Rock
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Sarcastically noting that answering questions is “my favorite thing to do,” Cher answered a few from the press backstage at the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Saturday (Oct. 19).
After taking the Rock Hall to task during her speech for waiting 35 years to induct her after she became eligible, Cher acknowledges that, “I have a kind love hate relationship [with the Rock Hall], because I thought, ‘What do I have to f–king do , y’know, to be inducted into this place? What do you have to do to be a part of it?’”
Though tempted to tell David Geffen, who she said wrote a letter to the Hall of Fame Foundation on her behalf, to “please take it back,” Cher said that in the end she was happy with the way things turned out. “I felt good. I can say that I’m happy that I’m in,” she says. “If I didn’t [think] it, I wouldn’t be here.”
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Reflecting on a 60-year career dating back to work with her late ex-husband Sonny Bono and sessions with Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew, the singer said that she struggles with thoughts of legacy. “I [didn’t] have perspective, exactly — I just was busy living my life, so I wasn’t like thinking about it at all,” she says. “I was thinking about it from minute to minute, thing to thing. I thought of myself as a bumper car and when I hit a road I would just back up and turn in a different direction, because I wasn’t going to stop doing what I loved.”
And what about Sonny & Cher making it to the Rock Hall one day? “I think that we deserve it, ” Cher tells Billboard. “Even if we weren’t exactly rock ‘n roll, we represented music. I know it’s not like … we were corny, but we were very avant garde for what was happening at the time, so, I don’t know. I didn’t expect to get in. I just thought, ‘They’re never gonna let you in, b–ch.’”
During her speech, Cher made sure to send a message to all of the women watching around the world: “The one thing I have never done, is I never give up,” she explained. “And I am talking to the women, okay … we have been down and out, but we keep striving, and we keep going and we are somebody. We are special.”
Alex Van Halen hopes that those coming to his new memoir, Brothers, for a tell-all will be disappointed.
“It’s not about the dirt,” Van Halen, older brother and bandmate of the late Eddie Van Halen, tells Billboard. “If I start throwing dirt, it’ll never end. I think some people would like that; that’s how projects are sold nowadays. I think it divides the audience, and we’re not here to divide. I think the tone of the book and how I want the book to be perceived is more on a spiritual and creative level. That’s why there’s very little, or any, dirt in there.
“The majority of things that were written about Ed were third party,” he continues. “They weren’t really there. I’m not degrading any of it, but it’s not accurate. I really felt like a lot of the stuff that was out there was incorrect, and it didn’t do justice to the more sensitive side of Ed. So before I die I would like to at least partially set the record straight.”
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Brothers, publishing Oct. 22 and written with New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy, acknowledges the sex and drugs and rock n’ roll. But as the title indicates it’s primarily a chronicle of the drummer’s relationship with his guitar hero brother, who passed way during Oct. 2020 at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer. The tome is undeniably emotional, with some passages written directly to his late brother. Van Halen acknowledges that the process “really took its toll on me.”
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“You have to remember we were together for 65 years; that’s a lifetime, if not more,” explains Van Halen, who was born in Amsterdam and came to the United States with his family in 1962, eventually settling in Pasadena, Calif., where the Van Halen band was formed in 1974. “(Brothers) not only forced me to look at everything Ed and I had done in our lifetime, but also — and I should thank Ed for this — it forced me to look at me. What are my motivations? Why am I really doing this? Who does anybody do this? It took me a lot of places…very heavy.”
Throughout Brothers’ 231 pages, Van Halen discloses the tight bond between him and Eddie, personally and musically — and presents the connection between those two as one and the same thing. Van Halen offers a detailed account of the entire family dynamics, too, from the influence of their father, Jan, a jazz musician, and their more strict Dutch East Indies-born mother Eugenia, and the impact of immigrating to America and being treated as outsiders. The passion for music came early and was a constant, of course, and one can read in Brothers a kind of mission on Van Halen’s part to offer a more expansive and sophisticated view of his brother’s talents.
“There was more going on than most people recognize or realize, and it’s not our job to ‘teach’ people,” explains Van Halen, who also makes use in the book of a variety of other sources, including published interviews with his brother, books by original frontman David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman, and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The brothers, who first learned to play piano, actually started out on each other’s instruments before switching as teenagers. “When Ed picked (the guitar) up he could make it sing. It was amazing. That sound, that intonation was phenomenal. You couldn’t express it in words. Everybody gets blinded by the fact Ed was such a phenomenal player (that) you’re not even understanding who the human being was. Maybe people don’t care, but I care. He’s my brother.”
Brothers of a Band
Writing about Van Halen the rock band in Brothers, Van Halen says that “me, Ed and Dave were very subversive in the way we looked at music and the political system and the way we looked at people in general…The band was dysfunctional. It was completely running on three wheels, if you will. I think Ed was quoted as saying ‘but we always played well,’ and that was ultimately what kept it together until it was no longer together. It was a very sad moment when that whole thing fell apart.” Van Halen, in fact, writes in Brothers that Van Halen’s 1985 split with Roth “was the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust. Until I lost my brother.”
Despite the acknowledged rancor with Roth over the years – and blaming Roth for the failure of a planned Eddie Van Halen tribute tour — Van Halen maintains that “I’m not angry at all with Dave. He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out. That’s why I mentioned (in the book) that the first person I called when Ed died was Dave because I felt like I owed him that, to the work we had done together and the fact that our families knew each other and the fact that everybody was sort of on the same level, if you will, when we first started. I don’t know where things went wrong…I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dave and his work ethic. I just think some of his choices were really strange to me, but that’s not my job to figure it out.”
Other than his brother’s death, Van Halen chose to stop the story with the Roth split, leaving out subsequent runs with Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone and even the reunion with Roth that started in 2007. (Roth and Hagar both wrote memoirs after their respective tenures with the band.) Van Halen cites “limitations to how big the book could be” but also says it the scope of the narrative made sense to him.
“What happened after Dave left is not the same band,” Van Halen explains. “I’m not saying it was better or worse or any of that. The fact is Ed and I did our best work whenever we played. We always gave it our best shot. But the magic was in the first years, when we didn’t know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything.” Not surprisingly, Van Halen was not responsive, either, when Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony reached out about him taking part in some way in their Best of All Worlds tour celebrating Van Halen.
“I’m not interested,” he says. “They’re not doing the band justice. They can do what they want to do. That’s not my business.”
Everybody Wants Some
Van Halen does add, however, that his auction of drum equipment and other items in June “was misinterpreted” and simply clearing out a warehouse of gear that wasn’t being used.
“I’m not quitting. I don’t know where that came from,” Van Halen says. “I’ll die with sticks in my hand.” Spinal issues he’s been battling for decades are still present, he adds, including a recent injury during a trip to a shooting range in 2022. “But with modern technology we have now I should be OK in about five years,” he says.
Despite rumors of what the Van Halens were up to between the last tour with Roth (in 2015) and Eddie’s death, Alex maintains there was little to report. “We never really talked about it,” he says. “We prefer that things just happen by some kind of magic. The issue was Ed had been dealing with cancer for quite a number of years, and some of the stuff that he was doing out of the normal procedures, if you will, had side effects. Some of the stuff that was being said about Ed was completely wrong, and it was painful…. He was fighting cancer. It’s as simple as that.”
Fans are certainly excited about the presence of a new instrumental track, “Unfinished,” that’s part of the audio version of Brothers. It hails from a trove of ideas the brothers recorded at Eddie’s 5150 studio and stashed away, and Alex anticipates releasing more of that material “when it feels right.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” he says. “I do have a certain obligation to keep it to Ed’s standards. He was meticulous and he was a pain in the ass…and I need to have access to the right takes, ’cause not every day did we play at our best. But we always had the tape recorders running. We didn’t go in the studio like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna make a record from beginning to end.’ We had little pieces here, little pieces there, you put ’em away until the time comes and you go, ‘Hey, I think I like that piece…’ and then go back to it and build something from there.” He told Rolling Stone that he’s approached OpenAI about using its technology to help turn some of the material into songs.
“I know people want to hear it,” Van Halen adds, before cautioning that, “the other side of the coin is this doesn’t sound like Van Halen. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” He says that for future releases he’s also “looking forward to getting some people involved…other musicians and producers. You have to have the right team, because not everybody can do everything. So we’ll see.”
For the time being Van Halen is focused on promoting Brothers, which he’d also like to turn into a movie — though he notes that, “I learned a long time ago not to put your hope in things that don’t exist yet. I know people who would be willing to participate, but it’s a very complex fabric of things that need to happen.” Meanwhile Van Halen has three book events lined up — signings at Barnes & Noble in New York on Oct. 21 and at Books & Greetings in Northvale, N.J., the following day, and a live conversation on Oct. 24 at the Frost Auditorium in Culver City, Calif.
“People can ask whatever they like — that’s their prerogative,” Van Halen says. “It’s my prerogative to answer. Or not answer.”
One thing Van Halen will make clear, however, is that his brother is still a strong presence in his life.
“He’s not gone for me,” Van Halen says, citing the “island voodoo” of their mother’s upbringing and the Spooky Action at a Distance concept of quantum physics. “He’s still there. His spirit’s here, and it’s not something you can grab or touch. There’s something between us that’s just connected on a level that is beyond explanation. Scientists will tell you that you cannot destroy energy, it just takes different shapes, and that’s kind of how it is for me with Ed.
“I really had a tough time when Ed passed — full of rage, for a number of reasons. I heard this thing by Billy Bob Thornton; he just said basically when his brother died he didn’t know how to deal with it, and he basically said that you’re not running away from the fact that you’re not together anymore. You accept it for what it is and then the pain will slowly diminish, but it’ll never go away. That’s why i said (in the book), ‘When I see you again, I’m gonna kick yo’ ass…’”
Brothers by Alex Van Halen
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Ringo Starr‘s first new full-length album in six years, Look Up, will find the former Beatles drummer and solo star going country, again. The 11-track album of original songs produced and co-written by T-Bone Burnett is due out on Jan. 10 and was prefaced on Friday (Oct. 18) by the tear-in-your tea ballad “Time On My Hands.”
“I have loved Ringo Starr and his playing and his singing and his aesthetic for as long as I can (or care to) remember,” said Grammy-winning producer/songwriter Burnett, 76, in a statement. “He changed the way every drummer after him played, with his inventive approach to the instrument. And, he has always sung killer rockabilly, as well as being a heartbreaking ballad singer. To get to make this music with him was something like the realization of a 60-year dream I’ve been living. None of the work that I have done through a long life in music would have happened if not for him and his band. Among other things, this album is a way I can say thank you for all he has given me and us.”
Burnett wrote or co-wrote nine of the songs on Starr’s 21st solo album, on which the peace-and-love advocate sang and played drums; one song so written by Billy Swan and another was co-written by Starr and Bruce Sugar. According to a release announcing the project, Starr co-wrote the album’s closer, “Thankful,” which features one of Burnett’s previous collaborators, bluegrass singer/fiddler Alison Krauss.
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Burnett also roped in some other Nashville ringers for the project, including Billy Strings, Larkin Poe, Lucius and Molly Tuttle. Though pop and R&B stars dipping their toes into the country pool has become de rigueur over the past year, with swerves into the genre by Beyoncé, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, MGK and Lana Del Rey, the release noted that Starr’s appreciation for all things twangy goes back more than half a century.
“I’ve always loved country music. And when I asked T Bone to write me a song, I didn’t even think at the time that it would be a country song – but of course it was, and it was so beautiful,” Starr said of his collaboration with friend of more than four decades Burnett, which was spurred by a chance meeting in L.A. in 2022 where the ex-Beatle asked Burnett to write a song for an EP he was working on at the time.
“I had been making EPs at the time and so I thought we would do a country EP -but when he brought me nine songs I knew we had to make an album!,” Starr added of the tracks Burnett wrote that all had a country vibe. “And I am so glad we did. I want to thank, and send Peace & Love, to T Bone and all the great musicians who helped make this record. It was a joy making it and I hope it is a joy to listen to.”
“Time on My Hands” finds Starr wistfully lamenting the loss of a true love over pedal steel and gently strummed acoustic guitar, with his signature laconic vocals taking center stage in the ballad about the one that got away. “I used to have a true love/ Everything was fine/ But now she’s found a new love/ She’s no longer mine,” he sings.
From the country-tinged Beatles songs he performed and wrote, including “Act Naturally,” “What Goes On” and “Don’t Pass Me By,” to his 1970 sophomore solo album Beaucoups of Blues,” Starr has dipped his toe into the genre since his early, pre-Beatles days playing in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. In fact, the release added, Starr was so enamored with country and blues as a teenager that he tried to emigrate from London To Texas in his younger years after learning that blues great Lightnin’ Hopkins lived there.
Starr’s first new full-length album since 2019’s What’s My Name, will get a proper country welcome on Jan. 14-15, 2025 when the singer/drummer headlines the legendary Ryman Auditorium; tickets for the show will go on sale on Oct. 25.
Check out the full track list and cover art for Look Up below.
“Breathless” (featuring Billy Strings)
“Look Up” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Time On My Hands”
“Never Let Me Go” (featuring Billy Strings)
“I Live For Your Love” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Come Back” (featuring Lucius)
“Can You Hear Me Call” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Rosetta” (featuring Billy Strings and Larkin Poe)
“You Want Some”
“String Theory” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
“Thankful” (featuring Alison Krauss)
Ringo Starr
Courtesy Photo
From In the Heights to Hamilton, New York City – with its frenetic pulse and intoxicating contradictions – has been an intrinsic part of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s artistic palette. Even so, the EGT-winning musical mastermind is likely to confound more than a few fans with his and Eisa Davis’ new project: Warriors, a narrative concept album based on the 1979 cult film The Warriors.
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For those who do not reflexively think “come out to play” when they hear bottles clinking, The Warriors is about a Coney Island street gang forced to traverse the city after dark while a gaggle of gangs — each one sporting a distinct fashion aesthetic, from goth baseball to silken Harlem Renaissance — tries to murder them as revenge for an assassination they’re falsely accused of. It’s the violent, stylish stuff of midnight movie legend, and despite Miranda’s affinity for NYC-based tales, a surprising choice for a guy who was recently penning smashes for Disney.
With Warriors out Friday (Oct. 18) on Atlantic, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis (a playwright/actress who appeared in Miranda’s 2021 film Tick, Tick… Boom!), hopped on the phone with Billboard to discuss the inspiration behind their gender-flipped take on the subject matter, how they landed hip-hop royalty (Nas, Busta Rhymes, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Cam’ron, Ghostface Killah and RZA) for the project and what might be next for their Warriors.
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Lin — at a preview listening session, you mentioned that about 15 years ago, someone pitched the idea of a Warriors musical to you. You summarily shot it down but kept mulling it over. What was the “aha” moment where you had a breakthrough?
Miranda: That friend, Phil Westgren, approached me in 2009, and the bulk of my thinking why it couldn’t work is, “Well, it’s an action movie.” Action movies and musicals are always fighting for the sale real estate: When you can’t talk anymore — the emotion is heightened — you fight and/or sing. So doing it as a concept album first freed us from that. It allowed us to score the moment. We approached that in different ways throughout the album. Sometimes we dilated a moment of action, sometimes it’s a montage and you hear sound effects and by the end the Warriors are victorious. (laughs) The other thing that made it compelling to write was flipping the gender of the Warriors as a female gang. I had that notion in response to seeing GamerGate happen online around 2015. These toxically online men doxxing women’s home addresses, the chaos of it struck me as a very Luther thing to do. Luther shoots Cyrus, blames the Warriors and then watches the fun unfold. It seemed to be the same malignant chaos. That thought led me to thinking of the Warriors as a female gang and suddenly it got really interesting to write. Every plot point is wrinkled or changed in some fundamental way. I got excited by the notion of writing women’s voices surviving the night.
Eisa, unlike Lin, you said The Warriors was not part of your childhood. What was it that made you think, “I get it, I have something to say here”?
Davis: Number one: Lin asked me. Number two: Because they’re women, I thought, this is really exciting to look at the wrinkles and search for the ways that this is a specifically femme story. What is it that I’ve experienced on the streets of New York at night, or what is it that I want when it comes to protection and having a crew? We based the album on the movie; the movie is based on the novel; the novel was based on a Greek narrative from 400 B.C. Obviously, it has staying power and good bones. There’s something intrinsically human to the various responses to violence and adversity and loss that are in this story. One is that you can try and take revenge and continue the cycle of violence. Another thing the Warriors do is they defend themselves against the injustice of being falsely accused and develop more courage. Another response is to try and end that cycle of violence, try to create a peace not only in yourselves but the communities around you. All of those human responses being baked into the story, it has something very compelling to everyone.
What you said about GamerGate is interesting. Similar to the misogynist response to the 2016 Ghostbusters movie, do you think some perpetually online bros will get upset about the Warriors’ gender swap?
Miranda: Maybe. Probably. I know none of those people have seen this movie more than I have, and in many ways it’s a love letter to that original movie, too. I don’t think a beat-for-beat recreation of the movie would be satisfying. I’ve seen those adaptations, they’re not satisfying: You’re just waiting for the moment that you liked in the [original] movie. I think of this as a love letter to the original film and its own thing that could not be confused for the original film. To me, it’s the best of both worlds.
You really scored a murderer’s row of rappers to represent each borough: Nas, Cam’ron, Busta Rhymes, RZA, Ghostface Killah and Chris Rivers (Big Pun’s son). What was it like giving feedback to these legends? Lin, you’re a genius in your own right, but was that intimidating?
Davis: That’s such a great question because, of course, the only reason this murderer’s row, as you put it, are even on this album is because they already respect Lin and what he has accomplished. So everyone was on board and ready to do this. It was written for all of these rappers and what their rhythms are, but it was a question of, “Are they able to say someone else’s lines?” That’s a big deal.
Miranda: They’re used to writing their own features.
Davis: And have pride in never being ghostwritten.
Miranda: The shift was, “You’re not playing yourself. You’re playing the Bronx. You are the voice of Staten Island or the voice of Manhattan.” It’s having them playing these roles but bring what we love about them as emcees to the table.
The Warriors film is known for its violence and grit, things not usually associated with musicals. How did you go about ensuring there was a sense of danger on the album?
Miranda: It was freeing doing this as an album. Our job is to paint it as vividly as possible musically, to paint those slick sidewalk streets in your mind. To that end, we got the best artists we could find. We even got Foley artists to create some of the soundscapes of the subway and the city on top of these songs we’d written.
Davis: That really helped with creating that grit you’re talking about.
Miranda: The job is to create the sickest movie in your head possible. It’s also 1979 shot through 2024. I remember recording the scene where Luther calls an unknown associate and gives them a status update and someone said, “I don’t think young people know what a rotary phone sounds like anymore.”
Davis: That someone was Lin’s wife, Vanessa. (Miranda laughs) What we had to do was make sure we baked into the dialogue that this is a phone call, so people who had no idea what these sounds were would know. To make sure we didn’t have what you would call a pat musical theater score, something more cliché, one of the first things we did was make each other playlists and say, “This is an idea for this particular gang, they might have this particular sound.” Maybe there’s more of this Jamaican patois in the DJ so we have the Jamaican roots of hip-hop represented. Maybe we have this really amazing beat that can add this ballroom culture and have this queer, trans [vibe]. We were going for all of these vibes that would be legitimate for a pop listener.
As you’re saying, there are so many different musical styles on Warriors. Which was the hardest to get right, and which was the most fun to play with?
Miranda: They were all fun. The most joyous probably was going down to Miami to record with Marc Anthony and his orchestra. It would not sound as good as it does if we had not gone down to where Marc plays. We came in with a fully finished demo but by the time Marc is translating it to his orchestra with Sergio [George], his righthand man, he found another level of authenticity. Writing all of these was enormous fun. I think the one people will be most surprised by, considering what they’ve heard of my work, is our metal song, “Going Down,” with Luther. But I’m a big metal fan. The challenge was not so much writing the song and not blowing my voice out on my demo — because I don’t have a screamo voice — but finding the person to play Luther. My metal gods are all my age or older. (Davis laughs) We went to Atlantic and said, “Who is the next great metal singer we don’t even know about yet?” And I think Kim Dracula is one of the great discoveries of this album. Everyone who listens to this leaves going, “Who the f–k was that? And how can I hear more of that?” That was an exciting discovery.
Davis: Like Lin said, everything was so fun. It was wonderful to spend a week and a half with our Warriors, because they’re such dear friends, and hearing this gel together and sing was something only they could do. Another thing that was so joyful was to be with Mike Elizondo, our producer, at his studio, and being able to work with his band. What was challenging for me, as someone who does not have the same experience and Lin and Mike, was making sure the ideas of everything I heard was something I could articulate and share with all of our artists. Everything was so clear in how I could hear it, but how could I share how to get there? I had a nice learning curve.
I love that you flipped the Lizzies into the Bizzies, a boy band. Did you use any particular boy bands as sonic touchstones for that?
Miranda: We wanted to do the boy band to end all boy bands. The Voltron of boy bands, if you will. The Megazord. We wanted to connect New Edition all the way to Stray Kids and back again. You have Stephen Sanchez holding down the gorgeous falsetto crooner at the top; you have Joshua Henry holding down the soulful Boyz II Men era vocals; you have Timothy Hughes holding down the bass; and then Daniel Jikal representing the new school of hip-hop.
I love that you included K-pop boy band music on this, because that is the new school.
Davis: That was a flash of genius on Lin’s part. Of course, he doesn’t speak Korean….
Miranda: (laughs) How dare you tell them that!
Davis: We went to Helen Park, who is an incredible composer, and she dropped that instantaneously.
How much direction did you give her?
Miranda: We painted the picture for her: This needs to be the come on to end all come-ons, but then at the end, you sneak in the phrase “you killed our hope.” The folks who speak Korean will have a head start on how nefarious this gang is.
Ms. Lauryn Hill portrays the DJ on this, which is wildly impressive. At what point in the process did she enter?
Miranda: It was the first song we wrote. We had no plan B. We wrote it to Lauryn Hill’s voice. Essentially, we sent her manager a love letter from me and Eisa, the track and some test vocals for her to fill in however she pleased. And we stayed in touch. I learned from her manager she was an admirer of Hamilton. That kept the door from being all the way shut.
Davis: And then we prayed.
Miranda: And then a lot of prayer until one day the Dropbox came and it had all the vocals. It was so much better than we even imagined. The fact that she trusted us and sang the song we wrote will always be among the greatest honors of our careers, but then added so much of herself to it, added background vocals. She’s a co-producer on that track and she earned every bit of it.
I know you said making this a recording allowed you a certain freedom, but are you considering a staging?
Miranda: Yeah. It was an enormous privilege to be able to write it this way. This caliber of world-class talent, it’s hard to get them in the same room at the same time much less on a stage eight times a week. The fact that we get these fingerprints on these roles is incredible. And you’re talking to two theater artists. Of course, we’d love to imagine continuing to work together and what the next incarnation could be, but what we really love is that everyone gets the thing we made on Friday. It’s not a recording of the thing we made that you have to be in New York to see. Everyone gets it at the same time. As someone who lived through both Hamilton cast album going around the world and the relative inaccessibility of Hamilton because we could only serve 1400 people at a time, it’s enormously gratifying to give everyone the same gift at the same time.
Davis: If there’s a show, it’s a discrete thing. The album is its own thing and if we have a show, it’s its own thing. It’s another level of adaptation, just like we adapted the film. This is its own thing.
Final question for you both. In the movie, which is your favorite gang and why? And you can’t say the Warriors.
Davis: What’s the gang that puts their tokens in?
Miranda: (Laughs, coughs) In the opening montage, there is one gang that’s very courteously [entering the subway] like they’re on a school trip.
Davis: They’re like, “We’re going to uphold the social compact on the way to a meeting of gangs across the city.”
Miranda: My favorite gang is the Turnbull AC’s. The Turnbull AC’s walk to a Mad Max: Fury Road vibe. And a converted school bus of bats and chains is the most terrifying, awesomest thing.
There was a little bit of drama as inductees began arriving and rehearsals started in Cleveland on Thursday (Oct. 17) for this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony as word spread that two original members of Foreigner – including founder Mick Jones – will not be attending this weekend.
Jones, who founded Foreigner during 1976 in New York, is battling Parkinson’s disease, which will keep him away from the festivities.
Drummer Dennis Elliott posted a note to Facebook that he would also not be attending the event, where the band will be inducted after receiving its first nomination this year. Elliott – who was with the band from 1976-1993 – wrote, “Dear Foreigner Fans & Friends. Don’t look too hard, we will not be there. We were finally given the schedule last night, and it is not to our satisfaction. So we are staying home. We have been asking for weeks, and they have waited until the very last minute to send it knowing we were all packed and going to bed. Totally unacceptable to us. Hope you have a good time.”
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Sources in Cleveland tell Billboard that one specific point of contention was that only band members were to walk the red carpet before the show, without their spouses.
The group did issue a statement via its social media saying, “FOREIGNER is greatly looking forward to Saturday’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The band will be joined by Demi Lovato, Sammy Hagar, and Kelly Clarkson in a set celebrating the induction of the guys who started it all almost fifty years ago. Original members Lou Gramm, Al Greenwood, and Rick Wills will be there to accept the awards on behalf of the band’s leader and founder Mick Jones, drummer Dennis Elliot, and Ian McDonald and Ed Gagliardi who are no longer with us.”
Members of the current Foreigner lineup are expected to perform during the ceremony on Saturday at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, which will be streamed live on Disney+.
Fans responding to Elliott offered support, with one writing “this is very sad news” and another calling it a “travesty.”
Foreigner, eligible since 2002, was long considered one of the Rock Hall’s greatest slights over the years. The group has sold more than 80 million records worldwide, with hits such as “Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold as Ice,” “Hot Blooded,” “Juke Box Hero” and “I Want to Know What Love Is.” Foreigner finished third in the fan vote, with 528,000.
Foreigner will be part of a class of 2024 that also includes Mary J. Blige, Cher, the Dave Matthews Band, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang, Ozzy Osbourne and A Tribe Called Quest in the performer category.
Jake Shimabukuro is still pinching himself. And Mick Fleetwood is smiling ear to ear.
That’s how the two are feeling as they bring out Blues Experience, a collaborative album that finds the ukulele virtuoso and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer exploring the blues over nine tracks – one of which is a moving tribute to Fleetwood’s late Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Christine McVie.
“I’m really excited about this project,” Shimabukuro tells Billboard via Zoom from Hawaii, where he lives (and where he met Fleetwood, another Hawaii resident). “It’s such a departure from anything I’ve ever done, but I love that because it really feels like I learned a lot from this experience. In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that this album would exist someday. And I love those kinds of things…the most unlikely collaborations or combinations coming together to do something very different and unique.”
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Fleetwood — who has some 40 ukuleles hanging on the walls of his home as decorations — adds that the appeal for him was to work with someone he calls “an explorer. He’s fascinated with music. He comes from a very traditional musical background, but he’s done an extraordinary amount of projects with anyone from Neil Young to Bette Midler, all this strange, bizarre, super-eclectic stuff that’s obviously intrigued him on his journey. That’s what led to, ‘What can a funny old drummer — me — do with someone like this?’”
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Fleetwood and Shimabukuro had met a number of times over the years, establishing a friendly relationship. “We basically were passing in the night for years, always saying, ‘We’ve got to do something together,’” recalls Fleetwood. Meeting up again at a Shimabukuro show in Maui during early 2023 put the idea on the front-burner for both, and by March they were in a studio Fleetwood has near his home, with “no pressure, no agenda, just to get in there to see what happens.” Four songs in four days — “recording everything live and just experimenting and having a lot of fun,” according to Shimabukuro — proved they were creatively in sync. Shimabukuro was even happy to plug into a vintage Fender Princeton amplifier that helped him craft a sound that “really seemed to work nicely for this genre and this style.”
Playing blues was a no-brainer, even if it’s something Shimabukuro had not done to a great extent before. “First, Mick’s the iconic blues drummer,” he explains. “I’ve always loved that style of music, that style of playing the guitar, that kind of phrasing. I mean, one of my all-time favorite Jimi Hendrix tunes is his version of ‘Red House’ when I was young. So it was in me.”
Shimabukuro also acknowledges the influence on his playing of “Uncle” Joseph Kekuku, the 19th century acknowledged inventor of the steel guitar. “I’m not playing slide on my ukulele, but this album kind of brings it back to what he did and what I learned from that. It’s kind of a throwback but at the same time is progressive.”
Fleetwood says that his cohort “was very privy to the pedigree of early Fleetwood Mac and Peter Green. So that became sort of the template of the conversation, or at least the overview. He’s very passionate about what he does, and anything with passion in it, in my quiet opinion, is connected to the blues. He’s an incredibly, technically capable player, period, and he has a whole other world of looking at things in a different way, where you actually pay attention to where the blues come from. So this album ended up being a combination of his natural self, which is a huge catalog of technical ability, and what it is that I do.”
Blues Experience isn’t strictly blues, mind you; there are renditions of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” for instance, as well as Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” But the bulk of the set hews that way, including the Shimabukuro original “Kula Blues,” and the Stevie Wonder-written, Jeff Beck-popularized “‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” a personal favorite of Shimabukuro’s that features Sonny Landreth on slide guitar. Keyboardist Mark Johnstone from the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band plays on a couple of tracks, while bassist Jackson Waldhoff and keyboardist Michael Grande play throughout the album.
The album’s most stunning moment, however, is its closing, a rendering of Christine McVie’s Fleetwood Mac signature song “Songbird” followed by a spoken word coda by Fleetwood, mourning McVie’s death on Nov. 30, 2022. It’s a three-hanky musical elegy, even though Fleetwood says “that wasn’t the intention.”
“‘Songbird’ came out of the blue, and we couldn’t not include it,” Fleetwood says. “It was around the time when Christine had passed, and we found ourselves doing that song, which was not predetermined. To me that was very poignant. I was very pregnant with the loss of Christine, and the fact that we were singing it but not singing it reminded me of Peter Green; he had a great natural voice, but he also sang through his instrument. It was very emotional and also in those moments was a prayer, for sure. Christine was a huge loss for me and for millions and millions of people.”
Saluting McVie on a blues album was also appropriate, Fleetwood adds. “She was a blues player,” he says. “She came up through the ranks, playing with Freddie King. And she was an extraordinarily passionate songwriter; just when you thought she was on a journey into the pop world she’ll go out and lay something on you like ‘Songbird’ that really is a lament…which is of course connective to the blues.
“Before we lost Christine there were some intentions that Fleetwood Mac would’ve found a way to say goodbye…but we didn’t. It was unthinkable for (the band) to do any more. Stevie (Nicks) has been able to do that in many ways on the big excursion that she’s doing; she’s been able to do what Fleetwood Mac was not. All of that was like a sort of tsunami of feeling as we did that song. But it was also very healing, and a kind of closure.”
Fleetwood and Shimabukuro played some of the Blues Experience songs live at We Are Friends — A Maui Wildfire Benefit Concert on the island last year, and they both voice a desire to perform together again. They’re also up to collaborate more, though Shimabukuro claims that “I would never want to get greedy and ask for another project like this from him — but if he brought it up and said, ‘Man, let’s do another one,’ are you kidding me? Oh my goodness, that would be a dream come true, like winning the lottery twice.”
The odds are better than that, however. “If Jake knocked on the door and said, ‘I’m actually not on the road,’ I would always be open to doing something,” Fleetwood affirms. In the meantime, he’s working on an album of his own, collaborating with an “interesting” corps of other artists (he mentions Girl In Red specifically) and even employing some of those ukuleles from the wall.
“It’s petrifying,” Fleetwood acknowledges, “but it’s actually turning out to be really interesting. I’m having a lot of fun doing that, and my heart is saying ‘you need to do more.’ Doing this (album) with Jake did me a lot of good. It was really the trigger of ‘you can do this.’ It’s very therapeutic, and I’ve actually learned to express myself in little areas I never knew was there, and to whatever avail doesn’t really matter. It’s just about doing it, and then we’ll see what it leads to.”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” earns a second week at No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart, while five songs – four of them debuts – break into the top 10 of the Oct. 19-dated ranking.
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The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity from Oct. 7-13. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
“Maps,” from Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2003 album Fever to Tell, peaked at No. 87 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2004. Its TikTok resurgence has pushed the song to new heights on chart-reporting music streaming services; the song racked up 1.9 million official U.S. streams in the week ending Oct. 10, up 23%, according to Luminate.
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The tune remains driven by a pair of trends on TikTok. One is a dance, while the other features creators using a filter to remove their facial features, only to have said features float back onto their face, sometimes in the wrong spot. A sped-up version of “Maps” has contributed to the song’s success on TikTok as well.
Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” which reigned on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 dated Oct. 5, rebounds 3-2 on the latest list, followed by a debut in John Mackk’s “Pose for Me,” featuring Natalie Nunn, which bows at No. 3.
“Pose for Me” was originally released in March, but a remix dropped on Sept. 6 that has driven the lion’s share of the activity since. With its eponymous command, the song has spurred a variety of pose-related dance moves on TikTok, generally centered on Nunn’s verse that continues, “Baddies, pose for me/ A– fat, slim thick, no tummy.”
“Pose for Me” marks the first appearance on a Billboard chart for both Mackk and Nunn. The song earned 736,000 streams in the week ending Oct. 10.
Gracie Abrams’ “I Love You, I’m Sorry” isn’t new to the TikTok Billboard Top 50, rising as high as No. 34 in September. But the Oct. 19 ranking finds it reaching new heights, re-entering the chart at No. 4. That’s concurrent with a return to Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart; it re-entered at No. 49 on the Oct. 12 list and vaults to a new peak of No. 23 on the latest ranking, thanks to 11.5 million streams, up 41%.
Its resurgence is partially tied to a new version of the song; Abrams played a live take of the song for Vevo Extended Play, uploading it to her YouTube on Oct. 2. Recent TikTok uploads again zero in on Abrams’ “lay on the horn to prove that it haunts me” lyric, with the majority relating in some way to relationships past and present.
KSI’s “Thick of It,” which features Trippie Redd, debuts at No. 6 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50, concurrent with the song’s debut at No. 84 on the Hot 100. Some say all publicity is good publicity, and in the case of “Thick of It,” many of the top-performing TikTok uploads reference the negative reviews the song has received.
Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” bows at No. 7, albeit a remix of the song that was featured in the trailer for the film Wrath of Man. Its usage on TikTok in the latest tracking week revolves around uploads showcasing the devastation of Hurricane Milton in the U.S. (and previously that of Hurricane Helene).
It’s Cash’s second top 10 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 in 2024; “The Chicken in Black” peaked at No. 6 in May.
The final top 10 debut of the week belong’s to Akon, whose “Akon’s Beautiful Day” starts at No. 8. It’s a new song from the veteran singer-songwriter, released on Oct. 4 after being teased on TikTok in the weeks leading up. Many of the top uploads are from Akon himself, along with other usages.
@akon Wow, thank you for all the amazing videos you’re creating to ‘Akon’s Beautiful Day’! Can’t wait to share the official release with the world on October 4th. Let’s keep the gratitude flowing! ♬ Akon’s Beautiful Day – Akon
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
L.S. Dunes, the post-hardcore supergroup led by Circa Survive and Saosin frontman Anthony Green, will return at the top of 2025 with its sophomore full-length, Violet, Billboard can exclusively reveal. “Machines,” the first track released from the album, will be unveiled tonight at midnight ET. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest […]
Two days after being shot multiple times while walking his dog in Las Vegas, former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee said he was “one lucky motherf–ker.” In a text exchange with former Guns N’ Roses and Sixx:A.M. guitarist D.J. Ashba shared on the latter’s Instagram Stories, Lee said he was on the mend after the shock attack.
“Yooooo! Please tell me you’re okay??” Ashba texted his friend. “Doing surprisingly well. I am one lucky mother f–ker,” Lee responded. “Just make sure your bday bash is wheelchair accessible! Just jestin’. Ashba was glad t hear the good news, writing, “So fn thankful you’re ok! Haha! U got it bro!”
Lee, 67, was shot three times in an attack that took place early Tuesday morning at his home about 10 miles from the Las Vegas strip. According to TMZ reporting at the time, Lee was shot around 2:40 a.m. while walking his dog and was hospitalized and was reported to be fully conscious while being treated in the intensive care unit.
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Police said they did not believe Lee was targeted, chalking the shooting to random street crime; the incident is under investigation with no arrests reported so far.
“Lee is fully conscious and doing well in an intensive care unit at a Las Vegas hospital. He is expected to fully recover,” a publicist for Lee told Billboard. “Las Vegas authorities believe the shooting was completely random and occurred while Lee took his dog out for a walk in the early morning hours. As the incident is under police investigation, no further comments will be forthcoming. Lee and his family appreciate respecting their privacy at this time.”
Osbourne expressed sympathy for his former guitarist in a statement to TMZ, telling the outlet, “It’s been 37 years since I’ve seen Jake E. Lee, but that still doesn’t take away from the shock of hearing what happened to him today. It’s just another senseless act of gun violence. I send my thoughts to him and his beautiful daughter, Jade. I just hope he’ll be ok.”
Lee played guitar in Osbourne’s band from 1982-1987 following the death of beloved guitarist Randy Rhoads, appearing on the former Black Sabbath singer’s solo albums Bark at the Moon (1983) and The Ultimate Sin (1986), as well as being a member of the heavy metal band Badlands. He released the solo albums Retraced and Guitar Warrior in 2005 and 2007, respectively, and after what he dubbed a “self-imposed exile from the music industry” he returned with a band called Red Dragon Cartel, who released a self-titled album in 2013 followed by 2018’s Patina.
A day after Rufus Wainwright and Village People co-founder Victor Willis lashed out at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for playing their songs during a 39-minute musical interlude at one of his campaign events, the Republican National Committee has responded to the criticism.
In a statement to Billboard, RNC spokesperson Taylor Rogers noted that the campaign has the appropriate licenses from performing rights organizations BMI and ASCAP to play the music heard at the town hall in Oaks, Pa. on Monday during which the twice impeached former President halted the planned Q&A session to cue up a playlist of his favorite songs. “It’s a shame that some artists want to limit half of the country from enjoying their music,” Rogers said.
The unusual event hosted by Trump in one of the most crucial swing states was intended to be a back-and-forth with voters. But less than an hour in, after an audience member required medical attention Trump halted the proceedings and inexplicably asked his team to fire up Schubert’s “Ave Maria.”
The strange sight of convicted felon Trump doing a swaying dance to the instrumental version of that song instantly became fodder for mockery on late night programs and news casts on Tuesday. Democratic rival Kamala Harris’ X feed piled on with a trolling statement saying “hope he’s okay” along with video from the event of Trump solemnly swinging side-to-side as he listened to his playlist in the overheated room.
“Let’s not do anymore questions. Let’s just listen to music,” Trump said after a second audience member reportedly fainted from the heat. “Personally, I enjoy this,” Trump said. “We lose weight. We could do this, lose 4-5 pounds.” He then asked his for his sound person to cue up a second version of the funeral and church service staple “Ave Maria,” requesting a vocal version sung by Luciano Pavarotti.
“We’ll do a little music. Let’s make this a musical-fest,” said Trump, whose unusual request prompted NBC News to report that the incident once again put the focus on Democrats’ questions about 78-year-old Trump’s mental acuity with just three weeks to go before the Nov. 5 presidential election; if elected a second time, Trump would be the oldest president in the nation’s history.
In addition to the “Ave Maria” double-down, Trump spun Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” as well as Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain,” James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” Elvis’ “An American Trilogy,” the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” and Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye,” another song often played at funerals.
Harris supporter Wainwright issued a statement on Tuesday blasting Trump for playing his version of Cohen’s beloved, oft-covered 1984 hymn.
“The song ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen has become an anthem dedicated to peace, love and acceptance of the truth. I’ve been supremely honored over the years to be connected with this ode to tolerance,” wrote Wainwright. “Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy. Of course, I in no way condone this and was mortified, but the good in me hopes that perhaps in inhabiting and really listening to the lyrics of Cohen’s masterpiece, Donald Trump just might experience a hint of remorse over what he’s caused. I’m not holding my breath.” The statement also noted that the publishing company for the Cohen estate has sent a cease-and-desist order to the Trump campaign.”
GNR and O’Connor’s reps have publicly requested that Trump not to play their music during his campaign stops, and the Village People threatened to sue the former reality TV star last year over a lookalike band playing their hits at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida private. Trump has long been enamored with the group’s 1978 queer disco classic, which he plays a many of his events; spokespeople for GNR and O’Connor’s estate had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on Trump’s event.
In a statement sent to Billboard on Tuesday morning, Village People co-founder, “Y.M.C.A.” lyricist and one of the owners of the song’s copyright Victor Willis wrote, “I have been inundated with hundreds of complaints from the public and press about Donald Trump and his campaign’s use of my song,” he said. “Me, and the Village People as well, have in the past opposed Trump’s use of ‘Y.M.C.A.’ and we have made this very clear to him.”
While Willis acknowledged that Trump has continued to play the song because he is “legally entitled” to thanks to what the RNC said in its statement is the proper licensing, he noted that despite his objections he will not be taking legal action at this time. “Could I have asked my wife, who’s a lawyer, to have BMI revoke his political use license… yes,” Willis said, adding that he decided not to because Trump’s repeated spins have “greatly benefited” the song.
“Some fans are demanding that I sue. I am not going to sue the President over his use of ‘Y.M.C.A.’ because it’s stupid and just plain hateful,” Willis said. “Though I don’t dislike Trump, I am a registered Democrat who supports Kamala Harris for President.” He added that Harris is also free to play the song if she wants to.
Trump has accrued a long list of artists who have objected to his use of their songs at his events, including, over two weeks this summer, Beyoncé, the Foo Fighters and Jack White, who blasted him for using their music without permission. They joined a long roster of acts who’ve made similar requests since Trump launched his first presidential bid in 2015, one that includes: Adele, Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie, Celine Dion, Earth, Wind & Fire, George Harrison, Neil Young, Isaac Hayes, Linkin Park, Nickelback, Ozzy Osbourne, Prince’s estate and R.E.M., among many others.