Rock
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On Saturday night (Nov. 5), the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted its 2022 class in grand fashion. Inductees included Dolly Parton, Eminem, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Lionel Richie and Carly Simon. Judas Priest and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis are also joining the Rock Hall with the “award for musical excellence.”
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And while little was known about what Eminem in particular would do to commemorate his induction — as is expected from the reserved rapper — the surprises, plural, made for an even more impactful showing.
Longtime friend and collaborator Dr. Dre had the pleasure of inducting Eminem, recalling the first time Jimmy Iovine called to let him know that Eminem was a white guy. “That completely f—-d me up,” said Dre with a laugh.
He continued to recount how nearly everyone tried to discourage him from working with the then-unknown rapper, saying no one believed or saw the vision. “I knew that his gifts were undeniable,” Dre affirmed. “Each of us was what the other one needed — and I was willing to bet my entire career on it.”
As Dre said, Eminem “brought hip-hop to middle America.” In doing so, he became one of the best-selling and most celebrated rappers in music, evidenced by the Rock Hall video montage that included clips from Adele, Elton John, Rihanna and more all praising his unmatched skills.
There was only one way to follow such a hefty induction, and that was with an even meatier performance. Em delivered just that, ripping through hits like “My Name Is,” “Forever,” “Not Afraid” and more — while also featuring unexpected guests from Steven Tyler to Ed Sheeran.
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” said Eminem following his set. “One, I’m a rapper; two, I almost died from an overdose; and three, I really had to fight my way through… I’m a high school drop out with a hip hop education.”
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will air on Nov. 19 on HBO.
On Saturday night (Nov. 5), the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted its 2022 class that included singer-songwriter great Carly Simon. Following an induction and performance from Sara Bareilles, Olivia Rodrigo made an appearance to deliver a theatrical and passionate take on Simon’s hit “You’re So Vain.”
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In the video montage honoring Simon (who was unable to attend the ceremony), Taylor Swift even called “Vain” “the best song that’s ever been written… that is the best way anyone has addressed a breakup, it’s amazing.”
Wearing stockings and a gray dress, Rodrigo skipped on stage during the sing-songy chorus, giving a performance so convincing it was as if she had written the 50-year-old song herself.
“You’re So Vain” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. It’s Simon’s only No. 1 on the tally. Bareilles performed “Nobody Does It Better,” which hit No. 2 on the Hot 100.
The 2022 ceremony is the first time in the Hall’s 37-year history that six female acts — Benatar, Parton, Simon, Cotten, Robinson and Annie Lennox (as part of Eurythmics) — were inducted in one class.
The 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which took place this year in Los Angeles, will air Nov. 19 on HBO.
Andy Taylor was expected to join his former bandmates tonight (Saturday, Nov. 5) at Duran Duran’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. However, after performing a medley of their hits, current members Simon LeBon, John Taylor, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor took to the podium and explained his absence.
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“Four years ago, Andy was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer,” LeBon said, breaking the news. He read a portion of a letter from Taylor, who had hoped to join the band on stage for the first time in 17 years but his health did not allow him to travel from Ibiza.
Taylor left the band in 1986. He rejoined in 2001 and played guitar on 2004’s Astronaut before leaving again in 2006.
Below is his letter in full.
Dear Simon, John, Roger, Nick, my fellow inductees and countrymen
I wanted to send a personal note to pass along my sincerest respect to you all for what’s been an amazing career, and to also share what has happened to me.
Firstly, can I say what an absolute honour it was to be nominated let alone be inducted into the RRHOF. There’s nothing that comes close to such recognition. I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved together and of the way you have continued. As a guitar player in a progressive band from the synth days of the early eighties, literally from the day I met Nick, John, Simon and Roger they truly valued the contribution of a rather noisy, versatile Northern brat. We all grew up on the same vinyl records and live gigs, from David Bowie to Roxy Music, The Sex Pistols and of course CHIC. I could go to all those places as a player and developed a hybrid guitar style that fitted this amazing concept OF A BAND…
I loved going into the studio and recording our material; nobody else sounded like us. We were ripe to absorb what was the art of analogue recording, but with some different kit, Nick’s artful obsession with synth technology was something I’d never seen before and I was introduced to layers. Because we were instinctively the right fit, we evolved very quickly, writing RIO as our second album with the confidence our very early success with ‘Girls On Film’ and ‘Planet Earth’ inspired.
You can dream about what happened to us but to experience it, on one’s own terms, as mates, was beyond incredible.
I would like to thank each of my brothers in this great band.
My family: my incredibly sane wife of 40 years – Tracey – my amazing children, Andy, Georgie, Bethy and Izzy, not forgetting my grandson Albie, who’s probably online listening or on Fortnite!!!
The original believers: Paul and Michael Berrow, Dave Ambrose, Terry Slater, Rob Hallett.
The Producers: Colin Thurston, Alex Sadkin, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers – I’ve also really dug the work with Mark Ronson – I particularly admire ‘All You Need Is Now’, that’s a DD melody if ever I heard one.
Thanks also to Merck, Andrew and Wendy.
Now for the bad blood, well the good news is that there is none, just pure love and respect for everything we wrote, recorded and achieved together. What’s the point? There’s no stopping this 44-year thing called “Duran Duran”.
Now to the reason I’m not here:
Just over 4-years ago I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer. Many families have experienced the slow burn of this disease and of course we are no different; so I speak from the perspective of a family-man but with profound humility to the band, the greatest fans a group could have and this exceptional accolade.
I have the Rodgers and Edwards of doctors and medical treatment that until very recently allowed me to just rock on. Although my current condition is not immediately life threatening there is no cure. Recently I was doing okay after some very sophisticated life extending treatment, that was until a week or so ago when I suffered a setback, and despite the exceptional efforts of my team, I had to be honest in that both physically and mentally, I would be pushing my boundaries.
However, none of this needs to or should detract from what this band (with or without me) has achieved and sustained for 44 years. We’ve had a privileged life, we were a bit naughty but really nice, a bit shirty but very well dressed, a bit full of ourselves, because we had a lot to give, but as I’ve said many times, when you feel that collective, instinctive, kindred spirit of creativity mixed with ambition, armed with an über cool bunch of fans, well what could possibly go wrong?
I’m truly sorry and massively disappointed I couldn’t make it. Let there be no doubt I was stoked about the whole thing, even bought a new guitar with the essential whammy!
I’m so very proud of these four brothers; I’m amazed at their durability, and I’m overjoyed at accepting this award. I often doubted the day would come. I’m sure as hell glad I’m around to see the day.
All My Love
AT
Live. A note. A melody. A passing riff. It’s fleeting, one-of-a-kind artistry. Few know this better than Deadheads.
In the 160-odd years since audio was first recorded, many a musical legend has attempted to bottle the elusive magic of their live performances. Some successfully. Others less so. But few rock bands have produced anything as influential as Europe ‘72, the Grateful Dead’s triple live album, chronicling their wild ride through The Continent in April and May that year. Released 50 years ago on Nov. 5, 1972, it remains one of the most commercially successful albums by the Dead. It’s also perhaps their one release most responsible for The Live Cult of the Dead – the cultural movement that today is still very much alive and well. It’s the gateway drug for prospective Deadheads. While bootleg tape-traders can argue over which recording of what show during which era is the band’s best, Europe ’72 is their best-known and most widely acclaimed.
By the early 1970s, it had already been a long strange trip for the Grateful Dead. What started in 1964 as the trad-folk group Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions quickly and temporarily became The Warlocks by 1964, before the core group—singer-guitarist Jerry Garcia, singer-rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, bassist-vocalist Phil Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann—settled on Grateful Dead by ‘65. From their first show at Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, the band was at the center of the 1960s psychedelic and counter-culture explosion in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Second drummer Mickey Hart and lyricist Robert Hunter joined in ’67, and the band then went on a run of classics, starting with the heavily experimental (1968’s Anthem of the Sun and 1969’s Aoxomoxoa) before moving out of SF to Marin County, Calif., to reinvent the Americana sound with their legendary psych-folk duo of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty (both 1970).
It was an incredibly productive period for the Dead. In ’69, the band released their first live album, Live/Dead, for which the band’s audio engineer, Owsley “Bear” Stanley, adopted then-revolutionary new gear and techniques, including 16-track recording and a microphone splitter that cleaned up the sound. Recorded at SF’s Fillmore West and the Avalon, the LP introduced exploratory renditions of tracks like “Dark Star,” “St. Stephen” and “The Eleven.”
“Studio versions could never do those songs justice,” Kreutzmann said in his 2015 memoir, Deal.
In ’71, they followed up with a self-titled live album, lovingly known as Skull & Roses for its iconic cover art, which introduced tracks like “Bertha,” “Wharf Rat” and “Playing in the Band.” Then, in early ’72, Garcia dropped his eponymous debut solo album, shortly followed by Weir’s solo release, Ace. It all helped add to the Dead’s live repertoire.
A few more lineup changes occurred during this time: Hart began a three-year absence in ‘71, leaving Kreutzmann as the Dead’s sole drummer. Keyboardist Keith Godchaux joined in September ’71 to help prop up the 26-year-old Pigpen, who was by then in and out of the hospital with health problems. And finally, Godchaux’s wife Donna, a onetime session singer for Elvis Presley, joined as a backing vocalist. The stage was now set for Europe ’72.
“Magical stuff was happening in ’72,” longtime crew member/manager Steve Parish said in Amazon’s four-hour documentary A Long Strange Trip. “Stuff that to this day, I can’t explain. They we repushing us into the light, and the light was bright.”
On the Dead’s first extended European tour, the group played a total of 22 shows (most of them clocking in north of three hours) starting and concluding in London, and hitting Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich and others in between. It was a 50-person traveling circus of family members, wives, girlfriends, friends, kids, roadies, dealers and hanger-ons. Live, the band leaned into the kaleidoscopic, yet dusty, psych-Americana sound of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty with slithering guitar solos and rollicking rhythms. Each night’s full set was recorded with a future release in mind—the band was in debt to their label and the tour needed to be profitable. They jammed into the night aided by a bottle of distilled LSD smuggled across the Atlantic on the plane.
In the end, the best 17 tracks were chosen for Europe ’72, including the introduction of a handful of new tunes: “He’s Gone,” “Jack Straw,” “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Ramble on Rose” and “Tennessee Jed,” most of which never saw release in the form of a studio version, adding more value to Europe ’72 as a stand-alone album.
Extended, energetic improvisations abound, and post-tour overdubs eliminated most of the crowd noise (some new vocal takes were added, too). The tour de force is Garcia’s messianic closer, “Morning Dew,” recorded at the last show of the tour in London. It’s a Canadian folk tune, recounting a conversation between the last man and woman alive on earth following a nuclear apocalypse, but heavily interpreted by the Dead and Garcia: “Walk me out in the morning dew my honey,” he sings, his guitar gently reassuring, Pigpen’s organ lines floating beneath. “I’ll walk you out in the morning dew my honey. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway.” Garcia reportedly played the version on the live album with his back to the crowd, tears running down his face.
Europe ‘72 was one of the first triple-record rock albums to be certified gold, and has since been certified double platinum. The Dead’s best-selling live album also marked a coda: the group’s final recording with Pigpen, who died the following year.
In 2011, all recordings from the tour were released as Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings—across 73 CDs.
And the legend roles on. After Garcia’s death, in 1995, the band’s various members carried the torch, performing their classics in too many incarnations to mention. In 2015, members of the Dead unexpectedly partnered with John Mayer for a new band, Dead & Co. Yes, “Your Body Is a Wonderland,” Rolex-collecting, Jessica Simpson-dating Hollywood pop-blues playboy John Mayer. At first, it was a very curious partnership. Many Deadheads were livid. Now, in hindsight, it feels like destiny. The band’s live shows over the past seven years have drawn millions and been positively embraced by Deadheads. Meanwhile, the band’s quarterly archival live release series, Dave’s Picks, have delivered their highest chart placements in recent years. And in summer 2023, the Dead & Co. will wrap up their run with a series of shows across North America. It’s one of the hottest tickets on earth.
But that won’t be the end of the Dead or their Cult of Live.
“Being alive, means continuing to change,” Jerry Garcia said in A Long Strange Trip. And The Dead never die.
Arctic Monkeys return to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart dated Nov. 5 with the debut of their first album in four years, The Car.
In its first tracking week dated Oct. 21-27, The Car earned 38,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate. The set is Arctic Monkeys’ third to top the chart, following 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino and 2013’s AM.
The Car also debuts at No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums rankings. Concurrently, The Car starts at No. 6 on the all-genre Billboard 200, tying AM for the band’s best rank and marking its fourth top 10, dating to its first, the No. 7-peaking Favourite Worst Nightmare, in 2007.
Two songs from the new album reach the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am” debuts at No. 36 (1.9 million official U.S. streams) and “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” re-enters at No. 39 (1.7 million).
The tracks concurrently place at Nos. 22 and 25, respectively, on Hot Alternative Songs, and “Quite” is bubbling under Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart.
In all, the band has three songs on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Alternative Songs. “505,” the closing track on 2007’s Nightmare, is currently charting due to TikTok virality over the past few months, putting it at No. 10 on the latter and No. 13 on the former. In the Oct. 21-27 tracking week, “505” accumulated 4.7 million streams, down 3%.
As part of our annual Indie Now package, we asked notable figures in the independent scene to offer advice on how to succeed in the industry. Below, Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin talks to Billboard‘s Jason Lipshutz.
I think the label “DIY” is a little misleading — like you’re out on this island, fighting your way toward some sort of success or fame. To me, it’s really about doing it with all the people around you. The DIY community is what sends artists into the next levels of their careers, so it’s about surrounding yourself with people whom you believe in, who believe in you and want to support you. For me, that was mostly going to shows, meeting people who liked music that I liked [and] being open to new situations.
When you place yourself in a community, you learn about your own skill set and what other people are really good at — you realize you’re not an A-plus graphic designer but know how to record a band. Being able to produce and write with people comes naturally to me, and I like being around musicians, so it becomes this endless feedback loop of, “How can we help each other?”
Recording is more accessible than ever [right now] — if you have a laptop, or even an iPhone, you can do so much. It’s so easy to jump in with a limited set of tools, and the best way to get comfortable in that setting is to just do it over and over again: Practice, sit in your room with a guitar, record yourself, and listen back. Some of the music that I’m most blown away by is from high school kids with Ableton on their laptops, making crazy stuff. Or someone who went to a Goodwill, got a tape recorder and started there.
There’s a lot of talk on the internet now about the sustainability of the music industry — it’s hard to tour, and it’s often not fiscally rewarding while also taking a lot of time and energy. With live music feeling a little tenuous, I think DIY could come back stronger than ever because nothing beats a basement show. And that’s what will come back if middle-tier artists can’t afford to put on shows at a 500-capacity venue with sound and lights. We’ll get to go back to the basics of finding a warehouse and a community and feeding the scene.
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
Get ready, North America — Paramore is coming. On Friday (Nov. 4), bandmates Hayley Williams, Taylor York and Zac Farro announced plans to embark on an arena tour in 2023, with shows in 26 cities across the United States and Canada.
The tour, simply titled Paramore in North America, kicks off in Charlotte, N.C., on May 23 — five days after the pop-punk group opens for Taylor Swift at one show on her recently announced Eras Tour — and ends in St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 2 next year. Bloc Party, Foals, The Linda Lindas and Genesis Owusuare are slated to open for the band at select shows on the trek, which will also make stops at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, Austin’s Moody Center, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum and more.
Tickets go on general sale at 10 a.m. local time next Friday (Nov. 11), and will be available on Paramore’s website. A presale for American Express cardholders will go live 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday (Nov. 9), meanwhile a general presale for verified fans starts at 8 a.m. local time the following day.
Fans have until Monday (Nov. 7) to register for both presales on Ticketmaster’s website. A portion of ticket sales for all North American shows will be donated to eco-conscious hunger relief nonprofit Support + Feed and environmental nonprofit REVERB.
The tour will follow the Feb. 10 release of Paramore’s sixth studio album This Is Why, the band’s first LP in almost six years. The record’s lead single — which doubles as the title track — dropped in September.
The “This Is Why” era comes after Paramore took a nearly five-year hiatus from releasing music and performing. The trio made their official return to touring this fall with a run of intimate North American shows, their first circuit since 2017’s After Laughter Tour.
See the full list of dates for Paramore’s 2023 North American tour below:
PARAMORE IN NORTH AMERICA TOUR DATES
Tue May 23 – Charlotte, NC – Spectrum Center*×
Thu May 25 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena*×
Sat May 27 – Atlantic City, NJ – Adjacent Festival!
Tue May 30 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden*×
Fri June 02 – Washington, DC – Capital One Arena*×
Sun Jun 04 – Cleveland, OH – Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse*×
Mon Jun 05 – Indianapolis, IN – Gainbridge Fieldhouse*×
Wed Jun 07 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena*×
Thu Jun 08 – Toronto, ON – Scotiabank Arena*×
Sat Jun 10 – Columbus, OH – Schottenstein Center*×
Sun Jun 11 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paint Arena*×
Tue Jun 13 – Orlando, FL – Amway Center*×
Wed Jun 14 – Hollywood, FL – Hard Rock Live*×
Thu Jul 06 – New Orleans, LA – Smoothie King Center+°
Sat Jul 08 – Fort Worth, TX – Dickies Arena+°
Sun Jul 09 – Austin, TX – Moody Center+°
Tue Jul 11 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center+°
Thu Jul 13 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena+°
Sun Jul 16 – San Diego, CA – Viejas Arena+
Wed Jul 19 – Los Angeles, CA – Kia Forum+
Sat Jul 22 – San Francisco, CA – Chase Center+
Mon Jul 24 – Seattle, WA – Climate Pledge Arena+°
Tue Jul 25 – Portland, OR – Veterans Memorial Coliseum+°
Thu Jul 27 – Salt Lake City, UT – Vivint Arena+°
Sat Jul 29 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center+°
Sun Jul 30 – St Louis, MO – Enterprise Center+°
Wed Aug 02 – St. Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center+°
*With Support Bloc Party
+With Support from Foals
°With Support from The Linda Lindas
×With Support from Genesis Owusu
!Festival Performance
It’s fitting that Phoenix’s live show, specifically on a temperate night at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 9, is buzzing with electric energy. After all, the lauded French band — consisting of members (and decades-long pals) Thomas Mars, Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz, Deck D’Arcy and Christian Mazzalai — had been waiting with bated breath and crossed fingers for this exact moment.
After a glittering showcase of the band’s beloved material — including the No. 6-charting Adult Alternative Airplay hit “Entertainment,” fan favorite “Too Young” from its self-titled debut LP and multiple cuts from the group’s Grammy-winning classic Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix — the quartet stripped things back for the live debut of “Winter Solstice,” a stark insight into Phoenix’s mindset amid a pandemic that left the members starving for connection. That outlook frames the band’s seventh studio album, Alpha Zulu, out now via Glassnote Records.
To be clear, Phoenix “didn’t want to make a cliché pandemic album” with Alpha Zulu. But when France was under lockdown due to COVID-19 and Mars was separated from his friends, musical bits acted as the band’s letters to each other. On the other side of the world away from Branco, Mazzalai and Deck, Mars penned and recorded stream-of-consciousness lyrics that would later become “Winter Solstice” to speak to the isolation he felt amid the wildfires in northern California. Out of this bleakness, the light that would inspire the rest of Alpha Zulu started to shine through.
“It sounds corny, but music became the way to communicate when we were separated. It was our way of saying we knew everybody was okay, but on standby,” Mars explains of the brooding, synth-driven track over a four-way Zoom call, accompanied by his bandmates. “We wanted something to happen in our lives, but the only thing that could happen was a good song and the possibility of playing it live someday.”
The quartet didn’t want to steep in the sorrow for too long. “After we recorded ‘Winter Solstice,’ we wanted to escape and think about a brighter future,” Branco adds. As lockdown restrictions across countries began to ease, hope started to break through the clouds. In between pockets of travel for Mars — “he could come back to Paris, but no more than a week or 10 days and had to rush back because of new waves in other parts of the world,” according to D’Arcy — Phoenix was feverish with inspiration when they finally were able to reconvene.
Hunkered down for weeks in a storage room-turned-studio located at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs (“real studios are very boring,” says Branco), the musicians were immersed in both chaos and solitude, a combination that set their creativity aflame.
“We were surrounded by Napoleon’s throne and works from the medieval period and the second century. All this culture melting together in a sordid, empty museum with no one seeing us…it was a big mess!” Mazzalai explains with a certain glee. “But it was helpful to us. Very freeing and joyful, in a way.”
He further recalls, “We’ve never been that inspired, because Thomas was stuck in confinement during lockdown for many months in the United States. It was the first time we didn’t see Thomas for more than a month, so once he could travel to the studio after weeks of waiting, we produced more than ever. It was maybe the most creative time of our entire life.”
“The stillness made recording the album even more intense for us. The world was asleep, and that gave gravity to us and depth to the record,” Mars adds.
The trying conditions resulted in some of Phoenix’s brightest and most ambitious work to date. “After Midnight,” a cut from the top half of Alpha Zulu, sees the group tapping into a euphoria that leaves its listener equal parts jittery and energized; “Season 2” calls back to Phoenix’s classic — and infectious — use of wordplay (“giddy up, I’m bored”), while “Artefact” highlights the band’s consistent, artful use of synthesizers and lyrical repetitions, also seen in the tongue twisters on the album’s title track, “Alpha Zulu.”
For the first time, the band needed a friend to help bring one of its songs to life. On single “Tonight,” Phoenix enlists fellow indie pop heavyweight Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend to provide supporting vocals and a verse on the upbeat track. Marking the band’s first time collaborating with another artist, the band spent months cultivating a relationship with Koenig. At first, the uptempo track started off like any other Phoenix song, with the group jotting down lyric ideas on the makeshift studio’s whiteboard and assigning names to each of the song’s parts for easy swapping. But when the track’s second verse rolled around (“What if we last ’til it’s dawn like you promised me?/ Who let the boys spill their entrée?”), the band knew something — or rather, someone — was missing.
“The playfulness of the track reminded us of Ezra, so we had to call him. We were intimate enough with him that we knew the song was safe,” Mars says. “If it wasn’t good, we wouldn’t have to put it out or he could say no if he didn’t like it. It’s rare that we know people well enough to do that.”
To be let into Phoenix’s circle is a privilege not afforded to many. The group — friends since elementary school who have been in a band together for the past 25 years — still manages to maintain an unwavering chemistry without resorting to breaking up or bringing in new members. So what’s the secret? “The lead singer is not one of the brothers. If you look at every band where the lead singer is one of the brothers, they’re totally collapsing and hating each other,” the frontman jokes.
The true formula to Phoenix’s tight-knit nature resides in the most benign form of communism — each member of the band has a hand in all moving parts. “We share everything in four, in a very communist manner,” Branco explains. “Our music belongs to us because we control everything, from the publishing to the production, the four of us, equally. It’s the French motto ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ (liberty, equality, fraternity).”
Whereas other bands might rely on the lead singer to craft lyrics or handle most of an album’s production, Branco insists It’s Never Been Like That for the French quartet: “There is not one of us that is more gifted than the other. There’s not that one genius songwriter and the others are just following. We are pretty average — or bad — when we are on our own, but when we add our forces, we produce a result that is better than the sum of our individual qualities. We know we need each other.”
The band’s unofficial member, Philippe Zdar, was also crucial to Phoenix’s friendship story. Alpha Zulu marks the first album the band has worked on without the guidance of the French music producer, who passed away in 2019 — the quartet touches on the producer’s passing in the LP’s stunning closer, “Identical.” The track, which also appears in Sofia Coppola’s (Mars’ wife) 2020 movie On the Rocks, serves double duty by shedding light on the band’s perception of life post-pandemic.
Speaking of Zdar’s role in “Identical,” Mars says the track “was the best way to end the album because he was the main thing that was missing in us working together. The song has the light at the end of the tunnel, which fits the pandemic. That’s the strong identity of the album. We’re trying not to be in denial of what happened or to wash it away. It’s a reminder that every album is a Polaroid of its time.”
Whereas Phoenix’s previous studio effort, 2017’s Ti Amo, saw the band tapping into Italo disco sounds and nostalgia sweeter than scoops of melted gelato, Alpha Zulu has no set purpose. There’s no obvious takeaway, just the unbridled “joy of creating things as different as possible from each other.”
The band’s message, however, has always remained the same — to infiltrate their listener’s most human senses to make them feel something at their core.
“The power of music…it’s like a charm or a spell. This magical trick that is so powerful that even us, the magicians, we don’t understand how it’s working,” says Branco. “That’s why we make music.”
Måneskin is all for keeping the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll alive — which is why the Italian rockers took issue with the MTV Video Music Awards censoring their performance back in August.
When Maneskin’s Victoria De Angelis suffered a wardrobe malfunction that left her chest exposed during their performance of the Alternative Airplay No. 1 hit “Supermodel,” the live broadcast cut away from the bassist to wide shots of the stage instead. In a new NME interview with De Angelis and frontman Damiano David published earlier this week, the duo shared that the censorship was a major disappointment to them as a band.
“It shows that there are still many, many prejudices towards rock bands and towards women,” David told NME. “There is a lot to work on and we try to do our part.”
The televised moment saw cameras at the awards show hastily panning away from the stage following De Angelis’ exposure and to an area containing empty seats; shortly after the moment, De Angelis went down into a pit of fans at the show to continue the performance.
“It’s sad, but it’s good that people then talk about it and think about it,” De Angelis added. “It’s stupid that there has to be this control and censorship over people’s bodies.”
On Sept. 6 — a week after the 2022 VMAs took place — MTV shared a “restored,” slightly less censored version of Måneskin’s performance. De Angelis’ wardrobe malfunction remains, though her bare chest is blurred in the final cut.
Revisit Måneskin’s performance of “Supermodel” at the 2022 MTV VMAs below.
“Is this America, or is this the bands?”
That’s the question that Manic Street Preachers frontman James Dean Bradfield remembers asking himself back in the ’90s, about the destructive impact that touring the United States seemed to have on so many bands (particularly British ones) of the era. At the time, the question was most directly inspired by his then-tourmates in Oasis and Screaming Trees, both of whom appeared to be disintegrating as the three acts were trekking across the U.S. in 1996. But Brett Anderson, leader of the London Suede, recalls his own band being something of a casualty of stateside touring in their own early days.
“I’ve seen bands fall apart in America – our own included, actually,” Anderson says. “And I’ve seen what it can do to you … I’m slightly wary of the pressures that the States kind of exerts on bands, actually.”
This wariness may have contributed to both bands — two of the U.K.’s most successful and best-enduring alt-rock outfits of the ’90s — mostly refraining from touring the States in recent years, with the London Suede’s last full U.S. trek now a full quarter-century in the rearview. But older, wiser, and newly motivated post-pandemic — and with a pair of excellent recent albums to promote in the Manics’ 2021 effort The Ultra Vivid Lament and London Suede’s September release Autofiction — the two veteran groups are linking up for a dozen North American tour dates, starting Thursday (Nov. 3) in Vancouver, and taking them to both U.S. coasts and a handful of cities in between. “We’re not all 25-year-old lunatics anymore, so hopefully we can bring a bit of judgment to bear with that,” Anderson says.
It also helps that the two groups, who toured together in Europe in 1994, are longtime well-wishers and kindred spirits. It’s a familiarity obvious in Billboard‘s Zoom conversation with Bradfield and Anderson, who spend the first five minutes catching up about each other’s lives, and laughing about how unimpressed their kids are with them. (“I think it doesn’t really matter what your parent does, they’re automatically uncool, aren’t they?” Anderson remarks. “It’s just the definition of being a parent — that they’re a bit naff, d’ya know what I mean?”)
Below, Billboard discusses the two bands’ histories of touring America with Bradfield and Anderson — as well as what they expect on this current tour, and why them actually getting along with one another is more the exception than the rule with bands of their era.
So obviously it’s been a while since you’ve both been on tour – and it’s even longer since you’ve been to the States, in both your instances. So what made now the right time?
Bradfield: I suppose I should just be really honest … after COVID, after lockdown, and then looking in the mirror too many times … as a band, we started talking about the things that we wanted to do again, just in case — well, just in case, really. And we had realized that we hadn’t toured America that much, and we wanted to go back. And places like America and Japan were places that we always want to go back to. It was just that thing of the near future not being so definite anymore – it spirited us on to actually do it again, I think.
Anderson: Yeah, uh, from our point of view – I can’t remember where the suggestion came from, but one day someone suggested this … did it come from you guys?
Bradfield: I think it may have come from our dear manager, Martin [Hall].
Anderson: Well, that’s lovely. Then it was a fantastic suggestion. Like most things with one’s career, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And I think that you kind of have this sort of idea that everyone’s got these incredibly sort of strategic plans for their careers, and it’s not really like that. You kinda stumble into things. Someone suggested it, and we thought, “Yeah! F–k it, why not? Let’s do it.”
Bradfield: We have no delusions about what we mean in America as a band, y’know, the Manics. And the idea of going with another band that could help us with the lifting – sometimes lift more than we could, or vice versa, just helping each other – was appealing to us. Because we’re not delusional about our status in America. And just touring with Suede, in terms of – some kind of kinship there, some kind of empathy that we share, I think – and the idea that we could actually help each other get there, and for it to mean something… we definitely looked at touring with Suede – with you, Brett – and we just thought, “God, that could just be a great experience for us,” simple as that.
Anderson: Yeah, I think the same for us. You know, we haven’t been to the States in such a long time, and it didn’t really ever go off for us in the States. I mean, the first album [1993’s Suede] did OK, and then after that we had to change the name [to The London Suede], and there’s a lot of s–t that went down … and we didn’t, we just sort of, we left it alone for a while.
And when [this tour] was suggested, it was almost like – you know, more than the sum of its parts, almost. It’s a thing with both bands together – I think we share, not the same fanbase, because that would be oversimplified, but I think we have a fanbase in common. Lots of people like both bands, there’s a similar kind of thread that runs through both bands. So it seemed like a really exciting prospect. And we’d toured together before and we’d always got on, so it seemed … like yeah, a bit of a no-brainer.
Bradfield: They know that we’re quick sound-checkers! [Both laugh.]
Had there ever been any discussions either between your two bands, or between your bands and other like-minded bands from your era, of doing kind of this package thing, and sort of doing the strength-in-numbers approach and maybe getting to the States last decade or the decade before?
Anderson: The problem is … we don’t really like many other bands. That’s our problem. We’re one of the most miserable bands in the music industry, d’you know what I mean? So the Manics are one of the few bands that we like.
James: As I remember, there was a quote from Richey [Edwards, late Manics lyricist/guitarist] before — somebody asked him why he didn’t really like other bands, and he went, “You wouldn’t ask other plumbers if they hang out with other plumbers. You wouldn’t ask James’ dad,” who was a carpenter, “if he hangs out with other carpenters. Why do bands need to hang out with each other?” And he has a point!
I grew up in the music press of the ‘80s, and I grew up with Ian McCulloch, Mark E. Smith, Morrissey, all just taking shots at each other all the time. There was open warfare! And it was kind of part of the game. So we kinda grew up with that culture in the press, that bands didn’t necessarily have to like each other. So Brett – I can concur with that. I don’t have many musician friends.
We had supported Suede in France, and a couple parts of Europe back in the ‘90s. And so we knew that it worked, and we knew that we got on with those guys, and we knew that – importantly — we can give each other space. You don’t have to prove to each other that you have to socialize all the time. And you know that you can get on if you have to socialize … So, unless we’ve all irrevocably changed since then, I think we should be OK again.
Was it sort of a rite of passage for U.K. bands back in those days to build your audience at home, and in Europe, and then come to the States and have a bit more of an up-and-down experience? You say that you don’t really like a lot of other bands, but would you talk to other bands and kind of compare experiences at the time?
Bradfield: There was a strange thing in the ‘90s, where you were goaded by the British music press that you hadn’t really made it if unless you sold records in America. But then when you went to America, you realized that the British music press – NME, Melody Maker, Sounds – meant f–k all in America. You know? In fact, when we first came to America, we were just called “typical NME band”; that was used as the open insult to describe us when we first came to America. But then we’d come back, and the NME would say, “Well, if you haven’t sold quite a lot of records in America, you haven’t really made it.”
So there was always this strange kind of like, back and forth thing going on about the pressure of having to sell records in America for it to sort of define you kind of thing, from the British music press.
Anderson: I think [touring America is] an interesting cocktail of things, isn’t it? So often what happens is: a band becomes successful in the U.K., and then they go to America, and … they find a challenge, because they’re not received as warmly in America. So straight away, their egos are damaged. I’m just talking about as a broad thing, not anyone specific. But that’s what happens, and you’re not playing in front of your London crowd or whatever? You’re in front of a much more disinterested crowd. And then the size of the country as well, just the physical size of the country. All of these elements kind of get thrown into the mix.
And then there’s obviously – when English bands are in America, there’s a kind of sort of carnival element to it, where you kind of almost feel like you’re on holiday. We definitely did that in the early ‘90s, you know, partying much too much. You feel as though you’re not really working, you’re kind of on one long jamboree, almost. And all these elements, and drugs and drink and stress – they’re very harmful to bands.
It’s a crucible that kind of makes you or breaks you. And some people come through it unscathed and some people don’t. But it’s all kind of part of the contract that you enter into, you know?
Do you have any really positive experiences that you remember – shows where you did find a small audience that was really invested in the band?
Bradfield: Oh, yeah! Absolutely, the first time I played in Detroit, I absolutely loved it. I had a great day in Detroit. I had the best hot wings ever. I played the best gig in front of 350 people in a 1,000-2,000 people room. But the 350 people there were absolutely amazing. I did the corny thing of, like – because I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for the Red Wings, the ice hockey team – and I went to the Hitsville museum, I had a great gig, I had great food … that was one perfect date, that was amazing.
And then I’ve had other nights there that were strange. [America] is just like any place, it’s a mixed experience. But the road feels like a very real place in America. The contrast of experiences is so enormous, that it feels like a very real journey when you come to America. But that’s what makes it exciting. That’s why we’re coming back. Because there is a challenge there. And there is a bit of fear there. But you know that when it clicks, it’s a great experience, too.
Anderson: I’d echo that. You know, it’s a big country – it’s like saying, “What’s it like touring Europe?” “Well, you know, Sweden is different from Spain, it’s very different from Austrian …” America’s almost like a lot of different countries [in one]. There’s no one American experience. And it’s difficult to really sort of sum it up like that. It’s like, some gigs will be great, and some gigs will be terrible, I’m sure …
Bradfield: Hey, Coach, thanks for the pep talk! [Both laugh.]
Have you found in general that bands from the U.K. from the ‘90s have more of a U.S. base now than when you were touring at the peak of your popularity?
Anderson: I’m kind of keeping my expectations low and then I’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s been such a long time ago since we’ve been to the States. I’d like to think that there’s kind of, y’know, universal appreciation of both bands. And as bands kind of age, they kind of like, grudgingly gain more respect. But who knows? It might be a disaster! I don’t think it will be, but …
Bradfield: I’ve done an interview like a week ago, and one journalist said, “These are quite small gigs for you.” I’m like, “F–k no! Some of these are quite big for us in America!” So we’re under no illusions.
Is there anything that you’re particularly looking forward to coming to America – places to visit, or venues you’ve never played before that you’re really excited to play for the first time?
Anderson: I’m looking forward to [all of it]. I’ve got that sort of slight nervousness, that slight sort of anticipation. But it could be really exciting. It’s going to be great touring with the Manics, and it’ll be great in the States, and let’s see what happens.
Bradfield: It kind of feels so novel to come back to America, that there will be that element of feeling like it’s the first time for a while. And you never know, it could be the last time! It could be.
Anderson: It could absolutely be the last time for us, as well. Who knows? We haven’t been there for 25 years. We might come back in another 25 years! It might very well be the last time we play for another 25 years. So if anyone is ummming and ahhhhing about it — come along, because you might as well see us now.