Rock
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The long-awaited first authorized documentary about Led Zeppelin, Becoming Led Zeppelin, has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, which will distribute the Bernard MacMahon-directed film in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia (except Japan) and Benelux.
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According to Deadline, the hybrid documentary-concert film features never-before-seen footage, performances and music and is described as an “experiential cinematic odyssey exploring Led Zeppelin’s creative, musical and personal origin story,” told in their own words in the first officially sanctioned movie about the band.
The hype train for Becoming began in 2021 when a work-in-progress version was screened at the Venice Film Festival, receiving a 10-minute standing ovation. The film follows the band’s four members — singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and late drummer John Bonham — as they rise up through the British music scene in the 1960s playing in small clubs. It follows them to a fateful rehearsal in 1968 that changed the course of their careers and culminates in their first tour of America in 1970 as they ascended to rock superstardom.
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According to Deadline, the film features a new sound mix, previously unseen materials from the archives of all four members, including home movies and family photos, as well as exclusive interviews with Page, Plant and Jones, and never-before-heard interviews with Bonham.
The movie was written by MacMahon (American Epic) and Allison McGourty, with the director saying that the team spent “years designing this film to be experienced on the big screen with the best possible sound.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Sony Pictures Classics added, “We loved this film from the first moment we saw it. It has been nothing short of extraordinary to witness the organic process Bernard, Allison, and their team have taken to sculpt what has turned out to be THE definitive film on the origins of Led Zeppelin. We are honored to be working with such committed artists who have crafted a film that immediately transports you right into the energy and excitement of that time.” The rep went on to note that the film “seamlessly weaves astonishing performances, archival footage, and interviews through superb editing and impeccable sound design. This film is a grand theatrical experience and we are very proud to be bringing it to the world.”
At press time no release date had been announced for the film, but you can watch a teaser prepared for the Venice debut below.
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Kelly Clarkson is basically in Weezer now. On Wednesday’s (May 15) Kelly Clarkson Show, the singer joined the group’s singer, Rivers Cuomo, and drummer Patrick Wilson (on guitar) for a run through “Say It Ain’t So” from the band’s iconic self-titled “Blue” album. Cuomo and Wilson loved their stop-in so much, they tweeted that “@kellyclarkson gave us a run for our money on Kellyoke.”
Weezer are in the midst of a promo run for the 30th anniversary of their Ric Ocasek-produced debut, which featured such beloved classics as “Undone – The Sweater Song,” “Buddy Holly” and “Holiday.”
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The Kellyoke performance opened with Rivers crooning the song’s mellow first verse, with Clarkson joining in on the “ooh yeah… all right” refrain before slathering the second verse with her buttery soul. “Flip on the telly/ Wrestle with Jimmy/ Something is bubbling/ Behind my back/ The bottle is ready to blow,” she belted as Wilson and Cuomo cranked up the guitars and Clarkson joined the bespectacled rocker on the swoony chorus. The back-and-forth between Clarkson and Cuomo was indeed formidable and Rivers was not kidding when he said the show’s host added some serious spice to the performance.
“I’ve literally never been cool in my life until now,” gushed Clarkson afterwards, who came dressed to play with the cardigan-loving duo in her own brown cropped button-up sweater and jeans.
The duo also sat on the couch with Clarkson to discuss the album’s anniversary, but not before Kelly implored her audience to go see Weezer live on their Voyage to the Blue Planet tour with the Flaming Lips and Dinosaur Jr. “You put on a hell of a show, I’m just saying,” Clarkson told them, recounting a gig she saw several years ago that blew her mind.
Fellow guest Brooke Shields also got emotional thinking about how much Weezer has meant to her, revealing that she was blasting their music on her way to the studio that morning. The 10-minute segment quickly went off the rails, with Clarkson laughing about their earlier rehearsals for the performance, where she feared her cranked-to-11 energy hilariously clashed with Cuomo and Wilson’s hovering-around-2 chill vibe.
After bonding with Shields about their mutual love of Pickleball, Cuomo and Wilson sat politely as Clarkson asked about the origin of the band’s name (it was Cuomo’s nickname from his dad as a child), noting that she called her sister “Weese” when they were little. Kelly also made another connection, telling Cuomo that her daughter’s name is River Rose, with Rivers dead-panning that he was, indeed named because, as she said, he was born “between two rivers… y’all lived between two rivers, is that true?”
“Yeah, here in Manhattan,” Cuomo said straight-faced, as the audience, and Shields, broke into bellowing laughter at the singer’s plainspoken geographical response. “I really wanna host a show with you,” Clarkson said as Shields covered her eyes and mouth while guffawing at the delightfully awkward exchange.
“Uh… should I continue?” Cuomo asked sheepishly to more face-covering giggles from Shields, who, not for nothing, noted that she was named after a babbling brook. Spoiler alert: Cuomo was actually named after three soccer players from the Italian and Brazilian teams who played in the 1970 World Cup. “So I thought we had something in common there too, but turns out no,” Clarkson said. “I’m an Aquarius,” Wilson interjected helpfully. Later, Cuomo and Shields also (kind of) bonded over both appearing in productions of Grease, as Clarkson could not stop enthusing about how much she was loving the chat.
“This is literally my favorite panel we’ve ever had,” Clarkson chortled as she fell off her couch in convulsive laughter at the end of the segment.
Watch Weezer on the Kelly Clarkson Show below.
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Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Love Earth Tour, their first trek together in a decade, rolled through New York City’s Forest Hills Stadium on Tuesday (May 14) for the first of two shows at the charming open-air venue.
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Unlike nearly every rock legend from his era, Young doesn’t rely on pyrotechnics, lights or even video screens to captivate an audience. The iconoclastic rocker and his longtime collaborators Crazy Horse — which still includes co-founders Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot — take the stage with nothing but bare-knuckled rock n’ roll (not to mention some of the greatest songs ever written) to knock the crowd on its ass.
“What’s your favorite planet?” Young shouted several times during the show, prompting the fan callback, “Earth!” Perhaps as a gift to one of her most vocal rock n’ roll advocates, Mother Earth provided a bit of visual theatrics for Young and Crazy Horse’s set at the outdoor venue, conjuring up dramatic storm clouds that looked straight out of a J. M. W. Turner painting. Naturally, nothing is a better complement to the tumultuous “Like a Hurricane” than an angry sky.
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Young said the band had rehearsed for 23 days leading up to the tour, and it clearly paid off. Musically, Young and Horse were as simpatico and incendiary as ever, stretching out on auditory odysseys like “Cortez the Killer” and “Powderfinger,” chugging through the blunt thump of “Cinnamon Girl” and feeding off each other during the oil industry takedown “Vampire Blues.” (Speaking of “Cortez,” Young and Crazy Horse’s new release, Dume, is a reworked version of 1975’s Zuma using shelved material from those sessions; Young paid tribute to that album’s producer, the late David Briggs, during the show, saying, “We like to think about him — it centers us a little bit.”)
It’s almost shocking to witness Young, who survived a brain aneurysm in 2005 and turns 79 this year, sounding every bit as ferocious and dexterous on the guitar as he did on recordings from the ‘70s. Close your eyes on the Love Earth Tour and you could almost believe you’re listening to 1979’s Live Rust. Hell, if you open your eyes (and ignore the numerous white-and-grey heads) you could mistake it for that era, too – after all, Young and Crazy Horse are still toting around the same gigantic amps from the Rust Never Sleeps era at each show on this tour.
The rain didn’t put a damper on the evening, but unfortunately, a few sound issues did. During Young’s solo acoustic portion toward the end of the set, the sound cut out entirely during “Human Highway”; when it came back, Young gamely restarted the song, only to have it drop out again. He made the right choice to solider on, bring out the full band and tackle “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” — but unfortunately, the audio issues persisted. As the sound faded in and out on that cataclysmic rocker, it was almost like listening to a vinyl record using a sound system on the fritz; one moment the noise level is pummeling you, the next moment all you can hear is the small sound made from the needle raking over the record’s groove.
Undeterred, Young and Crazy Horse returned for a problem-free encore that gave audiences a crackling “Sedan Delivery” and a cathartic “Rockin’ in the Free World.” It’s been a long time since Neil was young, but with Crazy Horse at his side, you can almost believe him on “Powderfinger” when he sings, “And I just turned 22.”
During its half century existence, Styx has logged 23 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, eight of which reached the top 10. It’s a wide array of music as well, from the prog leanings of “Come Sail Away” and “Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” to the hard rock of “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)” and […]
Bruce Springsteen was born to run, which, for the past five decades, has meant touring all over the world with his E Street Band. Now, a film documenting the group’s rehearsal process and famed performances is coming to Hulu and Disney+ this fall, as announced Tuesday (May 14). Premiering on both streaming platforms in October, […]
John Barbata, the drummer for bands such as The Turtles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, has died at 79.
The Facebook account for Jefferson Airplane — which Barbata joined in 1972 — shared this post on Monday: “Known for his exceptional talent, John left his mark on the music. During a hiatus for CSN&Y, David Crosby introduced John to the Airplane, who hired John instantly. You can hear John’s drumming skills on the band’s final studio album, LONG JOHN SILVER, as well as the live album THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND.
“Rest in Peace, John,” the post concludes, with a red heart emoji.
After pioneering psych-rock band Jefferson Airplane regrouped in the mid-1970s to create Jefferson Starship, Barbata was the new group’s founding drummer. “We are saddened to hear of the passing of the great John Barbata,” reads a Facebook post on the Starship page. “Our thoughts go out to his family, friends and fans. Rock in peace, Johnny!”
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Prior to his time with the Jefferson outlets, Barbata served as percussionist for The Turtles, lending his skills to recordings of hits such as the Billboard Hot 100-topping “Happy Together” as well as “Elenore” and “She’d Rather Be With Me.” After the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group disbanded in 1970, the New Jersey native was tapped by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for live performances and session work on the members’ solo projects before he transferred over to the Airplane.
Following his retirement, Barbata released a memoir: Johny Barbata – The Legendary Life of a Rock Star Drummer. “There are lots of great stories about all the the bands and people I have had the pleasure to be involved with during my incredible career,” reads a description of the book on Amazon.
“I’ve done a lot of albums and 28 singles, and my wife said, ‘You know you’re a part of rock ’n’ roll history. You really gotta write a book,’” he told Desert Sun in 2014. “I’m always talking to people about how [the ’60s and ’70s] was the best time, era for music.”
The Band Camino had a jam-packed 2023, complete with their pensive sophomore album, The Dark, and non-stop touring worldwide. But they’re not slowing down yet.
The trio — Jeffery Jordan, Spencer Stewart and Garrison Burgess — announced exclusively via Billboard on Monday (May 13) that they’re unveiling a brand new EP, Bruises, on May 17. “Fresh starts are hard to come by when you’ve been a band for nine years and almost all of your 20s, but this release truly feels like one,” the band tells Billboard in a statement. “Honestly, for a while, it felt like we were chasing something. Having a fan base and any amount of success puts this pressure on your art and it’s easy to start chasing and predicting what you think people are going to like. In this next chapter, we’ve decided we aren’t chasing anything at all – just expressing. Making something you connect with is far more fulfilling, and the only reason we found our footing as a band in the first place. Just know we feel these songs in our bones and we have a feeling someone out there will too.”
The statement continues, “Making these songs and this EP brought us together in a way we haven’t felt in a long time, honestly. We took the process back to the place we started as a band and wrote and arranged the songs in a live rehearsal setting to truly create them together with instruments in our hands. Making music in 2024 has mostly turned into sitting in front of a computer, so we really put in effort to make music with no computers in sight until it was time to hit the studio with a fully-fleshed out arrangement. We tracked everything live as a band and left the takes as raw as we could. Our live show has always been what we’re most proud of, so we really just wanted to capture that in these recordings and not overcomplicate or overproduce anything. A touch more humanness, imperfectly perfect.”
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With so much emphasis on sharing the upcoming tracks directly with their fans, The Band Camino doubled down on the excitement by announcing an accompanying summer tour, with “Not The 1975” star Knox as the supporting act.
The month-long run will kick off on July 8 in Seattle, Wash., before hitting cities like Sacramento, Calif.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Austin, Texas; Orlando, Fla. and more before wrapping up on August 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
See the full list of tour dates below and on the band’s website here, and pre-save The Band Camino’s Bruises EP here.
July 8 – Seattle, Washington – Showbox SoDoJuly 11 – Sacramento, California – Ace of SpacesJuly 12 – Costa Mesa, California – OC FairJuly 13 – Phoenix, Arizona – The Van BurenJuly 15 – Austin, Texas – ACL Live at the Moody TheaterJuly 16 – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – The CriterionJuly 18 – St. Louis, Missouri – The PageantJuly 19 – West Des Moines, Iowa – Val Air BallroomJuly 20 – Milwaukee, Wisconsin – The Rave/Eagles ClubJuly 22 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Stage AEJuly 23 – Cincinnati, Ohio – Bogart’sJuly 25 – Royal Oak, Michigan – Royal Oak Music TheatreJuly 26 – Fort Wayne, Indiana – The Clyde TheatreJuly 27 – Cleveland, Ohio – The AgoraJuly 29 – Orlando, Florida – The VanguardJuly 31 – Raleigh, North Carolina – The RitzAugust 3 – Charlotte, North Carolina – The Fillmore Charlotte
Limp Bizkit have been playing their unique version of the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” during live shows since including the 1971 Who’s Next classic on their 2003 Results May Vary album. On Friday night at the Welcome to Rockville Festival at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, Fred Durst and company roped in […]
Dave Grohl is a showman. The Foo Fighters frontman loves to surprise and delight his band’s fans by giving them a bit of the unexpected amid the sweat and rumble of a typically high-energy Foos show. On Saturday, during the Foos’ headlining slot at the Welcome to Rockville Festival at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona […]
Vampire Weekend returned to Studio 8H to perform songs from their latest album. During the May 11 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by former cast member Maya Rudolph, the Ezra Koenig-led rock quartet delivered a pair of tracks from their fifth studio album, Only God Was Above Us, which debuted at No. 27 on […]