in 2019, has three expansive tracks that run a total of 2.5 hours. The free-flowing Screen Time, released in 2021, was fittingly released on Southern Lord Records, the home of drone metal band Sunn O))).
This month, Moore premiered Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations at the New Music Dublin festival in Dublin. He was joined by Googe, Doulton and guitarist Jennifer Chochinov, one half of the London-based duo Schande. A suite in nine pieces, Cloud Formations is “very lengthy, repetitive, immersive guitar, sort of drone pieces,” says Moore, “because I wanted to have that kind of elemental nature to them as opposed to being more song-centric.”
Recording and performing a variety of music creates some uncertainty, though, among promoters, retailers and fans. So, Moore is careful to draw bright lines between his different styles to eliminate confusion. Before his recent shows in New York City and Philadelphia, he asked the promoters to make clear that fans would see an experimental trio featuring percussionists Willie Winant and Tom Surgal, not the band that recorded Critical Flow Lucidity. When he performs songs from Critical Flow Lucidity, he wants fans to know they’re not going to see free-form guitar improvisation. And although he could release a torrent of music, Moore is careful to flood the market.
“I realize that there’s a bit of a responsibility,” he says. “I mean, I know people who I associate with who are musicians who release music every week on Bandcamp, and they’re just constantly recording, releasing. And in some ways, I hold myself back from doing that. I mean, I have gotten into this situation through the years where I want to do a tour and the promoters are like, ‘Well, you were just here playing noise improv in some basement in Paris. So we don’t feel like we can actually book you right now, because the audience is confused.’ Like, what are you going to do? And so that has been a bit of an issue. It’s like, are you going to do your band? Are you going to be playing proper quote-unquote songs, which there’s much a bigger audience for? Or are you going to come here and play with some electronic noise guy? And so I understand that. It’s difficult for the other people involved who are presenting your gig, particularly promoters, because they don’t know how to promote it, and so I’m a bit careful.”
His desire to push boundaries — and his seemingly never-ending supply of friendships with influential musicians — finds Moore collaborating with some prominent names. Last year, for example, Moore performed a free improvisation set with former Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., and later in London (joined by drummer Steve Noble at one gig). The Big Ears performance was “extremely polarizing” for anybody who expected to hear a cross between Led Zeppelin and Sonic Youth.
“It was just pretty jarring. It was like creating this kind of sound world of improvised noise music. And the place was just jammed. Everybody wanted to see this. And then I think within 30 minutes, it was half full, and I think maybe people got the idea that we weren’t going to be playing any tunes. We were just into this other thing, which we really wanted to do. And we did it, and I really loved it. I have actually mixed down the session. I’d love to put it out some day.”
Three musicians Moore is unlikely to perform with are his Sonic Youth bandmates: Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Steve Shelley. From Oasis to Pavement, many rock bands from the ‘90s have capitalized on nostalgia and the longevity of their brands by returning to the stage. While Moore doesn’t exactly rule out a Sonic Youth reunion, he says isn’t motivated by the payday and believes the band’s legacy stands firm without one. “We covered so much territory that I don’t feel like it was a story left on untold. I think it really had a nice trajectory, and it certainly doesn’t feel unfinished to me.”
Listen to the entire interview with Thurston Moore in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
Bruce Springsteen dropped the second preview of his upcoming sprawling Tracks II: The Lost Albums collection on Thursday morning (April 17). The beat-heavy mid-tempo song “Blind Spot” will appear on the box set as part of the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, a 10-song LP that a release noted has long been referred to by fans as the Boss’ “loops record.”
Opening with a sampled voice grunting over a mechanical-sounding drum beat, it finds Springsteen singing, “We inhabited each other/ Like it was some kind of disease/ I thought that I was flyin’/ But I was crawlin’ on my knees,” in a haunted cadence. The chorus leans into the notion that it’s the things we miss in love that are our undoing: “Everybody’s got a blind spot that brings ’em down/ Everybody’s got a blind spot they can’t get around.”
“That was just the theme that I locked in on at that moment,” Springsteen said in a statement about the song exploring doubt and betrayal in relationships that became the thesis for the Philadelphia Sessions. “I don’t really know why. [Wife and bandmate] Patti [Scialfa] and I, we were having a great time in California. But sometimes if you lock into one song you like, then you follow that thread. I had ‘Blind Spot,’ and I followed that thread through the rest of the record.”
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The song was written following the rock icon’s 1994 Oscar- and Grammy-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia,” which accompanied the 1993 Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington movie Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme’s legal drama about an attorney suing his former employer for his firing after the firm discovers he’s gay and has AIDS.
The never-released companion album “found Springsteen exploring an interest in the rhythms of mid-1990s contemporary music, and particularly West Coast hip-hop,” according to the release. “Initially poring over CDs of drum samples at his home in Los Angeles, Springsteen began making his own loops with engineer Toby Scott — which formed a rhythmic base he’d build on with keyboards and synthesizers. Both a revelation and departure in his home recording, Springsteen is the primary instrumentalist throughout most of Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.” Among those lending an assist during the sessions were his 1992-1993 touring band, as well Scialfa, E Street band members Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell.
Though it never saw the light of day, the album was completed, mixed and slated for release in the spring of 1995, then shelved when Springsteen opted instead to reunite with the E Street Band after a seven-year hiatus. “I said, ‘Well, maybe it’s time to just do something with the band, or remind the fans of the band or that part of my work life,’” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said. “So that’s where we went. But I always really liked Streets of Philadelphia Sessions’… during the [2017-2018] Broadway show, I thought of putting it out [as a standalone release]. I always put them away, but I don’t throw them away.”
Earlier this month, Springsteen announced the June 27 release of Tracks II, which will contain seven previously unheard full-length records. The 83-track collection will “fill in rich chapters of Springsteen’s expansive career timeline — while offering invaluable insight into his life and work as an artist,” according to a release, which noted that some of the LPs got so far as the mixing stage before being put on hold.
Among the albums included are the lo-fi LA Garage Sessions ’83, described as a “crucial link” between the stripped-down Nebraska and the rocking Born in the U.S.A., the sonically experimental Faithless film soundtrack he wrote for a movie that was never made, the country-leaning Somewhere North of Nashville and the border tales LP Inyo, as well as the “orchestra-driven, mid-century noir” Twilight Hours.
The box set covering the years 1983-2018 was previewed by the first single, the turbulent “Rain in the River.” The Lost Albums will be issued in a limited-edition 9-LP set , as well as 7-CD and digital formats, with distinctive packaging for each, along with a 100-page cloth-bound hardcover book with rare archival photos. A 20-track compilation, Lost and Found: Selections From The Lost Albums, will be released on June 27 on two LPs and one CD.
Listen to “Blind Spot” below.
Zak Starkey has spoken out about his apparent firing from The Who after a nearly 30-year run, saying in a statement that he was shocked to hear that, according to reports, singer Roger Daltrey had taken issue with his playing at a recent Royal Albert Hall show in London.
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“I’m very proud of my near 30 years with The Who,” Starkey said in a statement on Wednesday (April 16) according to People. “Filling the shoes of my Godfather, ‘uncle Keith’ [Moon] has been the biggest honor and I remain their biggest fan. They’ve been like family to me.”
The veteran session and live drummer and son of former Beatles timekeeper Ringo Starr and his first wife Maureen Starkey noted that he suffered a “serious medical emergency” in January when he was treated for blood clots in his right calf. “This is now completely healed and does not affect my drumming or running.”
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In a statement to The Guardian earlier this week, a spokesperson for the group said: “The band made a collective decision to part ways with Zak after this round of shows at the Royal Albert Hall. They have nothing but admiration for him and wish him the very best for his future.”
The shows in question took place on March 18 and 20 in benefit of the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity that singer Roger Daltrey has long been a patron of. According to Metro, Daltrey — who recently revealed that he is losing his hearing and eyesight — appeared to get frustrated about Starkey’s playing and stopped several songs mid-performance after saying he was having trouble hearing the band over Starkey’s drums.
During the band’s first-ever run through the show-ending Who’s Next track “The Song Is Over,” Daltrey reportedly told the audience, “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”
In his statement, Starkey expressed shock that “anyone” would find fault with his playing that night. “After playing those songs with the band for so many decades, I’m surprised and saddened anyone would have an issue with my performance that night, but what can you do?” Starkey said in seeming reference to the Metro report. “I plan to take some much needed time off with my family, and focus on the release of ‘Domino Bones’ by Mantra Of The Cosmos with Noel Gallagher in May and finishing my autobiography written solely by me. 29 years at any job is a good old run, and I wish them the best.”
Starkey, who first began playing with the Who in 1996 when they got back together for a reunion tour on which they played their 1973 double album Quadrophenia in its entirety, seemed to predict his sacking in an Instagram post on Saturday, in which he said he thought Daltrey, 81, was “unhappy” with him.
“HEARD TODAY FROM INSIDE SOURCE WITHIN WHOSE HORSES NOSE THAT TOGER DAKTREY LEAD SINGER AND PRINCIPAL SONGWRITER OF THE GROUP UNHAPPY WITH ZAK THE DRUMMER’S PERFORMANCE AT THE ALBERT HALL A FEW WEEKS AGO,” he wrote alongside a pic of him sitting next to a smiling Daltrey. “IS BRINGING FORMAL CHARGES OF OVERPLAYING AND IS LITERALLY GOING TO ZAK THE DRUMMER AND BRING ON A RESERVE FROM ‘THE BURWASH CARWASH SKIFFLE ‘N’ TICKLE GLEE CLUB HARMONY WITHOUT EMPATHY ALLSTARS’ THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY WHOSE LONG TIME MANAGER WILLYA YOUWONTYOUKNOW.”
Starkey got his start behind the kit when the Who’s original drummer and close family friend, Keith Moon, gave him a drum set for his eighth birthday. In addition to his longtime gig with the band, he has also played with Oasis, Johnny Marr, Paul Weller and Graham Coxon and also performs with the new supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos, which features Happy Mondays/Black Grape members Shaun Ryder and Bez and Andy Bell of Oasis and Ride.