Author: LRussell

Screamin’ Scott Simon of Sha Na Na has died at the age of 75, following a lengthy battle with sinus cancer.

The news was confirmed by his daughter, Nina, in a social media post.

“My dad was a rock star. Literally,” she wrote, sharing a photo of her father and family. “A member of Sha Na Na for over 50 years. He loved early morning diners and late nights onstage. But he loved his girls most of all.”

Simon’s Background

Simon was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1948, later graduating from Columbia in New York City in 1970. That same year, he joined Sha Na Na, the doo wop revival group who rose to fame covering ’50s rock ‘n’ roll songs and even performing at Woodstock in 1969.

With Sha Na Na, Simon wrote a number of the band’s songs. In 1978, the whole group appeared in Grease as “Johnny Casino and the Gamblers,” but Simon did more than just appear on screen — he also co-wrote the song “Sandy” with Louis St. Louis, which John Travolta sang.

Over the years, Sha Na Na performed with the likes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Steve Martin, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. They also had their own television series named after themselves, which ran from 1977 to 1981 and included guests like Chuck Berry, the Ramones, Dusty Springfield, Billy Crystal and more.

Simon was a member of Sha Na Na until 2022, the year the band stopping touring.

Watch Screamin’ Scott Simon Perform on the ‘Sha Na Na’ Show

Columbia Pictures, producers of Saturday Night – the movie that explores the minutes leading up to Saturday Night Live’s first-ever broadcast in 1975 – has announced the feature will begin rolling out two weeks ahead of its original schedule.

It had been set to arrive everywhere on Oct. 11, but will now land in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto on Sept. 27, followed by a limited release farther afield on Oct. 4 and wide release on Oct. 11.

The news follows a series of positive reviews, with reports that test screenings also went better than might have been expected.

READ MORE: Meet the Cast of the Upcoming ‘Saturday Night Live’ Movie

Variety’s review said director Jason Reitman “isn’t the first to take audiences behind the scenes of SNL and its ilk – 30 Rock, Studio 60 and The Larry Sanders Show all demystified that world — but he does it so convincingly,” adding that the movie “seems destined to be the way we remember the night that changed television.” Variety also described it as a potential Oscar-winner, “thanks to its superb ensemble, sizzling script and expert craftsmanship.”

World of Reel shared comments from a contact who’d attended a test screening, who said: “Fantastic. Big response from audience…[I]t’s also hard to fully pinpoint a bonafide standout within the ensemble because it’s all over the place with the way it’s constantly moving and bouncing around to different characters (not a bad thing though, I thought it kept things fresh and avoided lingering/losing momentum).”

Rolling Stone called the production “extremely potent,” noting that while it was sometimes a “sloppy and overly reverent tribute,” it was also a “part hilarious 1970s gross-out romp, and an all-out assault to recreate the adrenaline rush of producing that inaugural SNL.”

Which Viewers Will Most Enjoy ‘Saturday Night’?

And while the Hollywood Reporter’s review tended towards the negative, it appeared more critical of the premise rather than the performances, arguing: “We go into the movie with high expectations, but only some of them are realized. … Those who remember the excitement of SNL‘s early years will want to catch up with this revolutionary moment in TV history, but younger viewers may not find enough here to tickle or tantalize.”

The cast includes Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster and Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris. The soundtrack was composed by Grammy-winner Jon Batiste, who plays the show’s first musical guest, Billy Preston.

Watch a Trailer for ‘Saturday Night’

Billy Greer, the bassist and co-lead vocalist for Kansas, has retired after nearly 40 years in the band.

In a message announcing his departure, Kansas thanked Greer for his decades of service.

“For 39 years, Billy has been a loyal, dedicated, and immensely talented bandmate. He’s traveled around the world with us including USO tours,” drummer Phil Ehart wrote.

Guitarist Richard Williams added that Greer “stood shoulder to shoulder with us through both the ups and the downs. His voice, both singing and emceeing, has been a constant with us on stage. The entire Kansas family will miss him.”

Who Is Billy Greer?

Though he was not an original member, Greer’s tenure was the third longest in Kansas history behind Ehart and Williams. The bassist joined in 1985, part of a new lineup following the group’s brief hiatus. He appeared on seven of the band’s studio albums: Power (1986), In The Spirit of Things (1988), Freaks of Nature (1995), Always Never the Same (1998), Somewhere to Elsewhere (2000), The Prelude Implicit (2016) and The Absence of Presence (2020). For the last 18 years, Greer has also taken a prominent role in Kansas’ live shows, serving as emcee.

READ MORE: Kansas Albums Ranked Worst to Best

“I consider myself lucky. There have been a couple of incarnations along the way, but we’ve managed to push through the rough times,” Greer explained during a 2023 interview with 100% Rock Magazine. “I was part of those rough times. In the ‘90s when grunge became the flavor of the month, that set us on a course for doom.”

“We kept going. Those were some dark times. Playing small clubs from Tuesday through Thursday to get to the good gigs on the weekends,” he continued. “It was a rough go for a lot of years, but we slowly made our way back.”

Greer’s final performance with Kansas took place Sept. 1 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The band has not announced a replacement, but assured fans that Greer’s departure “will not impact any Kansas performance scheduling.” The group’s next show is Sept. 7 in Spencer, Iowa.

The beauty of writing a song is that you can take inspiration from literally anywhere. You can also, if the mood strikes you, write about one specific person.

Often, songs end up a mixture of both of these approaches — certain lines prompted by real-life people and others more general in nature. This gray area is where it can become hard to tell where factuality ends and where fictional story-telling begins, and in turn, can lead to a whole lot of speculation.

Female singer-songwriters in particular have suffered for decades under the assumption that their creative output revolves around the men in their lives, an antiquated and sexist stereotype that holds little water. When male characters — real or otherwise – appear in women’s songs, it’s more likely because the artist is doing the same thing any other gender of songwriter does: write about the people, places and events they observe in their lives.

Still, when the rumor mill starts going it’s hard to stop it. Below, in no particular order apart from chronological, we’re taking a look at 10 of the best songs written by women, possibly inspired by specific men.

1. “A Case of You,” Joni Mitchell 
From: Blue (1971)

Joni Mitchell is famous for what was, in the early ’70s, referred to as “confessional songwriting,” as in the kind of emotionally personal writing that takes directly from one’s own life and exposes it to the world. It was Kris Kristofferson who heard Mitchell’s 1971 album Blue and allegedly warned her to “save something of yourself,” but this approach helped usher in an entire generation of singer-songwriters who scraped at the sides of their souls in the name of art. Because she was so prolific in writing about her emotions, Mitchell’s songs were often examined closely for hints of their potential subjects, and though parts of Blue contained material regarding one of her exes, Graham Nash, “A Case of You” is said to be more about a previous partner, Leonard Cohen, with its allusions to Shakespeare and lines he said to Mitchell.

 

2. “It’s Too Late,” Carole King 
From: Tapestry (1971)

In “It’s Too Late” we have something of a double-hitter. Lyricist Toni Stern penned the words in a single day after her relationship with James Taylor, who played guitar on Tapestry, ended. “I won’t say who ‘It’s Too Late’ is about — I don’t kiss and tell,” Stern said for Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation. That’s okay, we can put two and two together.

Meanwhile, King’s nearly decade-long marriage to Gerry Goffin had also ended and she’d gotten remarried to her bass player, Charles Larkey. “[Stern’s] lyrics, you know, speak for people who are going through divorces,” King noted to CBS in 2012.

 

3. “You’re So Vain,” Carly Simon
From: No Secrets (1972)

Any song that begins with the words “son of a gun” is bound to be juicy. Enter Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” a track that has beget question after question over the subject’s identity. Among the people whose names have come up over the years: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Warren Beatty, James Taylor, David Cassidy, Cat Stevens, Dan Armstrong, David Geffen and Jack Nicholson. Simon has said that the song is indeed about a real-life man who walked into a party she was at in Los Angeles with an air of egotistic confidence, but has refused to name him specifically and has also insinuated it is a conglomerate of several people. Either way, if you recognize yourself in the lyrics to “You’re So Vain,” you may want to reevaluate your personality.

 

4. “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire,” Joni Mitchell
From: For the Roses (1972)

James Taylor had the pleasure of dating several exceptionally talented women, including both Simon and Mitchell. Like several musicians of his time, Taylor struggled with substance abuse as his fame rose, which Mitchell witnessed firsthand and wrote about in 1972’s “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire,” a troubling but also jazzy account of a lover’s descent into addiction — “Sparks fly up from sweet fire / Black soot of Lady Release / ‘Come with me, I know the way’ she says.”

Taylor knows the song is about him. “I’m not able to listen to it,” he told The Guardian in 2020.

 

5. “Diamonds & Rust,” Joan Baez
From: Diamonds & Rust (1975)

For many years, Joan Baez was better known for her interpretations of traditional folk songs. When she began releasing her original music, she proved to be an equally adept songwriter. In 1974, she was at work on a song about something else when she got a call from her old boyfriend Bob Dylan. “He read me the entire lyrics to ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,’ that he’d just finished from a phone booth in the Midwest,” Baez recalled to HuffPost in 2010. (That song would end up on Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks.) Baez swiftly shifted gears, crafting the title track to her own 1975 album Diamonds & Rust with lyrics about Dylan being “the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond.” “I don’t remember what I’d been writing about,” she said in 2010, “but it had nothing to do with what it ended up as.”

 

6. “Silver Springs,” Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac
From: 1976 Single

Not to pigeonhole her work, but Stevie Nicks is arguably the queen of writing songs like this — “Silver Springs” is just one of them. Nicks has never hidden the fact that the song, like others, was written about her relationship and breakup with Lindsey Buckingham. “‘I’m so angry with you. You will listen to me on the radio for the rest of your life, and it will bug you. I hope it bugs you,'” she said to The Arizona Republic in 1997, describing why she wrote it and what message she wanted to get across to Buckingham. That was the same year Fleetwood Mac reunited for an album and TV special both titled The Dance, in which Nicks could be seen staring a hole through Buckingham as the band performed “Silver Springs.” You’ll never get away from the sound of a woman that loved you.

 

7. “Barracuda,” Heart 
From: Little Queen (1977)

Being a female rock ‘n’ roll artist in the ’70s presented challenges, as the sisters of Heart became all too familiar with them. At one point, someone at Mushroom Records, the label responsible for releasing Heart’s first two albums, had the extraordinarily stupid idea to create a publicity stunt of sorts that implied Ann and Nancy Wilson were involved in an incestuous relationship. When a radio promoter at a concert asked Ann how her “lover” was doing and she realized what he was referring to, she was livid. Her sister was too, and they ended up writing the fiery “Barracuda” as a response.

 

8. “Songbird,” Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac 
From: Rumours (1977)

Stevie Nicks is not the only member of Fleetwood Mac to have written some remarkable songs about lost love. Christine McVie’s “Songbird” was written before her 1976 divorce from bassist John McVie, while Fleetwood Mac was touring no less. “I broke up with John in the middle of a tour. I was aware of it being rather irresponsible,” she told Rolling Stone in 1977. McVie never explicitly stated who the song was about, but the poignancy of lyrics like “I wish you all the love in the world, but most of all, I wish it from myself” speak for themselves. “When Christine played ‘Songbird,’ grown men would weep,” John McVie once said. “I did every night.”

 

9. “Talk of the Town,” Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders
From: Pretenders II (1981)

Some people assumed the Pretenders’ “Talk of the Town” was written about Ray Davies of the Kinks, who would later have a daughter with Chrissie Hynde in 1983 — “One thing leads to another I know / Was a time I wanted you for my mine.”

But actually, Hynde wrote it about a stranger. “I had in mind this kid who used to stand outside the soundchecks on our first tour,” she explained on the BBC Songwriters Circle program in 1999 (via Songfacts). “I never spoke to him. I remember that the last time I saw him I just left him standing in the snow, I never had anything to say to him. I kind of wrote this for him, so, in the unlikely event that you’re watching this, I did think about you.”

 

10. “You Oughta Know,” Alanis Morissette
From: Jagged Little Pill (1995)

Those who have been rumored to be the subject of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” include the actor Dave Coulier, hockey player Mike Peluso and actor Matt LeBlanc, plus others. But Morissette’s lips have been sealed since the song came out in 1995.

“Well, I’ve never talked about who my songs were about and I won’t, because when I write them they’re written for the sake of personal expression,” she said to the Vancouver Sun in 2008. “So with all due respect to whoever may see themselves in my songs, and it happens all the time, I never really comment on it because I write these songs for myself, not other people.”

Rockers Who Dated Their Bandmates

Clutch and Rival Sons brought a prime selection of heavy rock to New York on Thursday as they began their Two Headed Beast co-headlining tour.

Both bands are celebrating the anniversaries of key albums. Rival Sons turned in an energetic set that covered a lot of their catalog, including six songs from 2014’s Great Western Valkyrie, including “Good Luck” for the first time since 2018. Clutch subsequently performed the bulk of 2004’s Blast Tyrant, honoring its 20th anniversary, while also mixing in additional cuts from their catalog. Set highlights included three songs from 1993’s Transnational Speedway League: Anthems, Anecdotes and Undeniable Truths, which marked its 30th anniversary last year and was the major label debut for the Maryland group.

READ MORE: How Rival Sons Swung for the Fences With ‘Great Western Valkyrie

Fellow stoner rock veterans Fu Manchu are opening the initial dates of the tour and delivered a tight performance that checked a lot of boxes despite their limited time on stage. Serving up two tracks from their latest album, 2024’s The Return of Tomorrow, they also made room for fan favorites like “Evil Eye” and the title track from 1999’s 10 inch, Eatin’ Dust.

For Rival Sons, the night’s performance at at the Brooklyn Paramount found them walking a bit of a wire. “We haven’t seen each other for a good month and a half. Generally, we’ll get together and rehearse for a few days, but we didn’t,” guitarist Scott Holiday tells UCR. “We were really working out the kinks and kicking the dust on deck, which is kind of fun. You show everything and there’s a certain excitement and energy about it.”

According to Buchanan, they eventually plan to play all of the songs from Great Western Valkyrie — including one that they’ve never performed before. “I think it was a really strong record for us and they’re songs that work well live, for the most part. So we regularly play a lot of songs from that record already,” he shares.”We’re really hoping to bring ‘Destination on Course [Slipped from the Rail)’ to the set.”

“It’s got some interesting parts that we weren’t able to work out quickly and for some reason, we just never circled back around on that one,” Holiday explains. “It has this huge choral section that we weren’t sure how we were going to accomplish that properly. It wasn’t going to be with us singing the background vocals. Now that we’re working with Jesse Nason as the keyboard player — he has a Mellotron and all of these interesting things that I think will be able to close these little gaps.”

The guitarist happily acknowledges that they’re the odd band of the tour. “Clutch and Fu Manchu are way more stoner rock than we are,” he laughs. “We’re just fans and kind of enjoy being this black sheep, you know, signing to a death metal label, booking a stoner tour! It was Clutch-heavy last night as far as the fans, but I think we won some fans [also] and it was a really fun night.”

The Two Headed Beast tour continues tonight (Sept. 6) in Atlantic City.

Watch Fu Manchu Perform ‘Evil Eye’ in Brooklyn

Watch Rival Sons Perform ‘Too Bad’ in Brooklyn

Watch Clutch Perform ‘Electric Worry’ in Brooklyn

Rival Sons Set List, Sept. 5, 2024, Brooklyn, New York
“Mirrors”
“Nobody Wants to Die”
“Tied Up”
“Too Bad”
“Good Luck”
“Electric Man”
“Belle Starr”
“Where I’ve Been”
“Open My Eyes”
“Pressure and Time”
“Torture”
“Do Your Worst”
“Keep on Swinging”
“Secret”

Clutch Set List, Sept. 5, 2024, Brooklyn, New York
“Mercury”
“Profits of Doom”
“The Mob Goes Wild”
“Cypress Grove”
“Promoter (of Earthbound Causes)
“The Regulator”
“Worm Drink”
“Army of Bono”
“Spleen Merchant”
“(In the Wake of) the Swollen Goat”
“Subtle Hustle”
“Ghost”
“(Notes from the Trial of) La Curandera”
“Spacegrass”
“A Shogun Named Marcus”
“El Jefe Speaks”
“Binge and Purge”
“Electric Worry”

Fu Manchu Set List, Sept. 5, 2024, Brooklyn, New York
“Eatin’ Dust”
“Evil Eye”
“Hands of the Zodiac”
“Hell on Wheels”
“Laserbl’ast”
“King of the Road”
“Loch Ness Wrecking Machine”
“Weird Beard”

Weezer launched their Voyage to the Blue Planet tour with a rousing performance in Saint Paul, Minnesota on Sept. 5.

The trek celebrates the 30th anniversary of the beloved alt-rockers’ self-titled album, commonly referred to as the Blue Album. While that LP was performed in its entirety, it was only part of a much broader show.

From the opening moments of their St. Paul performance, Weezer made clear that their sci-fi-themed tour name wasn’t just for show.

A large spacecraft started on the stage, then “blasted off” to reveal the band members, decked out in astronaut suits. Weezer – made up of frontman Rivers Cuomo, guitarist Brian Bell, bassist Scott Shriner and drummer Patrick Wilson – then proceeded to rock through material from throughout their career, as stars, planets and UFOs periodically appeared around them.

READ MORE: How a Trip to the Grocery Store Helped Weezer Make the Blue Album

The show was loosely separated into three parts. The first, Blue Voyage Takeoff, featured a collection of the band’s various hits, including “Hash Pipe,” “Beverly Hills” and “Island in the Sun.”

Next, the show’s plot, which was reminiscent of a campy Star Trek or Lost in Space episode, placed Weezer in the Pinkerton Asteroid Belt. Appropriately, the rockers delivered a series of tunes from their cult-classic second album, including “Why Bother?” and “Pink Triangle.”

Weezer Lands of the Blue Planet

Then came the moment everyone was waiting for. After their intergalactic travels, Weezer touched down on the Blue Planet, only to discover it was dying. What could bring it back to life? Why, playing their debut album in its entirety, of course. “That’s one small step for Weezer, one giant leap for Weezer-kind!” Cuomo declared, fully embracing the fun of the moment. The crowd then happily rocked out to such classic tracks as “My Name Is Jonas,” “”Undone – The Sweater Song” and “Buddy Holly.”

Pictures from the show and a full set list can be found below. Weezer’s Voyage to the Blue Planet tour continues through mid-October, with stops throughout the U.S.

Weezer, Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, Set List

1. “Anonymous”
2. “Return to Ithaka”
3. “Dope Nose”
4. “Hash Pipe”
5. “Pork and Beans”
6. “Beverly Hills”
7. “Burndt Jamb”
8. “Island in the Sun”
9. “Any Friend of Diane’s”
10. “Perfect Situation”
11. “Run, Raven, Run”
12. “Getchoo”
13. “Why Bother?”
14. “Pink Triangle”
15. “You Gave Your Love to Me Softly”
16. “Across the Sea”
17. “My Name Is Jonas”
18. “No One Else”
19. “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”
20. “Buddy Holly”
21. “Undone – The Sweater Song”
22. “Surf Wax America”
23. “Say It Ain’t So”
24. “In the Garage”
25. “Holiday”
26. “Only in Dreams”

Weezer ‘Voyage to the Blue Planet’ Tour Launch

Sergio Mendes, the influential Brazilian jazz musician known for bringing bossa nova to worldwide audiences, has died at the age of 83.

In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the musician’s family said he died “peacefully.” No official cause of death was given, but the family noted he “had been challenged by the effects of long term COVID.”

Born in Niteroi, Brazil, Mendes began playing music at an early age and attended school in hopes of becoming a classical pianist. He eventually transitioned towards jazz, cutting his teeth in Brazilian nightclubs in the 1950s.

Mendes formed the band Sexteto Bossa Rio and released his debut album, Dance Moderno, in 1961. Soon, American jazz musicians came calling, including Cannonball Adderly and Herbie Mann, who recording with Mendes in the early ‘60s.

As his star continued to rise, Medes reallocated to the U.S.A. Still, American record companies were leery to sign him.

“We’d play three, four, five songs” Mendes recalled to NPR regarding his early U.S. auditions. “No answer, nothing,” was the reply, “just, ‘Oh, thank you. You guys sound great, bye.’ “

Listen to ‘Mas Que Nada’

However, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, founders of A&M Records, were intrigued by Mendes’ sound and eventually signed him to his first American record deal. The move immediately paid off, as Mendes and his newly formed backing band Brasil ‘66 scored a mainstream hit with their rendition of “Mas Que Nada.” The tune reached No. 47 on the Billboard Hot 100 and helped push their debut album to platinum sales.

“It was the first time that a song in Portuguese was a hit in America and all over the world,” Mendes noted.

An expansive career continued from there. In 1968, Dusty Springfield’s rendition of “The Look of Love” was nominated for an Oscar. Mendes and Brasil ‘66 covered the song during the award show telecast and turned it into another hit, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard chart.

Later in 1968 he’d put his own spin on “The Fool on the Hill,” resulting in another Top 10 single. It was one of many Beatles covers Mendes recorded over the years, with “All My Loving,” “Day Tripper,” “With a Little Help From My Friends” and “Norwegian Wood” among the others. Mendes’ also covered material from the Mamas & the Papas (“Monday, Monday”), Simon & Garfunkel (“Scarborough Fair”) and Buffalo Springfield (“For What It’s Worth”).

Listen to Sergio Mendes’ Version of ‘Fool on the Hill’

Medes’ popularity took him all over the world, and even resulted in performances at the White House for presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. Best known for his distinctive bossa nova style, Mendes began mixing his sound with funk and soul during the ‘70s. He collaborated with Stevie Wonder on “The Real Thing,” a minor hit in 1977.

Mendes enjoyed a late career resurgence with the 2006 album Timeless. The LP featured many modern hip-hop artists collaborating with the Brazilian legend on new versions of his classic material. The Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake, Jill Scott and John Legend were among the guest appearances. Mendes also served as co-producer for the soundtrack albums for the popular animated films Rio (2011) and its sequel, Rio 2 (2014).

In total, Mendes released more than 40 albums in his influential career. He won a Grammy for his 1993 album Brasileiro and earned an Academy Award nomination in 2011 for the song “Real in Rio.”

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of Judas Priest‘s 1974 debut album Rocka Rolla, rock journalist Martin Popoff is releasing a new book dedicated to the band.

Due in stores Nov. 12, Judas Priest: Album by Album examines the legendary metal band’s entire catalog, all the way up to and including 2024’s Invincible Shield. In our exclusive preview, you can find the entire chapter dedicated to Rocka Rolla below. in it, Popoff and fellow historians Pete Pardo and Matt Thompson break down each track on the album, illustrating how it hints at the band’s future ascendance.

The book features interviews with rock stars such as Slash, Marty Friedman and Charlie Benante. It also includes rare photos taken both onstage and off, as well as shots of vintage memorabilia.

Read More: Top 40 Debut Rock Albums

In a recent interview, Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill revealed that the band had regained the rights to Rocka Rolla and 1976’s Sad Wings of Destiny, and would soon be announcing the release of an upgraded version of their debut album. “It’s just been re-engineered by Tom Allom after all of these years,” he told Talking Rock with Meltdown. “The multi-tracks were in remarkably good condition, and he’s changed some of the sounds, made it more modern and obviously remixed it. And he’s done a great job.”

Judas Priest: Album by Album is available for pre-order at all major retailers.

Jerry Cantrell has released a video for his solo track “Afterglow.”

It appears on his upcoming solo album I Want Blood, set for launch on Oct. 18. The single follows the appearance of “Vilified” when the new LP was announced.

The Alice in Chains star worked with guests Robert Trujillo, Duff McKagan and Faith No More’s Mike Bordin – among others – to deliver I Want Blood, which comes after his 2021 solo outing Brighten.

The video can be seen below.

READ MORE: How Jerry Cantrell Entered Uncharted Territory With ‘Cut You In’

“The incredible Matt Mahurin and I created a moving piece of film to accompany the song,” said the Alice In Chains guitarist. “Check it out. If you want blood, you got it.”

Mahurin added: “Two of my all-time favorite videos I’ve directed are ‘No Excuses’ and ‘Angry Chair’ for Alice In Chains in the early 1990s. To be able to once again offer my visual work to Jerry’s ‘Afterglow’ some 30 years later was a blast. From opera aria to pop tune, everybody sees a movie playing in their mind’s eye when they listen to a song. Jerry inspired a welcome fever dream that I was grateful to lure out of my mind’s eye.”

Cantrell previously described I Want Blood as “a serious piece of work,” continuing: “It’s hard, no doubt, and completely unlike Brighten. And that’s what you want, to end up in a different place. There’s a confidence to this album. I think it’s some of my best songwriting and playing, and certainly some of my best singing.”

Watch Jerry Cantrell’s ‘Afterglow’ Video

Jerry Cantrell – ‘I Want Blood’ Track Listing
1. “Vilified”
2. “Off the Rails”
3. “Afterglow”
4. “I Want Blood”
5. “Echoes of Laughter”
6. “Throw Me a Line”
7. “Let It Lie”
8. “Held Your Tongue”
9. “It Comes”

Pink Floyd‘s solo catalog, like the band’s main discography, is typically thought of in terms of David Gilmour and Roger Waters. It’s understandable since they have been the band’s opposing poles for so long.

But Pink Floyd existed before Gilmour’s arrival and after Waters’ departure, with important contributions made in these eras by the whimsical Syd Barrett and the more ruminative Richard Wright. Both often-overlooked figures find a home on our list of Top 20 Pink Floyd Solo Songs.

Of course, Gilmour and Waters dominate the remaining entries – even if neither of them could exactly be described as prolific solo artists. There were 22 years separating Gilmour’s About Face and On an Island – though some fans may derisively describe Pink Floyd’s intervening A Momentary Lapse of Reason as a Gilmour album, too. Waters bested that by waiting almost 25 years between Amused to Death and Is This the Life We Really Want?

READ MORE: Richard Wright’s Best Pink Floyd Songs

Each nevertheless made their own arguments for carrying forward the separate musical visions that ultimately tore apart the classic-era edition of Pink Floyd. Waters remained smart and novelistic, sharply critical, sometimes preachy. On the other hand, Gilmour turned toward emotive placidity once he was no longer forced into a square peg of diffidence or crankiness by Waters’ narrative contortions.

Together, the Top 20 Pink Floyd Solo Songs might have made the band’s next great double album. They certainly have a similar ebb and flow. Any hopes of a reunion were apparently dashed, however, by Wright’s death in 2008. By then, Barrett – the group’s lost soul – had already been gone two years.
 

No. 20. “Out of the Blue”
From: About Face (1984)

The smartly episodic “Out of the Blue” was one of three David Gilmour demos that were ultimately discarded as Roger Waters built his didactic finale with Pink Floyd, 1983’s The Final Cut. They finally found a home on Gilmour’s second solo LP. About Face sometimes suffers from this era’s mechanized sensibility (in particular on “Blue Light” and “Murder”), but “Out of the Blue” transcended those of-the-moment sounds. Beginning with a diaphanous meditation on the suddenness of our fates, Gilmour fills the song’s middle with a thunderous bit of rage, before settling into a perfectly conceived, open-ended conclusion. This is what Gilmour was trying for again – but not quite reaching – with “On the Turning Away” from Pink Floyd’s first LP without Waters, A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

No. 19. “Woman of Custom”
Richard Wright, Broken China (1996)

Arriving during an era when Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell was edited down into a more song-focused release, Broken China more accurately reflected the group’s rangy vision. “Woman of Custom,” like the rest of this LP, would not be similarly constrained. Inspired by his future wife Mildred, Wright ended up creating a shattering four-part meditation on depression – with this layered and intense song as a centerpiece. Anthony Moore, collaborator on a pair of late-period Pink Floyd albums, helped sharpen Wright’s ideas. A striking cover image from the band’s longtime designer Storm Thorgerson framed it all perfectly.

No. 18. “There’s No Way Out of Here”
David Gilmour, David Gilmour (1978)

Gilmour’s work with the Surrey-based group Unicorn included producing Blue Pine Trees and Too Many Crooks in 1974 and One More Tomorrow in 1977. Then he stole one of their songs. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but it’s not untrue. They met Gilmour while jamming at a wedding reception, and soon Unicorn was being managed by Pink Floyd’s Steve O’Rourke. “No Way Out of Here,” written by Unicorn bandleader Ken Baker, had appeared on Too Many Crooks. It’s easy to see why this quite Floyd-like song appealed to Gilmour, who basically recreated their approach. Still, the single went nowhere. That provided an early indication that no matter how great the song, Gilmour needed to work under the Pink Floyd banner to find his widest audience. Within a few years, he would.

No. 17. “Gigolo Aunt”
Syd Barrett, Barrett (1970)

“Gigolo Aunt” deftly recreated the early Pink Floyd magic but, by this point, Syd Barrett was a hopeless mess. His second solo album would be the last – and that was obvious even as the badly faltering former Pink Floyd frontman attempted to finish it. Co-producer David Gilmour resorted to fastening a Barrett warm-up session onto the beginning of the Byrds-y “Baby Lemonade” just to complete the song. “Maisie” was nothing more than an extended jam with Barrett’s wandering lyrics on top. Only “Gigolo Aunt” – and to a lesser degree, “Effervescing Elephant” – really showed how Barrett invented the template for subsequent successes by the likes of David Bowie, Robyn Hitchcock and Blur.

No. 16. “What God Wants. Pt. 1”
Roger Waters, Amused to Death (1992)

Maybe Roger Waters’ best take on the conflicts of organized religion, “What God Wants, Pt. 1” is also a showcase for the molten contributions that Jeff Beck made on Amused to Death. Like the best Pink Floyd albums released so many years before it, Waters found some of his greatest success as a solo artist through a collaborative bond with a forceful and equally artful guitarist.

No. 15. “Scattered”
David Gilmour, Luck and Strange (2024)

Taking a page from Waters’ Is This the Life We Really Want?, Gilmour makes a surprisingly direct reference to his storied past: “Scattered” starts with a pulse straight out of Dark Side of the Moon. That’s where the comparisons end. Unlike his erstwhile bandmate, Gilmour proceeds to build a different kind of song about mortality and the passage of time. In fact, at one point, the whole enterprise nearly falls to pieces in a tumble of orchestral wreckage. When Gilmour rouses himself once more, it’s with a stubborn sense of hopefulness – or, barring that, a form of accepting reverie – that too often eludes Waters. The entirety of what made them so great together, and what in turn tore them apart, might be found inside this one song.

No. 14. “The Powers That Be”
Roger Waters, Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)

Commercial flourishes like sequenced drums and programmed keyboards all but sink “The Powers That Be” on first listen. But sort through those aural missteps, and you’ll find a smart update of Waters’ patented call to arms against bloated bureaucracy and war-mongers — “They like fear and loathing / They like sheep’s clothing” — amid a deeply funky horn signature.

No. 13. “Against the Odds”
Richard Wright, Wet Dream (1978)

Like Gilmour, Wright was itching for a creative outlet as Waters’ muse began to take center stage in Pink Floyd. Like Gilmour, he recorded his solo debut at France’s Super Bear Studios. Like Gilmour, it went virtually unnoticed – even with a definitely noticeable but rather unfortunate album title. Still, “Against the Odds” makes the case for a reappraisal that somehow wouldn’t get underway until Steven Wilson remixed Wet Dream some 45 years later. Wright blamed a still-evolving solo musical vision but there was a long precedent for the subdued jazz-inflected dreamscapes created here by a sessions group that included Mel Collins and Snowy White, two members of Pink Floyd’s touring band. “Against the Odds” sits comfortably alongside ethereal Wright contributions to “Us and Them” or the second side of Wish You Were Here.

No. 12. “So Far Away”
David Gilmour, David Gilmour (1978)

Several songs in the Gilmour solo catalog appeared to be directed at Waters, including “You Know I’m Right” from About Face. But “So Far Away” seems to speak to a deeper sense of confusion about where their relationship – and Pink Floyd itself – was headed in the late ’70s. “Why am I suspended here?” Gilmour asks, as Waters moved to take control of the group. “I get no choice, I just have to wait. It may already be too late.” It was, of course. The Wall would subsequently appear with only a smattering of his creative ideas (including a chorus progression that’s similar to this song in “Comfortably Numb”), followed by The Final Cut – which had none at all. Pink Floyd was coming apart at the seams. That added new gravitas to soaring moments of uncertainty and alienation like “So Far Away,” whether that was Gilmour’s intent or not.

No. 11. “Bird in a Gale”
Roger Waters, Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017)

Waters’ comeback some 25 years after Amused to Death was perfectly timed in its own sad, weird way. Who better to douse the era of polarization with a cauldron of seething anger? But Is This the Life We Really Want? wasn’t all fire and brimstone. The searching, starkly personal “Bird in a Gale” allowed fans the rare opportunity to see him as more than an aggressive orator. After years of bitter public spats, Waters was also finally ready to deal with his former band’s always-looming specter. This is one of his most Floyd-ish sounding solo moments, like “Welcome to the Machine” for a new age. In this way, he challenged the conventions of what a Roger Waters album could be, even as he belatedly embraced his own towering musical legacy.

No. 10. “A Boat Lies Waiting”
David Gilmour, Rattle That Lock (2015)

Gilmour returned with a more rock-focused album after descending into this studied quietness for much of On an Island and Pink Floyd’s almost completely instrumental farewell The Endless River. Those earlier albums were gorgeous, largely meditative, and for some fans admittedly boring. Yet the truth was that Gilmour remained in mourning over the loss of Richard Wright, who’d succumbed to cancer in 2008. He summoned up those billowing emotions in “A Boat Lies Waiting.” Gone forever was the “blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy,” as Gilmour recalled in his emotional eulogy for Wright, but Gilmour’s grievously tender goodbye somehow found beauty in that loss.

No. 9. “Home”
Roger Waters, Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)

Despite being part of a plasticine bid for MTV acceptance on Radio K.A.O.S., “Home” rings true as Waters challenges us all to stand up to the creeping indignities that eventually coalesce into true injustice. Best of all is when he hits a lyrical riff while talking about any number of unexpected personalities who might one day provide the greatest danger to our everyday lives. Water couldn’t have known it, but he was neatly presupposing the sweeping fear that eventually gripped the U.S. in the wake of 9/11.

No. 8. “On an Island”
David Gilmour, On an Island (2006)

Gilmour’s waltzing title track was based on a twilit memory from the island of Kastelorizo near Greece and featured old collaborators Richard Wright, drummer Andy Newmark (who appeared on The Final Cut) and bassist Guy Pratt (part of the post-Waters touring units). But Graham Nash and David Crosby actually gave “On an Island” its emotional force as they settled in behind Gilmour’s airy vocals. Together, they discover a place that’s very much “halfway to the stars” just before Gilmour’s typically visceral solo. Sensitive orchestrations by Zbigniew Preisner serve as both launching pad and soft landing. When Gilmour returns to the lyric, Crosby and Nash create a cascading counterpoint that only adds to the song’s enchanting embrace.

No. 7. “Smell the Roses”
Roger Waters, Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017)

Waters belatedly resumed his solo career during a time of deep political turmoil. No surprise then that Is This The Life We Really Want? is perhaps his most confrontational album – but, in a surprising turn of events, also his most musically sentimental: “Deja Vu” had already featured a Wall-like orchestral sweep when the hard-eyed “Smell the Roses” arrived with stabbing guitars and a barking dog right out of Animals. (“Bird in a Gale,” found earlier in our list of Top 20 Pink Floyd Solo Songs, would have fit nicely on Wish You Were Here, too.) This tended to give more heft to Waters’ grievances, no matter how familiar. Blame nostalgia for an age when they were all brand new, if so inclined, but it worked.

No. 6. “The Piper’s Call”
David Gilmour, Luck and Strange (2024)

Though he often seems settled into one of them lately, Gilmour always had his feet in two distinct worlds: He’s by turns brooding and contemplative or flinty and eruptive. Gilmour begins here again in the former, with a trickling guitar figure and whispered entreaties to avoid life’s darker temptations. It’s a feel made familiar by Gilmour’s recent solo work. Then, at about the midpoint of “The Piper’s Call,” drummer Steve Gadd’s heartbeat rhythms become more insistent. Conductor Will Gardner begins to build a sweeping sense of anticipation. Seems Gilmour’s other foot is ready to mash down on a guitar pedal. A solo of wit and sudden fury unfolds, putting his entire solo career in perspective.

No. 5. “Watching TV”
Roger Waters, Amused to Death (1992)

This remarkable song arrives within a broader concept – Amused to Death decried the influence of mass media – but like “5:06 AM: Every Strangers’ Eyes” from 1984’s The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, it works as a separate statement. Waters duets with Eagles star Don Henley on a devastating chorus, using the death of a single student as a prism to discuss the 1989 Chinese youth movement against Communism. The result is maybe the most sadly beautiful thing he’s ever attempted.

No. 4. “Short and Sweet”
David Gilmour, David Gilmour (1978)

Co-written by Roy Harper (who later issued his own version), “Short and Sweet” combines the sweetly romantic sound of Gilmour’s voice with a serrated guitar edge. Think of it as a kind of precursor to the more widely known “Run Like Hell” on The Wall – and that’s the story of Gilmour’s debut disc, really. David Gilmour was supposed to assert some measure of independence but his brief reunion here with Bullitt, an early Gilmour group, wouldn’t last. Gilmour quickly folded back into Pink Floyd, and this album – other than the rock-radio deep cut “There’s No Way Out of Here” – became largely forgotten. Gilmour would rejoin Waters at these same Superbear Studios in France to work on The Wall, where Pink Floyd continued its disintegration.

No. 3. “Three Wishes”
Roger Waters, Amused to Death (1992)

In a smart twist, this guy finds a genie in a bottle, and makes his wishes – only to realize that he’d included lofty notions like peace in the Middle East but not something far more personally relevant, like fixing a broken relationship. Sound familiar? The thrice-divorced Waters didn’t just construct one of his best narrative arcs with this introspective triumph, he’d grown comfortable enough in his own skin to skewer even himself.

No. 2. “A Pocketful of Stones”
David Gilmour, On an Island (2006)

An excruciatingly beautiful song, “Pocketful of Stones” connects with the same shattering sense of loss that defined Wish You Were Here but with a contemplative orchestral counterpoint that adds new depths. Gilmour’s most important contribution here is vocally. “Pocketful of Stones” stands as perhaps his most sensitive work ever at the mic. Quietly confidential, strikingly open, Gilmour’s approach to the lyric is the perfect accompaniment to a typically searching solo. Together, they create something simultaneously wonder filled and so very still, a song with this darkness around the edges that couldn’t be less like what we’ve come to expect from him with Pink Floyd, or even as a solo artist.

No. 1. “Picture That”
Roger Waters, Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017)

“Picture That” once again returned to the machine from Wish You Were Here, but this time we find a world inside that’s on the verge of shattering – rather than a heart, as with “Bird in a Gale.” Either way, rest assured that no punches are pulled: “Picture a shithouse with no f—ing drains,” Waters seethes at one point. “Picture a leader with no f—ing brains.” Best of all? Decades after he unceremoniously dumped Richard Wright just before The Wall tour, he finally reintroduces the cerulean keyboard flourishes that always served to balance out Waters’ latest spittle-flying invective. He’d plumb new emotional depths elsewhere on this LP with moments like “Wait for Her” – but “Picture That”? This was vintage Waters vitriol.

Why Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Roger Waters Are Still Fighting

Two major and largely unexpected reunions were recently announced, as both Oasis and Linkin Park will be returning to the stage.

Both reunions have been overwhelmingly celebrated, with the bands’ respective fan bases clamoring for the chance to see their favorite act in concert once again. Still, the return of Oasis and Linkin Park also opens questions surrounding their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame likelihood.

Could momentum from these respective reunions push both bands to induction in 2025? Let’s dive in.

Oasis Reunion Could Revive Hall of Fame Debate

Of the two acts, Oasis is the one who has been previously considered for enshrinement. The band was nominated for the 2024 class, but did not receive the necessary support to earn induction.

Never afraid to court controversy, both Noel and Liam Gallagher have openly expressed their distaste for the Hall.

In 2017, Noel refuted the suggestion his band should be inducted, saying: “I know what it is. I know what it entails, and it won’t be fucking happening, OK?’”

Likewise, Liam rejected any idea of Oasis in the Hall. “Fuck the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame its full of BUMBACLARTS,” the singer tweeted in 2024. In a separate discussion around the same time, the frontman described the Hall as “mentally disturbed.”

READ MORE: Five Reasons Oasis Should Be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

So why should anything have changed now that Oasis have gotten back together? Well, for starters, it’s clear that both Gallaghers have a history of changing their minds. After all, Noel and Liam insisted they’d never reunite, yet here we are. And while Oasis has a history of rebelling at awards shows – in 2010 Liam infamously threw his BRIT Award in the crowd after the band’s 1995 LP (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? was named the best album of the last 30 years – the Gallaghers do enjoy celebrating their own greatness. With a new harmonious outlook, it seems likely the brothers would reconsider their stance on the Hall of Fame if elected.

Watch Oasis Performing ‘Wonderwall’ in 1996

On the flip side, the Hall has undoubtedly taken notice of the excitement surrounding Oasis’ reunion. The band’s U.K. ticket sales caused a Taylor Swift-like meltdown at Ticketmaster, and there’s already substantial anticipation for a U.S. tour leg. When Oasis appeared on the 2024 ballot, some argued the group’s commercial peak was too short to be worthy. Considering the worldwide enthusiasm generated by their reconciliation, such criticisms now feel invalid. Oasis’ staying power and legacy is front-page news once more. It seems impossible for the Hall to ignore.

Will Linkin Park Be Elected in First Year of Eligibility?

In 2025, Linkin Park will become eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the first time. While classic rock purists will undoubtedly scoff at the suggestion that a band who debuted in 2000 could get inducted before such legendary acts as Styx, Iron Maiden or Motorhead (among many others), Linkin Park’s resume is downright daunting.

With more than 100 million albums sold, the band ranks among the most commercially successful acts of the 21st Century. Their debut and sophomore LPs, Hybrid Theory (2000) and Meteora (2003), each sold more than 10 million copies. We cannot find evidence of another rock band matching that achievement.

READ MORE: These Are the Only 33 Classic Rock Albums to hit No. 1 Since 2000

Like Nirvana and Pearl Jam less than a decade before them, Linkin Park led a massive musical movement. For as much as people like to decry the early 2000s rap-rock era, there’s no denying its complete cultural dominance at the time. Tracks like “In the End,” “Crawling” and “One Step Closer” were ubiquitous radio hits. Linkin Park was all over MTV, their posters plastered in bedrooms across the world, and they even memorably shared the stage with Paul McCartney and Jay-Z at the 2006 Grammys, combining “Numb/Encore” with the Beatles‘ “Yesterday.”

Watch Linkin Park, Jay-Z and Paul McCartney Perform at the 2006 Grammys

After the tragic 2017 death of Chester Bennington – and a star-studded tribute concert that followed – Linkin Park appeared to be done for good. Now, the band’s return with singer Emily Armstrong has ignited their fan base once more. With a new album and fall tour dates on the way, Linkin Park is once again one of the most talked-about acts in music.

We’ve seen the Hall gleefully jump on hype trains in the past – see Kate Bush’s induction following her Stranger Things bump, or Foreigner finally earning induction on the wave of a viral campaign. The institution clearly knows that timing is everything, and welcoming Oasis and Linkin Park in 2025 would capitalize on their reunion hysteria.

When it comes to rock ‘n’ roll, many layers make up the workings of the music. From its earliest days when country and R&B converged for a new, wilder hybrid to its evolution over the decades including punk, metal and roots, there’s never been just one single shade to rock ‘n’ roll.

But it’s all part of the natural progression. The blues-based rockers of the ’60s slowly gave way to heavier music mid-decade; bands such as Yardbirds, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience laid the foundations for a new music that would dominate much of the ’70s’: hard rock.

As you will see in the below list of the Top 35 Hard Rock Albums of the ’70s, even this singular subgenre has its offshoots, and it’s not quick to be defined. (Our criteria? We know it when we hear it.) From leftover pieces of the previous decade to the birth of heavy metal, hard rock music has always had more textures to it than it lets on. Finding a line between the Who‘s stately rock operas and AC/DC‘s bad-boy boogie isn’t always easy, but dig deep enough, and a pattern will begin to reveal itself.

READ MORE: Top 40 Soft-Rock Songs

Familiar names show up often, more than just one or two times, in the Top 35 Hard Rock Albums of the ’70s, which were chosen by the UCR staff. Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Black Sabbath place several records in the upper half; there are even some surprises among the candidates.

Yet they all have one thing in common: the outlining structure of rock ‘n’ roll amplified through the sheer force of their music and, especially, the guitars at the center of much of it. For better or worse, hard rock turned into something else during the following decades. But here, in its ’70s glory, there was rarely music as exciting and significant to the genre’s progress.

Scotti Hill insists Skid Row won’t reunite with former singer Sebastian Bach, despite calls from fans to do so.

The band’s most recent vocalist, Erik Gronwall, left the group in March to focus on his health. Halestorm‘s Lzzy Hale filled in for a handful of shows, but Skid Row has yet to find a permanent replacement.

With the position open, many fans have clamored for Bach’s return. The singer fronted Skid Row from 1987 to 1996, the most commercially successful period of the band’s history. Despite this, Hill says there’s no chance a reunion will happen.

“We did great things in the past, but this is about way more than a band or music,” the guitarist explained during an appearance on the Appetite for Distortion podcast. “‘Do it for the fans.’ No, no. I’m not going to put my good life and well-being and peace, I’m not gonna sacrifice that for the fans. That’s not what I do. And anybody that calls himself a fan wouldn’t ask the band to put themselves through something they don’t want to do. But people just want what they want. They just want what they want. They want that band back with that guy. They still want Bon Scott back in AC/DC. I mean, come on.”

READ MORE: Forgotten Frontmen: 27 Lead Singer Fans Don’t Remember

Bach has been estranged from Skid Row since ’96, but has recently expressed interest in a return. The feeling has not been reciprocated.

“I don’t want to have food poisoning every day of the week,” Hill declared, explaining what a reunion with Bach would feel like. “That’s all. It’s toxic.”

“If you don’t like Skid Row without that singer, you don’t have to listen,” the guitarist added. “And on the flip side of that, if you love that singer, if you love both of us, then go see him, go see him.”

‘I Don’t Want to Be in the Room With Somebody That I Don’t Like’

Hill conceded that fans are “never gonna stop asking” about a reunion with Bach, yet he insisted outside pressure won’t change his mind.

“It’s just a simple quality-of-life issue,” the guitarist noted. “People are like, ‘Just put your differences aside and do it.’ Well, I don’t want to do it. There are no differences. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to be in the room with somebody that I don’t like.”

In an apparent response to Hill’s statements, Bach posted a picture on social media with the caption “photo of actual last time in a room together.” The image shows the happy rockers alongside their respective families.

Skid Row Searching for New Singer

According to Hill, Skid Row’s search for a new singer is ongoing.

“We are looking at some people. We’ve got a nice list of people that we’re gonna sit down with,” he revealed. “A lot of people are getting in touch with us and some of them are really good. Some of them are not really good. But with YouTube and Instagram and such, you can go out and find people quite easily. It wasn’t like the old days where you had to put an ad in every music paper in the country and word of mouth and all that stuff, pre-Internet. It’s much easier now.”

Assuming they don’t go back to Bach — or any of their previous frontmen — the band’s next singer will be the seventh in Skid Row’s history.

When Rival Sons released their fourth album, 2014’s Great Western Valkyrie, they had navigated past a crossroads as a group. Founding bassist Robin Everhart left the ranks the prior year, citing a need to get away from the “road warrior” lifestyle.

The California hard rockers decided to carry on and though singer Jay Buchanan admits there were feelings of uncertainty, they ultimately figured it out. “[Robin’s departure] caused us to look at it and go, “We’re going to keep going, but we’re going to change a little bit now,” he tells UCR. “I think we were really swinging for the fences to try and push ourselves in a new direction.”

Road work with Aerosmith, Deep Purple — and a stint as the sole opener on Black Sabbath’s final tour helped to strengthen the band’s resolve. A decade later, they’re heading out  with Clutch and Fu Manchu for the Two Headed Beast tour, which begins tonight (Sept. 5) in Brooklyn, New York.

Buchanan joined Ultimate Classic Rock Nights host Matt Wardlaw to discuss the legacy of Great Western Valkyrie and more.

The band is marking the 10th anniversary of its fourth studio album, Great Western Valkyrie. How do you look back on that record now?
It’s interesting, because you don’t really tend to look back. But when you have an anniversary like this, it places it ten years behind you. All of these songs, they’re part of our dialogue. They’re part of our collection, when we’re making set lists. Most of these songs from the Great Western Valkyrie record, they’re very much part of the now that we’re living. We have nine records, right? So when we’re putting our set lists together, a lot of these songs from [that record] or any of the other albums too, they’re part of the current dialogue. Like, they never go, “Oh, that was way back when.” You know, a song’s got two different lives. It’s got the life that it lived very briefly when it was written and recorded. That’s just this tiny little flashpoint on its timeline. And then the real life is how that song lives on the road, night after night — and the legs that it grows. All of the improvisation and what it incites on a nightly basis.

So all of those songs have been living with us and that’s been part of my conversation every night. Looking back is introspection. But it’s great to look back and think about recording that record and where we were as a band. Our founding bass player, Robin Everhart, had just quit and we had to figure out what we were going to do. We got our buddy Dave Beste on bass, who is still in the band. But that was [Dave’s] first album and we weren’t exactly sure [how things were going to work out]. You know, losing a member when you’re a four-piece, especially a bass player and musician as formidable as Robin is, it caused us to look at it and go, “We’re going to keep going, but we’re going to change a little bit now.” Because when 25% of the band is fresh blood, I think we were really swinging for the fences to try and push ourselves in a new direction. I really think we achieved that. Great Western Valkyrie, I think, is a really healthy turning point for the band.

Listen to Rival Sons’ ‘Where I’ve Been’

I was revisiting the album today and “Where I’ve Been” is still stunning. What’s the history behind that song?
I had started that one as a country waltz that was a lot quicker. But it stuck with me for a couple of years. It was just the idea, “How could you love me/ When you know where I’ve been.” People that live by the code of forgiveness, they receive that gift in return. The gift of forgiveness when they dole it out, because they’re making it clear that they refuse to carry the bad blood. They refuse to carry the remnants of the wound or the trauma of an action. So there’s the forgiven and the forgiving. It’s equal parts. It’s a mutually beneficial thing, you know? I think that people can tend to think that they can’t dole out forgiveness. They can’t participate in that because they’re so wounded by something — or they’re just maybe filled with judgment and indignation.

But when you refuse to forgive people for whatever it is that they had to go through or whatever it is that they did…..what do they say, anger, it poisons the vessel. As much as you can let go of it, you’ve got to let go of it. So I’d held onto that for a little bit. While we were in the studio, I knew I wanted to [record] a ballad. I’d grabbed our producer, Dave Cobb’s 1976 Martin 00-18C. It’s like a gut-string [guitar], it’s nice and beat-up. I’ve written a lot of songs on that guitar. I wrote “Jordan” on that guitar and I’ve written quite a few [other ones]. I just picked that guitar up and started writing it and as soon as I had the chorus and the verse together, I brought it to Scott [Holiday] and said, “What do you think about this?” He said, “Hey, I’ve got this turnaround.” That really beautiful almost-music box motif that the song starts with, it just worked perfectly. I love the way that song turned out.

READ MORE: 11 Bands Leading the Classic Rock Revival

There were two new Rival Sons albums last year, Darkfighter and Lightbringer. It must have been Interesting figuring out how to present those records.
The two albums began as one collection. It was a large undertaking for us, just to make those records. It was written and recorded through the pandemic and 2022 and we finally finished it. It was close to two years in the making and we’d never intended for it to be that long. With the lockdown and everything, we had that time. We dug really, really deep and by the time all of the dust was settling, we had entrenched ourselves so deeply that we couldn’t just exit. We couldn’t just jump off and be like, “Okay, the album is done.” It was more like, we got down in the mine deep enough where we wanted to mine all of the gold that was down there. We ended up making it a larger collection.

When we finished, the decision was pretty easy. Scott and I were discussing it and realized, “This is a larger collection.” We didn’t want to make a bloated album that was too terribly indulgent and long. It would have been an hour and a half or whatever. That’s just so taxing and so what we decided to do was to partition it into two records and release [them both] in one year. In hindsight, that’s also very bloated and self-indulgent. [Laughs] But releasing those two records, I think that really, they’re just companions. They’re two installments to one story and I think it’s some of the best work that we’ve done, like, far and above. It’s the most ambitious collection so far.

Listen to Rival Sons’ ‘Darkfighter’

What are some of the choice memories you have from touring with Aerosmith?
I’m friends with Brad [Whitford] and I’ve hung out with him quite a few times as well as his sons — including Graham. Graham’s band, Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown, that’s how I know Brad. He’s just a great dude. But going out on the road and playing shows with Aerosmith, I can’t get too far into it, but I remember the first time when I met Steven [Tyler]. Steven has one of the most iconic rock voices, period. I’m not talking about all of the reality television over the last 10 years or whatever. It’s not that. It’s just the man and his voice. It’s his voice that’s unmistakable. For me, when I was a little kid, I’d play in coffeeshops and things like hat. I’d play “Dream On,’ because it’s just a great song that you can sit and play on an acoustic guitar and everybody loves that song. I’d do that, being 14 and 15 years old.

Finally, the first time when we played with them, I think it was in Copenhagen, Denmark. Steven pulled me aside and talked to me for a couple of minutes. I don’t want to repeat what he said to me, because I don’t think it would be in good taste, but he gave me some of the highest praise I’ve ever received from anyone, about what I do artistically. It just melted me. For him to pull me aside and take the time and talk to me in this fashion, I’ll never forget it, the things that he said to me. That was so surreal to have that conversation with him. Later that night, after we had opened for them, I went out into the pit, right on the side of the big catwalk and everything that they had.

I was out there past security where their touring photographer, Zack Whitford was out there shooting. He was like, “Hey man, come out here.” So I was just below them and Steven was at the piano. They’re playing “Dream On” and I was just transported. I’d had that heavy conversation with Steven like three hours before then. Then, I went on stage and played to their audience and now here I am 10 feet from these guys. He’s singing the song that I played when I was a kid. It was so cathartic. I can speak to this. If he doesn’t feel comfortable singing and touring anymore, great. You’ve already given enough. Whatever comes now is one thing, but quality of life comes first. It’s tough to imagine not hearing Steven Tyler sing again, but you never know what the future holds. People do heal up and things change. But even if Aerosmith never did play [again], the legacy stands.

READ MORE: Aerosmith’s 10 Most Memorable Concerts

25 of the Coolest Tour Pairings in Rock History

There is no more devastating loss for a band than the death of a lead singer.

Fans, by and large, recognize a group based on the unique sound of the frontman’s vocals. Robbing a band of their voice takes away their most identifiable ingredient.

It’s understandable, then, that many acts have opted to simply break up following the tragedy of losing a singer. Others, most notably the Grateful Dead and Joy Division, opted to evolve into different bands (Dead & Company and New Order, respectively).

READ MORE: 30 Rockers Who Died Before 30

Still, what about those groups who decide to forge forward and continue with a new lead singer? While rarer, there are certainly many instances in rock history of bands doing just that.

Below, we’ve highlighted 10 Famous Bands That Continued After a Lead Singer’s Death. The list is impressive and features a variety of acts, including Grammy winners, Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, era-defining groups and multi-platinum stars.

In many cases — like those of the Doors and Queen — these bands were able to continue building upon a legacy they’d already begun writing with their late vocalist. Others managed to even take their career to new heights following the difficult transition to a new lead singer. Such was the case for AC/DC, who soldiered forth after the sudden death of Bon Scott.

“For us, it was like losing a member of your family,” Angus Young recalled of the trying situation. “It’s very, very difficult to go through something like that. Not only is it your friend, it’s also somebody you’ve been working with all that time.”

These acts weathered the storm and found a way to keep going.

10 Famous Bands That Continued After the Lead Singer’s Death

Steve Lukather has played a loaned guitar that belonged to Jeff Beck just weeks after John Mayer appeared on stage with the same signature white Fender Stratocaster. It’s easy to spot because of the distinctive reverse headstock.

Mayer borrowed the instrument for Dead and Company‘s residency shows in June at the Sphere. Fans initially theorized that the Strat was a custom build, but Joe Bonamassa later confirmed that the guitar was authentic. Lukather played the same Stratocaster over the weekend during Toto‘s homecoming at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

“I’ve got something special to do tonight,” Lukather said on stage. “If you’re wondering, I normally don’t play a white Stratocaster. … This is a special one. This was brought from England. This is Jeff Beck’s guitar.”

READ MORE: Top 10 Jeff Beck Songs

After the crowd’s applause, Lukather also cleared up the mystery behind these guitar loans while describing how the Beck project might continue to grow.

When Did Jeff Beck Get His White Strat?

“His lovely wife Sandra and his closest friend and guitar tech … brought this out, and they’ve been bringing it out to guitar players to put a little love on it,” Lukather added. “They asked a certain amount of guitar players, but they’re just getting started. They asked Billy Gibbons, John Mayer and me – and they’ve probably got a long list.”

Lukather then led Toto through a seven-minute cover of Jimi Hendrix‘s “Little Wing.” “I wish this would make me sound like Jeff Beck,” he jokingly added, “but it won’t.”

Beck’s Strat was built around 2014 by the Fender Custom Shop and was his main late-career guitar. He died in early 2023.

Why Steve Lukather’s Autobiography Took the High Road

Michael Anthony is the last member of Van Halen‘s early classic lineup to still be actively touring – a fact that is both shocking and sobering for the bassist

“I don’t really think about it consciously that I’m the only person,” Anthony admitted during a recent conversation with Sirius XM’s Eddie Trunk, noting that he didn’t even realize the situation until a friend pointed it out. “I’m the only one from the original band left out here doing this. And I thought, ‘Whoa, that’s a trip.’ I never thought about it.”

As Anthony noted, Eddie Van Halen’s death in 2020 “closed the whole deal on the original Van Halen or any incarnation of Van Halen.”

“I always thought that it would have been either him and Alex or whatever that would have carried on after everybody was gone or everyone broke up or everyone stopped getting along,” the bassist admitted. “And here I am, I’m the guy.”

READ MORE: The Best Song From Every Van Halen Album

By all accounts, Van Halen’s other surviving original members are done with touring. Singer David Lee Roth last performed in 2020. He announced his retirement in 2022, and a farewell residency in Las Vegas was canceled before ever getting underway. Meanwhile, drummer Alex Van Halen has remained reclusive since his brother’s death, and recently sold the majority of his instruments and gear.

“He was selling everything right down to the last drumstick,” Anthony noted. “Now that really kind of surprised me, but maybe that’s his way of just, that’s going to be his closure on the whole thing with doing that and the book now.”

Michael Anthony Has Tried to Reconnect With Alex Van Halen

Speaking of Alex, Anthony admitted he’s tried to get in contact with his former bandmate, to no avail.

“I tried to get ahold of him on his birthday in May,” the bassist recalled. “I did not hear back from him. So, I don’t know. I didn’t want to push it or keep trying to get ahold of him or whatever.”

READ MORE: Top 10 Van Halen Michael Anthony Songs

Anthony, who is on the road with Sammy Hagar on the Van Halen-focused Best of All Worlds Tour, added that the Red Rocker also tried to reach out to Alex.

“Obviously Sammy and I were, we’re both hoping that Alex at some point might get in touch with us,” the rocker explained. “Sammy’s been trying to get ahold of Alex.”

One of the most ubiquitous sporting-event anthems in rock history, Queen‘s “We Will Rock You” has received another facelift courtesy of rapper Megan Thee Stallion in Pepsi’s new Gladiator-themed NFL commercial.

You can watch the full three-minute ad below.

After a brief conversation between actors Jake Lacy and Lamorne Morris, the lid of a Pepsi can transforms into a coliseum where gladiatorial games are underway. The crowd stomps and claps to the beat of “We Will Rock You” as the gladiators — NFL stars Travis Kelce, Josh Allen, Derrick Henry and Justin Jefferson — enter the arena.

Megan Thee Stallion then calls for the gates to be opened, releasing a pair of tigers into the arena. The Houston star raps over the Queen track, delivering bars like: “Win, that’s all that we do / Everybody’s watchin’ and they all came for you / Hard work, dedication, an understatement / We fill up arenas that’ll rock the whole nation.” At the end of the commercial, the sand on the floor of the arena gets blown away to reveal a football field.

READ MORE: Brian May’s Battle for ‘We Will Rock You’

Does This ‘Gladiator’-Themed Pepsi Ad Look Familiar? Here’s Why

Pepsi’s new NFL commercial is a remake of the soda company’s 2004 ad, which featured Britney Spears, Beyonce and Pink putting their spin on “We Will Rock You.” (The full ad never aired in America and didn’t become a pop-culture phenomenon until fans circulated it online years later.) That commercial was based on the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, and the new version arrives ahead of Gladiator II, which is slated for a November release.

Neil Young is getting back on the road, one step at a time. He’s now scheduled to perform two dates with the band he’s dubbed the Chrome Hearts on Sept. 23 and 24 at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York.

At those shows, Young will perform with members of Promise of the Real: multi-instrumentalist Micah Nelson (son of Willie Nelson), plus drummer Anthony Logerfo and bassist Corey McCormick.

Presales start today for Neil Young Archives subscribers, followed by a general sale on Sept. 7.

Other Concert Dates for Neil Young

Young has other performance plans on the horizon. On Sept. 21, he’ll appear at Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid festival in Saratoga Springs, New York. Not long after his Port Chester shows, he’ll play a benefit concert on Oct. 5 in Lakes Hughes, California with Stephen Stills, his former bandmate in Buffalo Springfield and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

All four of these concerts come after the cancellation of Young’s summer tour with Crazy Horse, which began in April but ultimately was scratched midway through.

READ MORE: Neil Young Archives Albums Ranked Worst to Best

“A couple of us really hit a wall,” Young recently explained to the subscribers of his Neil Young Archives website (via Rolling Stone). “I just woke up one morning on the bus and I said, ‘I can’t do this; I gotta stop.’ I felt sick when I thought of going onstage. My body was telling me, ‘You gotta stop.’ And so I listened to my body.”

According to Young, plans are being made for more small concerts like Port Chester. “They’re mostly theaters that I played before – little theaters,” he continued. “I can play a little bit of acoustic and then have the band come out and play.”

Pete Townshend has collaborated with his wife and fellow composer Rachel Fuller for a new album, The Seeker, a “musical reinvention” of Hermann Hesse’s 1922 novel, Siddhartha.

According to the project’s website, the double album “follows the quest of the young Siddhartha as he embarks on a journey of self-discovery and enlightenment during the time of the Gautama Buddha.” It comes accompanied with an illustrated novel, authored by Fuller, narrated by Christopher Plummer and with artwork by Emilia Wharfe.

Recorded at Angel Studios in London, The Seeker stars Townshend as the Ferryman, South African multimedia artist Nakhane as Siddhartha, Elton John as Kamaswami, Emeli Sande as the River, Bollywood star Sunidhi Chauhan as Kamala, Layton Williams as Siddhartha’s son, Tyrone Huntley as Govinda and Biddu as Siddhartha’s father. It also features the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and choir. Both the album and novel will be released on Nov. 7, one day after members of the cast will perform the music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and choir at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

READ MORE: Pete Townshend Albums Ranked Worst to Best

Though no track listing has been revealed, the aforementioned website promises “new orchestral arrangements of some recognizable Who songs, but also original solo songs written by Pete in 1976 for a friend’s amateur stage play of Siddhartha.”

“The creation and realization of The Seeker in musical and book form has been part of my own spiritual journey,” Fuller said in an earlier statement. “This collaboration with the musical artists, orchestra, choir, the illustrator, Emilia Wharfe and the beloved Christopher Plummer has created something truly magical – far exceeding my original vision for the piece. I feel truly blessed to be a part of it and hope that the story resonates with listeners and readers in today’s world, where we need the energy of love, peace and hope more than ever. Music and art has been and forever will be universal.”

Sting has released a new single, “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart),” with his latest power trio.

The track features guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas, and arrives before the group’s upcoming Sting 3.0 North American tour, which starts in Detroit on Sept. 17.

You can watch the video for “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)” below.

The song takes a decidedly tougher stance than many of Sting’s recent songs, adapting the classic Bo Diddley beat and featuring an appealingly raspy vocal take from the singer.

READ MORE: Top 40 Soft-Rock Songs

“I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart),” on which Sting plays bass and guitar, is the former Police frontman’s first new music since his 2021 album The Bridge.

Where Is Sting Playing in 2024?

Sting launched his Sting 3.0 tour in May in Dresden, Germany. The set list included solo favorites (“Fields of Gold,” “Fortress Around Your Heart”) and Police classics (“Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne”).

The trio starts its North American leg of the tour on Sept. 17 with two consecutive nights at the Fillmore Detroit. From there, the group winds through cities such as Toronto, Boston, Atlanta and Chicago before wrapping up with two dates at Los Angeles’ Wiltern.

You can see the full itinerary below.

While Sting has not announced a new album to accompany “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart),” a box set centered on the Police’s final album, 1983’s Synchronicity, was recently released. The six-CD set documents the making of the Grammy-winning album through demos, alternate versions and live songs.

Sting 3.0 2024 North American Tour
Sept. 17 – Detroit, MI – Fillmore Detroit
Sept. 18 – Detroit, MI – Fillmore Detroit
Sept. 20 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall
Sept. 21 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall
Sept. 30 – Philadelphia, PA – The Met
Oct. 01 – Philadelphia, PA – The Met
Oct. 04 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall @ Fenway Park
Oct. 07 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
Oct. 09 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
Oct. 10 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
Oct. 12 – Port Chester, NY – The Capitol Theatre
Oct. 15 – Washington, DC – MGM National Harbor
Oct. 20 – Miami, FL – Fillmore Miami Beach
Oct. 22 – Atlanta, GA – Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre (CEPAC)
Oct. 28 – Chicago, IL – Auditorium Theatre
Oct. 29 – Chicago, IL – Auditorium Theatre
Nov. 06 – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic
Nov. 07 – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic
Nov. 12 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern
Nov. 13 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern

Sammy Hagar has explained why Kenny Aronoff took over for Jason Bonham on the Red Rocker’s Best of All Worlds tour.

He said Bonham had tried to keep working after his mother suffered a stroke, but in the end realized he had to visit her in a U.K. hospital.

And the singer added that Aronoff had done a great job in covering for Bonham, joking that he was actually performing the Van Halen-heavy set list better than Hagar was himself.

READ MORE: Watch Sammy Hagar Fight 114-Degree Heat in Arizona

“His mother had a stroke and went into a coma, and it’s serious,” Hagar told KSHE 95 in a new interview (below). “The whole family went over there, and he held out for two or three days. [Then] he says, ‘I gotta go; I gotta go.’ I said, ‘You go – go.’

“So we told Kenny; he had about 24-hour notice, and he came in [for] the first night… at six in the morning. We played that night in Cincinnati, and he did a 90-percent perfect show. I swear to you, I make more mistakes every night than he did! So that’s a big hats-off to this guy.”

Sammy Hagar Hails Kenny Aronoff’s attitude

With the North American dates now complete, Hagar is set to tour Japan with Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani and Ray Thistlethwayte. “If Jason is still with his mom, he’s gotta be there till she either comes through or… whatever,” Hagar said, admitting he shouldn’t speculate. “But he’s got a medical emergency with his mother. You don’t ignore that.”

Returning to Aronoff – who previously stood in for Chad Smith in Chickenfoot, which also featured Hagar, Anthony and Satriani – the vocalist said: “We got Kenny, thank God. And if we have to go to Japan with him, we’ll go to Japan. I just love playing with him… he’s so enthusiastic. He’s the most enthusiastic guy – ‘Oh man, we’re gonna kill it! ‘Oh, don’t worry about me!’ He’s like, foaming at the mouth. He’s crazy!”

Watch Sammy Hagar’s Interview

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter recalled how he helped make Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” a hit using a $35 guitar.

And the Steely Dan co-founder, who went on to work with the Doobie Brothers, said he nearly hadn’t bothered attending the session for Summer’s 1979 album Bad Girls.

The single was Summer’s second of four No. 1 hits. It opened her music to new listeners with a more rock-oriented sound as she crossed over from disco music under the auspices of Italian producer Giorgio Moroder.

READ MORE: The Best Songs of 1979

“It almost didn’t happen,” Baxter told Vertex Effects in a recent interview (below). “My assistant forgot to tell me that Giorgio had called. I saw it on a message pad. So I called him back; I said, ‘What kind of music is it?’”

On being told it was disco, the guitarist’s response was muted, because he and his musical partner Jay Graydon had played a lot of sessions in the genre. “[N]ot to be snotty about it – but Jay and I [would] get together on a Monday and decide what riff we’re gonna play, for the whole week!” he explained. “To us it was all the same.”

So he told Moroder: “There’s a million guitar players who can do this. If you want something different, then I’m happy to do it. But I’d like to have some space.” The producer’s reply was: “Play whatever you want.”

The next issue was that Baxter was moving into a new house at the time, meaning he didn’t have access to his guitars. He went down to the nearby Hollywood branch of Guitar Center and spoke to the manager. “I said, ‘Paul, I need a guitar – now!’ So he laughed [and] pointed to a box in the middle of the store. The box said, ‘Buy me – $25.’ It had a bunch of weird guitars in it.”

Did ‘Skunk’ Baxter Know ‘Hot Stuff’ Was a Hit?

For some reason he was drawn to an instrument that didn’t even have matching tuning pegs. “I picked it up, plugged it in, played it – ‘Okay, fine.’ I gave him $35. Bought a six-pack of Bud, went down to Rusk studios. And they played me the song… I turned everything up to 10, plugged the guitar in and said, ‘Roll tape.’ That was it – one take.”

Asked if he’d known how successful “Hot Stuff” would be, Baxter allowed: “I don’t think I had any foresight… After it was over, I thought, ‘Wow, this is different.’ And I said to Giorgio, ‘I think I know what you wanted to do.’ … [H]e said, ‘Absolutely.’”

He reflected: “All we can do is sew the body back up and see what happens!”

Listen to Donna Summer Perform ‘Hot Stuff’

Watch Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter’s Vertex Effects Interview

Scorpions guitarist Matthias Jabs has detailed the injury that forced his band to cancel all of their September tour dates.

“Dear fans and friends, as you might have heard already, I had a bad accident in my rented summer house,” the rocker explained in a social media post. “I fell down the stairs with 16 steps and broke my left pinky twice and I also broke my left heel. I had surgeries on both, hand and foot, by the best specialists I could find in Hamburg. Now it is time to heal and start the physical rehabilitation for a speedy recovery.”

“I will try everything to be able to play guitar again on stage as soon as possible,” the guitarist continued. “I am sorry to tell you, that the shows in September won’t be happening, but I am very optimistic that we will see us again very soon. Rock n Roll forever, Yours Matthias.”

At present, no dates are listed on the Scorpions website beyond their now canceled September shows.

 

Statement From Scorpions

In a separate statement, released prior to Jabs’, Scorpions announced the cancelation of five shows in their home country of Germany. The impacted dates were the last scheduled stops on the band’s Love at First Sting 40th anniversary tour.

The statement reads:

We deeply regret, especially Matthias Jabs, that due to the accident of our friend and SCORPIONS lead guitarist, the five concerts on our German tour cannot take place in September as planned and we will work closely with the tour organizer to announce new information as soon as possible. We kindly ask for your understanding from all our fans, all the Rock Believers in Germany who were looking forward to the shows with us.

READ MORE: Top 100 ’80s Rock Albums

Scorpions’ Canceled Dates

The five affected tour dates, all in Germany, fall between Sept. 11 and 20.

Sept. 11 – Nuremberg, Germany @ Arena Nurnberger Versicherung
Sept. 13 – Hamburg, Germany @ Barclays Arena
Sept. 15 – Leipzig, Germany @ Quarterback Immobilien Arena
Sept. 18 – Cologne, Germany @ LANXESS Arena
Sept. 20 – Frankfurt, Germany @ Festhalle

Scorpions’ most recent show, which took place on Aug. 1, was at Germany’s Wacken Open Air Festival. They played 18 songs and even welcomed fellow German icon Doro Pesch onstage during “Big City Nights.”

Brian May has suffered a minor stroke that briefly left him unable to move his left arm.

The Queen guitarist says he hasn’t discussed the emergency because he didn’t want any public attention. He added that he was making a full recovery while observing doctors’ orders to do nothing but rest.

“The good news is that I can play guitar after the events of the last few days,” May, 77, said in the social media video below. “I say this because it was in some doubt, because [a] little health hiccup… happened about a week ago – what they called it was a minor stroke.”

READ MORE: Top 10 Brian May Queen Songs

He continued: “All of a sudden, out of the blue, I didn’t have any control over this arm. So it was a little scary, I have to say.” He thanked the staff at the hospital he’d attended, recalling the experience of “blue lights flashing, the lot” as “very exciting.”

May had kept quiet, he explained, because “I didn’t want anything surrounding it. I really don’t want sympathy – please don’t do that, because it’ll clutter up my inbox, and I hate that.”

He added: “I’m okay and doing what I’m told, which is basically nothing. I’m grounded; I’m not allowed to go out, drive, get on a plane; I’m not allowed to raise the heart rate too high. But I am good.”

Last month May appeared on BBC TV in the U.K. to host a documentary titled Brian May: The Badgers, The Farmers And Me, in which he continued his campaign against badger culling. The animals are destroyed in a bid to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis – but May has long argued that there’s no need for the extreme response, and aimed to prove it on the show, where he worked with a farmer to eradicate the disease without harming any badgers.

Watch Brian May’s Health Update

Neil Young is slowly but surely putting together another run of concerts after abruptly canceling a tour with Crazy Horse.

Just weeks after announcing an appearance at 2024’s Farm Aid, Young has confirmed a shared date with Stephen Stills, his former bandmate in Buffalo Springfield and then Crosby Stills Nash and Young. They’ll appear together at the charity Harvest Moon concert on Oct. 5 at the Painted Turtle Camp in Lakes Hughes, California. Proceeds benefit the camp and the Bridge School.

“This event not only brings together amazing musicians and families but also raises vital funds for two organizations committed to changing lives,” April Tani, executive director of the Painted Turtle, said in an official statement. “It’s a day of music, fun, and philanthropy — what could be better?”

READ MORE: Top 10 Neil Young Songs

In the meantime, Young has also hinted at mounting a series of theater shows, but this time with guitarist Micah Nelson, bassist Corey McCormic and drummer Anthony Logerfo rather than Crazy Horse. “I can play a little bit of acoustic, and then have the band come out and play,” Young said. “They won’t be marathons. They won’t be two hours and 10 minutes of blasting rock ‘n’ roll like it was with Crazy Horse.”

Young’s tour with Crazy Horse began in April before grinding to a halt in June. Young cited health issues as dates scheduled for July through September were called off. Farm Aid will be held on Sept. 21 in Saratoga Springs, New York. Also appearing are  Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews, Mavis Staples, Nathaniel Rateliff and Lukas Nelson, among others.

This will be the second Harvest Moon charity concert, following the 2019 edition where Young played a 15-song acoustic set that concluded with an all-star rendition of the title track from 1992’s Harvest Moon. Young also previously performed benefit shows for the Bridge School from 1986 to 2016 at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.

The Best Crosby Stills Nash and Young Fight Stories

It took more than a year – and one extraordinarily drastic legal measure – but the Guess Who has settled an argument over control of the band.

Classic-era frontman Burton Cummings and co-founding guitarist Randy Bachman filed suit in 2023 against original members Jim Kale and Garry Peterson over false advertising claims. Kale and Peterson had continued to tour as the Guess Who even after Bachman and then Cummings departed – giving the impression that fans would see the creators of such hits as “American Woman,” “No Time,” “These Eyes” and “Undun.” Instead, Bachman and Cummings described the act as a “cover band.”

Cummings then took things one step further, terminating the performing rights for those hits. No one, including the touring edition of the Guess Who, would be allowed to sing their songs – and royalty payments from concerts, TV and movie placements and radio plays abruptly stopped. The move was both unprecedented and effective.

READ MORE: How the Guess Who Carried on After Randy Bachman

“It was painful, but we’d have done it indefinitely just to stop that fake band from taking over our history,” Cummings tells Rolling Stone. “They took over streaming sites; they were using old photos of me and Randy. It gets me going thinking about it, but that’s over. It’s a painful success. It cost a lot of money with lawyers and I gave up a lot of publishing money, but we finally won this terrible battle.”

Details of this new settlement were not released, but Cummings and Bachman confirm that trademark details have been worked out with Peterson after hours of mediation in Los Angeles. They both expressed relief that this ugly standoff was over. Cummings is even talking about touring again.

“If there is a group out there calling themselves the Guess Who, it’s going to have the lead singer who wrote the songs and the guitarist who made the riffs,” he said. “It’s going to have Bachman and Cummings in it. I say ‘if’ because we don’t know. Randy has a lot of bookings and I’ve got solo gigs. What we do know is that Randy and I are happy because there isn’t a fake Guess Who out there anymore.”

Who Owns the Guess Who Trademark?

The Guess Who apparently never filed a trademark for the band name during their turn-of-the-’70s glory years. Kale belatedly secured one in 1986, then began mounting tours as the Guess Who. Peterson rejoined him in the late ’80s, though the rest of the lineup regularly changed. Then Kale retired in 2016 and Peterson began playing more infrequently, leaving the Guess Who without any direct connection to the past.

It was a bridge too far for Cummings. “We’re trying to preserve the history and the legacy of the Guess Who for our fans all over the place who have followed the real band and the real songs,” he said.

What becomes of the group that had been calling themselves the Guess Who is unclear. Their Facebook page has vanished. The band’s official account on X has been scrubbed of all content except a screenshot and link to coverage of this settlement – and an older post promoting their most recent album, 2023’s Plein D’Amour. Cummings said the LP is going to be removed from the Guess Who’s official discography, though Plein D’Amour remains on Spotify.

“I’m not concerned with the other band. Don’t even know who they are. It doesn’t matter to me,” Bachman said. “When you’re a football player, you’re not thinking about who gets traded for you when you get signed by a team. As far as I know, they’ve been earning a living for decades, trading off the Guess Who names and playing the songs that Burton and I wrote, pretending they were us.”

Tom Morello is imploring the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to induct one of its biggest holdouts: Iron Maiden.

The Rage Against the Machine guitarist has long advocated for hard rock and metal — subgenres routinely overlooked by the Rock Hall — and he previously inducted Randy Rhoads in 2021 and Kiss in 2014. (His own band was inducted by Ice-T in 2023.) Now, Morello is setting his sights on the British metal titans, who have been eligible since 2005 and were nominated in 2021 and 2023.

“Mother-flippin’ Maiden, dude! That’s been on the top of my list for a while,” Morello told the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz podcast. “I feel very, very fortunate that they let me into that — I’m not sure how fortunate they feel — but I feel very fortunate that they let me into that room to make my case for the Randy Rhoadses and the Kisses and the Stevie Ray Vaughans, Rush, Judas Priest and MC5 — but Maiden’s next.”

READ MORE: Will Taylor Swift Get Into the Rock Hall Before Iron Maiden?

Iron Maiden Leads Current Rock Hall Fan Vote

Morello is far from alone in his crusade get Iron Maiden into the Rock Hall. As of this week, the band topped the leaderboard at the Hall’s in-person “Voice Your Choice” voting kiosk, besting Blink-182, Styx, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Motley Crue.

One person who’s less excited about the prospect of Iron Maiden’s Rock Hall induction is the band’s own singer, Bruce Dickinson. The frontman previously called the Rock Hall “an utter and complete load of bollocks” that is “run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn’t know rock ‘n’ roll if it hit them in the face.” He claimed he was “really happy we’re not there and I would never want to be there. If we’re ever inducted, I will refuse — they won’t bloody be having my corpse in there.”

“Rock ‘n’ roll music does not belong in a mausoleum in Cleveland,” Dickinson continued. “It’s a living, breathing thing, and if you put it in a museum, then it’s dead. It’s worse than horrible, it’s vulgar.”

On the one hand, it’s cause for celebration that it took Neil Young only four years to release the third volume in his multidisc and career-spanning Archives series after an 11-year break between the first two editions; on the other hand, of the 198 tracks covered on Archives Vol. III (1976-1987)‘s 17 CDs, nearly a third collect material from widely derided ’80s albums such as Trans, Everybody’s Rockin’ and Landing on Water.

However, as the previous two excellent volumes have proven, within the proper context, even the most disparaged records in Young’s catalog can be reevaluated and, in some cases, redeemed. It’s been done before, especially by Young’s closest contemporary regarding the breadth of output and decades-spanning influence, Bob Dylan, whose critically and commercially berated 1970 LP Self Portrait found new relevance in a 2013 Bootleg Series volume.

Paired up with the unreleased 1982 album Johnny’s Island on Archives Vol. III, songs that found a home on Trans – a mostly electronic record with Young feeding his vocals through a vocoder – tell a more pointed picture of where Young was heading at the dawn of the decade. Following Re-ac-tor, a 1981 album made with longtime backing band Crazy Horse and represented here with a selection of songs, Young switched record companies and stepped into a new era with synthesizers replacing guitars.

The next several years found the singer and songwriter and his label at odds; at one point Geffen sued Young for not making and delivering records that were uncharacteristic of his ’70s albums. He eventually retreated to the sanctuary of his original home, Reprise, but Archives Vol. III wraps up before the change. And if discs 12 through 17 – documented by a handful of previously released album tracks, unreleased songs, live versions and the 1987 shelved LP Summer Songs – reach a supposedly fallow point in Young’s timeline, understanding their place in the restlessness that has defined and supported his creativity is more clear now.

READ MORE: Neil Young Archives Albums Ranked

Better is the material leading to the era. Covering Hitchhiker (first issued in 2017), Comes a Time, Rust Never Sleeps and Hawks & Doves, the first 11 discs of Archives Vol. III features a bounty of unreleased tracks, shelved songs, live cuts (including selections from the terrific 1979 Crazy Horse collaboration Live Rust) and entire albums that were never released at the time. The 11 years the box spans, a larger period than either of the previous volumes, includes 15 new songs among the 120-plus tracks that have never been heard before. They’re a welcome addition to one of music’s most fascinating and often complicated discographies.

Archives Vol. III starts where Vol. II left off – there’s even some spillover from Young’s March 1976 shows in London and Tokyo with Crazy Horse; 22 new live tracks from the concerts (a simmering “Cortez the Killer” from London is a highlight) join the 10 found on the earlier set. Live songs comprise a large portion of the box, with previously released tracks from the individual Archives series albums Songs for Judy, High Flyin’ and A Treasure mixed with unreleased onstage cuts covering the 1976-87 period. Of particular note is Young’s 1978 collaboration with Devo, which resulted in a gloriously chaotic nine-and-a-half-minute performance of “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” that turned up in different form in Young’s 1982 film Human Highway.

But the heart of Archives Vol. III, as it has been with the other two volumes, are the previously unavailable studio tracks, best heard here in the fabled shelved albums Oceanside/Countryside, Johnny’s Island and Summer Songs. Recorded in Nashville in 1977, the first was an early stab at Comes at Time, some of its songs ending up on that 1978 album (“Field of Opportunity”), on Rust Never Sleeps (“Sail Away”), on Hawks & Doves (“Lost in Space”) and elsewhere over the years; the Trans-era Johnny’s Island includes a combination of songs reworked later: “Silver & Gold” from the 2000 album of the same name, “Soul of a Woman” on 2015’s live Bluenote Cafe. Summer Songs – which concludes Archives Vol. III – serves as a redemption moment for the occasionally disruptive ’80s, and a sign of the salvation that arrived with 1989’s Freedom, in eight solo acoustic numbers, including “American Dream,” used on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young‘s 1988 reunion album, and a moving version of Freedom‘s “Someday” featuring just Young at the piano. They bode well for the next chapter in this essential series.

Led Zeppelin was together for only a little over a decade, and they have not musically reunited — or at least fully — since their breakup in 1980.

That means there have been a lot of years in which the former members have been releasing solo projects, sometimes entirely on their own and sometimes with famous collaborators. Their output ranges in quantity — Jimmy Page only has one official solo album to his name, while Robert Plant has over 10 of them. John Paul Jones, meanwhile, has often teamed up with other artists, as well as composed a number of film soundtracks.

John Bonham died in 1980 — part of the catalyst for Led Zeppelin’s breakup that year — but he’s also still a part of the below list featuring the Top 20 Led Zeppelin Solo Songs.

20. “Everybody Clap,” Lulu (With John Bonham)
From: 1971 Single

When you are Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, you have friends in high places. In 1971, Gibb and fellow singer-songwriter Billy Lawrie co-wrote a song called “Everybody Clap” for Gibb’s then-wife and Lawrie’s sister, Lulu, to sing. To round out the rhythm section, Gibb called up Jack Bruce of Cream to play bass and Bonham to play drums.

 

19. “Fortune Hunter,” The Firm (With Jimmy Page)
From: Mean Business (1986)

The Firm formed in 1984, featuring singer Paul Rodgers, drummer Chris Slade, bassist Tony Franklin and Page on guitar. Rodgers, for one, knew a thing or two about band breakups having come from Bad Company, but Page’s name really carried some serious wight. “Just to be associated with Led Zeppelin was a big boost, because people would go, ‘Who are these guys?'” Rodgers recalled to Eddie Trunk in 2019. “We weren’t instantly dismissed.” And it turned out that Page got on pretty well with Rodgers songwriting-wise — “Fortune Hunter” is one of several of their co-writes to appear on the Firm’s debut album, Mean Business (1984).

 

18. “When You Fall in Love,” John Paul Jones
From: Scream for Help (1985)

If you’ve never heard Jones take the lead vocal, we would like to direct your attention to “When You Fall in Love,” one of nine tracks he contributed to the soundtrack of Scream for Help, a British horror film directed by Michael Winner. Imagine if Jones had sung some of Led Zeppelin’s songs…

 

17. “Rainbow,” Robert Plant
From: lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar (2014)

Plant has had the most plentiful of all the former Led Zeppelin members’ solo careers. The below track, “Rainbow,” comes from one of his more recent solo albums, lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar. It was recorded with Plant’s then-band the Sensational Space Shifters, and described by Plant himself at the time as “very crunchy and gritty, very West African and very Massive Attack-y.” That certainly comes through in the percussion work on “Rainbow” with traditional instruments like bendirs, djembes and kologos.

 

16. “So Glad to See You Here,” Paul McCartney and Wings (With John Bonham)
From: Back to the Egg (1979)

Bonham was just one of several famous rock musicians to appear on this track by Paul McCartney and Wings from 1979’s Back to the Egg — there was also Ronnie Lane, Bruce Thomas, Pete Townshend, David Gilmour and more. Nevertheless, Bonham has, for decades, stood out in the former Beatles’ mind. When asked by Howard Stern in 2020 about his favorite drummers, he replied: “I’d go Ringo [Starr] top — he’s something else. Second, I’d go Bonzo.”

 

15. “Radioactive,” The Firm (With Jimmy Page)
From: The Firm (1985)

Long after the Firm split up in 1986, Paul Rodgers continued to perform “Radioactive” at his solo concerts, albeit without Page by his side serving up those wah-wah pedal solo bits.  When the Firm made a music video for the song, it marked the first time Page had participated in one since the late ’60s. “People will say ‘Well, there’s the hypocrite,'” he said in a 1985 interview with Chris Welch. “It’s not that. The idea is to go out and have a play and show people who have had a lot of faith in me that I’m ready to work.”

 

14. “Scumbag Blues,” Them Crooked Vultures (With John Paul Jones)
From: Them Crooked Vultures (2009)

John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme walk into a bar. Just kidding — they actually walked into a recording studio in 2009 to release an album under the name Them Crooked Vultures, which would become a Top 15 hit in the U.S. The self-titled release is overall quite strong, but “Scumbag Blues” is particularly fun with a funky clavinet part from Jones.

 

13. “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” Robert Plant (With Chrissie Hynde)
From: Carry Fire (2017)

Plant just seems to have a knack for singing incredibly well with American women, from Alison Krauss to Patty Griffin to Chrissie Hynde, the lattermost of whom can be heard on his 2017 cover of “Bluebirds Over the Mountain.” That’s another thing Plant has a talent for: covering older American songs. “Bluebirds Over the Mountain” was written in 1958 by the rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey, and recorded later by Richie Valens and the Beach Boys. “I respect and relish my past works, but each time I feel the trawl and incentive to create new work,” Plant said in a statement at the time. “I must mix old with new.”

 

12. “Don’t Freak Me Out,” Jimmy Stevens (With John Bonham)
From: Don’t Freak Me Out (1972)

Jimmy Stevens released exactly one album: 1972’s Don’t Freak Me Out. But he sure did make the most of it, inviting Bonham to play drums on the title track and another song called “Is It Me Babe.” Oh, plus Peter Frampton contributed guitar and Maurice Gibb played bass and organ. If you listen to no other part of this song, let it be Bonham’s drum fill around the 2:30 mark…

 

11. “Leafy Meadows,” John Paul Jones
From: The Thunderthief (2001)

There’s two reasons you’ll want to listen to Jones’ “Leafy Meadows.” For one thing, it’s just plain solid bass work from arguably one of the best bassists in the world. But also, that’s Robert Fripp playing the guitar solo. “What a pleasure,” Fripp wrote in his digital diary on Aug. 4, 1999, referring to a lunch he had with Jones, “talking with an outstanding player of my own generation who has more experience, and a greater breadth and depth of knowledge, than I do. And a nice guy.”

 

10. “Pride and Joy,” Jimmy Page (With David Coverdale)
From: Coverdale-Page (1993)

It sort of makes all the sense in the world that Page would team up with David Coverdale in the ’90s, another powerhouse of a British singer, for an album. “Pride and Joy” was one of 11 songs they co-wrote together, with Coverdale playing acoustic guitar while Page does what he does best on electric, also adding in some dulcimer and harmonica. “I took the creative side of working with Jimmy Page very seriously because I’d been a fan and an admirer of Jimmy Page since way before Zeppelin,” Coverdale told Classic Rock in 2011. “Page is a lovely, lovely, lovely man to work and to socialize with.”

 

9. “Nineteen Forty Eightish,” Roy Harper (With Jimmy Page)
From: Whatever Happened to Jugala? (1985)

The thing about Page is that not only is he a master of rock ‘n’ roll guitar riffs, he also has a way of being able to tell a story with his instrument. Here’s one such example: a nearly 10-minute song called “Nineteen Forty-Eightish” which appeared on Roy Harper’s 1985 album Whatever Happened to Jugula? Yes, it’s a cheeky reference to George Orwell’s dystopian book 1984.

 

8. “Keep Your Hands on the Wheel (Said Marie to the Driver),” Roy Wood (With John Bonham)
From: On the Road Again (1979)

Roy Wood is best known for being the co-founder of not just one band, but three: the Move, Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard. He also enjoyed a solo career, releasing four of his own albums. On 1979’s On the Road Again, Bonham made a guest appearance. Here he is playing loud and proud on one of the album’s singles, “Keep Your Hands on the Wheel (Said Marie to the Driver).”

 

7. “Burning Down on One Side,” Robert Plant
From: Pictures at Eleven (1982)

Here’s the thing: every solo song of Plant’s is going to remind people at least a tiny bit of Led Zeppelin since there isn’t much the singer can do about those famous vocal cords of his. This was especially true in the early ’80s as Plant found his footing as a solo artist, trying quite hard to separate himself from his history. But with a little help from Phil Collins on the drums, there were songs like “Burning Down on One Side,” which cracked the Top 100 in both the U.K. and U.S.

 

6. “Zooma,” John Paul Jones
From: Zooma (1999)

Jones proved two things with his 1999 solo debut, Zooma. Firstly: it is never too late to start a solo career, even if nearly two decades has passed since the breakup of your band. Secondly: lyrics are lovely, but not required. Zooma is primarily an instrumental album, which is excellent considering your full auditory attention is suggested for a song like “Zooma,” the title track — there is a reason Jones is considered one of the best rock bassists in the world.

 

5. “Wasting My Time,” Jimmy Page
From: Outrider (1988)

To the surprise of many, Page really hasn’t spent much time exploring a solo career post-Led Zeppelin — or at least, not in the way you might expect from one of rock’s most inventive guitarists. In any case, his lone solo album, 1988’s Outrider, featured a number of fruitful collaborations. “Wasting My Time” is one of them, co-written with the fellow English musician John Miles, who also sang lead vocals on it. “We’d both jam and come up with riffs,” Miles recalled to Classic Rock in 2014. “It took a while to get to know him, but we hit it off.”

 

4. “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On),” Robert Plant (With Alison Krauss)
From: Raising Sand (2007)

Plant and Alison Krauss come from entirely different worlds. He from the land of heavy blues-based rock ‘n’ roll, she from plucky bluegrass-country. And yet, when they came together for the first time in 2007 for Raising Sand, something just seemed to click. With “Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On),” originally written and recorded by the Everly Brothers, Plant and Krauss unequivocally proved that opposites do indeed attract.

 

3. “Tall Cool One,” Robert Plant
From: Now and Zen (1988)

You can take the frontman out of the band, but you cannot take the band out of the frontman, even when he embarks on a solo career. Not to mention, who better to sample on a new song than yourself? This is what Plant did with “Tall Cool One” from 1988’s Now and Zen, which borrowed bits from “Black Dog,” “The Ocean,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Custard Pie” and “Whole Lotta Love.” Oh yeah, and that’s Page playing guitar on it, arguably the only guitarist qualified for this particular job.

 

2. “Emerald Eyes,” Jimmy Page
From: Outrider (1988)

If you took all the best parts of Page’s career as a guitarist with Led Zeppelin and somehow stirred them all into one solo song, it might sound like “Emerald Eyes” from Outrider — polished acoustic rhythm guitar, intercut with mellifluous lead electric guitar. It’s an instrumental that expertly highlights his talent for arrangement, assisted by Barriemore Barlow of Jethro Tull on drums.

 

1. “Big Log,” Robert Plant
From: The Principle of Moments (1983)

Look, not every ’80s song made using a drum machine aged all that well. “Big Log,” we argue, is an exception. “I was into [British label] 4AD and the stuff that was going on with Jesus and Mary Chain and all that,” Plant said in a 2019 episode of his Digging Deep podcast. “There was just loads and loads of music that I was interested in — that kind of, almost darkened shadow of the music of that time.” “Big Log” turned out to be Plant’s first Top 40 hit as a solo artist, reaching No. 20 in the U.S. and No. 11 in the U.K.

David Gilmour says he wants to “be rid” of the Pink Floyd catalog, but his motive for selling has nothing to do with money.

During a recent conversation with Rolling Stone, the guitarist admitted that a sale of Pink Floyd’s catalog is “something that is still in discussion.”

Rumors have suggested that such a deal could net the band $500 million, however that’s not the reason Gilmour is eager to sell.

“To be rid of the decision making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going is my dream,” the rocker declared, alluding to the ongoing drama he’s endured with former bandmate Roger Waters. “I am not interested in [a catalog sale] from a financial standpoint. I’m only interested in it from getting out of the mud bath that it has been (going) for quite a while.”

READ MORE: Top 10 David Gilmour Pink Floyd Songs

Gilmour further noted that Pink Floyd decisions are made “on a veto system,” and that they often end up being “three people saying yes, but one person saying no.”

In 2022, reports indicated that the band was on the cusp of a massive deal, but negotiation hold ups – as well as a new round of controversial political remarks from Waters – brought those conversations to a halt. Despite Gilmour’s willingness, it seems a catalog sale is no longer imminent.

Gilmour Calls His Feud With Waters a ‘One-Way Thing’

In a separate part of the Rolling Stone interview, Gilmour eluded questions about his ongoing disputes with Waters.

“It’s something I’ll talk about one day, but I’m not going to talk about that right now,” the guitarist insisted. “It’s boring. It’s over. As I said before, he left our pop group when I was in my 30s, and I’m a pretty old chap now, and the relevance of it is not there. I don’t really know his work since. So I don’t have anything to say on the topic.”

READ MORE: All 167 Pink Floyd Songs Ranked Worst to Best

When reminded of the strongly worded tweets he and wife Polly Samson shared in 2023 – including Samson calling Waters “antisemitic to your rotten core” – Gilmour was forthright.

“People talk about the battle, but to me it’s a one-way thing that’s been going on since he left with different levels of intensity,” he explained. “I agreed with [Polly’s] piece and said so. Again, that’s all. I don’t really have anything extra to add to this, any other lights to shine on that.”

Could the Brian Wilson Band return without its namesake? Fellow Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine, a long-time solo touring partner, is considering dates.

“Brian has agreed to allow me to use the name of his band to resurrect that incredible Brian band that we worked with so wonderfully for the last 20 or 30 years,” Jardine tells Rolling Stone. “I’m looking forward to meeting up with him shortly and working out a schedule to do a couple of benefit concerts that we can do in L.A., and then maybe kick off an actual tour from there maybe early next year.”

Jardine has only played a few small-scale concerts since Wilson came off the road in the summer of 2022. Wilson has since been placed in a conservatorship after being diagnosed with a “major neurocognitive disorder” and now uses a wheelchair.

READ MORE: Beach Boys’ Best Post-‘Pet Sounds’ Songs

If Wilson takes part in these proposed dates, it would be on a one-off basis. “Brian just isn’t physically in shape to join us,” Jardine said, “but … it wouldn’t surprise me if he could make a few of the shows in the Los Angeles area where we intend to do a trial performance.” The tour might be dubbed Brian Wilson Band Presented by Fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine, he mused.

Jardine has vowed to add an element to the tour that Wilson always shied away from. “We never did video with Brian’s band,” he said. “I never understood that, but I think that dimension would really improve the quality of the show. I’ll also tell stories to inform the audience about how the music was made essentially. It could be a lot of fun.”

Will Al Jardine Reunite With the Beach Boys?

He memorably toured with former bandmate Mike Love during the Beach Boys’ 2012 reunion tour, then worked with Love during the promotional cycle for the recent Disney+ documentary The Beach Boys. Still, there are no plans to get back together again. “I’ve got my hands full,” Jardine said. “If we’re going to get this Brian Wilson Band going again, I’m going to be pretty busy.”

Jardine’s return to the road follows the release of a long-unfinished song called “Wish” with veteran writing partner Larry Dvoskin. He said he hopes to complete a new album early in 2025. Jardine’s most recent LP dates back to 2010’s A Postcard From California, and featured Wilson, Love and early Beach Boys member David Marks as guests.

Jardine is still considering which songs might be played on tour but hints that his focus would be on lesser-played ’70s-era songs like “Roller Skating Child” from The Beach Boys Love You. “Mike does the ’60s really well. That can be a blessing and a curse,” Jardine added, “but apparently people are still coming to see him. People love to hear the same songs, and there’s a new generation of fans – and Mike seems to enjoy that. That’s the important part. But I found it tedious after a while.”

Listen to the Beach Boys’ ‘Roller Skating Child’

Elton John has taken to social media to share that he’s currently recovering from a serious eye infection that caused temporary blindness in one eye.

“Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye,” he said. “I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.

“I am so grateful for the excellent team of doctors and nurses and my family, who have taken such good care of me over the last several weeks,” John continued. “I have been quietly spending the summer recuperating at home, and am feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far.”

Elton John’s Other Recent Health Issues

John has experience a number of health-related obstacles in the last couple of years.

In 2023, he fell at his home in the South of France, but was found to be “in good health” after visiting local doctors. The year before that he was forced to postpone several concerts when he tested positive for COVID-19, and in 2021, he underwent hip surgery that was prompted by an injury.

READ MORE: Underrated Elton John: The Most Overlooked Song From Every Album

But there has also been good news from the John camp: he and his longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin have made a new album, though a release date has yet to be revealed.

“It’s absolutely wonderful,” John said about the album at last year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “It’s full of youth and it’s full of vitality, and it’s a wonderful place to be after we’ve been together for 56 years.”

Alex Van Halen has shared a snippet of an unreleased track written with his late brother Eddie called “Unfinished,” which is scheduled to arrive next month alongside the release of his memoir Brothers.

You can listen to the preview of “Unfinished” via Instagram below.

The brothers’ handiwork should be immediately evident to Van Halen fans. The snippet of “Unfinished” features Eddie’s harmonic overtones, soaring bends and light vibrato atop delicately strummed acoustic guitar, along with a steady beat (and signature snare drum sound) from Alex.

READ MORE: All 75 David Lee Roth-Era Van Halen Songs Ranked Worst to Best

When Can Fans Hear All of Eddie and Alex Van Halen’s ‘Unfinished’?

“Unfinished” will arrive on Oct. 22 to coincide with the release of Brothers. The track will be featured in the audio edition of the memoir, which Alex voiced himself. Publisher HarperCollins confirmed that “Unfinished” is “the last piece of music they wrote together” before Eddie’s death at age 65 in 2020.

Aside from the release of Brothers and “Unfinished,” fans shouldn’t expect to see or hear additional musical output from Alex Van Halen. The drummer announced the auction of his musical equipment earlier this year, much to the dismay of former bandmate Sammy Hagar, who is currently paying homage to the Van Halen catalog on his Best of All Worlds tour with Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani and Jason Bonham.

“Mike and I reached out to Alex before we did this,” Hagar told UCR over the summer. “We reached out to him a dozen times before this tour, in every way. Email, text message, phone call, message on the machine, OK? No response. No response. … I was saying, ‘He’ll come to a show, he’s got to in L.A. or something. I’m sure he’ll come.’ But no, no, he sold all of his equipment. That was his statement. That was like, ‘Nah, I ain’t coming nowhere.'”

Bruce Hall confirmed months ago that he was healthy enough following November 2023 back surgery to return to touring with REO Speedwagon – but there was one issue: “The consensus feeling is that I don’t have good enough posture to perform at the level expected by our fans.”

Fill-in former Elton John sideman Matt Bissonette continues as the group’s touring bassist behind long-standing frontman Kevin Cronin. Ongoing summer dates with Train are now wrapping up, with the final show set for Sept. 11 in Phoenix, Arizona.

“It was my intention to be back on the road again by now, for sure,” added Hall, who joined REO just before 1978’s breakthrough You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can’t Tuna Fish. “I’m feeling better every day and have been cleared by my doctor to perform. If it were up to just me, I’d be there rocking tonight … but it’s unfortunately not.”

READ MORE: Top 10 REO Speedwagon Songs

Cronin assured fans last November that Hall would return to the lineup as soon as possible. “Bruce is our brother – and times like these test us all,” Cronin said. “We have faith that Bruce’s surgery will be successful, that he will make a complete recovery, and that he will be back to being the hard-rocking bassist/singer that we all know.”

Now Hall’s daughter is asking why it hasn’t happened yet: “My dad has poured his entire life into his craft and this band,” Sara Siders says in a social media post, “just to be told he can’t play or be on stage anymore because of how tall he can stand? What a joke.”

Is Bruce Hall Retiring From REO Speedwagon?

Cronin is now the last remaining classic-era member of the group after co-founding keyboardist Neal Doughty left the road in 2023. The other members joined in the late ’80s. Derek Hilland is touring in Doughty’s place following concert appearances with Whitesnake and Foreigner.

“Trust me, I have no intention of retiring or walking away from the band I have loved for almost 50 years,” Hall said in his June social media post. “I would never ever walk away. I love my band too much. I love our crew. I love all of you, the best fans of all time, so very much.”

The previous two albums released by David Gilmour – the 2015 solo record Rattle That Lock and Pink Floyd‘s The Endless River, out a year earlier – double as snapshots of the time. Both conceived after the death of original Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright in 2008 (though The Endless River was made up of leftovers from the last Pink Floyd album Wright performed on, 1994’s The Division Bell), the LPs serve as double bookends to an era the singer and guitarist was ready to close.

Scatterings since then – a 2017 live album culled from a 2016 concert, a 2020 single and a one-off Floyd reunion song with drummer Nick Mason in 2022 in support of Ukraine’s effort against the Russian invasion – have moved away from the predominantly meditative work that peaked with the mostly instrumental Endless River. But with his fifth solo album, Luck and Strange, Gilmour returns to a thoughtful and occasional melancholy stage, undoubtedly spurred by the events of the past several years, especially the pandemic.

That 2020 song, “Yes, I Have Ghosts,” is a bonus track on deluxe editions of Luck and Strange and underlines the album’s musical and thematic center. Cowritten with wife Polly Samson and featuring vocals by daughter Romany Gilmour, both of whom contribute throughout the LP, it’s a summoning of spirits from the past. But with the aid of Alt-J producer Charlie Andrew, who pushed Gilmour to try something new, Luck and Strange often draws the singer and guitarist away from fixed expectations.

READ MORE: 2024’s Best Rock Albums Reviewed

That doesn’t mean Pink Floyd has been entirely wiped from the album; Gilmour’s powerful and flowing solos in “The Piper’s Call” and the seven-and-a-half-minute closing song “Scattered” can’t help but recall celebrated moments from the band’s catalog. Neither can the slippery “Dark and Velvet Nights.” But the emphasis here is on coming to terms with aging and mortality (see: “A Single Spark”), which are persistent reminders that have been even more nagging since the pandemic. As Gilmour sings on the bluesy title track, “In the light before the dawn, shadows snake in my peripheral.”

The 90-second instrumental intro “Black Cat” is the gateway to Luck and Strange and, with its softly stinging guitar and delicate piano, a preemptive nudge signaling Gilmour’s steps into somewhat unfamiliar territory (“A Single Spark” again). “Between Points,” a cover of a 1999 song by British dream-pop duo the Montgolfier Brothers sung by Romany, is the album’s biggest left turn, though it shares a thread with Pink Floyd’s more anodyne recordings. Through it all Gilmour sounds in fine voice, its still-rich warmness driving home the poignancy of many of the songs; his luminous guitar is even better, averting a total break from the past. If Luck and Strange suggests Gilmour’s future, it will be a bright one, even in the darkness.

If the fans who are visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame get their way, Iron Maiden, Styx and Motley Crue will soon have their own plaques at the Cleveland-based museum.

Read More: Will Taylor Swift Get Into the Rock Hall of Fame Before Iron Maiden?

Future Rock Legends posted a shot of the recent standings in the museum’s “Voice Your Choice” voting kiosk, where visitors are allowed to choose who they think should be inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame. Despite (or perhaps because of) singer Bruce Dickinson’s vow to turn down an induction – his exact words were “they won’t bloody be having my corpse in there” – Iron Maiden is solidly in the lead so far this year.

Punk-pop’s Blink-182 are in second place, followed closely by Styx, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Motley Crue, with Boston also appearing in the Top 10. Unlike the Rock Hall’s annual online fan vote (which is used to fill out one ballot for each year’s induction class) the “Voice Your Choice” results have no automatic impact on the induction process, although Future Rock Legends notes that the ranking are typically shared at the nominating committee meeting as a gauge of fan interest.

Foreigner, Ozzy Osbourne and Peter Frampton Will Be Inducted This Fall

It will be a while before we see if this early fan vote has any impact on the next class of Rock Hall nominees. Before that happens, last year’s winners still need to be formally inducted. That will happen for Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, Dave Matthews Band, Kool & the Gang and A Tribe Called Quest during an Oct. 19 ceremony that will stream live on Disney+.

In a recent interview, Gene Simmons not only quickly identified Kiss‘ worst studio album, but also took full blame for its creation.

His choice, 1981’s Music From ‘The Elder,‘ will come as little surprise to the band’s fans. Originally intended as a back-to-basics hard rock album that would undo the fan base damage caused by the disco and pop flirtations of 1979’s Dynasty and 1980’s Unmasked, The Elder instead transformed into an extremely ill-fated attempt at earning critical acclaim with a high-minded, medieval times-themed concept album.

Read More: 10 Things That Went Wrong with Kiss’ Music From ‘The Elder’

“I take the blame for it, because it was my idea,” Simmons told Classic Rock. “I remember telling [producer] Bob Ezrin that I was writing a movie script, we were making a concept album based on that, and he said: “Let’s do our own Tommy!” I said: ‘Yeah. If the Who can do it, why can’t we?’ Well, the straight answer is because we’re not the Who! There are some fans who love that record. To me it was dishonest.”

Gene Simmons Says Kiss Never Spent Enough Time in the Studio

In the same interview, Simmons declared that The Elder wasn’t even Kiss’ “most dishonest” album, instead giving that dubious honor to 1997’s grunge-influenced Carnival of Souls (The Final Sessions) while admitting, “we were trying to follow a trend instead of just being ourselves…. In hindsight, Kiss never really spent enough time in the studio. [1976’s] Destroyer is okay, and I like [1992’s] Revenge, but Kiss was always more about the live experience.”

Simmons won’t get much argument about Carnival of Souls from his longtime band mate Paul Stanley, who declared that he was “dead-set against doing that kind of an album” in the band’s 2001 book Kiss: Behind the Mask. “I never believed the world needed a second-rate Soundgarden, Metallica or Alice in Chains.”

Pink Floyd fans will spot a familiar name in the credits of David Gilmour’s new album: Richard Wright.

The keyboardist, who spent decades as Gimour’s Pink Floyd bandmate, died in 2008. Still, an old recording was used in the title track of Gilmour’s upcoming LP, Luck and Strange.

“It’s a strange admission that I’m using pieces recorded over 20 years ago,” the guitarist confessed during a recent conversation with The Sun. “At the end of the ‘On an Island’ tour in 2006, I thought we were playing so well together that I got the core band together in this barn — Rick [Wright], Guy [Pratt] and drummer Steve DiStanislao.”

As Gilmour recalled, the recording session inside the barn was “effing freezing,” still the rockers managed to hammer out a song idea.

READ MORE: David Gilmour’s 10 Best Solo Songs

“I had this little riff and we jammed for 15 minutes,” he explained. “That is the track which became ‘Luck and Strange.’ All the verses, the introduction, the ending are on that original take — no rehear­sal, no thought beforehand.”

Gilmour went on to describe Wright as “a one-off with a very singular style.” “Rick had heart and soul,” the guitarist noted. “We didn’t always see eye to eye, but he was a valuable partner.”

When Does David Gilmour’s New Album Come Out?

Luck and Strange, the fifth album of Gilmour’s solo career, will be released on Sept. 6. It marks the musician’s first new LP in nine years.

In support of the release, Gilmour will perform a series of concerts in Italy and London before coming Stateside for further dates. He has four shows scheduled in Los Angeles in late October, followed by a run of concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden in November.

When Bush turned in the Sixteen Stone album, a couple of things happened. They were told there were no singles on the record. A short time later, they lost their distribution deal with Hollywood Records.

While some bands would have folded up shop right there, Bush kept pushing. “You have to remember that every single thing we did on that record was against the backdrop of abject failure and a complete zero success,” vocalist and songwriter Gavin Rossdale tells UCR now.

They had the last laugh when Interscope Records, led by Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field, picked up the distribution rights for Sixteen Stone, which was finally released on Dec. 6, 1994. They dispatched five hit singles to rock radio and by the time they had wrapped up touring behind the album, it had sold millions of copies.

In the midst of the band’s current tour with Jerry Cantrell and Candlebox, Rossdale connected with Ultimate Classic Rock Nights host Matt Wardlaw to discuss Sixteen Stone and what’s ahead for Bush.

These summer shows have been a lot of fun. What have you enjoyed about the experience?
I’ve been enjoying the good energy backstage. We’ve always been in situations where everyone is very cool. We’ve done a lot of co-headlines, we opened for Alice in Chains and have done some other opener things. It just feels really good having a harmonious backstage. You know, the Candlebox guys are great. I watched them last night for the first time and they were excellent. I see them every day and it’s a nice energy when you go to work and everyone is getting along. Everyone’s in it for the same reasons, you know, to have a great night of music. That’s it.

READ MORE: 75 Best Rock Songs of the ’90s

How did you bond with Jerry back in the day?
Obviously, there’s been a lot of respect over the years with Alice in Chains. “Man in the Box” was a pivotal song for me as a songwriter and a young musician trying to figure out my own aesthetic. It’s such a powerful, amazing song and they’re an amazing band. Tyler Bates is a very good friend of mine and I’ve written a bunch of songs with him. He’s great friends with Jerry, so he’s been sort of the bridge between us socially, a little bit. We’ve hung out a lot in that capacity. When we first went on tour together, originally Tyler was playing with Jerry. So there’s that social connection. He’s a great guy and an amazing musician. There’s some incredible history there. He’s such an interesting writer and frontperson. There’s not many guys like [Jerry]. We get along and we’ve been eating a lot together in catering. We seem to be on the same feeding schedule. [Laughs] I wore his shirt last night and he came on stage with us, to play “Comedown.”

You’ve got a new EP coming out this fall, Loads of Remixes, with new versions of some of your classic songs. What was the most intriguing thing for you about doing that?
I love when people do remixes. I think Corey [Britz] did a great job with “Glycerine,” Jason Butler with “Everything Zen,” you know there’s a mix from [Michael Shuman of] Queens of the Stone Age. He did an amazing mix of “Swallowed.” I did “Machinehead,” I was like, “This is too much fun, can I have a go?” So I did one. It’s so sexy and it’s really fun to have these reimagined [versions of our songs]. Remixes are so fun, I did “Machinehead” how I wanted to remix it.

Watch Bush’s ‘Everything Zen’ Remix Video

How did you land on doing “Machinehead” as the one you picked?
It was the only one that hadn’t been done and we had the stems for it. It was like, “Well, I’d better do that one then.” You know, the point is, I’ll just try it and if it sucks and doesn’t work, let’s pretend that I didn’t do it. So I did it and it worked. We had a fun afternoon and I’ve got a great engineer. We flew through it and I’m looking forward to people hearing it. I thought that Loads of Remixes was a hilarious title as well. [Laughs]

The intros for things like “Machinehead” and “Little Things” still really stick out on the radio. Obviously, the idea is always to hook the listener in quickly. But how did you figure that out?
It always [came] down to what we liked. You have to remember that every single thing we did on that record was against the backdrop of abject failure and a complete zero success. I just thought the chance to make a record was exciting for a small label in the valley of America in Los Angeles. It was the only option we had. I never had an actual concept of success. I didn’t make the songs thinking we’d talk about them 30 years later. I’d made the songs [before that] and tried to make them good, but it hadn’t worked. So when we recorded Sixteen Stone, I didn’t have the slightest idea of the potential. All I had was, “Wow, you’re going to get a chance to make a record. This is your legacy before you go back and paint houses for the rest of your life. Just feel [good] that you’ve made a record and you weren’t such a loser. You pursued music and you failed for many, many years.” Because as the story goes, that’s what it always takes.

READ MORE: Top 100 ’90s Rock Albums

I didn’t know if the story would ever turn and that I would get a [record] deal. I would go out to night clubs in London all of the time as a kid and I’d see all of the A&R guys. All of them. I’d see them across the room and everyone else would be having a good time and I’m thinking, “Oh, that fucker’s got my future in his hands! Doesn’t he realize, if he signed us, we could do something? I could be in that friend group, I’m fun!” Of course, nothing ever happened and they share never shared any drugs with us. They didn’t buy us any drinks and we didn’t go on holidays with them. They didn’t take us out with their expense accounts. I was used to being a bit of an urchin, a bit of an extra. I couldn’t get a break. That was it and I was used to that. So when I got a chance to make a record, I jumped at that chance. That’s as far as I could see. My imagination couldn’t take me any further than, “Okay, we’ll do a cool intro.” That’s it.

Watch Bush’s ‘Machinehead’ Video

You’d been through so much that at the point you are being told that there’s no viable singles on Sixteen Stone. You have this resolve that’s been built up and I’m guessing you’re not going to give up.
That’s funny, because you know, there was four or five months after we handed the record in where we lost the distribution deal. I spent the summer and the next few months just working back in London and everything did die away. I wasn’t surprised. Nothing had really gone right, so I was like, “Well, at least we made a record.’ We lost the distribution deal, okay, I didn’t know what that really meant, truthfully. Outside of just knowing, “Oh, so we don’t have a record deal now.” I was really confused by it. In November when I came to America and met Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field, because “Everything Zen” was becoming a hit on the radio, that’s sort of when everything changed. It deeply changed and it hasn’t been the same since. That was a pivotal shift where it went from a band that was not working to a band that suddenly had a crazy slipstream of work. We were suddenly in a whole different stratosphere.

How did you deal with the success when it came?
We just didn’t stop touring for a couple of years. For two or three years, we just played and played in all of the clubs, over and over. It was a lot, but it felt for the first time [like we were getting somewhere]. Before then, it was such a disconnect. Because we couldn’t get a break, so it was just hard to just always be wanting to prove yourself. What was so cool about having a hit song and playing the clubs is that every night, you got a chance to prove that you could do it. I think that may be why I love playing live so much. Every night, I get a chance to prove I can do it. When people come to shows and they’ve named their son after me — which happens a lot [Rossdale chuckles] — I just think, “Thank God, I’m still singing and thank God I’m still doing that.” I want to be a good role model for someone, if you name your kid after me. Thank you for not naming your kid after some loser with two records and that was it, they fucked off, you know? But the staying power and this connection with people, that makes you feel really good. You know, it was much harder to exist in life as an abject failure than it was to exist with some kind of audience.

What’s up ahead as far as the next album?
We did the record. It’s recorded. Part of my psychiatric process of doing this celebration of the greatest hits [with the Loaded compilation and current tour], is to have a new record. It just felt better to have a whole new record, so we recorded 10 new songs. I’m sure we’ll add a couple more. I like the idea that the body of work is done. It feels really good to know where that is and I know how all of those songs would fit into this lineup. It’s interesting, because it’s like having another stable of really strong racehorses that are gently training and being groomed, looked after and fed. A lot of TLC and they’re ready to do the business. I would probably think at the beginning of the year. We thought we’d have a single out for this run and then it was like, “Hang on, just calm down. One thing at a time.” I’m super excited about the record, because I feel really proud of it. I wrote a bunch of it and there are some collaborations with the producer we worked with. I made sure and got those out of the way and then did a bunch of stuff myself. Because if I don’t do the collaborations, everyone’s like, “Well, what’s it like if you collaborate a bit?” So we started with the collaborations and I’ve got a couple of killer songs, so I’m super excited.

Watch Bush’s ‘Nowhere to Go But Everywhere’ Video

Did King Crimson invent progressive rock? Were Yes and Genesis principally responsible for creating its accepted formulations – all while furiously pushing its boundaries? Did Rush‘s forays into synth-driven modernity open the door for similar transformations by Yes, Genesis and a host of others?

Deciding who the “Big 4” bands of prog rock are depends on answering these kinds of deep questions.

Inevitably, of course, important acts get left out. What about the outsized musical excursions and even more outsized concert performances of Emerson Lake and Palmer? The groundbreaking folk-melded prog of Jethro Tull? Wait, is Pink Floyd actually a progressive rock band? What about Frank Zappa?

READ MORE: Top 10 Peter Gabriel Genesis Songs

Again, the questions run deep – and reasonable fans can disagree. In the end, however, settling on the Big 4 requires taking in these myriad impacts and accomplishments and then adding an overlay of popularity. You don’t reach the final four without having been a part of a lot of people’s lives.

Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa, quite frankly, were far too rangy to be considered strictly prog. Emerson Lake and Palmer and Jethro Tull may have held sway too briefly. Kansas and the Moody Blues were usually more focused on pop. Others, like Gentle Giant and Camel were sadly very niche.

So where does that leave us? Actually, back where we started. Here’s a look at the Big 4 in prog rock:

King Crimson

King Crimson fired the progressive-rock shot heard ’round the world with 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King, then made genre-refedining records in each of the three decades to follow. The faces around stalwart Robert Fripp would change, as Greg Lake, John Wetton, Bill Bruford, Adrian Belew and others cycled in and out of the band. But King Crimson somehow never lost the creative alchemy that produced triumphs like 1973’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, 1981’s Discipline and 1995’s Thrak. Larks’ Tongue marked a career-shifting move toward more free improvisation. Discipline added a jolt of new wave energy with a remade lineup that featured Belew and Tony Levin. Sadly, Thrak was the lone studio project from an eruptive double trio lineup that also included Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto.

Yes

Like each of the remaining members of the “Big 4” of prog rock, Yes scarcely resembled their future selves on the earliest recordings. The addition of Steve Howe and then Rick Wakeman helped transform a Jon Anderson-fronted group that sometimes dabbled in twee folk music into a dynamic long-form juggernaut on a trio of early ’70s albums highlighted by 1971’s blockbuster Fragile. By the time they returned to the Billboard Top 10 with 1983’s multiplatinum 90125, the lineup had been reconfigured around Howe replacement Trevor Rabin and Yes had completely modernized their sound. This transformation provided proof of concept that the group could survive any lineup change – even the death of cofounder Chris Squire, who’d been part of every era. They kept touring and recording, with the now-returned Howe at the helm.

Genesis

Genesis didn’t really find their creative footing until drummer Phil Collins and guitarist Steve Hackett joined. By the time 1973’s gold-selling U.K. Top 5 smash Selling England by the Pound arrived, the Peter Gabriel-led group had completely come into its own. With subject matter and musical approaches shifting literally from song to song, Genesis was unlike anyone else. Then Gabriel left after one more LP, followed by Hackett a couple of albums later. Collins earned an in-house promotion to frontman and within a few years, Genesis had been transformed from a band that occasionally dabbled in pop (among many, many, many other things) into a pop band that occasionally dabbled in prog – but only on deep cuts. Millions bought their singles, never knowing about the occasionally twisted, yet strikingly beautiful weirdness of Genesis at their ’70s best.

Rush

Rush didn’t seem all that interesting at first either, as they trudged through surprisingly pedestrian songs like “Working Man.” Enter Neil Peart. His importance may not have always been self-evident on transitional early LPs like Fly by Night and Caress of Steel, but Peart unquestionably saved the band with 1976’s long-form 2112. By letting his imagination run very wild, Rush redefined themselves (and avoided getting dropped by Mercury). Hemispheres pointed the way forward in the late ’70s, including both the 18-minute Book II of their “Cygnus X-1” epic and a second side of more compact song ideas. “Tom Sawyer,” “New World Man” and “Subdivisions” then became synth-driven early-’80s U.S. hits – but by the 2000s, they were extending songs past the six-minute mark again. Rush’s last album included the even longer epic “Headlong Flight.”

How We Ranked Every Genesis Song

The creator of an AI song intended to sound like the Kinks deleted it after guitarist Dave Davies reacted negatively to the piece.

The guitarist recently discovered the track “Hop Skip Jump!” which had been assembled using the band’s music as source material.

When he shared his horrified response to hearing it, the person behind the digital development quickly apologized.

READ MORE: Hear 25 AI ‘James Hetfield’ Covers: Toto, Wham!, Seal and More

“What the fuk is this???” Davies wrote on X. “This Kinks AI cover is like horror show – sounds fukin horrible.” He provided a link to YouTuber Leeroy’s Musical Journey’s song, which has since been removed.

Leeroy replied to Davies, saying: “Sorry Dave; I’m a big fan and my favourite all time band. I meant no disrespect. I have taken down. Hopefully you prefer my cover of ‘Living in a Thin Line.’”

He provided a link to that track, to which Davies responded: “I really like your cover.”

Dave Davies Says Kinks AI Song Sounded Nothing Like His Band

Leeroy – who has 2,000 subscribers on YouTube and 451 videos on his channel, including 11 Kinks songs – explained in his intro: “I love making music in my spare time using Cubase, which has opened up a whole world of musical sounds and creation. I like to cover songs and make my own originals.”

He added: “If you have your own basic tune that you would like to see get additional instruments and mixing let me know. I love the challenge.”

Following the interaction, Davies reacted to commentary by saying: “It wasn’t even vaguely like a Kinks song… I’m glad it’s not.”

Tim Burton didn’t want to “tick any boxes” by re-casting Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in the Beetlejuice sequel.

The pair played ghost couple Adam and Barbara Maitland from the original 1988 flick, but the filmmaker didn’t feel their presence was necessary for the story he wanted to tell in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which focuses on the Deetz family.

He told People Magazine: “I think the thing was for me I didn’t want to just tick any boxes. So even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else.”

READ MORE: We Ate Every Single Thing on Denny’s Beetlejuice Menu

Adam and Barbara summoned the titular trickster ghoul, who is played by Michael Keaton, after they drowned in a river and became ghosts. They get Beetlejuice to scare away the new family that moved into their home. Charlie and Delia Deetz can’t see them, but their death-obsessed daughter Lydia can.

Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara reprise their roles as Lydia and Delia, while Jenna Ortega plays the former’s daughter Astrid Deetz.

Burton added: “A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time. That was my hook into it, the three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter. And that [would] be the nucleus of it. I couldn’t have made this personally back in 1989 or whatever.”

Time has moved on with Lydia now a mother herself, and Ryder recently admitted she initially struggled to see Lydia move beyond her gothic phase to become a parent.

She told /Film: “I think certainly, I never pictured Lydia either having children or in any type of relationship. I just always thought she was just probably in her own world as she got older. Just sort of in the attic and happy, but alone.”

The Stranger Things actress added that as soon as she started working with Jenna and Justin Theroux — who plays Lydia’s husband Rory — on the project, she was able to get a better grasp of this new version of the character.

She explained: “I think once we got there and once Jenna and I bonded and once Justin came on board … I mean, I think everyone who’s as old as I am now, we’ve all been in those things where you’re just like, ‘What was I thinking, in terms of the relationship I have?’”

“But I don’t know with young Lydia, I don’t think she would ever have expected to be in front of a camera.”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens in theaters on September 6.

Summer has descended with the intensity of a relentless inferno, leaving many American towns simmering in its wake. I don’t recall summers ever feeling this hot when I was a kid, but that probably has something to do with the fact we were always soaking ourselves with cold water in some manner.

Summer Adventures Requires Some Serious Toys

Every day was a new adventure when you had very few responsibilities, except for maybe a paper route or babysitting the neighbor’s brats. We always made sure to be back in the house before the streetlights came on and re-runs of Laverne & Shirley started (dating myself here).

READ MORE: Things You’d See in a 1980s Garage

With no screens to distract us (outside, at least), we made our own entertainment, and we were really good at it. Hide ‘n Seek was a favorite, though we’re still not sure if we ever found Derek. Red Rover, Red Rover was fun, and I still have the scars to prove it. Come to think of it, many of the things we did to keep ourselves busy were really quite dangerous.

The Potential for Danger Only Made Us Tougher

And when I say dangerous, I mean even the toys we played with. Water toys turned us into little stunt professionals (or amateurs) and were quite plentiful. I remember buying low-grade fireworks at the candy store. Many of these toys were likely to poke your eye out, stab your foot, or practically strangle you.

READ MORE: 10 Somewhat Shocking Wacky Pack Cards From the ’70s

But here we are, mostly okay. So let’s take a look at some of the summer toys that kept us busy while we were pretty much running wild in our neighborhoods. From the wet and wild to the shootin’ and tootin’, these playthings had us keeping cool, looking cool, and only a few trips and falls away from the emergency room.

The earlybird window for Oasis reunion tickets resulted in some buyers demanding as much as $8,000 on resale sites.

Tickets began appearing on third-party dealers’ pages soon after the three-hour pre-sale window for official purchases closed last night (Aug. 30).

With people asking up to 40 times the face value of those early tickets, the band warned any sales that turned out to be illegal would be canceled.

READ MORE: Betting Firms Offer 4/1 Odds on Oasis Split During Reunion Tour

Around 1.4 million tickets are expected to be sold for the 17 U.K. and Ireland shows announced so far. Official prices range from about £70 to £200 ($90-260) for seats, about £150 ($200) for standing and around £500 ($650) for premium packages.

The BBC identified lots on resale sited that included £6,000 ($7,880) for the London show on July 26, £4,500 ($5,900) for the opening concert in Cardiff, over £4,000 ($5,250) for Edinburgh on Aug. 12 and over £2,500 ($3,280) for the band’s first homecoming event in Manchester on July 12.

Concert Ticket Resales Prevent Scams, Argues Reseller

“We have noticed people attempting to sell tickets on the secondary market since the start of the pre-sale,” a statement from Oasis read. “Please note, tickets can ONLY be resold, at face value, via Ticketmaster and Twickets. Tickets sold in breach of the terms and conditions will be cancelled by the promoters.”

Reselling is not illegal in the U.K., as third-party dealer Viagogo said in its own statement. “We oppose anti-competitive actions taken by event organizers to restrict purchasing and resale options to certain platforms in an attempt to control the market,” the corporation said, arguing that such moves “ultimately harm fans by limiting their choice” and lead to a “surge in scams.”

General ticket sales began this morning (Aug. 31).

Andy Summers reflected on the “weird kind of karma” that connects him with Robert Fripp, and he recalled being knocked out when he recently heard 12 tracks they’d recorded together in the ‘80s, which he’d decided not to release at the time.

The future Police guitarist grew up in the same area of southwest England as his King Crimson counterpart. They decided to collaborate in the early ‘80s, resulting in the records I Advance Masked and Bewitched.

Fripp has prepared a box set to be released in September, which includes a third disc of unheard music, after Summers sent the master tapes to him. In a new interview with Ultimate Guitar, Summers – who described himself as de facto producer of the sessions – said the result was worth the wait.

“I was quite … I don’t know, perhaps ‘shocked,’ is too strong a word, but we got them and I was kind of knocked out – they’re great tracks,” Summers said. “I thought, ‘My God, why didn’t we put these on the album?'”

How Did Andy Summers and Robert Fripp Meet?

READ MORE: Andy Summers Still Has Regrets About the End of the Police

Reflecting on meeting Fripp, Summers said: “We both came from the same town in England, and he was this other guy that I’d heard about, but I’d never met him. … The weird thing was I played in this hotel. I was like 16 years old, and I got a gig and became a professional musician at 16 in this hotel group – until they threw me out for chasing the girls there. Fripp took over from me. It was a weird kind of karma: he became the next guitar player and he was a very different player.”

Summers continued: “I can’t remember much else in between; except, many years later, he helped me out – he got me a gig before I was in the Police. I’d lived in California, then I came back to England and there was a whole scene in London. I met Robert one night, and I was trying to get started again into playing in England, and he got me hooked up.”

When the Police were at the height of their powers, Summers said, he felt the desire to “do something else outside of the band, just to sort of prove that I could do it.” He admitted it was partly because he’d become “so used to playing the same Police songs over and over and over again.”

The thought of working with Fripp occurred to him, “particularly because we had this local tie-up in our lives.” The pair began working together in New York, and after agreeing the project had potential, they decided to set up in their English hometown.

“There was a little recording studio, which was run by a guy that we grew up with,” Summers recalled. “It was called Arny’s Shack, a peculiar little recording studio. He was a sort of eccentric. He smoked a pipe while he recorded. We got there, and then we just started working things out.”

Andy Summers Thought He’d Hate Abandoned Songs With Robert Fripp

After I Advance Masked was released in 1982 and Bewitched followed two years later, nothing else came of Summers and Fripp’s collaboration until a member of Fripp’s team recently asked about the master tapes, subsequently cleaning up a dozen tracks which had remained on the shelf.

“Well, it was surprising,” Summers said of revisiting the tracks. “I went, ‘God, why didn’t we do this? Why was I throwing those out?’ Because I was essentially the producer. But listening to some of these songs all these years later, I thought I’d listen to them and think, ‘Oh, my God, well, I see why. They were no good. They’re terrible. That’s why we didn’t use them.’

“But they weren’t. They’re all really much like the other tracks that we actually put out. And my God, it’s a good album. So who knows where that’s going.”

David Gilmour was never fully comfortable taking over the role as Pink Floyd’s de facto leader.

In 1985, two years after the release of The Final Cut, frontman Roger Waters unceremoniously quit the group. His decision brought an end to Pink Floyd’s classic era, which had featured Waters alongside Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason. Keyboardist Richard Wright, who was also an important part of Pink Floyd’s classic run, had already departed in 1981.

Despite the departure of Waters – who wore many hats as the band’s bassist, primary songwriter and occasional vocalist – the decision was made for Pink Floyd to soldier onward. The move left Gilmour in an unfamiliar position.

“I was thrust into being band leader of Pink Floyd,” the rocker admitted during a recent conversation with The Sun. “But I feel a more collaborative approach is better for me.”

READ MORE: David’s Gilmour’s 10 Best Solo Songs

Wright eventually returned to help shoulder some of Gilmour’s burden. The success of 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason showed that Pink Floyd could still be a formidable force, even if it didn’t match the artistic heights of the Waters era. Things fared even better with 1994’s The Division Bell, which ultimately offered the last great glimpse of the band’s prowess.

In his conversation with The Sun, Gilmour expressed amazement at the way Pink Floyd’s impact has endured. “Joining the band and having that whole life with it was wonderful,” the rocker admitted. “It’s always amazing to me that Pink Floyd didn’t fizzle out the way others do. In some way, it has kept going to the present day.”

Is David Gilmour on Tour?

Gilmour will be touring this fall in support of his upcoming fifth solo album, Luck and Strange. The rocker will perform a series of concerts in Italy and London before coming stateside in October.

Gilmour only has two U.S. cities lined up for shows – Los Angeles, where he’ll perform Oct. 25, 29, 30 and 31; and New York, where he’ll play five concerts at Madison Square Garden from Nov. 4 to 10. The dates mark his first U.S. live shows in eight years.

“f***” has gotten a pretty bad rap over the years.

Decried as a “bad word,” it has long been censored on radio, television and just about any other public display you can think of. But the thing is, “f***” is actually an incredibly versatile word. It can express anger, bewilderment, confusion or betrayal. It can be inflammatory at one point and erotic at another. Is there any other word in the English language that wields such broad ability? We don’t think so.

While using the f-word has become commonplace in modern music, it’s often just for show. Artists — correctly or incorrectly — seem to believe that placing it in their lyrics gives them more edge or street cred. Still, when “f***” is used to its full ability, it has the power to significantly impact a song.

With that in mind, here are the 20 Greatest F-Bombs in Rock History.

20. Guns N’ Roses, “Right Next Door to Hell”
“f*** you, bitch!

About two minutes into “Right Next Door to Hell,” Axl Rose unleashes a “f*** you” of epic proportions. The singer squeezes every last bit of air out of his lungs as he delivers the phrase, then Slash swoops in with a fiery solo immediately afterward. The anger in Rose’s voice on this Use Your Illusion track isn’t just for show. The singer wrote “Right Next Door to Hell” about his neighbor at the time, Gabriela Kantor, who accused the singer of assaulting her with a wine bottle outside of their swanky West Hollywood condo building.

 

19. Sex Pistols, “Bodies”
“Ah! f*** this and f*** that / f*** it all the f*** out of the f***ing brat”

The subject matter of the Sex Pistols’ “Bodies” would be controversial regardless of what era it was released in. That the band was willing to deliver an unflinching portrayal of abortion in 1977 was downright shocking. Inspired by a mentally unstable fan who regaled the band with the stories of her abortions, and the raw emotion of the subject is driven home with several f-bombs. While some have argued “Bodies” is anti-abortion, Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten has always insisted it never took a side. “That song was hated and loathed,” the singer recalled to the BBC in 2007. “It’s not anti-abortion, it’s not pro-abortion. It’s: ‘Think about it. Don’t be callous about a human being, but don’t be limited about a thing as ‘morals’ either.”

 

18. Soundgarden, “Ty Cobb”
“Hard headed f*** you all / Hard headed f*** you all / Hard headed f*** you all”

A blitzkrieg of f-bombs – 21 in total – blast listeners of Soundgarden’s 1996 song “Ty Cobb.” The tune was named after the infamous baseball player, a Hall of Famer on the field, but whose legacy is tainted by his racism and abusive history. Still, the song wasn’t overtly about Cobb, but rather the type of person he embodied. “It was basically coming from the frame of mind of some sort of hardcore pissed-off idiot, and that’s why we titled it that,” Chris Cornell explained to Kerrang in 1997. “We weren’t writing the song about Ty Cobb at all—I didn’t even know anything about him. I was just thinking of a character who was a combination of a lot of people I’ve met and didn’t like.”

 

17. Prince, “Sexy M.F.”
“Come here, baby, yeah / You sexy motherf***er”

Remember when we said f-bombs could be erotic? Leave it to Prince to get the formula just right. Given the profanity, “Sexy M.F.” certainly turned plenty of heads when it was released as the lead single from 1992’s Love Symbol album. Still, Prince was no stranger to controversy, and the funky, brass-tigned tune oozed with exactly the type of sexual energy that its name would imply. Prince eventually dropped “Sexy M.F.” from his set lists, largely due to his discomfort with the lyrical themes after converting to Jehovah’s Witness. The final time he performed the song was in 1998.

 

16. Babys, “Midnight Rendezvous”
“All I really wanna do / Oh I really wanna f*** you”

The Babys scored a minor hit with their 1980 single “Midnight Rendezvous.” The catchy tune followed well trodden lyrical ground, chronicling romance and desire. While the song largely finds singer John Waite keeping his emotions in check, listeners who stay to the every end get rewarded with a lustful f-bomb amid the song’s final tones.

 

15. Pearl Jam, “Jeremy”
“Clearly I remember / Pickin’ on the boy / Seemed a harmless little f***”

The lone f-bomb in Pearl Jam’s 1992 hit “Jeremy” is delivered with spite and vitriol, like singer Eddie Vedder is embodying the bullies who plagued Jeremy Wade Delle, the real life 15 year-old who inspired the song after committing suicide in front of his sophomore class. It’s biting, powerful, and serves the tune to dramatic perfection.

 

14. Pink Floyd, “Not Now John”
“f*** all that, we’ve got to get on with these / (f*** all that, f*** all that) / Got to compete with the wily Japanese”

Profanity is pretty rare in Pink Floyd songs, but “Not Now John” is a notable exception. The word “f***” occurs in the album version of the song seven times, including six instances of the phrase “f*** all that” (the line quoted above comes from the song’s opening verse). Like most Floyd tunes, there was deeper meaning within “Not Now John”’s lyrics: The song argued for the importance of humanity in the face of war.

 

13. The Clash, “Death or Glory”
“But I believe in this and it’s been tested by research / He who f***s nuns will later join the church”

The Clash – and, more specifically, their acerbic lead singer, Joe Strummer – had no time for hypocrisy, especially when it came from fellow rock stars. In “Death or Glory,” Strummer took aim at the generation of rockers who swore they’d die before getting old and selling out, only to later do both. Here he uses an f-bomb alongside a metaphor, likening sanctimonious rock stars to religious zealots.

 

12. The Offspring, “Bad Habit”
“Something’s odd / I feel like I’m God / You stupid dumbshit goddamn motherf***er!”

SoCal punks the Offspring capture the insanity of road rage on their 1994 single “Bad Habit.” According to the band’s guitarist Noodles, the song, which chronicles the fury of a man who resorts to gun violence in response to rude drivers, was meant to be a “tongue-in-cheek look at psychosis.” However, this was lost on many parent groups at the time, who criticized the song’s themes and lyrical content. Regardless, “Bad Habit” became one of the Offspring’s breakout hits, and audiences across the globe can still be found yelling “dumbshit goddamn motherf***er” with glee.

 

11. Led Zeppelin, “Hots on for Nowhere”
“The timing is right growin’ older / I’ve got friends who will give me f*** all”

The trying situation surrounding the recording of Presence has been well-chronicled. Led Zeppelin had to alter their plans after singer Robert Plant was seriously injured in a car crash. While recovering in Malibu, California, he and the band decided to work on a new album. The lyrics on “Hots on for Nowhere” reflect Plants growing frustrations at the time, not only with his physical limitations, but with his bumpy relationship with Jimmy Page and band manager Peter Grant that the time. Reportedly, Plant tried to slur his f-bomb when recording the line “I’ve got friends who would give me f*** all” in an effort to avoid radio censorship. It didn’t work.

 

10. Joni Mitchell, “Women of Heart and Mind”
“Push your papers / Win your medals / f*** your strangers / Don’t it leave you on the empty side”

Arguably the most surprising entry on our list comes from Joni Mitchell. The revered singer-songwriter, known for her gorgeous, poetic lyrics, seems like an unlikely candidate to go around dropping f-bombs. Perhaps that’s why her use of “f***” in the 1972 song “Women of Heart and Mind” hits so hard. The tune finds Mitchell grappling with her own success, while also enduring heartbreak. Her frustration and vulnerability comes cascading throughout the tune, highlighted by its memorable four-letter word.

 

9. Violent Femmes, “Add It Up”
“Why can’t I get just one f***? / Why can’t I get just one f***? / I guess it’s got something to do with luck / But I waited my whole life for just one”

Violent Femmes tapped in to adolescent sexual anxiety for their 1983 single “Add It Up.” With each verse, the song’s narrator grows exponentially more frustrated — questioning why he can’t get a kiss, a screw, and eventually, a “f***.” The frenzied tune later hits its climax during a hysterical instrumental break, suggesting that the song’s character has finally gone over the edge.

 

8. Guns N’ Roses, “It’s So Easy”
“I see you standin’ there / You think you’re so cool / Why don’t you just / f*** off?”

Guns N’ Roses may not have been rich in the early part of 1987, but they were certainly becoming a must-see act on the Sunset Strip. “It’s So Easy” reflects the effortlessness with which the band was suddenly meeting women. “There’s a lot to say for that period of time when you start to lose the excitement of chasing chicks,” Slash explained in a press release at the time. “You start going after really bizarre girls, like librarians and stuff, just to catch them and say I finally went out and caught a girl that wouldn’t be my normal date. Because everything else was starting to get … it’s so easy.” The tune features a different vibe than many other Appetite for Destruction tracks, as Axl Rose delivers his vocals in an aggressive, lower register. In the line quoted above, Rose throws his disdain towards Hollywood ladies who pretend they’re too glamorous to be seen with his band. Later, he delivers a further series of f-bomb aftershocks, professing over and over again “it’s so easy, so f***in’ easy.”

 

7. The Pretenders, “Precious”
“But not me, baby, I’m too precious / I had to f*** off!”

Chrissie Hynde‘s early career was spent hanging around such anti-establishment rockers as the Sex Pistols. Her punk roots certainly shine through on “Precious,” a muscular and assertive track from the Pretenders‘ 1980 debut. For much of the tune, Hynde spits out lyrics with constrained intensity, but things ratchet up towards the end when the singer shows she’s anything but the precious little girl society wants her to be. You can practically hear the middle fingers in the air as Hynde declares: “But not me, baby, I’m too precious / I had to f*** off!”

 

6. Nine Inch Nails, “Closer”
“I wanna f*** you like an animal / I wanna feel you from the inside”

There is perhaps no more raw or carnal delivery of an f-bomb in music history than Trent Reznor’s famous lines in “Closer.” The Nine Inch Nails singer embodies rage and pure aggression on the track, yet for all of its taboos, “Closer” is often misunderstood. Though the track has plenty of sexual overtones, it was not designed as an ode to animalistic lust. Instead, Reznor crafted the song as a reflection of his own self-loathing.

 

5. The Who, “Who Are You?”
“Oh, who the f*** are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)”

In a career overflowing with classic songs, the Who’s “Who Are You” ranks among their most memorable. Pete Townshend wrote the tune after a night of drinking with members of the Sex Pistols. But it was singer Roger Daltrey who gave the track its notable fire and aggression, inspired by – or, more likely, in response to – the budding sound of punk at the time. “Who the f*** are you” was added by Daltrey towards “Who Are You”’s latter half, infusing further bite to the song’s tone.

 

4. Harry Nilsson, “You’re Breaking My Heart”
“You’re breakin’ my heart / You’re tearing it apart / So f*** you”

The contrast in Harry Nilsson‘s 1972 tune “You’re Breaking My Heart” is both jarring and wildly entertaining. Musically, the track is upbeat and buoyant, a bouncy little ditty that plays along a happy piano line. But lyrically, it’s dark and disarming, the confessions of a man whose life is crumbling around him. The largely autobiographical track finds Nilsson laughing through the pain of his own messy divorce. It also features a couple of his famous friends, most notably George Harrison and Peter Frampton, who both played on the track.

 

3. Radiohead, “Creep”
“I wish I was special / You’re so f***in’ special / But I’m a creep”

Radiohead has always offered a voice to outcasts, making heady, artistic rock that never conformed to any mainstream style or fad. It’s ironic, then, that the band’s breakthrough outsider anthem was also their biggest commercial hit. “Creep” ranks among the the most popular songs of the ‘90s, a powerful track so globally embraced that Radiohead refused to play it for years, partly because they didn’t want to be known as the “Creep” band. For radio and MTV, the tune was censored, with “you’re so very special” appearing in the chorus. But the original version is still the most compelling, with f-bombs helping to power Thom Yorke’s dynamic vocals.

 

2. John Lennon, “Working Class Hero”
“Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV / And you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re still f***ing peasants as far as I can see”

It was extremely rare for the Beatles to use any profanity in their lyrics, but John Lennon mixed in choice curse words with his solo material. The most impactful example came on his classic 1970 single “Working Class Hero.” Described by the singer as a “revolutionary song,” the track finds Lennon tearing apart class structure and social standards. The rock legend – who grew up in a lower class home – declares his disdain for elites throughout the tune, and his f-bomb on the song’s second-to-last verse rattles with rage. “I think it’s for the people like me who are working class, who are supposed to be processed into the middle classes, or into the machinery,” Lennon once explained of the song. “It’s my experience, and I hope it’s just a warning to people, Working Class Hero.”

 

1. Rage Against the Machine, “Killing in the Name”
“f*** you, I won’t do what you tell me”

Rage Against the Machine’s 1992 single “Killing in the Name” ranks among the most powerful political rock songs ever recorded. The scorching track attacks police brutality head on, with frontman Zack de la Rocha deriving his lines with unbridled fury. This is fist-in-the-air, call-to-arms rock. And for the song’s emphatic ending, “f*** you, I won’t do what you tell me” is repeated 16 times. The words burn through the speaker like a car fire in a riot. Songs like “Killing in the Name” are why the f-bomb was invented.

David Gilmour believes success hindered Pink Floyd‘s ability to accept criticism.

During a conversation with The Sun, Gilmour explained how the band’s creative dynamic changed.

“After you achieve these dizzying heights, people tend to show you way too much deference,” the guitarist explained. “It becomes hard to retrieve the setup you had when you were young.”

As Gilmour pointed out, success made it difficult for members of the group to accept opinions different than their own.

READ MORE: Pink Floyd Albums Ranked

“In the earlier stages of Pink Floyd, we could be as rude and insulting to each other about our personalities and our music as we wanted,” the rocker noted, “and yet everything would be all right in the end.”

Of course, then the day came that things were no longer all right.

“No one ever stomped off permanently — until that bloke did.”

“That bloke” who Gilmour is referring to is Roger Waters, the band’s bassist and primary songwriter, who acrimoniously quit Pink Floyd in 1985.

READ MORE: The Best Song From Every Pink Floyd Album

“We never managed to come to a common view of the dynamic that existed within the band, of who did what and whether or not it was right,” Waters declared to Rolling Stone two years later. “It was an irritation to start with, and it became an impossible irritation towards the end.”

Pink Floyd’s most famous lineup would only reunite one more time. In 2005, Gilmour, Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason performed a brief set at the Live 8 benefit concert in London.

What Is David Gilmour Doing Now?

Gilmour’s fifth studio album, Luck and Strange, is set for release on Sept. 6. It marks the musician’s first solo LP in nine years.

According to The Sun, the guitarist claimed the new album is his most satisfying work since The Dark Side of the Moon.

“There’s a wholeness to it that I can’t pin down,” Gilmour explained. “It goes all the way through without any concept album bullshit.”