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In a 2022 interview with Publishers Weekly, Colin Meloy talked about discovering author Stephen King in the sixth grade — writing that inspired his own work as a novelist of such young adult books as the Wildwood and The Stars Did Wander Darkling. Not counting the 33 1/3 series book he wrote on The Replacements‘ Let It Be album in 2004, Meloy’s literary career began in earnest in 2011, by which time he’d already established himself as the Stephen King of indie rock.
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As the frontman and principal songwriter of The Decemberists, Meloy is a prolific crafter of songs that are as lyrically rich as their music — contemporary issues expressed through ancient history and freighted with dark storylines and black humor. He doesn’t write about vampires and killer dogs or cars — wicked mortals and the luckless are his forté — but like King’s stories, Meloy’s songs connect and captivate with authentic humanity, even when something sinister is afoot. He makes bad behavior sound really good.
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That certainly holds true for The Decemberists’ new double album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again — the band’s first release in six years, as well as the first on their own label, YABB — which drops June 14. Meloy says it’s their best album, and he may be right. Certainly, it’s their best double album — a fat-free collection of songs that, like Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, takes creative and sonic chances and yet flows as cohesive, immensely enjoyable and often profound song cycle.
The Decemberists ‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again’
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The Portland, Ore. Band’s last album, 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl was largely a provocative reaction to the 2016 presidential election, epitomized by the brilliant, searing single, ‘Severed.” But, as Meloy explains now, singing those angry songs during the tour that followed left him exhausted.
As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again is an irreverent musical revival of sorts — an attempt to muck out the political and cultural sludge we’ve slogged through for close to 10 years now — perhaps so that we are prepared for a second dose. The jaunty gallows humor of the album’s opener, “Burial Ground” sets the tone with Meloy singing, “This world’s all wrong, so let’s go where we belong. Pack up the stereo, meet at the burial ground.”
As it does on so many Decemberists’ albums, death looms, but on “The Reapers” and “The Black Maria” it’s inevitable, not personal. We are all doomed, Meloy seems to be saying, so why not really live while we can. “Long White Veil” puts the listener to that test. It’s a song about a woman who dies on her wedding night, with a pedal steel and guitar sound that dares you not to dance.
The album closes with a stone-cold masterpiece, “Joan in the Garden,” which was sparked by Meloy’s reading of The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch’s science-fiction riff on the story of Joan of Arc and his subsequent immersion in the history and lore of the martyr and early feminist. A prog-rock track with massive fuzzy guitars, bombastic drums, chimes and careening synths, “Joan in the Garden” clocks in at more than 19 minutes and includes an instrumental interlude that sounds like supernal electricity punctuated by muffled voices and the THX audio company’s sonic logo. (Could that also be a nod to OMD’s “Joan of Arc” at the song’s beginning?)
It’s a cathartic, carburetor-clearing banger that brings the album full circle. The last lines of the song’s last verse serve as the album’s title, and a mantra that, in light of these times, could be inspirational or delusional: “As it ever was, so it will be again.”
The title of the album reminds me of that Karl Marx quote, “History repeats itself. First is tragedy, second is farce.”These days we seem to be living through a combination of the two. Any thoughts on that?
Is that Karl Marx or Groucho Marx? I’m familiar with that quote. I didn’t know that was Karl Marx. That was not on my mind. “As it ever was, so it will be again” is the last line of “Joan in the Garden,” which is a triumphal moment, but I also think it’s about returning and about permanence or how we perceive permanence. I think there’s a lot of things to unpack at that.
I interpreted the cover art as a return in the way that nature returned during the pandemic.
There is something about that. I think there is a return to nature, to simplicity — to a kind of idyllic world that exists in our imagination. And it’s a little skewed. To go back isn’t always the best way forward.
“Joan in the Garden” is an epic song. Have you ever seen Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc?
I have.
That song would make a great soundtrack to the movie.
“Joan in the Garden” came out of a weird period in my life. Starting in 2017, I became super fascinated with the story of Joan of Arc after reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, which recasts her story in this weird, bizarre, future world. After I read that I was like, “What is the real story of Joan of Arc?” So, I went back and read another novel. I read a biography, and I certainly watched that film. It’s absolutely beautiful — all those close-ups of her [actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti].
A movie director once told me that the burning-at-the-stake scenes got a little too realistic.
I read that, too. I think some of that was real emotion. Real tears that were brought out in her. Real fear.
Is there anything you’ve read or watched recently that resonated with you?
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It won the Booker Prize. That book is phenomenal. I also read The Bee Sting by another Irish writer named Paul Murray that I really loved. Stuff I’m watching — I really love Ripley, the Netflix adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley with Andrew Scott. And then we just watched the season finale of Shogun. I thought they did such a good job with that series.
The songs on As It Ever Was are not the first laced with dark happenings and black humor. But I feel like the album alludes to death and mortality more than on past records. Do you agree?
Maybe. I’d have to look. I think with every Decemberists record, somebody makes a crack about how many people die in a Decemberists record. I don’t know that the death count in this one is that high. I leave that up to our capable fans. I think there’s a lot of meditations about death and dying and mortality — maybe more than there are actual deaths.
Where do these meditations come from?
Oh gosh, I guess it’s not often far from my mind. It’s a universal thing. It’s something that we all share — birth and death. I feel like I’m drawn back to it time and time again.
I’m guessing you had finished the album by the time the wars in Ukraine and on the Gaza strip and Donald Trump’s numerous trials began. Did the political climate in America factor into your songwriting at all?
Our last record was shot through with resentment and reaction to the 2016 election and living under a Trump presidency, and I came out the other end of touring behind that record so exhausted from all the vitriol that I was spewing [in those songs]. So, while we’re clearly not out from underneath Trumpism, I need to move on from that and being angry about that. But it does show up. The song “America Made Me” is a reflection on my experience with Americanism in 2024, and the brand we have on us as Americans. But beyond that, I don’t know. I mean certainly you could read “Joan in the Garden” as an anti-authoritarian song. But beyond that I’m not sure that I spent much time dwelling on politics.
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I’ve read that the song “William Fitzwilliam’ has a connection to John Prine?
It’s sort of me writing a John Prine song. Right when the lockdown happened, I was reading Hilary Mantel’s book The Mirror and the Light, which is the third in her Wolf Hall series about the Court of Henry VIII. At the same time, I was reading about all the stuff that was happening in lockdown and John Prine died. I went back and listened to these John Prine records and even learned a John Prine song for this streaming tribute thing. I had Hilary Mantel and John Prine on the brain, and they just collided into this song “William Fitzwilliam.”
The press release for the album says you consider As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again The Decemberists’ best album. Can you give me a sense of why you feel that way?
In so many ways, it’s a culmination of everything that we’ve tried to do from the beginning of our career. I think it hits every note. Probably some of that is my own bias of it being fresh new music. I did have a moment in the studios where listening through, I thought, “This the best thing that we’ve done.” I think the structure is there from song one to song 13. Other people can argue with that. I’m probably the worst expert to give you that kind of summation, so why not just shoot my mouth off about it.
I find it interesting there have been such a proliferation of double albums recently: Taylor Swift, Travis Scott, Morgan Wallen and now The Decemberists. Is it that people were so cooped up during the pandemic that they have a lot they need to express?
That’s part of it. Also, we’ve never really done a proper 70-minute double record, and I feel like this is our time to do it. I had regrets that What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World wasn’t a double record. Weirdly, we kind of split the difference with that record. It should have been a very short record or a very long record. In my head, it exists as a double record.
There’s always the anniversary edition.
As far as double records out in the world today, I do think there’s lots of people putting lots of music out. It’s easier to record and there’s less constraints, but I grew up loving certain double records and the big swings they make. I think of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk and Zen Arcade by Husker Du. Some of the classic double records.
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You talk about the exhaustion that resulted from the Your Girl/Your Ghost World Tour. Did you ever consider walking away from the music business?
I feel that way between every record. At every stage in my career, I’ve had this longing to just chuck it all in. I think that’s my own weird hangup. I’m a private person. I’m a reserved person. I tussle so much with how I’m perceived and receiving criticism and constantly putting myself out there in this way and being drawn to that over time it’s just so challenging. I continue like a moth to a flame. I come back. I can only hope that each time that flame burns a little brighter and it gets a little hotter. At least maybe I’m making better work for all that anguish.
This is your first album on your own label. Why start one now?
We were done with Capitol, and the major label world has changed so much. We were always outliers as a major label band. The people call us a quintessential indie rock band and I would be like, “But we’re not, actually.” I feel like we managed to make it work at Capitol, and for whatever reason they kept us around even though they were more and more geared towards making pop records. By no means is there bad blood or anything. Working with Capitol was surprisingly great. But at this point in our career, we don’t need a major label behind us anymore. We have our fan base, and there are more and more channels available to independent artists making their own work. It has changed so much since we signed to Capitol in, whatever, 2005, that it didn’t make sense to go back to a major label. It felt like if ever there was a time to take this under our own control, it was now.
Do you own your masters prior to this album?
No. Those are all Capitol’s or Kill Rock Stars’. In time we will own masters, but the deal with the devil that you make is that you give up your masters.
I find it interesting that you write young adult fiction and songs that, from my perspective, are created for people with much more life experience, and a healthy sense of mortality. How do these two creative engines coexist?
I don’t think they’re too far off from one another. The stuff that I write or at least the stuff that I am drawn to as far as books for kids is darker, and I think so much of children’s literature up until kind of recently was always a little dark. Folk tales and fairytales are as much about warning kids about the darkness and evil in the world and death as they are about imparting any kind of moral lesson. And so, I feel like that’s the mode that I worked in in the books, and then similarly I feel like that’s also part of what I write in the songs, too.
Your novel Wildwood is going to be a film and you’re writing the soundtrack?
I’m contributing songs to it. There’s a composer writing the soundtrack, the cinematic music for it. But I have been asked to contribute a couple of songs and then maybe one for the end credits. Who knows. With these things, you never know what’s going to survive.
Will you perform the songs solo or with The Decemberists?
We might be doing a song for the end credits. But the songs that I wrote will be sung by the actors; the characters in the movie. There’s just a couple of them.
You are also working on a musical theater project. Are you able to talk about it?
I can’t really talk about it in detail. Right now, it’s still in a gestational phase. But I feel like it’s something that I’ve been devoting a whole lot of songwriting time to over the last three years and, in some ways, I think really helped and informed the songs that I was writing for the band.
After conquering all terrestrial continents, Metallica are headed to Fortnite later this month when the metal veterans will become the first band to play appear across all Fortnite experiences. After launching Metallica-themed gameplay starting Thursday (June 13) in Fortnite Festival, Battle Royale, LEGO Fortnite and Rocket Racing, the Bay Area rockers will play a series […]
If you listen to enough Howard Stern you know that as much as he loves his SiriusXM channels, more work is the last thing he wants. But the veteran broadcaster has long held a special place in his heart for his sister rock channel, Lithium, so on Wednesday morning (June 12) Stern will help kick off SiriusXM’s new Guest DJ campaign by doing a takeover in which he gets to spin some of his favorite songs and tell a few stories about why they are so special to him.
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“Hi everybody, this is Howard Stern and welcome to the Howard Stern Guest DJ,” Stern says in his intro to the stunt. “Over the years I feature a lot of music on the show, I interview a lot of musicians, I just love music. And I also talk about music because I used to professional radio DJ.” In his best announcer voice, Stern then jokes that during his DJ stint he learned the delicate art of “talk-ups,” where a DJ speaks over a song’s instrumental intro until just before the vocals kick in.
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Or as Stern described it, “where you talk over really good songs and ruin them.” He notes that on his three-day-a-week Howard 100 show he often plays his favorite songs and talks about why he loves them, which is why he wanted to share his personal home playlist during his Lithium guest spot.
In a perfect example of a song-ruining talk-up, Stern describes how much he thinks about late Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland while playing the band’s 1994 hit “Vasoline,” saying, “what a charismatic dude. We had him on the show a bunch of times and I used to go to Stone Temple Pilot concerts and see him perform and… fabulous band. And I would go and I’d think, ‘geez, he’s got it all. He’s f–kin’ good looking. He can sing like an angel.’” Stern also reveals some background about the lyrics he gleaned from the band’s other members, talking through almost the entire song as longtime co-host Robin Quivers adds some of her patented positive accents to his banter.
In addition to songs by Soundgarden (“Black Hole Sun”), Jimi Hendrix (“Are You Experienced?”), Aurora (“Life on Mars?”) and Public Enemy (“911 Is a Joke”), Stern will also queue up the Rolling Stones’ 1971 Sticky Fingers track “Moonlight Mile,” calling it the “epitome of a great song. This is when music was staggeringly good. How did he come up with this? How does that happen?”
Stern says the only thing he knows about the song is that singer Mick Jagger came up with it while sitting on a train and staring at the moon before going home to write the lyrics. He then goes into one of his patented digressions about being raised with a deficit of emotion that he wore like a “suit of armor” his whole life that has started cracking as he’s gotten older. In theory, that sounds to him like a great idea for a song. But, unlike Jagger’s emotional revelation on his train ride, Stern says, “and then I sat and thought about this and nothing happened! There was no song!”
The special will premiere today at 11 a.m. on Lithium and is available anytime on the SiriusXM app. The Guest DJ campaign will feature more than 70 other entertainers doing take-overs, including: James Corden, Kate Hudson, Kevin Hart, Busy Philipps, Rob Lowe, Conan O’Brien, Andy Cohen, Gayle King, NFL player Maxx Crosby, NASCAR’s Chase Elliot and more. The campaign will be heard on more than 35 SiriusXM channels across a variety of genres.
Listen to Stern on Lithium below.
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Foreigner and Styx on tour together is a match made in classic rock heaven.
It’s happened many times over the years, though it’s been a decade since the bands were last on the road together — as they will be for this summer’s Renegades & Juke Box Heroes tour, which kicks off Tuesday (June 11) in Grand Rapids, Mich., and plays 36 North American dates through August. The bands will also release a joint compilation album, Renegades & Juke Box Heroes, on vinyl in conjunction with the trek. Available at tour stops and, as of July 12, at retail, it features four songs from each band, divided onto separate sides.
With John Waite opening, the tour will be filled AOR-era hits, from Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold As Ice,” “Urgent,” “Juke Box Hero” and “I Want to Know What Love Is” to Styx’s “Lady,” “Come Sail Away,” “Renegade” and “Mr. Roboto.”
And so many more, for both. Foreigner, after all, has released nine studio albums since 1977 — seven of them platinum or better — with 14 top 20 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Styx, formed during 1972, in Chicago, has been around a few years longer, with 17 studio albums and nine top 20 singles
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Foreigner, in the midst of a farewell tour that’s slated to go into 2025, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Oct. 19 in Cleveland after its first nomination, following an extensive campaign spearheaded by founder Mick Jones’ son-in-law Mark Ronson. Styx is still waiting for that honor but has been (comparatively) prolific in the last decade, with new albums in 2017 (The Mission) and 2021 (Crash of the Crown).
Both bands have also gone through numerous membership changes during their histories, as well as recently. Earlier this month Styx brought keyboardist Lawrence Gowan’s brother Terry Gowan on board replacing bassist Ricky Phillips after 21 years. Foreigner, meanwhile, added guitarist Luis Maldonado three years ago after the amicable departure of multi-instrumentalist Thom Gimbel. But what both bands share is a staying power; in their cases — to turn a Pete Townshend phrase — it’s the songs not the identity of the singer that keeps the music moving along, and the popularity of those tunes has kept both bands healthy at the box office.
In advance of the tour, Billboard sat down with Styx’s Tommy Shaw and Foreigner’s Kelly Hansen, both eager to share their enthusiasm for hitting the road together once again with such friendly touring partners.
They Really Like Each Other
“It’s always been good, the respect and admiration we have for Foreigner and their music,” Shaw says of the kinship between the two groups. “They’re going for excellence all the time, and they’re achieving it. I think they are also true to the DNA of the music and really do a great job of playing the songs people have loved for so many years.”
Hansen adds that, “Both bands came out of the same era, the same kind of machinery of the time, of the ‘70s, when recording techniques were expanding colossally, when all different kinds of bands on a wide spectrum were all on the same radio station together, when every song you heard was completely different. It was a really a bountiful time, and I think that’s something both of these bands have experienced that kind of bonds us and creates a camaraderie.”
That extends to at least one end-of-tour prank that Hansen remembers. “(Bassist) Jeff Pilson and I dressed up in this crazy outfits. Jeff was wearing a dress and a wig and I had a mask on with a huge nose and a cape and tights and stuff. We were just trying to make them crack up when they were in the middle of a serious song.” Did it work? “No,” Hansen says. “They’ve experienced it before.”
The First Time They Heard The Other Band
“I had just moved to Niles, Mich.,” Shaw relates, “and was sitting in the bathtub in the middle of the afternoon, cooling off ’cause it was hot. I think it was ‘Cold As Ice’ that came on; that was the first time I heard anything by Foreigner, and I’m sitting there going, ‘Who is this?! Whoa! I have to hear more of this!’ From that point on they never let me down — in fact, they just kept getting better and better. The songwriting is just fantastic, really well thought-out and produced. I think that’s what makes their music so timeless.”
Hansen claims that he “couldn’t tell ya” when he first heard Styx. “It’s all a jumble. I was listening to pop radio — to singers with backup bands, mostly, like Aretha or Ray Charles or Rod Stewart, things like that. It wasn’t until years later that I fully understood the concept of what a band is, when I got into Zeppelin or whoever and realized, ‘Oh, these guys are really equally playing a part here. There’s not one guy out front and the rest of the band in back.’ That was a real revelation, and that’s the context I heard Styx in.”
Their Favorite Song By the Other Band
Hansen tries to demure — “There’s so many,” he protests — but pushed he allows that, “I like ‘Blue Collar Man.’ ‘Renegade’ is a big song. So, yeah, there’s two.” Shaw’s pick: “Well, of course, ‘I Want to Know What Love Is.’ But I can go down the list really — ‘Cold As Ice,’ ‘Hot Blooded,’ just really drop the needle anywhere and you’ll get a great song.”
Weathering Lineup Changes
“There’s the entity of the band and the music itself — the catalog of songs and what they carry with the audience,” explains Hansen, who’s been singing the songs made famous by original frontman Lou Gramm since 2005. “It’s all about the songs; it’s a testament to the writing and the recording of these songs originally.
“I think my job is to carry forward the legacy of those songs. To still be able to go out there and play these songs, and the songs still have meaning, is a rare thing to achieve. I think both bands have been doing that quite well.”
Styx, of course, still has founding guitarist James “J.Y.” Young and bassist Chuck Panozzo, who plays a few songs each night, while Shaw has been in the band since 1975.
“As we’ve gone on great people have come our way, and once you’re working in it it’s such a great world to be in, musically,” he says. “It’s the music that brings you all together.” Shaw adds that the benefit of legacy is “you’re not having to worry about having to make new music. We’re always working on new music, but the power of that music from the first time it came out and the experiences that our fans had and how they related to the music, that’s really what sticks with you.”
Is New Music Coming?
Foreigner hasn’t released anything since Can’t Slow Down back in 2009, but founder Mick Jones — who revealed via Billboard that he’s been battling Parkinson’s disease for several years — has confirmed that he’s still writing for both the band as well as for a solo project. Gramm has also discussed some unfinished material he and Jones wrote during the early 2000s that’s still around in demo form.
“As always, there’s unfinished stuff in the pipeline,” Hansen notes. “Maybe when we’re not on the road all the time we’ll have time to finish up some of those things. There’s definitely some good stuff that’s not finished yet, so time will tell.”
Shaw, meanwhile, says he’s been working on new Styx material with Will Evankovich, who produced the band’s last two albums and also tours with the group. “There’s music; the problem is there’s just not enough days in the week or hours in the day to get it all done. But we just keep plugging away at it and everyone brings a certain kind of magic to the new music, especially when it’s in the writing phases of it, and it’s all exciting.
“Whenever we’re creating new music we always remember who we are and the things that we love about Styx and not step out of the margins any more than we have to. But it’s such a wide lane to be in, anyway. (Styx) music can go just about anywhere.”
About the Rock Hall….
Hanses says that even though the current members of Foreigner will not be inducted, they’re thrilled for Jones, Gramm and the other members receiving the accolade.
“I think that the original guys in this band really deserve this recognition,” he says. “In so many ways they didn’t get recognition back in the day. It was somewhat of a faceless kind of thing; there wasn’t a David Lee Roth out there or a Jimmy Page or a Keith Richards public persona out there; they were a lot more about the music rather than showing off their personalities. I think they made a musical mark, so to be recognized for the music is a really great thing.”
As for the induction, Jones and Gramm have said they plan to perform, along with other members being inducted, but the current Foreigner lineup won’t be forgotten. “I know everyone has all kinds of ideas,” Hansen says. “I’m here to humbly assist in any way I can.”
Shaw is also stoked about his tour mates’ impending induction. “It’s fantastic,” he says. “You like to see your friends get in — (Peter) Frampton this year, too.” He’s circumspect about Styx’s prospects for the Rock Hall, however.
“We’re really powerless over it,” Shaw notes. “We don’t have any influence whatsoever. So to be anticipating it or be disappointed that we’re not in there…I don’t even know who the people are who judge (the Rock Hall), so I can’t really say much about it. We just know that our fans love us and we know that our music is good before we let them hear it. If that thing’s meant to happen, it will.”
Farewell is a relative term for Foreigner, by the way. Despite last year’s farewell tour announcement — which is expected to roll into 2025 — Foreigner is “not disappearing off the face of the earth,” according to Hansen, who’s blamed the vocal demands of singing that material as one of the reasons he’s dialing down.
“We’re just not gonna tour nine months out of the year anymore; it doesn’t get easier, especially for someone of my years,” explains the 63-year-old. “There’ll be some shows here and there, but there’ll be a lot more time for doing other things in my life that I’m passionate about,” including family, cooking, working on cars and motorcycles and “a social life that I’ve had to miss out on for many years. There’s just a lot of other things for me to do.”
Shaw says Styx is nowhere near such a point, but he does understand where Hansen’s coming from. “Y’know, I’m one of the singers (in Styx); there are good vocalists in our band who can take the leads,” he notes. “Kelly’s the guy in their band, and there’s a lot of high vocals in those (songs) that aren’t easy to do. So that’s a decision they have to make but, y’know, I never say never. They can say it’s the end; a lot of people do, and then a lot of people are right back there a year and a half later. I just hope they do what’s right for them and everybody’s happy.”
At 76 years old, Stevie Nicks — who breezily brought up her age a few times on stage Sunday night (June 9) — maintains the distinct, strong vocal performance for which she’s become iconic. She carries it through a showtime of about two hours, with a 15-song set and several stories spanning her fascinating journey in rock ‘n’ roll.
Nicks brought her headlining tour to the Mohegan Sun Arena, a well-designed, 10,000-seat venue in southeastern Connecticut that’s within the Mohegan Sun casino/entertainment complex owned by the Mohegan Tribe.
She has plenty to play, and so much to say — and with the life experience she’s had as an entertainer for so many years, rightly so. On Sunday Nicks was a lively conversationalist, letting her sense of humor shine while telling the crowd about her early days with Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s, how her debut solo album hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1981, and what’s currently on her mind in 2024.
Who wouldn’t want to hear what Stevie Nicks has to say? This January it’ll be 50 years since the 1975 lineup of Fleetwood Mac (with Nicks) came to be, a musical ride that followed humble beginnings alongside eventual Mac co-star Lindsey Buckingham with the Buckingham Nicks project, and preceded the ascent of her solo career.
Nicks’ concert at Mohegan Sun Arena featured setlist staples like “Dreams,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Stand Back,” “Leather and Lace,” “Rhiannon,” “Gypsy” and an encore of “Landslide,” a beautiful tribute to late best friend and bandmate Christine McVie. Mixed in with the chart-toppers were the singer-songwriter’s stories, almost like mini lessons on the history of Nicks’ path.
During a quick restroom break my husband overheard someone making small-talk wisecracks at the urinal: “She talks a lot, huh?” I grew up with a parent who’d listen to Fleetwood Mac albums on repeat. I could listen to her voice telling stories 100 times over and still find it soothing. We didn’t find the bathroom joke funny, but it was amusing timing.
As though she could sense what someone, somewhere, was saying, a charming Nicks was actually on stage poking fun at herself: “I’m trying, I’m making a big effort to shorten down my stories. My stories are starting to become as long as the show,” she quipped at the start of a 13-minute introduction to her performance of 1982 single “Gypsy.”
“Every time I do it, I mess up,” she said. “I take a part off, it’s impossible to understand where I’ve stopped and where I should start up again. I’m only sharing this with you because it’s part of the fun of being my age.”
“I’m so old … What’s everybody gonna say to me? ‘Stop! You can’t do this anymore!’ I’ll say, ‘OK. Fine. I’ll just go home and be alone in a rocking chair with my dog Lily,” Nicks said with a grin.
Below, see five of the best moments from Stevie Nicks’ concert at Mohegan Sun Arena. Nicks is currently on tour through June 21 in North America, then heading to Europe in July. See the full tour date list on her official website.
Stevie Arrives in Style for Her Show
06/10/2024
The weekend was packed with performances of new songs, killer costumes and more.
06/10/2024
Jon Bon Jovi has been making the rounds lately to talk up Bon Jovi‘s new album, Forever, as well as to promote the recent Hulu series, Thank You, Goodnight – The Bon Jovi Story, which chronicles the Jersey band’s history and his long, hard road back from vocal cord surgery in 2022.
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The one thing he hasn’t really done, though, is perform a set with the band as he tests whether all the work he’s been doing to strengthen his voice has paid off. But on Friday night the band hit the stage at the singer’s new Nashville bar, JBJ’s, for a special mini-set to celebrate opening night. And, by the sounds of the fan videos of the pop-up gig Bon Jovi is in fine form.
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According to Setlist.fm, the set opened with “Blood on Blood” (from 1988’s New Jersey) and included “We Weren’t Born to Follow,” “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Born to Be My Baby” and the Forever single “Legendary.”
Wearing a black t-shirt, jeans and a white sneakers, at the top of the show Bon Jovi welcomed the capacity crowd to the bar and said, “we’re just gonna play you a couple and then we’ll get to drinking.” Bon Jovi recently said that he doesn’t think the band can do a full tour in support of the album, so the club show was a rare treat for the group’s fans.
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Connecting via Zoom from across the pond, Roger Daltrey declares with great exuberance, “I’m actually looking forward to a tour! I’m out there to have a good time this time.”
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Daltrey doesn’t mean to cast aspersions on his many treks with The Who, mind you — most recently the symphonic tours he and Pete Townshend began in 2019. But his upcoming nine-date North American run, which kicks off June 12 in Vienna, Va., is something else entirely, described as “a mostly acoustic set of Who gems, rarities, solo nuggets and other surprises,” along with Q&A opportunities for the audiences.
“I’ve done all those years with The Who, and I’ve done my solo stuff and charity gigs and all that,” Daltrey tells Billboard. “I just want to branch out and do something different, where I’ve got different instrumentation and I can stop using tape loops. It just creates a whole new sound and allows me the freedom as a singer to put some other people’s songs in I’ve been fond of over the years. It’s gonna be quite interesting. I’m just determined to enjoy myself and explore the freedom I’ve got to do what I want to do on this tour, and let’s see where it ends up.”
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Don’t ask what those songs will be, however.
“I’m not gonna talk about songs,” Daltrey says. “Too many people reveal songs. There’s no surprises left with concerts these days, ’cause everybody wants to see the setlist. I’m f–king sick of it. The Internet’s ruined the live shows for me. Who wants to know what’s coming next? People forget about surprises. I can’t stand it.”
Maybe, it’s suggested, that it’s just an audience with weak bladders who want to pick the right spot to visit the loo? “Why not just start to listen to the bloody show in the toilet, then?” he says with a laugh.
One song Daltrey expects to perform is The Who opus “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” but, he adds, “We don’t use a tape loop for the instrumentation. We do it on real instruments. It just takes it off the rails and gives me more room as a singer.” That said, Daltrey notes, “I’m not gonna do the scream. I’m gonna get the f–king audience to do the scream. I’ve done that scream for 55 years, and I’ve had enough of it. I don’t even want to try it now; it’s brutal on the vocal cords. They can do the scream, and I’ll do everything else. I’m more into singing these days. At the age of 80, I think I deserve to be.”
Daltrey’s band for the tour includes Who musicians Simon Townshend (Pete’s younger brother) on guitar, violinist Katie Jacoby and Billy Nicholls on mandolin and vocals, rounded out by Jody Linscott on percussion, guitarist Doug Boyle, bassist John Hogg, harmonica player Steve Weston, Geraint Watkins on keyboards and accordion and drummer Scott Devours. “I like to put bands together where we’re a real band and everybody gets the spotlight and there’s camaraderie,” Daltrey says. “To me a band is more than choosing great musicians; you can sometimes have five great musicians on stage and there’s no chemistry whatsoever and it falls flat on its face. That’s not gonna happen here.”
As for the Q&A part of the night, Daltrey did something similar for a show in England back in 2022 and enjoyed it. Fans will be able to submit written questions to boxes at the venues before the show, then the band will review them backstage and choose “the most interesting ones…and I just draw them out of a hat. It creates a great deal of fun, and you can get some good comedy out of it if you’re lucky.”
The tour, meanwhile, is just one of the projects Daltrey has in motion these days. He has no plans yet to record another solo album — his last, As Long as I Have You, came out in 2018 — but doesn’t rule it out, either. “I don’t really think about it,” he says. “If anything turns up that I find interesting and challenging and musically progressive, I’ll have a go at it.” Meanwhile he’s continuing to work on making a biopic about late Who drummer Keith Moon that he’s been plugging away at for many years; Daltrey has a script in place that will be finalized once he finds a director, which is the next step in the process.
“That’s taken up quite a lot of my time; I want to get this made while I’m still alive to promote it,” he says. “I’m trying not to make that (typical) kind of biopic. There’s some good ones out there; I thought the Amy Winehouse (Back to Black) was better than the reviews it got. I thought (star Marisa Abela) was really good, actually, ’cause I knew Amy. But was that a film? I’m not so sure. I think it’s a TV film, and that’s the problem cinema has at the moment. What are you making it for — streaming or theaters? And I suggest that if you’re making great films you’ve got to think of theater. You’ve got to take them into theater and blow their minds. You never get your mind blown on a TV, do ya?”
Daltrey is also contemplating a second book to follow his 2018 memoir Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite: My Story, one that will delve further into the shyness and insecurities he felt during the early days of The Who. “I didn’t really go deep enough in my first book,” he says. “Quite a lot of it was terrifying, but I didn’t show it. I need to write about it.” The Who itself, meanwhile, is back of mind for Daltrey, who claims that “I don’t really think about it.”
“I’ll do it if Pete wants to do it, really wants to do it and do it properly,” Daltrey explains. “As far as I’m concerned, do we need another Who tour? We were a great group and two of our members died, and it’s been different since. Equally, there’s a chemistry between Pete and I. I love him dearly. There’s something special there, but it needs us both to be on fire and both wanting to be there. So if he really, really wants to do it I’m gonna turn up even with a broken leg, and I’ll deliver for you.”
But if The Who never return, Daltrey says he’s satisfied the band did its bit — and then some. “We did as much as I could ever have wished for, and more. I thought it ended on the ultimate presentation of Pete Townshend’s music, which is out with the orchestra while maintaining the thunder of a rock band. That’s what the music deserved.”
Daltrey’s upcoming tour itinerary includes:June 12 / Wolf Trap – Filene Center / Vienna, VAJune 14 / OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino / Niagara Falls, ONJune 16 / Bethel Woods Center for the Arts / Bethel, NYJune 18 / The Capitol Theatre / Port Chester, NYJune 20 / Leader Bank Pavilion / Boston, MAJune 22 / Tanglewood – The Koussevitzky Music Shed / Lenox, MAJune 25 / Meadow Brook Amphitheatre / Detroit, MIJune 27 / Murat Theatre at Old National Centre / Indianapolis, INJune 29 / The Pavilion at Ravinia / Highland Park, IL
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