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The New Pornographers have “immediately” severed ties with drummer Joe Seiders after the longtime member of the rock collective was arrested in Palm Desert, CA for possession of child pornography.
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According to a press release from the Riverside Sheriff’s office, Seiders was arrested after officers were dispatched to investigate a report of suspicious activity on April 7 at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant, where an 11-year-old boy told officers that an unknown man had recorded him on a cell phone while he was using the bathroom. Two days later, police said an employee at the same restaurant reported that the man was seen entering and exiting the restroom with juvenile males.
“Believing the male was the suspect from the previous incident, law enforcement was contacted. Upon arrival, deputies located the suspect, identified as 44-year-old Joseph Seiders of Palm Desert, and took him into custody,” read the release. After an investigation, officers served search warrants on Seiders’ residence, vehicle and cell phone, where they reportedly found evidence implicating Seiders in both incidents and “additional crimes,” which they said included possessing child pornography.
Seiders was booked into the John Benoit Detention Center in Indio, CA for possession of child pornography, annoying/molesting a child, invasion of privacy, and attempted invasion of privacy. At press time a spokesperson for the band had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional information on the incident.
In a statement on Instagram, the band wrote, “Everyone in the band is absolutely shocked, horrified and devastated by the news of the charges against Joe Seiders — and we have immediately severed all ties with him. Our hearts go out to everyone who has been impacted by his actions.”
Seiders joined the Canadian indie power pop supergroup — which formed in Vancouver in 1997 — in 2014, joining charter members singer Neko Case, singer/guitarist Carl Newman and bassist John Collins. He appeared on their 2017 album Whiteout Conditions, as well as 2019’s In the Morse Code of Brake Lights and 2023’s Continue as a Guest, as well as their recent single “Ballad of the Last Payphone.” The drummer is being held at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility with bail set at $1 million and is scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Tuesday (April 22).
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.
Sean Ono Lennon is confident that the One to One: John & Yoko documentary “is going to be very revelatory for everybody who sees it. For sure.”
Present company excepted, however. “I do think I know my parents pretty well,” says Ono Lennon, who co-executive produced the film (along with Brad Pitt and others) and served as its music producer. “I knew about that time. It was only a couple years before I was born. My mother spoke about it a lot. I know a lot about their story, including (this time period), so I would not frame it that I learned something necessarily.”
Other viewers, however, will get a thorough look into one of the most dramatic 18-month periods in the couple’s lives — which, for anybody who knows about them, is saying something — from their move to New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1971 to the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 30, 1972, Lennon’s only full-length performances after the Beatles’ 1970 split. One to One premiered at the Venice Film Festival last August, also showing at the Telluride Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival before its IMAX rollout on April 11. One to One opens wide in theaters starting April 18 and will stream on Max later this year.
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Directed by Kevin Macdonald and distributed by Magnolia Pictures, One to One employs a montage-style collection of footage and sound recordings (some provided by the John Lennon Estate) to present Lennon and Ono primarily in their own words, without third-party narration. “Certainly Kevin and myself were sitting around in a room for quite a few weeks, scratching our heads — not in a bad way — deciding what direction we wanted to go in,” says co-director and editor Sam Rice-Edwards. “We didn’t want to make just another Beatles or Lennon documentary; there’s plenty out there, and this needed to be original and fresh.
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“Kevin came up with the concept of presenting the world as John and Yoko would have seen it in 1972; we felt if you did that, and we also spent time with them, in a way, that was really what people hadn’t done before. We found moments where we felt like the camera wasn’t on them…which gave us a fresh look at John and Yoko and allowed (the viewer) to be with them in a way you hadn’t before.”
Ono Lennon — who acknowledges that left to his own devices “I probably would’ve made a live concert film” — felt the approach was “really effective in telling their story. It’s not easy to maintain such a complex story, but (One to One) does it very beautifully. If it was narrated it would’ve been more of an op-ed. This is a true documentary in that it allows the subjects to tell their own story.”
Using other period footage — snippets of TV shows, commercials, news footage, etc. — to provide a context for the time, One to One finds Lennon and Ono embroiled in strident political activism, including an association with Jerry Rubin, that made them targets for FBI surveillance and, ultimately, attempts to deport Lennon by the administration of then-President Richard Nixon. “It’s really a beautiful story because you realize they were willing to risk everything, their careers and even their personal safety, to fight for their political and moral beliefs,” Ono Lennon says. But, he adds, only to a point.
“I think an important message to glean from the film has to do with the way my parents reacted to the more extreme elements of the radical activists they were working with at the time,” he explains. “At a certain point they realized the people they we working with, or some of them — Jerry Rubin specifically — were proposing to do things that were not necessarily aligned with my parents’ philosophy of pacifism and peace and love. You witness the trajectory of my parents experimenting with the radical groups and then realizing that they’d sort of gone too far, and they had to pull back — not just because it became dangerous for them but because people who were arguing for potentially violent activism were basically becoming as bad as the people they were fighting, which is really an important message for today, too.”
Ono Lennon says that as a youth his mother spoke frequently about that particular time, including being “freaked out” about the FBI wiretaps on the couple’s phones. “My early childhood was chaotic, obviously, and a lot of stuff that was happening in the film, the echoes were still resounding throughout my childhood,” he recalls — which includes the FBI planting an agent with the family after Lennon’s assassination in 1980. He adds that Ono “never believed activism was worth losing your life over. She always felt like it’s important to protect yourself so you can keep on doing good. If you’re not alive, what’s the point? Some people glamorized certain revolutionary kinds of characters willing to resort to violence. She never admired those people, and I don’t, either.”
The grail find for the One To One documentarians was an unlabeled box of reel-to-reel tapes that held recordings of Lennon and Ono’s phone calls, which they began making when they discovered their lines were bugged. The conversations, with manager Allen Klein as well as a variety of employees and friends, were discovered by Simon Hilton, vice president of Multimedia Projects for the Lennon Estate, amidst the Lennon archives in New York. Rice-Edwards recalls that “we knew pretty quickly this was really important. Listening to John and Yoko, or the people around them, when they thought they weren’t being listened to was extremely revealing about who they were. And a lot of what they were talking about in the phone calls was relevant to events we were covering in the film.” Ono Lennon, meanwhile, considers the tapes “a pot of gold,” for the film as well as for himself.
The One to One concert materials have been released before, but Ono Lennon and the filmmakers went to great pains to correct shortcomings from the original source material, which was initially released as a TV special directed by Steve Gebhardt and featured appearances by some of the other acts, including Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack and Sha Na Na. “There was some really crazy camera work,” Rice-Edwards says. “A lot of people working on the film, the camera people, were really high, so we had to work with that. But there was some really great stuff as well. That fact it was shot on film originally — in lovely 35mm — helped, and it was certainly good. We just treated it in the right way and made it the best we could.”
On the audio side, Ono Lennon found that “the recordings themselves were quite chaotic…. There were mics that were misplaced, and a lot of mics were moved between the matinee and evening shows. It seems like things were done in an improvised and last-minute manner. But we didn’t mind because it was more fun to have the challenge. I don’t want to give away too many of the tricks. I think there’s a reasonable amount of movie magic in there, let’s put it that way; it was a great time, technologically speaking, for us to reinvestigate the mixes. We have more tools than ever to bring out the best and turn down what’s undesirable. It did take a lot of work to get it where it is now, but that was part of the joy of doing it.”
He did come away with favorites among the performances, including sharpening the mixes of “Cold Turkey” and “Come Together” and hearing his father’s performances of the song “Mother.” “To see him sing that song, which is a very different style from Beatles music…His voice is so incredible and so moving,” Ono Lennon says. “It’s kind of shocking, honestly, and it’s very sweet as well…very vulnerable, but also powerful at the same time.”
His mother’s aggressive rendition of “Don’t Worry Kyoko” also resonated with him. “She had several styles (of music), but ‘Don’t Worry Kyoko’ is the more challenging, punk rock stuff…there wasn’t even (punk rock) yet. Some people might not have liked listening to it on the stereo, but when you see the show and see the audience live, it really does translate. It’s all about the energy, and the groove is there. It’s undeniably rockin’.” He adds that Ono, retired at 92, was not deeply involved with One to One but is “not unhappy with anything” about the film.
ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
Ono Lennon has finished work on a One to One soundtrack release slated for Oct. 9 in several formats and packages. The full two concerts will definitely be part of it, while additional performance content from the period — such as songs from Lennon and Ono’s stint on The Dick Cavett Show during September 1971 — is currently being discussed and licensed.
“Whatever we can put on we’re putting on,” says Ono Lennon, who’s also finishing work on a new album of his own. “I think we’ll put on basically everything that would make sense to put on it…to satisfy the hardcore fans.”
Over his 45-year career, Thurston Moore has always comfortably had his feet in two worlds: the song-centric music of Sonic Youth, the pioneering noise rock band he co-founded in 1980, and the experimental world born from his upbringing in New York’s No Wave scene in the late ’70s and early ‘80s.
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“I really give equal value to composition … that I would give to improvisation,” Moore tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from his home in London. “I mean, they really inform each other.”
Moore’s latest album, Flow Critical Lucidity, released in 2024, often splits the difference between keeping to traditional song structure and tossing the rulebook out the window. Moore was joined in the studio by musicians who have performed on his song-based solo efforts: Deb Googe, the bass player for My Bloody Valentine; drummer Jem Doulton and guitarist James Sedwards. Googe and Sedwards also appear on Moore’s 2020 album, By the Fire, 2017’s Rock N Roll Consciousness and 2014’s The Best Day — albums that harken back to Sonic Youth’s more accessible work and Moore’s 1995 solo debut, Psychic Hearts.
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But much of his work captures his love of experimental music that took root in the New York music scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Spirit Counsel, released in 2019, has three expansive tracks that run a total of 2.5 hours. The free-flowing Screen Time, released in 2021, was fittingly released on Southern Lord Records, the home of drone metal band Sunn O))).
This month, Moore premiered Guitar Explorations of Cloud Formations at the New Music Dublin festival in Dublin. He was joined by Googe, Doulton and guitarist Jennifer Chochinov, one half of the London-based duo Schande. A suite in nine pieces, Cloud Formations is “very lengthy, repetitive, immersive guitar, sort of drone pieces,” says Moore, “because I wanted to have that kind of elemental nature to them as opposed to being more song-centric.”
Recording and performing a variety of music creates some uncertainty, though, among promoters, retailers and fans. So, Moore is careful to draw bright lines between his different styles to eliminate confusion. Before his recent shows in New York City and Philadelphia, he asked the promoters to make clear that fans would see an experimental trio featuring percussionists Willie Winant and Tom Surgal, not the band that recorded Critical Flow Lucidity. When he performs songs from Critical Flow Lucidity, he wants fans to know they’re not going to see free-form guitar improvisation. And although he could release a torrent of music, Moore is careful to flood the market.
“I realize that there’s a bit of a responsibility,” he says. “I mean, I know people who I associate with who are musicians who release music every week on Bandcamp, and they’re just constantly recording, releasing. And in some ways, I hold myself back from doing that. I mean, I have gotten into this situation through the years where I want to do a tour and the promoters are like, ‘Well, you were just here playing noise improv in some basement in Paris. So we don’t feel like we can actually book you right now, because the audience is confused.’ Like, what are you going to do? And so that has been a bit of an issue. It’s like, are you going to do your band? Are you going to be playing proper quote-unquote songs, which there’s much a bigger audience for? Or are you going to come here and play with some electronic noise guy? And so I understand that. It’s difficult for the other people involved who are presenting your gig, particularly promoters, because they don’t know how to promote it, and so I’m a bit careful.”
His desire to push boundaries — and his seemingly never-ending supply of friendships with influential musicians — finds Moore collaborating with some prominent names. Last year, for example, Moore performed a free improvisation set with former Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., and later in London (joined by drummer Steve Noble at one gig). The Big Ears performance was “extremely polarizing” for anybody who expected to hear a cross between Led Zeppelin and Sonic Youth.
“It was just pretty jarring. It was like creating this kind of sound world of improvised noise music. And the place was just jammed. Everybody wanted to see this. And then I think within 30 minutes, it was half full, and I think maybe people got the idea that we weren’t going to be playing any tunes. We were just into this other thing, which we really wanted to do. And we did it, and I really loved it. I have actually mixed down the session. I’d love to put it out some day.”
Three musicians Moore is unlikely to perform with are his Sonic Youth bandmates: Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Steve Shelley. From Oasis to Pavement, many rock bands from the ‘90s have capitalized on nostalgia and the longevity of their brands by returning to the stage. While Moore doesn’t exactly rule out a Sonic Youth reunion, he says isn’t motivated by the payday and believes the band’s legacy stands firm without one. “We covered so much territory that I don’t feel like it was a story left on untold. I think it really had a nice trajectory, and it certainly doesn’t feel unfinished to me.”
Listen to the entire interview with Thurston Moore in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean or Everand.
Bruce Springsteen dropped the second preview of his upcoming sprawling Tracks II: The Lost Albums collection on Thursday morning (April 17). The beat-heavy mid-tempo song “Blind Spot” will appear on the box set as part of the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, a 10-song LP that a release noted has long been referred to by fans as the Boss’ “loops record.”
Opening with a sampled voice grunting over a mechanical-sounding drum beat, it finds Springsteen singing, “We inhabited each other/ Like it was some kind of disease/ I thought that I was flyin’/ But I was crawlin’ on my knees,” in a haunted cadence. The chorus leans into the notion that it’s the things we miss in love that are our undoing: “Everybody’s got a blind spot that brings ’em down/ Everybody’s got a blind spot they can’t get around.”
“That was just the theme that I locked in on at that moment,” Springsteen said in a statement about the song exploring doubt and betrayal in relationships that became the thesis for the Philadelphia Sessions. “I don’t really know why. [Wife and bandmate] Patti [Scialfa] and I, we were having a great time in California. But sometimes if you lock into one song you like, then you follow that thread. I had ‘Blind Spot,’ and I followed that thread through the rest of the record.”
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The song was written following the rock icon’s 1994 Oscar- and Grammy-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia,” which accompanied the 1993 Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington movie Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme’s legal drama about an attorney suing his former employer for his firing after the firm discovers he’s gay and has AIDS.
The never-released companion album “found Springsteen exploring an interest in the rhythms of mid-1990s contemporary music, and particularly West Coast hip-hop,” according to the release. “Initially poring over CDs of drum samples at his home in Los Angeles, Springsteen began making his own loops with engineer Toby Scott — which formed a rhythmic base he’d build on with keyboards and synthesizers. Both a revelation and departure in his home recording, Springsteen is the primary instrumentalist throughout most of Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.” Among those lending an assist during the sessions were his 1992-1993 touring band, as well Scialfa, E Street band members Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell.
Though it never saw the light of day, the album was completed, mixed and slated for release in the spring of 1995, then shelved when Springsteen opted instead to reunite with the E Street Band after a seven-year hiatus. “I said, ‘Well, maybe it’s time to just do something with the band, or remind the fans of the band or that part of my work life,’” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said. “So that’s where we went. But I always really liked Streets of Philadelphia Sessions’… during the [2017-2018] Broadway show, I thought of putting it out [as a standalone release]. I always put them away, but I don’t throw them away.”
Earlier this month, Springsteen announced the June 27 release of Tracks II, which will contain seven previously unheard full-length records. The 83-track collection will “fill in rich chapters of Springsteen’s expansive career timeline — while offering invaluable insight into his life and work as an artist,” according to a release, which noted that some of the LPs got so far as the mixing stage before being put on hold.
Among the albums included are the lo-fi LA Garage Sessions ’83, described as a “crucial link” between the stripped-down Nebraska and the rocking Born in the U.S.A., the sonically experimental Faithless film soundtrack he wrote for a movie that was never made, the country-leaning Somewhere North of Nashville and the border tales LP Inyo, as well as the “orchestra-driven, mid-century noir” Twilight Hours.
The box set covering the years 1983-2018 was previewed by the first single, the turbulent “Rain in the River.” The Lost Albums will be issued in a limited-edition 9-LP set , as well as 7-CD and digital formats, with distinctive packaging for each, along with a 100-page cloth-bound hardcover book with rare archival photos. A 20-track compilation, Lost and Found: Selections From The Lost Albums, will be released on June 27 on two LPs and one CD.
Listen to “Blind Spot” below.
Zak Starkey has spoken out about his apparent firing from The Who after a nearly 30-year run, saying in a statement that he was shocked to hear that, according to reports, singer Roger Daltrey had taken issue with his playing at a recent Royal Albert Hall show in London.
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“I’m very proud of my near 30 years with The Who,” Starkey said in a statement on Wednesday (April 16) according to People. “Filling the shoes of my Godfather, ‘uncle Keith’ [Moon] has been the biggest honor and I remain their biggest fan. They’ve been like family to me.”
The veteran session and live drummer and son of former Beatles timekeeper Ringo Starr and his first wife Maureen Starkey noted that he suffered a “serious medical emergency” in January when he was treated for blood clots in his right calf. “This is now completely healed and does not affect my drumming or running.”
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In a statement to The Guardian earlier this week, a spokesperson for the group said: “The band made a collective decision to part ways with Zak after this round of shows at the Royal Albert Hall. They have nothing but admiration for him and wish him the very best for his future.”
The shows in question took place on March 18 and 20 in benefit of the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity that singer Roger Daltrey has long been a patron of. According to Metro, Daltrey — who recently revealed that he is losing his hearing and eyesight — appeared to get frustrated about Starkey’s playing and stopped several songs mid-performance after saying he was having trouble hearing the band over Starkey’s drums.
During the band’s first-ever run through the show-ending Who’s Next track “The Song Is Over,” Daltrey reportedly told the audience, “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”
In his statement, Starkey expressed shock that “anyone” would find fault with his playing that night. “After playing those songs with the band for so many decades, I’m surprised and saddened anyone would have an issue with my performance that night, but what can you do?” Starkey said in seeming reference to the Metro report. “I plan to take some much needed time off with my family, and focus on the release of ‘Domino Bones’ by Mantra Of The Cosmos with Noel Gallagher in May and finishing my autobiography written solely by me. 29 years at any job is a good old run, and I wish them the best.”
Starkey, who first began playing with the Who in 1996 when they got back together for a reunion tour on which they played their 1973 double album Quadrophenia in its entirety, seemed to predict his sacking in an Instagram post on Saturday, in which he said he thought Daltrey, 81, was “unhappy” with him.
“HEARD TODAY FROM INSIDE SOURCE WITHIN WHOSE HORSES NOSE THAT TOGER DAKTREY LEAD SINGER AND PRINCIPAL SONGWRITER OF THE GROUP UNHAPPY WITH ZAK THE DRUMMER’S PERFORMANCE AT THE ALBERT HALL A FEW WEEKS AGO,” he wrote alongside a pic of him sitting next to a smiling Daltrey. “IS BRINGING FORMAL CHARGES OF OVERPLAYING AND IS LITERALLY GOING TO ZAK THE DRUMMER AND BRING ON A RESERVE FROM ‘THE BURWASH CARWASH SKIFFLE ‘N’ TICKLE GLEE CLUB HARMONY WITHOUT EMPATHY ALLSTARS’ THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY WHOSE LONG TIME MANAGER WILLYA YOUWONTYOUKNOW.”
Starkey got his start behind the kit when the Who’s original drummer and close family friend, Keith Moon, gave him a drum set for his eighth birthday. In addition to his longtime gig with the band, he has also played with Oasis, Johnny Marr, Paul Weller and Graham Coxon and also performs with the new supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos, which features Happy Mondays/Black Grape members Shaun Ryder and Bez and Andy Bell of Oasis and Ride.
Linkin Park will headline the upcoming UEFA Champions League final kick-off show at Munich Football Arena on May 31. The teams for the finale of one of the most prestigious football tournaments on Earth have not yet been announced, but regardless of which top-division European club makes the cut, they will have the pitch more […]
Justin Vernon has a new Bon Iver album to hawk, Sable, Fable. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to take the odd Taylor Swift question here and there. Which is why during a chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe this week, the singer-songwriter waxed rhapsodic about accidentally being pulled into Swift’s pandemic orbit in the best way possible.
When Lowe asked Vernon what it was like to work with Swift, he praised the singer for the “courage” to reach out to The National’s Aaron Dessner to collaborate on her COVID-era Folklore album. On the cusp of quarantine, Vernon said he was about to go on an European tour with Bon Iver a month before lockdown when he tapped Desssner to fill in on guitar.
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The plan was for Dessner to play DJ and cue up demos of songs from his Big Red Machine side project — a long-running collaboration with Vernon — before the Bon Iver arena sets. The tour was quickly cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so like a lot of musicians at the time Dessner went on Instagram Live to play some unreleased music for fans and who happened to hear what he was laying down but Taylor Swift?
“All the glory goes to Taylor for hearing, as a songwriter, what music she wants to make,” Vernon said. “But those songs are Big Red Machine demos at their core and her genius was working with the genius of Aaron Dessner on making the strongest set of lyrics and songwriting that she’s ever had, really.”
As he sat back and watched the process unfold, Vernon said he was mesmerized seeing the global pop icon “enter our whole universe… of course there’s no one bigger and we all bowed down to her.” Vernon described a feeling of not being able to stop blinking as he realized the collaboration between the chart and stadium queen and their low-key indie side project made perfect sense.
“The love and community that Aaron had shown me over these years… Taylor was just stepping into it and flawlessly taking it,” Vernon said, adding that Dessner rang him up during the process and said that there was a track Swift wanted him to sing on. “I was like, ‘Taylor?’” Vernon said he asked as Dessner explained that Swift was writing to some of the Big Red Machine songs she’d heard.
“I was like, ‘Awesome! I’m not doing anything today!’ They sent it and I ended up adding a couple little bits,” Vernon said of the origin story of how he ended up with a co-writing credit — along with Swift, Dessner and the singer’s ex, actor Joe Alwyn (under the pseudonym William Bowery) — on the track. “I just sang it on an SM7 in my little makeshift studio… and it felt level to everything else. It’s an exceptional song and an exceptionally popular song for a good reason,” he said. “But it felt just so natural and I’m so thankful for that opportunity just to have worked with such an amazing artist.”
In addition to “Exile” on the Folklore album, Vernon also pitched in on the title track to the companion Evermore pandemic album, while Swift lent a hand on the Big Red Machine single “Renegade” in 2021.
Watch Vernon talk about working with Swift below.
The Who have parted ways with drummer Zak Starkey after nearly three decades, following the band’s recent run of London shows.
In a statement to The Guardian, a spokesperson for the veteran group said: “The band made a collective decision to part ways with Zak after this round of shows at the Royal Albert Hall. They have nothing but admiration for him and wish him the very best for his future.”
The gigs, which took place last month on March 18 and 20, were in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The Who’s frontman, Roger Daltrey, is a patron of the charity and until 2024 acted as curator for their annual gig series at the historic venue.
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Tensions came to a head when Daltrey complained onstage last month about Starkey’s performance. A report of the first performance via Metro suggested that the singer stopped several songs mid-performance, citing difficulty hearing the band over the drums.
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It also said that Daltrey paused their final song, “The Song Is Over,” and told the audience: “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”
Starkey appeared to pre-empt his dismissal over the weekend (Apr. 13), when he posted an all-caps message to his Instagram page that read, in part: “Heard today from inside source that Toger Daktrey [sic] lead singer and principal songwriter of the group unhappy with Zak the drummer’s performance at the Albert Hall a few weeks ago is bringing formal charges of overplaying and is literally going to Zak the drummer.”
Daltrey, 81, recently revealed during those Teenage Cancer Trust shows that “the joys of getting old mean you go deaf. I also now have got the joy of going blind.”
The decision wraps up a significant chapter in the legendary rockers’ history. Starkey joined the band during their 1996 Quadrophenia world tour. He was introduced to drumming by The Who’s original drummer, Keith Moon, a close family friend who gave him a drum kit for his eighth birthday. He went on to play major shows with the group, including the 2010 Super Bowl and the 2012 London Olympics. At press time spokespeople for Starkey and the Who had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional comment.
Starkey is the son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and Maureen Starkey, and has also enjoyed a fruitful career outside of The Who, playing with Oasis, Johnny Marr, Paul Weller and Graham Coxon. He currently performs in the recently-formed supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos, also featuring Shaun Ryder and Bez of the Happy Mondays and Black Grape, and Andy Bell of Oasis and Ride.
Two heavy metal icons are teaming up for a 22-city co-headlining tour this fall. Original shock rocker Alice Cooper, 77, will share stages with British hard rock legends Judas Priest for the Live Nation-produced outing that is slated to kick off on Sept. 16 at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi, MS. The tour will […]
Former Judas Priest drummer Les Binks, who held the spot in the metal band’s lineup for a few crucial years in the late 1970s, had died at 73.
The group members announced their bandmate’s death on Tuesday morning (April 15), writing on Instagram, “We are deeply saddened about the passing of Les and send our love to his family, friends and fans. The acclaimed drumming he provided was first class – demonstrating his unique techniques, flair, style and precision – Thank you Les – your acclaim will live on…..”
Born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, on Aug. 8, 1951, Binks (born James Leslie Binks), spent time drumming with Eric Burdon and the Animals and War, as well as the pop group Fancy before joining Judas Priest in 1977. The band formed in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and fronted by leather-loving singer Rob Halford released its debut album, Rocka Rolla, in 1974, followed by 1996’s Sad Wings of Destiny.
Binks made his first appearance with group in time for 1977’s Sin After Sin, the band’s major label debut. The sessions saw the exit of early drummer Alan Moore, who was replaced by Simon Phillips for the recording. But, with Moore unavailable to tour, Binks was tapped to hit the road with the band after bringing his signature double-bass barrage to the bonus track cover of The Gun’s “Race With the Devil.”
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The drummer made his biggest mark on 1978’s Stained Class, where his massive, double kick drum sound and blitzkrieg style is a standout from the very first seconds of opening track “Exciter,” one of the songs that set the stage for the speed and thrash metal of the 1980s. The album, considered by many fans to be one of the group’s finest efforts, featured a rare co-songwriting credit for Binks on the ominous prog-metal shouter “Beyond the Realms of Death.”
Binks also appeared on the follow-up, 1978’s Killing Machine (which was released as Hell Bent for Leather in the U.S.), the most commercially oriented collection to date from the Priest, and the LP that would also mark his swan song with the group. Anchored by meaty rock anthems such as “Rock Forever” and the raucous “Hell Bent For Leather,” the album set the stage for what would become the band’s commercial breakthrough on 1980s British Steel, which featured the hits “Living After Midnight” and Beavis and Butt-Head favorite “Breaking the Law”; Binks was replaced on that album by former Trapeze drummer Dave Holland.
Binks’ final record with Judas Priest would be the band’s 1979 Unleashed in the East live album recorded in Tokyo earlier that year, after which he split following a reported dispute with band manager Mike Dolan over compensation for the live LP.
The drummer played with a series of other bands throughout the 1980s and ’90s (Lionhearted, Tytan) and formed the all-star Priest cover band Les Binks’ Priesthood, in 2017. In a testament to the crucial role he played in the development of Judas Priest’s sound, Binks was on stage with the rest of Priest in 2022 when the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and performed as part of their three-song set in one of his final public appearances before his death.
Check out their performance at the RRHOF ceremony below.