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Considering that Conan O’Brien made a name for himself by subverting TV comedy tropes in the ‘90s, people were ready for something weird when the comedian kicked off the eighth annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre on Thursday (March 7). But it’s safe to say few people expected him to grab a guitar and deliver a full rock band performance of Elvis Presley’s final Hot 100 No. 1, “Suspicious Minds” – and honestly, he killed it. He hammed it up on the bridge, but the ginger giant delivered a mostly straight-faced take on the song and proved he’s got a solid set of pipes. You might not turn a red chair for him on The Voice, but he’s good enough to be a ringer at a karaoke bar (plus, it’s fun to see that orange pompadour undulating as he headbangs).
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That was one of the many unexpected delights at Love Rocks NYC, a fundraising show for the New York City nonprofit God’s Love We Deliver, which hand delivers 10,000 medically tailored meals to New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses every weekday. It’s an inarguably fantastic cause, and everyone involved – rock royalty, comedy legends and rising talents – brought their A-game to the Beacon Theatre.
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Eagles’ Don Felder played “Hotel California” on his signature double-neck guitar; Dave Grohl rocked out “Everlong”; Hozier belted “Take Me to Church”; Nile Rodgers brought the “Good Times”; and the Black Keys trotted out “Lonely Boy.”
Even so, most of the standout moments came courtesy of artists banding together for unexpected covers. For instance, who knew that Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” needed a trombone solo? But when Trombone Shorty, Joss Stone and Ivan Neville teamed up to cover the late, great Purple One, it brought a fresh New Orleans flavor to the Minneapolis sound. Speaking of Stone, the British soul singer had jaws on the floor with a fervent cover of Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which had Tracy Morgan dancing side stage, hands in the air. Aside from Morgan and O’Brien, Martin Short, Bill Murray and Jim Gaffigan kept the night moving between sets, managing to make “donate now!” exhortations funnier than they should be. (Short’s quip that it’s a “rule of show business” to never ask Nick Cannon what he’s doing on Father’s Day was a chef’s-kiss moment.)
“Love Rocks is its own thing. We designed this concert to feel like a real rock n’ roll concert. While we do a text-to-give and message the charity throughout the show, we never wanted this to feel like a benefit or a gala. We do the majority of the fundraising prior to the show, so that when people come to the concert it is all about the music and entertainment,” Love Rocks NYC co-executive producer Greg Williamson tells Billboard. “And for the artists it is a very special experience where they get to see their friends and have a reunion with so many fellow artists that they love and respect. It’s a true lovefest and Love really does rock.”
It was a testament to the quality of the lineup (not to mention the flawless house band led by Will Lee) that the four-hour affair flew by. Bettye LaVette brought soul and attitude to a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed”; Tom Morello steered a sing-along to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” complete with the oft-excised verse about hungry people waiting for relief; The Struts’ Luke Spiller led a crowd-pleasing take on Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”; and Allison Russell and Hozier traded vocals on a version of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” that was so good one hopes they record a studio version.
The evening closed with an all-star jam to David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” led by the Chic frontman who co-produced the Hot 100 No. 1 for the Thin White Duke – with Grohl on the drums, no less. “Is it possible that the entire evening was a favorite moment?” asks Love Rocks NYC co-executive producer Nicole Rechter. “Love Rocks 2024 was riveting from the opening act with Conan to the finale with Dave Grohl on drums. The night never let up with extraordinary performances from all the artists and comedians.”
Just like God’s Love We Deliver feeds thousands of New Yorkers in need every day, the audience at the 2024 Love Rocks NYC show left the Beacon Theatre well fed – and ready for the next one.
[Trigger warning: this article contains descriptions of domestic violence, as well as sexual and physical abuse.]
Marilyn Manson announced his first live dates in nearly five years on Friday (March 8), marking the shock rocker’s return to the road after more than half a dozen women accused the him of sexual and emotional abuse. The news came in an X post in which Manson revealed that he and Slaughter to Prevail will be hitting the road this summer/fall for a 30-date arena/amphitheater tour with Five Finger Death Punch slated to kick off on August 2 at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, PA.
More than a dozen women have accused Manson (born Brian Warner), 55, of sexual, emotional and physical assault, including actress Evan Rachel Wood, who was the subject of the two-part HBO 2022 documentary Phoenix Rising that delved into her claims of the abuse she claims she allegedly suffered at the rocker’s hand during an on-and-off relationship that began when she was 18.
Manson, who has denied all the allegations, reached a settlement with actress Esme Bianco last year to end her sexual assault lawsuit after a judge dismissed another sexual abuse suit from model Ashley Morgan Smithline. Previously, an L.A. Superior Court judge dismissed a suit against Manson filed by a former personal assistant alleging sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual harassment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
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The singer was sued over allegations of sexual assault against a minor in January 2023, in which the “Jane Doe” claimed Manson groomed and sexually assaulted the then-underage girl early in his career. The graphic details of that Doe suit closely match the allegations from a number of the other women who have made claims against Manson, including that the singer subjected them to “hostile and verbally abusive behavior,” as well as racially charged language mixed with the sharing of intimate personal details.
After initially declining to name Manson as her abuser, Wood posted an Instagram statement in Feb. 2021 in which she wrote that “he [Manson] started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander or blackmail.” Among her horrifying claims were that Manson would “draw swastikas over my bedside table when he was mad at me” and that he would allegedly tie the actress up and torture her ritualistically, lashing her to a “kneeler” bench and hitting her “over and over” with a Nazi whip from the Holocaust before shocking her welts and private areas until she broke the bench in half. Following Wood’s claims four other women came forward with similarly allegations against Manson in a Vanity Fair article.
Manson has countersued a number of his alleged victims — in addition to settle Bianco’s suit — and judges have dismissed several of the abuse lawsuits against him over the past three years. In the wake of the raft of allegations, Manson was dropped by his record label Loma Vista Records in Feb. 2021 as well as by his longtime manager, Tony Ciulla, several days later.
The “Antichrist Superstar” singer has been off the road since the final August 18, 2019 date on the Twins of Evil: Hell Never Dies joint tour with Rob Zombie and hasn’t released new music since his 2020 We Are Chaos album.
See the announcement and tour dates below.
Summer/Fall 2024 North American tour:
August 2 — Hershey, PA @ Hersheypark Stadium
August 4 — Boston, MA @ Gillette Stadium ( w/ @metallica )
August 5 — Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
August 7 — Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Centre
August 8 — Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
August 10 — St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphiteater
August 11 — Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field (w/Metallica)
August 13 — Rogers, AR @ Walmart Amphitheater
August 14 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
August 16 — Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music Center
August 18 — Minneapolis, MN @ US Bank Stadium (w/Metallica)
August 19 — Des Moines, IA @ Wells Fargo Arena
August 21 — Omaha, NE @ CHI Health Center
August 22 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
August 24 — Saskatoon, SK @ SaskTel Centre*
August 25 — Edmonton, AB @ Commonwealth Stadium (w/Metallica)
August 27 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
August 29 — Airway Heights, WA @ NorthQuest
August 31 — Portland, OR @ RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheater
Sept. 1 — Seattle, WA @ Lumen Field (w/Metallica)
Sept. 3 — Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheater
Sept. 4 — Chula Vista, CA @ North Island Credit Union Amphitheater
Sept. 6 — Anaheim, CA @ Honda Center
Sept. 8 — Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden
Sept. 10 — Phoenix, AZ @ Talking Stick Resorts Amphitheater
Sept. 11 — Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheatre
Sept. 13 — Durant, OK @ Choctaw Grand Theater
Sept. 15 — Atlanta, GA @ Lakewood Amphitheatre
Sept. 16 — Biloxi, MS @ Mississippi Coast Coliseum
Sept. 18 — Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance Amphitheater
Sept. 19 — Houston, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
*no Manson
Today (March 8) is International Women’s Day, and to mark the occasion Tunecore has released its fourth annual Be The Change: Gender Equity In Music Report. Prepared by research firm Midia, the study offers key findings on progress and challenges around representation for women and nonbinary people in the industry.
Beyond the findings, the study incudes a forward from rock pioneer Melissa Etheridge, who reflects on the discrimination she has experienced and witnessed during her four decade career. She notes that while women have dominated the charts for decades, “typically white, male executives have profited from our labor.”
She also tracks some of the changes she’s seen during her long music career, noting that the industry has become more inclusive for women and gender expansive people since she started out in the ’80s, a time, she writes, when being gay protected her from some of the discrimination she saw straight women experiencing.
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She emphasizes how crucial it is to truly be the change one is hoping to affect, writing that “people are sometimes driven by their own misunderstanding and fear, so if you become the love you want to see, we hope they will feel that and change.”
Read Etheridge’s foreward in full:
It’s no secret that the music industry has historically been a boys’ club. There have been decades of music defined by incredible women dominating the charts, but behind the scenes women have often been pushed aside and prevented from reaching the same career heights while typically white, male executives have profited from our labor.
When I started in the business back in the ‘80s, the A&R reps who came out to see me were all men. There were very few women in the business, and this was the norm at the time.
In the late ‘80s, the industry started to change. There was finally a bit of interest in women artists’ music and experiences. In 1988, when I was finally signed and my album came out, women were starting to break through the industry wall. Tracy Chapman, k.d. lang, Toni Childs, and Sinéad O’Connor were writing and releasing songs, and people finally started paying attention and realizing we had something to say.
In music—as in life—being a woman comes with its own set of obstacles, both seen and unseen. Ranging from unequal pay and a diminished sense of autonomy to the countless cases of sexual harassment and abuse that have come to light in recent years from all corners of the industry. And, these obstacles are compounded for women of color and gender expansive individuals.
What was the hardest for me was also a blessing. I was lucky enough to find steady work in L.A.’s lesbian bars, so when I entered the music industry, it was already known that I was gay. It changed the way people responded to me. I didn’t experience the same sexual harassment as straight women did in the industry. Men stood back and didn’t know how to deal with me, so in a way, my queerness protected me.
To me, BE THE CHANGE means that when you try to spend your time and energy trying to change everyone else – that’s a rough road. The best change is to become what you want to see. You want to see more peace, more inclusiveness and understanding? Then you need to be more peaceful, inclusive, and understanding.
I’ve been around in the music industry for over 40 years now – long enough to see how far women and gender expansive musicians have come. It’s really important to give thanks for that so that this work doesn’t feel so impossible. It used to be that people were either straight or gay and now there’s a beautiful rainbow – a whole sphere of beings and ways of being, and it’s important to celebrate that. The best thing to do is not to make it an issue of us against them. People are sometimes driven by their own misunderstanding and fear, so if you become the love you want to see, we hope they will feel that and change.
The history of our industry does not have to be a vision of its future. Studies like BE THE CHANGE: Gender Equity In Music educate our peers and help close the perception gap through storytelling and provide actionable solutions to combat gender-based discrimination.
Through this, we can reshape the face of music. We can work together to create a more equitable, accessible, and inclusive industry, where people of all backgrounds, sexualities, abilities, and gender identities are granted the same opportunities for success. From the stage, to the studio, to the board room, we each have a part to play to make that vision a reality. It’s on all of us to take action to combat discrimination in all forms. Inclusivity is a necessary ingredient for our industry to thrive. We all have to BE THE CHANGE.
Jack Black knows what you need. So, after giving a little tease of his band Tenacious D’s rocked-up cover of Britney Spears signature 1998 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash “…Baby One More Time” last week, the singer/actor dropped the full thing on Friday (March 8). In addition, Black and TD bandmate Kyle Gass got […]
Woah, we’re halfway there! Bon Jovi is the subject of an upcoming deep-dive four-part docuseries that drops next month on Hulu. Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story chronicles the band’s epic, four-decade career, a journey that began in Jersey Shore Clubs and reached rock music’s zenith.
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In a two-and-a-half minute trailer that dropped on Thursday (March 7), singer Jon Bon Jovi excitedly says “I’ve got a story to tell” over the strains of the band’s iconic hit “You Give Love a Bad Name,” as estranged guitarist Richie Sambora jokes, “I’m excited… are we telling the truth, are we gonna lie? What are we gonna do?”
Bon Jovi reveals that making it as a rock band was the only path forward for him. “There was no plan B in my life, ever,” he says over images from his early days grinding it out in bars. “Bon Jovi was all or nothing.”
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There is, of course, plenty of footage of the band’s early shaggy-haired period, with elder Garden State statesman Bruce Springsteen remembering the first time he saw that “young kid” from his backyard “makin’ some noise.” The group’s members recall the rocket ride to fame they embarked on, which got super-charged with their third studio album, 1986’s Slippery When Wet. That album marked the beginning of Jon Bon Jovi and Co. dominating sales charts around the globe, unleashing a stream of hits, including the Billboard Hot 100 leaders “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
The singer recalls the day they wrote “Prayer,” saying the group didn’t “think much of the song,” which Sambora boasts is still their best effort to date. “Jon’s choruses demand to be sung by 20,000 people in an arena,” Springsteen says.
Slippery When Wet was the first of the band’s six leaders on the Billboard 200, an album that ignited a global fanbase and ensured the New Jersey favorites would, indeed, play arenas and stadiums for as long as they remained active.
It hasn’t all been a bed of roses. The ride has been stacked with triumphs and setbacks, good times and bad, and “public moments of friction,” all of which are captured in the series. The trailer hints at the wages of success, with Bon Jovi saying the global fame and wild antics “almost killed us,” and Sambora adding that he didn’t regret leaving in 2013, but lamenting “how I did it.”
All episodes will arrive for streaming April 26, retelling the Bon Jovi story with personal videos, unreleased early demos, original lyrics, and never-before-seen photos, according to Hulu.
The series joins the band in February 2022, an uncertain moment in their odyssey, four years after their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a decade after guitarist/co-songwriter Sambora’s departure at a time when Bon Jovi was battling a vocal injury which required major reconstructive surgery.
In addition to Springsteen and the other members of the band, longtime manager Doc McGee appears in the series.
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story is directed and executive produced by Gotham Chopra (“Kobe Bryant’s Muse,” “Man in the Arena,” “Tom vs. Time”). Executive producers are Giselle Parets and Ameeth Sankaran for ROS, and the series is produced and edited by Alex Trudeau Viriato.
Watch the trailer below.
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When Katie Crutchfield, the 35-year-old singer-songwriter better known as Waxahatchee, released her country-tinged fifth album, Saint Cloud, in March 2020, its intimacy connected with listeners in early-pandemic lockdown and it topped Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart. “I didn’t expect for Saint Cloud to mean as much to people as it did,” she says. “That was obviously a beautiful thing; that’s still, to this day, the thing I’m the proudest of.”
But for her follow-up (and ANTI- debut), Tigers Blood, out March 22, Crutchfield kept a healthy distance from the acclaim of Saint Cloud. “Internalizing people’s praise is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than internalizing criticism,” she says from her Kansas City, Mo., home. “I really try and shut all of it out.”
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Tigers Blood carries on in Saint Cloud’s alt-country vein, and like that record, it was made in just two weeks at Texas studio Sonic Ranch with producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Snail Mail). But the album has a character all its own, thanks in part to Crutchfield’s new backing band: Cook’s multi-instrumentalist brother Phil, drummer Spencer Tweedy and ascendant rocker Jake “MJ” Lenderman, whose vocal harmonies and guitar leads course through the songs. “With Brad, my records are like a great slice of homemade bread with a fresh slice of tomato, a little olive oil, salt and pepper,” Crutchfield says. “The ingredients are so simple. Why overthink it?”
Allison Crutchfield, your sister and longtime musical collaborator, is an A&R executive at your new home, ANTI- Records. What was that signing experience like?
It’s a crazy situation, right? And it feels so correct. She has always been my most trusted confidant. When she started working A&R at Anti-, she really stepped into that role so naturally, and like has such a unique sort of flair, and like take on being an A&R person. When my [Merge] contract was up, I knew I wanted to make a change. I considered my options, but I’m not going to have that type of connection with anybody [else]. And I already just loved ANTI-, their roster and their ethos and approach.
What has Anti- been like as a label partner as you’ve been getting this album off the ground?
They’ve been so perfect. It’s crazy how well it suits me. The team is just so enthusiastic and hardworking and pure of heart. The president of Anti-, Andy Kaulkin, is such a visionary and such a unique person in the music business – like, a true head. He really cares about music and he just wants me to be an artist; he doesn’t want me to be anything I’m not. There’s a lot of mutual trust there.
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Saint Cloud was a creative risk for you in how strongly you embraced country sounds for it. How did you decide to continue in that stylistic direction with Tigers Blood rather than making another hard pivot?
With Saint Cloud, there was no pressure; we were doing something totally new and just going for it. With Tigers Blood, early on […] there was some pressure that Brad Cook and myself were feeling. There is such a weird allure to reinventing yourself – like, that is sort of looming when you’re thinking about what to do next, you’re like, “OK, what pivot am I going to take?” We ultimately landed on the confident choice [being] to double down on what we did before and change a couple of little, small elements and just trust that it’s going to feel new.
Brad Cook is a longtime collaborator who you worked with on Saint Cloud as well as 2018’s Great Thunder EP and your collaborative 2022 album as Plains with Jess Williamson. How has that relationship evolved?
He’s one of my very, very, very best friends now. Finding exactly the type of collaborator that he is has been a lifelong goal of mine, something that I’ve been subconsciously searching for. Since I’ve been working with Brad, I’ve learned a certain amount of self-awareness about exactly what it is I bring to the table. I bring the songs, I bring the voice, I bring a certain amount of vision, of aesthetically how I want this to be. Brad brings a lot of the other stuff — he is a person who knows how to execute a vision. There is this complementary dynamic to our whole thing. We’ve really built this shared world and this shared taste. It just keeps getting easier and better the longer that we make records together.
Jake “MJ” Lenderman has also had a successful few years as a solo artist and as part of the band Wednesday. What did he bring to these sessions?
Brad and I, when we talk about music, a lot of the time we use food metaphors. And he was like, “Jake is a really potent spice — you’re going to taste it.” I really liked that. It’s kind of fun to throw that spice in the mix — that mixes things up for us, too. He just has amazing taste and this great, exciting, youthful energy that we really fed off.
He came on the Plains tour [in 2022] and opened. I came up in this small DIY scene and I had always approached my music career as like, the main thing is artistic integrity and creative integrity – it’s all about the work and it’s about being close with my people and just like having fun with it. And then having this big year with Saint Cloud, this big year with Plains, not that I like got so far away from that, but I got pulled away from it a little bit. I didn’t even totally see that. So when I was on that [Plains] tour, before we made Tigers Blood, with him and his band and seeing how alive their set was every night and how they built this sweet community and they’re in such good spirits and having so much fun with it – and there’s all this buzz around him and his band, but they really don’t see it or care about it. That really realigned me with my own values. I just really appreciated it. My record wouldn’t have landed the same or been the same had I not had that experience.
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Tigers Blood is the second consecutive Waxahatchee album recorded at Texas’ Sonic Ranch. How did the studio impact your headspace while working on the album?
You feel like called home or something – that’s how I feel at Sonic Ranch. It has worked so well for me to be that removed from my own life. It’s just so beautiful and so expansive and the environment is really conducive to being focused on what you’re doing. It’s like summer camp or something, too, because it’s like a compound; Sublime was working on something right next to us. There is this sense of community but there’s also privacy. I wish I had more excuses to go there. I’m jealous of someone like Brad who gets to go there a lot.
Tell me about your reverence for country music and how that has increasingly bled into your own.
It’s foundational to my songwriting. I grew up on Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn and George Jones and all these great country duets and classic country music. And I grew up in the ’90s, when pop country was so huge. All of those things are imprinted on my songwriting DNA. For all the early years, I really rejected that — and so I have been on a journey to reconnect with that. The big artist that helped me bridge that gap is Lucinda [Williams], who is still, to this day, my very favorite songwriter. I’m on a journey with it. It works its way in, always.
How excited are you to tour this record? Is MJ going to join?
I’m really excited to go on tour. MJ is not going to be on the tour. He will pop up here and there. He’s going to have a very busy year himself. He’s gonna do his thing, but of course, he knows there’s an open invitation. And we have a couple of little things planned, so I’m really excited about that. My band this year is really exciting: Spencer’s gonna join me on the road, and the person that’s going to fill the Jake role is Clay Frankel from the band Twin Peaks.
What was the most fun moment of the Tigers Blood sessions?
It was like so magical. We just really bonded. We all lived in this little house on this other side of the property of Sonic Ranch. We were cooking meals for each other and watching basketball and jamming and staying up late and talking and just having the best time. I miss it a lot.
This story originally appeared in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Wolfgang Van Halen‘s career has been full of unlikely opportunities. After all, he started with playing bass alongside his father and uncle in Van Halen when he was just 16 years old. And his own band, Mammoth WVH, has become a stadium habituate opening for the likes of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses.
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But the son of the late Eddie Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli never thought he’d be part of an Academy Award-nominated song — sung by a Barbie doll, no less.
Yet Van Halen was, in fact, part of the team that recorded “I’m Just Ken,” the Ryan Gosling-sung piece from Greta Gerwig’s hit film Barbie. He plays guitar on the track, which was co-written and produced by Mark Ronson and Andrew Watt and features Slash on guitar, current Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese on drums and Jelly Fish/Imperial Drag keyboardist Roger Manning.
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“I’m honestly happy just to be a part of it, to have an opportunity to play a super small part in it,” Van Halen tells Billboard. “It was a really, really wonderful opportunity. I knew (the movie) was good just from being involved in it and seeing what I was able to see. But to see the song I played on blow up as much as it did was pretty crazy.”
Van Halen was recruited for the track after meeting Ronson at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in London during September 2022. “Mark Ronson and I hit it off,” Van Halen remembers, “and he reached out and hit me up and it was just a really good time. I spent two days in his studio and we just played around with ideas and it was a really good time. (Ronson) and his writing partner Andrew are such wonderful dudes and amazing at what they do that it was an honor just to see how they worked.”
“I’m Just Ken” was a top 5 hit on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart during the summer and hit No. 87 on the Billboard Hot 100, while Barbie The Album reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Soundtrack Albums chart. During December, a “Merry Kristmas Barbie” version of the power ballad send-up was released, accompanied by a video boasting an in-studio performance. Gosling will perform the song at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday (March 10); the band lineup for the show has not been announced, but Ronson, Watt and others who took part in the session are expected to be part of it. Mammoth WVH recently announced the postponement of three concerts this week which would have conflicted with the Oscars and rehearsals.
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“For Mark and Andrew to bring me into it, just to play some guitar in the movie, it was really, really wonderful,” Van Halen says. “I’d love to do something like that again, especially with those guys. They’re wonderful dudes and incredibly talented. Everybody in the movie, the whole production of it, are so deserving of every accolade they’re getting. It’s really exciting.”
Van Halen does not, however, see soundtrack composing in his future at the moment. “I’m still very much focused and driving on building Mammoth and seeing what is possible with that,” he explains. “But certainly, opportunities like the one that Mark gave me for Barbie, when they come up it’s very, ‘Okay, we can certainly make time for something like this.’ But I’m very much driven in terms of, ‘Let’s see where we can take Mammoth.’”
Van Halen has mostly been taking Mammoth on the road this year, supporting last August’s Mammoth II. The group is wrapping up the first leg of a U.S. headlining tour and will be playing Europe supporting Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy & the Conspirators during March and April. The group will also be supporting Metallica and Foo Fighters during the summer. Van Halen is also “tinkering” with new song ideas, though he says any plans for a third Mammoth WVH album are “super preliminary.”
In May, Van Halen and his father’s EVH instrument company will roll out a new line of SA-126 guitars, which he designed along with EVH masterbuilder Chip Ellis and Matt Bruck.
Amidst all the good news, Van Halen is still fighting off some haters, an ongoing battle that he’s addressed in songs such as “I’m Alright” and “Better Than You.” Most recently it was former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth, who posted a lengthy video diatribe that referred to Van Halen as “this f–kin’ kid” and a “schlemiel kid” and accused him of kicking some of Roth’s guests out of the backstage area during shows. “I’m honored he thinks about me as much as he does, I guess,” Van Halen says in response, though quickly adding that, “I would sure love to not have to be part of some sort of Van Halen drama at all, so I think I’m just gonna continue to sit in my no-comment zone…’cause at the end of the day it’s just not worth it.”
But, he continues, “It’s one thing when there’s some due on Twitter saying a lie about me. But when there’s other people trying to lie about me and make me look bad? It’s just like, you can believe whatever you want, I guess. The people who hate me are gonna continue to hate me, and I’m just gonna be over here doing my thing.”
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds will unleash Wild God later this year, the alternative rock outfit’s 18th studio album. Led by the title track, Wild God is the followup to Ghosteen, the critically-lauded two-disc longplay from 2019, which explored Cave’s exposure to grief and pain, following the sudden death of his son Arthur in 2015.
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That record went on to crack the top 10 on national charts in Australia (at No. 2) and the U.K. (No. 4) and impacted the Billboard 200 (at No. 108), and was shortlisted for several major music awards, including the Australian Music Prize and the U.K.’s Ivor Novello Awards. The album will drop Aug. 30 through Cave’s own label Bad Seed, via a new, exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Play It Again Sam, an imprint of the independent [PIAS] label group.
“The new album is incredible,” enthuses Kenny Gates, co-founder and CEO of [PIAS], “in my opinion his best ever, and we will go over the barricades to deliver the global success it deserves.”
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Led by the ARIA Hall of Fame-inducted Cave, the current Bad Seeds lineup consists of Thomas Wydler, Martyn Casey, Jim Sclavunos, George Vjestica and longtime collaborator Warren Ellis, who produces the album with Cave.
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Mixed by David Fridmann, Cave began work on the album on New Year’s Day 2023, news of which he shared on his blog The Red Hand Files. “My plan for this year is to make a new record with the Bad Seeds,” he wrote at the time. “This is both good news and bad news. Good news because who doesn’t want a new Bad Seeds record? Bad news because I’ve got to write the bloody thing.”Spanning 10 track, the forthcoming LP was cut at Miraval Studios in Provence, France and Soundtree Studios in London, England, and features contributions from Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood (bass) and Luis Almau (nylon string guitar, acoustic guitar).
Greenwood will accompany the multihyphenate Cave on a solo tour of Australia, set to kick off April 25 with the first of a three-night stand at the MCEC Plenary Melbourne. Cave is expected to perform songs from his extensive catalog on the trek, presented by Billions.“I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me,” Cave says of the new album. “It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it. It’s a complicated record, but it’s also deeply and joyously infectious. There is never a master plan when we make a record. The records rather reflect back the emotional state of the writers and musicians who played them. Listening to this, I don’t know, it seems we’re happy.”Wild God track listing: 1. Song of the Lake2. Wild God3. Frogs4. Joy5. Final Rescue Attempt6. Conversion7. Cinnamon Horses8. Long Dark Night9. O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is)10. As the Waters Cover the Sea
Jim Beard, a solo artist and touring keyboardist for Steely Dan for the past 16 years has died at age 63. The news was confirmed by a spokesperson for the group in a statement on Wednesday (March 6) that revealed the pianist, composer, keyboardist, producer and arranger died on March 2 due to complications from a sudden illness; at press time a cause of death had not been announced.
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Beard joined the live Steely Dan band in 2008 for the Think Fast Tour and in addition to performing with the long-running jazz-influenced rock group — including at his final show with the band on Jan. 20 in Phoenix, AZ — he was also a touring member of the Eagles on their Long Goodbye tour.
Born in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania on August 26, 1960, Beard took clarinet, saxophone and sting bass lessons as a teenager and studied jazz at Indiana University, where he played in a bar band that featured session drummer Kenny Aronoff (John Mellencamp, John Fogerty) and trumpet player Chris Botti.
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According to an official bio, after moving to New York in 1985, Beard set off on a prolific career of composing — on tracks by John McLaughlin, Michael Brecker and many others — and toured the world with such jazz greats as Pat Metheny, McLaughlin and Wayne Shorter. He also performed on recordings by Dizzy Gillespie, Al Jarreau, David Sandborn, Dianne Reeves, Meshell Ndegeocello and rock guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, as well as with the Metropole Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra as well as composing music for TV and movie scores.
Between tours with Metheny and McLaughlin’s Mahavishu Orchestra, Beard recorded six solo CDs and taught at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University, the Aaron Copland School of Music in New York and the Sibelius Academy in Finland. Beard’s productions and compositions were nominated for seven Grammy awards, with one win in 2007 for his playing on “Some Skunk Funk” by Randy and Michael Brecker.
The Doobie Brothers‘ 50th anniversary reunion, which is heading into its third year of touring, is yielding some new music as well.
Co-founders Patrick Simmons and Tom Johnston tell Billboard they’re both stoked about the band’s next album, which it’s finishing work on with Michael McDonald. The singer/keyboardist was with the Doobies from 1975-1982 and has been back in the fold since anniversary tour was first announced in 2019 and then delayed by the pandemic.
Produced by John Shanks — who also handled 2021’s Liberte, the band’s first set of new material in 11 years — it will be the Doobies’ first album with McDonald since One Step Closer in 1980 and the first Doobies album to include McDonald, guitarists Patrick Simmons and Tom Johnston since Takin’ It to the Streets in 1975. McDonald also sang backing vocals on the Doobies’ 2014 album Southbound.
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“We probably kicked (a new album) around a little bit, but not a lot,” Johnston says. “Those things just start. They just sorta happen. This whole band has been like that; things just happen through the years — songs, albums.”
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Simmons, the lone Doobie Brother to be part of the band’s entire 54-year career, shared the news with fans via a social media post. “It’s very exciting,” he tells Billboard. “At one point I said, ‘Hey, we’re doing all these dates… As long as we’re doing this it would make sense to do a record. I think people would really get a kick out of that.’” With a chuckle he adds that, “We have yet to find out whether they’ll get a kick out of it or whether we’ll get kicked for it.”
The latter is unlikely, of course. McDonald’s tenure with the band — coming after he worked with Steely Dan — was among its most successful. Brought in to help the Doobies while Johnston was suffering burn-out, McDonald contributed hits such as “Takin’ It to the Streets,” “It Keeps You Runnin’,” “You Belong to Me” (co-written with Carly Simon) and “Real Love.” The triple-platinum Minute By Minute album in 1978, meanwhile, was the Doobies’ sole No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won three Grammy Awards including Record of the Year for the hit “What a Fool Believes.”
Simmons says he’s particularly happy to have himself, Johnston and McDonald — as well as fourth Doobies principal guitarist John McFee — fully engaged together on the new album. “It’s nice that Tom has an opportunity to interact with Mike musically because they have so much in common as far as their love of R&B and the people they admire,” he explains. “They never really got a chance to interact in this way before, so it makes me happy to see that happening. It’s more than the sum of our parts, I think.”
Each of the main Doobies, collaborating with Shanks, have contributed several songs to the set, which has no announced title and release date yet — although Simmons says the goal is to finish recording before the summer tour begins June 15 in Seattle. “I would put it half, maybe 60 percent where we’re at now as far as completion,” Simmons says. “The songs are done. The arrangements are pretty close.”
He’s particularly stoked about a gospel-flavored track called “Walk This Road” that features lead vocals by both McDonald and Johnston as well as guest Mavis Staples. “John Shanks had assumed I knew Mavis was singing on it, and I had no idea,” Simmons says with a laugh. “I hear this voice and I’m going, ‘What the…? Tommy is really killing it;’ it didn’t’ really sound like him but he has that quality to his voice. But it was Mavis, and… the three of them singing, I’m telling ya it just floored me. And there’s a bunch of other great tracks, just some killer — for me, anyway — great songs on this record, some ferocious tracks.”
Johnston, meanwhile, predicts that, “This one’s probably a little moreso diverse because Michael is involved in all the tunes, but that’s fine, man. It’s an extension of what we’re doing on the road.”
In addition to the album, McDonald is publishing What a Fool Believes: A Memoir, co-written with Paul Reiser, on May 21. He also contributed to 2022’s Long Train Runnin’: Our Story of the Doobie Brothers, which Simmons and Johnston helmed.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” Simmons says of the continuing Doobies reunion. “We’re having a good time. It’s kind of continuing what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years and we still do things the same way for the most part, but having Mike on board again is great. I think it’s just having great artists, great creative people and talented guys that write the material… and then we have a great band. We’ve always had really great musicians, great singers. I think that really helps with how people perceive the band at any given time. It’s as strong now as it ever was.”