Rock
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Five days and a few thousand miles between gigs — and the formal release of his new album, No Name — gave Jack White a good excuse to show one of his homes where his heart is.
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Just two days after playing the Pentaport Rock Festival in South Korea, White and his quartet were on stage Monday night (Aug. 5) at Saint Andrew’s Hall in his native Detroit, tearing through a characteristically frenzied, nearly 100-minute show that served as the album release celebration for No Name.
White released the 13-song set secretly on July 19, when white-cover copies were slipped, for free, into customer bags at Third Man Records stores in Detroit, Nashville and London. The album was formally released last Friday, the same day tickets for the Detroit show were put on sale (and, with less than 1,000 available, sold out instantly).
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Among the notables on hand were White’s wife Olivia Jean, John Fogerty (who played in the Detroit suburbs the previous night) with his wife and manager Julie and members of his band and touring party, and Major League baseball all-star Kirk Gibson, now a broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers. (White took in a game on Sunday, shortly after arriving from overseas.)
The atmosphere was festive, both on stage and off, and certainly more intimate than Detroit’s nationally televised Michigan Central opening concert White performed at in June. “That’s my town! That’s my town, right there!” White declared after an enthusiastic early-show call-and-response during “That’s How I’m Feeling,” one of seven No Name tracks included in the 21-song setlist.
The largely more straightforward, hard-rocking material — including “Old Scratch Blues,” “Morning at Midnight,” “Where’s the Rumpus?,” a joyous “Underground” and “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” with a vocal cadence not unlike fellow Detroiter Eminem — fit well alongside the garage-derived material from his White Stripes days, too, though he did touch on solo favorites such as “Love Interruption,” “Why Walk a Dog?” and “Lazaretto,” bisecting the latter’s funky gait with a furious freak-out jam.
And White paid tribute to some other Michigan heroes, the Stooges, with a room-shaking rendition of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” sandwiched between portions of the White Stripes’ “Cannon.”
While White had played at the venue, a Detroit music landmark, prior to his White Stripes days, it marked the first time he’d been on stage there in more than two decades. “I’ve seen so many shows in this building, but I’ve never really played here,” he told the crowd. And before the White Stripes’ “Hotel Yorba,” meanwhile, he quipped that “I have to be careful; the last time I played this song in Detroit I got married” — referring to his on-stage proposal and marriage to Olivia Jean on April 8, 2022, on the opening night of his Supply Chain Issues Tour at the nearby Masonic Temple Auditorium.
He also shouted out his 93-year-old mother, who he said was watching from the Saint Andrew’s balcony. Mostly, though, White and the band — longtime bassist Dominic Davis, keyboardist Bobby Emmett and Raconteurs/Greenhornes drummer Patrick Keller — turned in ferocious treatments of everything they touched, filling the performances with improvisations, vamps and musical asides without ever losing control of the songs. Keeler’s style in particular brought a garage-y kind of propulsion to the mix but with chops that elevated the likes of “Ball and Biscuit,” “The Hardest Button to Button,” “Little Bird” and “Hello Operator.”
White reached back even deeper to one of his early bands, The Go, with “Keep on Trash” before offering “Broken Boy Soldier” and “Steady, as She Goes” from the Raconteurs. “Seven Nation Army,” of course, brought the show to a momentous end, with White finishing atop his amplifiers, swinging his resonator guitar off his shoulder to salute the crowd.
“Thank you for all the love you gave tonight,” he told fans who clearly would have stayed for another 100 minutes if he offered it. “I hope we gave as much love back to you. Music is sacred!”
White next heads to Gothenburg, Sweden to play at the Way Out West festival on Thursday, Aug. 8, the start of a three-day run that includes shows in Norway and Denmark. His only other concert on the books right now is during October at Desert Daze in Lake Perris, Calif., with the exact date still to be announced.
Late folk-country icon John Denver returns to the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart (dated Aug. 10) as a writer via MGK — who formerly went by Machine Gun Kelly — and Jelly Roll’s new single, “Lonely Road.”
The track, released July 26, launches at No. 33 on the Hot 100 with 10.5 million official streams, 646,000 in radio airplay audience and 12,000 sold in the United States in the week ending Aug. 1, according to Luminate.
Referring to himself and Jelly Roll as KellyRoll, MGK revealed that they worked on “Lonely Road” for “2 years [in] 8 different studios [and] 4 different countries [and] changed the key 4 times.”
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The song, MGK’s fourth top 40 Hot 100 hit and Jelly Roll’s seventh, reimagines Denver’s breakthrough anthem “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which journeyed to No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1971. The singer-songwriter tallied 14 top 40 hits through 1982, when “Shanghai Breezes” reached No. 31. He logged four No. 1s, among seven top 10s.
Denver, who died in 1997, appears in the Hot 100’s top 40 as a writer for a second time in the past decade – with both via reworkings of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” In October 2016, “Forever Country,” by Artists of Then, Now & Forever, hit No. 21. The song, released in celebration of 50 years of the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, is a medley of three favorites: “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” The all-star track also spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
“Lonely Road” concurrently debuts at No. 13 on Hot Country Songs.
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Denver’s enduring original “Take Me Home, Country Roads” has drawn 931 million official on-demand streams in the U.S. to date. It has also totaled 230 million in radio reach and sold 1.8 million downloads.
Further modernizing its profile, Lana Del Rey’s cover hit No. 23 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs this past December.
Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert (who were then married) co-wrote the song from its start and finished penning it with Denver. Since 2014, it has served as an official state song of West Virginia, while Denver’s version was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2023.
Springfield, Mass., native Danoff recalled in 2018 to Billboard that, after he began studying at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he had “one year where I did a lot of road trips. I just was fascinated by the countryside … barns … stuff I had only seen in pictures. I’d suddenly become a real nature fan. That’s where all that ‘country roads’ stuff came from.”
Knowing when to hang it up is a skill not every rock singer has. While some call it a day way before their time is up, others hang around way too long and end up doing damage to their reputations. That’s why the announcement last week that Aerosmith will permanently retire from touring due to 76-year-old singer Steven Tyler’s ongoing vocal issues hit Sammy Hagar so hard.
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During the encore of a show on Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour with drummer Jason Bonham, former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and guitar god Joe Satriani at Pine Knob Music Theatre in Michigan on Friday, Hagar, 76, took a moment to acknowledge the then-new information and give Aerosmith props for their longevity and spirit.
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“We had some crazy news today. We got here this afternoon sometime and we’re all sitting around backstage and a friend of ours that works for Aerosmith came and said, ‘Yeah, Aerosmith called retirement today. They quit. They stopped.’ God bless ’em,” Hagar said according to fan video of the moment. “It’s a horrible thing. What a great f–king loss.”
Hagar recalled the time in 1973 when his band Montrose was opening a gig for Aerosmith at Detroit’s Cobo Hall (now called Huntington Place) during a period when the red rocker had no idea who the “Dream On” Boston band were. “They sold out Cobo, and I’m going, ‘Who the f–k are these guys?,’” Hagar remembered saying. ” So, we did our show, we did an encore, and we played ‘Helter Skelter’ for our encore. And Aerosmith comes on and they opened with ‘Helter Skelter.’ Steven and I have been friends ever since.”
Long story short, Hagar added, “we love those guys. We all grew up with those guys. You grew up with them, we grew up with them, Mike and I. They’ve been our competitors to Van Halen for f–king 10 years. You know what I’m saying? ‘F–k those guys.’ No, no, no, but we really do like them. It’s just that we’re mad at them. But anyway, what a shame.”
Three months after rescheduling the remaining dates on their Peace Out farewell tour, Aerosmith announced their official retirement from touring on Friday due to singer Steven Tyler’s ongoing vocal cord injury. “It was 1970 when a spark of inspiration became Aerosmith. Thanks to you, our Blue Army, that spark caught flame and has been burning for over five decades. Some of you have been with us since the beginning and all of you are the reason we made rock ‘n’ roll history,” the statement began. “It has been the honor of our lives to have our music become part of yours. In every club, on every massive tour and at moments grand and private you have given us a place in the soundtrack of your lives.”
The “Walk This Way” group said that Tyler has spent “months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before his injury,” but said it became clear that a full recovery was not going to happen. “We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision — as a and of brothers — to retire from the touring stage,” they wrote.
Hagar said the tough call to press permanent pause on the road was honorable, and rare. “It’s a sad thing, but honest to God, my hat goes off to one of the greatest rock and roll singers of all time, Mister Steven Tyler, for saying, ‘I can’t sing anymore. I quit,’” Hagar said before taking a veiled swing at other, unnamed, aging rockers who have continued to tour past their prime while making a bold prediction about himself.
“F–k yes! Listen, that’s honorable – that’s f–king honorable. The day I can’t sing anymore, I will f–king do the same thing. And that’s what a lot of other motherf–kers should have did a long time ago,” Hagar said. Sammy and the band then, naturally, broke into the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” which Hagar howled with his signature raspy vigor.
Aerosmith only got three shows into their swan song outing last year before having to reschedule the tour due to an injury to Tyler’s larynx.
Watch video of Hagar’s comments below.
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Less than a week after she passed the delegate threshold needed to become the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris is kicking off a battleground state tour alongside her yet-to-be-announced running mate — and she’s bringing along Bon Iver for the ride. Billboard can exclusively report that, Bon Iver will join Harris and her […]
The third annual Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp for women only will take place Dec. 5-8 in Los Angeles and feature such rock legends as Nancy Wilson (Heart), Lita Ford (The Runaways), Sheila E. (Prince), Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper) and Rhonda Smith (Jeff Beck).
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“Rock Fantasy Camp for women is a meaningful gathering of women together. As a military brat I never felt constrained by my gender,” Wilson tells Billboard. “Encouraging women to wield their power outside confining gender expectations is always a happy task for me.”
The capacity for the camp is around 80 campers divided into up to 14 bands. Each band is assigned a counselor who mentors them throughout the four days and helps prepare the musicians for the closing concert where they play with the rock headliners at the Viper Room on the Sunset Strip. The counselors themselves are a constellation of heavy hitters, including Roxy Petrucci (Vixen), Eva Gardner (P!nk), Jennie Vee (Eagles of Death Metal), Julia Lage (Vixen), Jennifer Oberle (Sarah McLachlan) and Britt Lightning (Vixen), who also serves as the event’s musical director.
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Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp
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The camp is open to musicians of all levels, who are evaluated beforehand to make sure they are placed in the appropriate band and each participant is sent a song list to start rehearsing. The four days are filled with rehearsals, masterclasses, Q&As and jam sessions.
This year’s event will also include a panel of top women music executives, presented by Billboard, which serves as the Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp’s media sponsor.
“The Women’s Rock Camps have been some of the most supportive and uplifting camps I have seen in my 28 years of producing the Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp,” says producer David Fishof. “The way these women are able to bond and be completely open about topics without judgment allows everyone to leave with so much joy and increased confidence. After observing it, I realized it would be a disservice to not continue producing annual Women’s Rock Camps.”
Lightning adds, “The campers gain friends for life and more importantly establish a network of females that share the same passion from all over the world. The sense of community is overwhelming and inspires not only the campers but the talent as well and allows dreams to be realized in music and beyond.”
Fishof has run the Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp for more than 25 years, and participating rock stars have included Roger Daltrey, Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, Joe Tyler, Slash, Paul Stanley and Sammy Hagar.
For more information, go here.
Dave Grohl surprised fans at a Foo Fighters concert in Denver by performing an unexpected cover of Tenacious D’s “Tribute.”
During the acoustic section of the set at Empower Field on Aug. 3, Grohl took the mic and paid homage to his longtime friends and collaborators Jack Black and Kyle Gass.
“I only played the drums on that song,” Grohl quipped, recalling his contribution to the original track. You can check out the moment at the 1:31 mark below.
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But as fans know, the beloved rocker’s involvement with Tenacious D goes far beyond percussion.
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Grohl has played drums on all of Tenacious D’s albums and famously portrayed Satan in both the “Tribute” music video and the 2006 film Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, his devilish antics having become a beloved part of the band’s mythology.
The Foo Fighters‘ “Tribute” performance comes not long after Tenacious D found themselves in hot water over a controversial comment made during a show in Sydney on July 14.
When Jack Black asked Kyle Gass for his birthday wish, Gass replied, “Don’t miss Trump next time,” referencing the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. The remark drew major backlash, with an Australian senator calling for the band’s deportation and the Australian Prime Minister telling the band they needed to “grow up”.
In response, Tenacious D cancelled the rest of their tour and announced, “All future creative plans are on hold.”
Jack Black released a statement distancing himself from the controversial comments, saying in a statement that he was “blindsided” by his bandmate.
“I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form,” Black wrote on Instagram before announcing the cancellation of the tour.
Kyle Gass also faced professional repercussions, reportedly being dropped by his agent.
In the midst of this controversy, Grohl’s Denver performance seemed to offer a light-hearted show of support for his friends.
“Tribute,” released in 2002, became Tenacious D’s breakthrough hit, reaching No. 4 on the U.K. Singles Chart and peaking at No. 84 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.
The “Tribute” music video, featuring Grohl as the devil, has amassed over 124 million views on YouTube since its release.
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The Smashing Pumpkins‘ Aghori Mhori Mei has topped this week’s new music poll that features artists in various genres of music. Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (Aug. 2) on Billboard, choosing the the Billy Corgan-led rock band’s 13th studio album as their favorite new music release of the past week. Aghori Mhori […]
A vulnerable Machine Gun Kelly opens up about his troubled relationship with his mother in a raw conversation with Bunnie XO on the eighth season opener of her popular podcast, Dumb Blonde. “I would like to say for the record I love my mom dearly and I misrepresented her a lot early in my career,” Kelly […]
Puddle of Mudd lead singer Wes Scantlin was arrested after allegedly resisting arrest during a traffic stop. On Wednesday (July 31), the 52-year-old rocker was pulled over for a traffic violation by police in Burbank, Calif. During the stop, officials discovered Scantlin had an outstanding warrant from a previous crime for allegedly having a weapon […]
Three months after Aerosmith rescheduled the remaining dates of their Peace Out farewell tour, the group has officially announced their retirement from touring amid Steven Tyler‘s ongoing vocal cord injury. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The rock band took to social media on Friday (Aug. 2) […]